I received an email this morning from Backlink Genius, one of the many websites that I do business with, with the email header Change of payout method in BackLinks Genius. I don’t like it when I receive emails from companies I work with mentioning a change in pay-out in the email header because it is ALWAYS bad news.

I took a deep breath and clicked the email open…

I’m not sure if it is good news or bad news but it certainly puts my nose out of joint slightly.

The email was informing me that as of this morning Backlink Genius would no longer be paying out using PayPal and would only pay-out using Moneybookers. They did not give a reason for this sudden change.

This is something that has been happening quite a few times this month, I think this is the FIFTH company, that I am involved with, this month that has taken this exact same approach.

The reason it put my nose out of joint is because I had so much trouble and strife trying to set up my PayPal account that I’m not looking forward to having to go through it all again with Moneybookers.

Plus I know absolutely nothing about Moneybookers, are they a reliable company to trust with my money and bank account details? Do any of my readers use Moneybooker? I live in the United Kingdom and would appreciate some feedback on them.

This week Google gave us a treat and updated their PageRank system. It is something that a lot of people who make their money online look forward to because for some of us a higher PR means more money.

This latest update has been considered by many to be a major update so you should check ALL your domains that you have under your belt.

How Did I Need Discipline Do?

I wasn’t expecting this blog to remain as a PR5 for long and this update did exactly what I thought and I saw my PR drop from PR5 to PR4, I attribute this to the high amount of guest posts that I have been accepting lately.

I have been looking at reducing the amount of guest posts I publish so maybe this will be the catalyst to make me do it, after all I really don’t want to drop anymore PR levels.

It’s Not All Doom & Gloom

While this blog dropped PR my other blogs ALL increased in PR, most of them increased by a single PR level but they still count.

So how did you do? Did you see an increase? Or did Google take all your PR away like an internet-type Grinch?

I like to give everybody the benefit of the doubt so when I received an email a couple of years ago from a guy informing me about a new sponsored post network I decided to give it a try and see how it panned out.

It took me ages to get one of my small blogs accepted because they kept nit-picking about certain things on the blog but after weeks of trying I was finally accepted. A couple of months later I received my first assignment and submitted it and had it approved quickly.

That was in July 2011 and I am still waiting for them to pay me. Every month they keep pushing the date back by a month despite stating on their site that they pay every week.

I have fired off FIVE emails to them, three via their contact form and two via an email address on their site, and they have not replied to ANY of them. I have searched Google to see if anyone else has not been paid and have seen no bad things being reported about them.

Has anyone had any dealings with this site?

If you have ever tried to make money in the sponsored posts market then you will have heard of Smorty. At the beginning of the year they did a disappearing act and didn’t let on to anybody what was going on, leaving a lot of their members high and dry.

Closing up shop, and doing a runner in the middle of the night without alerting their clients, is nothing new on the internet, it’s been happening since the early 90s, but I think Smorty was one that really took people by surprise for some reason.

In fact when they were gone for a month people were still regularly checking to see if the site had made a return.

Although four months on there is still no announcement from the people who run the network; I think it is time for everyone to realise that Smorty are dead and gone and are not coming back anytime soon.

Thankfully I stopped using them back in 2009 when they stopped offering me tasks, but unfortunately I am one of the few lucky ones as apparently when Smorty disappeared it did so without paying its members for quite a few months.

This is just another example of why you should never put all your eggs into one basket, if you check out my Make Money page (just under Sponsored Posts) then you will find a lot of networks to use so you can spread your bets.

In the four years (53 months to be exact) that this blog has existed I have been asked a lot of questions and one of the most common has been how to install and set up a blog. It seems that it comes across as a combination of rocket science & brain surgery to a fair few people.

It is sad to think that a process, that many of us do multiple times a week, is considered out of reach of a lot of people and is, the majority of the time, the only thing that stands in their way of doing something that can provide them with a lot of enjoyment and even some income.

Well you should not have to miss out any longer.

I will offer to install and set up a WordPress blog for you at absolutely no cost to you. On top of that I will also install a selection of plugins to help you on your way. The plugins are:

After The Deadline – A plugin that helps weed out the little spelling errors you might have missed.
Akismet – A plugin that helps kill spam comments.
All In One SEO – An SEO plugin that will help you rank well in search engines.
Google Sitemap – A plugin that will help Google index your blog pages quicker.
Show Top Commentators – A plugin that encourages readers to comment on your blog.
W3 Total Cache – A plugin that will make your blog run faster.
WordPress.com Stats – A plugin that helps keep track of your traffic.

Most people and companies would charge you around the $100.00 figure for a service like this (and they probably would not install plugins) but I am offering to do it for absolutely nothing.

OK, What’s The Catch?

In order to take advantage of this offer all you have to do is order a web hosting plan with BlueHost. Once you have done this you should then email me with the login information (you could set up a temp one for me if you wish) to dean [at] ineeddiscipline.com and I’ll set up your new blog for you. I’ll then email you the login details for your new blog ready for you to start on your blogging path!

Don’t put off starting your blogging journey another day, take advantage of the great prices and service that myself and BlueHost are offering TODAY!

Click Here To Order Your New WordPress Blog

In January last year I decided to set goals for this blog instead of resolutions about myself, I did this because I’ve always seen resolutions as promises to yourself that are only weak promises that can be broken easily, plus I thought it would be a different.

Today I’m going to revisit these goals and see how many of them (if any) I achieved.

GOAL 1: Make More Money Than I Did In 2010

In 2010 I made $1423.93 and I did this without putting in as much effort as I’m capable of so I was very confident that I could easily make more money during 2011. The truth is I passed the 2010 sum within the first three months. I finished 2011 by earning a grand total of $6547.74.

Did I Achieve My Goal?: Absolutely!

GOAL 2: Write More Content For This Blog

In 2010 I published 107 posts which I didn’t think was good enough so I wanted to publish a lot more in 2011. My aim was one article a day but I didn’t really believe deep down that I would stick to that so I unofficially changed it from “post once a day” to “post more than you did in 2010”.

In 2011 I published 153 posts, that means I posted an average of 12.75 articles per month. It’s an improvement but I’m hoping to be able to say that I’ve doubled that next year.

Did I Achieve My Goal?: Yes, although it is still not good enough in my opinion.

GOAL 3: Give This Blog A Redesign

The best thing I did during 2011 was give this blog a redesign. I was apprehensive about it at first because Thesis costs money but I managed to persuade a friend to buy it for my birthday. There is a message there, when people ask you what you want for Birthday/Christmas, point them in the direction of a theme or plugin.

I am so pleased with how the blog looks now, I’m still tinkering but I think it is just about right as it is.

Did I Achieve My Goal?: Yes and I did it for free thanks to a friend’s generosity.

GOAL 4: Step Up My Bid To Get More Guest Posts

Not only did I manage to publish more guest posts in 2011 but I think I went a bit nuts and posted too many, to the point where I was having to ask guest bloggers if I could hold onto their articles for weeks before publishing them.

I must think of a reasonable amount to publish so I don’t run into this problem again.

Did I Achieve My Goal?: Yes I did but I got swamped in the amount of posts that were too good to turn down.

GOAL 5: Start Up More Blogs

During 2011 I started up five new blogs, hopefully by the beginning of February I’ll be able to start submitting them to sponsored post networks to make more money . I have even more domains waiting to be used.

Did I Achieve My Goal?: Yes.

GOAL 6: Double My RSS Subscriber Count

I wanted to go to town on my RSS count during 2011 but I haven’t even made a dent in it. In my defence I have not tried to increase it, I’ve been spending the time on other areas of social media like twitter & Facebook.

Did I Achieve My Goal?: No, I think I’ve actually lost subscribers.

GOAL 7: Start My Mailing List

This was something that I kind of half succeeded at. I managed to start my mailing list in the sense that I’ve set it up and turned it on but that is as far as I have got. I haven’t sent anything out and I haven’t done anything to entice people to subscribe. I still managed to gain 35 subscribers though.

Did I Achieve My Goal?: Yes & No.

GOAL 8: Double The Traffic

My goal was to get 2,000 unique visitors and 4,000 page impressions a month, In my last blog income report I hit 3,516 unique hits and 6,516 page impressions. And the stats seem to be more or less increasing every month.

Did I Achieve My Goal?: Yes, with gusto!

GOAL 9: Submit More Of My Old Articles To Article Directory Sites

This was something I failed to do, actually I didn’t submit ANY articles to article directory sites in 2011. It is definitely something that will be on my list for 2012 because I aim to submit some to sites like InfoBarrel and earn more passive income.

Did I Achieve My Goal?: No, I failed miserably.

GOAL 10: Write More Content For Passive Income Directories

Again I failed at this as I did not submit ANY articles to any directories. I’m looking to increase my passive income during 2012 so posting to sites like InfoBarrel and Hubpages is definitely at the top of my list of goals for 2012.

Did I Achieve My Goal?: Again that would be no.

GOAL 11: Write At Least One Ebook

This was one goal that I didn’t even think about, which is surprising because I’ve been wanting to publish a book of some kind since I was 8 years of age. I think it is something I have to do if I want to entice people to subscribe to my mailing list.

Did I Achieve My Goal?: No.

So out of the eleven goals that I set myself for 2011 I managed to achieve six of them, failed four of them and one of them (Goal 7) was a stalemate. How did you do with your 2011 goals? Did you achieve more of them than I did?

I don’t like it when companies kick their customers and clients to the kerb without any sort of warning. I dislike them even more if it is a company that I have been with for a number of years and who I have actually made money for.

I have been doing business with Sponsored Reviews since November 2007, in that time I have earnt myself a grand total of $1005.55 ($20.00 of that was from bringing in referrals), when you take into consideration that they increased their share percentage to 50% well over two years ago that means they have earnt over $1000 from me as well.

I did not complain when they silently increased their share of the money bloggers earn from 35% to 50%, I actually thought it was a good idea for two reasons:

1. It would force the crappy bloggers to leave Sponsored Reviews, this meant no more having to compete with spammy blogs who scare away the decent advertisers.

2. It gave me the encouragement I was lacking to increase my prices for this blog. For a few years I was only charging $5 a sponsored post, with the 50% share put in place I was forced to take the plunge a lot sooner.

This morning I was looking through the current sponsored post offerings and I noticed that none of them were available for this blog, when I checked my list of blogs that I applied to Sponsored Reviews with I noticed this blog was missing. I checked the “rejected blogs” list there she was all on her own feeling cold, miserable and lonely.

I fired off a quick email to their support service (I use that term in the loosest possible way):

Hello.

My PR5 blog has suddenly been taken off my blog list and placed in the rejected blog list. I received no warning and reason about this.

Can you please explain to me why ineeddiscipline.com was moved to the rejected blog list?

Thank you.

To their credit they replied within several hours with the following information:

Hello

The template of your site doesn’t meet our requirements. It doesn’t have a blog archive section, also all blog posts must be located on the homepage with links going to the advertisers site.

Regards,

Judy

I was slightly confused because if you check my navigation menu you will see I have an entire page for my archives, and it has been there since 2007. I was also confused as to why they would now insist on me displaying ALL my posts on the homepage.

Hello,

Thank you for your speedy reply. I have listed the reasons ‘Judy’ gave and I have given my answer after them.

“It doesn’t have a blog archive section.”

My blog DOES have an archive section, in fact it has an entire page just for the archive section – http://ineeddiscipline.com/archives/ – it has been like that since 2007 and has NEVER been removed so I don’t know why you would claim I don’t have one.

“All blog posts must be located on the homepage with links going to the advertisers site.”

2. Are you insane? You expect me to show 447 (at the time of writing) posts on my blog home page? Do you have any idea how horrible that would make the blog look and how slow that would make the blog load?

I have been a member of your network since 2007 and I am deeply disappointed that I was not even given a warning that my blog would be taken down, let alone for VERY shaky reasons.

Please explain this because I don’t understand how you have come to the two explanations in your email.

Thank you,

A couple of hours later I received this reply:

Hi Laurence, (DON’T CALL ME LAURENCE! – Dean)

I apologize for not contacting you. I do see the archive section. We definitely do not require all posts to be on the homepage at the same time. We do require the post to be placed on the homepage for a minimum of 24 hours with at least one link to the advertisers site. Then it must be archived.

I have re- approved your site. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Thank you,

Judy

So I am going to ascertain by that reply that whoever rejected my blog did not look at my blog before rejecting this blog. I’m not sure why I was lectured either as I haven’t written a sponsored post on this blog since November 23rd.

Hi Judy,

Thank you for re-approving my blog.

I would like to know who rejected my blog because whoever it was is definitely not doing their job properly as it is painfully obvious they did not even scan my blog let alone look at it for any length of time.

I’m also not sure why you would feel the need to lecture me on the practice of leaving your sponsored posts on the homepage for 24 hour. I’m well aware of this and have always stuck with this ruling.

If this is the real reason why the blog was rejected then I would like to point out that I have not written a sponsored post for you with this blog since November 23rd 2011.

I thank you for putting my blog back and sorting the error out quickly.

Dean Saliba

I had obviously annoyed her because she replied within 30 minutes with this beauty of a reply:

Hi Dean

There is a QA process for all blog sites, they are continually monitored. There is a negative rating by an advertiser that stated links were not posted on the homepage, that is why the site was disapproved.

Once again I apologize and your site is currently available.

Thank you,

Judy

I had a quick check and found the rating she was talking about:

Hi Judy,

That negative rating was left in July 2008! I think your “QA process” needs updating or replacing.

Thank you,

Dean Saliba

My support ticket was promptly closed.

I like to believe that I’m slightly different from the other entrepreneurs who are trying to make an income on the internet (I don’t know why I keep saying ‘trying’, I’ve actually been doing it since 2007!) and one thing that I have noticed was that they only seem to list their successes.

Although they would like you to believe they have all been successful first time with their ventures, a lot of them have had some massive, and at times quite epic, failures to get to where they are.

As I said earlier I like to think I am different so I have decided to list some of my past failures. Some of them are very embarrassing and I have a feeling that I might wake up in cold sweats in the middle of the night regretting this for many years to come.

1. Sweet Shop In My Bedroom

This was the first thing I ever tried to do to make money. I was 10. Sadly it wasn’t anything as elaborate as people who set up online sweat web sites. Basically I went to a shop and brought a load of sweats, crisps and soft drinks and sold them to my friends and siblings from my bedroom who were too lazy to walk to the shops in town.

As I was young I naturally ended up eating most of them myself.

2. Stationary Company

When I was 13 I decided to start a stationary business. I had unlimited access to free stationary (pens, pencils, papers, rulers, staplers, etc) so I really thought I was onto a winner.

I advertised by printing up flyers and popping them through the letterboxes of businesses in my local area. One of them got to the housing association, who my father rented our apartment from, and they threatened legal action as it was illegal to run a business from their apartments. Oops!

3. Online Music Club

Here in the United Kingdom we used to have a music club called Britannia Music Club. They would send you a booklet every month with the latest albums and you could buy them through the post from the comfort of your own home. If you brought enough at the full price they would let you buy some at really cheap prices once or twice a yeah.

My idea was along the same lines but online. I was new to the internet and didn’t know a thing about promoting, I simply set up a free webhost account with Geocities and got a free CJB.net domain name. Surprise surprise no takers.

4. Dating Site

I noticed that people were making a lot of money with dating web sites and I wanted a piece of the action. I had just read about how Markus Frind had created Plenty of Fish for nothing so I thought I could do it as well.

I knew a bit more about promoting by this stage, and I found a free script to run it with, but sadly I only attracted men from India and nobody paid for a premium membership account.

5. Football (soocer) Message Board

My brother started a football message board and asked me to take it over because he did not have the time. We already had a domain and the forum script in place so I promoted the forums wherever I could and as often as I could. I even paid a couple of ad networks to run advertising campaigns.

The revenue we were generating was not great but the membership was growing nicely, at a point we had over 3000 members who had generated around 500,000 posts. The only problem was the members were never satisfied and were always complaining.

They didn’t want ads, they wanted prizes for posting, they wanted more expensive skins to choose from, the moderators wanted to be paid, etc. It got to the point where I was spending pretty much every hour of the day working on the forum. In the end we were hacked so badly that it cost us a lot of money to repair and the members were long gone.

6. Tapp Out Radio

Ah Tapp Out Radio, my unloved baby. I wanted to try my hand at running an internet radio station but I didn’t want to have to pay those extortionate fees radio stations are forced to pay to promote music. So I played unsigned music and talk shows.

I spent a lot of money creating the website, purchasing broadcasting servers, broadcasting equipment and I paid voice artists to create stings and promos for the station. The problem was that not many advertisers were willing to do business with a station that aired music nobody had heard of.

The servers were hacked badly and I decided to cut my losses.

Now I’ve admitted my mistakes, how about you admit yours?

This morning I received a nice surprise as I was casually updating some of my blogs that I own, I discovered that Google had given us an early Christmas present by updating Page Rank.

Some of my blogs stayed as they were but four of my blogs climbed in PR. My personal blog went from PR2 to PR3, my professional wrestling blog jumped from a PR3 to a PR4 and my hosting blog increased from a PR2 to a PR3.

But most pleasing of all was the Page Rank for this blog, it rose majestically from a PR3 to a PR5. I have never had a blog or web site with a Page Rank higher than 4 before, so I am very pleased about this.

The last time Google updated Page Rank was in August, I believe, and they increased this blog’s PR but then a week later halved it. The blog had gone from PR2 to a PR4 but was then reduced to a PR3. I’m hoping the same doesn’t happen this time.

How did you do?

I came across a couple of reviews recently for a web site called Traffic Express, the reviews were posted on blogs that I consider to be popular and carry quite a considerable amount of clout in the MMO niche.

So I thought “if these guys are highly recommending them then they must be reliable and decent.”

Traffic Express boldly claims that they can help make your blog, Twitter account, LinkedIn profile, or Facebook page, go viral. It claims to analyse your current traffic and will then supply you with relevant traffic that will double or even triple what you are currently receiving.

Again, because two rather big players in the niche were promoting this site I decided to ignore the horrible design and layout and give it a go and signed up for one of my smaller blogs. I installed the plugin and left it running for two weeks.

In that time three things happened:

1. They plastered my blog with links to their site. Backlinks for them.

2. They kept wiping my account every couple of days.

3. I received no traffic from them what so ever.

After 2 weeks, and about the 5th time of entering in the details, I decided to remove them.

If they can not handle a blog that pulls in a couple of thousands hits a month then how will they handle one of the bigger blogs? They are a complete waste of time and I strongly urge you to give them a wide birth.