EDIT – Aditya has emailed me to confirm the statistics – I found it strange, but I’m looking like a fool now with regards to that, as he has shown me traffic statistics proof and it seems like Alexa has updated a bit too late (for this blog, and my embarrassment ) – the recent shoot up is pretty phenomenal.

I think we both have a bit to learn from this – me to not be so quick, at well, trying to hammer someone (and maybe look into it a bit more before I do) and Aditya for his personalized email.

I have a couple tips, if I could to retain some of my dignity back

1) The personalized email would help a great deal. Even if I wasn’t interested in advertising (which I’m not, because there is no talk of making money online) I would have perhaps searched for others that would be. From his reply, I notice that Aditya has kept track of this blog, and saw advertising on Shoemoney – a five second trip to my about page to find out my name would have been far more well received, even if the rest of the email was generic.

2) The theme – this one may well get the job done, but something that stands out will help your readers come back for more and more. A unique, or even standard customized one can help people remember your site better, because we all know internet users generally have a pretty poor memory. As for paying a grand – you can get it done for less than $100 if you look in the right places, a price that would be a decent investment in the long run.

As for me – I’m going to slink into the corner for now, cos I’ve been a bad boy. Anyways, I will be emailing Aditya now to confirm that this is cleared up; one hopes that he will not be too pissed off and should I ever start a tech blog in the future I’ll be the first to purchase advertising (or a Digg front page ).

Oh yeah – last but not least, @ EGK… check your email. The second thing I’ve been found out about in this post, jeez!

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Morning/Afternoon/Evening all, depending on where you are

There are thousands, if not millions of blogs participating in the niche that is the make money online/blogging tips section of the blogosphere. They do have a lot in common – yes, a lot of the stuff is regurgitated, but you’ll also find that people tend to play it safe, and say rather than do. For example, I wouldn’t promote something, no matter how good it sounded unless I knew 100% that it worked – that’s the case for all the eBooks I write, as well as the blog posts giving you guys tips on earning online. There are too many bloggers out there speaking theoretically rather than practically, and talking about things when they have no idea whether it’ll work or not.

I pride myself on this blog being honest – quality content is something that can only be answered by you, as if you asked me, I’d tell you TUK was the best blog in the world (only due to its brilliant readers, of course) – but one thing this blog will never do is lie to its readers. Being honest and all is pretty important in today’s world, and even if you have to be harsh at times, that’s not a problem – as long as you’re helping someone. I have no problem being called an idiot (and trust me, it happens pretty often) with regards to my online activities, as long as someone points out where I’ve gone wrong or what the big flaws are.

Today, I’ll show you how NOT to approach a website owner – I get requests like that pretty often, usually through instant messenger; today, one came in through email, and I’m going to personally rip it to shreds in front of you so that you will hopefully never do the same.

Being a person that has a pretty large chunk set aside for website advertising, I often get contacted by webmasters – mainly looking for me to advertise on their websites. The deals range from bargain basement ($0.5/month) to pretty damn expensive ($50 a day)… most of them were pretty personal emails, and backed by understanding publishers – today, I received an email quite opposite to that.

First off, as you can tell – it’s a generic email. If I’m going to spend some money advertising on this guy’s site, I’d appreciate it if he could learn my name – nothing major, but it helps. This very same email was probably sent to dozens of other bloggers – not that great when you’re selling something.

Now – his website. I visited it, and yeah, it looked somewhat popular, but nowhere near 280,000 page views a month (even at 2.8 pages a visitor, that’s 100,000 visitors). Whilst the content is somewhat interesting, to me it generates nowhere near the level of interest that I’d check out two more, and I doubt 100,000 other people would <== See edit: Looks like loads more people than me like Tech stuff. At $100/month, you’d think they’d be some proof of his claims, or even an ‘Advertise’ page telling advertisers of the benefits?

I did an Alexa check, and his website receives less traffic than mine. See edit… g’damn! So unless it’s one visitor visiting 280,000 pages by himself (and even that wouldn’t help much) there is something pretty amiss – the whole non-personalized email, website quality and all (would someone charging $100/month per slot for advertising – and that’s only in the sidebar – really be stuck with a free theme?) Zapnat.com, and it’s Editor Aditya Mahesh who has just replied to my email and left me looking a tad stupid. If you go there quick, you’ll notice their featured article has a spelling mistake – not an impression I’d want to leave on potential advertisers.

Oh yeah – that email made me rethink, and from now on I’ll be charging $101 per month for those 125 x 125s in the sidebar. Gah, short lived happiness. I need a Digg spike, but I’m scared my server would crash

How I’ll be increasing my RSS feed numbers

Everyone has some kind of mention of this, so I thought I might as well follow through

- Provide different content. Sure, you could talk about becoming a better blogger, increasing efficiency or similar things all day, but how many make money online bloggers bashed someone that sent them any annoying email? I’ll tell you what – find one of them (other than me) and I’ll send you a free copy of my eBook.

- Provide prizes. Yes, everyone is doing so, but none of them are putting up cold hard cash. Everyone loves cash, no matter what kind of digital goodies you give away – I’m giving away both.

- Hidden things that I’ll talk about later. More on this in the next few days, but keep your eyes open – this is going to be big. Hint – watch out for **** ***, something will happen over there.

That’s all for now – I have a pending website sale that I need to take care of. Oh yeah, I’m thinking of putting up the email subscription form in posts from now on – what do you guys think? Unobtrusive or a little bit of overkill? Comment on this post to increase your chance of winning