I get emails like this every other day – now, I have replied to most of them, but having received three of them on the same topic and being the complete lazy ass that I am, I figured out why not write up a post on this and let everyone learn something they already know useful.
This will pertain to the make money online niche, as that’s the one I’m most familar with; but the tips in here will help with most (blogs).
Choosing a domain name
If you don’t have a domain name, you don’t have a site. Yeah, you could use a subdomain at WordPress (which doesn’t allow affiliate links or advertising or Blogspot, but a) those are pretty long and b) those are extremely unprofessional. For your personal blog, you must get a .COM – if the one you’re thinking of isn’t available, think of another one. .COM is the core domain – one that everyone goes to first, and it would be a lot, lot better if you had it.
You can get a domain at GoDaddy – a .COM there only costs $7.15 if you use the coupon code OYH3 (which is my personal favourite).
Getting Some Hosting
Y’all know who I recommend; anyways, it’s the same people I use – HostICan. I’ve been with them for a while now and they are always responsive to questions and requests for help – their Tera Host package is well worth the money, and if you use the coupon code University-12 you’ll get $40.00 off. You can also try HostGator – I’ve heard a lot of mixed opinions about them from various forums but considering they offer their first month at $0.01 (with the coupon code jury) you don’t have much to lose.
The Actual Blog
I will recommend WordPress until I’m blue in the face; it’s simply the easiest and most professional content management system out there for anyone looking to create their own blog. You can download WordPress at www.wordpress.org – if you get hosting with Fantastico (see HostICan above 
) then you can have a one-click install and don’t have to deal with databases and similar crap.
Wordpress also have a range of themes that you can tweak to suit your needs – Adii’s WP-Polaroid is a great one, while you can also buy the sexy Milk It theme from John Cow if you’re willing to spend. Let’s not forget that most of you are cheap bastards though, so you can find some pretty sexy free themes on this page (sponsored by yours truly) or ones specifically created for Adsense by Dosh Dosh.
You can eventually fork out for your own custom one – for the beginning, if you’re not happy with the ones above just do a simple Google search for WordPress Themes and browse to your pleasure – there are thousands of them.
Now, you can start out with just a theme – I recommend a few plugins that you can use to ’soup up’ your blog.
All in One SEO Pack – you know how often you hear that SEO and meta tags and all that is one of the most important things for a website? Well, this plugin helps with that and it’s pretty easy to use – no dealing with code whatsoever.
Dofollow - people are more likely to comment on a fresh blog if it has the dofollow plugin enabled – everyone is greedy for link juice to their sites. This will only be useful if you have a blog with PageRank.
Google XML Sitemaps – another thing to help your site – this plugin will get you indexed in the search engines within a day or two. The quicker you get indexed, the quicker you’ll start receiving search engine traffic.
Subscribe Remind – this plugin places a small line of text at the bottom of each of your posts reminding people to subscribe to your blog. Eventually it will get so annoying that people will give in.
Top Commentators Widget – i personally use this instead of a blogroll. Rather than a one off link exchange, the top commentator widget makes sure that only people that contribute to your site get links in your sidebar. Links are dofollow (I think!) which is an added bonus.
Permalinks – this isn’t a plugin, but it must be done for a blog; it’ll give you search engine friendly URLs and look a lot cleaner and professional. To enable permalinks, go to Options ==> Permalinks and enter /%postname%/ under Custom Structure. It’s a lot better to do this at the beginning, rather than wait a bit and suffer for it.
Content
The point of a blog is not just original content, but your original content. If you’re going to just report news or rehashed crap that’s been discussed thousands of times without adding your opinion into the mix – don’t start one, an autoblog will save you time and money. People read blogs to see what the person writing them has to say – without personality, and better yet uniqueness you are going to crash and burn. For a better, more elaborate post on this topic read the one by William Montanaro.
Another thing to do would be to keep most of your content relevant to your niche – no one is going to want to read about break dancing when you’re running a make money online blog. If you aren’t relevant at least 60 – 80% of the time, people are going to go somewhere else.
There is nothing wrong with discussing the ideas of others, or even common topics – how many blog posts have you seen on Adsense, PageRank or *cough* starting new forums *cough* ? I’m not saying you shouldn’t discuss those topics, but make sure you’re adding your own viewpoint – no matter what it is. With the actual blog posting itself – make sure it’s consistent. Whether it’s once a day or once a week, make sure you follow that pattern – go a while without posting (and without warning your readers that you won’t be) can kill a blog. If you can’t do so yourself, ask someone to fill in – there are plenty out there that would do a guest post and steal your valuable traffic.
Monetization
Google Adsense – I would never use Adsense on a personal blog because I think it looks tacky as hell – a lot of people do use it though and considering it is probably the biggest ad network around it has to get a mention. If you want to use Adsense on a WordPress blog, download the Adsense Deluxe plugin and you’ll find it pretty easy to put in.
Private Ad sales – You will be able to sell ad space when you become established – you can start out offering it cheap for the beginning. I personally have raised mine to a pretty high level – yes, none of them have sold but that’s not the point 
. Private ad sales bring it a lot of income for some of the bigger bloggers out there – the 125 x 125 ad is a common seen one in the sidebar of most larger blogs.
Text Link Ad Network – TLA works pretty well for me – their affiliate program pays out a decent $25.00 per free referral and considering you can make some decent money just by showing their ads on your site, it’s not bad at all. They can get a little bit confusing when you’re looking at how to set them up – read this guide on what to do.
Scratchback – I came across this one a few days ago and recently asked them to create a customized widget for TUK – they do them for free while in BETA ($50 normal price) so if you want to join, get in their quick. Scratchback allows people to ‘tip’ you – something that is a lot better than the standard ‘Donate’ button as they will get a link on your site as well. The only bad thing about them is that they don’t have an affiliate program 
.
Buy Me A Beer - this is Wordpress plugin just for donations – there are Buy Me a Milk, Toast, Coffee etc as well. It allows people to donate if they like your work – don’t expect to make a living off them though .
Affiliate Products – If you have any products that you feel your readers will like, feel free to push them if they have an affiliate program. Make sure that they will benefit your readers just as much as they will benefit you though – I push HostICan and TLA because I personally use them and I know that they’re good. Pushing over-hyped crap may get you some sales in the short term, but will not do well in the long run.
Your Own Products – If you have a product of your own, why not sell it (or have a link to buy it) on your site? This can be pretty successful, especially if your readers like you.
Promotion
You can have all the above – quality content, well placed ads and a killer domain on a hosting package that won’t crash, but if you don’t promote your blog, it is worthless. I do not blog ‘for fun’ (although it definitely is so) – I blog because I hope to offer some advice to my readers and eventually make some (decent) money off it. Without traffic, there’s no way you can do that – so how do you get visitors?
Forums – you don’t know just how much traffic forums can send you – Digital Point is my largest referrer with around 1,500 visits – were I not a member, I would never have received those (and would probably be a couple dollars short, but I’ll talk about that later ). If you post informative stuff, forums can be a gold mine – remember, they allow you to display links in your signature (which show up as backlinks to your website) as well as in your Recent Blog Feed – post up informative titles and you will get visitors.
Stumble Upon / Digg – they are going to shit, considering the traffic bots, exchanges and all that but while they’re barely living you can still extract some traffic out of them. Getting a story on the front page of Digg guarantees at least 10,000 visitors to your site (and probably a server crash too) while Stumble Upon can send 100 – 200 uniques a day if you work them right. There are plenty of social bookmarking sites around – use them when you’re just starting up.
MyBlogLog – this is what I use; it shows the recent visitors to your blog. Have a decent looking avatar and people will click through to see what it is – if you visit 100 sites daily (while you’re doing the EC card dropping – see below) you will have your avatar show up on 100 sites. You can also join communities and spam promote your site by leaving messages on the ‘walls’ of other bloggers.
Entrecard – yes, it is junk traffic but any traffic counts at the beginning (or so I’ve heard) and thus you can use Entrecard to gain a few visitors to your site. Most of them will not stay and only come to drop their card, but make sure you put it below the fold and have a killer header and a few of them just might stick around long enough to read a post and better yet comment on it.
Guest Posting – John Chow has 15,000 RSS readers. Problogger has 36,000. Send in a guest post to one of those or similarly trafficked blogs and even if 1% of their readers visit – you’re in business. You can of course also do swap guest posts with ’smaller’ blogs -they’ll generally be more willing. For a guest post, make sure you send in a quality one – no one is going to accept one that is written crap and even if they do, the only thing that will happen is that you’ll embarrass yourself in front of thousands. Guess that’s why yours truly hasn’t sent it a guest post to the bigger blogs yet
Buy Advertising - for a new blogger, this may not be financially viable but if you can get cheap advertising then go for it. With Entrecard you can get some decent advertising for free, of course 
TrackBacks – Ever wonder why a load of bloggers do ‘Top Five Weekly Posts’ or ‘Best Blog Posts From The Blogosphere’ posts? It’s not because they actually want to give you something good to read – it’s so that they can get trackbacks on the most popular posts of a particular blog . I’m joking, but you’ll find that this works pretty well as an evil way to send you some traffic – link to popular posts with controversial anchor text and you will get visitors.
Commenting – most blogs have the top commenter widget nowadays, meaning that if you do enough you’ll get on it; even just leaving interesting comments can send you traffic, especially if they’re on half decent blogs.
Social Networking Sites - I don’t mean SU/Digg. If you have a Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Orkut or similar crap account, you can link to your blog from there – it might send you some traffic (and definitely will if you’re masquerading as a hot girl ).
That’s all for now. It’s long enough! If you like this post, feel free to Stumble It, and I’ll probably add it to Digg later. Hopefully it’ll become fairly popular, so link to it and gain yourself a trackback… 
By the way, the stumbles I mentioned yesterday are in the process of going through and will go out within the next 6-8 hours. Thanks for the hard work you put in to participate in the contest
January 20th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Thanks for the mention jason
really nice post there, you covered a lot of ground!
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Rahul Jadhav (10 comments) Reply:
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:50 pm
Ya , its an extensive post containing all the important aspects about blogging
Rahul Jadhav’s last blog post..Sunday Link Love
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January 20th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Thats one long post Jason!
Good tips though. Should be enough to get everybody started.
Staale aka Vikingblogger
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January 20th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
[...] written a long and describing post here telling you what to do when you start up, but today Jason @ The University Kid. Wrote a great post pointing out some importan – well – uhm – [...]
January 20th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Hot damn, that was a very informative post, I learnt something new
Thanks!
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January 20th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Great info Jason! I really appreciate your taking the time out to write all this up.
Thanks
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January 20th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
A well put together article and some great tips and advice for people just starting out.
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January 20th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
Not bad. Although, Entrecard is not all crap traffic. I have seen some comments from Entrecard users that are actually well thought out, and I have formed several friendships with EC bloggers.
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January 20th, 2008 at 5:19 pm
Great post!
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January 20th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Super post, thanks J
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January 20th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Amazing post – particularly liked the Google sitemap generator plugin, something which I didn’t know about until now.
Thanks!
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January 20th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
Now.. that’s what I call.. one helluva post Jason..
Keep it up..
:twisted 
Btw.. sorry for not being able to contact ya.. pretty late right now..
will get at ya tomoz and let ya know the URL I would like to be stumbled.
Hope you remember that I won 100 stumbles
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January 20th, 2008 at 10:15 pm
Really nice guide
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January 20th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Amazing blog post. Skimmed through it, but will read it all in about an hour
!
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January 21st, 2008 at 2:07 am
Really nice post with lots of information man. I put together a similar post not to long ago, although definitely not as long or with as much information, but it might be worth somebody checking out.
http://doteduguru.com/id11-the-right-way-to-setup-a-wordpress-blog-and-why-part-1.html
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January 21st, 2008 at 2:08 am
Oh also, just thought I’d throw this out but the top commentors links are follow links, learn how to read HTML code and it’s really easy to see this!
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January 21st, 2008 at 6:51 am
@ William, no problem. Glad you liked it
@ VB, thanks for the plug. Enjoy the err.. PR0 dofollow comment
@ Sawan, Techman, MB… glad you guys like it
@ ryan – perhaps… maybe it’s just my site
My bounce rate of 87% from EC traffic (37% up from normal) speaks for itself though – a few have stayed to chat, but the majority are just card dropping bastards 
@ Richy, glad ya liked it.
@ David, the Sitemap thing is pretty good for getting you indexed – far better than wasting your time submitting to search engines
@ Hamza, ah.. i put out the stumbles yesterday to all the URLs that y’all used to comment with. I will see what I can do though
@ Usman/Sammy, glad you liked it
@ Kyle, had a short read. Pretty long post though eh.
I knew Top Commentators were dofollow, must have forgotten to mention it. Ah well
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January 21st, 2008 at 7:55 pm
[...] – yesterday’s post wasn’t a total waste – I made one affiliate sale for HostICan which is pretty fooking [...]
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:42 am
Good post. You could have put all these into an ebook and make a nice
sale!
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January 22nd, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Jason, what do you think about the FeedBurners?
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January 24th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Good guide, there is a few I have not tried that i think will help my blog. But I did not see the one saying lots of work and less sleep lol.
Bud
Bud’s last blog post..Comment more and win my contest
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January 25th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Very useful information, for those who new in blog can use some of these tips.
David Chew’s last blog post..Boost Your Blog
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January 26th, 2008 at 10:04 am
[...] of starting one if you think that you have the capabilities of doing what are the tasks listed on How The **** Do I Create A Half-Decent Blog? by [...]
February 1st, 2008 at 11:10 am
[...] I made one affiliate sale, mainly due to this article. [...]
February 6th, 2008 at 4:54 am
Interesting post, very useful. I will refer to this when I start up my own blog. Thanks.
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February 6th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Now there…
I remember seeing this post sometime earlier..
And hell.. I remember commenting on it.. eh jason
how come this is on the top again? Unless ofcourse…
YOU put it there
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February 6th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Err… Hamza, not sure what you’re smoking man, but I didn’t do anything to the post. Must be your imagination or something
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February 9th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
I got a blog also but it isn’t finished yet and this post will really help me to monetize my blog.But this will be in the future.My problem now is where do I get the content?
I am thinking of getting a cheap writer or write it myself.I really don’t like to spend money but I also don’ like to write
To buy or not to buy-THIS is the question !
lol
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February 9th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
I’m catching previous posts, since I try to “steal” something for my new blog. Monetization was great part of post.
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February 15th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Good post.. this couldve been your next ebook
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March 10th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
[...] How The Heck Do I Create A Half-Decent Blog? | The University Kid Enjoy! Don’t go too overboard, Wordpress is way too much fun when you start out __________________ Make Money Online With The University Kid | I Use HostICan. Why Don’t You? Use Coupon Code University-12 To Get $40 Off Tera Host Yearly [...]
March 14th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
name.com – A .com costs just $5.99 anyhow
George’s last blog post..Proxy Tracking, Good or Bad?
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March 19th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
I think thats a complete guide. And very helpful for newbies like me.
Thanks.
meethere’s last blog post..Steps For a Successful Web Conference
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March 22nd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
[...] have just begun or are looking to start blogging. This article was written by The University Kid. How The Heck Do I Create A Half-Decent Blog? | The University Kid Your Thoughts? __________________ – Rob – Home Business Blogger – Submit Your Blog – Blog [...]
March 22nd, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Very nice tips. thanks!
Mike’s last blog post..Tip: Synchronize Your Office Docs With Google
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March 23rd, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Amazing Tips..
You have inspired me to make the leap to move from Blogger to my own domain. Thanks for the advice and guidance!!
Tropper
http://dontdiepoor.blogspot.com
Tropper’s last blog post..Discount Weekends
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April 2nd, 2008 at 3:48 pm
[...] My friend Jason has painstakingly done a lot of research on how to set up a blog, generate traffic and even monetise it. You could read his long post here… HOW TO CREATE A BLOG [...]
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:17 am
How to create a blog,
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April 4th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
@roohullah – have you read the article??
thats a nice article, really helpful for newbies like me.
Tech blog’s last blog post..Technology and Travel
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April 5th, 2008 at 2:52 am
No wonder your blog is growing like crazy. You are definitely passionate about what you are doing.
Thank God I found this post.
Chris’s last blog post..Smiley Face
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April 5th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
I really liked this article but I’m afraid that I simply don’t have the time to uphold a successful blog, thats why I rely on Blogger in case I have to shut down. Blogging is such a complex hobby that I might not be able to keep up with it.
Dmitriy’s last blog post..Help the Environment Pt2
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April 7th, 2008 at 8:48 am
[...] You could read the great post by Jason Pereira here… HOW TO CREATE A BLOG [...]
April 9th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
great article and i sumbled it!
keep up the great work
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May 4th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
[...] could read the great post by Jason Pereira here… HOW TO CREATE A BLOG bookmark to: Tags: blog, [...]
May 17th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
[...] Make sure that you sort out your permalink structure, as well as the other basic things – you can read more about setting up a blog in this post. [...]
May 18th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Yup worth a stumble. Nice one man.
Matt @ Kurb’s last blog post..Viral marketing, death of old media, and I’m still whinging about amplifier.co.nz
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June 19th, 2008 at 2:22 am
I’ve been blogging ‘for fun’ for over 3 months now. I never really thought of these stuff. After reading this post, all I see is junk after junk after junk on my blog. Thanks for the lowdown on this stuff
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July 11th, 2008 at 1:33 am
Jason, found the above post excellent, one of the most informative yet simple quick guides to blogging online. Ive only started out in this field and appreciate your detailed advice
cheers man,
Rory http://www.imongey.com
Rory’s last blog post..Bose Speakerbox
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July 14th, 2008 at 8:22 am
All in all a through post coming from your stables. Give some more similiar AIO (All in One) posts.
Regards
Thinkjayant @ Smartblogtips
TJ @ Smartblogtips’s last blog post..TinyURL gets a makeup, adds custom alias
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July 17th, 2008 at 6:50 am
I am beginning to employ all of these techniques on my site. Choosing the right domain for you is necessary. When I started my blog in march I chose the wrong domain for it. I recently changed my domain name to better suit my website, but this means I have lost many links and readers to my previous domain. So always always pick your domain carefully because changing can be a huge hassel. I love my domain name now
Ryan McLean’s last blog post..5 Great Ways To Get Money Fast
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July 24th, 2008 at 11:26 am
you pretty much summed up everything.pl. include a little promotion part to make a complete guide for newbies.many think they just have to write articles and they will earn thats not the way how it works.so u can add the promotion part to this post.
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July 30th, 2008 at 3:29 am
I am one of the dumb people to comment on this months after it came out. That is what some desperate commentators do, but it is ok.
This is really a great and helpful post, good enough to get you started in the blogosphere. Worthy of a bookmark!
Nathaniel’s last blog post..Blogging Is Like Chess
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August 4th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
I’m a desperate commentator too. I’m ok with it.
Definitely worthy of a SU bookmark and Digg. Great info for a new blogger. I can still get a good amount of traffic from both of those, but no where near what people used to get.
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August 14th, 2008 at 1:46 am
Thanks for the good post. I would advice sticking to a premium theme instead of a free one if you care about your blog being unique. There are a lot of premium themes out there.
Ganesh’s last blog post..How to Increase your Backlinks
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August 18th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
This post was great, even stronger than your free e-book. Thanks!
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August 23rd, 2008 at 7:06 pm
You have a free ebook? Where?
Is it the one on how you made $467.99 in 24 hours?
CreatingRevenueOnline.com’s last blog post..What To Do After The Flip
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August 23rd, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Wow.. didn’t realize this post was so old. The last comment was from a few days ago.
CreatingRevenueOnline.com’s last blog post..What To Do After The Flip
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September 9th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Great post which advices me a lot about money making online .its interesting for a newbie like me.Thanx Jason
Harish’s last blog post..A Few Reasons Why I Keep Saying You Should Subscribe To My Feed
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September 12th, 2008 at 8:35 am
That’s an amazingly detailed and well written article. Even for an experienced blogger some points really hit home.
Eva White’s last blog post..LCD Monitor
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September 12th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Great post with lots of good information. Writing articles can promote your site too.
ways to earn online’s last blog post..Earning Money Online: Factors To Consider
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September 24th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Hey Creating a descent blog leads to lot of visitors.Ex this blog.
Harish’s last blog post..Make Money With Proxies and My first Ever Proxy Launched
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October 3rd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
i’m still on the fence in relation to entrecard. i like the idea of being able to have an ad of sorts on other people’s sites, but having to put their widget on my blog doesn’t appeal to me.
kouji’s last blog post..haiku poem: friendship (loss)
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October 12th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Great Post!
Shafar’s last blog post..Be Ready to Win $20 Every Week from Garanew!
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December 2nd, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Amazing post – particularly liked the Google sitemap generator plugin, something which I didn’t know about until now.
Otel ?ikayetleri’s last blog post..Florya Park
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December 4th, 2008 at 2:26 am
Definitely a comprehensive reference guide for anyone looking to start a blog or take their free blog to the next level..Well done!
The Monetizer’s last blog post..eBay Frustrations List & Policing
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December 21st, 2008 at 1:00 pm
I do weekly links round up giving my readers 5 interesting posts to read so I do see some traffic from linking out.
Peter Lee
work from home ideas’s last blog post..Make Money With The Plug-In Profit Site
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December 28th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
[...] How The Heck Do I Build a Half-Decent Blog?-Another teenage kid that is absolutely blowing up within the blogosphere. 17 year old Jason Pereira from Dubai and his blog The University Kid is yet another example of the exuberance that is shown by young entrepreneurs. This is also a developing theme that seems to be appearing quite often and feel that it will only continue to grow. [...]
January 15th, 2009 at 6:12 am
I really liked the guest posting part, but is there a guide on how to write the perfect guest posts?
TutorialCompiler’s last blog post..Color Overlay
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