If you don’t have a blog of your own, get one – now.
There are some in the community that will wax lyrical about the benefits of a blog – it’s good for this, it’s good for that – they’ll talk about benefits so much that eventually you’ll never want to hear the word again.
Unfortunately for you guys – I agree with them.
Some of you, well most of you will have websites of your own – some maybe even having niche blogs that are aimed are bringing in an affiliate income.
However, a lot of people that read this website don’t actually have personal blogs, ones where they actually interact with their readers. Why not?
If you don’t, you should. Start a blog, not with the intention to make money, not even with the intention to teach anything to anyone, but with the intention to network. Because networking is one thousand times easier when you have a public place on the Internet where everyone can see what you’re up to and better yet, reach you. I’ve mentioned this somewhere before, but my business list of contacts has grown more than five times than it was before I got TUK – that’s hundreds of potential people I can go to should I need help with something.
Take a real life example – I recently started Blog Premiere’s forums, and a few of you will know this because I’ve spammed it on here in near every single post (sorry!). However, it is the perfect example of how using a blog to provide leverage for projects is possible.
At the moment, the forums sit at around 2,000 posts (not including my own). Had I hired a standard paid posting company, there is a good chance this would cost $300+ – and the thing is, all of them would leave as soon as there job was done. That’s why I’d never recommend buying paid posting services, as well – they’re worthless. If you want your forums to look populated, there are a few softwares that can do so – they’re not just far cheaper, but can be used lifetime should you wish to 
With a community of your own, granted you will meet the odd (in my case, it’s occasional) idiot but the positives still outweigh the negatives. And remember, if anyone irritates you too much you can always post about them on your blog and make sure they’ll never do it again
Anyways, on to other things – I decided to go with iWhic hosting for my proxies; using the coupon code 1stMonth (thanks @ IMBlogger for letting me know) you get the first month for 50% off, or $5.99. If all goes well it will need to be upgraded, however for now a basic shared hosting package is fine. Out of the dozen or so hosts I took a look at, they were one of the most established and offered an easy solution for upgrading. They also have eight servers I believe so it won’t get killed too soon. Anyways, check them out.
I’ve also started a discussion at the forums and am giving away five free domains to the first few people to ask; I have 25~ proxy domains that I’m not using, and a few of them are already gone I do believe
I’ve decided to use some of my current domains with a few months left on them to start off with, as well… they’re nice and generic and totally unrelated to proxies in any way (like AbouDiaby.info, for example). They have a less chance of getting blocked, which is great; it also might be slightly harder to spread the word. Start with five, concentrate on the $0.1 – $1 daily and then work on five more – well, you get the idea. Nice and easy, nothing too complicated. I will talk about the proxy promotion (a lot of them are in the old post but I’ll let you guys know whats working for me and what isn’t) and various other things as I advance with this
Last but not least, tomorrow’s post will be nothing but an ask for guest posters, so if you’re interested, let me know. On to the proxies!
April 29th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Pretty nice post. And I agree with you – we can get promote our products, or may be get some good people whom we could do business with via our community – it may be blog, or a forum. Very nice to see that you have decided to go with IwhiC – but don’t you think you should have asked for my affiliate ID over MSN?
Haha Just kidding man! Good luck with your proxies, I’ll just put my adsense codes and start working on the promotions tomorrow or may be tonight if I get enough time. I might be also interested in guest posting, will let you know when I am ready via MSN. I’ll also be doing a couple of guest posts on some popular blogs (Like TUK) to get some decent traffic.
IMBlogger’s last blog post..Few ways of getting traffic to your blog
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April 29th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
@ IMBlogger, don’t think I have you on MSN mate… :S
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April 29th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
What forum populating software do you recommend? I didn’t know anything like that existed!
Jeffrey Sigmon’s last blog post..AeroPremier Jet Center
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April 29th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I swear I will setup a blog someday!
You have built a good community and that is evident with the quick growth of the forums. Much better than if you had used paid posters as the forums content and discussions are quite interesting, something those services wouldn’t have bee able to provide.
I’m looking forward to getting into proxies again. I will definitely be following along…..
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April 29th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
@ Jeffrey, search for “ICO Content”
@ EGK, as I said on BP, I’ll be waiting re: your blog.
Did you claim some proxy domains? Hehe
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April 30th, 2008 at 3:24 am
Man you should have told me that coupon before cause I just paid $15 for it lol!
I should check this blog before I buy things cause this blog always have coupons for it lol.
Usman’s last blog post..Contest Ending Soon!
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April 30th, 2008 at 5:18 am
Jason,
Tips on how you quickly spread word of your proxies would be great. It is easy to make 50 proxies in a day, but how to get people to them (much harder to promote 50 sites than just a couple).
Thanks,
Matt
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April 30th, 2008 at 6:41 am
Hey Matt,
That’s why I spoke about starting with 3-5 at a time. Once you get them to $1/day (each) recurring, then you start promoting the others.
I will be testing a few things out, will update on the best ways I’ve found. Been out of the proxy game for so long that I’ve forgotten half of it
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April 30th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Old proxy post is old one; make another with best and working ways of monetization
Aleks’s last blog post..Joke – Careful husband
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April 30th, 2008 at 9:21 am
I agree that networking is a must, and I wasn’t aware that forum populating software existed. :O
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April 30th, 2008 at 9:26 am
@ Jeffrey and Make Money:
Just look on DP, you will see people selling forum populating software quite often. It really is nothing more than an RSS to Forum Post conversion mod. I have set these up before, actually have one currently running… They may be good for creating posts but they rarely get any replies.
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April 30th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
You made a good choice with the host. iWhic is great! They offer quality service, and amazing uptime.
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May 1st, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Just a tip: you need links to BP & the fourm on your sidebar somewhere.
(and study hard
)
Andrea_R’s last blog post..WordPress MU 1.5 release candidate 1
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May 1st, 2008 at 5:46 pm
Andrea, the forum is linked to in the 468 x 60 banner above the fold on TUK’s homepage.
As for the main site, it’s not exactly ready yet…
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