This is a sponsored post of IronBlogger.com. If you are interested in your own sponsored post or review, please check out our Advertise page for stats and rates.

I’ve been in the blogging game for well over a year to this point, and have definitely picked up a lot of tips and tricks to get by. In the “make money online” niche, there are certainly a lot of competitors. In order to beat the competition, you need to have something that sets you apart from the pack. One of the best ones, in my mind, has been the fact that I am a student blogger.

In comes Robin Haney, a guy from CANADA no less, trying to take my spotlight with his increasingly popular blog IronBlogger.com. This is a website that talks about the web, technology, making money and even gags on the internet that are worth checking out. Don’t let the innocent air about this guy fool you, Robin rules the internet with an iron fist… and is soon to take you into his world. Believe me, this student blogger isn’t messing around. Because of this, I am declaring guerrilla warfare!

Why the Iron Blogger Needs to be Stopped!
Okay, okay, this post isn’t serious. My good friend Robin Haney came to me a few weeks back asking for a sponsored post to shed some light on IronBlogger.com and I whole heartedly agreed. In all seriousness, IronBlogger is a very cool website that talks about everything under the sun, and is a website that I love for some light reading in the morning as I’ll usually find something interesting.

I want to take this opportunity to talk about how to blog correctly, because I think that Iron Blogger is a great example of this in action. Too many people try to start a blog and be the best from the get go. This is the wrong attitude, as it takes time and patience to climb to the top. Sure, all of us want to be the “head honcho,” but in order to do so… one must first establish a brand name that people will find credible. The thing about “make money online” blogging is that it is all about establishing a sense of credibility between you and your readers. What Robin Haney has done correctly, is just this. While still a fresh blog, I could see IronBlogger.com potentially generating a lot of interest if things stay consistent.

Bringing the REAL story, one post at a time
Another thing that I really like about IronBlogger.com is that all of the posts have a very personal feel to them. Since it is a personal blog first, make money online blog second, Iron Blogger has posts like “Dell AC Adapters Suck” and “Create a Popup Form with Aweber.” With all of the variety, it’s not a bad blog to simply plug into your RSS reader in the event that what Robin is talking about today excites you. By posting every day, Iron Blogger has a ton of useful information all around the website. While I don’t like the fact that there isn’t a set “niche” about it, it certainly keeps you entertained when you are hearing about blogging income one day, and fixing a broken iPod the next.

Looking to Start a Blog?
If you are looking to start your own blog and want a second opinion on where to go, I’d definitely recommend subscribing to IronBlogger.com and asking for a helping hand. Other than coming to yours truly , Robin is a great option… and will be sure to guide you where you want to go. I feel like the best way to get your foot in the door is to mirror someone who has already gotten the train rolling… as is the case here. With over 100 subscribers and definite room to run, not to mention advertising that is very inexpensive for all you value guys, check out Iron Blogger for some ironic blogging tips and tricks that you can use for your ultimate success on the net.

-Jimvesting

P.S.: Sorry Robin for the “unexpected” intro, it was late and I was feeling creative, haha

…and we’re back!
Time for some LINK LOVE!

It was definitely a rough week for me because of final exams… but now that those pesky things are out of the way, it’s going to be an action-packed next 30 days here at theNetFool.com! Excited? I thought so. We’re going to get into the winner of the free “The Ground” professional golf club holder that was given away here from Friday to Friday… but first on to the best articles of the week:

• Suite J – Getting Your Niche Site Listed
  
• Nicky Cakes – 2008 Top 10 Worst “Make Money Online” Sites
• Cash Tactics – Irresistible Offers to BOOST Response Rate
• The Keyword Academy – How Many Links Does it Take to Rank #1
• Franklin Bishop – How I got 700 Followers on Twitter

This week was pretty fun in terms of the blogging crowd. Nothing outrageous happened, but there has been plenty to talk about. Suite J had a great article that outlines how he gets his blog flips indexed as fast as possible. Nicky Cakes wrote up an extremely controversial post that named the 10 WORST “make money online” blogs on the internet. Thankfully, I wasn’t on the list… but a few people I knew were (Tyler Cruz, Mr. Javo, Zac Johnson) and I actually completely agree with Nicky’s assesment. Cash Tactics provided a neat way to angle your sales pages to get more conversions. The Keyword Academy runs us through Google’s search engine ranking algorithm and how to get that coveted #1 spot for your favorite term. Finally, Franklin Bishop recounts how he got over 700 followers on his Twitter account.

Stock Market Recap
The Federal Reserve cut rates! Whenever some monumental event like this happens, you know you are in for a good trading environment… or at least an exciting one, eh? Ladies and gentlemen, the Fed’s target rate is now at 0.00% to 0.25% down from 1.00%. For those of you that don’t already know, this is the rate at which banks borrow money… and it is a major stimulus anytime the rates are cut. Has the Fed used up all of it’s ammunition by cutting to 0%? They COULD go negative, but that won’t happen. At the very least, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) came out and said that they would be doing anything and everything to help foster liquidity.

The markets took the news well, and posted a positive gain on the week (that’s a change, eh?). Unfortunately, the U.S. Dollar was giving up a considerable amount of ground to foreign exchange currencies on the week (before a late-Friday rebound) and the yield on U.S. Treasuries fell drastically. The stock market saw an early boost on Friday, on an announcement that the automotive industry WOULD BE GETTING A BAILOUT! That’s right, there is now a $17.4 billion dollar bailout in action that will definitely help the major U.S. autos that were supposedly “too big to fail.” We’ll have to wait and see how that turns out!

Blogosphere Update
On the site flipping side of things… TheUniversityKid.com is still trying (unsuccessfully) to sell on an open market. This is concerning, because Jason had a great blog and I would have thought it’d have no problem getting over $10k in bidding. One the better side of things, Sly Blanco sold SlyVisions.com for $9.5k… despite the fact that there were only around 400 readers. This is definitely good work… but hear me out, because I think that Sly made a very unethical blunder!

SlyVisions.com was sold to a new owner for $9,500, which I believe in the first place is a high bid. There is nothing wrong with this if somebone saw potential… and more power to Sly for getting it done for such a premium! HOWEVER, the actions after have me furious. After selling the rights to SlyVisions.com, he creates a new blog SlyBlanco.com and uses the exact same logo and everything. The site mine as well be SlyVisions 2.0. Now, Sly Blanco is announcing to the world that they should subscribe to his new blog… effectively moving interest away from his old blog that some poor sap is left with… on to the new domain name. Is this really fair? Is this ethical? I know that if I sold a blog… I’d think long and hard before turning around and making a new one in the same niche.

Sorry for the rant, but if nobody is going to bring down the hammer of justice on this one… then I’m going to have to step in, eh? Sly is still a great guy and a friend of mine… he’s just out of line on this one in my opinion, and it is ONLY an opinion. I’ve been out of the loop this week, and haven’t had a chance to catch up on a lot of the juice that is going around… so this week, I’m going to get all caught up and back into the blogging groove!

“The Ground” Contest – RESULTS!
We had a decent amount of interest for the contest hosted here that gave away a free golf club holder, so it’s time to announce the winner! “The Ground” is a really neat golf tool that looks just like an ordinary golf club. When you really examine it, turns out the thing is a full-fledged stand that you can stick in the ground by the green so you never lose or misplace a golf club again.

And the winner is…. Shanker Bakshi from ShankerBakshi.com, congratulations!
I will email you, and you’ll get your free golf club holder!

Jimvesting’s Christmas Giveaway! Get Your Entries In!
That’s right… get your head out of the sand! We’ve got a KILLER contest running here at Jimvesting where you can win a HUGE prize pack with things like an Amazon Kindle, an Apple iPod and a Flip Mino HD! You gotta check this one out… entering is as easy as leaving a comment on the official comment area on the original contest post. You can record a video, blog about it, or whatever you want as long as there is a link back in the comment space. Better yet… as of now there are only 11 entries, and if you are the best entry on my blog you are going to get a Flip Mino or an Apple iPod, so get your entries in today so that you have a shot at one of the prizes!

The Week Ahead…
I’m releasing a new eBook sometime this week that focuses on gaming the industry to turn out big profits. It has to deal with exploitation, which is always controversial, so definitely stay tuned for that post! I am going to make it affordable for all of you readers (special deal ) so keep your eyes open and your clicker fingers at the ready. I’m also in the works of launching a new website company, but that is going to stay under wraps for the next week or so while I get it ready to go.

That’s it for this week… oh, and the first person to comment with the text “Jimvesting is my homeboy” somewhere in their comment will win a free one-month 125×125 banner on theNetFool.com. Sneaky that I’d slide that in here like that… isn’t it?

Stay Bullish on the Net!
- Jimvesting

Imagine that you own a successful website, and everything is going great. Traffic is high, user activity is thriving and you are starting to make a name for yourself. Then imagine that you refresh the page an hour later only to find that your domain name is… wait a minute… parked?!

If a hacker can gain access to as little as your email address… they can wreak more havoc than you ever thought imaginable. Just a few months ago, popular website “MakeUseOf.com” was hacked and the domain name was transferred to another owner when someone else got a hold of the owners email address. The scary part is that they were able to convince the registrar that they were the owners, and had everything changed in less than an hour. Read the full details if you don’t believe me.

The rightful owners even got blackmailed:

“Hi There,

I said it very simply and very easily !
2 K !
Deal or not ?!
You own the domain I get the money…

Regards”

Shocking, right? You are probably saying to yourself… “oh, that couldn’t happen to me.” But the bottom line is that even if you think you have your stuff together… the underground world of domain name hi-jacking is widely unknown and can really come back and bite you if you don’t take precaution. Don’t think your awesome registrar would let this happen? Think again. The above case was actually performed in less than an hour on the biggest of the big, GoDaddy.com… that’s right! Let’s talk about what happens in domain name hijacking and how you can prevent it.

What’s This About Hijacking?

The type of criminal that will hijack your domain name (and other online property) is out there on the prowl whether you like it or not. But what exactly is domain name hijacking, how is it done and why? Let’s get a basic knowledge of the issue so that we can understand the monster we are dealing with here.

What is Domain Name Hijacking?
Theft of domain name is the process by which internet domain names are effectively stolen from their rightful owner (registrant). This is not the same thing as buying an expired domain name. Domain name hijacking is illegal, and while many registrars will right the wrongs within a week… it is well-documented that most cases go unresolved as individuals typically don’t have the resources to get to a higher power.

How is it Done?
From what my experience has been with domain theft, the most common form is simple “social engineering.” This is a common term in the underground hacking world that simple refers to using your attitude and behavior to get something that isn’t yours. If anyone has seen the movie “Catch Me If You Can” you will know exactly what I mean. For the rest of you, consider it like walking out of a pizza shop with a pizza that isn’t yours… simply because you successfully convinced the cashier that you were the man on the ticket.

Other forms: hacking, spyware, registering lapsed email, forgery of authorization, adding false verification information, spoofing and impersonation

Why is this done?
As we saw above, many criminals steal domain names for the purposes of what is known as “cybersquatting.” In a nutshell, this is like registering a domain name with the sole intention of taking it from someone else for profit. In this case, you have stolen it as ransom so that you can potentially solicit a reward from the rightful owner. Others simply do it for respect. People like to feel powerful, and often hack things simply to flaunt their own skills to an underground community. Still others practice domain name theft solely to be bullies. Let’s face it, there is a lot of unwarranted malicious content out there… and this is a big source of domain name hijacking.

How YOU Can Stop Your Domain Name from Being Stolen

Okay so clearly this is a problem. I think that by now, I have you sufficiently freaked out. Don’t get too worried, as it’s not like this is a typical phenomenon (though it is increasing in occurrence). The first thing you should do is run and call your registrar and make sure that your domain name is “locked” so that nobody can initiate a domain name transfer. This is a new feature that pretty much 100% of domain name registrars practices to defeat a large amount of theft… simply by blocking any request for transfer that comes in. However, hackers have ways around this… so read on!

• Register with a good domain registrar
  You don’t want to be registered with FreeDomainNamesExpress.com or what have you… stick with the big names that have at least 500 thousand active domains in their purse. GoDaddy, 1and1, eNom, Register.com, NameCheap or your reputable web host are all great and still affordable.
• Maintain your accurate contact information
  First of all, if you log into your account and someone elses information is there… this is a problem, haha. Believe it or not, this actually happened to my with PayPal… but I fought it and eventually won out. Same with domain names, make sure everything is always up to date so if they need you, they will get YOU (not someone else). This is especially true with email addresses. If your email address goes bad, a hacker can gain access to it and easily get full control of your accounts through this backdoor.
• Register Your Domains Privately
  Bottom line, if they don’t have your information in the first place in a publically available place… it is going to be much harder for them to do their due diligence and hack you out of your property. More than likely, you’ll be passed for an easier target.
• Choose an upgraded registration package
  I know that GoDaddy offers Business and Enterprise domain name plans for your safety. These might run you an extra $10… but if you have a good business running that is a small price to pay in the long run. Consider upgrading!
• Don’t lose your passwords or usernames
  Obvious right? Well so many people are loose with their information, and it really hurts. I used to have one password that unlocked everything and what happened… I got hacked. I thought it couldn’t happen to me, but it did because I had made it too easy. Now I use longer passwords, and a rotation of multiple passwords that I switch in and out at random. It’s a bit of extra work… but it’s a good memory game to excercise your brain if nothing else.

Domain name hijacking is a rampant problem that has gone pretty undiscovered across the board. I really wanted to alert you guys to this issue so that you know exactly what the deal is, and how you can help yourself out. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them below. Additionally, you can forward this article to your friends so that we can educate more people of this big issue that many registrars turn a blind eye to. Saving the world, one domain name at a time!

-Jimvesting

Hey Guys! It’s time to start our week off right…
…And I’m talking about some LINK LOVE!

It’s been  a hectic week so far, and now I am in FINALS… uh oh! That being said, I am looking for guest posters for this week to help me out of a bind, because I am going to be studying pretty much every day from here on out. I’ll talk about this later, but it’s a great opportunity if you are looking for exposure. Let’s start first with a look back on the week that was:

• John Cow – How to Gain an Edge with Keyword Modifiers
• BloggerVenue – Make Money with Massively Multiplayer Online Games
• The Blog Entrepreneur – My Niche Site Renovation
• Winning the Web – How to Ignite Viral Marketing Campaigns for your Site
• Iron Blogger – 100 Bloggers That Will Help You Make Money Online

We start things out with a John Cow two-parter, this the second part of the series, all about keyword research. I thought this post was especially helpful, because it talks about something that a lot of people don’t consider with misspelled keyword targetting. BloggerVenue runs through an interesting alternative way to make money online with MMORPG games you make yourself. The Blog Entrepreneur returns from a long sabbatical with a nice series on optimizing niche stores for more profit. Winning the Web talks about “igniting” a viral marketing campaign in a few easy steps. And finally, Iron Blogger made a nice list of 100 MMO bloggers that you should check out… nice!

Stock Market Update
A topsy-turvy market once again folks! This week was actually relatively calm as far as the market goes. A few big news events went down though, and lots to talk about in general. Perhaps the biggest story of the week was that the so-called “Auto Bailout” was passed through the U.S. House of Representatives… effectively passing the first checkpoint in a series of hurdles to get eventually approved. But guess what? Later in the week, when it went to the U.S. Senate, the bill COLLAPSED. That’s right folks, no auto bailout…. at least until January when it can be re-evaluated. This is big news and really casts a shadow of doom over the short-term prospects of the “Big Three” United States automotive companies.

There were some interesting news articles that came out this week that I want you guys to read up on if you haven’t already. That’s right, you are getting homework. The first is about a HUGE $50 billion Ponzi Scheme that collapsed this week. This was a major deal and had everybody talking. Let’s see the excerpt from the Wall Street Journal:

“Bernard L. Madoff, a former chairman of the Nasdaq Stock Market and a force in Wall Street trading for nearly 50 years, was arrested by federal agents Thursday, a day after his sons turned him in for running what they said their father called ‘a giant Ponzi scheme.’

The Securities and Exchange Commission, in a civil complaint, said it was an ongoing $50 billion swindle, and asked a judge to seize the firm and its assets. “Our complaint alleges a stunning fraud that appears to be of epic proportions,” said Andrew M. Calamari, associate director of enforcement in the SEC’s New York office.” — See Full Article.

This completely dwarfs any pyramid scheme in the past, and really begs the question… how could we let this actually happen in this day and age? Another interesting tidbit in this week’s news was Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich being arrested on charges of trying to actually sell Barack Obama’s now-vacant seat in the U.S. Senate for personal gain. Wow, really? Read the full story here.

Blogopshere Update
We’re running contests galore here at theNetFool.com! We have currently a fantastic Market Leverage Christmas giveaway… where you can win an iPod Nano or a Flip Mino HD for being the best from theNetFool.com. Then, if you are the best here, you compete in the finals for a chance of a prize package consisting of an Amazon Kindle and a few gift cards… nice! I am also running a quick one-week giveaway that ends next Friday and can give you the chance to win a free golf club holder for your friend, loved one, boss… or even yourself! Check out that post now as there aren’t many entries and it is as easy as writing a one-sentence comment to win!

Other than the contest-mania happening here, we had another good friend of mine bite the dust. It seems that now SlyVisions.com has made it official… that blog is being sold right now (and for a hefty price tag!) and yet another Make Money Online blog shifts gears in this consolidation war. Will Jimvesting be next to go!??! Haha, just kidding…. I wouldn’t do that to you guys…. or would I?… hmmmm….

Jimvesting Week Ahead
GUEST POSTERS NEEDED! That’s right ladies and gentlemen… do you want a shot at the front page of theNetFool.com? Since I am taking exams all this week, I would love for you talented writers to send me by email your best stuff. If I like what you have to say, I’ll put your post up for 24 hours and give you a great link back to increase your subscribers and your traffic. Check out the post by Caden Grant that got a whopping 28 comments and tons of traffic! Sounds like something you can work with, eh?

Stay BULLISH on the net!
-Jimvesting

The following is a guest post that was written by Caden Grant, who blogs about making money at CadenGrant.com. Caden is a fresh face in the MMO world… check him out!

Search engine optimization is very important for any blog right? The better your blog is optimized for search engines, the more traffic you get. The more traffic you get, the more money you make. There is a lot to learn about search engine optimization. Many bloggers make simple mistakes… so I’ve made a list of the most common search engine optimization mistakes most people make. Try to avoid these mistakes and it should help you out.

1. Not updating and maintaining

This is very important. Most successful bloggers or website owners do this, but if they don’t it will affect their ranking. If you don’t keep up to date with the new algorithms of search engines, your page will eventually drop in the rankings. Some people think that after optimizing their website, they’re done forever. Well, this isn’t true. Try to always update your web page and work on your search engine optimization. As far as updating and keeping up with the competition, it’s also important to update your content. Google likes updated content and will make your page rank better in the SERPs.

2. Wasting your time on the meta tags

This is another common one. People think that if you get your meta description and keywords tag right, it will help optimize your site to perform well in the search engines. Well, this also isn’t true. Nowadays, meta tags don’t really help at all, they’re mostly a thing of the past. Now, you don’t even need the meta keywords tag as it doesn’t have any effect on your rankings. Although, the meta description tag does come up as the description for your website in Google.

3. Not minimizing duplicate content

Duplicate content mostly refers to blocks of content on websites that match other parts of content on your website. Some examples are discussion boards like vBulletin that can show the regular version of a post and then a different version, WordPress, printer-friendly pages, etc. Some people will use duplicate content to try to gain more traffic from search engines, but it’s not necessarily good for your users… or even yourself. Google will probably think you’re trying to deceive your users, and it will hurt your search engine rankings or cause in complete removal in certain search engines. You can try to minimize duplicate content in a few ways.

1. You can tell the search engines to block certain pages through your robots.txt file.
2. Use a 301 redirect. A 301 redirect, (Permanent Redirect), will redirect your users and search engine spiders to the actual page that should be displayed. (Do this in your .htaccess file, look up 301 redirects)

4. Canonicalization Issues

Canonicalization is a term that means you can get to your website through different urls like for instance www.yoururlhere.com and yoururlhere.com and someotherurl.com. Decide on the link you want and use it. You can use Google webmaster tools to tell it which URL you prefer to be indexed and Google will use that link for future crawls. Another way to do this is in your .htaccess file. Use this code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Replace it with your link details of course, then save it and upload it. That’s it!

5. Not using the HTML attribute rel=”nofollow”

As Wikipedia states: nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing “spamdexing” from occurring. NoFollow is not meant for blocking content or preventing it from being indexed, but instead is meant for telling the search engines to not affect the pages PageRank. For instance, the “About Us”, “Contact Us”, “FAQ”, “Privacy Policy”, etc aren’t really important enough to have a PageRank.

6. Not using relevant keywords when linking internally

Try not to use the words like ‘click here’ or ‘here’ or anything similar when linking to posts or something within your website. Try to use keyword relevant links. Like if I was linking to 10 Ways to Make Money Blogging, I wouldn’t link to it saying “Click here.” Instead I would link to it using the words 10 Ways to Make Money Blogging.

7. Ignoring the <title> tag

The <title> tag of your website in the heading of your code is very important as it comes up in the search engines for the hyperlink to your website. Use relevant keywords related to your site in the title of your tag. If your website is about making money online, include those words in the title of your Web page.

8. Using JavaScript menus

JavaScript menus aren’t necessarily bad… but just know that search engine spiders cannot read JavaScript. So, if you can, try to stay away from them altogether.

9. Letting pages get indexed that shouldn’t be

There are certain pages on websites that shouldn’t be indexed in search engines. For instance, printer-only versions of web pages, or just content-less pages with no use to the user. Go to Google and use the site:link.com/page.php or whatever to check and see if certain pages that should not be indexed are indexed. If you find pages that shouldn’t be there, you can tell the search engines to block them using the meta robots tag in the heading of your website and the robots.txt file.

10. Not using SEO friendly URLS

Not using SEO friendly URLS is also another mistake bloggers make. For instance, if you have the link http://www.linkhere.com/page.php?id=3&blahblah=computercases it’s not very friendly to the search engines. What would be a better option is something like http://www.linkhere.com/computercases/ or something similar. In wordpress you have the option to change your “permalink” so that it’s more SEO friendly.  It should be under the permalinks option in your settings. Choose custom structure and put /%postname% in the field.

11. Using flash without HTML

Flash might look good but it’s not good for the search engines. Search engine spiders can’t read flash (yet). So either try to stay away from flash or as an alternative create an HTML version of the web page and optimize it.

12. Images as headlines

Some people think that images do better as headlines but it’s really better to use h1, h2, h3 and so on for headings. Images are good but text is great. Search engines love text. Although, be sure to use the alt=”" attribute when using an image to describe what the image is.

13. Lack of keywords in content

To rank for certain keywords, of course you have to have keywords in your content. Put them where necessary. Putting them in heading tags or in bold is really good. Just try not to make it look spammy. Write for people not for search engines.

So there you have it. 13 common mistakes most bloggers make when blogging. If you try to avoid these problems, they should help you in optimizing your own blog for success!

-Caden Grant