You have to check out Marketvice - the relatively new, but very exciting blog all about online marketing, blogging and even making money online.

Its a great read and is already attracting quite a bit of press around the blogosphere. Take a look at Marketvice.com

I have doing quite a bit of writing recently on a number of different blogs as well as building a mulitude of websites. Here are some links to whats going on:

Tumblr.com got a great update and I have given a quick update on some of the new features over at NetFlask.com. I also did a writeup of another web 2.0 wine startup!

Speaking of Tumblr, TastyStartup (which is powered by the great blogging platform) is starting to get off the ground. I use TastyStartup to list the countless startups I come across on a daily basis.

MyBlogNet.com has been sold, I took some of my own advice about never getting involved with forums and decided to flip it. And sorry guys, im no longer working on DoshTalk as there are plenty of other blogging forums which in my mind are way better then what I built.

I also sold PicSpeed, my image hosting service. It was a nice flip which made a great profit. If you’re looking for an alternative I also own PicHoster which is similar (probably even better)

I decided to reveal some of the techniques I use in Domaining - I make a living buying and selling domains and I think its a great business to get into! Im even thinking about releasing the program I built which allows you to automatically setup hundreds of cPanel accounts with just a click of a button.

An finally don’t forget the Dosh networks very own auto ping tool, DoshPing. I have forgotten to give it a plug recently and it has started to fade away.

45n5 has put together another linkbait, listing the current value to the top “make money online” blogs.  And BloggingDosh has been valued at a hilarious $2,168.60.

The valuation of these blogs seem to have solely been based on the number of RSS subscribers.   To me that seems pretty rediculos.   Being a full-time domainer, I can tell you that the recent sale of “make money online” blogs have been sold with revenue as a selling point.  45n5 used BloggingFingers as an example.  Sure they 200 subscribers but it also had a small amount of revenue and some quality backlinks.  Was it worth $6000?  Of course not, it was probably flipped to someone fairly inexperienced.

And that brings to the question of this blog being worth 2k.    I would never pay 2k for this blog and looking at the current market, I doubt even I would struggle selling it for this much.  Furthermore, I don’t want to sell this blog - I don’t profit from it, but I love my readers (and the controversy I cause by not being a John Chow sheep!).

If you own a Make Money Online Blog, sell it now!  Get in before the market becomes saturated and you could make a decent profit.

Where the hell did my avatar go!

Since MyBlogLog made me integrate it with my Yahoo account they seem to have deleted my avatar.  Sure thats no big deal but noticing how my picture had suddenly turned a lot…well grayer, it drew my attention to a service that I had almost forgotten about.

I previously was a bid supporter of MyBlogLog…a long time ago.  I used there site quite often, joining lots of different blogging communities and it even using it as a marketing tool.  But then I realized,  What does MyBlogLot actually do?  They track a few links and show you that some random people have visited your blog.  But do I really need this? No.

And whats the benefit of joining a blog’s community!  It doesn’t give you any additional features (apart from the ability to read the odd spam message).

Whats the point of displaying who’s reading your blog.  The only logical reason you may be using the recent readers widget is to prove that somebody’s actually reading your blog.

And so now im considering just getting rid of my account and that waste of space on my sidebar.

Wheres Anthony?  Sorry guys, I’ve been busy working on a few projects which have pretty much tied up all of my time.   But there has been no lack of news over the past week:

First off the much anticipated PR update came - and boy did we here about it, so the last thing I want to do is write another article about PR.  But I’m happy to say this blog went from 0 to 3 - which isn’t that exciting, but as I did zero SEO work on this blog its fairly decent.   Most people seem to be winging about the update - but even though a few of my higer PR sites dropped the majority of my domain portfolio went up, effectively increasing the portfolios value by 200%.

With this nice boost in PR, I decided to sell off a number of domains and will be reinvesting the profits in Proxy Experiment.  This is my attempt at building a network of Proxy websites and seeing how much dosh their is to be made in this crowded niche.

I also launched NameOp.com.  Nameop is the frontend to a smaller portion of my domain portfolio.  In the past I usually have sold domains through Sedo and Sitepoint, but in an attept to maximise profits I am selling a few of my less valuable domains through my new marketplace Nameop.  I’m actually really happy with the way this site turned out - let me know what you think!

And finally, theres TastyStartup, a tumblelog covering the latest web 2.0 startups that hit my desk.  Ever since I sold Tap Media (technology news network) I have missed being in that industry.  So, I decided to go in lite with a tumblelog which requires very little work to maintain.

I have been doing quite a bit of design work recently and so I decided to put together a blog about design, web 2.0, ajax and upcoming web technologies.

And it was lucky that I also had the perfect domain just sitting in my portfolio waiting to be used - csscomfort.com

I haven’t put a lot of content up yet, but I promise to start developing this site big time!

Buying and selling text links has previously been dominated by TextLinkAds.  But now its time to welcome a new player into the ring - TNX.net.

TNX.net (I assume its prounounced thanks) offers a unique marketplace for selling and buying links.   Sellers (or publishers) can not only sell links on just one or two pages, but on every single page on their website - talk about maximizing your revenue!   And for advertisers, instead of having to go through and find individual sites to add links to, you can automatically place links on thousands of sites at a time.

I decided to register at TNX.net and try out what they had to offer.  Although I will look at selling text links on this blog in the future, I think I better try TNX out as an advertiser.

As mentioned before, instead of buying links on individual sites, you simply choose categories, language, backlinks and Pagerank of links you would like to purchase and it does it all automatically.  I really liked the calculation tool becuase I could see how many links I could get for a price I was willing to pay.  For this example I chose to send a mere $6 a month.  BTW.  IF you’re serious about SEO I recommend you budget a little more than $6 per month.

Buying links is done using the sites mini currency TNX points.  Publishers earn points by placing links on their website and they can be used to buy links or you can sell them back to TNX for PayPal!  As a publisher you are required to put a piece of code on your website (Wordpress users may need to use a special plugin that will allow PHP code).

TNX.net also offers an awesome affiliate program where you will get 13.3% of your referrals points.  You could sell them or  use them to buy more links!  Also head over to the Digital Point Forums to get your hands on some free links

Having links on high PR websites can definitely improve your orgranic search traffic.   So head on over to this great ne service to buy links now.

I will keep you updated on how TNX.net progresses and how my purchase goes.

I previously discussed how you could use a free script to turn your referral links from: website.com/?ref=980093 to bloggingdosh.com/go/link.  This is a great way to increase click-throughs and hide those long and ugly looking links.   But the problem is, you need to install a script (or have knowledge of PHP) and logging into the system each time to create a new link wastes valuable time.

So, I decided to build a really fast and simple way to make long affiliate links short again.  Introducing Shortless.com!

Shortless allows you to input a URL and a tag and it will instantly spit out a URL for you.

An Example

My referral URL: http://www.mylot.com/?ref=ezybusiness
A Custom Tag: mylot
My New URL: http://shortless.com/mylot

As you can see, the great feature of this site is the ability to add custom tags (im sorry, but MyLot is now taken).  So unlike TinyURL or other similar sites you have control over what your new URL will look like.

As with most of my apps, this site requires no registration - so its super quick to use.  There is also a FireFox extension coming!

Take a look and let me know what you think.  Hint.  Get in quick to redirect your affiliate links because it won’t be long before all the good tags are taken.  

I advertise a quite a few blogs.  I really like advertising on blogs because being a blogger I have a fairly good understanding of the market.

Yet, I seem to be receiving more and more emails asking me to advertise on the writers blog.  They go something like this:

Hey Anthony,
I’ve noticed you have purchased some advertising buttons on a few sites. I was wondering if you were interested in taking up my offer for a prime sidebar ad spot for just $12 for a whole month.

Let me know!
Sincerely,
*****
www.************.com

Sure, going out and being proactive in the marketplace is fine, but when you own a pretty crappy blog with hardly any traffic these emails just annoy me and will probably put me off advertising on your blog completely.  If you owned a high traffic blog, that fitted my niche I wouldn’t mind the email.  I would also expect you to give me the creative stats that any advertiser needs.

I sell advertising on quite a few different sites.  Although I don’t send random emails to possible advertisers.  I send emails to current customers who may be interested in renewing their accounts - but thats it.

My tip to “cold callers” (or should it be cold emails).  Learn a bit about advertising and learn how to write a proper sales letter, because the one I received above definitely isn’t one.

How much content on this blog is unique?  I mean all of it has been uniquely written, but its possible to find what I write about on other blogs.  Sure I may throw in my own opinions here and there, and the reviews I do are fairly original, but the majority of tutorials and advice I give isn’t unique.

So this begs the question - are most bloggers publishers or writers?

I would say that most bloggers, writing in the “blog about blogging” niche are mainly publishers.  We simply take content from place and then mix it up in our own words and then spit it out again.

However, does this make mine or your content any less valuable?  Probably not!  I believe that your writing style will make or break your blog and differentiate you from the crowd.

In my opinion, its alright to be a publisher but I also believe its important to also include original ideas, concepts and thoughts.  But what I don’t want to see is just another “Blog about Blogging” or “Make Money Online” when the author has no experience in online marketing or blogging.  It really does take years to master the concepts of successful online business - it took me 6 years until I made a full time income online!

So my aim is to be more of a writer and less of a publisher.  Instead of just taking blogging news and reposting it on my blog, I will try and work towards gathering original news.  Instead of just sharing another blogging tip, I will share my personal experiences with what worked and what bombed.   These seem like obvious concepts but its surprising that its only a minority that truly employ these ideas.