The design and coding was handled by me, along with the monetization aspects.  I hope its a success much like my other websites.  If you have time check it out.

I Don’t Need a Job

FreeCSS.info - 4 -5
Proxy-Sites.info - 0 -5 (1 month old)
Proxystartup.com - 0 - 5 (1 month old)
Fuvz.com - 0 - 2
Intelligent-Studios.co.uk - 3 - 4
IntrinsicGreatness.co.uk - 0 - 4
HiddenBypass.com - 0 - 3

Most of these changes come as a complete surprise. I really don’t understand how in a month with no real linking strategies my proxy websites went to PR5. As for uniongraphite.com there has been no changes yet but im not bothered since I won’t be using this domain for much longer. EDIT: I just noticed some articles have changed in PR such as the expired domain article is now PR2.

All are .coms
I would have my name as the url but sadly they are all taken. Mainly due to the fact its a common name - Michael Clarke.

Nothing has really appealed to me but so far these are the ones im considering. If you have any ideas please post them here. You can preview the design for the new blog: here.

Well the blog has been up for about 3 months now so I figure its time to look back on the blog and also forecast whats going to happen in the future. Recently I have been busy with other website developing but its time to get the blog back on track.

Looking Back
Although the blog hasn’t made much money, some posts have been successful in attracting new readers and traffic. The top 5 posts to bring in traffic so far have been:

• Header Tutorial
• Ways to get traffic to your blog
• Set up your own free website
• How to find expired pr6 domains
• Most common mistakes made by new designers

As you can probably tell most of these posts were written at the start of the blogs opening. They were the most successful because I submitted them to tutorial websites. Most of this blogs traffic originally came from tutorial websites such as good tutorial and tutorialized. Other than that stumbleupon accounted for most of the blogs traffic.

For the future
I am currently on the look out for a new domain and I may look to design a new theme for the blog. Hopefully I will get the new look and new domain up soon. Other than that I will continue as I have done so far but ensuring the following:

• Posting daily
• Commenting on related blogs daily
• Have a speed linking article every Friday
• Monetizing the traffic I do get.
• Pay more attention to the focus of each article and try to make the website SE friendly.

What I want to achieve
The blog is currently getting around 300-400 uniques a day and is ranked as 183,340 on alexa. I want to increase this and also increase the revenue generated each month. I will also be looking to set goals for the traffic. I will do that and the end of each month followed with a detailed breakdown of the money I have earned online that month. Instead of convential goals of numbers I will be looking to set percentage increases month to month. This comes after an informative article which I read on problogger.

Until I get the new domain and design I will continue to post as usual. So check back for more updated:)

• The businesses are basically one person in their house.
• They do not have any formal qualifications.
• They are behind the times with their websites look and coding.
• They charge much more than those online.

After calling some up to be disappointed by the fact they were one person I decided to check their website out. Im not going to name names but these sites were terrible. They often had poor colour choice, barely any images, drop shadows all over the place and coding which still used tables. They were also charging far in excess of anything you would charge online. These guys would charge £500-750 for a simple 5 page website.

How can I get into this?
This was exactly what I was thinking. If you are going to get paid almost ten times more offline than you would online how do I get into it? Its quite simple really and it will actually get you very enthusiastic.

Register as a business
Probably the first thing you are going to need to do. You need to set up an account for your business. This means coming up with a name as well. In the UK you can get a lot of help with setting up a business from various agencies. They can tell you how to write a business plan and how to calculate your tax etc. One company which offers this help and offer up to £1000 grant for flyers, software and other expenses is Business Gateway.

Get your website up
People are not going to hire you unless you have a business website with your previous work. I would also put your pricing on the website and a contact form so people can get in touch. Other things which I noticed on the businesses I checked out was the simplicity in their writing. They really broke things down so people who don’t understand the web could understand their website and how they can get a website. This means they offered hosting with their design as well.

Get the word out
If you have a strong portfolio you shouldn’t find it hard to find work (hopefully). I believe if you go old school with your marketing then you will actually get more work. This would mean designing business cards and flyers and get posting them around the city. Drop them off in cafes and small businesses. Also try to approach small businesses asking if they would like a website. Another easy way to advertise is to get your business in the phone book. I find its best if in your name you include website design. So when people read the section in the phone book they know immediately you are a website design company.

The approach taken to get work offline is much different but its really worth the effort. If you can get one simple job a week you can be making a full time wage. I sadly won’t be getting into the designing as much as I would like. That is due to a couple of reasons with my accommodation.

Trackbacks are something I also started with, then forgot about. Often if you put a trackback url in your blog posts you can get extra backlinks. Its a really quick and simple way to get backlinks so I think I better start that again.

Blog commenting is pretty simple. Especially if you are reading other people’s blog posts anyway. It works to benefit your website in a number of ways. You can get backlinks from the website you post on and also traffic. Also something which is often overlooked is a return comment. If you comment on someone’s blog they are likely to check it out and possibly comment on your. You can therefore make new friends with other blog owners.

The reason I started to think about increasing my blog commenting was a post on onemansgoal.com. He wrote a post on successful blog commenting which although didn’t tell me anything new, it did get me thinking. The blog has been rather neglected lately (mainly due to me having to think about things in my life and my future)

Its time to get back on track! I will post if I find blog commenting does indeed boost traffic or comments on this blog.

The website also has pictures of other hybrid animals such as:

• Ligers
• Tigons
• Wholphins
• Zorses
  

I made the website because I was previously intrigued by hybrid animals. I was mainly fascinated with the liger which is a cross between and lion and tiger. It is reported that there was a liger which weighed over 1700lbs.

I designed the website pretty quickly and integrated the design into wordpress. I may use the design with different colours for other simple website similar to this one. I also experimented a bit by using lightbox for the images and scrollovers for the heading titles.

If you like the website please stumble! I appreciate it. Oh and im on the hunt for a job so if you have any jobs going in Scotland shoot me an email
Zonkey.info

The days of the .info domains being used for spam websites and MFAs may be over. If the price of .infos are the same as other top level domains they may seem less attractive. However some places do still have cheap .info domains.

The days of the $1 info domains seems to be over as I looked around today to no avail. The cheapest I found with a well known registrar was $2.99 with godaddy and dotster.   I went with dotster because godaddy does not accept paypal balance trasfer.  This means I would have to add a credit card to my account to buy domains.  Not something I can really do since I don’t have a credit card.

I will reveal the domain I purchased tomorrow when the website is live. Its a information site about a niche.  It probably won’t get much traffic but may become part of a network of information sites.  Thats if it makes any money.

The hidden proxy is getting around 300-400 uniques a day which isn’t bad.  I am hopefully going to be launching another proxy soon if I have time and feel it will be beneficial.   Since I have a few websites related to proxies and the internet I could probably make a profit purely by using my own websites to advertise.

This is a great position to be in.  If you like the new look for my hidden proxy please stumble

Content of your lens

Make your lens either something unique and fun or make it about your website.  Either way the lens should be in the same niche as your website as it is going to be used to advertise your website really.

As for the content of the lens, I like to keep it simple.  Add a couple text modules at the top of the page containing links to your website.  I would also suggest adding RSS feeds from your website if you have any and some youtube videos which are related.

Marketing your lens

Getting traffic to these lenses seems quite easy.  If you follow the tips on the actually website you should be able to get some traffic.  All for not much work.:

• Stumble your lens (click thumbs up on stumbleupon toolbar)
• Add to delicious, digg and other social bookmarking services.
• Send your lens URL to friends or people on your contact list you don’t actually know (:) cheeky, I know)
• Post your lens on forums asking for tips on how to make it better.  This will bring in traffic from forums and also gets some sound advice.
• Join groups related to your lens content.
• Add as many tags as you can think of.

I just started to use squidoo.  In an hour I made the simple lens and bookmarked it.  I have had around 50 uniques already and hopefully that can continue.  The lens which I created was originally created to build further backlinks to my proxy site.  You can view my Proxy Sites lens.