September, 2008

An Interview with the Master – “Daniel scocco” from DailyBlogTips.com

Daniel-Scocco-Daily-Blog-Tips Daniel Scocco has lived and studied in several places around the world, including Italy, Chile and Brazil. After receiving a degree in International Economics and working for a year within a multinational company, he decided to quit and pursue entrepreneurial projects on the Internet.
His experience completely changed the way he interacted with the Internet. Through out these years he launched several successful blogs, and Daily Blog Tips is the place where he shares what he learned along the way. The blog was nominated under the “Best Web Development Blog” category on the 2007 Weblog Awards, and currently it is ranked number 29 among the most popular blogs in the world (according to Technorati).
Daniel Scocco is an inspiration to start this blog and his blogs have helped us a lot in learning about blogging. I highly recommend every blogger to subscribe to DailyBlogTips. And I take this privilege to thank Daniel for giving this interview.

1. How long have you been blogging?

I started late in 2005.

2. Where did you first hear about blogging and making money through internet?

On StevePavlina.com

3. Are you a full time blogger?

Full time web publisher.

4. When did you quite your day job — Was it before/after you started getting more money from your blogs than your regular salary?

I quit before I was making any money online. But I was sure in 6 months to 1 year I would already be earning enough to live. That was the case.

5. Did you start with the purpose of making money?

No, I started because the lifestyle was what I wanted (i.e. the possibility to work from home and have plenty of free time).

6. How many blogs do you have or write for currently(otherthan Daily Blog Tips, Daily Bits, Daily Writing Tips…and hope you don’t write in Techcult.com ).

Those are the main ones. I have some smaller websites, but they are all static.

7. How many hours do you dedicate to them every day? How much time do you spend for each of your blogs? Do you sleep at night
🙂 ? (kidding!)

I work around 8 hours every day. The time is spent reading new stuff, writing posts for Daily Blog Tips, managing the other 3 blogs, and on some consulting projects.

8. Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious, Yahoo Buzz! — Order them with your priority ?

StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit, Buzz.

9. How much do you make from your blogs, monthly?

Around $3000.

10. What is your main income source?

Direct ads and consulting projects.

11. Do you think Adsense makes a blog look unprofessional?

Depends how you integrate it. AdSense on the sidebar or below the posts are fine. Blended with the content they look spammy.

12. What were the 3 major mistakes you did on your blog?

On Daily Blog Tips I already had a good experience. On previous blogs I messed up pretty bad though.

My first web hosting was a Windows plan on GoDaddy…

My first blog was a hand coded HTML page.

My first WordPress install was not done on the root folder.

13. What would you suggest for a blogger, who have just started his blog.

i. Wait till they get direct advertisers or use ad networks?

Wait until you have 1000 uniques a day, then put ads. Direct or ad networks will depend on the niche.

ii. AdSense or anyother ad networks

Depends on the niche.

14. If you could give an advice for a novice blogger, what would it be?

Focus on the content.

15. If you could read only one blog, which one would you pick?

TechCrunch

16. If you could read only one blog(related to blogging), which one would you pick?

Problogger

17. How many RSS feeds do you track daily?

Some 200

18. Have you ever invested money in promotion of your blogs?

Yes

19. What are your 3 main strategies for blog promotion- In a line each?

1.valuable content
2. contact with other bloggers
3. social media

20. What are your other revenue source, other than blogging?

Consulting projects and niche websites.

21. What was the most difficult situation faced by you in all these years, regarding blogging(except Spam 🙂 )?

Content theft.

22. Which are the 3 major traffic sources for your DailyBlogTips?

1. repeat traffic
2. search engines
3. social media

23. What is the secret of your success?

Consistency

24. How important is the design aspect? (0 to 10)

Some questions to which we expect some detailed answers.

1. How you spend your day?

Wake up at 6am more or less. Check email. Eat breakfast. work until 10:30. Hit the gym. Lunch. Work till 5pm. Train Jiu-Jitsu or Kick-boxing (depending on the day). Dinner. Go to sleep at 10pm or so.

2. Personal hobbies and interests?

Martial arts, swimming, weight lifting, saxophone, chess.

3. Life before blogging, blogging life, where you want to see your blog in next 5 or 10 years time?

Before working on the web I used to work for a multinational company. Boring.

Right now I love my life style.

Hopefully my blogs will still be going strong.

4. Some of your life’s ambitions?

I want to start my own Internet company some day.

5. What projects do you have in your to-do list for coming days(2008-2009 and even 2010, if any).

Buy a house, preferable at some nice beach location.

6. We see all over the internet that, people earning lot from Internet usually have cool life style, they will be going to holiday trips to their favorite places frequently etc etc….Do you think its true and do you also have such life style.

This is true for people earning bit time. I am not there yet.

7. Do you also complain of not having time?

No. I love the flexibility I have working from home.

8. 3 things you do, which you consider waste of time….

I don’t waste that much time actually. Don’t watch TV, don’t play games, don’t have gadgets or anything.

Only thing I could say is watching DVD movies.

9. How about your contacts with the outside real world(other than blogging life)? Do you meet and talk to people often or will you be busy almost all the time infront of your computer?

I think I keep a good balance. I workout or train martial arts almost every day, so I meet people there. On weekends I always meet up with friends and with my girlfriend, so it’s good.
I wish I would have more time for that though, but one got work hard.

We feel that everybody had great time reading this interview article. Daniel is one of our blogging idol and we are very happy as we started this “Interview” section with Daniel. If you have some interesting questions to ask your blogging idol or your blogging inspiration, then Ask questions here and Celebrity Bloggers will answer it(an Interview).

Watch this Amazing Digg song

As you all know, networking sites and social bookmarking sites ( DIGG, Stumble, Yahoo Buzz, delicious etc ) can bringing a lot of traffic to our blog. And we have observed almost all blogs adding links to submit their stories to these sites.

You can see that Technotip.org also uses this feature and has got some traffic from it.

Now please share your experience with these sites in terms of traffic. Number it from 1, 2 ,3….. and write down your preference of these sites, in below comment section. There are many more networking sites which most of us are unaware of. By sharing your preferences and previous experience with these sites(in terms of traffic), you will be helping eachother and we can learn a lot from everybodies experience.

So please share your preference and you can link to your profiles on those sites.

So far our site has not got much traffic from these sites. Our main traffic source are from feedburner subscribers and from Google.

Now watch this DIGG song…. And let this nice song not influence your preference 🙂 hihihi…

We just shared it, because we will be off 3 to 4 days and there will be no new articles publishing here for the next few days. So we thought that, a good Song like this would keep our readers happy and engaged.

And do not forget to participate in Ask questions here and Celebrity Bloggers will answer it(an Interview).

Watch this Amazing Digg song

Kina Grannis

Lyrics:
“Gotta Digg”

When I’m feeling lazy, at school or when I work
I sneak to my computer, and then I like to shirk
I don’t go online shopping, I don’t email with my mom
I open up my browser, and go to digg-dot-com

Chorus: Gotta digg, gotta digg, gotta digg
Gotta make this story big!
Did you hear that awful sound?
Another server’s down!

I always dig up Apple, and I bury Microsoft
But when I said I was a girl, all the diggers scoffed
And when I see those stories about Senator Ron Paul
I don’t even RTFA; I just digg them all!

Chorus: Gotta digg, gotta digg, gotta digg
Gotta make this story big!
Did you hear that awful sound?
Another server’s down!

The fan boys can be tiresome, they always are outspoken
And if you’re listening Kevin Rose, the comment system’s broken!
I know digg isn’t perfect, but be thankful for what we’ve got
It’s just like daddy always says: “At least it’s not Slashdot!!!”

Chorus: Gotta digg, gotta digg, gotta digg
Gotta make this story big!
Did you hear that awful sound?
Another server’s down!

———————————

Hey are you forgetting something ? Read some lines from this article, from the beginning! (Your preferences in social networking/social bookmarking sites)

Please do not forget to participate in Ask questions here and Celebrity Bloggers will answer it(an Interview).

No new posts in Technotip.org for next 3 days

no-internet-cartoon Hi all readers, there will be no new articles in Technotip.org for next 3 to 4 days. We will be going to Bangalore / Bengaluru to purchase some gadgets, books and for some other important works. Even though I am going to Silicon City(fully wi-fi/wi-max enabled), I would prefer not to behave like a blogger there, just for a change. No laptop, no internet, no computer for 3 to 4 days. It would be a great change to have. Hope we will get refreshed and comeback and write more useful contents.

While we were writing this post, we thought to have some conversations/exchange of ideas here. So what would you do when there is no time to write and publish articles? When you goto some far place where there is no internet connection, for about 3 to 4 days. Then what will you do to manage your blog ?

Will you inform your readers (before going!) the reason to not have new articles for next 3 to 4 days on your blog ?

Please share your ideas in the comment section. Remember, “If two people exchange 1$, both will have 1$ each. But if they exchange 1 idea, both will have 2 ideas each”.

Ask questions here and Celebrity Bloggers will answer it(an Interview)

There is a good news to all Technotip.org readers….

We will be doing interviews of some of the celebrity bloggers in the future. So you can expect some inspiring articles being published here.

Its hard to interview a Celebrity Blogger, as there will be no time with them to answer everyone’s questions. But still we will struggle and try to do it. For now, the good news is, one of our favorite “Celebrity Blogger” has agreed to give us an interview this weekend( Shhh..suspense!). Cheers….

And we expect lot of Diggs, stumbles, buzz! etc from our readers, to make the interview stories big and to help as many people as possible by sharing these articles.

speak-up Now this article is mainly written to inform you all about the future posts, and we also want you people to participate.
We have already prepared some questions to ask, but we thought that it would be great, if we give a chance to our readers, to ask some more questions.

So please leave some interesting, useful questions in the comment section of this post.

And please remember that, you are asking questions to a “Celebrity Blogger”. Don’t just ask – How to install wordpress? What is your blog income ? What is RSS? etc. Please just don’t ask such questions. You can ask such questions in some forums and get the solutions to your problems.

Ask questions, seeing which the “Celebrity Blogger” should feel like answering them happily and he should also feel good for giving the interview.

You can ask questions like – how you spend your day, personal hobbies and interests, life before blogging, blogging life, where you want to see your blog in next 5 or 10 years time? etc.

Keep in mind that, your questions should be useful to other readers also.

We will include your questions while interviewing the “Celebrity Bloggers”. And we will give you full credit for asking good questions. We will write a special article(with link Love) to thank all people who give us a good question to ask.

And we make it clear that, all questions asked here will not be asked to “Celebrity Bloggers”, we will select good and insightful questions only. And please do not hesitate or underestimate yourselves, every person on this earth has got his own abilities. So ask questions, even if you do not have a blog or if you have a small blog or no blogging experience. We will surly take your questions, if its a good one.

And please do not ask for the name of the “Celebrity Blogger”, because this will dilute the thrill and more over the interview is not only for one “Celebrity Blogger”, we will use some of your questions to interview some more “Celebrity Bloggers” in the future. While asking questions, think that, you are asking the question to someone who has achieved a big thing in his life and he is good and famous.

Please use this opportunity to full extent and make use of the experience and talent of the “Celebrity Bloggers” by asking relevant questions. Who knows, the answers given by the “Celebrity Bloggers” may become your key to success.
Subscribe to our blog for FREE, to get the articles directly to your RSS and/or EMAIL inbox.

Google services on your mobile browser, worth checking

Its a general convention to have m.domainname.com as the mobile version of domainname.com. And now its great to see the big “G” going that way. Yes now you can easily access almost all Google services using the URL m.google.com from your mobile browser.
We personally like reading stories on our mobile using “Google Reader” and to watch “youtube” videos whenever there is free time!
With the release of Android and “Chrome“, Google is quickly entering the mobile arena.

Do not miss watching this short video demo:

Mobile version of Google supports BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Nokia S60 phone, other Nokia phone, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and many Others..

Mobile version of Google has:-

Smooth and responsive user interface
Powerful shortcut keys and intuitive menus
Search and find any Gmail message
Includes almost all Google services.
You can also use IMAP to sync your Gmail with your phone’s native email client.

Google-mobile-services
click here to configure your mail client or wireless device to download Gmail messages.
Also look for your handset compatibility details here.
I am really thankful to Google, for making the entire world(internet) into my pocket. Clearing my “Google Reader” stories has really become dam easy now.
Thank you Google….

9Rules – Round 7 results are out

Many bloggers who had applied to 9rules had been waiting at 9rules blog, refreshing the pages to see the final result announcement. 9Rules have finally released the much awaited results, and as we gone through the accepted sites, we feel that, all these sites really deserve to be on the board of 9rules. So well done 9rules.

For those unaware of 9rules, it is a collection of independent blogs with a focus on networking and love for design & knowledge sharing.Thanks to — Paul Scrivens, Mike Rundle, and Tyme White, Who Runs 9rules

We had also applied to 9rules, but our blog is too young(2 months) to get into 9rules community. Anyway, we will apply to it when our blog is atleast 6 months old(its also a kind of requirement to apply to 9rules). I have had chat with some of the lucky guys who had been accepted into 9rules in previous rounds and they revealed me that their blog get around 100 to 300 visits from 9rules…..that’s not at all bad, additional traffic for no extra work is always good.

Good thing about 9rules is, they only accept sites after individually checking them out. This ensures that, whoever have subscribed to 9rules will get only interesting things to read. So 9rules subscribers will never get pissed off and there will surly be constant increase in the subscribers list and thus the accepted sites get more traffic whenever there is an interesting article published. So 9rules creates totally a Win-Win situation. Technotip.org really likes the concept and is in full support to 9rules.

Technotip.org will be eagerly waiting to get into 9rule community soon.

Ok…here’s the list of sites which got accepted in the 7th round of 9rules…CONGRATS!!!!

If anybody is leftout from the above list, then please inform us.

Finally what we can say is- “9Rules, you really Rule”.

Download Google browser: Chrome

We already have many Free browsers, then why did Google think of releasing yet another ?

[ Get Paid for using the Brave Browser, from the founder of Mozilla Firefox and inventor of Javascript. ]

The answer is, Google’s “Chrome” is not just an ordinary browser. Its an application which enables users to better handle interactive applications and resource-hungry web pages such as video clips and online games. It is also less likely to crash. This might be a step into the next generation web. I personally feel that, this is the beginning of next generation Internet.

google-chrome-screenshot

For now we can not talk much about “Chrome”, anyhow we are also eagerly testing the Beat version of “Chrome“, link to download “Chrome” is at the end of this article. Its launched in almost 100 countries today and only for windows users, but will be soon launching in all countries and for all operating systems.

Its built on Open Source platform and the browser will remain Open Source. Google has also released official Google Chrome comic book and its worth taking a look and it almost explains all its features and its purpose, so I will not cover all those things here.

Google will host a webcast press briefing and demo at 11 a.m. Pacific time today and here are the link to watch, if you are interested – Windows Media Player or Real Player.

“ I think in the coming years Microsoft’s IE(followed by their Operating System’s) will vanish and Mozilla Firefox may merge with Google and the Operating system may go online with Google OS or something like that, with xxGB or/and unlimited(for premium users) storage etc…these are my wild personal predictions….nothing might even happen like this! “

Google is showing the download link to “Chrome” on its homepage– google.com, as Google know that, it need to compit with those browsers which come in as default with the Operating System. Click below image to enlarge..

Google say that, this is just the beginning of “Chrome” and it has a long way to go and keep improving over time.

You can download the Beta Version of “Chrome” by clicking here or by visiting Google’s official blog.

Its quite funny, as we can not install Google Toolbar to “Chrome“!

Your AdSense a/c might be in danger

We were looking at our AdSense account and wanted to test a feature in it…” Allowed Sites “. Login to your AdSense account and click on the “AdSense Setup” tab, there you can see the option “Allowed Sites“, click on it.
Adsense-Allowed-Sites
There choose “Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account“, there, list all the URLs where you are using your AdSense Ads and click on Save Changes. Now just leave it and visit the same page again after a week.

Below the Save Changes Button, there will be a list of “Unauthorized Sites“, which will be using your adsense codes!

Actually its cool right, someone using our ad codes and helping us earn more! But wait, just see who are using your ads? Technotip.org is still a new blog and I was shocked to see even the porn sites Using our ad codes! and many other URLS which required password to access. We just rescued our AdSense account from getting banned, by using “Allowed Site” feature.

allow-certain-sites Just opt into “Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account” option and make sure that your ads are not used on illegal sites.I don’t know what these people will get by including our adsense ads on their blog. By listing our URLs ourselves, we will rescue our AdSense a/c. And by using “Only allow certain sites to show ads for my account”, we will not get paid for the clicks and impressions from other URLs displaying our Ad codes.

Do not forget to list these URLs:-

1. Your sites/blogs/forums. If all these are in the same domain, then just give its homepage URL once.

2. 209.85.171.104 — Google Translator

3. stumbleupon.com — As people may open your blog from within Stumbleupon to vote/stumble your article.

And keep checking your adsense account to see all those sites which are using your ads, if you see one which is not offensive(Ex:- like Google Translator etc), then just include that URL in your list.

By this you will be securing your account.

Have you used this feature of Adsense? Does this make sense to you? If you have not used this feature, then we recommend it to you all orelse you will be putting your account under risk without your knowledge.