Meet The Million Dollar Blogger – Alborz Fallah

Alborz Fallah, a blogger from Australia was in the news since last two week when another blogger from Australia and my friend Yaro Starak interviewed him on his blog Entrepreneurs-Journey.com. Alborz is a former student of Yaro and at present also coaching to Yaro’s students at blogmastermind.com

Whats the big deal; why he was hitting the blogsphere so hard, let me clear you that Alborz is blogger who is earning more then US $ 50000 per month from his blog caradvice.com.au. His blogs is valued at US Dollar 5 Millions. Well that’s a remarkable achievement, isn’t guys.

When I visited his blog I didn’t find anything interesting for me as his blog is about cars and am not so “car freak” guy., but I will advise you that you must visit his blog and try to grab some tips about how he is making so big money out of blogging.

Image courtsy Yaro Starak

Google Digg Out Possibilities Of Another Acquisition

If you wanna be the next big internet baby then start a new dot com venture give it a fancy name something like Flickr, Meebo, Wikiyou, Mahaloo Bebo make it big and then sell it to Google.

If sources at TechCrunch are to believe  Digg will soon be under big Google’s cap. As per TechCrunch, negotiation between Google and Digg were on since last six months.

Digg started in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson with funding of 11.3 Million now as per an undisclosed source at TechCrunch price offered by Google would be around 200 Million. Whoooping.

Digg is a website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories, in a social and democratic spirit. Voting stories up and down is the site’s cornerstone function, respectively called digging and burying. Many stories get submitted every day, but only the most dugg stories appear on the front page.

In its endeavor to power and rule internet fraternity these are few companies which already acquired by Google;

Pyra Labs the creators of Blogger, a blogging publishing platform acquired by Google in year 2003

Writely a company responsible for the online word processor acquired in year 2006

Keyhole, Inc. a company which developed a product called Earth (Google Earth) acquired in year 2004.

YouTube A video sharing site acquired in year 2006

DoubleClick a company that provides Internet ad serving services acquired in Year 2007.

Postini a company who manage their own email servers acquired in Year 2007

Feedburner a site which provides media distribution and audience engagement services for blogs and RSS acquired in year 2007.

I would also like to share this very exciting video “here comes another bubble” with comical lyrics by The Richter Scales. It puts a question whether present web 2.0 is another bubble in the Web Tub.

See it and give your opinion.

Learn The Art Of Conversion Blogging With Yaro Starak

My friend and Blog Master Mind Yaro Starak come up with this educational video which teaches you about the making money online. So if you are a blogger who writes in make money online niche then I suggest that you must see this video. This video tells us about the basic of make money online blogging and how you can convert e-mail list and news letters into profit.

Yaro is a master trainer; no body can train you as impressively as he can. He explain about his video :

This video covers a form of Internet marketing that combines the traffic and raw exposure power of a blog, with the direct marketing power of email lists. I call it “Conversion Blogging”, and it’s the basis for my entire six-figure online business. However, this system won’t work if you ignore blogging fundamentals – you still need to know what goes into building a great blog.

In the series of two videos, you can watch the first one absolutely free but to access the second video you have to enter your e-mail id but as Yaro promises that he won’t spam you and you can unsubscribe from his  contact list any time you like. Well this is called the art of conversion blogging.

Now watch this video and learn the art of converting blogging into profits.

Food for Thought – When you feel you have nothing to blog about

Do you feel sometime blank from inside, and then you start thinking that you actually have nothing much to express on your blog. You scratch your head and still not come up with any idea what you going write. Its true, mostly this phase comes in early stage of your blogging or it can be at some later stages when you start reading some great stuff of blogsphere or it can be when you come across to read some truly superior blog posts. People do get inspiration from these great blogs writers but still there are few who claim that their confidence gets jolted after reading to these so called big boys of blogging.

Well whatever may be the reason is; I will make an effort here to tell you what to do when you become “Thoughtless”. I will show you how you can go on writing posts on your beloved blog against all odds.

[1] Post a YouTube video
Now to make the things little lighter, posting a YouTube video is a good idea to fill in the blog till the time you sharpen your pen. There are several videos up there on YouTube which you like to see time and again. Noted it down, bookmark them somewhere and share it with your readers whenever you don’t find anything else to write.

Example
I posted this YouTube video about this weird Girl on Human Sling Shot back in Aug 07. I love keep sharing these crazy videos, do you?

[2] Post a Picture
Posting a picture is a good idea. But you can not download any picture which you like and post it on your blog as they may be scaled down and subject to copyright that’s why I rarely use this method, only once or twice I guess so far.

Example
Look at the faces of these guys, some one click them while they were having fun on a roller coaster. Having fun?

[3] Write about any interesting website that you have just discovered.
While surfing the internet you may come across some really good site which are useful and some time creepy, bizarre and amazing. You can introduce it your readers.

Example
I read about this very interesting site on one of my friend Marlene’s. Blog. Magmypic.com, look how easily you can place your picture on a very famous magazine and impress mates.

[4] Next Big thing
Latest advancement in the technology is the niche of so many big blogs. Why can’t we draw a couple of tech posts on our blog, people love to read about what happening hot in technology. I guess you understand what I am trying to say here, still not clear then see this example post.

Example
Here I am explaining about 3G iPhone India Launch. While everyone in the world playing with it; we in India still waiting for its launch, and have to wait until first month of New Year 2009. But what’s that in my hands, have a look at it here.

[5] Talk about your self
Personal branding of your blog is very important, your readers always love to hear about yourself, what you do, what you like, what you dislike, what you play etc etc. It creates a personal bonding between you and your readers and believe me it’s very important. So you can write about your self, your pet, your school days, about your bad habits or about the things which you hate to see around.

Example
You will find many such posts in rambling category. Miscellaneous rambling of a dot com guru are feature posts in which I love to talk about “whats-up” with me. But I want you to go thru this post where I talking about how my son Aditya amazes when I watch cricket on television and dance at every good shot.

Hope the post would help you get some idea about what you going to write today {if you are going thru this thoughtless phase}. So get set and go.

Image by Rachel Sian

World’s Oldest Blogger Olive Riley Died

I want to be Olive Riley; I also want to do blogging till my last breath and want to die being a blogger, blogging and writing posts for Shanker Bakshi dot Com.

Olive Riley, a lady from Australia, who died at the age of 108 on July 13, was considered to be the world oldest blogger. It’s interesting to see that she was introduced to blogging at the age of 106 by one of his friend Mike Rubbo. Here is the excerpt from her first post.

Good Morning everyone, my name is Olive Riley. I live in Australia near Sydney. I was born in Broken Hill on Oct. 20th 1899.Broken Hill is a mining town, far away in the centre of Australia. My Friend, Mike, has arranged this blog for me. He is doing the typing and I am telling the stories. He thinks it’s a good idea to tell what’s going on.

Riley who used to pronounce blog as “blob” posted videos, including clips of her singing songs. Born in the outback town of Broken Hill on October 20 1899, she lived through two world wars and raised three children while doing various jobs, including ranch cook and barmaid. Riley had established a nice communication with the readers from around the world which helping keep her mind fresh.

In her final post from the town of Woy Woy, she wrote:

I can’t believe I’ve been here in this nursing home for more than a week. How the days have flown, even though I’ve been in bed most the time. I still feel weak, and can’t shake off that bad cough. I’ve never been treated so well in all my life. The nurses can’t do enough for me.

She began her blog The Life of Riley in February 2007 at the age of 107 and made her final post on June 26, 2008. Complaining of a cough about two weeks before she died at the age of 108. She had posted over 70 entries.

Here is her Blog The Life of Olive Riley

Adieu Riley  – We will pray for your soul to rest in peace.

Do You Think Making Money From Blogging Is A Sin?

I tossed this question among blogcatalog community. In response I received so many interesting, weird and logical answers to my dig up. Some answers were so interesting that I love to share them with you guys in the form of this post. Moreover I ask you to tell me now that who’s answer do you think is the best? Comment your view below.

[1] Thaiger

Yeah, there are alot of people that say they make money blogging, but when you check out their blog, it’s just a clutter of ads with little content. And the little content that’s there is something like “To make money, you need traffic”, you know, something obvious. I think those money blogs are just marketing strategies to help sell their ebooks. It’s not a sin though… unless you’re lying.

[2] cooper

Not if you make money from something worthy and shut up about it. There is nothing more boring or uninteresting than listening to people talk about how much money they can make from sitting on their asses.

[3] jafabrit

I don’t care! How others choose to use their blog (within legal limits) is their business.

[4] Norski

I wouldn’t call them a “sin,” except in a very metaphorical sense. They’re more like patches of thick fog on the information highway

[5] satijournal

If you’re producing something that there is a demand for, there’s nothing wrong with making money from it. Blogging can be a lot of work. Domain name squatting is another story. They don’t produce anything or add any value. I don’t know if that’s a sin, but it should be a crime.

[6] MadameX

Sin is a strong word, but I think in general that it’s destructive to society that we’re working so hard to find ways to make money without actually producing anything. There are bloggers who are creating something valuable and using that as a forum to make money, and there’s nothing wrong with that–any more than there is anything wrong with making money from a magazine or newspaper or writing a novel. However, blogs that exist only to make money without adding anything of value to the world or the people who might read them are, in my mind, another story…something akin to sitting home and printing up counterfeit money instead of getting a job.

[7] drdental

There are certainly some “gurus” out there running “how to make money online” blogs that are purely profit motivated – with very little actual help coming from their blogs. It amazes me with so little contents how they’re still successful, but once you create an empire it’s not easy to tear it down. Anyways, I don’t think it’s a sin to make money on a blog because it’s no different than making money at a 9 to 5. Is that a sin?

If you ask me I love what Copper said above “There is nothing more boring or uninteresting than listening to people talk about how much money they can make from sitting on their asses.” Are you listening to it my dear Mr. John Chow? Well now it’s your turn to let me know who’s answer do you think is the best. Comment now.

Image by Novecentino

Miscellaneous Ramblings of a dot Com Guru 14th July 2008

It’s good to back with ramblings post. I posted last miscellaneous ramblings in second fortnight of April. Thats because I was struggling with some hosting issues and then formation of  CBA. Now as the things have been settled down, so am doing the job which I loved the most.

Five Most influential bloggers from I N D I A

Today am trying to dig into Indian blogging scene and will give you five most influential Bloggers list from India, Let’s have a look at the five most influential bloggers from India.

[1] Amit Aggarwal
Digital Inspiration is a brain child of Amit Aggarwal. He is a well known professional blogger and personal technology columnist for national newspapers. This guy stands at Rank 403 in the world as per Technorati which is tracking 130+ blogs. Feed count chicklets stand at 26610 readers by feed burner. Quite impressive, isn’t it. He writes about latest in technology.

[2] Kiruba Shankar
This guy from Chennai, shares his last name with my first name, is blogging since January 2002. Kiruba hold CEO position of Business Blogging Pvt. Ltd, a social media consultancy. He is the founder Director of F5ive Technologies, a firm specializing in Web Development. He is the most respected blogger of our time as he always there to extend his help to budding blogger and building blogging communities all over India. I can’t find him on Technorati, even he don’t have any FeedBurner feed button on his blog.

[3] Rashmi Bansal
Editor and Publisher of a popular youth magazine called JAM –Mumbai based Rashmi Bansal writes in her blog Youth Curry about everything and anything she founds interesting about youth in India. At present Rashmi Stands at Technorati Rank: 22,226.

[4] Amit Verma
Former editor of Cricinfo in India Amit Verma started blogging back in December 2004. After blogging for quite some time with Google blogger he then moved to his own domain name. In his blog India Uncut he penned about so many things happening in young India a personal blog with India through his eye sort of. With 4250 feed reader Amit also stand with Rashmi Bansal at Technorati 22,226 Rank. Interesting isn’t it.

[5] Presently you are reading the fifth most influential blogger from India { } Just kidding I have nothing to do with India or young India now. The above selection is based on my own predilection, but it’s a fact that these bloggers are ruling Indian blogsphere from years.

Poetry is back with Blogging
It’s good to see that Hindi Kavita (Poetry) inhabiting at its new place and that’s blogging. More and more bloggers are coming with this idea of blogging poetically. I can understand there is no another medium now as powerful as blogging to present their writing ability before the world. One of my friend Ravi Prakash who is very new to this city beautiful started his new blog a couple of months back. Ravi who hails from city of Joy - Kolkata tries and pours words beautifully thru his Hindi Kavita (Poetry). I request you that you must visit his site to see his side of view of this beautiful city Chandigarh. Here is Ravi Prakash with his Hindi Blog.

Max Banner Ads
Another friend of mine at Maxblogpress, The WordPress Plugin Guru Pawan Aggarwal who previously formulated MaxBlogPress Stripe Ad and MaxBlogPress Favicon now come up with this wonderful idea of Max Banner Ads Plugin. The beauty is plugin is that it can place banner ads at different positions of your blog like top of your first post or at side bar and you don’t have to edit a single line in your CSS Style sheet. You can see this Plugin in action at the post of first post of this blog.

Note before Downloading:
This Plugin is released as Reviewware. That means you can download and use it for free and if you find it useful then you have to write a review post for this Plugin in your blog. This will help lots of other people know about the Plugin and get benefited by it.

Chitika – Make Money With The New Hot Adsense Alternatives!

Last week was quite fruitful for me; one because we few bloggers from Chandigarh City get together for a cause and had our first meet-up and my second crop grown on Friday when the world’s best contextual ad service “Chitika” approved my account with them.

Getting your account approved by Chitika for placing contextual ads and referring other person is really a Big deal. You can find so many people nauseating against Chitika for their request being rejected by them. So I feel myself lucky that I got this money making partner with me, let’s see where it takes me on.

Chitika, Inc. is the creator of an online blogger-driven merchandising/shopping network, based in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The company was co-founded in 2003 by Chief Executive Officer Venkat Kolluri and Chief Technology Officer Alden DoRosario,. The name Chitika means “in a snap” in the South Indian language of Telugu.

Chitika is alternative to Google’s much hyped AdSense, if you are living on AdSense, installed its code on your blog for almost two years and still waiting your dollar pool to cross over 100 dollar mark then you must try your fortune at Chitika. It has following unique features;

• Simple to install – requires changes to only a few lines of code
• You get web solution with 12,520,796 of products and offers from 4,701 of merchants
• Pay Per Click Price Model. Up to a dollar a click.
• You can use it to promote a third party such as Adsense, CJ or any other.
• You keep 100% of any commission
• Search Engine Friendly, fully customizable. You can create own skin using our template

eMiniMalls – a PPC ad format
eMiniMalls at Chitika offer a PPC price module that mean you have to send traffic to towards advertising site and not bother about the actual purchasing or acquisition made by that visitor. That’s very good actually and a preferable model over CPA where you get paid only when your visitor made actual purchase.

Chitika Linx
Chitika also allows you to make money by incorporating their Linx code into your site. Following is how Chitika Linx works;

Linx will automatically identify key products/keywords mentioned in the content on a website or blog and hyperlink (double underline) those keywords to interactive paid (CPC-based) product listings featuring best deals, offers and promotions from name brand merchants. When users mouse-over these links, a small bubble-like scroll over is revealed listing offers from merchants

You can run Chitika Contextual Ads along with Google AdSense

Yes it’s an extra advantage with Chitika, if want to run both AdSense and Chitika Contextual ad formats, you are allowed to do that. The reason is that one you can disable contextual elements of ad in Chitika and second Chitika shows pictures with contextual ads which gives it a different look then Google AdSense.

Payment
Payments are sent by Paypal to the specified Paypal address. Payments are sent out monthly when your balance crosses $10. If you choose check payment option then the minimum payout will be $50. So Sign-up and start Making money with Chitika.

Sign-up HERE

This post include affiliates link, if you sign up through those links I will get paid commission but it will not effect your earning from the affiliate. Views express here are not influenced by being paid.

Chandigarh Bloggers First Meet-Up – As Seen After Fifty Years from Now

I was pleading this Tech Geek blogger Gaurav not to cancel this Chandigarh bloggers meet in any circumstances. Although Gaurav was very enthusiastic about this meeting but was not very happy to see the turnout at indiblogger.in, only few guys gathered to have their say on this first meet-up.

But why I was so desperate about this meeting, well for a very simple reason, I know blogging will hit the blogsphere scene of this city very hard in coming years, we will witness so many meetings after this, various communities, conferences and God knows where we will land in future with this wonderful thought of Chandigarh bloggers Unite, but you know what? We will be consider the first flag holder of this progression,

Yes we the few fortunate chosen ones who were about to witness a history in the making. To me this feeling was very precious and wishing to see this whirling into a certainty. Now, no body can turn this fact down that we auspicious twelve were the first to witness this blogging evolution. I know all you guys realize this truth, so cherish it for years. Keep on blogging and reach out to your dreams.

As I said this was the first Chandigarh Bloggers meet-up and we were the first few to glimpse this; now am giving you this very fancy idea suppose if some one wish to write a post about this meet-up on its Golden Jubilee Celebration in Year 2058. How he will state about this meeting (In year 2058).

Lets see a blogger writing about us in year 2058 and have fun;

Chandigarh Bloggers first meet-up July 2008

Hey dudes do you know after digging out internet for five hours I got all the information about the first bloggers meet which was held exactly 50 years back here in this city beautiful. After hard work of hours finally I found this above picture on flickr, this is a very old photo sharing website own initially by yahooo takeover by Micro-soft in 2010 but now is a subsidiary company of Gogle.

Let me tell you about these founders, enthusiastic guys who were present there to be a part of this association. Let me explain;

TOP ROW – Right to left;

• Can you recognize this thin specky guy? -yes you are right he is Abhinav Sood the same person who is handling Navi Mumbai Nano City Projects, also authored a book titled “Seven Inspirational bloggers”.

• The guy in yellow T-shirt is Jasdeep Singh, lyricist, philosopher and dean at All India Information Technology Centre Batala. Jasdeep has just finished script of “Mera Pind Patila” a soon to be released Punjabi feature flim.

• Next to him are Abhishek Vaid and Sameer Relan , the guys who own multi million projects of Vantage Webtech, Abhishek also write a blog “You And Your Pet”

• The guy in white check shirt is Rajesh, after blogging on various social aspects for 15 years he left the blogging world and joined PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animal.) in 2023.

• Next to him are couple Mohit and Reet Aneja, Mohit owns a social media site “JAneja” having 120 million users. According to Saturday SUNs Gogle offered mohit a price of 1.49 billion for acquisition which was turned down by mohit quoting the offer is too low for fixing the deal.

Sitting Row– From Right to left

• The dude on extreme right is Sourabh Dutta , This guy hold the Guinnesss Record for holding and writing maximum number of blogs. He own 1086 blogs on 54 different niches.

• Next to him is Shanker Bakshi, after trying his hand at different media turf this jack of all trade last seen in SatPura Forest Range in 2048? No body knows where he is now. By the way his son Aditya also writes a blog named “Where is my Dad dot Com”

• Gaurav runs Gaufire Incorporation; a company in the business of customized software. He also writes for TechCrunches. People say he was the man behind all this community stuff.

• The girl with cute smile Preeti who hails from Panchkula now lives in Pennsylvania and looking after Audio Content Writing division of AT&TT Wireless Services.

• Last in the row is Sukhbir Kaur, she is CEO in a tech company and managing a projects on how to use SEO for eliminating poverty (????)

So guys this year we are celebrating this meeting’s 50th Anniversary at Hotel TAJa SHERATON, Sec 17, all 45000 Bloggers of Chandigarh are invited in it.

See you there ;
Chaw.

[Please take this blog post in comic spirit; I apologize if it hurts any person’s feeling. Ask me to exclude if you feel so –Shanker Bakshi]

Are you a Twitter Whore ?

Twitter bird is twitting around web 2.0 from last couple of years now. But at present it is hitting all other social media sites too hard since lots of big bloggers and some really big names join and start twitting.

I would like share a video with you,  this video shows a little fun side of twitter, Lisa Nova claimed in the video as “twitter whore” twitting around, the funniest part is the expressions which comes after twitter get down. This is the first introductory video for the series of two back to back videos released by Lisa Nova.

You can also watch these:

TWITTER WHORE Part 1
TWITTER WHORE part 2

For those who are not familiar with twitter here is the explanation.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (otherwise known as tweets) which are text-based posts, ranging up to 140 characters long. Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook.. For SMS, four gateway numbers are currently available: short codes for the United States, Canada, and India, as well as a United Kingdom number for international use. Several third parties offer posting and receiving updates via email.

Now if you wish follow me;

www.twitter.com/shankerbakshi

Win Flip Digital Video Camcorder Contest

John Chow dot Com has come up with this cool offer to give away Flip Digital Video Camcorder. Bic Promo Pen is association with JCDC brings this contest.

If you are looking for an affordable and effective marketing tool you should consider buying some BIC Promotional Pens. At BiC Promo Pens where you will find an extensive selection of BIC pens that will keep your company’s name at the forefront of customers’ minds every day.

So if you are in mood to join this cool contest all you have to do is to write a post about this contest in your blog and link that to original Contest Post at JCDC. Two Lucky winners will get cool Flip Digital Video Camcorder.

Contest closes on 31st July 2008. So if you are a blogger, you must enter this contest.