This is an unpaid review from me going contest-sponsoring wild. Just one more of these and I will not be doing any more for the next… 20 years as I’ve tired of them.

Up for review today is The Germz, which is a blog about making money online. The Germz won a review in a contest somewhere, and although I delayed getting around to it (didn’t want to hit you guys with too many reviews, paid or unpaid ) here it finally is. So let’s look at the blog!

My first bit of advice to TheGermz would be to change its focus. The MMO niche is a difficult one to break into, and even more difficult to grown established - I got out because I was tired of it, and when you’re dealing with others who make money you have to be at the top of your game. For me, you should only start an MMO blog if you are… making money, and I skimmed through the posts and couldn’t see it mentioned anywhere that anything had been made. One of the things a blogger opens himself up to when starting an MMO blog is a tremendous amount of scrunity - you need to prove that you can make money, otherwise I’m going to go to an established MMO blog with proof of income. Personally, I feel that the Germz would do far better as a blogging tips or young entrepreneur blog… it has the tools to succeed in that niche, some of which I’ll be covering below.

The blog is run by yet another teenager - there seems to be more and more coming up every day which is always good as you guys know we’re the future . Seriously though, let’s look at other stuff.

The Design

The design is decent - monetized yet uncluttered with posts being the main focus. The blog appears to use a combination of private ad sales, pay per click and affiliate programs to monetize and diversity is always good. Each blog post uses a large image and there are only two on the front page at any given time, leading to a colourful, friendly experience. Using posts in images is always great and I’m going to start when I can be bothered soon.

The Domain

I have no idea what the domain means, which may or may not be a good thing; on the About page, the author says that due to his name being German, his friends called him Germz. However, ‘The Germz’ doesn’t really make grammatical sense… but anything to be unique I guess, and the name is certainly unique

The Addons

This is where the blog kicks most other blogs right up the backside, TUK included. The Germz has a whole host of addons that will help you… let’s look at them in short.

Entrecard Credit Generator - allows you to mass open Entrecard windows so that you can drop cards, get points and further popularize your blog. With a fast computer, you should be able to do around 30 cards a minute, taking you 10 minutes or slightly more to get your 300/day.

Dofollow Search Engines - not a new idea by any means but still useful for bloggers. In this case, you get both a blog search engine and a forums search engine, allowing you to find places where you can spam build links.

Free Templates - I’m always on the lookout for landing page type templates and signed up for these seconds after I saw them. They’re well structured and if you use them right will make you money. Below is a screenshot of one of them for your enjoyment

Giveaways - The Germz is constantly giving away things… he gave away ten free landing pages recently and only five people bothered to signup which was a real shame - I actually meant to but forgot…. however they are definitely worth a decent chunk and I’ll be getting ready for future contests

Forum - there is a forum, but it appears to be down at the moment as I get a coding error.

I do think that these should be promoted more… at the moment, the only way to get to them is a small link to ‘Free Stuff’ in the navbar… perhaps a bigger banner on the homepage would help. Nevertheless, all that free stuff is pretty cool, so head on over to play around with it.

You can subscribe to his feed here. Feel free to let him know in the comments if you think anything needs added to or whatnot.

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My computer still isn’t fully fixed, will probably have to get some cables installed or something. At the moment my laptop is good enough to pick up the wireless signal of the house from my room, but the desktop (which is new) isn’t strong enough. Oh well.

ONE DAY left to win a Creative Vado so get in if you haven’t.

Anyways, I’ve made a few changes to this blog, some big, some small… I’ll list them below and explain why too for the ones that are relatively big.

I’ve never really promoted this blog heavily - apart from a couple months ago where I had a contest or two while promoting in terms of guest posts, nowadays I’ve tended to set things up and then let them lie.

It’s time for that to change.

Personally, I feel that this blog tries to offer something different to blogs that are even far more established - although I wouldn’t say all my posts are useful, I do think that I offer at least one or two posts that can spark things off per week. For example, my blog commenting post which made people thousands of dollars… when was the last time you saw a post on an A List blog that actually made you money? Despite the posts frequently referring to it, this isn’t a ‘make money online’ blog - I tried to get out of that niche a while ago because most of the blogs there are absolute crap and as the title says nowadays, this is a young entrepreneur blog.

Sadly, I’m never someone to get off my backside and do things just like that… so luckily we have an incentive. Daniel at Daily Blog Tips is running a contest dubbed ‘Blogging Idol‘ where the winner picks up $800 in pure cash and $700 in SEO consulting. Although there’s a large probability I won’t win it (as there are around 100 participants) competition always helped me work far more effectively. So the month ahead will be one of heavy, heavy promoting - I’ve slacked off doing so for the past 2-3 months and this hasn’t really grown as it should have (although it still has grown some, thanks mainly to you guys ).

Here’s the changes:

Dofollow removed. This is probably a big one. I’ve always prided this on being a dofollow blog, but can’t allow all comments to be so anymore; now, I do not have regular visitors commenting on internal posts to get some link juice, but I do have a problem with drop by link spammers (guess I really shouldn’t have wrote that make money blog commenting post, eh ) with stupid anchor text. By stupid anchor text, I mean people commenting as something like ‘San Antonio Washing Machines’ … I’ve had people comment as that, then later send me an email to ask why it was deleted, very angrily. Remember that outgoing, unrelated links hurt this blog’s Pagerank and although it is not very important in real terms, everyone likes to see improvement

However, top commentators will still get the joy of a dofollow link to their own website, and one of the things I’ll be implementing from now on is a free link under Recommended Websites for the top five commentators each month. Think of it as comment one month, get the next to slack off

Entrecard / Sitehoppin’ Added. Why’d I add Entrecard after I’ve repeatedly called it a useless service for traffic? Simply because there are a lot of bloggers that use it, and it helps getting your blog’s name out. This blog is not a big name in the industry yet, and although I don’t expect it to become so… I would like to get the word out a little more. This kind of traffic converts at something like 1/1,000,000 (okay slight exaggeration, maybe ) but if I get one or two people that become heavily involved in the community per month, all’s good. I also wanted to test SiteHoppin’ as the guy behind it has put a lot of effort into it and I think it’s a cool souped up version of a traffic exchange program

Email Subscribe Form Added. In the past, I had a button that linked to the email subscribe; now people can just do it direct from the homepage. The more work you give people, the less work they’re going to do, so let’s make things easy. Subscribe if you haven’t to get a fresh email every day with some incoherent ramblings thoughts from me that will help you out. I’ll report back if I see an improvement in conversion (from visitors ==> subscribers).

Upgraded Wordpress. I’m almost embarrassed to say this, but I was still on the old version of Wordpress for TUK. Anyways, upgraded this, will probably upgrade my other websites in a few days (or weeks…). I used the best Wordpress plugin of all time for this which made things a breeze. Haven’t noticed any real differences (apart from the Top Commentators widget now working internally) but I have noticed that the tools plan to release WP 2.6 soon… meaning another upgrade. One wishes that they sorted all their numerous problems once and for all…

Dedicated Posting. One of the methods I’ll be employing to try and win the Blogging Idol challenge is heavily working the social networks… I’m going to try and write one Digg frontpage worthy post weekly. Whether it’ll get there or not remains to be seen, but I’m far more prepared than I was earlier with tools like WP-Cache and whatnot. I’ll be ‘making friends’ on things like Digg and aiming to produce one post per week that is better than all posts I have ever posted on TUK before.

Dedicated Commenting. The more discussion a blog post has, the more discussion it will continue to get… and so on and so forth. I’m going to try and comment at least once on blog posts of mine - I used to do this in the past but haven’t so much recently. I know I could, and I know I should (as without comments by you guys there would be no discussion) but I haven’t because I’m lazy; it’s time to start!

Working on SEO. I haven’t done much SEO with this blog apart from install the plugin; I’m going to start, but try out SEO that actually makes money - rank for product reviews, rank for hosting, etc. If you see a few keyword stuffed posts heavily promoting something (which I will have tried) do not worry, they are not for you.

There’ll be a review posted up on here tomorrow, one I gave away in a contest. Speaking of contests, I’m looking of having one to compete in Blogging Idol; I’d prefer less prizes but with each prize being of value; heck, I’d prefer things that are tangible (anyone want to sponsor an iPhone, let me know ). I’ll also post within the week. I have not forgotten the bum marketing thing, I did say I was waiting for the end of Euro 2008 (ends June 29th) for all those that asked.

Also, I hate work, so let’s make this a challenge; although I do not expect to win Blogging Idol, I do expect that on August 1st I will have double the subscribers I do now. If I do not, I will write a post on August first giving everyone that comments here a free link.

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Well, kinda.

One thing that an entrepreneur needs are tools - it is the tools that you have that define how successful you’ll be.

I’ve been using shitty tools (a virus infested laptop which ran pretty damned slowly) so decided to get myself souped up. Nothing major, but stuff that’ll help.

I’ve been looking for a new computer for a while now - it’s the summer holidays and there’s not much to do over here so went out today looking to buy one. I narrowed it down to about 4-5 choices and finally picked one up.

Nothing huge, but it’s a definite improvement over the laptop… still working on getting stuff fixed like the Internet (which doesn’t work yet) so I’ll be on the laptop for a couple days more but when it’s ready…

Here’s the exact computer I bought:

Spent a couple hours setting it up - came with a ton of freebies like mouse / keyboard / webcam / home theater system etc so will be looking at tweaking it. As for the specs… it had a Core 2 Quad processor, 2 GB RAM, 2.4 Ghz, 320 GB space and a sleek design. Cost around $1,000 USD.

They also had a laptop for around $8,000 USD which had pretty much the same specs but was called the Annihilator - guess names do make a difference

Anyways, I’ll be looking at installing stuff over the next couple days, fixing the Internet… might not be online as much (instant messenger) and have to fix a few errors on it - the damned thing came preloaded with Internet Explorer and Vista (I hate Vista) so will be looking to a) get it downgraded to Windows XP and then b) Get Firefox.

The computer comes loaded pretty well for gaming, which I will be buying a few (hundred) of - if any of you play online (I’ve already thumped a couple TUK readers at FM08 ) let me know and we can sort something out.

Anyways, gotta run - going to have another go at fixing the Internet and getting ready for the Euro 2008 semis too. Laters guys

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I went on a bit of a buying spree yesterday - stuff unrelated to the bum marketing project, but stuff that should be useful for other things. I picked up scripts, softwares, graphics packages, website templates, design services and quite a few other things… and then discovered I had a bit too many.

One of the things I’m always on the lookout for is cheap vBulletin licenses - new ones retail at $180 and when you can get ones that are second hand for $80, well… it’s hard to turn them down. I picked up one yesterday which I later (after about ten seconds) realised I didn’t need, so I’m going to ask you guys for help.

I love the act of flipping… it’s easy. I’ve flipped niche websites, blogs, proxies, image hosts… but the thing I haven’t flipped yet is a forum, as the only big one I’ve had so far has been Blog Premiere. Now, I’m not looking at selling BP, and I will not even consider the idea until all tshirts are sold (just for an inkling… there are around 85 left, with me selling 3 in three months and giving away the rest) so it’s not going away from my possession anytime soon.

However, I’ve always wanted to flip a community as it has more potential value (especially if you can get your users creating content…) and a forum is one of the best ways for your users to get content. Run a small contest or two, get some people on board and bang, you have a community that you need to spend ten minutes a day on interacting with and moderating.

I currently have three vBulletin licenses - one is in use for Blog Premiere, another in use for a project of mine, and the last one is open… so I’m going to ask you guys which niche you think I should have a go at.

Personally I’m thinking aim for the webmaster niche, as well… that’s where most of my contacts are in, that’s where I know how to make the most money (hosting sales are easy…) and that’s where I could drive the most traffic. I’m starting out with a small contest, nothing large but a small cash prize for the highest poster. I will let you guys know more about this soon, but if you have any ideas of other niches you’d like to see a forum in… let me know

I launched a couple projects today that I think will do fairly decent - will let you guys know about them soon. Do not worry, I’m still doing the whole bum marketing thing; the football tournament is almost over so will start seriously when it finishes

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Money Spent: $0.00
Money Earned: $0.00

I’ll do something like the above every so often throughout the length of this case study.

As a few of you know, I’m going to run a bum marketing case study; looking to see whether it does work for me and whether the efforts of a group are better than a lone person. I actually took a break yesterday, as I will update on here as I do things; and yesterday could not update as there was a guest post submitted

Anyways, I’m taking things slowly, but getting them done; today I’ll talk about two important things I’ve done or will be doing.

The first step was getting on board servicemen. This is something I always do before any project, even though I have a lot of freelancers that do various things it is always good to have nw people on board. I looked for people that had instant messenger and people with a history of feedback at the various forums, the cheaper the better of course due to my budget.

People for the services I looked for could do:

• Social Bookmarking

• Directory Submissions

• Content writing

• Video creation

• Minor coding

• Graphic design

The former two I needed to build links (for example, the guy I found submits to 65 social bookmarking websites, with a report showing proof for $2… whether it’s manual or automated I do not care, but that saves me a chunk of time - you can’t beat getting 65 links for two dollars ). I will be writing the content myself, but if this starts turning profitable I want to rinse and repeat in bulk. I also mentioned having a go at getting some targeted traffic from Youtube, so got on board someone that produces decent quality videos for cheap (although I will first have a go at creating my own).

Graphics, again; just in case, however I will not be hiring any for the moment. I mentioned this website in an email to my list a while ago, but it is amazing for when I want professional looking logos; it doesn’t do the whole Web 2.0 thing but the logos it produces are good enough. The website I’m talking about is Logy Pixy; I specifically like their Aldo font.

So I’ve got the freelancers on board for when if I screw up. The next thing I did was start looking for a product to promote.

Someone asked this in an earlier post; yes, I will be targeting Clickbank products. Why? Because Clickbank is the marketplace with the largest amount of information products geared at all kinds of niches and although they pay with cheque, I love their interface.

What am I looking for when choosing an offer?

Knowledge. That is, my knowledge. Although things like forex pay substantially well, I wouldn’t know how to write a single article on them without extensive research - sounds like work, and I’m a lazy student if you guys have forgotten . Seriously though, I want to pick a topic that I know a decent amount about so I’ll be able to maximise promotion and whatnot.

Payout/Popularity. A product can pay out 99.9% to affiliates, but that doesn’t mean a thing if it’s a product that no one’s going to buy. By looking at the payout amount and the popularity, I’ll be able to determine whether it will be worth my time.

Sales page. If the sales page looks like it was designed by a preschooler and coded by someone even younger, I’m not promoting it. Professionalism sells… and something that isn’t professional will be pretty hard to sell.

Those are the there main things I’ll be looking at; there are a few more but those are the biggest ones. Will update soon when I choose a specific product to promote.

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