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The title of todays post is a little strange I will admit but I want everyone of you to read this post so I made it something that gets anthony’s your attention. Ever wondered how certain blogs get bigger real quick while others just waste away dead space in the blogosphere?

I thought about this for a while before I ever started IBB and I believe I understand better now how and why these certain blogs do so well. Without making things to complicated let me break it down into two easy steps to get on your way to becoming a big dawg in your blogging niche!

- Make Connections: Firstly and most importantly is making connections with others in your niche. If you blog about gardening then get to know other gardening bloggers, why do I suggest this? Simple, if you become friends with them they may link to you for free or be open to a guest post that links back to your blog and builds your brand simultaneously. If you ever ever seen my about page you will see at the bottom where I list all the guest posts I have written for other bloggers in this niche. I now have a relationship with most of these bloggers and if I asked them for a favor they would most likely deliver asap.

Its a win win when you do a guest post because you get to build your brand while they get extra unique content that their subscribers want and need anyhow.

- Drop The Free Theme: Secondly and most certainly important is the fact that every big time blogger started out with a great design. That is not to say if you get a custom one done now your already doomed, no blog is every doomed unless you trash people on it left and right (just kidding).

But seriously, what about your free theme makes me want to visit your blog? I understand content is important but content is sort of like medicine that is hard to go down, by sugar coating things with a pleasant design it makes it go down easier.

Take it from me and pay the money to have a custom design done, there are many choices ranging in prices from $50.00 to thousands. I normally don’t plug my own services on the blog but I do design wordpress themes for around $250.00 and they kick butt (or so I have been told).

It is important and worth every penny to have a custom design, logo and maybe even a mascot made for your blog not matter the niche or age of your site.

This is a guest post by LiveEditions

If you are new to the Internet and domaining, you may be wondering what this article is about.

By “Auto Pilot” we mean you can make a passive and constant income online without having to do anything other than the set up.

There are, as with most cases, multiple ways on doing so. Firstly, there is parking. Parking a domain is when you use an advertisement provider who puts ads on your website. When clicked, the ads generate a reasonable amount of money. Some parking providers are parking.com, sedo.com, and namedrive.com. There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages of each one.

Some pay more per click, others have a lower minimum payout level, etc… (Do the research, google it.) As you can see, after you have your domain parked set up, you don’t really need to do anything with it.

Provide your paypal address to your parking provider and they will usually give you your payout automatically. Another method of gaining money automatically includes developing sites that don’t need maintenance. Such sites can include forums and video sites.

Really the basics of this are that the users control these sites. With forums, if you have the users, you are set to go. Other than short maintenance every once in a while, if your forum is active, you have $$. Make a long term deal with somebody who wishes to advertise on your site.

That way you will not need to look for advertisers every month. And with video sites, it’s the same thing as with forums. Your members are the ones who put up the videos and generate the traffic. The only problem with this last suggestion of an Auto Pilot is you need to first have the traffic.

Once your site has a successful good amount of visitors, you are ready to start making money.

When you started your first blog did you count the costs of starting it up? When you started did you have any goals in mind? Have you reached any of those goals yet? If you can’t answer yes to all those questions today’s post will help you get on track with it!

When I started InfectedByBugs it was more of a test then anything, through blogging I have learned a lot and IBB was really my first real blog other then just a personal one or two I started some time ago. That didn’t stop me from dreaming big however and I believe in time this blog will make me a nice income to live off of while I start other projects along with it. Before I get into the meat of this post lets review a couple of goals I set for myself when I started IBB.

• Reach 500+ RSS Subscribers By The End Of 2008 (Which Will Be Basically One Year).
• Make $200.00 + per month from personal ad sales / reviews.
• Meet New People With The Same Passion For Blogging.

As you can see some of those are pretty lofty goals, mainly the RSS and 200.00 per month goals. Before I get into that however lets talk about the 3rd one “et New People With The Same Passion For Blogging”. I can without hesitation say that I have accomplished this one with flying colors. It was actually not that hard, they are just people and they love to talk and here how great they are just like any other person.

About the first and second goals I mentioned above, I am well on my way to breaking 500 in my first year if the sign up count continues. I also have some new plans underway to really break these boundaries up and sky rocket my RSS numbers as well as traffic! I have also nearly reached my $200.00 a month goal at least for the next 2 months but you will have to wait till the end of this month to see my made money post for may to see the results!

So as you can see I set some goals that were at the time seemed impossible but as I look back I could have actually done more and tried to get even bigger quicker. I believe the way I did things was standard for a new blog but its time to kick things into overdrive and that’s why I am setting a goal to reach 250 subscribers (100 more then I have now) for the end of June. That way I am sure to reach my 500 goal or sooner by the end of the year.

Goals are important to set because they give you something to work towards, lets face it we cannot produce kick butt articles 10 hrs a day for years one or two per day is the best we will be able to do without burning ourselves out.

What do you think of setting goals? Talk to us by commenting below!

Today I was reading Shoemoney blogs, shoe has long proclaimed he is not an seo but we all know that he is and just won’t admit it! Anyways, he made a post about how seo it going to leave and I think many of us have know this for some time now.

SEO is the old way to get a site ranked but as google continue to improve that will stop being the case.

 SEO to this point has allowed people to spam the search engines into thinking they are something they really aren’t. Mostly through paid links and stuff of which I do not endorse in any way nor take part in.

My reasoning for this post is simple, I want to know what you all think of the seo future and how you think we will need to start ranking sites? I believe in time only through using legit techniques to get people linking to our blogs naturally will we really put a nail in the coffin on spammers.

What are you thoughts?

Today I was reading a blog I read every day and noticed that they said they were in the top 100 of the mmo blogs online through 45n5. I talked to the owner of 45n5 before and got InfectedByBugs included in the list but never paid it much attention.

I went to the top 100 list today and to my surprise and enjoyment InfectedByBugs is now number 87 out of the best 100 blogs in the mmo niche!

This is awesome news for IBB fans as it means InfectedByBugs is starting to get noticed more and more every day, I recieve some traffic from 45n5 as well so it is even better for me now that I am on the list!

I think the main reason we are still so high on the list is because of our alexa which has not updated in a while coz I need to resubmit the site to them with the new thumb nail and all that good stuff.

Hope you all are as glad to see IBB up there as I am coz I think it totally rocks!