Feb

Still No Luck With Nameservers…

I had been looking forward yet again to trying out BANS but I am still having trouble changing the nameservers of the domains I want to use over to the nameservers of my hosting account. I know the advice usually is to use a seperate domain registrar to your hosting company but on this occasion it would have been more convenient and much less hassle.

I realised yesterday morning that I have hardly raised my head from my laptop all week and have been seriously neglecting my daughter so we spent all afternoon exploring Hampstead Heath which is like an island of countryside a few miles north of the centre of the city of London. I hadn’t been for years and forgotten just how beautiful it is. We are so lucky in London to have such an abundance of parks, I am sure I heard a while ago that London is the greenest city in the world, not bad for one of the most busiest!

I am going to really work on my work/home life balance from now on, planning for the future is all well and good but not at the sacrifice of now.

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Feb

Just When IS The Best Time To Start?

Fran in BANS, starting up

Before deciding to embark on the life of being a problogger I spent a fair while reading and researching what it was about, what it involved etc and most importantly would it suit me?

After doing all this reading and soul searching (I am making it sound much more heavy than it was! Call it creative licence!) I decided to take the plunge as there is always a danger of spending all your time reading about something but never actually doing it.

Since starting my blogs I haven’t looked back, not once, I am enjoying blogging tremendously, but I am coming across posts on other blogs that have started to make me wonder if I have chosen the best niches, though I think I already know the answer to that. I have since started to look at BANS and other things which is making me feel more secure, as I feel I am hedging my bets and don’t have all my eggs in one basket. There will be other sources of income apart from blogging alone.

This may or may not be the best route to take. A friend of mine swears that you should only have one plan, with no plan B, because then you give it your all knowing you have nothing else to fall back on. But I figure if I have a few things all, hopefully, bringing in some money in the first few months or a year, then I can take stock of what is working the best and focus on my most profitabl niche and/or venture.

I would really like to hear other peoples thoughts on this, have other bloggers felt like this?

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Feb

Ban Men?

Fran in BANS, Personal

I was all set to get BANS up and running today and started the day with great enthusiasm. I have read lots of reviews that mention how addictive BANS is so I was really looking forward to getting my teeth into it.

It took a lot longer to download than I realised, it kept downloading corrupt files so I had to delete and start again though I think that was down to my internet connection and nothing to do with the BANS website.

I was rather worried when my new powerful laptop told me it would take five hours to extract the files! But in the end it took about half an hour, which I think is way too long so I may phone tech support on Monday and see if my laptop needs checking out.

If anyone else has bought BANS how long did it take you to extract the files?

My plans to launch my niche stores hit the buffers when I was unable to successfully change the domains nameservers to point to my hosting account. I forwarded the nameservers in the same way I have in the past so I don’t know why I am having trouble this time. I’ve messaged support and they have a response within 24 hours promise so hopefully by this time tomorrow night I will be the proud owner of at least one functioning niche store.

I have been brainstorming ideas for my main blog and the realisation of what a huge established niche I am tapping into has really struck home. It is going to be a challenge but it is a market that I am very knowledgeable on, but even so it was hard not to look at the big guys and think WOW! I always find challenges much more stimulating than playing it safe so I am using my apprehension to drive me into achieving what others are doing and more.

On a more personal note I did have a date last night. We went to see Sweeney Todd, there was a rationale at the back of my mind that if the date went tits up at least I had been able to watch a 10 foot Johnny Depp for over two hours, every cloud….

I should have started to get worried when my date announced that even though he had eaten three sandwiches before leaving home he was still hungry and marched to the food stand to buy a 12″ hotdog, a large sweet popcorn and an extra large full fat coke, which raised some eyebrows and a few comments from those around. Even the dour girl serving managed a smirk then a smile. It was a nerve racking walk from the foyer to the screening room as his food was piled high and at an angle more precarious than the tower of Pisa. I had a feeling that things could go embarrasingly wrong for him at any second.

I thought this all mildly amusing and stifled my laughs until he loudly announced what big he hands he had and spent a fair few minutes stressing the point, I cracked up at this not sure if he really was as naeive as he sounded or was very clumsily trying to impress.

After this very surreal beginning, and it was surreal, it progressed from weird to just cheesy as his chat up lines became worse and he got a bad case of wandering hands. I am sure if the lights were on and I hadn’t kept fending his spider hands off me he would have been done for public indecency. But hey ho, I was relieved when the film was finished and he snottily announced it was home time because I refused to get in his car. I smiled my brightest smile, said goodbye and walked away back to my car.

Hopefully my problogging ventures will be more successful than my dating ones!

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Feb

So Many Good Ideas….

Fran in BANS, affiliate schemes

Since getting back from my jaunt in a country residence turned hotel I have turned my focus squarely back on to my blogs. I have been reading lots about what works for other bloggers, but now I think I may be suffering from the much commented ‘information overload’ syndrome, so I’m going to take a step back for a bit.

I have been networking with other bloggers, one of which Andrew, at Newbaffiliate, suggested I try using BANS. I had never heard of this before but after doing some research on the internet, it’s certainly something I would be interested in. I am going to buy myself a copy and detail on here how I get along with it. So thanks for the info Andrew!

There seems so many things to try, so many different affiliate schemes, I feel quite overwhelmed. Partly I think it is because I am just starting out so there is a lot to take in and also it is an aspect of my personality that I try and focus on too many things at one time.

I am also having some trouble staying focused. Facebook seems to be the biggest culprit, but apart from that one website seems to lead to another and another and so on. I am going to have to work much harder at drawing a line and being strict with myself on how long I spend researching each post in future.

How do you stay focused?

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Feb

My Night of Luxury

Fran in Misc

Well, right now I am sitting in what I think must be the most palacial hotel room I have ever been in. I had to drive up from London to Mansfield, a town in Sherwood Forest, to take care of some business. I have decided to stay the night as it has been a long day and a long drive. My little one was picked up from school and is spending the night at a friends house so there is no rush for me to get back, it’s wonderful!!

I haven’t stayed in this hotel before, mainly because it isn’t the closest one to where I need to be, but it does have wifi which other hotels in the area don’t, and thanks to my budding problogging career, I don’t want to be without the net.

The hotel used to be a hunting lodge and is set in beautiful grounds, so I may take a leisurely stroll tomorrow. I can tell I am not in London anymore, people up here actually talk to you instead of scowl. I was shown up to my room and invited down to the bar later to have a drink with the receptionists, how’s that for making guests feel welcome!

At the risk of droning on about this hotel, I can’t believe how huge this room is! I have a huge picture window overlooking the landscaped grounds which I am sure I’ll appreciate more in tomorrows daylight. The walls have floral wallpaper, there is even a tapestry hanging up! A four poster bed certainly wouldn’t look amiss here!

I also think the change of scenery and night away will give me a break, I always become more inspired about writing when away from home, there are less distractions and unfamiliar surroundings always give me a fresh mindset.

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Feb

How Much I Have Spent On Blogging So Far….

Fran in starting up

I read with interest both the article from Yaro Starak on entrepreneurs-journey and the comments it received on how much start up costs blogging needs.

So far I have spent £20 ($40) on one years hosting with one domain name included, and a further £28 ($56) on lots of domain names that I snapped up on special offer. I am currently using four of the domain names I own for blogs. The rest I am going to use for niche sites and other things.

Looking back with the knowledge that I have now I am probably going about my problogging in the wrong way. Lots of the advice I have read says that a problogger should not aim for one of the big markets but work on smaller niches instead, to build up experience before moving on to bigger fish. When I bought my first few domain names and set up a blog I was focussing on other advice I saw that said you should blog about what you are passionate about, and in my case what I am most passionate about is firmly in one of the bigger most established markets.

I don’t intend to take on the big boys, certainly not yet. But by blogging daily high quality posts on a subject I am passionate and knowledgeable about I hope to build a steady and loyal following.

I am going to spend the immediately foreseeable future building up the content in that blog and then market it like crazy.

I read some wonderful advice on Warrior Forums from someone who I think is an established blogger about how he would go about doing things if he was starting from scratch, using the knowledge he has gained over the years.

If you have the time I recommend you check out his post, it’s so detailed and makes for very good reading.

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Feb

Always A Glitch At The End!

Fran in starting up

Ok so here I am and it is 12:50pm local time. I have been sitting in McDonalds all morning since dropping my little one off at school making the most of their free WIFI. Before I really start on getting down to business with my blogs there was one static site I had to build first so it wasn’t niggling at the back of my mind.

I should probably have used Caroline Middlebrooks’s idea she spoke about in her excellent ebook on building niche sites using WordPress but I wanted more graphics and menus for the static site so I used RVS SiteBuilder through CPanel on my hosting account for what I thought was quickness. Everything was going fine until the end when I tried to publish it and kept getting error messages that even baffled the tech guy I contact at my hosting company.

He’s referred it to someone else so as soon as that problem is fixed, the static site will be up and I can continue my path to world domination, whoops, moderate success through building up and working on my problogs.

I was thinking last night after I had posted on here what seasoned bloggers may think when they read my post. ‘Oooh another newbie expecting to make millions online’! I think my goals are reasonable and I don’t expect to make millions, I’ll be so happy if I can make £1500-£2000 from all my blogs combined over the next 2-3 years. If I get to Blog World Expo in September I’ll be ecstatic!!

So lets see, I have a personal blog that I think I will just keep as that, no adverts. Then there is this site and my other two blogs. I intend for this and one of the other two to be my main blogs and update them at least once daily, with my other two being updated weekly.

I am really interested in hearing from other bloggers what blogs they used as inspiration when starting out. I am addicted to Yaro Starak and Caroline Middlebrook. I also find Yaro Starak very good looking which only adds to the pleasure of reading his blog. I’d love to put in the raised eyebrow smiley you find on MSN here but WordPress doesn’t offer the dubious luxury of smileys and I don’t have time to add one manually. Going to stop myself now because I can feel myself slipping into what used to be a customary rant on how I hate smileys.

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Feb

Now I have proclaimed myself to be a problogger I have to succeed at it!

Fran in starting up

Hi all and welcome to my blog!

I set this blog up to chart my daily journey to being a fully fledged problogger. I am a single mother in my late twenties from the UK. I was given my first computer at the tender age of eight, an Amiga 500, remember them? Being the technogeek I am I remember for my twelfth birthday I was offered a birthday disco party with all the trimmings, or an Amiga 1200. I went for the Amiga 1200.

I qualified as a holistic therapist a few years ago and have a couple of pretty certificates for Swedish body massage, Indian head massage, reflexology, aromatherapy and nutritional therapy.

I ran a business using niche sites back in 2002-2004 and would like to get back into the making money online game. Massage and all that is very nice, but the oil makes a hell of a mess, computers are much neater!

So here is my blog, hope you enjoy it. I want to share my journey with you and would love to share your journey. You know where the comment link is - hit it! Also why don’t you subscribe to the RSS feed and keep up with what I am doing?

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