whydowork.com

As you may know I got a BIN bid yesterday for this blog, of $4,000. I took it, but I’ve decided today not to go through with the sale. For starters, I specified PayPal or Western Union only as methods of payment, and the buyer wanted to do it with escrow.com (my country is not accepted by escrow.com). Second, I’ve been feeling remorse at selling it since I took the bid yesterday, and since this bid didn’t go through, I’m not going to reopen the auction.

I’m keeping the blog and I’ll deal with the busy period from January when I’ll get there. My original plan of having more subscribers then ProBlogger at some point (don’t go mental on me) is still standing, and I can’t wait to write again tomorrow ;).

I’m working on a plan to get this blog to the next level, so stay tuned.

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Shylock Blogging has grown so fast in the last 3 months, and I’m really sad to sell it, but my browser game will take all my time from January, and I have to sell this blog.

Shylock Blogging is on auction at Sitepoint. I’m not desperate to sell, so I’m not going to give it away for peanuts. The auction starts at $2,000 with a BIN of $4,000.

Blogging Fingers sold for $6000 with a similar number of subscribers and RyanShamus.com sold for $2500 with half the subscribers and a pen name as a domain. At a starting price of 2,000, ShylockBlogging.com is a steal.

Stats

• 11,300 page views in October (4,500 in the first 4 days of November)
• 5,500 unique visitors in October (2,400 in the first 4 days of November)
• Technorati Rank: 25,103
• Tehnorati Authority: 221
• Alexa: 79,628
• 72 posts and 319 comments
• 7,300 backlinks according to Yahoo
• PR3 blog with 3 PR4, 14 PR3 and 6 PR2 inner pages

The blog has ~180 subscribers right now, in just 3 months since it was started.

In the first 4 days of November, the blog already has 4,500 page views from 2,350 uniques, mainly from StumbleUpon traffic, which seems to love the articles here.

Revenue

I’ve started monetizing ShylockBlogging.com on October 10 and in these 25 days it made me a total of $305.

• $70 from direct ad sales and paid reviews
• $235 from the business I started here, of creating mini-sites.

The $235 worth of orders came from a single post I did 12 days ago, announcing the service, and just this morning I had to turn down a $60 order because of the blog sale.

I will help the new owner continue with the mini-site business, showing him exactly how I do the keyword research and create the mini-sites.

The new owner can also put a bigger emphasis on the monetization of the blog, as there is a lot of other things he can do, including using affiliate links in the posts, something I’ve neglected to do so far.

The blog has huge potential and it’s main goal since it started was to teach people to blog aggressively, and do everything they can to succeed at making money online.

What you can do for additional revenue:

• promote affiliate programs
• sell text links on the PR3 and 4 pages
• sell ads inside the posts (they are currently only in the sidebar and at the end of the posts)

What You Get

A PR 3 blog, with 3 PR4, 14 PR3’s and 6 PR2 pages, with backlinks from some of the most appreciated blogs and sites in the industry, including SEOmoz.org, SearchEngineLand.com, CashQuests.com, 45n5.com, DoshDosh, BloggingTips.com, DailyBlogTips.com, JohnTP.com, Mashable, Valleywag, Gawker, NYMag.com, Blog.Wired.com and even from a NYTimes blog. These are permanent links, mentioning one article or another from this blog. If you had to buy permanent links from these sites they would cost more then the price I’m asking for this blog.

I will stay onboard until the end of December, writing 2 posts per week for free, to ease the transition for the new owner.

The Shylock Adsense Plugin (spent $200 on it so far), which has over 1400 downloads so far and over 500 links to the download page. It’s one of the best Adsense plugins out there and a backlink magnet. You get full rights to it.

A 2 column WordPress Theme with full rights that I bought, that you can release for free and gain new backlinks from it. You can see it here (comes with PSD file for the banner).

A 3 page mini-site that I did as an example for an article, all 3 pages with PR2, gained from just 2 backlinks to each page from the blog. You can do some link building and make it rank for its keywords.

The mini-site business and I’ll show you exactly how I do it.

Traffic

So far, the traffic comes from search engines, StumbleUpon, Sphinn and the sites that link to the articles.

What You Should Know

• there is one ad that ends on November 12 and one that runs until the end of November. The new owner must keep these ads in place until they run out.

Payment by PayPal or Western Union.

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By the time you go searching for a domain name, there is a very good chance that you already know what the topic of the blog will be.

Basic rules when picking a domain:

- if you can, always choose a .com domain. More then once, a reader will remember the name of the site, but will not remember that you have .cc, .ws, .org or another extension. So, the first thing he’ll try is to use the .com extension. To give you an idea about the importance of a .com domain, Topix.net paid $1 million for the .com version, because they didn’t think to take it for couple of dollars when they started.

- try not to use dashes in the domain name. You could try the phone test here. Imagine yourself talking to someone over the phone and telling him your blog’s address. What address you think is easier to communicate? Virtual Shop Dot Com or Virtual Dash Shop Dot Com? Also, when doing the phone test, see what other things in the domain name need additional explanations.

- try to keep it as short as possible ( 1-3 words would be ideal)

- keywords vs. branding - this one is up to you. If the domain contains keywords then it’s easier to rank for them, but you may want to think long term and build a brand around your site with a unique name.

- if you use your name, then you will not be able to sell the blog, or you’ll do it at a much smaller price, so I’d recommend not going that route. It’s always good to have an exit strategy.

- try to stay away from words like free, top 10 or others like that. They’re overused and have a spammy feel to them. While we’re here, the same feeling people have about .info domains. Try sticking to the .com. If you can’t find a .com, then .net and .org are the next best choices (or the tld of your country if the blog is focused on your local market).

Some places where you can register domains at acceptable prices:

www.namecheap.com

www.godaddy.com

Hosting

First rule when it comes to hosting, is don’t believe the hype. 9 times out of 10 they will say one price on the front page, but it’s usually either the discount price for when you pay 1-2 years in advance, or they have setup fees that you don’t see at first. Always browse through the site and check everything they have to offer, any hidden fees, what’s the price when you pay monthly, how many domains you can host with them ( many will allow just one domain per hosting account and it’s quite possible you’ll want to start other sites in the future).

Next, go to hosting forums (like www.webhostingtalk.com) and see what others had to say about that company. Check for downtime issues, response time from the staff and how helpful they are. You can avoid a big headache later if you spend a bit researching who you’ll pay to take care of your blog hosting.

Another trap you might want to avoid falling into, is the very large storing capacities and bandwidth, available at very low prices. That usually means that they’re overselling, and they will never be able to support that kind of traffic.

Some hosting companies that you might want to consider: www.dreamhost.com, www.resellerzoom.com, www.mediatemple.net ( a bit more expensive, but more reliable).

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The Blogging Zoom launch was covered quite a bit in the last few days by blogs, and here are my $0.02. I think the idea is great, a place where only bloggers can submit, far away from the pricks that live on Digg and bury every article with SEO in the title. I’ve been waiting for quite some time for a site like this. Unlike most Digg clones, that have a fix number of votes for each story (usually 3-4), Blogging Zoom got quite a bit of traction from day 1, with plenty of mentions in the blogosphere. It’s started by Courtney Tuttle and Vic.

The site does have a lot of potential and it’s got quite a bit of traffic. The promise of traffic for blogger’s is too strong to resist, and I’m sure it’s going to have success in the long term.

That being said, I do think there is a flaw in the site’s strategy.

What the problem is

Unlike Digg, Reddit or Sphinn, Blogging Zoom doesn’t really have a target audience. I mean yes, it’s for bloggers, but those bloggers all have different interests for the most part. Everyone can submit their stories, but a blog about knitting doesn’t really have a good chance to hit the front page. Not like an article about blogging tips anyway.

Their launch strategy, to market it as a site for all bloggers will make it grow, but to be realistic, I don’t see it working for everyone. It’s not a targeted audience unless you got articles for bloggers and webmasters.

I do think it’s great for those that write about blogging tips and making money online. Once it grows, it will be easier to new bloggers to gain some recognition in this niche.

The 350 character limit

Since yesterday Blogging Zoom needs a minimum 350 character description for each article submitted and I do think that’s a mistake. They might take that out for posts in the images or videos section, but I still believe it’s too much to ask from people. What they want is a summary of the article, when it should be just a teaser to make people visit the site.

To give you an idea, the paragraph above has about 360 characters, spaces includes, and that’s the minimum amount of text you need to put into the description when you submit.

Conclusion

I like it, I think it has great potential and I hope it will grow and do it fast. If you’re a blogger sign up for it and try it out. I don’t think however that every blog out there will benefit the same from Blogging Zoom or that they will be able to keep such a broad area of topics. I’m very curious how it will evolve in the future and I’m going to use it myself.

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