I wrote a post a while ago about writers block, however it has not helped me very much lately.  I take a note book around with me everywhere.  It sits in my bag and when I think of something that I think that I should write about, or a niche idea that I think I should explore I write it in there.

The pages have been very empty lately.

I think that it may have something to do with the amount of stuff that I do during the summer.  It is really too nice to be inside, and I have also filled my evenings with sports.   This does not leave a lot of time for sitting and thinking, which in turn leads to burn out.   I am starting to feel like I am sinking in a hole, which leaves my mind not relaxed.

I have been trying to get to the gym.  Hitting the weights has always been a good way for me to clear my head of everything.  When you are there the only thing that you think about is the amount that you are lifting, or the speed that you are going.  it really helps to focus for the rest of the day, but I haven’t been doing even that lately.  I have been playing ball hockey and ice hockey very late so that means that I am not getting up early enough to hit the gym.  This is something that I am missing out on, and it is something that I am going to have to make a priority if I don’t want the advances that I have made in the last month to slde.

So now I am off to play hockey, and then it is off to bed.  Tomorrow morning I am going to begin my new workout at the gym to see if I can get focused again, both at work and at home.  I hope that this new routine will get me motivated like I was last month.

Marketing Leverage has gone crazy with the contest sponsorships.  Not that I am complaining I have joined in a few hoping to get something out of them.

The one that I ALMOST missed was John Chow’s.  Today is the last day to enter.  All you have to do is reply to his post or write a blog post with a trackback and a link to Marketing Leverage.

This is my post for the contest

Today I have sold my last link placement through TextLinkAds.  I recommend them if you are interested in selling some text link space.  They are very easy to deal with and the payouts are fair.

Currently TLA is the main way that this blog makes money.  It is about 25% of my total online income currently, but I am expecting more.  I have added the ability to sell private ads using OioPublisher.  This is a great plugin, very easy to install and manage.  The only downfall, if you can call it that, is that it costs money.  I will write a full post on it in the very near future, because it really is worth everything that you pay.

Right now I am offering 3 site wide banners and 1 inline ad.  I have “default” banners located there now, so there are 4 spots available, so get them now before they are gone

My next step in my hobby is to let one site die and build on another.  The killer for me is that the site that I don’t have to time for is the one with the more profitable niche, however I have more “fun” writing for the other site.  Since this is a hobby I am going to leave it this way.  I may not let the other site die prese but maybe I will just let it sit and buy some post for it in the near future.

For my next step I am going to start to investigate my entry into the affiliate marketing space….again.  There seems to be a number of people doing the same, but I am sure that I can succeed.  I have a monthly profit goal in mind that I want to reach for the new year.  If I reach it, I may plan on making this hobby into an actual company.  This has the advantages of limiting my personal liability, but it costs money.

That is enough rambling for tonight.  Maybe in the future when I have more cash flow into this blog I will post my earnings like JohnC and TylerC.

Ciao

Today I found an interesting resource on cheap web hosting.

There are a lot of places that a beginner can get information on the different types of hosting that is available out there. A lot of those resources are too “full”. WebHostingRating articles is very well organized and has some great articles and tutorials.

I have had some time to browse through some of them and the following are some of the articles that I believe would be the most useful to the beginner:

Concept of Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is the type of hosting that a beginner is most likely to use. It is the most cost effective and easiest to obtain.

Intro to cPanel

cPanel is the control panel of choice when it comes to the backend of your website. It is very easy to use, but this article will help you get a head start when you have finially decided on the webhost that you are going to be starting with.

Fantastico Tutorial

Fantastico is known as a popular library for commercial scripts. It is commonly used as a third party add-on that works with cPanel. It was designed to automatically install applications into a website and eliminate the need to upload files through FTP. These scripts are executed from the administrative area of your website. Websites running Fantastico scripts are said to be installed by over 10, 000 servers. With millions of users on a global scale it is easily the most used product of its kind.

Myphpadmin

myPHPadmin is not something that the absolute beginner is going to be using, but take a read because you never know when you are going to have to use it to change a variable in one of you database tables.

Conclusion

All in all, WebHostingRating Articles is a decent new resource that looks like it is going to be growing in the future. Make sure to add its feed to your reader so that you will be notified when new articles are added.

Then when you have figured out what hosting is all about then you can go to the cheap web hostingpage and figure out what webhost you are going to go with.

Thanks to Sean Mulholland for pointing out to me while I was Stumbling that Mozilla has killed its own servers.  In case anyone out there didn’t know, the SpreadFireFox was trying to break a world record for the most downloads over the course of 24hrs.  I didn’t know that this was a Guiness Record but I guess it is.

However, the servers are DEAD, so if you were waiting for today to download FireFox 3, you are out of luck for now.

This is either a good sign, they have already broken the record, or a shitty sign that they are not going to be able to because their server admins weren’t up to the task.

All I know now is that I sent an email to the entire office at lunch today asking them to give Firefox a try and all I got was emails back asking if I got the URL right, that it crashed their computer or that it was just plain slow.