2009 was an interesting year, to say the least.

Goodbye 2009 Hello 2010

I don’t know about you, but 2009 had it’s share of ups and downs. A whole lot of downs and a few ups.

I had the worst vacation in my life this year.

I am not even going to elaborate on it. I think it will be best to just forget about it.

I also had one of the best vacations with my wife.

The Green 3 Legged Monster of Monico, WI

We spent a few days in upper Wisconsin. We hunted down two mythical monsters of Wisconsin, the Hodag in Rhinelander, WI and the Green Three-legged monster in Monico, Wisconsin. My wife was truly terrified as you can see from the photo. We had a great time (my wife found a store she likes in Eagle River, WI) and returned home to see my new niece moments after she was born. Kinda made up for the the other vacation.

The Hodag of Rhinelander, Wisconsin

Internet marketing wise, it was an unusual year.

I admit I did not do much. In fact, last year’s New Year post was still on the front page of this blog until late December this year. I have been doing some “part time” work in IT for a while now and have not made the time to work on my websites and blogs like I should have.

Still, my websites did great this year.

I am not making a lot of money. I am not anywhere as successful and John Chow. Still, after a year of neglect, my websites did better this year than any other year in the past! I even had some serious host problems that should have really affected things.

I have some big plans for 2010.

First, I will be making more regular updates on my blogs (I know this post is a week late after New Year’s but at least I made a post). I think this year will be even better. It definitely is worth the effort I have put in and should really take off.

The addition of a Blackberry is going to help this year.

Look for lots of new short posts. The phone looks like it is going to be a big help in making regular posts, but it is not good for the typical long post I usually make. It’s going to really help with one of my other sites.

I am really excited about this coming year.

I am looking to see some great advances in page views and income. It is going to take some work, but I am ready to make the effort this year. This is going to be a great year!

What are your plans for 2010?

How was your 2009? Did your sites improve? Did you give up? Are you planning to make this year your best year so far? How are you planning to improve your sites? How are you planning to improve your life?

May God bless you this coming year.

I know some of my blogging friends have had very bad years and even now are looking at some terrible times both online and off. Don’t give up, but work smarter. We all have a great opportunity. I am thankful for my readers and friends that have developed over the years and hope we can all make a life that we can enjoy.

As I have quoted my wife’s Chinese saying before:

New Year, New Hope!

The last $1.00 ScratchBack link for this blog has been taken.

I really like the ScratchBack ad system.

They have added some new designs to the widget too. I am still hoping that narrower designs will be coming out soon.

I have raised the price of the links to $2.00.

It will stay at $2.00 until the last $1.00 link is bumped off. Then it will go up to $3.00.

In the meantime, it is my job to bring traffic to see these links. Otherwise, there will be no reason for anyone to pay $2.00 to purchase one. Unless, of course, they are just purchasing the link as a tip. That is also greatly appreciated.

I would also suggest taking a look at the various links yourself and seeing how people are using them.

You can learn from what others are doing to further your own efforts. There are one or two sites that are very good blogs. I find the car wax ad an interesting idea, and don’t forget Jim Kurkral’s Flip camera ad.

The Firefox SEO link surprised me. I have been using the Firefox SEO extension for a while myself and it can be a useful addition to anyone running a blog or website or several blogs or websites.

So far, I have approved all the ScratchBack links that were requested/tipped for.

As long as they do not lead to anything that could be termed offensive I will most likely approve a link. If you have any concern about your link feel free to contact me first, that or $2.00 is not really a risk anyway. Since the ads are no-follow, there is no need for concern on my part about linking to spam.

The ScratchBack widget is a great alternative since Google started to crack down on paid links without no follow.

The catchy graphic help the links stand out. The marketplace also helps advertisers find your site to purchase a link. While there are some alternatives that will let you keep all the profit from an advertisement, without a marketplace, you may not find advertisers. While ScratchBack has not replaced the income I used to get here from TTLA, it is doing well and shows promise. I kind of wonder what it would do on John Chow’s blog.

If you haven’t given ScratchBack a try, what are you waiting for?

Most sites have things that take up space and are less profitable. It is a safe and easy way to monetise a site or blog.

If Feedburner was not already a part of Google the following from the Feedburner blog would probably start a lawsuit.

…the reason is that specific subscriber stats from Google Feedfetcher were offline because this service was apparently out late with friends on Friday night, and well, it completely slept through Saturday…

Burning Questions • Saturday Subscriber Count Drop?

I noticed the drop in RSS readers this morning.

I do not have that many RSS subscribers yet, but I was surprised to see a large drop. Not only on this blog, but also at the other sites I have with Feedburner.

It was not until I went to Ed Lau’s blog that I found out it was not just my sites.

John Chow also has a post about the RSS numbers.

In John Chow’s case, it was a loss of nearly 5000 readers. That would put him back almost to where he was before the contest with Shoemoney.

Fortunately, the Feedburner post says everything should be back to normal shortly.

This would be a good time for you to subscribe to my RSS feed if you are not subscribed already.

I do not post at a regular schedule, and getting updates by RSS is more convenient than trying to check back. You can also get updates by email through Feedburner.

Well, sort of.

My wife and I are leaving for Toronto tonight.

We’ll be visiting family. Since my wife is Chinese, we will be visiting a lot of the Chinese communities in Toronto. She always complains that Milwaukee has no Chinatown. Chicago’s is not very big either.

Oddly enough, we will also be going to Montreal for a couple days also.

My wife had family there also she wants to see. I do not speak French or Chinese so this will be an interesting week. I’m already kind of used to it.:) At least the Chinese.

I’m looking forward to seeing my nephew. I’m hoping we can get some video game play in. He may still be in school this coming week so I hope we can do it without interrupting his homework. Amazingly smart kid.

I do not know if I’ll be posting much during the week. I wonder if my readers would be interested in a day to day blog of our trip to Canada? I’ll try to make one post about it and see how that goes.

I just hope it is warmer in Toronto and Montreal than when John Chow went.

Take a look at what weather he had:

The weather was cloudy and damn cold! So cold in fact that some parts of the falls were iced up. The boat that normally takes you under the falls wasn’t operating because of the ice.

Source: John Chow – That’s a lot of water

I hate cold weather.

Happy Memorial Day everyone!

John Chow of John Chow dot Com is giving link to blogs that review him.

He is asking for a link to his home page and the review rules page with the keywords "make money online" in the anchor text for both links. 

This post is also a lesson on the importance of linking with keywords or phases. In the Evil Nintendo Wii Blog Contest, I asked people to link to me using “root of all evil.” If you do a Google search for that phrase, you’ll see I am now ranked number three, just behind Wikipedia and RootOfAllEvil.com.

While it’s fun to rank for root of all evil, not many people search for that phase. However, according to the Overture keyword selector tool, there are over 44,000 searches every month for make money online. If I can get on page one of Google for that phrase, it would mean a flood of new traffic.

Source: Make Money Online « John Chow dot Com

Here is my review of his blog:

I have no idea how I found it. In fact, I still do not have it bookmarked, even though I subscribed to the feed. Perhaps it was from Problogger.net.

I like the style of his posts.

I enjoy reading it. I think it has gotten me to post a bit more often just by reading it.

Even though I have had this blog for what is approaching a year now, I am learning a few things from him and his blog.

I like the sense of community his blog has.

I think the Weblog images have helped develop that sense of community. It was interesting to see who else was at the same page recently (I saw Yaro’s Weblog picture near mine). I have since added Weblog to my blog here and will be adding it to other WordPress sites I have.

While I have heard the word Algloco around, I had never stopped to look at it. I do not think it is for me, but I learned something about it at John Chow dot Com. It was even interesting to read.

John posts quite often.

Most of the posts are completely original. He does not just give a link to another site, say it has an interesting post, and leave it at that. While I have only been reading his blog seriously for a few days and off and on for a few weeks, nearly every post he has made had been of reasonable length, and still interesting.

Right now, I am going to be following John’s blog and sooner or later I will remember to bookmark it. I would recommend anyone trying to make money online to read his blog and learn what he is doing right, and follow it.