This should apply everywhere in your life: Make sure that you focus on, and enjoy everything that goes right in your life. Focus on the positive as they always say.

Celebrating the positive can do wonders for your happiness, self esteem, motivation, relationships, and even health. The more you look at the good things in your life, the less you will notice the things that kinda suck. The bad things will start to loose their hold over you.

I know a lot of people just roll their eyes when they hear people talking like this but it really is true. The secret to happiness and sucess is all locked away in your head. It’s all in how you look at things.

The reason I’m writing about this is because Jason and I are starting to make some money off of the site and even though it’s not a lot (yet) it’s very exciting and is enough to give let us know that everything we’ve done so far has been worth it.

We are not climbing the ranks as fast as some other blogs have, yet faster than a lot of others. Do we worry about that? Not really! We know that if we stick it out long enough, and keep improving and learning as we go we will reach our goals soon enough.

If you have any inspirational stories about focusing on the positive, or want to let us know how your blog is doing please feel free to post a comment below.

Related Posts:

So you’ve been working on your blog for a while now and just don’t have the motivation that you had in the beginning. When you started your blog, you were going to make millions in your first year. You were gonna be a star! Now that the initial surge of excitement has warn off, all you can think about when it’s time to write another article is how hard it’s been to get to where you are now.

One thing to keep in mind is that there will always be hardships and disappointments. You will have failures along the way. Even the most successful people in the world have disappointments and will tell you that the key to “getting there” is to never give up. Even when you fail.

Give up the negativity

When you start thinking about how hard it is to “make it”, you may have thoughts like “I’m not good enough, interesting enough, or internet savvy enough”. A lot of people talk themselves down from chasing their dreams by thinking this way.

There are probably a large number of negative things that you tell yourself on a regular basis, without even noticing it. These thoughts can drain any excitement you once had for a project. This may be holding you back from doing the things that need to be done to make your blog a success.

Your hesitation is not there because you’re lazy, or boring, or bad with computers. It’s because you’re telling yourself that you are!

The next time you catch yourself thinking a negative thought, notice it, evaluate it, and dismiss if it’s holding you back. Remind yourself that you need to ignore those thoughts if you’re going to be successful and happy which is I think what we are all striving for.

I’m not saying that you should go into denial, if there are things that you need to fix, then fix them. Otherwise don’t worry so much and remember that there is always room for improvement.

That is my pep talk for the day.

Related Posts:

Hello all,

I was wondering if you could help me. I am looking for a few good blogs to read. You see the blogroll at the side of this site? Those are the blogs I read, usually daily. Some of them are no longer worthy of being on that list. I would also like to expand it a little bit.

So I am asking you for some suggestions, and yes it can be your own site. I would like it if they were close to the same topic as this one, or something that compliments it. But I will check out any and all suggestions anyway.

So why would you do this? Well, if I do end up reading the site on at least a weekly basis then it will get added to the blogroll! So you will be giving some link-love to whoever owns the site. Now thats some great internet karma. So just leave a comment or fill out our contact form!

Also, what does it take to get on your blogroll? Do you trade with people? Do you just add what you like or find interesting? Do you have to join a special blogrolling group?

Related Posts:

I just thought I’d compliment Jason’s post on our recent successes with Foximus and reaching the 150 post benchmark by posting our current website grade.

Our website grade has risen along with our Technorati ranking and backlinks. We are now the proud owners of a website with a 71% grade. That’s a B right? Not bad!

When I first checked our grade (about a month ago) it was quite a bit lower than it is now so we’ve had a very good month. I can’t wait for Foximus blog promotion month! I also can’t wait to see what happens when our page rank finally shows up.

Related Posts:

I’m not sure if I’m alone in this but I’ve notice that ever since Jason and I started this site i’ve been having trouble getting to sleep at night. I think it might have something to do with the fact that I write most of my posts right before I go to bed. By the time I’m finished writing, I’m wired and my brain just won’t shut down!

If you’re like me and are having trouble getting to sleep, here are some tips for turning your brain off after an awesome post.

1. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. I’m really bad for this one. I usually just go to bed whenever I feel like it and I always sleep in on the weekend which really messes me up.

2. Avoid stressful/stimulating activities (like blogging) right before going to bed.

3. Only use your bed for pleasure and relaxation - this means no blogging in bed.

4. This one’s obvious, no caffeine close to bed time….unless you’re writing a late night post, then it just can’t be avoided.

5. Start a bedtime ritual. Play relaxing music and drink decaf tea to let your body know that it’s time to go to sleep. Keep your mind off of blogging, it can be exciting to think about what you’re going to write next, or how many visitors your site will have tomorrow but when you’re trying to get to sleep then you have to just let it go. Write it down if you have to and then let it go.

Already I can see some things that I have been doing wrong. The biggest thing is that I should probably start writing my posts right after work instead of just before bed I’m sure the stat checking doesn’t help…that stuff is like crack. I’ll have to see what I can do about it. I can quit whenever I want…

Related Posts:

In another scheme to accumulate backlinks, I saw this on Jon Lee’s site. This one is unique from previous schemes because you can use anchor text to promote your site. The imporant thing with this one is to keep on updating your current list with new additions, that way there is no disadvantage of not being amongst the first on the list!

=======Copy and Paste below this line========

Instructions:
1. ) Copy and paste the matrix of “ViralTags” below courtesy of Founders Cafe.

2.) Substitute the Host Tag and one of the “Viral Tags” in the matrix with your anchor text of choice with your blog’s URL. Please keep anchor text to a max of 3 words to keep the matrix size manageable.

3.) When you get a ping back from someone that has your link in one of their “Viral Tags”, practice good karma by copying his/her Host Tag’s anchor text (automatically the associated link will also be copied) and paste it over one of your “Viral Tags” below.

4.) Encourage and invite your readers to do the same and soon this can grow virally.

Host Tag: Foximus

start a blog | Best Affiliate Program | Make Money Blogging | Tech at Hand| Marketing Made Simple | Asian Celebrity | ViralTags | ViralTags | Technology Music Life| ViralTags | Manila Mom| ViralTags | ViralTags | Startup Entrepreneur Money| ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Agloco Internet Marketing| ViralTags | Tech Gadgets Stocks| ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Earn Money Online| ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Entrepreneurship Internet Web| ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Tech Startups Web2.0| ViralTags | ViralTags | Plugins TV Blogging| ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Really Funny Jokes| ViralTags | ViralTags | Internet Marketing German| ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Business Blog Web | Celebrity Gossip | Anitokid Chronikos| ViralTags | esofthub’s web finds| ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | The Broken Bow| ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | Foximus | ViralTags | ViralTags | ViralTags | create a blog | Fun Web Development

Important: Once I get a ping back from you, I will add your anchor text and the associated link you designate as “Host Tag” here, replacing one of the “ViralTags” from the matrix above. As more and more bloggers copy and paste this matrix, the more backlinks you will have with your anchor text. If everybody who copy and paste from your blog does the same, pretty soon this will spread and go viral. So, the sooner you participate, the more links with anchor text you will receive.

====== Copy and Paste from Above this line=====

Let’s get those Technorati and Google rankings up!

Related Posts:

You may have noticed over the last few days that I added Bumpzee to the fox. I wanted to see if it would be as useful as MyBlogLog. Not only didI add the Bumpzee visitor plugin, and added the bump this button to each post.

As far as traffic goes, nothing came from bumpzee and no one seems to like the “bump this” button on each post either. I did not really like the Bumpzee site either, at least compared to the MyBlogLog site.

So in response to this not very scientific experiment, I am removing the Bumpzee plugin and button. Maybe I am just not using it right, but I followed all the instructions and if it takes more than that for it to be useful than I am not interested.

So the winner this round is MyBlogLog! Make sure to add us as a contact.

Related Posts:

Every couple of days, I check the akismet spam filter just to see if any real comments got thrown in there by mistake which happens from time to time. I have noticed aomething weird going on lately that maybe someone reading this can shed some light on.

We are getting tons of spam comments on one particular post. The person or bot never leaves a link to follow, but they always use a weird name like ‘win big time’ and the comment is something super positive like “I love your site and now I can reccomend it to others!”.

I don’t get it though. They are all on the same post, but there is no link or anything. I highly doubt that one of our posts have spawned a cult following of regular posters named “click here” or “win fast” but I guess it is possible. Has anyone else had a similar experience? I have approved a few of them so you can see what I mean. The post in question is Should you consolidate.

Related Posts:

Since I am a lover of stat checking, I thought I would post my favorite tools for measuring traffic. These tools can be a huge waste of time if you check them too often, but they can also be a lot of fun, and can tell you about what your readers are interested in, how they are getting to your site, and even the paths they are following to leave your site.

When used properly, stat checkers and other tools can be a great asset to any website owner. When used too often, they can be a huge waste of your time, energy and can be a drain on your motivation when you don’t see results right away, so be careful.

Check Page rank - This is one that most people have heard of. Your page rank is a number from 0 to 10 and is assigned to every website in Googles database. The higher the number the better. This number is based on how many other websites are linking to your site. The more websites with high page ranks that link to your site, the higher your page rank will become.

Google page rank is only updated once every 3-4 months so there’s no need to check it any more often than that. You also need to be indexed on google before a page rank can be assigned to you, and if you’re a new site, you could be in the google sandbox for a few months before your links will even start to matter so hang in there (thanks to Ted from Devil Works for the tip on the sandbox effect).

Google Page Rank Prediction - Now this is one you can check more often! While you’re waiting for google to get around to updating your page rank, you can run your URL through this PR prediction tool to see where you might end up once google finally does assign one. Apparently Foximus will have a PR5 once we do finally get updated. That would be nice, we’ll see how accurate it is.

Alexa - Alexa is another big one. They call themselves “The web information company” and they rank all of the websites on the internet based on the amount of traffic that each site receives. The closer you are to #1 the better, (there are millions of website on the internet so to become number one would be quite a feat). Right now the number one spot belongs to Yahoo.com.

You can run your URL through alexa’s site checker and see how your site has done over the day, week and month on average. You can also see what percentage of the people on the internet you are reaching through your site.

Technorati - This is a site that ranks blogs. You have to register your URL with them, and once you do they use the amount of backlinks that you have to rank your site against all of the other sites that are registered with them. The more backlinks you have, the closer you will be to number 1.

Statcounter.com - This is the main one that I use for checking stats. I like it for a few different reasons. Firstly, (and most importantly) it’s free to use and doesn’t require a visible counter or link back to the site. Secondly, it’s gives you stats in real-time. This means that you can watch your traffic throughout the day. The down side is that you can only see detailed info for the last 500 visits so if you want a larger log file then you have to pay for it.

Website Grader - This one is a tool that I have already written post about and use fairly often. It’s great because it combines many of the tools that i’ve already mentioned in one, easy to read page, along with a side by side comparison to your competition, analysis of your keywords, and a lot of other useful information.

DNS Scoop - This one is neat. It will look at your page rank, and back links and give you the monetary value of your site. It will suggest an amount to charge monthly for any ads you may sell on your site, as well as a total value. This is the theoretical value that you could sell the site for if you wanted to cash out. It is fun to watch this number going up as you increase your website ranking.

www.addfreestats.com - Here is another free invisible stat checker. I haven’t tried this one, but apparently (unlike statchecker.com) they monitor how your users exit your site.

www.feedburner.com - This is another way for you to offer your content to your readers. It will allow your users to subscribe to your content and have it delivered directly to them on a daily basis. Using this tool you will be able to see how many people are subscribed to your site, how many are reading your posts and which ones are the most popular.

That’s it for now. If you know of any other useful website analysis tools let us know about it.

Related Posts:

Well my dream has finally come true. Today (Friday June 1st, 07), I loaded up my stats page and found that our stats was reporting a (relatively) huge jump in traffic.

We are a fairly new website (about 2 months old) so we are just starting to build up our traffic. The highest amount of unique visitors we had before today was 53. Today when I loaded up my stat page, I saw that we had almost 400 unique visitors and it was only 3pm! As a stat checking addict, this was exciting to me on so many levels.

I immediately loaded the page that shows the referral URLs and saw that most of the referrals were coming from a site called stumbleupon, which seems to be a lot like Digg. The difference is that it’s a toolbar that you install into your browser and use to vote for any website that you like or dislike. The link was leading to Jason’s post Perfect gift for that geek girl you are stalking. Someone must have liked the post, voted for it…and away we went!

We also had a link placed on Blogging Away Debt, which ended up bringing a lot of traffic in. Thanks to Tricia for linking to the post How I paid my $20,000 student loan off in 2 years.

The good news for us is that although this jump in traffic may be short lived, we are actually starting to get somewhere with this thing. The bad part is that after today I will be even more hopelessly glued to my stats page, reloading until my finger falls asleep, ever more encouraged by knowing that each time I reload that page, the number will be just a little bit higher. It also means that I will not be satisfied until we beat our all time high of 711 unique visitors.

Our website grade is also doing pretty well since my first post on this subject. We have increase our grade from 58 to 66. That’s an 8 point difference in one week! Not bad!

Related Posts: