Green Flamingobecause I said so: a blog of blogging tips, reviews, making money online, technology, and new things and ideas

It has been over a week since I have posted anything, or maybe just over a week since my site has been down.

I am not sure it is so much readership that I have suffered, though it did take some people many days to comment on how my site is down.

I am disappointed in the loss, hopefully it can be won again, for I do not want to let Green Flamingo die.

I think some of you might want to know what happened, so I think I can relay that in a quick manner.

What Happened

I think it was on a Sunday, in the afternoon and I was working on Green Flamingo. I wrote two posts, one published immediately and the second of the University Kid to be published the following day.

I then thought I would touch up the site a little bit, as long as I have the time, and you rarely have time for blogs on vacation. I went into the footer file, remembering some of the weird links that were there. I had heard Jason say people will get really pissed if you remove footer links, but nothing superbad will happen.

So I took my chances removing an ugly beer link and a webhosting link. Why should I have those?

Then the trouble started.

I hit “update” and I either got the message straight away or when I opened my site to see the new look.

“This theme is released under creative common’s license and all footer links must be kept intact.”

I was willing to agree with them, maybe they just go a little extreme over it, who knows? So I went back and tryed to edit the file. I was sad that I did not have the exact format for them, so I opened greenflamingodesigns’s copy of the file and sure enough it was there. I copied/pasted the code in, but it still did not work.

Days later the site itself was fixed, but I had to use a different theme. Of course, I was stupid enough to try the other theme again, then again, and even a third time. The other day Ben tried to help via IM, he downloaded a copy and I emailed him a copy of my footer. He tried to find the problems, and I did too, and finally he decided to give me his footer text. I copied that in, deleting my other text and not saving it. The theme was still broken, and so I had to delete the theme and get a new copy.

Before I could do that, my Internet was down for a day and a half, and it was down today being the reason I was not finishing this at 1:00.

I copied and pasted the theme files I edited like the stylesheet and sidebar into a word file to switch them with the new theme copy, but when I got to the header I found my part gone.

That was another place where I truly messed up, all the editing of the RSS buttons and email forms were messed up, plus ads and entrecard. I will probably recover soon, I am not sure if I can get the same images, or remember who was advertising. (If you were please tell me).

Anyway, my site is alive and hopefully I can get itr back to its previous staus. I hope you did not die hearing my long talk of problems, though sometimes a blogger must reveal his failures. And a tip for you: you might not want to remve that footer link, not matter how ugly!

As I have said a few times I love to review, and a while back I offered some free reviews, nobody took me up on the offer, Usually I do a review of some sort of product, technology, site, and it is all based on my opinion, and is not paid. Today’s review is not “paid” either, but it was won as a top commentator prize. I congratulate Rajaie, for being the top commentator on Green Flamingo in July and winning this review. I have gotten to know Rajaie well through Blog Premiere, his site, and his works.

More Traditional Review

Rajaie is a 14 year old entrepreneur, not much older than myself, owning a unique blog and by age is set apart from other bloggers. Though most sites belong to 16-20 year olds,  Rajaie displays his skills and professionalism through his blog Rajaie Talks, where he gives great blogging tips and very effective methods for improving your blog.

Rajaie Talks combines blogging tips with daily ramblings, having some fun experiments once in a while or a rant or two. I think it continually provides great blogging content that will really boost your blogging,  something that is common in the blogosphere but very important.

The stats of Rajaie Talks can be amazing, I have not looked deeply into them but I know he has 10,XXX inbound links according to Yahoo!. I am surprised how well Rajaie has raised his blog, he really seems to know a lot about blogging!

My Style Review

I think Rajaie Talks is a great site, is brings out the best of himself and the way of blogging. Rajaie’s blog is fun to hang around, maybe it does not have the most upbringing design but it has a very strong and supportive community, and I’m sure you will be able to find help there if you need it.

The site itself is clean cut, gentle, and has a cloudy but refreshing feel. When I first visited I was interested, because I have not seen a design quite like this one before.

When you first step in to talk to Rajaie and his friends, you are greeted by a nice logo, some flashy banner ads, subtle blue background, and best of all: useful and effective content. I like the content part, because to me there is not much special about the design, but with his writing you can really learn something.

I think Rajaie Talks is a site well worth visiting to learn and enjoy. Have fun!

I guess I am done with the review, I don’t know what else to add. If you have any tips for future reviews, let me know, when I do paid reviews I will consult with the client to see what they want in it.

See you tomorrow and good luck!

I am sure you have heard that you need to create a “user friendly” blog, so here we will expand on that idea. Of course, you do want to make your blog friendly to all visitors (excepting spammers) so that they will like the blog and come back. This will be part of a series here, and this is part one, the theme.

A theme distinguishes the look of a site, including colors, pictures, and layout can come with theme. If you look at my blog, the cover that you see is the theme, or if you are noticing how the design is constructed.

There are different types of themes, for different people and for different platforms.

• Probably the most common theme is the Wordpress theme. Since many, many, many blogs are using wordpress as a platform, then wordpress themes are all over. Now there are three main types of wordpress themes, which are:

Free themes - there are many free wordpress themes that you can find, and they really have a great look. The theme I am using is a free wordpress theme, but I have other plans for this blog and it’s theme. The only problem with the free themes are that there are so many out there, and so many good ones too, that it is hard t find the perfect one. I am not going to refer any free wordpress theme sites to you yet, because I think you should search on your own.

Premium themes - premium themes are made by very experienced theme designers. Premium themes cost you a bit, but they can be worth it. One thing notorious for premium themes is that they have a lot of features, meaning there will be places you can easily edit, such as banner ads, featured posts, RSS details, and many other things that can be much easier than going into your code and editing it.

Custom Themes - custom themes seem so great to me. Every blog that I come across with a custom theme really seems to have a nice feel. Custom themes are themes that you pay someone to make for you, it is custom for you, having whatever you need with it, and also is used for only you. It will not be sold to anyone else.

Now we move on to the second kind or type of theme, and these are Blogger Themes. These themes are for people joining Blogger, where it is yourdomain@blogspot.com. There can be some great blogger themes, but I see nothing special about them, maybe the reason being I am not a Blogger user.

Our last type of theme introduced is the plain html template, or CSS or xhtml, but basically it is just code making this template. I have started a site using just code, but that was a practice of Green Flamingo Designs and I have decided not to mess with code so much anymore, it just cannot do the same things as Green Flamingo › Edit — WordPressthe themes can. I do not recommend this type, for it is hard to deal with and a bit of a pain.

Choosing and creating your design

You should always combine certain aspects of a basic theme design into what your site looks like. Those will be introduced here, as well as some guidance on choosing or creating a theme.

• Creative
• Semi unique (not a hugely common theme)
• unique graphics
• friendly graphics
• accessible and usable
• not overwhelming or scrambled
• black on white text, not white on black

Creative - be yourself, be creative. Make the look something that is you.

Semi unique - if you have a free theme, choose one that is not too common, you do not want to be the same as everyone else! Same thing applies to the premium themes, so you might want to move on from the John Chow or Cow “Milk It” theme.

Unique Graphics - you want to have unique graphics, so you should probably get your own header, logo, maybe even RSS button.

Friendly Graphics - you want to keep your graphics friendly, mostly to the eyes, but in general as well. You want to have everything neat and friendly, with fun but professional graphics.

Accessible and usable - we want your visitors to be able to use the theme functions, so make sure they can do that!

Not overwhelming - you want to keep it short and sweet. Do not load up and graphics and pics, ads, or anything else disturbing to the eyes. If if hurts you to look at your blog, it’ll kill others.

Black on white text - I think you should keep it so that your text is black and background white. I have heard complaints from the white text/dark background thing. It does not have to stay completely black and white, you can add some variation, just have dark text on light background.

This was day 1 of the tips! Expect to see more tomorrow! I will be updating all of this, and I may put much of this into separate posts. We do not want too much in one post! I am not sure exactly how I will balance out all the information, I think I will just turn it into a long series of post, each one being about half this length. If you like it all in one, then let me know.

I think that this was a great post and would be very grateful if you submitted this to any sites. Thank you!

If you have been blog traveling lately you will have heard of the Google Pagerank update.

Google Pagerank or PR is measuring the authority of your site, like your technorati rank. How it works is Google counts how many backlinks you have to your site, and from there it gives you a rank from 1-10. It is rare to see a high PR site like PR8 or higher. Most sites are between 0 and 5 for pagerank.

So to increase your pagerank then you have to collect backlinks. It depends how high the PR is on the sites that you get links from. You can search for charts, or use this one, to see how many links of what PR to get to a certain rank.

The PR of Green Flamingo actually went down. I am very disappointed in this, but it is how it is. I used to be PR3, but now I am PR2. In between now and the next PR update I will try to increase the rank, hopefully to 4.

What is funny is that when I had PR3 I got that without even trying. In fact I think I received PR3 when I first looked into making money online. In Internet time this was years ago, but really around January. After I found out what PR was I was surprised at the number.

Now when I have been trying to increase my pagerank, for it can help increase sales or even boost the look of your blog. I am disappointed that is went down, but it is the way it is. For all of you that had a backlink on my site, some of your PR increase will be because of this backlink.

I think I mostly got my pagerank from tech-buzz.net and lionandmagicboy.com. On tech-buzz I no longer have my top commentator spot, and the PR5 or six that it was moved down. Fortunately it’ll be back up and my top commentator spot will be reclaimed in August. Lionandmagicboy will soon close down, but I have other sources for links.

I heard from Jason at theuniversitykid.com that it is not very good to have out going links, so this is one of the reasons I am not linking to some of the sites I mention, though it really does no harm. so I have a little announcement.

The links and banners that I was giving out at the beginning of July (I think it continued to the 5th or 6th though) I will be taking down in the next few days. This would come no matter what, my intention was to keep them up for a month. This is very close to a month, and since most were practically free, they are going to come down now. I am going to begin banner advertising, so if you received a good experience from having your banner up then contact me. My advertise page will be up soon, so if you are new here then you should read that. The links I will keep up until a few of the banners go down, and eventually the links will come down, though not right away. Really nothing will come down right away, but be prepared is all I’m saying. I do have a new category of links, these are the sites I read and love, so a lot of my blogroll if I read those blogs will be transferred. I am also going to add one or two more, some of the ones I read and comment on often.

Back to the PR update, and your status. I want to know what the PR update has brought you! We just want to know how your pagerank has changed, good or bad.

There are many methods that people use to write, many methods they use to concentrate on writing, many things to persuade or even force them to write. As I have said before, forcing yourself to write is not a good thing, and I think that is you make yourself write then the writing will not have the love in it that your more natural writing has. Even if you are writing an article or promotional blurb for a company or business, you can still write that in a natural way.

This post is another of my endless series on writing tips, for I want you to become the best writer you can be. I cannot bring out everything for you, to find your real soul in writing you must discover that flame on your own. I have moved away from anything personal, though I am dying to talk of my troubles I have had lately online, for I am afraid when  have a traffic rush one of my worst posts will be up. So here I present to you some methods to concentrate on your writing, getting it done on time while still enjoying life.

Have what you want in mind - you should have an idea of what you want to write, usually before I step up to the plate I have a few paragraphs in my head - which sadly are forgotten by the time I can write. This is why I should carry a notepad in my ear, pants, shirt, etc. Basically you should have a topic, maybe a starting sentence, maybe a little map of what you are going to write in your head. This cannot always be done, I know I hate what teachers call “writing mapping” or the “web planning.” Don’t do that or it’ll kill me, but have an idea.

Get comfortable - make sure you are fairly comfortable with where you are, having a soft seat and good posture. You don’t want to be sitting on a stone bench, forar to me, that is not all that comfortable. I could spend a few hundred dollars on a nice soft, squishy, leather chair but I guess I will stick with what I have.

Don’t slouch - when I said get comfortable I did not mean you should slouch. This has two meanings: (1.) sit up straight in a healthy position (2.) Do not get too comfortable such as lying in bed or in a chair/couch where you are not in a good position to type or write with mind.

Stay professional - You want to keep your job by writing a good advertising article write? Then stay professional. For blogging you should be as you are at work - having ok clothes and keeping fresh. Unless you are writing about the “adult jammy party extravaganza” I suggest you stay out of sleep wear and other unprofessional clothing while you write (unless you are known as “the nude blogger” of course). We want to keep the articles professional with the air of knowledge around.

Use willpower - sometimes you have to be strong enough inside to stop yourself from wondering off on the internet, but it can be very difficult. Try it out for a bit and see if you are any good. If you want to make it more fun reward yourself from keeping away from your inbox or facebook. Choose either small or big rewards!

Deprive yourself - when willpower isn’t enough to keep you away from your gmail inbox or myspace, you will have to start depriving yourself of these dreaded time vacuums. I do not usually do this, but I suffer the consequences from not disconnecting. A lot say to disconnect from the internet all together, which I guess if the best plan. You also have to worry about offline games, things off the computer and so on. Just deprive yourself of the right amount so you can post what you need.

I hope these tips have helped you concentrate on your writing! Happy blogging!

There are many things that one blogger looks for in another blogger. If you want to become someone great and looked up to online, you have to have things typical of a blogger, so others can recognize you know what your doing. You also have to have things unique to you, for if you look like every other blogger they see the visitors will feel no need to stay or help you.

We will mainly focus on a blogger’s content, though the design is very important, and one of the first things measured to judge you. If you want to enter a big $ cracking deal, you will have to mainly focus on your content for someone to notice you and get a big opportunity.

Again, unique - I will say it again, but you must have something unique to present to your readers. Maybe if you write in a certain style that really appeals, or you have some tips that are hard to find anywhere else. You could offer a service as well, and even if you can get that service elsewhere, try to add something to it that is just you.

Post often, keep your readers excited - if looking for a joint venture with one of your readers, you will have to show that person you can produce rock hard content. You must break through the glass not only once, but once every post. Get on Digg’s frontpage as often as you can.

Spoon feed them - deal out your best content to everyone, from newbies to experienced webmasters. Really what you should do is turn those newbies into people making $200 a day, as you should be yourself. So spoon feed those newbies so they know what they’re doing, and try not to set any traps. If there are areas that might be hard to navigate, be sure to encourage questions that you will answer.

Something special - this may be similar to having unique content, but at the same time different. Offer something special to the reader, not special to you. It may tie with a unique service, but you have to make your readers feel special to keep coming back.

Rock hard - one of the most important things in your content is to make sure it is solid and won’t break through. This is another that ties together with the others, but it requires you to have pure ideas and a strong mind. Even if you were born thinking crap, you can train yourself to produce the rock hard read all the way.

Don’t be shy - don’t be afraid to tell your readers a bit about yourself, offer a deal, or let them in on secrets to blogging. These might be some of the things that make you unique, so keep at it and stand out. Get out on the stage and rock the house down!

Don’t overdo it - though you don’t want to be shy, you shouldn’t overdo it either. If you go too far, nobody will follow along your lines. I am sure you can discern the right amount of what you do.

Well, those are the tips I have for you today. I would really appreciate if you took time to Stumble or Digg this post, as I think it is very good. We will continue with the theme look later.

In this post, I bring 3 aspects of guest posting, a few of whicg may be a surprise, so read on!

If you have been in the blogosphere for more than a month you’ve heard of guest posting and learned that it is very beneficial to a blogger, to the blogger receiving the guest post and the one guest posting. If you have not heard something like this than you have been completely been isolated - for example you have been living under a rock - or you just don’t pay attention to what you read.

Guest posting is a great way to gain exposure and a good experience to see how it feels writing for another blog. Hopefully you will get positive comments on that post, and because it is yours then are entitled to respond to everyone with little tidbits of your own about the post.

Sometimes you have to work up the courage to guest post, to ask the person if you can, and if you are afraid that they will not approve you to guest post. Maybe you are all worked up that your content for the post is not perfect, which it never can be. All you have to do is follow your soul in the path to words, and if completed successfully the words will flow from your fingers. This is how I post successfully. If I do not relax myself and let the words type themselves, then I write a shitty post that gets nowhere. If you are afraid of the quality of the content, you should not be trying to reach success.

You may think that commenting is as good as guest posting, for you don’t have to write a whole post, but there is more to the side of guest posting. With guest posting the readers of the blog you are posting on get a sample of your content, they get to see who you are and if they like it they will follow to your blog, read more, and even subscribe. In the post you should write a little in italics introducing you and your blog, and you could even add your RSS address at the end of beginning of your killer post.

Adding another benefit of guest posting, you will get a link. That one link can be used for many things, such as basic exposure, technorati, pagerank, and even more. Since Technorati is becoming an authority to bloggers, and many judge you based on your technorati rank, it is good to have. Though many say PR is b.s, I think they may say that because of low or no PR. I myself have PR3, how I got that I am not sure of, I think lionandmagicboy.com and tech-buzz.net contributed a lot. For all I know, I could be selling these PR3 links for $15 a piece, but if you ask I will most likely give it away for free.

So if you want a new experience and a but of the ol’ exposure, I advise a guest post for you.

Before we move on to the other 2 parts, I will sum up the benefits of guest posting for you.

• exposure
• new experience
• giving a new audience a sample of your content
• technorati +
• PR +
• $$ +

So now I can move on to my second part. I am hoping to guest post on many blogs in the next few weeks, or in the end of July.

I have already established getting ready to post on ItMightBeLove, where I will be able to express myself through channeling and write with the other side of myself without creating a whole new site and trying to maintain that. Posting on IMBL is not much for exposure, for it is not in my niche, it is mainly for expression.

Thilak at tech-buzz.net recently had a nast bike crash, though he wasn’t in the Tour De France. I am hoping to do a little post there on his fairly established technology blog.

I am also trying to target the big guys this month, and that is where the killer but easy content has to come in via waves. I am not sure how high I can get, but I will finish the post and then try from the top of the blogosphere down.

I may have a few more, and I’d be happy to post on your blog,  but I think those are the only ones for now on my main list.

My third part I want to mention is that I am looking for guest posters. I want to see what it feels like having the blog that is posted on, so I would appreciate if you would contact me to do this.

Though I said I was trying to take a break from blogging, I might still do that but I just want to blog to blog. This post is natural and not forced from the depths of my brain. I was happy to write this, and maybe that is because I was motivated and I was not in a rush to finish it before midnight.

So again, I am looking for guest posters and I would feel honored if someone would want to post here for me.

Here we are with another late post. I hate starting the post at 11:30 because I never get it done the way I want it. This time I watched a movie, then experience problems with Green Flamingo Designs because somehow it was taken over by Google hosting. I am like “Wtf man, why can’t we go problem free for a day?” Anyway, I am going to share my opinions on how I think you should link to someone and for what purpose.

I have seen lots of weird ways that people link to each other, and patterns, sometimes irrational, but patterns that people go through on the decision to link to another. Many people are different about how they configure the process, but there is something shared in common: a reward.

Money - many people sell their links, maybe not for money but they do trade the links in some way. These people usually never think about linking to some of their favorite sites of their own accord, though they may advertise the paid links with a branding of “sites I like” or a variation on that. These people categorized as the ones looking at the path to wealth and fame, and are not in it with the others. This does not mean that people that sell their links are bad or greedy, in fact I visit quite a few sites that do this. I think that these people are smart, and others look up to them and know what they expect.

PageRank - some people link to others hoping they might get a link back, and those people are usually looking for PR, though they could be wishing more popularity and trying to improve the visitor level. This method is not 100% certain of desired results, as I have seen. There may also be a reason to put or not to put links up for free, I think it has something to do with a Google ranking system and they do not want to upset Google for fear of a bad ranking.

Kindness - there are few people that put links up of pure kindness, but it does happen, usually on a smaller blog, linking to family and friends. You may think this does not fall into the all time category of getting a reward, but the reward in this case is maybe a “thank you” from the friend of family member that makes them feel special inside. A person might link to their favorite site of their own accord as well, though it would usually of someone they knew.

Feeling Important - there are a few of these, usually young entrepreneurs who go out asking if anyone wants a free link on their site. This may be to fit in with others that sell or trade links, and they might be stopped from selling due to lack of a payment method or trade system. They might be really nice too, and just want to please people  by offering a service that doesn’t cost ‘em a cent.

These are my impressions on what the linking incentive is, though this could be false and not be a true categorization, but I think it is, for how could my writing be wrong? If I go around seeing this with my own eyes and I have the words flow through my fingers, I think it is correct!

To bring you a better understanding of these categories and myself, I will categorize myself on these and see what you think. I have linked to people for all of these incentives, but lets’s take last week’s linking and see why I did those first few banner ads.

Feeling Important : I gave those away for I wanted to be like other people I saw, and it was right before I got my paypal account and I thought I might as well. I am glad I gave those links, though the latter ones went on a “you subscribe I link” basis. I think that it was quite successful, but it was hard to bring myself to charge people for it, like all the others were doing. I guess I just need to stay in my lane to fame, and not stop by at any restrooms for a while.

I’d love it if you’d share your categorization, I am eager to see where other people see themselves!

This post goes with my last post of website flipping, and ties together how I am entering website flipping and other things related. In the last post I apologize for the lack of information, maybe that is why it got no comments yet. I described how website flipping can be a benefit to you, what it is and here I am telling how to use it and how I use it. As said before, website flipping is done to create a fairly easy source of income, that is if you are good at raising websites. What will happen is you build a website and then sell it, and the process repeats itself on and on. Here are some tips to help you with website flipping, or really, raising a website.

Raising traffic

Raising traffic is very important for all the aspects of a website. Comments, ranks, revenue, RSS subscribers all depend on the traffic. If there is no traffic to your site, it is dead.

• Read and comment on other blogger’s sites
• advertise
• forum post
• create email lists (you have to know what to do with them though)
• offline promotion
• social sites

Raising Subscribers

Raising subscribers is also very important for raising a successful blog and selling it. Many sites are judged by the amount of subscribers attained.

• Incentives to subscribe, such as free treats for subscribing (is there anyone I know who doesn’t do this?)
• Big RSS button and email form
• RSS and email option at the end of a post

Raising Revenue

What is gained off a blog is also very important, especially in buying and selling.

• Join affiliate programs
• Run private ad sales
• sell products and services

These are the tips to help you be successful in website flipping, buying and selling. Happy blogging!

As I said I would also tell how I use and will use website flipping. I am planning to start one more “temporarily permanent” site, and then I will start flipping websites, one of the first ones to be a cooking one followed by an MMO or another blogging tips website. What I am worried about is trying to run 4 websites at a time, Green Flamingo, Green Flamingo Designs, my mystery website(I know what it will be), and the one to be flipped or sold. I will have to get used to managing all those, and I know I will call upon help. Once I get a “blog” page for my blog posts on Green Flamingo Designs, I will begin hiring writers at a low cost so I am not so caught up in fishing for content. For the new site I will have a little help with as well, from a friend of mine who is thought to be dead by most. That friend will be an admin too, and will have a few stories for you when I am not around.

Those are my plans for website flipping and updates, soon I will reveal the mystery website and behind the scenes peeks at it! I want it to be a hit in one week, which is why I have to start up some content and plans before I lauch it, I don’t know how people get settled with all their pages and what not in a day. If everyone tells me they would like to hear about this mystery site, I wil reveal it sooner with further looks, maybe even tomorrow. I do not want to bore people, but it they want to hear about it I will be more than happy to share!

I have heard the term “website flipping” a lot, and perhaps you have as well. This idea of a post, talking about website flipping in an interesting way popped in my mind while in a conversation with my mom after being gone at a 10 day all day meditation. As I have heard it, there are many advantages to website flipping.

Let us discuss the benefits of website flipping in this post, so that you can see what it is about, and soon I will reveal my plans regarding website flipping.

Website flipping is when you build websites to making “so much” money, or having “so many” RSS subscribers, and that sort of thing. Basically it is raising websites and selling them, as you may do with farm animals. Many people make quite a profit at website flipping, for they only have to care for a website for so long. My problem with website flipping is that it is hard to imagine selling a website, it is almost like killing an animal you have raised from birth. It is not hard to part with that site, for the site was a piece of you, showing the world who you are. Plus there are other ups and downs of flipping websites, but those are the basics.

-you pay for hosting and domain every time-

-you have to part with the site-

-you have to “shift the niche” depending on what site is it-

-you make fairly easy money for a few months of hard work-

-you have the joy of knowing you have accomplished something-

There I mixed a few pros and cons together, but no matter, for I am fairly confident you can tell them apart. Besides those mentioned, many more ups and downs surround website flipping. Personally I think you should give it a go. I have to go now, I know I didn’t provide very useful information, but keep in mind I will be coming out with the rest tomorrow!