Last month I started a monthly comment contests here below are the 1st months winners!

Thank you all for entering.  For those that didn’t enter or win now is you change to get a jump start on this month.  Remember all you need to do to enter so is any of the following things.

Comment, tweet, blog about this how hard is that!

January WINNERS!

Top Prize

Most comments                                    Extreme John 125×125 banner ad placement

Left at least 5 comments                    Icantinternet 125×125 banner ad placement
(drawing)                                               Ms Ileanes Blog 125×125 banner ad placement

Ideally I would pick a name from a hat for all the ones that left 5 comments since only 3 did this I will give everyone above the Prize.  I will send you a e-mail and you can once you reply I will post your 125×125 ad.

*** Bonus Prizes   ***

Link luv for the following at contest wrap up

(Most Tweeted) Tweet must include @jaredplittle for tracking

Not a lot of tweeting happened last month but I would like to thank Ben Lang and Ileane for some tweets.

See how easy this is,  thanks Ileane for the tweet!

(Any blog post about this contest)
Sadly enough know one blogged about my contest this month.  So I will have to up the stakes for this as I need you help with promoting.  Anyone writes a blog post about my contest or site will get an free blog review/promotion here the better the blog post the better quality the review.  A little blogger back scratching here if you know what I mean.

Please make sure to twitter @jaredplittle with a link to it or comment below.

Thanks everyone have a great day!

BlogEngage Invite only now!  Many of you know I am a huge supporter of Blog Engage.  If you haven’t joined Blog Engage by now a few things have changed.  No longer can you just join BlogEngage.  In order to become a member now  with this site you will need an invite.  The good news is existing members can provide you with an invite.  If you are interested in becoming a member of the best network and communities of bloggers please comment below and I can review your blog and sent you and invite.

Announcement from Brian Owner of BlogEngage

Blog Engage Closes Registrations and goes invitation only!

How to Invite Others

*** 1st you must be an existing member if you are then you have a simple 3 step process to follow details below.  The process is really simple nice work Brian.

Step 1 Log in to BlogEngage

Step 2 Click Invite Friends (Screen Shot Below)

Step 3 Add your e-mail and the person or persons you want to enter.

Is this a good move?

I would love to here you comments on this.  I personally think it is.  BlogEngage has grown tremendously in the last year.  Going invite only can is a technique that Google has used when it first launched G-Mail, Google Wave, Google Voice.   It worked for them it can create a buzz and demand for your product or service.  I been a member since July and I can tell you that I have made so many connections here.  I have found and connected with a lot of quality bloggers and made a bunch of blogger friends.

Every month I like to focus set some goals so I figure I better get some out in the public so I can hold myself to them.  1st February is a short month 28 days and were on day 3 already so this is going to be a ruff month to get a ton done but lets see what can happen.  So far I am still pump and January was my best month ever.

Last month I did a post about goals and I listed some of my goals for 2010.  Below I going to comment and see where I am at with them.

My post about goal for 2010

My Goals for 2010

- Be more consistent (doing better here)

- 20 blog post per month for 1st 2 months of the year (challenge)
In January I ended up with 16 which is the most ever for me.  I would have been very close but spend the last weekend in the hospital with my 5 year old.  This is a short month but I will try to hit this Goal as I really think and am starting to see that more content = more traffic

- Run Contests and Enter other Contest
Monthly Comment Contest – THE MONEY CULT
I kicked this contest off need to wrap it up for Jan and do a better job with it moving forward. I expected more but figure I failed cause I didn’t promote it enjoy or make my reader aware.  I will raise more awareness around this for this month.

- Guest Post
I wrote a few guest post on the blog engage Blog, I will look to do more here and elsewhere

- Reduce Alex Rank to 100k by year end
I haven’t started to focus on this yet but I am studying and watching what others blogs do that are in this club.  My Rank is dropping as a result of regular content, increased traffic and the Alexa bar on my page.  I will be doing a bunch of post on this as some point along with some Alexa chain reviews.  Currently 438,123, and 143,821 USA I havn’t been watching this to know the trend, One one rank is dropping 3 month is increasing.

- Exercise 15 minutes a day period!
Did ok with this but not seeing the result I want.  I joined the YMCA Sunday and will be attending 5:45 AM Boot Camp 3 times a week for one hour plus whatever else I can do to loose some weight and fell better about myself.  Lets just say I can’t feel my legs today after the 1st day.  I want to be able to take my shirt off in April when I come to Florida for vacation in 3 months. I sick of looking like crap in vacation pics.

- Create 3 products or services
I decided on my 1st product is going to be a fun e-book with the help of my kids.  I posted about it last week Top Secret Fun Kids Food Recipes I already have this started and will be finishing and launching it this month.  A lot of my focus will be on this for the month.  I really just want to launch a product end to end so I can learn from the whole experience and share it with others.

Below are some of the idea I was tossing around these are on hold for now.

xx –tee-shirt

xx –Membership site

xx – Workshops

xx – Small Business Website Setup and SEO consultation

- Build 5 Kick Ass Websites for others
I am doing a website for my brother in law for his Farm and Auto Repair shop.  The basic goals of this are to do a simple site and make sure it ranks for local traffic for relevant keywords.  He is sick of paying for yellow pages and wants to move online as it is a way better value.

- Learn to make graphics
I am getting a little better learning a few things will see if I can ever become efficient at this.  I will be doing the graphic’s for the Top Secret Kid Food E-Book so lets hope that doesn’t slow me down or look to cheap work case I have my kids do it in crayons since it is a kid book.

- Give out more link luv
I did better here I know I hooked Extreme John up a bit and some others.  Look for more of this.  Another reason to comment here.

-Affiliate marketing Plan for each month
Last month I started with my Dick Tracy Tuesday’s then switch to promoting David Risley Blog Master Club for the 2nd half the month once I caught wind he was opening his doors again.  I really like what David does  I will do a more detailed wrapup on both of these.  Both program resulting in a fair amount of clicks and I did end up making $197 so far with David program so I will take that to kick off the year with some sales.  This month I going to be doing some affiliate post about webhosting mine is up for renewal so I will review my options and post about it.

-Update side bars every month
So far I been good with this, I actually just pulled down a few more to rotate them for the month.

What about You?

Anybody else out their still looking at there goals or has the new year buzz worn off already.

Last day to buy for at least 6 months

This is the last day that you can buy David Risley Blog Master Club.  David will close the doors at 12:00am midnight tonight.  This is the 2nd launch of this product and the last time the doors were open it was 6 months ago so if you are interested and don’t buy today you will have to wait at least 6 months.

Reason Number 1 – Quality Teacher, Person and Blogger

David is a quality guy in this often scam filled make money online world.  He really knows his stuff and he always over delivers, he is a real guy, family man and six figure blogger.  He’s been doing this for a long time and not just in the make money online industry.

Reason Number 2 – Networking

If you haven’t figured this out yet networking is one of the key drivers to success for yo blog and business.  This is a great opportunity to network with other Blog Master Club members and David Risley as a student you will the ability to network and get closer to David and students.

Blog Masters Club is a comprehensive 16-module course, coaching program and club for aspiring probloggers. If you take a at David’s Sales Page you will get a full list of everything that David is offering.  Along with hours of A-Z training for your blog you get live coaching calls with David and classmates.  You get access to the Blog Master Club private forum.

I have read in a couple J-V e-mails from David around this launch and he is even more excited for this round.  He has stated that this time he has more time to spend with his students since it is his 2nd launch and all the material are publish and ready now.  Wouldn’t you like to be getting mentored and coached by one of the best problogger in the business right now?

Reason Number 3 – Value and Cost

Last year I spend about 200 dollars on various internet marketing/blogging products.  Most of what I bought was dated, and not very helpful.  The products I bought and only covered limited topics and often included a bunch of extra crap to keep you side tracked.  This class is current  and comprehensive written and delivered David.   Includes live coaching calls with David and now he is throwing in extra bonus just listed on his sale page which seems like it will be free access to his next product that he is not announcing yet.

The Blog Master Club is the best value on the market.  Many Internet marketers of David’s level offer products like this but charge way more between 1000-2000 dollars.  David costs is 97 per month for 6 months or buy the whole thing all at once for under 500 dollars.  David has stated that this price is too low in some of his e-mails.  It wouldn’t surprise me to see this price dramatically increase the next time David opens the doors.  David has done a great job off growing his brand and the value of his materials is going up and so will the cost of his programs.

Last Day to Buy

If you are interested in this hopefully your reading this before it is to late.  If you have any questions please go to the this link David will be streaming LIVE from his sales page most of the day.

If anything please take a few minutes to download some of the freebies that David offers along with this program.

Wow, January is almost over. Been a crazy week and month and the last 24-48 hours I spend in the hospital with one of my little ones but all is well now nothing like a little scare to me you think about what really maters.

I was hoping to to a better more detail wrap up as this has been a great month for me probably one of the best cause of a couple things that happened as a result of my actions and plan but I will have to get in to that in another past as I only have about 15 minutes to do this.

I been wanting to tryout this plugin for some time. Instant Weekly Roundup is the plug in. Extreme John likes to use this and I couldn’t remember the name I see that he re-posted the name today and replied to my tweet where I asked him about it.

Thanks John you Rock as always!

So here how this plug-in works I pick a date range and check my categories. The intent for this one is to figure out how this plugin works and wrap up the month. I just enter my header and footer and click a bunch of buttons and see what happens.

Once again I thank everyone and look forward to next month need to really sit down and think as I have bigger plans then time when I think about everything I need to do this month. I hope to figure that all out tonight. Good news is I stayed on track and actually made some money this month and almost hit my posting target of 20 posts.

Please make sure to comment Best Blogging Monthly Comment Contest as this month comment contest went ok but could be a lot better.  I did a poor job promoting it so I will work to tweak this as it goes.  Looks like John will be the winner unless someone takes some action tonight.  The 2 winner I will announce later you must have 5 comments to be considered for that.  Details in the post above to the contest.

Blog Maintenance

An often overlooked Blog maintenance or IT task that is often not addressed it backing up your website.  This is a simple task for any wordpress admin.  In less then 10 minutes you can set this up and start backing up wordpress automatically.

How to WordPress Backup

Step 1 Go to Install Plugins

Step 2 Search for backup

Step 3 You should see WP-DB-Backup # 1 return right now

Step 4 Click Install

Step 5 Activate

Once Activated you can configure in under Tools – Backup

Then just check the any extra tables and input e-mail address and how often you want it to backup.

You can also run a adhoc backups.  I would strongly suggest to backup before any major theme changes or upgrades.  I can’t tell you how many times backups have saved my ass in IT.  Backs are a must do activity.

Verify!!

Once do you will see regular e-mails that give you comfort that your backups are running.

Sample e-mails below all is well!

Do you have your backups configured?

If not you should really read this post and then go and download and configure this plug-in.  In less then 15 minutes you can be all set.  15 minutes of time to save you from losing months or years of work.

Here’s a link to the Plug-in website I thank Austin Matzko of ilfilosofo.com for making this great free plugin.  I hope this post isn’t too short but I wanted to K.I.S.S. so people would find it more useful.  If you like this please comment and tweet.  Remember I am running a comment contest this month and the month is almost over.

Look I am going to be flat out honest here I am sending you to a sales page.  I was checking out David Risley Sales Page for the Blog Master Club and he has a 7 minute video of him going though various weeks over the last 6 years showing his real income.   David’s been a 100k blogger for the last 6 years and here is his proof pretty cool.  Not some photoshoped commission check or pay pal screen shot.

If you a fan of income reports this is not one your going to want to miss.  Really shows you the power of a motivated individual and what can be done with a small web business.  You get to see him going through his quick books and if you look you can see each year how much he made broking down in to different segments  If this doesn’t motivate you to want to work harder then I don’t know what will.

To get to the sales page you need to click on this link and then in the top left click join.

Look for this video in the sales copy and watch it! Screen shot of income report video from sales David’s Sales Page below.

You don’t need to opt-in to view this but if you haven’t opt-in and downloaded .  David Free Six Figure Blogger Blue Print then you should.  This is the best free e-book I have every read and I have read hundreds of them.  This one I have read and listened too at least 5 times yes along with his download is an mp3 so you get both for free.  Lots of good advice and you catch something different each time I had 3-4 pages of notes with actions when I 1st read it.