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Million Dollar Blog Project!!

I have recently agreed myself and other bloggers to collaborate with ThinkTraffic to create a $1,000,000 blog. I am passionately following the project and willing to give up my best to perform myself while creating unique master piece that anyone can benefit out of it in future dates. I’ve been reading many successful blogger’s story so far and determined to create my own legacy.

It might sound bit crazy but I am confident that it is possible to build. If you have been following $1MBP, there are two goals to be reached.

1. Creating Million Dollar collectively in 2 years,
2. Creating my own Million Dollar Blog over its life time.

The first goal should be relatively easy to hit the target compare to the second one, as there will be many bloggers working that way. But I am committed and willing to give my best effort to contribute to the revenue figure for this project. I believe this will be the path to create my own million dollar blog over its life time.

Decision Making

“If I cannot do it, I cannot do it” I cannot just stare at blogs thinking I might’ve or haven’t succeeded this million dollar blog game before even actually trying it. Putting full efforts to make it happen is far too away. Here I mean it and really mean it for you. If you haven’t started yet blogging, you should start today, just think about it. Like I have made my decision and went open about it.

If you have already started a blog you might find this $1MBP series very handy for references. One of the reasons behind this million dollar blog project is to record the important stages, keeping in mind of people who will be in a position, where I am today. I aim to publish all these important steps and stages to catch up where I am today. You could always get updates as I progress.

 Where am I today?

Today is September 14 2011 and I am at my home. Not Kidding.:)

I am not that far if you’re reading this post recent to that date, but if in after long time I have already promised to let you know, and you should catch up.

Today I am going to tell you what exact stage I am at. I have already told you I am not a pro-blogger in my announced post, but I am a better blogger today. Life is a learning curve and I wish to develop every day. And I have chosen to learn and understand blogging more in-depth.

I am Tourism and Hospitality Graduate, a Restaurant and Bar Manager in London by profession but I have left that job as I had to travel for long time and couldn’t get a long leave. I always wanted to create my own website have an independence and freedom to learn and explore my life more in my way. I have some other projects coming up as my developers are working on it, I will revel that in coming days. However, I am looking to do some part-time work as till date I am not living out of online income:(. It is frustrating at some points of early days like this, but I have confidence on me because I have learned a lot over the period and knowledge is the queen:). I can utilize it now.

But hey, Couple of days ago I received a mail from PayPal, my very first $50 affiliate commission. I was over the moon and did twit about it. I found out the commission was from my hosting company, I was kind of surprised, I analysed my sales deeper and found out that someone had clicked my link 3 months ago in my Facebook Page probably that person bought the product recently. This is a clear example that happened to me very recently, I know it is not a big amount but kind of interesting in many ways. That sale has given me much more confidence, which any start-up bloggers will desperately need in early days like this.

That’s about today. That means I had done something yesterday. To tell you fact, I haven’t done much in terms of blogging itself. As I told you I am a Tourism Graduate, I had absolutely no idea on coding, CSS or more in so a basic WP set-up. I have been heavily investing my time and done so many researches independently. Many were just time consuming but few really informative and will make me keep going for a long time.

If you are in a stage where you think you do not know coding and stuffs, you should not worry; at the same time you should not just waste your time hanging around. I used to spend loads of hours just to find out how to use basic CSS and HTML. I found this site called W3school where I learned so much of stuffs that have been a real help in my early days and still visit often.

I do not want you do the same mistakes that I had done, or will make during or after this series. I will do my best to inform you step-by-step as I go along with this huge project that I have destined.

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How I bought this domain name: What I have learned?

If you are in a stage of buying a domain name for the first time, it could easily be overwhelmingly exciting. Even if I enlighten you to calm down, you won’t listen to me if you are person like me. I had learned few things here and there about buying domain name and using keywords in it for optimal performance. You could find those resources everywhere again some information are useful and many are there just for basic contents. {This post is not about how to choose domain name}

As I am really interested in tech, trends and media I wanted to create a blog on my own. I went to GoDaddy, tried www.techtrends.com it was not available. I tried www.mediatrends.com it was not available too. I searched www.toptrends.com not available as well, I searched then was www.TechTopTrends.com it was available, also mediatoptrends. That’s the point when I got really excited. I went much deeper and deeper, when I found domain that interested me, kind of.

I had done keyword research on my initial “tech” “trends” and “media” I was happy with the search volume in Google. I went back and did research on “TopTrends” then it started the whole new dimension and anxiety, which I think many new domain registrants, carries.

I went back to GoDaddy and used its bulk registration service and ended up buying whopping 12 domain names all with ending “TopTrends”. Thinking to create a Super Branded Blog. I haven’t spent time developing at all not even monetized those site with parking and stuffs, that’s just mine to say:) To let you know I bought:-

1. www.TechTopTrends.com
2. www.GoogleTopTrends.com
3. www.AppleTopTrends.com
4. www.SEOTopTrends.com
5. www.iPhoneTopTrends.com
6. www.AndroidTopTrends.com
7. www.iPadTopTrends.com
8. www.GadgetsTopTrends.com
9. www.MediaTopTrends.com
10. www.DesignTopTrends.com
11. www.StartUpsTopTrends.com
12. www.BloggingTopTrends.com

What I have learned?

I do not have any regrets or anything what so ever but I have learned that, I didn’t had planning and strategy on place for my entire domains. I initially wanted to buy just one domain, and I was easily carried away. I had interest on blogging but hadn’t analysed my personal situation, if I was technically and financially ready for the TopTrends project that I had in my mind initially before buying all those domains.

But I have learned today, if I hadn’t taken that small step to buy those domains, I wouldn’t have gained this information and knowledge what I have today. There’s nothing to lose now, there’s just opportunity to create, develop, or sale.

My advice to newbie would be to do a research, plan and understand basics about the topic you want to blog about before buying a domain. It is fairly easy to get a domain name and won’t cost you much, if not planned it could just be waste of your time and bit of money.

 But I have chosen the right hosting

I do not have any complaint at all getting my Baby Hosting package form Hostgator with the code[HostGatorHQ] which gave me [still gives] 25% discount. I paid only £… for this package. Hostgator has so much support and information out there which are designed especially for bloggers.

This hosting package gives me unlimited domain names to host without any major terms and limits. If you are planning to get one I recommend Hostgator strongly. Don’t forget to use the code that will save you some bucks on checkoutJ. Also I think baby hosting package is the best one as it encases you to host another blog.

Have I Chosen the right theme?

I have multiple thoughts on my premium theme that I am using. To tell you the fact, this theme could easily be tweaked to appear like Mashable, and that’s the type of super-blog I originally wanted to create. You can check the demo of my theme here.

I am happy with it as there are so many resources in the support forum which helped me understand more about designing and tweaking themes.

If you are planning to create a blog, I would recommend only investing on domain (one) and baby hosting package. There are plenty of free themes available for wordpress which you can tweak or twist to your taste.

In terms of blogging platform, I have only used, blogger.com, wordpress.com, wordpress.org and little bit of Joomla. Personally I find wordpress.ORG much easy and helpful open-source community. I have been trying many plugins and other stuffs in wordpress, which I will publish it in future dates what exactly I’ll be using to run my $1MBP stay tuned for that.

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The Million Dollar Blog Project: Fulfilling Requirements

If you would like to follow the $1MBP you will need to full fill simple requirements. The requirements are set to help track the progress of the overall project; however these steps are basic necessity for any bloggers willing to take the blogging to the next level.

I have almost everything set-up and ready to go rock now. I’ve been eagerly waiting for $1MBP’s nominated topic where we had to nominate 5 topics out of 80+, I had nominated:-

1. Eco-Tourism
2. Blog & Website Design for Non Designers (How to make your blog look incredible without spending a fortune)
3. 30-day Expert Blog: Chose one topic for a month and learn how to be the best at it.
4. Become an Expert Slowly (a site devoted to those people who take on worthwhile goals, huge goals, where they face years of failure between them and achieving mastery, skill, or success.)
5. The best “places” around the world & do they live up to the hype? 

ThinkTraffic announced the topic and is going to be Blog/Website design in a broad level, but still curious what Corbett and Caleb will come up for their project. But, in my case I have to decide what topic and domain I will be using, keeping in mind that bloggers could choose their own topic if they do not want to use the nominated topic as long as the requirements are fulfilled. I’ll let you know soon on that.

Long story short, the requirements are:-

1) Your site needs to be a blog, and need to allow comments:-  Well I do not have much to say on this. I love comments and please feel free to do so; I’ll reply back to all of your comments and notes. Where ever you want this blog, facebook, twitter or email me.

2) You may start a new blog OR use an existing blog for the project: It will really depend on my topic what domain name I’ll be using to challenge $1MPB. You’ll know it soon.

3) You have to install Clicky analytics on your blog and Google Feedburner (both free services).

This blog is set. I’ll have to do the same if I use different domain.

Feedburner:-FeedBurner is a free service by Google to burn the RSS feeds. All major blogs use this service and of course you do not want to miss out. Feed-burner tracks the statistics of how many people subscribes. FeedBurner is pretty straight to set-up just head to www.feedburner.com all you’ll need is a Google account to claim your feed for your blog. If you have confusion here is essential feedburner answers.

Clicky:- Without a doubt Clicky analytics is awesome. You can really see where your visitors are coming from in a real-time. In a long run, to achieve $1,000,000 you’d need to know where your sales are coming from, if you do not know you’d be flying blind.

I particularly find it powerful tool because it could analyze all the traffic and breaks down geographic views, time spent on page, conversion, bounce rates and much more. It is user friendly and Clicky comes free for an account. What can you expect more?

4) You have to keep an accountability journal to document your progress.

According to Think Traffic’s requirement, there should be a journal for $1MBP. And journal can be kept anywhere online, as long as it is public.

I have decided to use this blog to include the journal for $1MPB. Here you will find all my updates for the project. I’ll be using this site to publish other resources apart $1MBP so you could expect more here.

5) You have to tell us a few details about your blog.

I’ll be submitting my details as soon as the registration opens.

These will be filled:

• Blog name:                 _______________
• URL:                             _______________
• Author name:           Kalyan Shrestha
• Monthly visitors:    _______________    
• Subscribers:              _______________
• Total Revenue:         _______________      
• Progress log link:     _______________

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Do you think I will achieve success?

Success might mean but is not limited to a level of social status, achievement of an objective/goal or the opposite of failure.- Wiki

Success for this project, I would limit it to the target that is been set to achieve for$1MBP. There’s no set rules on what techniques could be applied in terms of blogging and I know there are plenty of ways to go forward. Choosing the right topic would be something I will be planning for couple of days from now. I’ll be using all those techniques that I have learned over the period.

I always used to enjoy reading sales and marketing back in school, and I know I am good at it. I’ve developed marketing plans for restaurants and tourism field but I am really looking to develop, design and implement on my blog project ($1MBP).

I have already mentioned, one thing I didn’t do before for my domains was creating a strategy. I am actively working on to create a strategy that will help me lead to the whole process. I am putting things together from scratch, definitely it is challenging task but I am determined to create a freedom out of it. I am putting the resources together, better say recording my steps. I usually have unique approach and fresh ideas. I love to work on Microsoft Words, Excel and Notebook. I’ll be sharing these on email because it will deserve some interest; otherwise it is going to bore you more here.

Content is the King: - A famous and important phrase, all blogger should embrace and I have truly understood the power of it. I’ll definitely strive to create unique articles, never though I have ever actively participate myself into blogging so much. You should know by now I like to learn and develop at every opportunity. I shall write better content next. I have few interesting articles lined up. Please do subscribe to my RSS or get instant Email updates. Please do let me know how you find this post below on comments.

I’d also love to hear from you,how’s things are on your side. The topic for the project seems to have been of a major debate what’s your point? I think there is still a space to choose our own topic and make use of the community that is going to introduce me to you or vice verse?

Let’s get the ball rolling.

Thank You

Kalyan

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