I was doing my regular visit of my blogs today, to check that everything was going well and received a very welcomed surprise.

Google had passed by and given my new blogs their first Page Ranks.

While StandOutBlogger continues to be a PR3 Blog, I received one new PR2 and two new PR1 blogs.

1. FranchiseBuzz.com.au (PR0-PR2)

   
   Launched in the middle of November, I have spent quite a lot of time working on this Franchise Business Opportunities blog. And While my posting has dropped off over the holidays, I am planning to jump straight back into things coming into the new year.

   The thing I am very excited about is that I also received a lot of internal PR2′s. In fact all of my individual posts, minus 4 of them are PR2. (You can check internal Page Ranks at: http://www.askmie.com/internal/) read this entry »

Looking back on 2009 I thought it would be a great idea to posts the most Tweeted articles on StandOutBlogger, as well as listing a few that should have been.

This is a great way to give a couple of posts a second wind, and a few that deserved it but missed out, a first wind. I am not to pleased with the amount of Retweets that my posts got, but considering I didn’t take full advantage of Twitter until later in the year, I will just strive to improve on these results in 2010.

Top 5 Tweeted Posts Of 2009

1. 30 Creative E-Book Covers (25 Tweets)
2. 6 Ways To Take Your Blog Up A Level (22 Tweets)
3. Twitter Backgrounds: Top 10 Bloggers (21 Tweets)
4. Using Alexa To Highly Target Your Blog Posts (14 Tweets)
5. Twitter Marketing: Branding With Unique Backgrounds (11 Tweets)

5 Under Rated Posts Of 2009

1. 5 Things More Important Than Blogging
2. The One Thing Stopping Your Blog From Succeeding
3. Turning Failure Into Success In 3 Easy Steps
4. How To Overcome Procrastination – Tomorrow
5. Unleashing Creativity In 5 Easy Steps

BONUS: Best Post Of 2008

10 Things Climbing A Mountain Taught Me About Goals

I hope these posts will keep you interested enough to to continue to follow me through 2010 – which is set to be a very exciting year!

First of all I must start with an apology. I just realised that it has been two weeks since I posts here at SOB and I am sure you guys are wondering if I even care anymore.

Well I do, and it has been nice to see my feed count continue to grow in my adsense, but everything has been crazy busy and I don’t see it slowing before Christmas.

1. I Am Doing 40 Hour Work Weeks At A Cabinet Making Business
   A family friend offered me a casual job up to Christmas at his business and for the last 5 weeks or so I have been working about 40 hours a week – on top of the work I was already doing. The money has been nice, but I am glad it is only for a season.
2. My Regular 3D House Design Work
   I work at my brothers Architectural Design company, and handle all the 3D house designs. We are trying to get a new product out for builders in the early new year as well as individual designs for clients.
3. Freelance Design Work
   I had the opportunity to design a series of t-shirts for a friends new clothing line (and she is looking for 2 more designs before Christmas), and I also recieved a website design contract from one of our clients at Archilads. Preview the website design here: Tin Can Bay Builder – still a work in progress.

read this entry »

Well I have had quite a busy week since my last post. As well as working full-time I have been working hard on FranchiseBuzz (My blog flip challenge blog) and got a few other things going on. I haven’t even had time to think about StandOutBlogger (sorry), so instead I decided to just give you a quick update on what I have been up too.

1. My Franchise Website Is Growing Quickly
   The blog flip challenge started a week ago, and my Australian franchise website is quickly gaining momentum. I am now already averaging 100 visits a day, with the last two days getting over 200.  I have made 8 posts in the last week. A little less that I wanted too, but still a good start. The @FranchiseBuzz Twitter account has over 550 followers and has been my major source of traffic (along with search engine traffic).

   I am currently working on a unqiue theme for the blog that will give it more of a ‘news’ feel -instead of looking like a blog. As well as optimizing adspace (for increase revenue). Speaking of revenue, I added adsense to the blog today (which I will have until I impliment the new design), and have already had 2 clicks and made $.50.

2. Selling A Blog And Domain
   My wife has made me promise that I will not buy a new domain until I sell some that I already own. This is why I have put one of my blogs up for sale at DigitalPoint.

   The blog is in the Christian Music niche and is making $10+ a month from adsense, and getting quite a bit of search engine traffic. It is currently at $70, and if you are interested or would just be kind enough to give it a nice little nudge back to the top of the thread you can view the listing here: IHeartWorship.com Sale Thread.

   As well as that I ahve the domain www.TwitterProfitCode.com for sale and it is currently at $5. Domain Sale Thread Here.

3. Doing Niche Research For A New Project
   I am also in the market for a new domain, which will definately be an Australian niche (as I have had much better success with localized blogs. I am still in the early stages of keyword research, but I think I have got a broad niche and will keep you updated when I decide to purchase a domain. This new project will focus on affiliate and adsense income, while Franchise Buzz will focus on private ad sales.

Well that is what has been happening for me over the last week. It is hard trying to juggle a 40hr/wk job plus freelance work and blogging, but I am sorry that I haven’t been more active on SOB. I think for the next couple of weeks I will be using SOB to keep you updated on my other blogging projects.

About a year ago I bought an amazing little piece of software called Micro Niche Finder that I use almost daily to find new niche blog and post topics that have a heap of searches but very little competition. I thought it was about time to show you the benefits of this powerful tool – and in doing so, give a few of you the chance to capitalise of a fantastic niche for a new blog!

Free Niche Analysis: CAKES

Now you may be thinking, “Why ‘Cakes’?” – Well “Why not?”

It is all about finding a niche and post titles that aren’t to overcrowded, where it doens’t take too much effort to get your posts onto the front page of Google. I have a habit of typing random words into Micro Niche Finder and it just so happens that ‘cakes’ could be a nice little money spinner if you created a WordPress blog and start writing articles for some of the key phrases I have found!

It’s All About ‘Longtail Key Phrases’!

Obviously keywords such as ‘cakes’ would have millions of pages of competition and companies would be paying $1,000′s to SEO companies to get first page listings, but these are not the keywords we are looking for. I mean, check out the competition!

There is no way that I would want to be competing against that many websites! So I head to the other end of the table and look at longtail terms that have little competition but a nice amount of traffic.

What I Look For!

Micro Niche Finder has some awesome ways to check how good a phrase will be to target for SEO. I have guidelines and limits for each of these to help me find the best phrases!

Search Count

This is what lets us know how popular a phrase is searched. For example you will notice above that ‘cakes’ is search 165,000 times a month on Google!
Now the chances of ranking in the top 10 for this term is near impossible, however the aim is to look for: read this entry »