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In the previous post about the 1st quarter, you could read what I had done to get the blog started for earning money.

In today’s post you’ll find out how this blog was actually starting to make money.
From the start in early July 2007, till October I managed to be real consistent regarding the frequency of posting.  For a starter blog content is absolutely king. So post, post and post good content as many as you actually can.
But in October 2007 due to circumstances I wasn’t able to blog as often as before, but I did manage to post a few interesting posts that month. One of them was the post where I made my remarks about the BlogRush hype that was going on that time. Everyone was talking and blogging about it. It looked like this was going to be the widget for your blog to get the traffic everyone wanted. Just post on your blog and really think about the title you’re going to use for this post, as this title will be displayed on the BlogRush widgets on other similar blogs.
But I felt they’ve started to soon because of the early problems they’ve got with serving all the widgets etc…

One of the circumstances that kept me from blogging was the work in my garden that had to be done. When we build our house we quickly flattened all the ground to grow some grass. But after a few years we did regret the quick decision we made earlier, so I rearranged the garden. This time I took all the time of the world to do it and when it was finally done we could wait and see the grass grow. If I look at the garden now almost 9 months later, me and my little daughter are very happy with the result.

Early October was also the time my blog got accepted by BlogtoProfit, so I could start to make real money on a regular base.  They send you a list of links with a specific anchor text and you’ll have to create a post about it.  After fulfilling their request two times, I stopped to use their service, as they don’t take into account the type of posts you would like to blog about.  But at least I made $50.

At the end of October, I became best friends with Google, with their new update, they awarded my blog with a PageRank 2. I know that this isn’t a measurement of how god your blog is and stuff like that, but on the other hand a good PageRank can help you earning more money. This will be proven a couple of weeks later when PayPerPost accepted me in their community.

November 2007 was almost completely dedicated to the search of my new hearth rate watch.
After reading a comparison of different watches in Runners World I started looking for the Garmin ForeRunner 305 that came out as the best, on the Internet.  Because the Euro was very strong against the Dollar, it was obvious that I started looking on sites in the Stated for buying one.
I found myself a really good E-Bay seller that I can certainly recommend to others if they like.
A couple of days later the postman delivered it and I was very anxious to test out my new Garmin Forerunner 305.  If anybody still has doubts about buying one, don’t, you’ll never run without it anymore. It’s very addictive.

The traffic hit of November I’ve got from my post about Lewis Hamilton’s appearance in Top Gear.
After posting, this blog was with one of the first sites in the world to blog about it. Because of this Google had already indexed my post by the time the Top Gear episode aired and people started searching Google on the keywords: “Lewis Hamilton Top Gear”. Guess who came out on the 4th place, just behind 2 pages of Top Gear and a link from the BBC.
A perfect example about how to rank high in Google.

Another traffic hit was the post about the iWebtool, which you can use to check your internal PageRank.

After some Christmas wishes I started out with putting my blog to the next level. So I’ve started to work on a new layout that I could implement in the new year to come.

In the next Year of blogging series I’ll let you know how the implementation of the new design went and what other stuff I did for gaining traffic, RSS readers and so on.

Here’s the second post in a series of SEO tips you all can use to get your SEO at your own site right.
I came on the idea posting tips about SEO after I received a 98% SEO Score. To get things straight, I’m not a SEO guru or something like that. But at the time I redesigned this blog I made sure I also thought about how to implement some basic SEO rules and seeing the score I received it pays off.

I’m also working on another blog that will be announced in a few weeks and on that blog I’m even doing better with a 99% SEO Score.

So here’s tip nr 2:
Think about your Title tag.

Every page on your blog has a title. Most of the blogs have the same title tag on every page.
So instead of having the same title everywhere, make sure you put the title of your blog post in front of your normal title tag.

For Example, my homepage’s title is: “Million Dollar Challenge”.
But whenever you click on a post on my blog, you’ll see that the blog post’s title is put in front of the normal title. Example: “SEO Tips, Tip Nr2 – Million Dollar Challenge”.
Normally this isn’t a big change that needs to be done in the background of the blog software you’re using.

So what’s the advantage of using this kind of naming for your title tag?
Well it makes sure that when your page gets indexed by the search engines, the title is relevant to the text in the post itself. And this is always better than if it has nothing to do with the title.
See the image below of my previous SEO Tip post.

Find this tip useful, than certainly start reading my previous SEO Tip.

This site went live early July 2007, but the challenge itself started July 5th 2007 right on my 31st birthday.
The first month I mainly focused on subscribing to different sites that can help getting you known in the o so big community.

Technorati was one of the first sites on the list. Back then I didn’t exactly know what it really was, but I knew it would help in the future. 

After that I started feeding blogsites with my RSS feed. So people who visit these blogs will see my latest posts and maybe visit mine. Not long after that it paid off. Hits were coming in.

A bit later that month, I’ve created a post about Burj Dubai, the new highest tower of the world, and for some reason, this brought in a lot of visitors back then and still now. It seems I’m ranking quit well on some search strings for this topic.

In August, I made a post about the new (first edition) of the iPhone that also brought in lots of visitors.

In the meanwhile I kept on submitting my feed to different directories and mad a list of it. These 200 blog directories can still be very useful to other webmasters.

And loving the numbers in titles, I made a list about 20 tips for starting a blog.

In September I found back my old Commodore 64 and was so happy about it that I shared it with the world. Do you still have yours?

I also found out that I have to think about SEO. My post about 9/11, six years after was good for some decent traffic because it was indexed before other similar topics. I made the post 2 days in advance and that paid off. At the six year anniversary, my site was listed as nr1 in Google if you searched for 9/11 six years after.

And one of the best things that happened in September was subscribing to MyBlogLog. A social media site where you can friend yourself to other bloggers.  So far I have about 385 contacts in the community there and with some of them I regularly mail with. So I actually made some friends also.
September was also the first month I actually made real money that was deposited to my paypal account. It wasn’t much, but it was money!!!

This was in short a little overview of the first 3 months of this blog.
In the following post I’ll tell you all about getting a pagerank and the following 3 months of blogging.

How did you start?

SEO is all about making sure your site can be found by the search engines.
After my previous discovery that this site has a SEO Score of 98%, I started thinking, why not share some tips with my readers. So as from today I will create a series of post over the next few weeks that are all about making sure you get your SEO fixed on your own blog or site so you to can have a SEO Score of 98%. (I like to brag )

Probably you all read about SEO elsewhere and most of the times you already know today’s tip, but I want to make sure you’ll be rewarded for using it. This you can’t find on many other sites.

My first tip in this series of posts is link your keywords and make sure they’re used on other sites to link to your site.

For example, from the start of this blog I used the keywords “Million dollar challenge” to link to this blog from other sites. Every time I subscribed to some kind of blog or site where you can leave your link, I’ve used these particular keywords. Or if you ask other site owners politely to link to our blog in return for a link to their blog or site, they’ll probably will do so.

If you search in Google using these keywords, you’ll see you’ll be getting around 500,000 results. My site is ranked on the 5th place. This means that everyone who searches on these keywords will see the link to my site without even going to the second page of the results. An advantage of being linked on the first page is more hits of course.

So really think carefully about which keywords you’ll be using to connect to your site. Ask yourself the question, how do I want to be found? If you got yourself an answer, then look at your competition for these keywords. The more competition, the more effort it’s going to take to rank higher. Or if you play your cards right the more hits you’ll receive if you figured out your way to Google’s first page.

And let me be the first one to help you with it. Of course there’s a little catch to it.
If you figured out the keywords you want to use, let me know and I’ll be sharing them in some upcoming linklove posts. Use the contact page or send me a mail (info at the1milliondollarchallenge.com) with your keywords and a brief description of your site or blog, max 50 words.

But before sending the mail, make sure you got a little post up and running about my site and put the link to this post in your mail. I’ll make sure your site will be featured in one of my future posts and you’ll get a permanent listing in my Link Page. Remember this is a PageRank 3 blog since last update, so you’ll be getting a decent backlink back to your site as well.

You can make the post as long as you like, but I would like to see an article with at least 50 words in it, that’s not so hard I think.
You can write about how fabulous you think I am, how good this site is , …
No just kidding, make an honest post out of it, you’re totally free in about what you write.
The only thing I ask from you is that you use the following keywords: “earn easy money” to link to http://www.the1milliondollarchallenge.com

So will you be in my future linklove posts?
And don’t forget to check back for my future SEO Tips, if you want to be updated automatically, subscribe to my Full Feed RSS or follow me on Twitter.

SEO Tip nr2 is also available right now.

Today, I asked a colleague of my to register me a new domain for a website project I was thinking about lately.

The project itself will remain a little mystery for now.
Those who regularly read this blog, could have a little idea and those who’re following me on twitter and actually read my tweets will know something more. If you want to be one of the first to know about it, then follow me on twitter for the latest info.

The hardest thing about most web projects, is finding a proper domain name that’s still available.
The last few days I searched the web for some good domain suggestion sites, to get some idea’s, but at the end I took a domain name that I thought about myself.

What I did to choose my new domain name, I’ve opened notepad and wrote down some keywords that I’ll definitely going to use once the site is up and running.
Because the site has a particular target audience I wanted to make sure that my nr one keyword was in it. So I began puzzling with this keyword and a few others to make some words or a short sentence.
Once this list was completed I started checking if the domain name was available.

After checking two complete lists I numbered it down to 5 available domain names.
It’s unbelievable what domain names people already have registered. And before you think to yourself, now I’ve thought about a domain name nobody else thought about, believe me this is wishful thinking

So now you’ll have a list with only 5 available .com domain names, what’s up next?

Because I just want one domain name, I started thinking which one will be the one that could bring in the most traffic without applying SEO? This is easy, the one that people type in directly when they want to surf to a particular site.
I also searched trough Google’s adwords site to see how much competition I have on some particular keywords and how much searches there are on these keywords. After comparing all of this I made my decision to register a brand new .com domain name. And I must say I’m really happy with it.

Now it’s up to me to make sure the site will go live, make sure that there’s enough content to start with and off course make sure I got my SEO covered.
The SEO part in particular won’t be a problem if you know that the blog you’re reading right now has a SEO score of 98%.

Every now and then I’ll post some more info about the project on this blog, but for those who can’t wait, follow me on twitter to find out first handed.

These are a few quick tips I can give you about finding a good domain name.
So what do you do for finding a good domain name, have some other tips we can use in the future?