How?

Easy Goals.

Step by step, I will make goals that are reachable, but will still need to work at it all.

Step by step, my goals will progressively grow.

Goal 1:

Make money on my websites/investments. I used to do this, but I don’t know what happened. Start small and work my way up.

1. $500 a month
2. $1,000 a month
3. $5,000 a month
4. $10,000 a month
5. Stop being frivolous with my money. I am terrible at this, but I will work hard at doing this. I need to respect the value of a dollar.
6. Make good investments such as I bought a DJ thing. I want to get better and use it to make money. This also includes stock market and other things.
7. Earn money to be even more self-sufficient

Goal 2:

Work harder. (I’ve already started this with the opening of The Image Igloo, Taking Charge of my Websites, and Opening Bundiez Network finally.

• Do well in my classes.
• Re-Open all my sites
• Increase traffic on all my sites
• Set up my advertising system.
• Have all my blogs up and running (updated)
• Continue with my 365 blog post promise
• Have my viral site open and ready soon!
• Keep up with updates
• Get new clients
• Start my new blog idea

Goal 3:

Get healthier. I think everyone has this, but it is true. My weight stays around the same, but varies a bit by season. Over the years, I know my health has increased quite a bit. In 2009, I cut out all caffeine besides chocolate. In 2010, I was at the gym the majority of the year.  (I regret stopping)

• Start going back to the gym. Need to find a partner, but I should start up soon.
• Stop with the noshing. I am the king of it. I hate junk food like candy and sweets, but I love crackers and pretzels which a lot is still bad.
• Start eating in proportion (no more eating until I am beyond full).
• Stop being able to fit in my old jeans. (I fit in them now, I want to go smaller)
• Get ready for the summer
• Be able to cycle for 100 miles no issue by July.
• Better cardio. I lift, no issue BUT I hate cardio, so I need to fix that.

Goal 4:

Focus on my websites. This goes with goals 1 and 2, but still needs to be said.

• Gain the traffic I lost back and more
• Have everything running and updated.
• Backup, backup, backup.
• Maintain, maintain, maintain.

Goal 5:

Keep my relationships alive and well. 2010 was up and down with relationships (friends, family, females). I want to fix all of this.

• Stay away from drama. This has always been my motto. I want to keep it. It seems as if I am involved with it including some New Years issues. I am going to avoid it all.
• Mend any bad bridges. I never intend for this, but somehow I always get involved without doing anything.
• Stay close to my family. This is a huge one.  I love my family, but I feel I don’t see them enough. I need to re-prioritize my plans to fix this and I will.
• Stay close with my friends.
• Make more friends. I love friends. They say the average person can only have up to 150 friends at a time. I say that is bullshit. I feel like I can have more because I enjoy the company.
• Visit everyone!
• I am not huge into relationships, but I would like to have a girlfriend. See how that goes.

Goal 6:

Follow through with everything. This goes with working harder, but still.

• Actually release my viral website.
• Actually do TBFE v3 which is long overdue
• Follow through with this list.
• Use my camera more. I have an awesome camera. I love photography. I want to use it more.
• Use my DJ thing. I might need some lessons, but I will work harder to do it.

———

Overall, I think these are great new years resolutions and I believe none of them are too ridiculous as long as I work hard at it. What are yours? Share them!

Before I get into the article, I wanted to throw in a bit of background information. If you read my Future of Forums post, you would know how I got from Geezer Gamers to Gamingvidz on 12-17-2005. Anyway, Gamingvidz was owned by this famous Halo player, TheHaloGod. From that, I worked my way up in the site and ended up helping TheHaloGod with his other forums such as Haloboards.com and Adobechat.com. Eventually those sites died out and my site grew. Well, over time I ended up finding out that Chris Guthrie was TheHaloGod. At this time, he was employed by Microsoft and was blogging off of ChrisGuthrie.net. That was about 3 years ago

That brings me to what I read. Some-what recently, Chris changed his blog from Chrisguthrie.net to Make Money on the Internet. In that time, he was fired from his job (despite doing a fantastic job), decided to work for himself full time on the internet, and all this other stuff. I am not trying to get into his whole life story as his blog gets into that. I want to talk about his most recent article.

Chris wrote about How to Sell a Website for Six Figures. Now, I was very interested in this as I’ve known Chris for some time and we have discussed websites a few times. Every we do speak, he always tells me to get into blogs and such and away from forums. Now, while I agree, he took the wrong approach for forums.  Either way, I remember when he first started Netbook Reviews. He told me he got this amazing domain name and he will do this. Since then, he sold it for a good amount of money. This is amazing. He went from making $60,000 a year to over $150,000 this year. Of course he isn’t allowed to say what he made, but the fact he made six figures is ridiculous. From playing Halo and running a forum to making XXX,XXX (imagine all those 0′s).

What does this have to do with me?

This inspired me. He worked hard and it paid off. Plus, he networked with what started as just in Social Media. Unlike Chris, I am going to keep my forums. Now, I don’t plan on devoting my time on the forums, I care about my community. You need to care about them. With that, I want to take advantage of my resources. I know how to make a website look sexy. I am full knowledge. I know how to run a website. I plan to open up my network of websites. I want to start making a living off of my websites. This is going to take hard work and initiative. Do you have it? I know I do. I will make my New Year Resolutions for all my sites and we will see how I do.

Lately, I have been thinking more and more about my websites. The reason for this as when I first got into websites, I thought about them as a hobby and nothing more. Then again, when I first got into designing websites, I was very young and money wasn’t an issue. Out of this came a lot of insight into the internet. I learned a lot very quickly and used that knowledge to the best of my abilities. My first site (technically) was one made out of Microsoft Frontpage. This was long before I realized how much work it was a website. Although, after some issues, I left the computer and tried other things in my life – mainly sports.

As I got older, I appreciated the computer again and became active on the internet because of gaming. The reason behind this as I wanted to enhance my gaming. I wanted to get better at Halo 2 at the time and was also looking for steady people to play with. With this, I found a new niche I’ve never experienced before, forums. I first went on Geezer Gamers and due to the age difference and how our interests changed over time, I moved on to Gamingvidz.

The popular communities helped mold my decision that I wanted to create my own community. The reason behind this is the fact I became close the community and saw areas to improve. Naturally, I attempted to do work on these sites, but the administrators became very difficult to work with (Ironically, I became the same way, but if someone gave me ideas – I’d listen). Although, with much work – I became staff. With that, I started a name for myself using photoshop as my guide. I branched out onto many different forums gaining access to their staff. What I didn’t realize until one discussion, I didn’t really have any power as staff which was the opposite of my intentions. At one point, I thought I had an opportunity to go good as I became head staff and eventually an administrator, but as I quickly learned: Nothing is good unless you own the site.

What I Learned

I learned a lot over those few years as you can tell. You need to have your own forums to actually make progress with them (as well as a lot of other traits). It takes a lot to own forums and such and I will go into detail through out this blog and such…

About My Forums Now.

So I currently own The Best Forum Ever. I’ve had it for two and a half years as of the 15th of December. It doesn’t feel like such a long time, but it has been. Lately, I haven’t focused much on my forum as I thought it was fine by itself. I was incorrect. Despite the fact that my forum is two and half years old, has 24,704 threads, 386,786 posts,and 5,340 members, a dedicated staff, the total traffic went down 30% compared to last year. Also, I haven’t made any money since I updated the skin which was quite a while ago. All that said, I am making a change. I am starting to become more and more into my websites as it is what I enjoy. I love making websites and doing for others. I love my community and wouldn’t change it for the world. I have even been asked many times to sell out. I always refuse despite the amount of money they offer. Call me stupid, but I am dedicated to my board.

My plans with the board is to completely upgrade it. I’ve noticed lately that the forum has been acting a bit sluggish and I know for a fact it isn’t my host or my internet connection. I have realized that this is because of three reasons:

1. My board isn’t optimized any more (this is the sense that I’ve done all that I can based on what I’ve learned from a lot of tutorials and personal help)
2. My vBulletin is quite outdated. I am running the 3.8 series. The current vBulletin is 4.1. I would update, but the current vBulletin is very bloated, flawed, and full of problems. Also, the look of it isn’t quite what I expected and in my eyes quite ugly. Even if I were update, I would need a whole new skin and my current person refuses to work with it because of how problematic it can be as with each new update, the skin breaks.
3. My plugins have become too much. At one point or another, they were all useful and great. They improved my forum tremendously, but like anything, my forum evolved and grew. The average member age has increased a bit. With that, the once useful plugins aren’t so useful anymore.

I also have to figure out how to bring back traffic. I’ve never kept secret my method of traffic because of the sheer fact it is common sense. I do understand there are many ways to get your name out there, but I don’t partake in those methods. It is funny because when I first started getting big, I would have at least ten instant messages a day asking how I did it and how I can help them. To each of those people, I said the same thing: My only way of advertisement is WORD OF MOUTH. This is really the only way I have ever actually received traffic. Now, when I say word of mouth, there is a little more to just going to your friends in school and telling them, but once again, that is for another post and if you keep reading my blog, you will learn that.

What I Am Going to Change

Traffic

As I stated before, traffic is down a whole 30% from last year. I can not stand for that which is why I am doing all of this change. I hate the fact my forum isn’t as popular. I must admit, the only upside about it is the whole community is like a family. While this is great and all, a family only stays together for so long. I want to stay for a long time and to do that, I need more active members. So, what I plan to do is a few things.

1. I don’t have much money, yet, but a few member contests is always good. Even if it isn’t for monetary value, a VIP membership always works or a title and/or trophy.
2. Get the community together in a few projects such as an all day post-a-thon where they rack up spam posts in order to gain a title.
3. Email all the members. I do have over 5,000 members and many of them did enjoy the site at one point or another. Why not remind them that The Best Forum Ever is still around and being updated.
4. Ask some of my Administrator friends and other friends to help announce my re-opening (I don’t know what to call it).

As for Plugins

I am getting rid of almost all the plugins. Over the last few years, I learned that while plugins may be nice and all, most people don’t really use them for the most part unless they are fully integrated. Once again, I will write more about this as I can go on and on about these subjects.  Basically what I am going to do is remove almost all plugins from my website. At one point, I was running everything including a whole point system, arcade with a ton of games, and a ton of other shit. For the updated version, I am going to use a few template edits to make everything look good such as drop-downs and anything else I feel that is needed. SEO plugins will definitely be added. I got to keep my Search Engine Optimization to the max. Finally, I will add any anti-spam plugins that I feel that is needed. It is such a huge issue. Anything else will be based on a case-by-case basis. I want to keep it as close to the original script as possible.

The Script and Skin

This is the main part of my issue. First off, I want to say that the script and the skin come hand in hand as they relate immensely. Anyways, I thought long and hard about this and how everything would work out. Lately, I’ve watched Internet Brands go down the tubes (not go out of business) with their latest version of vBulletin. Now, I am not saying it is terrible because how can a company release complete shit after they raised their price and all…right. Many would disagree with that statement, but that is neither here nor there. Either way, I learned about a new forum script (which at the time when I learned about it, it was unreleased) that was made by ex-lead developer, Kier Darby and ex-vbulletin developer, Mike Sullivan to create XenForo along with the help of ex-Jelsoft business manager, Ashley Busby as their business manager. For those who live under a rock or don’t know much about forum software, vBulletin (well technically Internet Brands) is suing XenForo over allegedly did the following:

“The suit is simple, the post from vBulletin reads. “We claim that Kier, Mike, and Ashley have infringed and violated contracts they signed with us to gain unfair business advantage. As such, Xenforo’s software unfairly stands on the shoulders of more than a decade of development by Jelsoft. Internet Brands owns this intellectual property.”

I do not believe a word of this, but I don’t know all the facts besides what I’ve read and I felt it was a bit odd as the lawsuit came a day before XenForo released their software for beta. Fishy if you ask me, but I am not one to pre-judge.

• Lawsuit from vBulletin’s point of view

• Lawsuit from XenForo’s point of view

• Information/Discussion found on Google about XenForo vs. vBulletin

• Information/Discussion found on Google about vBulletin vs XenForo

Either way, lawsuit or not, I bought XenForo. Originally, I bought it for a totally new project that I’ve had in the works, but as I played with XenForo more and more, I started to love it. I first fell in love with it on their official site where it was the only place to use it since it was an unreleased beta, but after having it in my hands, I knew it was correct for me. It was a culmination of the realization that I really don’t need any modifications anymore along with finding out the modifications I truly rely on are being made or already made. I would also need a custom skin as I do not settle for any less, but as for now, I can always customize a free script to make it my own. That is how The Best Forum Ever actually started. Then, I got a free one from my friend Vince for helping him out. Unknowingly to me, that was ripped and is found on vBulletin warez sites if you want it.

As for the script itself, it is still in beta. At first, I was absolutely reluctant to even think about converting The Best Forum Ever to a beta script especially one that had bugs (which was expected…it is beta). Now, XenForo is in Beta 5 and I am considering about making The Best Forum Ever a XenForo forum by new years. Now, before you say to yourself that it is still a beta, what are you doing? I realize that and how close it is before RC version and Gold version appear, but the time it took to go from Beta 4 to Beta 5 was about a week…give or take a day since I am not on top of it. That is a HUGE difference compared to the other betas. This means that there are hardly any bugs and nothing I really have to worry about. If I do, it will be fixed and I don’t have to do much modifying to make it all work. If they want their blogs back or want a blog or I want a homepage CMS/blog, I can always install WordPress MU and it would link to XenForo since there is a modification for it.

Speed is an issue as I’ve mentioned before, this is all the proof I need that XenForo is much better than vBulletin: Server Load VB > XF & Joomla – Proof Is Everything. I know that everything will be much better on XenForo speed and loading wise seeing the huge differences.

Plus, I recently read this comment on my forums:

“If I could like that I would. We need an effing like button on here.”

I realized after playing with XenForo, you would know there isn’t a traditional reputation system, but a like system similar to Facebook. My staff knew this as I opened a beta version of XenForo to them. By the way, my staff was ecstatic about it and absolutely LOVED it with the exception of one member. Having all of this go through my head, I knew it was time to move my forums.

What Now?

As you may realize, there is 20 days left in the year. In these 20 days, I plan to move The Best forum Ever over to XenForo with a skin ready and everything setup. Since I don’t have the plugins to really worry about, I have everything going pretty easy. I’ve found a lovely skin that I plan on customizing. Here is the essential breakdown on what I have to do.

1. Download XenForo
2. Download the Skin
3. Edit the Skin to make it look nice
4. Fix the forum setup on vBulletin now to make it all ready for XenForo
5. Install XenForo plugins that only deal with SEO/Anti-Spam
6. Set up all the settings and stuff beforehand
7. Clean out the server from all the junk and useless shit
8. Back up the database
9. Immediately after turn off the forum
10. Upload the files
11. Transfer over the database
12. Clean everything up
13. Open

I may be missing a few steps (including the get traffic parts), but that is the gist of everything. My goal…before or RIGHT after New Years. I let my forum down with TBFE v3 and this is to make up for it. This time around, I don’t plan to hype it up. The staff know I am working on it, but no details…that is until they read this blog post/twitter message I posted. We shall see!

After this…Bundiez Network and Steal the Internet!

PS. Hope you like the new theme. I refused to blog until I had a new one because I was stubborn/bored/loved this skin too much.

PPS. Here is a picture of The Best Forum Ever currently so I don’t forget to take one so I am able to do a comparison. Also is a picture of The Best Forum Ever when I first opened. Notice how I had no idea to take a proper screenshot back then.

Old – > New ->

Well, my friends and I left two Fridays ago. We decided we wanted an early break because leaving Tuesday was not worth it. Friday seemed a lot better. We left promptly in the afternoon and our adventure began.  The trip is a six hour trip. EASY. It isn’t the best drive, but I accomplished a lot of reading of my new book, Assholes Finish First by Tucker Max. It’s an amazing book and I definitely recommend it. Anyway, six hours later and we arrived at my friend Max’s house. We dropped him off because he wanted to go home and so did my other friend, Conor and I. Before finishing our travels, we decided to go to my favorite cheesesteak place, Geno’s. If you ever been there, you know that no matter what time you go, the parking is insane. So, as I am making a phone call, all I can hear is Conor cursing because he can’t parallel park for shit.  He has a small car – all I could do was laugh.

That night, I went to bed with two wiz wits in me. I slept. I woke up and slept some more. Then, I proceeded to sleep to sleep a lot more. I slept for 16 hours as when I woke up, it was 6pm. As you can tell, I haven’t been sleeping very well at all or not getting enough sleep. Either or, I made up for it that night. As I woke up, I ate dinner, decided to catch up on my favorite show so far – Boardwalk Empire.  It took me a while to catch up seeing as I had a few episodes to watch and each of them are an hour long. After that, I decided to do some writing sessions for my websites. I need to finish Bundiez. I am almost done, but the writing is killing me.

Monday came along and I just hung out. I decided to spend time with my family and learned that the DMV is closed on Monday. Afterwards, I spent some time with my grandparents as I don’t see them much. Although, the time I spent with them wasn’t as much as I thought. They ended up just taking me to my parents at their work. Not a huge deal, it was my mother’s birthday, so we went out to dinner in honor of it. It was a great time and I had a lot of great Italian food. Right as I thought dinner was over and we were going to leave, the waiter brings me a soda and say its from Evanne. Now, at the time, I was shocked. For one, I don’t drink soda or any caffeine products and haven’t since September, 2009. The other thing is that I didn’t know what the waiter was talking about and I couldn’t think of who he was talking about. Low and behold, my best friend was right behind me. She was smiling and walking over. I was shocked and speechless. Let me tell you, that isn’t something easy to do to me. Anyway, she talked with my family as I lost my breath trying to talk to her. We all talked for a while, but eventually it had to end.

The next day is a day I’ve been waiting for quite a while. It was the start of my real adventure. It began at home. I started to relax to prepare for the night. Hour after hour went by and I was anxious for the night to begin. Slowly, the clocked ticked and I finally decided to shower and leave. Before heading on my journey, I quickly packed and headed on my way. I drove to say goodbye to my father as he was at a meeting. I said hello to his friends and after having some water, I was on my way. To Philly I was heading listening to club music all the way up. As soon as I got there, I was informed that we had to pick up our other friend that was over a half hour away. I should have left earlier.

Half hour up to pick her up and a half hour back. We got her and was back at my friend’s house. After changing and getting ready, we left to the club. It was 10:10 and I was so adamant about getting there early, but how bad could have it been for being 10 minutes late? Well…that is how the whole story gets interesting. See, I was going to a club to see the famous, Basshunter. Most people have heard his music, but could never recognize him if they wanted to by his looks or name. Let me give you a sample of two of his most popular songs.

Recognize it? Well I was going to see him in concert. So we are at the club and we get there, what my friends thought was early. The main reason of going was the fact that my friend DJ Nemms was opening up for Basshunter. Nemms is a great friend of mine. So much so, that I made his website and he is teaching me how to DJ. Before, I continue, check out his mixes here! Anyway, we were in line and this line was huge. I was nervous, not worried about getting in. Standing in this huge line, I found out that the concert was sold out. In retrospect, I learned that the club can fit around 1,300 people and it seemed like a lot more tried to get in. Well, it is now 10:45pm and we are still standing in line. It is freezing and I am wearing a t-shirt. My friends are in light clothes. We moved a little bit, but not really. As we moved forward a bit, we saw kids drop like flies. Teaches idiots that drinking excessively is dumb, especially if you can’t handle it. People were throwing up and passing out. It was quite humorous. We tried getting their tickets, but no luck there.

The line started turning into a mosh pit. No lie, it was just getting crazy. People were getting rowdy and we were in the middle. My friends and I were squished together. There was at one point where about like ten people were held up by me standing there. I told my friends to watch closely as I stepped slightly over and they all fell. It was quite funny because I did this several times over the time we were standing in line. That and I was just shoving people around. My one friend who is a tall guy was being pushed and the guy behind him doing it was telling his friends to do so as well. My friend turned around and told them to stop pushing in a very not so nice tone and they politely stopped. It was very funny. After about multiple frantic texts asking DJ Nemms to get us in, he finally came outside to get my friends and I in. We jumped out of line and headed to the front where we thought we were getting in. Unfortunately, the bouncers were getting bombarded by drunk individuals and they shoved my friend (who had an all-access pass, mind you) back inside.

Now we were out of line and still had no tickets or a way in, we weren’t sure what to do. For one thing, we weren’t going to continue to wait outside the line. One reason was there was a kid who supposedly attacked the bouncer and was hit in the face. Of course, this kid was drunk off his ass and was very belligerent, but he and his friends thought they were right. They continued to harass the bouncers by yelling, throwing punches, and trying to record them. The bouncers weren’t going to have any of this as they just took their phones and threatened them to get out of there. My friends and I tried to squeeze back in line. Cops were telling everyone who wasn’t really against the wall, to get in the back; the line was much longer now. We just snuck back into the line and stayed there. It was past midnight at this point. Eventually, the bouncers used a more efficient way of letting people in and we got passed the bouncers.

We thought we were home-free without any tickets. As soon as we walk through the door, we see two more bouncers asking for tickets. We thought we were screwed. We didn’t have tickets and it was a sold out event. Pretending like we didn’t know where our ticket was on us, we fuddled around pretending like we did have it. With quick thinking, I saw a promoter that DJ Nemms was talking to briefly when I saw him outside. I got his attention and explained to him how DJ Nemms told me to come and he would take care of everything. He asked how I knew him and I explained how I met him, how we were friends, and how I made his website. He told me he would call him to get him to vouch for me. At the time, I thought it was fine, but I later learned that he was DJ’ing and I couldn’t get a hold of him. The bouncers informed us that we had two minutes. With quick thinking, I pulled out my phone and showed him the text messages him and I sent to each other and he let us in. Who knew that would have worked? Nemms and I are still amazed that actually worked. I mean the concert was sold out and I didn’t have tickets. As soon as we got in, Basshunter got on stage.

It was perfect timing. We spent some time trying to find DJ Nemms and after mistaking him for a few people, we decided to just watch Basshunter and then find him after. After seeing how much it was in the pit, we decided to join everyone. In the pit, we had so much fun. I pushed my way so close. I touched him a few times, that is how close I was. It was a lot of fun moshing and having fun in the pit. I even took a picture of him to show how close I was.

See how close I was? It was ridiculous. Afterwards, we went in the back where we thought DJ Nemms was. Turns out, he was behind the DJ booth in the VIP section and such. Well, after Basshunter was over, DJ Nemms went back up to close the club. Guess who went up there with him? I sure as hell did! I brought my friends with me and we were chilling in the DJ booth for the rest of the night. I personally never saw Nemms DJ live before, but he was bonkers. Definitely worth everything he charges and does! Now, he needs to teach me! I did manage to take a few pictures when I was up there, but they aren’t as good as Basshunter. You get the point. Although, I was upset that you couldn’t see how many people were in the club as many people left as soon as the concert was done.

Afterward, I hung out with Nemms while bringing my friends along of course. We watched his friends fight where was going to go for the night and eventually we left. For some reason, we had to leave through the back of the club which was super sketchy. We had to slip through the fence and hop into cabs. We ended up going to a Drexel frat which was extremely nice compared to the frats that I have been in. We hung out for a little while before heading out for the night. It was a bit early for me, 3:30, but it was all good. We took a taxi to Wawa and walked back to my friends house for the night.

Right before we all left, Nemms was telling me how the DJ’s that were opening after he was played Basshunter’s song right before he went on. This is a huge NO in performing. Basshunter actually heard the song and was like: Fuck this, get the check and let’s get the fuck out of here. How can they do that? Well, his manager had to talk him into playing the show and that is why he get on late…well for us, perfectly on time. Aren’t we lucky?

The next morning, I woke up and picked another friend up at the train station. She was hit on many times before I got there which made me laugh, but her creeped out. It was all in good fun, well…not for her. After getting breakfast, we took a Chinatown bus all the way up to NY. It is super cheap – $20 round trip. So worth it. My one friend had to be picked up, so from Canal Street, we took the subway to Grand Central Station and waited for her to get picked up. Despite waiting for a bit over an hour, we had great conversation and just hung out. Once we hung out, we went to the center of the world, Time Square.

We did the whole picture thing because my friend, she brought her camera and after talking about food and such, we decided that we had to go to Dylan’s Candy Bar. I love that place. It is hands down, the best place on Earth. Three floors of amazingly goodness. Well, we looked around and then decided we should get something at the cafe first. I got a Cookie Dough Destruction and I don’t remember what everyone else got.

Afterward, we bought some candy and just walked around New York. We went to fifth avenue and did a lot of window shopping. Unknowingly, we walked by NBC studios and Rockefeller Plaza. It was very beautiful even thought it wasn’t completely lit up yet.

Of course Radio City Music Hall is right there and there was a huge line to see the Rockettes. It was amazing. By this time, it was real late and we had to get going soon. We decided to get food on Canal Street and finally take the bus back. It was a great two days and I couldn’t ask for better.

The following day was Thanksgiving and I did the whole Thanksgiving thing with all my family. I worked on UnemployedWoman’s site and we removed the forum as it was just a hassle and counterproductive. We worked on some plans and I will try to launch them in the coming weeks and watch the owners do amazing things with them.

On Black Friday, I spent the day with friends.

This is what I have been doing. I am sorry for being super busy.

Here are all the pictures (including some not shown above).

So, after being able to read one full tweet without getting bombarded, I realized that these were actually good bloggers, including Darren Rowse himself. I am not putting him on a pedestal, but the man knows his stuff and does make bank blogging like a champion. Anyway, I realized that these bloggers are actually using twitter as a chatroom to discuss blogging. After further research, I learned quite a lot about the group. From what I read, this has been happening for almost two years now. In these two years, they have been discussing all types of topics. I just so happened to be in the discussion about process of blogging or at least that is what I thought the discussion was about. There was so much chatter that there were so much conversations taking point.

Although, from the discussion about making a plan came other talks. We conversed about writing our niche such as how to stay in the perimeters of what we intended to write about, how to come up with ideas to stay intact, and how others managed multiple blogs. I do remember one person tweeted how he managed ten blogs! That is insane. I have trouble managing my own sites and such and this guy is running ten. Much to say, I wouldn’t doubt that he has a staff or outsources his work. That isn’t the point. It got to the point where monetizing became a question where as if it is necessary and such. As you can tell, there was much discussion.

I must say, I loved every minute of this! Unfortunately, most of my time wasn’t focused on this past week’s chat as I care more about my Philadelphia Eagles kicking ass! (NUMBER ONE IN THE NFC EAST BABY!) Anyways, I learned a lot from the times I was there and actually will take my time to ask questions and help others solver their issue. I have some questions of my own also. Definitely need to take advantage of this and hopefully I will see you there to answer your questions or ask you for help.

Some things you should know about #blogchat.

1. You must stay on topic! This is huge and like the only rule.
2. You may promote your link(s), but keep it classy and don’t spam the website.
3. Don’t go off the main topic.

Lurk, post, please come out and check it out! Also, if you have an issue keeping up with everyone, please check out the conversation! I wouldn’t doubt if you were on. Right before I left, I received the most important load of advice yet:

RT @chrisgarrett: #Blogchat Pro Tip: Follow the people you had great conversations with #blogchat

Remember this with anything.

Do you have anything to say? Do you partake in any talks? Please discuss!

RT @chrisgarrett: #Blogchat Pro Tip: Follow the people you had great conversations with #blogchat

A few months ago, my aunt came to me asking for a website. The whole idea stemmed from recently losing her job like many, but unlike those many, she decided to do something about the situation. This is where she came in asking me for a website. I won’t lie, I was hesitant about making a website for her. There are a lot of factors to the website. Many of these factors I, myself, have not even stepped foot in, let alone conquered. Originally, I told her everything. I wasn’t about to dedicate my time until she understood everything I was going to tell her. My aunt and her friend Gail were very open to all I had to said and were ready to learn.

I must say, I was amazed by their drive to learn.

The Start

I am not going to exaggerate on anything in this article because that would just taint this article. Before they even started the website, I talked with them for about 10+ hours preparing everything. This talking session included everything.

1. Domain name
2. Idea
3. Logo
4. Slogan
5. Traffic
6. Ideas
7. Everything.

This is some of the issues discussed. Did I mention that my aunt and her friend knew hardly anything about their computers. I wasn’t sure they knew how to turn on the laptops without the stickers guiding them to everything. I was in for a treat! OH BOY!

The Steps Discussed

The first thing I asked my aunt was what did she want. This turned out to be quite a question as she wasn’t able to answer appropriately and completely. Knowing the internet very well and all the blogs out there, I was wondering what type of blog they decided to run. After showing them all types of websites from http://bunziez.com to http://makemoneyontheinternet.com to http://netbookreviews.com to http://johnchow.com and everything in between. The reason these sites were chosen is because they are all different types of blogs to choose from. After setting on the fact that my aunt wants to make money, but more importantly share her stories and ideas, she should do a combination of the same.

After deciding that she was ready for the blog world and the type of blog she wants to create, the name was an issue. I wish I could write out the major humor in this, but I can only try to explain this. My aunt spent all day bouncing names off of my family and I. Every type of name possible. At one point when I was in another room, she thought of a name and felt as if it was perfect. That was until I heard it and thought of high-priced escorts or prostitutes. So after bouncing names for a bit longer, they came up with: http://www.unemployedwoman.com/

It was like magic from there. I personally came up with the design of the site. Using Studiopress, I was able to make it look awesome. That along with their amazing content, they were able to start a blog.

Now, you might not understand the triumph in this. The fact of this is that they went from barely understanding the blog, the internet, and computers at a whole. Marketing was a whole new terrain for them. Writing successful blog posts to make money is still taking them some time, but I must say, they are learning and if they can do it, you can too!

Check it out! http://www.unemployedwoman.com/

Check out their rap video. It is an interesting take in marketing!

PS. If this negates what I said in my older post, disregard it because I am not even sure what I wrote there, but if I was going to talk about something cool like my forum, sports, or social media, you might see a few posts about that.  Anyway, lookout!

Now you might wonder, why the hell would I delete everything 5 times. Well, I had a great blog, but then it disappeared. Since then, I have slacked on my responsibility. Although, this time I refuse to slack because I like blogging. I might even go video blogging as well (but I don’t want to get ahead of myself yet)!

So let’s get this introduction out of the way because this same thing will be in the about me My name is Tony. I like lamp. My age is irrelevant due to the fact that I like to act based on my mood. Some days, I feel like a old shit and other days I like to act like an immature little shit. I am a fan of all sports such as ballroom dancing and curling. I love reading the news on websites that aren’t related to television networks. I loathe the word love unless talking about my family. My favorite language is English and my least favorite language is Spanish. I own a forum and it is The Best Forum Ever. Besides that, I will talk about my life later on in this blog. I need to keep you reading.

Since I got the introductions out of way, I might as well inform you as to what this blog is about. Well, I want to say everything, but unfortunately, I doubt I’ll ever talk about why the sky is blue, so I’m sorry to all those who care about that. What I will discuss are the random questions everyone is thinking, but never dared to ask out-loud. Along with my shenanigans, I will include professional topics such as what I’m interested in; social media, psychology of the Internet, trending topics, and all that other stuff that sounds so much fun. Besides that, I’m going to talk about random stuff.

Now we have all that out of the way, I can finally write all topics I’ve been collecting on my iPhone. You should see my notes app, it’s filled with things to write about. Also, I forgot to mention this, but I might as well include this now, but I love my iPhone. As you can tell, the theme of this blog is a recreation of the notes app on the iPhone. Ironically, this is where I originally wrote this blog post and where I plan to write most of them.

PS. Expect the worst and the best when reading this blog. ENJOY!

Yours,