Daniel Felice

Reflecting on 2008

// December 29th, 2008 // No Comments » // General

Just before the year ends I think most people start thinking about the year that was. I know I normally think about the year that has just flown by inbetween Christmas and New Years and also start thinking about what is going to be in the coming year.

This has been another interesting year for me.

2008 was my third year living in a foreign country. I went back home to visit a few months ago and have the urge to pack my bags and head home for good. I think it is nearly time to go back to Australia and start to settle down. I don’t mean get married and have kids just yet – but find a job, buy a home and just be in the one spot for a while. Living in Ireland has been great, but home is home and I am missing it more and more.

I didn’t travel as much as I would have liked in 2008. I was in Malta twice, Brussels, southern France and Valencia (Spain), Sydney and also had a trip to the north of Ireland. Before I do head home I would like to do a lot more travel, but I think the best thing to do is just save some money and do it all at once. So before I leave Ireland I think I’ll take 2 months off and travel around Europe.

2008 was the year that I got back into my websites. I hadn’t done much for about a year or so, but after being inspired by a few other bloggers I thought it would be a good idea to create my own and try to make some money online. The money making part hasn’t been that great a success, but I have made something from it. It will just over my expenses, so I am not loosing anything.

I also created a domain name trading website called NameSeek.com.au in June which was acquired by Pacific Octane in September.

Explore With Me was an idea created by myself and my girlfriend Ruth. The site is currently in development and we will be launching it sometime in January. I think this is “the” website that could be the one that takes off. Initial interest has been great and we will be pushing hard to make this one a success in 2009.

All in all it was an interesting year, both personally and professionally. I hope 2009 will be even better as I really try to work hard to create an online “empire”. I would love to leave my job and be able to afford to work from home working on websites.

Thanks for all your support over the past 8 months!

Merry Christmas

// December 25th, 2008 // No Comments » // General

I would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! I hope you all enjoy the time spent with family and friends at this special time of year.

My girlfriend brought me a Flip Video camera for Christmas so I thought I would put my first video online!

Wednesday Ramblings: Ramble On

// December 24th, 2008 // No Comments » // General

This was a popular post last week so I thought I might keep rambling!

• Sharing the Love: I spent Saturday with a good friend of mine teaching him how to setup his own blog. He wanted to know more after I told him how much money some of the guys are making. You can check out his blog at http://www.lucianinceu.com. This is the first time I have ever taught someone about blogging and WordPress and I thought I did a pretty good job! Might have to offer my services to a wider audience…what do you think?
• Danielfelice.com: I took the time to find some new affiliate ads for the blog earlier this week. Early signs are positive and I am getting more traffic than the last lot of ads I published so here is hoping.
• December Traffic: Traffic this month has already been better than November. I don’t think I will catch October but I do think things are starting to pick up a bit.
• Affiliate Marketing: I joined a new affiliate network this week. The network is called XY7.com. Make Money with XY7.com!

• Explorewithme.com: Traffic has increased this week and a lot of people join the Explore With Me network last week. It is nice to see some of the hard work paying off as a lot has gone into this website. The site is still not officially live, and it won’t be until WordPress MU 2.7 is out which probably won’t be until the new year.
• That’s about it!

Choosing Affiliate Ads for Your Blog: Part 2

// December 22nd, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Making Money

For those of you who read “Choosing Affiliate Ads for Your Blog” I wrote last week, I have just had another idea so I have created this post as an add on. For those of you who haven’t read it, then read it before you read this one so it all makes sense.

As you may have noticed I have changed a few of my ads around today just to try and generate some more revenue for myself as the previous ads weren’t getting any clicks, let alone making me any money.

As well as the steps I wrote in the earlier post, I also tried something I haven’t done before. It is a bit of an experiment I guess, but I thought it might be worth a shot.

I visited a few other blogs that are similar to this, but are successful. I won’t mention the names of the blogs, but if you know of a similar blog to yours that actually makes money you can do the same thing.

I went to the other blogs just to see what kind of affiliate advertising they have, just so I could get some ideas and try to figure out what I am doing wrong. I decided to click on one of the ads just to see what the landing page was like. I noticed that the advertiser had an affiliate programme so i decided to sign up and show their ads on this blog.

So the end result was that I am advertising exactly the same product as the more successful version of this blog.

I decided to do the same thing with a few other blogs that I know make good revenue each month and again I signed up to the affiliate programmes. I think all in all I signed up to 4 new programmes and now advertising the same products as the “competition”.

It will be interesting to see the results, however there is more to affiliate marketing and advertising then just showing a bunch of ads on the blog – traffic is a major part of it and I don’t think I get the traffic to make enough revenue to live off just yet. At this stage I’ll just be happy to make something!

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Blog From Your Phone!

// December 22nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Wordpress

Ever since a member of the BuddyPress forum made a suggestion for Explore With Me, I have been spent the last few days trying to find a plugin that allows Explore With Me users create a new blog post using a mobile phone. I thought this was a great idea, and not sure why I didn’t think of it myself!

There are a few mobile phone plugins around the Internet, including WordPress’ own iPhone. However I didn’t want to limit my users to just using an iPhone to update there blog while travelling, so I wanted to find a plugin that supported a wider range of mobile phones.

After a few days of searching, I found a plugin at WPMU DEV that did exactly just that – support the iPhone as well as other mobile phones on the market. The plugin is a modified version of WPhone that supports WordPress MU.

Due to the iPhone plugin that has been created by WordPress themselves, WPhone is no longer being updated or developed, however it does work and there do not seem to be any issues at the moment in initial testing.

I will use this plugin for as long as it works, or until WordPress decide that there are more than just iPhone users wanting a mobile phone plugin and cater for the rest of us.

December Looking Better!

// December 19th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Project Blogger

The past two months have been tough for danielfelice.com. After a great September, traffic started to head south in October and got even worse in November. However I am pleased to say that December is looking better!

So far hits have surpassed November and slowing catching October, however with the holiday season and Christmas around the corner, things might start to slow down next week so I am not expecting to beat October by too much, if at all.

However it is good to see that traffic is getting better and it would be nice to start the new year on a high note.

Thanks for your support!

Choosing Affiliate Ads for Your Blog

// December 19th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Making Money

So you have a blog and want to make some money from it. Before throwing up a bunch of ads there are a few things that you should consider. You should take some time in choosing products that you advertise on your blog, remembering that if you wouldn’t buy it yourself then your readers probably won’t either.

I have always said that I would never advertise anything on any of websites that I have not tried out myself, and even more so, I wouldn’t recommend a brand, product or service if I wouldn’t use it myself.

Depending on the nature of the blog will depend on what your choose to advertise on it. If for example you have a website about beauty, then you should be advertising beauty products as that relates to your content and it is why your audience visits your blog and therefore you both share that common interest.

If you have a blog that is about everything and nothing, then it can be a little more difficult choosing ads to show on your site. This is when you have to do a little bit of research about your target audience and find out why they are visiting your blog and what content keeps them coming back.

To find out more about your audience ask yourself a few questions:

• Which search terms generate traffic? Look at your statistics and find out how your audience are finding your site through search engines.
• Which posts have received the most hits? Not only will this tell you what your audience is reading, it will also help you determine what they are interested in.
• What do you like to about? What are your own interests and what do you like to blog about? Even though your blog might not have a clear “definition”, do you tend to blog about the same topics?

With all these answers in mind you should be able to find out why your audience are visiting your blog, and what they are reading.

So for example, if your most popular posts is about sport, and your audience is finding you through search engines using search terms related to sport, then you should be concentrating on finding sport related advertising. This could include sportswear, tickets to events, merchandise, memorabilia, etc.

When selecting your ads consider how your audience will relate to the product/s being advertised and try to do a little bit of research before promoting the product. If you don’t believe in the product, or wouldn’t buy it yourself then how do you expect your audience to purchase it?

Wednesday Ramblings

// December 17th, 2008 // 3 Comments » // General

I know it’s an odd day to have a “ramblings” post, but I’ve never done one and have a few thoughts going through my head that I want in writing so I actually make sure they happen!

• Twitter: Been spending a lot of time in Twitter this week. Not sure why really, but for some reason this week I am hooked on it! I am updating it a few times a day and I have had a lot of new followers this week! Follow me on Twitter!
• Blog via Mobile Phone: Trying to find a plugin that will allow Explore With Me users to create new blog posts using their mobile phone. There is an WordPress iPhone plugin but I don’t want to limit it to only people who have an iPhone. I have had a quick look around but will spend some more time on this over the weekend and probably wait until WordPress MU 2.7 arrives before implementing anything.
• Explore With Me: Concentrating on getting some new content written this week. I am holding off updating features, themes, plugins, etc until WordPress MU 2.7 is out. I don’t want to do any major changes until the new version is out as some of it might not work. Once WPMU 2.7 is out I will also write the “Help & Support” pages which will teach users the basics of WordPress.
• Danielfelice.com: Need to do some work on this blog. I should clean up all the affiliate and adverts on the site as they don’t bring in any revenue. I get a handful of clicks, but I think I need a new approach here. Need to do some research.
• Sharing the Knowledge: Helping a friend from work get setup with his own blog. I sent him my “How to” guides so now he is in the process of registering a domain name, hosting and setting up WordPress. Should be interesting!
• Thats about it!

BuddyPress Beta Released

// December 16th, 2008 // No Comments » // Projects, Wordpress

I mentioned a few months ago a WordPress MUplugin called BuddyPress. BuddyPress is a WordPress MU plugin that turns a standard WordPress MU installation in a social community.

I have been using very early versions of the plugin at Explore With Me for the past two months or so, and today it was nice to see that the first official beta version was released.

I was almost updating BuddyPress everyday as bugs were fixed and new features added, so I can now finally work on enhancing the members theme so it fits in with the rest of the site layout and it will also be nice for the users in the way that there are no more broken links and pages that don’t work properly!

Here are a few BuddyPress features:

• Private Messaging
• Add Friends
• Create Groups
• Activity Stream
• Post to users “wire”
• Incorporate a users blog, comments and posts into profile
• Group Forums
• and more!

Now that the first beta is released there is a feature freeze on the development of BuddyPress so that any bugs can be fixed. The first official version should be released shortly.

I’d like to thank Andy Peatling who developed BuddyPress! A huge amount of work went into it and it was just what we were looking to incorporate into Explore With Me!

Now that we have a stable version of BuddyPress my focus will shift to the rest of the site and get it officially up and running in January. It has been 3 months or so of work, so we need to start seeing it grow, and grow, and grow…until when one day someone offers us a nice multi-million dollar sum for it…

What is Your Site Worth?

// December 14th, 2008 // 7 Comments » // General

I was playing around on Google earlier today and stumbled across a website called “WebsiteOutlook“. WebsiteOutlook claims it can evaluate the worth of any website on the Internet at the touch of a button, which is handy for those of you interested in buying or selling a website.

So I decided I would give it a go! I typed in “danielfelice.com” and after a few seconds got back an evaluation. The search pulls site rankings from Alexa, Google PageRank, backlinks and DMOZ listing information to give your website a value in United States dollars.

The result tells you how much your site is worth, how many page views you receive and your daily revenue. For danielfelice.com – all these statistics are wrong.

This blog apparently gets 1133 page views a day and makes $4.81 in revenue. Both figures are incorrect. The estimated value of danielfelice.com is…..$3511.30. Somehow I think that figure is wrong too. Would you pay $3511.30 for this blog?

WebsiteOutlook does suggest that “the information offered by Websiteoutlook is not guaranteed to be 100% Accurate and is offered as reference only. Further research and conformation of claims are advised before any substantial investment,”  and I agree.

If you are looking at buying or selling a site, do thorough research before coming up with a value. I wouldn’t base anything on what websites like WebsiteOutlook suggest, even if, as a seller, it does looks appealing.