I would like to start by thanking everyone for taking part in the GoDaddy e-Gift card contest. With over 25 unique contestants and a total of 107 entries, I feel it is safe to say that the contest was a great success. I took me a while to add all the entries into my randomizing script.

And now, the moment you have been waiting for. Can I have a drum roll, please? Tatatatatatatatatata, the winner is:

?brahim Korkmaz

Congratulations ?brahim, I have emailed your GoDaddy e-Gift voucher to the address that you used when commenting. Please let me know if you have any problems using it.

I have attached a screenshot of the selection window for your viewing pleasure. I also ran the randomizing script a second time to select a runner up, congratulations to Sanil. If ?brahim does not claim his e-Gift card, I will award it to the runner up in 48 hours from now.

Remember that the competition will continue to run over the next 4 weeks, so you still have 4 more chances at winning. Your current entries are still valid and I will add any new comments to your total. Thanks again for taking part and good luck for next week.

I

At what point, in their blogging careers, do successful bloggers decide to go full-time? This is a question that I have been asking myself lately. While my blogging income still does not equal my regular salary, I have no doubt that if I made the transition from part-time to full-time blogger, my income would shoot up exponentially.

Is it wise to put all ones eggs in the blogging basket? I know there are some very successful bloggers, the likes or Darren Rowse and some others who rely completely on income from their blogging efforts. Other successful bloggers diversify into other sectors. John Chow runs an Affiliate network, Jeremy Shoemaker owns a few successful forums and niche sites.

Over the past few months, I have been adding sites to my portfolio. These sites are in various industries and niches that I hope one day will be successful. While I

Thanks to all my loyal readers, the blog has grown extremely quickly over the past 2 weeks. I would like to thank all of you by introducing my very first competition. I will be giving away 5 GoDaddy e-Gift Cards worth $15 each over the next 5 weeks. These e-Gift cards can be used for purchasing any product from GoDaddy, such as domain names or hosting. So now you can get that domain name you

Any of you who have been following my blog for a while, probably remember the issues I had with my Failing ThinkPad about a week back. Well IBM

Well, let

Having a good domain name can often mean the difference between a successful blog and one that never gets any visitors. It will most likely be the first thing that your visitors will encounter, and remember your blog by if they ever find your blog online. Many bloggers still use their internet provider’s domain name or a free blogging service to get their messages online.

With good domain names getting scarcer and scarcer, some people are willing to pay top dollar to get hold of one. I’m proud to say that I paid just $10 for my one, well actually $7 as I used a GoDaddy discount code. While I’m cheap when it comes to running my blog, many people shell out vast sums of cash to buy a domain. You

For any blog to be successful and maintain a decent readership, it needs to be updated constantly. Posts should flow beer at a bachelors party, but what happens when the keg runs dry and posts flow about as easily as month old custard?

Posting frequently is important for several reasons. The most important of which are:

1. Search engines love fresh content.
2. It keeps your readers interested and coming back for more.

If your regular posting stops, your visitors will disappear faster than rats abandoning a sinking ship and as we all know, visitors are a blogs most important asset. Statistics show that your regular readers will probably visit your blog for about a week or so before they realize that the blog has gone stale, maybe they will stay subscribed via RSS for about 2 weeks before unsubscribing.

So, what can you do if you hit a dry spell and can

Well, after finalizing the blogs theme and plugins yesterday, I was ready to kick back and relax to an easy day of content writing. That was until I logged in the Admin control panel and was greeted by the news that the new version of WorPress, version 2.6 (A.K.A. “Tyner”), had just been released.

Firstoff, I would like to congratulate the WordPress team on the release and thank them for supplying us with such a great blogging platform. The new release brings with it some nifty new features, my favourite of which are the ability to track changes to a post. That feature alone makes it worth the time it took me to upgrade.

The WordPress team has also released a video detailing some of the changes in 2.6. I have embedded it into this post for your viewing pleasure. There are also loads of improvements to some of the features introduced in version 2.5.

WordPress is not only a great blogging platform, it can be used as a full featured CMS. I use it to power 95% of my sites. Now I better be off as I have a full days work ahead upgrading all my sites to the latest version.

One of the most difficult challenges a blogger faces is losing your focus. This is especially true for an Internet Loser like me. It