Well, lately I’ve been so busy that I haven’t really had time to concentrate on the development of the site. But I have made some quality progress.

What I’ve Done:

1) Gained StumbleUpon Friends - I get a lot of page hits from StumbleUpon, though they don’t generate much profit or get many subscribers, the extra traffic can’t hurt. Getting my site and name out on the web is definitely a plus. If you are currently using StumbleUpon, I’d appreciate any extra “thumbs ups!”

2) E-Mailed Alex King (regarding ShareThis) - ShareThis, a great plugin doesn’t seem to be working out with this layout. When I activate it, my articles & text shift around on the screen making everything completely unreadable! There is also an ugly black coding segment above the header. I received an e-mail back from Alex and he escalated this problem to the ShareThis support team. Hopefully they can figure something out!

3) Considered Buying A Custom Layout. Yeah, that’s right, JOHN COW! John Chow has a very nice layout too, but John Cow’s is literally “pimped out.” That blog layout is off the chain! The man’s layout fits his blog perfectly and is one reason that visitors keep coming back. I haven’t been able to figure out a way to integrate the 125 X 125 ads in my widgets section and the Text-Link Ads widget isn’t working!

4) Signed Up For Digg - I’ve heard of Digg being very helpful at increasing traffic. Though I like using StumbleUpon a lot more, I’m going to keep submitting to Digg. Once one of my articles skyrockets in the number of Diggs, it should definitely increase my reader base. Any submissions of my articles to Digg are appreciated.

5) Posting In Forums - I post in the StevePavlina.Com forums in the business/financial section involving blogs and making money from them. I am currently searching for more good forums to post in to increase my traffic via a good forum post.

6) The Kontera Revolution - Good news here, I finally installed Kontera. Though Kontera can look a bit too “spammy” at times, I think readers can fairly easily distinguish between Kontera and intentionally posted hyperlinks. Though in order to get Kontera, you’re supposed to have a certain number of pageviews & visitors each month, I signed up through the “John Chow Kontera partnership.” If you do not have Kontera and would like an extra way to monetize your site, I recommend signing up. If you have less than 500,000 pageviews a month, check out JohnChow.com’s recommended money makers and follow the instructions.

7) Blogrush Fiasco - Blogrush will not allow me to “re-submit” my website until late February. I accidentally submitted it without carefully reading over the guidelines; I was supposed to have at least 10-12 quality posts before submission. By late Feb., I will have the articles section loaded with a shrine of valuable information. Though I don’t know exactly how effective Blogrush is, I’m going to give it a valid chance once I am able to “re-submit” and then share an evaluation of the plugin with my readers.

8) Commented On Other Blogs - Lately, I have been making an effort to absorb as much monetizing information as possible. I like to read other websites to stay up to date on the latest blog secrets, marketing techniques, and to see how others are doing. Alan Johnson from TheRatingBlog.Com has everyone dominated in comments on many popular blogs and even his own blog! Check this article out for more information. On sites like JohnChow.Com, being a top commenter can definitely get your site some extra exposure. I recently unintentionally squeezed onto the bottom of his “top commenters.” I think I will make an effort to stay on that list for some free link advertising ;)

9) Guest-Writing - Once I add a few more quality posts to this website, I will submit some articles to appear as featured guest posts on more popular blogs. I need to increase my traffic, and this is a great way to increase visitors and subscribers.

Though things have been slow lately on AndrewPavelski.com, the kinks are successfully being worked out and 2008 is going to be a great money-making year for this website! Though building up traffic and RSS has been slow, I am by no means backing down, waving the white flag, or throwing in the towel!

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!