It looks like selling blogs seem to be an ongoing theme so I’m going to mention that I will be selling some of my blogs in the near future. But don’t you worry, I’m not fully sure if I’m going to sell DatMoney just yet.

I own quite a few websites and blogs and I feel its getting harder and harder to manage these sites by myself. Although I have partnered with a few people so I can distribute the work so I’m only doing half, I feel its still taking up a lot of my time.

And if anything were to happen such as me getting sick (like I currently am), then I won’t be able to update like I would like.

I used to be able to multi-task and get a lot of work done but as of late there have been a lot of personal issues going on that has taken my attention away from my online stuff. And I would hate for some of my blogs to just go down the drain. Instead, I’ll try to focus on one or two blogs at a time, build it up again and hopefully sell it at its peak.

Of course, that never happens exactly how you would imagine.

I’m sure you guys are seeing a lot of familiar blogs that are going on sale such as TheUniversityKid and IronBlogger and it sucks to see those blogs go to new owners but I guess there is always a time to say goodbye. And seeing those blogs go made me realize that I should focus on a few projects at a time rather than 20 or 30 which can be distracting.

Honestly, I’m not sure which blog(s) I’m going to be selling just yet but whatever it is, I’ll eventually reveal the URL and maybe even write a quick eBook or password protected post on the details of it.

I’m sure we all ask ourselves this question: where do I see myself in 10 years? I always had this vision of where I was going to be at this point of my life. And quite frankly, I’m not at that point. Though, the reason why I’m asking myself this is the fact that I question if this online entrepreneurship is something I will be able to do for most of my life or is it just another job that may not last forever?

If you think about it, nothing is guaranteed when it comes to any job or life in general. I mean, who would’ve thought within the past few months hundreds of thousands of people would get laid off and all these businesses going right down the drain.

See, it’s just the same when you’re working for yourself online. One month you could make thousands and the next month it can all go away with just a snap of the fingers. No matter how much you make consistently each month, that following month is never guaranteed.

So, Where do I see myself in 10 years?

For me, each year changes especially the fact that I’m a go-with-the-flow type of person. But if I had a vision, it’d be something like…

10 years from now I hope will be out of my day job, I have paid all my student loans back and I’m working and enjoying what I do online. Of course, the reasons we all want to work for ourselves is the luxury of being your own boss, the flexibility with your own schedule, etc. I want to be able to travel with just my laptop and still be able to make money anywhere I go.

Who doesn’t want to just relax in Hawaii on a beach with your laptop and a mojito?

See, I have all these thoughts and dreams on where I see myself every few years and although it may not happen exactly how I want, I’m still working on it. I make a list and every time I accomplish a goal, I cross it off and add a new one.

I do that because I don’t want to settle for less, but more importantly, I don’t want to forget some of my goals.

Again, some goals change but the general theme tends to stay the same. I may not see myself making millions but if I’m at a job that I can enjoy and appreciate then that’s a stepping stone. I may not see myself married but if I’m with a special person then you’ll continue to see a cheesy smile on my face. I may… well, you get the point, right?

If you haven’t though about where you see yourself in 10 years, you should at least think about it, talk to a friend, do whatever. Because when it comes down to it, you have to think do the future at some point.

I mean, do you plan on making money online for the rest of your life?

If so, let me know!

I recently met with my accountant and went over my taxes and of course, I found out a lot of tax deductible expenses for being self-employed as an online entrepreneur that I didn’t know before. I figured I’d share some of that information with you guys if you ever need to do taxes for your online business.

I’m actually doing my taxes later than I normally do but this is the first time I had to include all my online stuff because I made a decent amount in 2008. On top of that, I also have a day job so it was a hassle because I had double the work when filing my taxes.

When you are self-employed (and anyone making money online is self-employed) you need to keep track of all your earnings as well as your expenses. Luckily, since we are working online, most of our expenses are documented for us already (through e-mails, Paypal, account history, etc).

Though, some of them are not so we want to make sure we save receipts if we can.

Below is a list of various things that I found to be tax deductible expenses for working online (I may have left a few things off, I don’t have my papers in front of me):

• Cost for domain names
• Cost for web hosting
• If you have a separate room like an office dedicated to working online, you can write off the cost of the electricity used in that room.
• Cost for internet service
• Potentially cost for buying products to support your online needs such as computers, monitors, laptops, etc
• Traveling for business purposes. For instance, if you went to any of the blogging conventions of affiliate summits or whatever, that’s for your business and you can write off those expenses too. And make sure you take receipts for all of it such as the cost for the event, airplane, gas, etc.
• Cost for advertising. If you advertised on any site or maybe you’re an affiliate marketer that pays for PPC ads like Google Adwords, then you can write that off too.

I know I’m missing a whole lot of things you can write off but you get the idea. Anything relating to things that will potentially help you with your online income through spending or any sort, you can just about write them off.

Now, you should be reporting your taxes for whatever you make online, especially if you made anywhere over $600 total within the year.

I don’t know how people do it in other countries but I’d be interested to hear how you handle taxes, expenses, etc.

But I hope this quick outline helped with your tax deductible expenses for being self-employed as an online entrepreneur… at least for those of you guys that live in the states.

Let me know if you have questions!

I’ve been extremely busy as of late, especially with taxes, personal issues and working on other projects to test new things out. One of the things that I’m in the process of testing is automated blogs with strictly Adsense ads (or pay-per-click ads) versus ones with strictly affiliate products.

Now, I’m not exactly comparing the two because when it comes down to it, I’ll probably have both running and I’ll just be tweaking each one to see how much money I can possibly make with very little work.

How Do You Set Up An Automated Blog?

Well, setting up an automated blog isn’t very hard; it just takes a little work just like any other way of building traffic, making money online, etc. You are basically setting up a Wordpress blog with key plugins, taking content from RSS Feeds of your choice and submitting to various sites and directories to build links and get traffic.

I would explain how to do it but it’ll be easier if you guys just read the controversial post on setting up an automated blog written by Jason.

Some Key Things to Keep in Mind

A few things you want to keep in mind based on things I have read from comments and forums are:

- Make sure the content you’re taking is not copyrighted. Some sites bluntly say you cannot republish content from them without permission, and it should usually be easy to see because they should have a copyright on their footer.

- After setting your Wordpress blog up, you basically want to get and save lists that include: keyword-based RSS Feeds, sites to submit your RSS Feeds to and a ping list.

Like I said, once you get these lists, you obviously want to submit to all of them but you also want to save them. You will need them again, especially if you decide to rinse and repeat the process.

- Don’t give up! Supposedly, the worst thing that can happen is you make no money but you gain a Pagerank of some sort. You could always sell links or even just sell the entire site for profit. I mean, you’re not doing much work besides the initial setup. After that, everything should be smooth sailing… for the most part.

Conclusion and Additional Notes

I forgot to reply to some of your comments on previous posts but a lot of people mention the “duplicate content” myth and getting in trouble from the Big G or whatever. Well, there are only a couple of things you have to keep in mind about that.

First, you won’t be penalized by Google if you don’t have duplicate content within your own site. There are codes to avoid that anyways but I’ll try to make a separate post for more information.

Secondly, if you avoid copyrighted material, you should be fine as well. Getting your website banned from search engines is a very, very long process and it’s not even guaranteed.

Below are reasons I found in which they would potentially remove your content from the search engines:

- If the site is a spam site.
- If a webmaster believes the site is engaged in buying or selling links that pass PageRank.
- If the content posted constitutes copyright infringement, which will require a DMCA takedown request.
- If the site is believed to house malware (viruses, malicious software, phishing, etc.).
- If a webpage contains personal, private information, request for removal can be made via the URL removal tool.
- The site owner has modified a page so that it no longer contains the information or image that concerns me.
- The site owner has removed a page/image or blocked it from being indexed by using robots.txt or meta tags.
- You’ve been unable to work with the site owner, but the information appearing in the search results is one of the following:
- Your social security or government ID number
- Your bank account or credit card number
- Your image of my handwritten signature
- Your full name or the name of your business appearing on an site that’s spamming Google’s search results.

So, I’ll try to keep you guys updated. I’m sure some of you guys will ask for URLs of the some of the sites, I’ll consider sharing one or two but strictly with password protected posts, which are only for my e-mail subscribers.

But would you try it out too?  Questions?

I just wanted to bring to your attention on people hijacking your awarded links on the top commentators plugin. Stu actually brought this to my attention the other day in a comment (and I’ve known about this before as well) but I never got a chance to address it.

What Is Top Commentators Hijacking?

If you don’t know what top commentators hijacking is, its basically finding a site that has the top commentators plugin installed (made to reward people who comment on blogs with a sitewide backlink to their site) and commenting using someone elses’ name to steal their backlink.

In the example with a reader and commentator of mine, Stu, he commented quite a few times within the past few days and he made it on my top commentators list. Now, someone else used the same name “Stu” to comment on the most recent post and he took over the backlink juice.

Though, the comment didn’t even get approved as it was still pending to be moderated by me, it still took over for some odd reason.

I don’t want to point and accuse people because I’m sure there are a lot of people who use the nickname “Stu” just like tons of people I know who are also “Jay” and stuff like this can happen accidentally.

On the other hand, some people take advantage of this knowledge and use it for their own personal evil plots.

How to Avoid Top Commentators Hijacking

There is no real way of avoiding it if someone decides to be an ass about it except expanding on the name you type in. I would suggest putting in your blog’s URL or something next to your name so that would narrow down who’s trying to steal your links.

I would do this especially if you have a common name and you tend to only comment with your first name.

For instance, instead of putting in “Jay” which I know tons of people have that name, I would put in “Jay – DatMoney.com” that way if someone did try to hijack my link, it’s easy as hell to spot who is trying to do so with proof.

Suggestions to Top Commentators Plugin Creator

I’m sure the creator gets lots of suggestions as is but one of the suggestions I would ask is to possibly change the comments getting approved compared to it being pending. In Stu’s instance, this person’s comment was still pending approval, yet, it hijacked the backlink almost instantly.

Conclusion

I’m sure I hijacked a lot of peoples’ top commentators and vice versa, only because I have a very common nickname “Jay” but I’m starting to change that to “Jay – Site URL” and I think you guys should too.

Anyways, what do you guys think about this?