Green Flamingobecause I said so: a blog of making money online, reviews, and new things and ideas

I am giving out links and banners for free! Come and join, not hard at all!

I was giving them out on Blog Premiere a few days ago, and I am still giving them away. I would just like you to subscribe to green-flamingo by email, then shoot me a mail telling me you subscribed and having your banner. You can catch me at yunkaka[at]gmail.com and subject it “I want a banner!” having the banner, link, and specify where the banner should go. Here are some choices:

125×125 ad spot in sidebar

125×125 anywhere else you think it could go

460×80 on top of first post

460×80 at the bottom of last post

Skyscraper ads in sidebar

Any ads within the post

There are multiples of some, and I can always rotate:)

For a link you will do the same thing, only just send me the link with no banner. We will go to links when the banner spaces are out.

If you want to send me a mail saying you subscribed and really didn’t, that’s fine, just think about why you are cheating me before you do that, for all I am trying to do is have some more RSS subscribers and give you a treat for subscribing.

If you would also like to link to me in return for the banner of whatnot, I would greatly appreciate that but it is not required. I do not run as strict a boat as some.

Good luck everyone and if there is anything I missed remind me in comments! Today is also the 4th of July so happy 4th of July. I will be setting off many fireworks tonight and I will tell you about them!

I promised I would write this, and it goes alng with my other post of having problems with balancing time and managing your schedule.

So you arw wondering how to manage your time? The best way is to create a schedule or plan of somesort, also known as something I can’t and don’t do.

There are many ways to create a schedule, it doesn’t have to be written down, but you do need something to manage your time more easily so you don’t run out of time to write a post while promoting the heck out of “your killer post two days ago.” You have to create a balance, because writing and promoting form a symbioses, and you cannot afford to lose either one.

Written down - you can come up with a little schedule on a piece of notebook paper, nothing fancy but something to clarify what you want accomplished in a day.

Online - many people use an online calendar or schedule of some sort, google calendar might work for you, it gets pretty detailed. If you are looking for something different you can always do a google search on it.

In your head - you can always make a schedule within your mind that doesn’t need to be seen with the eyes. If I make any kind of schedule I will make it in my head.

If you are looking for something else besides a schedule, like me, try to think of it as goals or checkpoints that you pass throughout the day and finish all. Say you have 11 things to do online, have to stop by the store and work at google then you have a few things to do. Think of them as tasks, and you may consider using Fruitful Time Task Manager. Fortunately I won a free copy in a contest and can use it!

I hope these will help you manage your time and you have successful schedule with even blogging!

Happy Blogging!

r

Blogging Idol has begun! I did not join myself, I think I should talk about it.  I have a few things to say, and a list of a few people I want you to help.

Blogging Idol is a contest set up by Daniel from Daily Blog Tips. The contest officially began yesterday, and it is to see who can gain the most RSS subscribers within one month. It is not one of those contests where you “do a blog post” or subscrie to join and such. It is a contest of ultimate competition, and I was actually thinking about doing something similar to this only I had no good prizes to give. A contest will arrive at Green Flamingo soon, I can assure you of that. I do regret not joining now, for it would be fun to participate in this and even have a chance at the prize. In a way I am competing, though I will not recieve a prize if I win.

Since I have no fear of other people getting more RSS subscribers in July than me, I have thought of a few people it may be valuable to subscribe to and if you can I would like you to subscribe to them, to promote them. These are the people I actually know who are in the contest.

• Stand Out Blogger
• The University Kid
• Rajaie Talks
• Melvin Blog
• Tech Treak
• Monkey Blogger
• Wp Theme Designer

That is all I think, and I think it would be nice if you visited them and maybe subscribed.

As I said, I am trying to gain subsribers too, and I would appreciate if you subscribed to Green Flamingo. If you are currently subscribed, I would give you a mention, but there is something I need from you too. I need you to unsubsribe, and then resubscribe, for I changed the feed address. Thanks!
Subscribe via email

Subscribe via RSS:

Thank you so much for all your support, and I hope to give all my readers a nice treat soon!

Maybe the title should be “successful blogging is not easy,” but we do need to cut down on words in a title.

As most of you know, blogging is not that easy to maintain. There  is so much to do in so little time and people can become overwhelmed with it. If maintaining a blog seems to stressful to you, I advise you don’t keep a blog.

First of all, you have to have the motivation to start a blog. You all should start a blog by the way, and if you are all newbies, I will write a small guide like everybody else does to get you started. Now mind you, this is the niche “blogging tips” which deals with tips for blogging, not starting a blog :). Some people start off thinking it will be hard to maintain a blog, which can be right, but also blogging continuously could be easy for them, and they miss out on their chance.

Once you have a domain, hosting, theme, and every other little piece to get that website off the ground, then you have to deal with content and promotion.

Content - content can be very hard to think of at times. The content you find and choose and write will develop your niche, or you will specifically have a niche in mind while starting the blog. Content can be the biggest trouble of some bloggers, especially if in a niche with not much to talk about.

Promotion - it doesn’t matter if “content is king” but the bottom line is you have to promote. There are many ways to promote your blog, such as blog commenting, guest posting, forum posting, advertising, contest sponsoring,  and social sites. Any of these work, and there are many more beyond. Some people get tired of promoting, but they have to keep going, just like they have to keep the content flowing.

The hardest part of it all, balancing time.

Balancing offline - Besides just balancing the time you have on the net, then you have to balance that in with other things you do in your day. If you have a day job offline, then you have to be at that and only have so much time to be working n your blog. If you are lugged around by your family all day, the same thing applies.

Balancing online - you also have to manage your time online, which can be just as difficult as offline. You do have to create a balance between writing and promoting, and we will count blog reading as promoting because essentially it is. You also have other things to do I’m assuming, and those of course take time. If you spend a lot of time on social networks you might have to give those up if you want to blog.

In the next few articles, I will talk about how you can manage and balance time, so stay tuned!

Sorry guys, this is a last minute contest, ending in 20 minutes and I have to get going. There is a big contest at WP Theme Designer, that is giving away 30 premium wordpress themes. One of them is the legendary Milk It theme! Here is the full prize list, with images!

1 Single-use License of John Cow Milk It Theme by John Cow

Demo | Purchase | Price and Theme Info

2 Single-use Licenses of Elegants Blubs WordPress Theme by Blog Perfume

Demo | Purchase | Price and Theme Info

2 Single-use Licenses for The Revolution by Brian Gardner

Demo | Purchase | Price and Theme Info

Premium Themes by Magnus Jepson
- 1 Single-use License of Polaroid Press
- 1 single-use License of Grunge Press
- 1 Single-use License of Portfolio Press

Price and Theme Info

1 Single-user License of Money Blogger Theme by BlogOhBlog
Demo | Purchase | Price and Theme info

2 Single-use Licenses of the Elite Theme by ElitebyDesign

Demo | Purchase | Price and Theme Info

Premium Themes by MotionTheme

- 1 Single-use License of Pirate Theme - Demo | Purchase
- 1 Single-use License of News Friendly Theme - Demo | Purchase
- 1 Single-use License of Easy Portfolio Theme - Demo | Purchase

1 Single-use License of TV Elements Premium Theme by WPelements

Demo | Purchase | Price and Theme Info

Premium Themes by PowerTheme

- 1 Single-use License of MagPress Theme - Demo | Purchase | Price and Theme Info
- 1 Single-use License of VideoDen Theme - Demo | Purchase | Price and Theme Info

Winners Choice Theme from Blogalized

Products | Order

Premium Themes by GraphPaperPress

1 Single-use License of F8 Portfolio Theme - Price and Theme info
1 Single-use License of F8 Remixed - Price and Theme info
1 Single-use License of Monochrome - Price and Theme info

Bonus:

Themes by Premiumnewstheme

- 3 Single-use Licenses of Fresh News
- 3 Single-use Licenses of LiveWire
- 3 Single-use Licenses of Gazette

I just love all these themes! I hope I win at least one of them! I am joining because I love contests, I have entered and won many! I need new themes, and some premium ones might be a better selection, so I’m in!

If you have been wondering where I’ve been the last two days, I have mostly been at Blog Premiere forum. The huge contest is just ending there, and I am extremely exhausted from working so hard to place second. The good thing is I am pretty sure I met my goal!(Though someone could be in front, making me reach third). I am happy to say I will be ready to return to blogging now, and no more huge contests will hold me up. I celebrate a new theme, and will talk of it later.

As you may know, I love to review. I love to share my opinions, and I love to see people benefit from ideas and advice I give them. If you would like a review, just contact me (if there are too many, I may have to deny them. They are completely free, maybe in a while I will start charging $$ for them). So, I am introducing you to something I happened to find today: Free Rice.

I think Free Rice is a good program for many reasons, which I will reveal.

How it works - How Free Rice works is that you play a vocabulary game to donate rice. You may wonder how that happens, so we take a look behind the scenes.

There are sponsors, rice companies, food companies, grain companies or whatever that actually give the rice. But to make them do that then you have to get a word synonym correct to donate the rice, and this makes them deliver it (after a certain number of grains have been donated).

How the game works - the game is simple, but difficult. I will give you an example instead of trying to explain.

Indigenous means:

type of tree

native

carriage

wise

You would click on ‘native’ of course, and at the top after finished loading it would say ,”Correct! Indigenous = native.” At the right the little bowl would have little grains of rice in it and on the side it would tell you how much you donate. As you travel through the words the words get harder as your vocab improves. You also are assigned a vocab level, and every few times you get  word right the level increases and every time you get a word wrong your level decreases. I have donated over 3,000 grains of rice and reached a level of about 30.

Why I like it - Free rice is helping to raise rice for those who have barely any. This makes me very happy, for I saw pictures of what some families owned all together, some only a few bags or bowls of grain, a table, a shelter, some blankets,  and that was pretty much it - for a family of about six. I also like Free Rice because it will improve your vocabulary, which can be a very useful thing.  I also like that you do not have to create an account to do this! It will remember you though, if you set it to remember certain things in the options. It is also free!

What I don’t Like - what I don’t like about the program itself is that sometimes the game cheats you. Sometimes there are two words that mean the same thing and only one is right. Some of the words are very confusing, and I hate it when I get a word wrong.

Review - I like the site, the project or program, and the site design. It incorporates green into the design and up close of rice. The site is laid neatly, and not hard to navigate around. The project was craftily created, having people have fun and learn something while donating rice to those who have none. It is not one of those things where you pay some money to “help feed this family type of thing.”

How you can help - you can join in this for a little competition, see how many grains of rice you can donate or what level you can get up to. This will help feed someone who barely eats in a week what you eat in three bites.

This is not something I was paid to do, I just felt like sharing this program with you.

What happens when someone mentions the name John Chow? Does the crowd awe in respect, or do they critisize him of being a greedy bastard? Which is it? I have so many questions of the opinion of him, because I have heard a lot.

Gathering The Evidence

On his site I have seen people criticize him and call him greedy, I have seen people cheer him on. I want to know what is behind their minds.

Jealousy - do people criticize John Chow because they are jealous of him? Are they jealous that he makes $30,000 a month and they make $0? A lot of people accuse him of being greedy, saying he should give all his money to charity. Isn’t he just one of the lucky ones that manages to get really rich? Or is he so rich because he worked hard to get in the status he is in now?

Respect - There are also those that respect him, look up to John Chow as an idol, and attempt to follow his footsteps. But are some of the ones respecting him so he will not get mad? And so they can get promotion? Brian Campbell met him at a bookstore/starbucks in Vancouver to deliver to him a 10,000 check, because Brian thought he owed the money to John Chow for posting about his goal of reaching 10,000 in 37 days with Facebook. Brian treated John with utmost respect in the video. But behind that shade, is there jealously lurking?

I am not sure of what people really think of this man, and I will never know…

Some people have never heard of John Chow…

Some people visit his blog everyday and comment…

Some people spend all their time criticizing John Chow and telling people he is a bad person…

I know someone who lives in Vancouver and has not heard of John Chow, and people may gape at that, but it is different from my next door neighbors never hearing of me? (Maybe it is, but not all that much)

I am not asking you a question, I am only sharing with you my wonder about what goes on behind his back.

Inspirations for this post: As you may notice, John Chow is on my entrecard widget (by the time you read it he may be gone). On Blog Premiere Forum Tom from StandOutBlogger talked about having John Chow on his widget in a few days. John Chow had many of his local readers come and visit him and watch him receive a 10,000 check from Brian Campbell. I needed something to write.

A post in my make money online section, “get a free custom logo.” I am not the one making them, but I know someone who will make one for you in return for a little favor. The favor is NOT a blog post about it, but I am writing one to be courteous and to show you something valuable, as well as have it as a blog post.

I read about it over at one of the new blogs I found, moneymakerboy.com, and thought I would try it out. You get the logo from Logo Angel, with a title of someone I would not usually buy from. But it’s free!

Here are some samples:

Supposedly, all you have to do is link to three sites, and then email the guy heading the site and he will make the logo for you. Here is what he said:

“So How Can I Get My Free Logo?

All you have to do is email the admin of logoangel at angle.crew@hotmail.com or logoangel@gmail.com and tell him that you will want to trade backlinks for a logo and he will give you these 3 websites to link to:

• Hire a Designer
• Seo Services
• Free Web Templates

once you put them on your site tell him the style of your logo and the color or choose a logo from the samples if you want and your logo will be ready the next morning!”

The only problem is that I am not sure when it was posted, but I think it was today for on this sidebar type thing it says posted June 24th. Best of luck.

Tell me if this works and you like it! I am trying it myself.

I have been a little inconsistant with how many times I post a day, especially in the past few days. I set a goal for myself, that I know cannot be fulfilled easily. I managed it for two days, and then stopped. My goal was to post twice a day for a while, and I thought it would be easier because I was focusing on other content than making money online.

To even out when I post, and see the interest of readers, then I am going to do a poll. You may answer as you see fit. The only problem is, I don’t know who votes for what, which is why I encourage you to comment and share more information than is asked in the poll.

Now I would like to know how often you post.

If you post less than every week, fill in that box and defiantly comment on how often you post. If you don’t have a blog, don’t answer but get a blog!

There is a small flaw in each poll. Try to find the flaw, and report with a comment. The first three will win 2 weeks of free advertisement. Good Luck!