guest post by Kelly Diels
When I was wondering how to create an effective, money-making review site, I thought of Robb Sutton.
Robb Sutton’s review site, Mountain Biking by 198 “pulls in thousands in review product every month” and in the last 15 months has received over $100,000 dollars worth of review product. He’s also got several other sites, including a coffee review blog, and oh yes, makes a pretty decent living as a ProBlogger.
That is, when he’s not hanging out with the likes of me and telling me all his secrets.
Kelly Diels: Robb, tell me all the dirty details about review sites.
[looooooooooooong pause. Isn’t it a little early in the conversation to have offended him?]
Kelly Diels: Robb?
Robb Sutton: I’m here. Sorry…was just closing up a few things. Now you have my 100% attention.
Kelly Diels: You know a girl likes that.
Robb Sutton: Yes, they do!
Kelly Diels: I mean, so I’ve heard. Tell me, dahlink, how you got started with review sites.
Robb Sutton: Well, it all started with an idea that had nothing to do with reviewing product, ironically.
Kelly Diels: Go on…
Robb Sutton: I had this idea that I was going to have a trail review site for mountain biking that was all user submitted content. About 5 minutes into the process, I realized that you can’t have user submitted content without traffic. So I started a blog where I reviewed parts, bikes and other related products and that took over what was the user submitted part. Basically, I used it as […] Read more »

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guest post by Kelly Diels
I have been blogging for almost ten months. I quit my job – a really, really good job – last week. Today, I made $10,600.
In one day.
(Okay, not really in one day, but today I collected two cheques for writing projects that I secured because the clients saw my pieces at ProBlogger and hired me. True story.)
How did I use my blog to launch a business?

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Copyright © 2010 Stephen Cronin. Visit the original article at http://www.scratch99.com/2010/02/temporary-post-used-for-style-detection-c40125a8-04c5-457b-87f0-068acd58e64a-3bfe001a-32de-4114-a6b4-4005b770f6d7/.
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guest post by Kelly Diels
I’m not a huge fan of arguments based on evolutionary psychology. They tend to justify the status quo, much of which is “status unacceptable” to me. They tend to explain social injustices and systemic discrimination as, oh that’s just the way we are. That’s evolution. That’s biology, baby.
Like this: oh, women seek relationships and withhold sex because evolutionarily speaking, childbearing was a life-or-death thing, so she had to be selective. So don’t bother granting them rights or jobs or treating them like people, or anything. They’re just baby-making, mate-seeking machines.
Or this: men are controlling and jealous because evolutionarily speaking, paternity was always a question. The only way to ensure the baby was yours was to ensure the baby can only be yours. So don’t bother thinking that men have feelings or emotions or that it might be nice to be kind to them or anything. Because they just want to bash you on the head, drag you back to the cave and make babies. Men. Neanderthals. Same dif.
Or this: we’re all racist because evolutionarily speaking, xenophobia helped preserve the safety of the tribe. Being cautious about strangers and outsiders is a survival instinct. So it is totally okay to make racist remarks and be suspicious of immigrants, because, like, that’s just natural.
The roots of these explanations may be true but often we make these kinds of statements as though we don’t have the brains, good fortune, common sense, compassion and creativity to evolve beyond them.
So, evolutionary psychology […] Read more »

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guest post by Kelly Diels
I’m not a huge fan of arguments based on evolutionary psychology. They tend to justify the status quo, much of which is “status unacceptable” to me. They tend to explain social injustices and systemic discrimination as, oh that’s just the way we are. That’s evolution. That’s biology, baby.
Like this: oh, women seek relationships and withhold sex because evolutionarily speaking, childbearing was a life-or-death thing, so she had to be selective. So don’t bother granting them rights or jobs or treating them like people, or anything. They’re just baby-making, mate-seeking machines.
Or this: men are controlling and jealous because evolutionarily speaking, paternity was always a question. The only way to ensure the baby was yours was to ensure the baby can only be yours. So don’t bother thinking that men have feelings or emotions or that it might be nice to be kind to them or anything. Because they just want to bash you on the head, drag you back to the cave and make babies. Men. Neanderthals. Same dif.
Or this: we’re all racist because evolutionarily speaking, xenophobia helped preserve the safety of the tribe. Being cautious about strangers and outsiders is a survival instinct. So it is totally okay to make racist remarks and be suspicious of immigrants, because, like, that’s just natural.
The roots of these explanations may be true but often we make these kinds of statements as though we don’t have the brains, good fortune, common sense, compassion and creativity to evolve beyond them.
So, evolutionary psychology […] Read more »

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guest post by Kelly Diels
In November, I rebranded and relaunched my blog. I screwed up, I suffered, I sniffled, I refuted the advances of a pervy tech wizard. And I thought: I’d better track my results to see if this was worth it. This better have been worth it.
It was.
On November 10, my Alexa rank was 1,082,076.
Two months and one day later, it is 173,556.

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In this post Jade Craven shares her thoughts on 30 bloggers worth keeping an eye on in the year ahead!
1. Dave Navarro
Dave was featured as one of tomorrows star bloggers in 2008 and has continued to impress in 2009. His tenacity and hard work have helped cement himself as a leading blogger and  coach. He has a truly impressive resume with guest posts on Copyblogger, two product reviews here on Problogger and joint ventures with other high profile bloggers.
2009 has been the year where he strategically built up his profile to become a respected member of the blogging community. In 2010, I expect he’ll be leveraging that profile to provide more awesome resources to help bloggers succeed. You can check him out at The Launch Coach and be sure to sign up for his advance discount list and for advanced notice of his More Buyers Every Month training.
More on Dave:

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Copyright © 2010 Stephen Cronin. Visit the original article at http://www.scratch99.com/2010/01/2009-on-more-than-scratch-the-surface/.
Happy New Year to all! A year ago, after looking at my Google Analytics stats for the year, I wrote a post reviewing 2008. I figure I may as well do it again for 2009 and also take the opportunity to explain the direction of this site.
The Top Ten Visited Posts In 2009
According to Google Analytics, the top ten visited posts in 2009 (with the home page and plugin pages stripped out) were:

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I’m having a rule-following problem. As in, don’t want to follow them.
Which rules? These ones:

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By Johnny B. Truant
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that affiliate marketing is the easiest way to make money online. You don’t have to create a product or develop a service, you don’t need huge amounts of focused traffic the way you do with AdSense, (I started using AdSense a year ago and just recently passed the $100 minimum payout), and you don’t need to do a ton of advertising or SEO to make it work.
All you really need is an audience to whom you can refer products and services.
Of course, the above statement is true in the same way it’s true that you only need food, water, and shelter to live. It’s technically accurate — but personally, I’d like to have Netflix and a few Twix bars, too.
I made around $20,000 in my first six months from affiliate marketing, and the following are a six tips I’ve found that will take you from bare bones to a legit affiliate income.
1. Establish trust
Technically, you can make a few bucks here and there even by tossing out links to people who don’t know and/or like you. I think of these as “cookie toss” sales, because most affiliate setups dictate that each time a person clicks on an affiliate link, that affiliate’s cookie (which identifies the customer as “belonging” to that affiliate) overwrites any previous cookies on the customer’s computer. If you’re on Twitter during a launch and toss out a bunch of affiliate links for the product […] Read more »

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