Overall I’m not too disappointed seeing I haven’t been blogging much anyways so I maybe lost 20 articles at the most. None the less a loss is a loss so I will try to write a few times over this month to get some more new content for everyone to read.

So what have I learned over the last 48 hours?

1. No matter how sure you are create weekly backups
2. Stop being lazy and saying I’ll do it later.
3. Don’t get out of the habit and stop making backup.
4. Back up your data to your PC instead of the server.

Creating weekly backups will help you keep data and content in case of situations like I had arise. Make sure to back up your system as often as possible and download it to your personal PC.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

I’m sure this project can be a success but I will have to start vlogging here on my blog. I truly believe that that my personal blog marketing has made blogengage so successful. I”m sure my vlogging will create a great buzz about my next project.

As I grow with this idea, try new software and decided how I’m going to move forward with the project I’ll keep you updated. Readers of my blog will have first dibs at  the latest news and updates regarding the project. Follow me and learn how to successfully create a new website in today’s fast changing web environment.

Things we will discuss

• Selecting a Name

• Setting our Goals

• Developing the Plan

• Building the website

• Marketing the idea

• SEO

• Building the Network

• Evaluating Success

Make sure to visit often for updates as I move forward in launching my new website.

Be sure to add me as a friend, bbrian017

Twitter, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

Live Running Music

I’m sure it’s a a great song but seriously do not auto play music on your blog. Truest me you may be the only person who enjoys it. Also it takes resources from our pc’s and could cause or browser to freeze or even crash.

Live Running Video

Perhaps one of the most annoying things when visiting a website or blog is live running video. Simply stop it and remove it from your website.

Pop-up Ads

If you have pop up ads that’s it your over. I would say 90% of the visitors going to your site will leave if you have a pop up ad and will never return on purpose again.

Full Page Ads

Personally I cannot stand full  page ads that take over a website. If this happens during my visit I normally never return to the site. I have one website that does full page ads but it’s a site specific to organic traffic so I don’t care about the end users as it’s meant to generate me a profit.

It’s very easy to apply these suggestion to your blog. If you want to keep your readers longer then simply do as I suggest. Think twice before you add anything to your blog and ensure it’s not going to affect the visitors reading experience.

As always don’t forget to vote for me @ blogengage and if interested you can join my social group.

Add me as a friend, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

If you’re an active member at blogengage you will know I have spent so much time and effort trying to combat and fight spam but yet the site continued to be dominated and control by spammers. Every morning I had the luxury of deleting spam submission after spam submission. This truly was a never ending process for me and my voluntary staff.

Little did I know pligg developed a module that would allow admin to moderate the first story submitted from all new members on the site. After finding out pligg was doing everything in their power to ensure I didn’t get a copy of this it turned out the exact same version of this 20 usd module was available for free at the social web cms forums. This is a branch of the pligg software.

So like any sane person I went and downloaded and to my surprise it worked amazingly. I installed it and since then our members haven’t been subject to any spam what so ever. This is a big step for blogengage allowing its members to enjoy a spam free community and blogging environment.

So I invite you all to sign up and start submitting to our site. I think you will find it more fun now that we have the ability to use the upcoming page spam free. Please also be social and vote for other bloggers. We need all the votes we can get. Simply submitting and not voting looks poorly on yourself so be active.

As always don’t forget to vote for me @ blogengage and if interested you can join my social group.

Add me as a friend, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

Next thing you know the idiots from pligg sign up and post a message stating anyone that helps me or buys the mod will be in violation of terms and services agreement by redistributing an item from the pligg pro shop. I thought this was pretty funny. It’s amazing how much these losers actually hate me and are jealous of blogengage becoming so successful without their help. For the record it’s not re distribution seeing someone will be buying it for me not buying and reselling it.

Let’s take a step back in time and explain how we got to this point of no return. When I first started working with the pligg software it was extremely basic and came with little or no functionality. (still does) They simply offered an out of the box piece of crap and charged you an arm and a leg in order to buy any modules. So the core software was free but anything cool or interesting you needed to pay money for.

I was very much against this movement seeing I’m a huge fan of open source software. You will notice all my site are open source software. Pligg boasts that their offering is all open source and it is until you want to try and make a success of your spam filled pligg site. So needless to say I was more then open with my opinion continuously got into verbal confrontations with developers looking to make money from the open source project. Some would go as far as calling me the modern day Peter Pan in a software sense of course.

Eventually after many arguments and discussions I was banned and removed from their website. Please also take note I was a donor and had donated money to their cause seeing I really love open source software.

After my ban I was worried how I could successfully run blogengage seeing I had little or no experience with the software. Luckily for me I managed to make a lot of friends within their community. Perhaps even more friends then they had themselves and got much e-mail support.

While all this was happening pligg was having their own internal issues. Ash Digg the main developer of the site announced he was in fact removing himself from the project due to conflict of interest. Ashdigg has the same opinion as me and was not interested in profits but more less an open source community project. He then started to branch from pligg and created Social Web CMS. The project also developed a module that allowed pligg users to convert to their Social Web CMS platform.

I did upgrade to the latest release of Social Web CMS but eventually moved back to pligg as I enjoyed their platform a little more and also liked the direction pligg was going. Today I’m running the latest version of pligg and plan on staying with them for sometime.

The point of this article was to let people know how rude and inconsiderate their community is. If you’re looking at starting a Social Community or CMS I would suggest taking a look at any other platform then pligg. If you don’t believe me simply go into the forums and read. You will see the rudeness in the answers from support staff and more.

Suggestion of software to use in replacement of pligg.

hotarucms

Drigg

phpdug

Social Web CMS

As always don’t forget to vote for me @ blogengage and if interested you can join my social group.

Add me as a friend, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

Right now we are running the following specs,

• Intel Pentium 4 – 3.0 GHz duo core!
• 1×120 GB disk drive
• 500 GB bandwidth
• 1 GB RAM

If you are interested you can join in the discussions inside my blog forum.

So today I get the luxury of moving all my website over to this new server.

As always don’t forget to vote for me @ blogengage and if interested you can join my social group.

Add me as a friend, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

I first started with blogengage back in 2007. The site was small, no semi custom template and looked like an out of the box pligg 9.9.0 beta software system. I was always a fan of  phpbb so I knew if I was going to start up blogengage I also wanted to create a small support and blogging forum.  I also went and created a blog directory on the same domain name a few week into the website.

For the past 2 years my only regret is not expanding on the look of my website. The Forums, The Social Network and the Blog Directory look like different planets. I have no consistency and it drives me nuts! I’m OCD like that when it comes to anything I take pride in. It must be perfect and if it’s not perfect then it must be to the best of my ability.

Customer Service

People get really picky in this environment and are easily offended. I take all e-mails with caution but come on I’m only human and I have bad days too. I try to be prompt and reply to all support cases with definitive answers.

Servers and Costs

I will admit I’m not a rich guy. I purchased a Virtual Server for blogengage and my other websites run from it as well. Eventually I will look at purchasing a dedicated server but right now my funds will not allow it. I just bought a 2009 Kia Sportage and my student loans are killing me.

Design and Functionality

I think overall I’ve managed to provide our community with some cool functions and features to build quality relationships and meet new friends while promoting and marketing their blogs. Blogengage has many features all bloggers can take advantage of. The community is Do Follow and passes all the page rank juice to it’s blogging members. We have a nice top members promotional spot in the top sidebar and I also offer a featured spot for random articles. We offer a link love program and multiple ways to promote your blog using our blog forum.

Growth and outlook

I’m 100% dedicated to blogengage and it’s members. I will Market, Design, Develop and Promote the blogengage of today and make it into the blogengage of tomorrow. With you, as members and  friends we will grow.

As always don’t forget to vote for me @ blogengage and if interested you can join my social group.

Add me as a friend, bbrian017

Thanks,

Brian

Reader Suggestions

The majority of suggestions recieved from your readers will be either content related or specific improvements to the quality of your website. Reader suggestions are the most important to listen to or you will eventually be writing for no one. Take all suggestions into consideration and implement the end result. Piece of advice don’t ever say you will do something and not follow through with your words. Get things done the right way right away.

Constructive Criticism

Sometimes this type of feedback can bite you in the ass. Sometimes it’s offensive, or more so embarrassing. Listen to me right now and listen good. It’s this exact type of feedback you must accept. Don’t get me wrong if your reader is being an asshole and saying stuff that’s irrelevant you can disregard and perhaps delete the comment but if it’s truthful and beneficial to your blog you mustaccept and implement the idea. This is only going to make the overall experience much more professional.

Reader Feedback

This type of feedback will normally be in the form of an opinion. It’s always beneficial to listen and take the the feedback into consideration. This can be easily disregarded but it’s highly reccomended not to as you should value your readers opinions and respect what they have to say.

It’s ironic I was posting about this today seeing a new reader of mine, Doug Dillard and the Gooroo actually provided some positive feedback on yesterday’s post. If it wasn’t for these guys saying something I would still be having issue with the images displaying properly. For the record they may still be having issues but steps have been taken to improve the situation. This just proves how important it is to listen to your readers feedback and to act on it.

Can you give an example of where feedback has improved your blog?

As always don’t forget to vote for me @ blogengage and if interested you can join my social group.

Thanks,

Brian

Finding a need: Finding your prospects need is never easy. In all reality 90% of sales people or companies lose their sale because they just didn’t truly understand the needs of their prospects. If I need apple and you’re selling me an orange we have a problem. This example is really good because the initial need I had was simply for fruit.

Listening: Listen to your customers. I’m really bad for this. I make sales calls to prospects and sometimes find myself rambling. This isn’t good and for many reasons. You an literally close the deal using the wrong words and potentially scare away your prospects. This means the more you listen and less you talk the better your chances are of determining your prospects needs and closing a sales.

Uncovering internal issues: Alright this part will be achieved by the above suggestions. Unlike listening you must do some talking here, specifically related to probing questions. (see below) These are a form of open ended questions that will reveal the true needs or issues of your prospects. Questions must be open ended and try to focus around your products. Remember we are trying to quality our sales lead so we don’t waste our time and most importantly their time.

Pricing: Can your prospect afford your product? Yes it’s great, yes it’s competitive or even advanced for the industry but does your prospect have the capital or budget needed to afford your products or service. Pricing is make or brake in today’s economy so make sure you pre quality your prospect by researching what their annual sales are or at least some GP information.

Qualify your sales prospect: At this point you should have enough information regarding your prospect and to start qualifying them as lead. Just because someone has a need doesn’t mean your product or service is the right solution for them. Compile a list of features advantages and benefits your products has and start comparing them to see if in fact you can fulfill the need of the prospect.

Probing Questions (Open Ended): Let’s assume I’m selling software solutions. These are a few of the open ended questions I would ask.

• If you could improve the way you’re doing business today what are some of the steps you would take?
• What are the most important and missing elements in your products today?
• What do you like the most about the way your competitors are doing business?
• Where are the places within your business you think productivity could be improved?

Depending on what products or service your selling your questions will change. See the idea here is to ask questions they will encourage a response from your prospect. With out any talking you will never know what that specific prospects is looking for.

Do you have any more suggestion for qualifying your sales leads?

As always don’t forget to vote for me @ blogengage and if interested you can join my social group.

Thanks,

Brian

Have a look at this search Image. Click here for search,

This is the cached page screenshot of blog catalog…

Some would say he what the heck it’s a back links anyways and a strong one too. Perhaps you’re correct and maybe my rankings will totally drop without that back link but it’s a rick I’m willing to take. This is from one search result. I was replying to a comment and when I clicked the search term I see this disgusting result.

I’m  keeping my groups and profile but that’s it.