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If you spend any amount of time in the blogosphere one of the first things that you’ll notice is that you start to use a lot of stupid words like blogosphere. The second thing you will notice is that the world of blogs is a lot like the world of late night television. Everywhere you look you’re inundated with infomercials and pyramid schemes. Get rich quick. How to make money from home with no effort.

At the top of the blog world you have a few bloggers who are raking in serious cash. Six figures in some cases. The problem with this is that your average person isn’t very clever. So instead of saying, ‘wow, that’s amazing how do I learn from them’, your average person will say, ‘I’m going to create a clone of their website’.

To begin with, if you’re sitting on the internet reading blogs all day, you’re probably not the most motivated person in the world. Combine that with the fact that blogging is the new gold rush and forget it. You suddenly have thousands of people on the web trying to become millionaires by blogging.

To have any chance of making money through blogging you need to do two main things. 1. Learning from others & 2. You need to find something that you’re genuinely interested in (and no, getting rich quick is not a good idea, too much competition), and write about it consistently better than everyone else.

Be forewarned blogging is probably not going to make you rich. The blogosphere reminds me a lot of the tech bubble (we’ll call it the blogobubble because that sounds funny), a lot of people trying to get very wealthy in a short amount of time without any sort of plan. Advertisers are only going to pay for results/traffic and there is a lot of competition out there. That’s why the people at the top of the pyramid do so well for themselves, making money becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Nothing draws a crowd like a crowd, so if you see someone out there making a ton of money, you’re drawn to their site to find out why and so is everyone else.

Now I can’t tell you what your niche should be and I can’t make you stick to it. But what I can help you with is the learning part. Below I’ve collected some articles concerning the ways in which you can make money online with your blog, the major revenue streams that bloggers use and links to some of the biggest blogs (yes you too can help hold up this pyramid). In part II of this article, I’ll teach you a little about long-tail economics and how you can do alright for yourself financially without copying the big boys.

Articles about Blogging for Dollars:

• “How to Make Money from Your Blog”
• “Earning a Six Figure Income From Blogging”
• “Ad Sense Tips for Bloggers”
• “My top 7 blog monetization methods”
• “101 Blog tips I learned in 2006″
• “Monetizin Word-Press Plugins”
• “The Art of Link Baiting”
• Not exactly an article, but Google’s AdSense blog

Some Blogs about … Blogging:

www.entrepreneurs-journey.com
www.problogger.net
www.stevepavlina.com
www.doshdosh.com
www.johntp.com
www.johnchow.com
www.copyblogger.com

The Major Revenue Sources:

AdSense:

• Google’s text based ad service. The way Google makes all of its money and many bloggers do too.

Amazon Associates:

• “Launched in 1996, Associates is Amazon.com’s affiliate marketing program. By linking to Amazon products and services you can add compelling content for your site visitors enjoyment and receive up to 10% in referral fees for doing so.”

Chitika:

• “Chitika provides bloggers the opportunity to harness their independent original content and opinions to monetize the traffic to their site. Offers retailers a new channel to merchandise their products, and gives consumers better access to a broader base of independent expert advice from the blogger community.”

Link Share:

• “As a LinkShare affiliate, you will earn revenue for driving sales, leads and traffic to partner sites. Find hundreds of affiliate programs from Fortune 500 and other leading businesses in the LinkShare Network. Registration is free”

Review Me:

• Write reviews for cash.

Text Link Ads:

• Inserts text links into your posts.

Let’s face it, you’re a nerd, a geek, a dork. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. Many people think that nerds don’t have a sense of humor. Not true, nerds are funny, while among other nerds. These days things are good for us, shall we say, intellectuals(pronounced: losers). Web comics have allowed jokes once only shared in the dorms of MIT to spread to the rest of the country.

Below I’ve collected some of the interent’s best web comics. I’ve included sample comic strips of these underground phenoms, they are all property of their respective owners, blah, blah, blah. I’m just trying to give you a taste so you know what you’re getting when you click, fair use and all that.

The Best of the Web Comics:

bLaugh

Ctrl+Alt+Del

Cyanide and Happiness

Digital Unrest

ExtraLife

HandRooster

….Battlestar Galactica anyone??

RPG-TV

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

User Friendly

the Warehouse

Wellington Grey

White Ninja

XKCD

There are plenty of other webcomics out there. Look out for part II of this series, sometime in the future.

- Editor’s Choice.

Ever missed your favorite TV show, didn’t have access to TV, or been bored at work (don’t do this at work, I’m joking…kind of)? Of course you have. I’ll show you how to watch TV over the internet using either Windows or Ubuntu. I’ll start by assuming that you’re really impatient and work towards solutions for people who have more time on their hands.

The first decision to be made is whether you would like to watch the episode by downloading it to your computer, or stream it directly from a web server. The benefit of streaming an episode is that you have instant access to it. The downside of this approach is that the episode is usually highly compressed(sound and video aren’t that great). On the other hand you could use BitTorrent. BitTorrent is much slower, you have to download the episode first but you usually get a much much higher quality product. On the flip side, the major television studios are always looking to sue people for piracy. Let’s start with the software you need….

Programs:

Adobe Flash Player (32 Bit Ubuntu & Windows): This is how most of your streamed files will get to you.

• Download

Automatix(Ubuntu Only): If you’re using Ubuntu, you probably already know that it doesn’t come with all the codecs you need to watch different types of media. Automatix also allows you to download other programs that you’re going to need for a positive multimedia experience.

• Download

• FAQ

Azureus(Both Ubuntu & Windows): Azureus is a BitTorrent client. It supports plugins, which is important for your protection.

• Download

• FAQ

Peer Guardian(Both Ubuntu & Windows): Peer Guardian is a plugin for Azureus. Essentially it attempts to block any connections from the MPAA, RIAA, or anyone else who’s going to sue you for filesharing. No need to download this, you can get it right in the Azureus client by going to plugins.

• Website

Swiftfox (Ubuntu Only):Swiftfox is the optimized, 32 bit version of Firefox. If you have a 64 bit version of Ubuntu, you’re going to need this to watch streamed media.

• Download

VLC Media Player (Both Ubuntu & Windows): This media player plays just about every file format out there.

• Download

Streaming TV Shows:

From The TV Studios Themselves (The main way of getting episodes streamed legally for free):

1. Links to the Big Studios
2. A lot more choices

Streamed from other places (Without Ads, more choices, but probably less legal):

1. ChannelKing
2. FreeTube
3. PeekVid
4. QuickSilverScreen
5. TV Link Vault
6. TV Links
   
7. TV-Video.net

BitTorrent:

1. EZTV
2. BT Junkie
3. IsoHunt
4. MiniNova
5. Pirate Bay
6. SloTorrent
7. Torrent Box
8. Torrent Spy !!!Before clicking be aware of this story!!!
9. X Television Interactive

Editor’s Pick

Want to Own your Episodes?:

I can’t really recommend iTunes or any of the other ways to buy electronic copies of TV shows. They all come with DRM built in. Treat your customers like thieves, and they will become thieves. You’re better off waiting until the boxed set comes out, then at least you have a copy that you can do whatever you want with (well technically they say you can’t, but what are they going to come into your house and stop you from lending the DVDs to your friends?)

Amazon.com Tv Central

P.S. And look, if you’re dumb enough to get caught doing something illegal, it’s not my fault. Take responsibility for your own actions.

And that concludes my three part series for beginning web designers. The lists will be updated, changes will be made, and descriptions will become more descriptive as time permits….. Now onto the next internet frontier….