Howdy folks,
I finally ironed out the bugs and officially launched my Warhammer Online blog, called The Greenskin last week. If you click on this comic, it will take you to my contest page, explaining how you could win an MMO Calendar and WAR beta key.
Cheers!
I recently created a new blog (almost live… pesky technical glitches) dedicated to EA Mythic’s upcoming MMORPG Warhammer Online: The Age of Reckoning! Please take a moment to stop by and have a look around! 
Find the latest Warhammer Online news, advice, opinions, and webcomics at The Greenskin!
I have the stories penned for at least 12 weeks worth of The Greenskin webcomic, but I’m a terrible drawer, so it may take a week or so before I start getting them up for everyone to enjoy! 
Not that you’re allowed to shill, er, I mean blog-for-profit on WordPress (unless you upgrade to VIP status), but if you could you might be interested to know that another “pay per post” service launched today called SponsoredReviews. This is another site bloggers can use to make a little cash on the web (others include PayPerPost, CreamAid, Blogvertise, etc.).
I’ve signed up for numerous sites like these just because I find the concept interesting and like to see what kinds of companies will pay bloggers to advertise for them. Sponsored Reviews definitely has a tidy interface and it’s extremely easy to navigate. Apparently they use what they call a “hybrid” system so bloggers can find advertisers and vice versa and they pay out bi-weekly using Paypal, which is a bonus. Aside from that, I couldn’t find much else that differentiates it from the crowd, however, the more sites there are like these, the more accessible blogging for profit becomes.
Now looking at it from the WordPress angle, I’m curious to know why WP chooses a different approach to blogging-for-profit than say LiveJournal or MovableType. The fact that Blogger supports advertising is a given since they ultimately want you to use Google AdSense to make THEM money (I believe Google makes way more cash per click than you do by showing their ads).
Does WP not support pay per post because ultimately you’re making money by piggy-backing on their bandwidth and hard work, delivering one of the best FREE platforms around? Is it a philisophical in that they don’t want to “dilute the quality of the Web” with a bunch of falsely-positive reviews (because people were paid to send a false message)? Would they ever support it if they could find a way to monetize it for themselves? I’m actually not sure how WP makes enough money to maintain their servers by offering such a “too good to be true” service like their free WP.com blogs. I know they charge a fairly large monthly fee for VIP status but I’m unsure how many people they have signed up for that.
It’s all very interesting and I am curious to see how things will play out in the future.
I logged in to discover that the blog article I wrote yesterday made it onto the top 10 most popular stories list and incidentally, the front page of WordPress.com:
Sadly, it wasn’t random traffic that sent me up the ranks — it was the referral link I posted on the WoW forums and Digg (gaming_news section). Sadder still, even with 178 story views there wasn’t a single comment. Was my content irrefutable? Boring? Not abrasive enough? Probably a little bit of everything.
I wrote another article similar to this one a month or so ago and experienced a similar outcome. Lots of page views but no feedback. One cool side-effect though is that I’m one of the top-ranked Google results for “WoW Shadow Priest.” You gotta love WordPress’ SEO-friendly back end. I actually get a fair amount daily of traffic to my site from referred links and Google even when I only write an article or two per week:
There are lots of guides out there for writing high-traffic/feedback-generating blog content, and I sometimes inadvertantly hit the nail on the head, but I don’t think you can be successful without putting a concentrated effort into following the rules and guidelines. I also think you need a strong network of friends to really push the limits of popular articles through Digg, trackbacks, and general “spreading of the love.”
I’m not too concerned about it though. I write mainly to get things off my chest or make available certain things that I was trying to figure out for myself. It’s not like WordPress lets you make money off your blog anyway (unless you go VIP – which I can’t afford with my inconsistent writing schedule) and I’m happy to provide the odd tidbit of useful information to any random traveller who happens to stop by along the way.
It was cool to hit the top 10 though!
Cheers.
I’ll be starting up a new, targeted blog using the downloadable WordPress.org format and an external web host. The goal behind this new blog will be to bring viewers the latest and greatest information about audio recording, audio gadgets / new instruments, audio software, and new websites with a focus on music and sound. The secondary ambition is that once I establish a decent reader base, the blog will morph into a splog. This may or may not happen, but at least this new project will allow me to improve my writing skills while keeping current with audio news.
Finally, I hope to learn a bit more about web development with this custom WP install by adding a personalized theme, some widgets, and a few other nifty things.
I’ll update this post with a direct link to the site once it’s up.
This site will remain as my personal blog for everything else!
Theme: Shocking Blue Green. Blog at WordPress.com.
