So I had set my goals for October 2008 and posted them previously, here is a reprint of my goals for October 2008 vs what I actually achieved.

Keep my Blog < 1000 IzeaRank

I have met this goal and in fact my blog has been in the 300 range for the entire month.

Keep my Blog < 500,000 Alexa Rank\

Again, my 3 month average is in the 200,000 range and this is because my blog only existed for 2 months.  I am the 100,000 range weekly average.

20 new Back Links

I only managed to achieve 11 new back links for the month of October for this blog.

Average Unique Visits to 200 consistently, this means I am shooting for 6000 Visits for the month on GA

I have averaged 318 unique visitors per day and hit 8095 unique visits for the month.

Dragon Blogger try to earn $100

I have made a total of $110 in payments for the month of October, not pending payments but actual paypal received payments.  ($17.50 from SocialSpark, $5 from PayPerPost, $87.50 from PayU2Blog)

So I had exceeded all of my goals except the number of back links, in the spirit of adjusting my goals I will set my November goals for reasonable growth.  I have seen my blog taper off quite a bit so I won’t be unrealistic.  Note each of my blogs has their own goals, and my other blogs have their own goals and income.  My personal site Justin Germino has actually started making some money as well.

• Goals for Dragonblogger.com for November 2008.

• 10 New Back Links

• GA Visits Keep Average 320 per day / 9,000 Unique for the Month

• Try to earn at least $100.00 for DragonBlogger.com

• RealRank (Izea Rank stays < 400)

• Alexa Rank below 200,000

Wish me luck in meeting my blog goals.

-Dragon Blogger

So I have been tagged by KellyK
and decided to play the game and share 7 things about myself and tag some fellow bloggers who I follow and would like to learn more about.

First, these are the rules:
1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

So here are the 7 things about Dragon Blogger

1. My Real Name is Justin Robert Germino
2. I have lived in Arizona 13 years this month but was born and raised in New York City (Queens)
3. I’ve been told I am a hopeless romantic, my favorite movies include (The Princess Bride, Stardust and What Dreams May Come)
4. I have a very analytical job (I work with Web Site Security Software), but I am a very creative person. I channel this through my poetry blog Wanderer Thoughts
5. I have two beautiful boys ages 5 and 2 years old
6. I have only started blogging in the last 60 days and am addicted to it, also addicted to twitter now too
7. I have made more decent people from blogging and twitter in the last two months than I have found in 12 years.

That’s my 7 items for this tagging

So I tag the following 7 people whose blogs I follow and I would like to know 7 more things about:

The Lady Programmer

Cheryl from DailyBlonde

Aronil

Damien Riley

Dani

Chorva

Nicole Humphrey

-Dragon Blogger

Today I received my first paypal payment from blogging and I was very excited to see the transfer in my paypal account this morning.  I want to tell everyone that anyone can make some money blogging if you have a little time, dedication and patience.  Writing skills help, but I have seen blogs that still make money without very credible writing talent.

I started this blog (so far my only profitable one) on August 23rd 2008.  That is around 6 weeks ago.  I was able to qualify for 3 SocialSpark and 3 PayPerPost opportunities but this was back when my blog was a PR of 2, now that it has been knocked down to PR0 since Saturday, I haven’t been able to qualify for a single post or opportunity, or even gotten any assignments from PayU2Blog.

Anyway, SocialSpark and PayPerPost have a fairly long “pending” period where your money is in pending status and pays out at the end of the next month or cycle.  So I haven’t actually been paid from either of those, even though I have about $15 pending in PayPerPost and $22.50 pending in SocialSpark.

PayU2Blog has been where my real payday is, I was assigned a # of opportunities between September 23rd and October 2nd.  I was able to make $77.50 cents in just 2 weeks of off these opportunities, and the best thing about PayU2Blog, is there is no fighting to try to get a slot in opps, you are given assignments and you do them.  On the downside, you don’t have a choice, you must do all your assignments or you risk not being given anymore.

Here is snapshot of my first payout from PayU2Blog:

Here is the snapshot of my paypal account showing the transfer was made:

Now, as mentioned I haven’t gotten a single Assignment Since October 3rd, which ironically is when my PageRank was whacked by Google. PayU2Blog claims it isn’t based on PR solely, but other factors. I was able to link my other personal blog Justin Germino to my PayU2Blog account, so maybe I can get more assignments with two blogs linked.

Most of the assignments are 50 word freeform using the text link required, you can craft them however you want and they are very easy to do. Just remember to check your account often, PayU2Blog doesn’t email notify when new assignments are given, and they must be completed before the deadline.

Every blogger who wants to try to make money with paid posts should at least try out PayU2Blog, it allowed me to bring in $77.50 in my first 30 days of blogging, which means this one blog already paid for the DNS names of my 3 other blogs and some of my web hosting fee’s. In less than its first month my blog has paid for itself and helped me fund 3 other blogs.

Not to bad for 1 months worth of blogging.

-Dragon Blogger

Ok, so I created a thread in the Technorati forum about my site being flagged and removed this morning.  Less than 6 hours later Janice a Technorati rep had left a comment on my previous blog about my blog was flagged as spam due to multiple ADSENSE Id’s found in the code.  Think this is because I am using an adsense plug-in in my sidebar, and using some adsense code in my HeFO plugin.  But My site doesn’t display more than 3 Google AdSense per page that is the limitation of adsense.

Anyway, my blog is now listed back on Technorati, and I noticed my authority jumped from 47 to 53 in only a couple of hours. The Technorati definition of Authority is as follows:

Technorati Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority the blog has.

So how does Technorati Authority differ from BackLinks on blogsearch I wonder?  Is it any different?

-Dragon Blogger

I found out for some reason Technorati flagged my blog, and it is no longer listed.  I can’t re-link it because it was flagged.  This is really foul play, they didn’t warn me or notify me, and I contacted support but have not received any response in two days.  I was just starting to leverage and like using it, I had built my blog up to 47 Authority for it now to be squashed.

I read all their rules and terms and such, and couldn’t think of why my blog would have been removed.  So now I am off to search their forums and see if I have better luck that way than with customer support.

Has this happened to anybody else, how did you resolve it?

-Dragon Blogger

Now that we are at October 1st 2008, it is time for me to set goals for my blog’s second month of life.  I have achieved quite a bit with my first month and am going to realistically pace myself a little better for the second month.

Rather than try to achieve some rediculously low IzeaRank I will set this purpose:

1. Keep my Blog < 1000 IzeaRank
2. Keep my Blog < 500,000 Alexa Rank
3. 20 new Back Links
4. Average Unique Visits to 200 consistantly, this means I am shooting for 6000 Visits for the month on GA
5. Dragon Blogger try to earn $100

I go into these goals with renewed spirit and realize how much I not only enjoy blogging, but browsing around getting to know others in my blogging community.  Some of you are my regulars, and some of you are just visiting my blog for Heroes posts, or Blogging Tips and such.

If anyone has any topic, they would like me to share or talk about be sure and let me know.  Especially if you need help with your blogging, or any sort of internet related technology.

-Dragon Blogger

Wow, so sure enough I looked at Google Analytics and Dragonblogger.com did 409 unique visitors yesterday which is double my normal traffic for the past few weeks.  It turns out that my Monday night Heroes Blog posts are extremely popular, my one post getting 199 page views specifically in less than 24 hours.

(This is a big deal for me, since my blog is only a month and a few days old).

Review of Heroes Season 3 - Episode 3 - One of Them, One of Us, 199 views

This encourages me to keep up with topics that bring in readers, in light of this, I will be posting my next review after reading the most recent Heroes Novel Chapter and will give summary and opinion on that.

-Thanks for all support, feedback, comments and opinions readers.

In the spirit of mentioning top droppers for Entrecard, I have decided to do one post per month giving props to my fellow entrecard users who have consistantly dropped on me.
Here is a list of the top 20 bloggers who dropped on my Entrecard Site for the Month of September.

Thank you very much to everyone on the list, enjoy your linkback.
Great registry hacks
BMWF1Blog
Kutsara at Tinidor
IndoContest
chorva!
Here to Ask Why
Random Thoughts
Steven Video
info ebazaar blogging corner
Waycool Modz

-Dragon Blogger

I just learned something about wordpress that I didn’t know, many of you probably knew this feature but I just learned it tonight.  Did you know you can edit the date of your post and set it to the future, like tomorrow or next week.  When you publish your blog post with a future date, it won’t display and actually be available to your readers until that date.

This is the perfect way to write a whole bunch of posts and pre-date them if you will be on vacation, so that your blog updates with new posts every day without you having to do a darn thing while you are on vacation.  Of course you can’t write about current events for that day, but for a poetry blog, or philosophy or personal blog, you can create posts just so your blog doesn’t have a few days missing posts.

This was a really neat feature in my opinion.

You just click edit on the right of creating a new post, and change the date for any future date.

See Screenshot:

Now before you chafe me with “we knew that, how did you not know that?” Remember, I have only been blogging for about 37 days with wordpress, so I am still new and learning it.

So, I will turn this question into a Spark Contest.
How many of you bloggers alter your post date, to either past or future to either, what are some of the reasons for altering your post date? What benefits do you look for? (Besides trying to age your blog for pay sites).

-Dragon Blogger