My online Identity known as Dragon Blogger is my brand and in 2009 I plan to build and extend Dragon Blogger in the online community so that more and more people recognize me and get to know the person as well as the content that I provide.  I have been blogging for 4 months as of December 23rd with this blog and already I have grown to over 12,000 unique visits per month averaging over 350 per day and hitting as many as almost 700 unique visits on some days (can’t figure out why the random spikes happen, but they seem to come from StumbleUpon a few days a month).

I continue to try and write reviews on products, software that my readers may use or want to use to help in their every day computer use.  I also will continue to provide honest and complete movie reviews as well as keep up with my NBC Heroes following.  And first and foremost to my fellow bloggers I plan on sharing everything I learn about blogging, from SEO to Income Generation with my readers so that everyone can model or at least pick some of my tactics to try and see what works for them.

So to summarize the last four months of blogging here is my primary methods for building my current success level:

Entrecard is still my #1 traffic generator consistantly, get the service and drop often.  Drop your inbox but go a day behind and drop further, don’t drop the same day droppers as they can’t drop you back the same day, always drop 1 day behind and you will see better traffic.  Also, do leave comments and feedback, don’t drop anonymously and move on, build a blog community and build blogging friends.

Twitter doesn’t generate enormous traffic but gets me out there and I enjoy connecting with people, I plan to leverage twitter more and more over the next year as just a means of getting to know people and for them to learn who I am and what I am doing.

SocialSpark I have worked hard to become the 3rd most # of friends on SocialSpark and I am hoping to take the 2nd slot in early next year just behind the CEO who automatically has everyone who joins on his friends network (cheater).  I have helped many people on SocialSpark, people will message me with random questions like “How do I get started?”, “How do I Link my blog”, “How do I add the ITK Tools”, and I am always more than happy to share anything I can with people, it comes from my tech support nature in my day job.

Blog Catalog, Zimbio, StumbleUpon, Digg are also helpful and I will be leveraging these more over the next year, particularly StumbleUpon and Blog Catalog which seem to work very well for some people.

For everyone looking to create a successful blog and build readership, and earn a little money on the side, keep this blog in mind as I will be sharing everything I have learned with you at some point as I learn it.  I am by no means making bank, but I have earned between $100 and $150 per month consistantly with my blog by its 2nd month and will be closer to $200 in January I predict.

Happy New Year

-Dragon Blogger

Have a Merry Christmas to all of my readers and friends, if you don’t celebrate Christmas then hey just enjoy the day off of work and go see one of the dozen movies that opens in theaters today.  In the meantime here are some funny Xmas Comics I found scattered online to share with my readers today.  These were the funniest four that I could find and I hope you find them amusing.

-Dragon Blogger

I would like to take the time to thank my top EC Droppers for the past 30 days (Okay, some of November is included). My top 10 for the past 30 days have dropped 31 or 30 drops each, which is astounding and shows how dedicated these fellow bloggers are in returning Entrecard drops. I encourage my readers who are also EC droppers to give my top droppers some EC love, as you know they will return the favor. I also have added the top droppers to my Entrecard Generator, there is a top button specifically for the EC Top Droppers.

-Dragon Blogger

Today I downloaded and installed the Twitme wordpress plug-in which allows you to configure your wordpress blog to automatically send out a tweet notifying your followers of your latest blog post.  This is a valuable plug-in and prevents me from having to manually log into twitter and send updates when I update each of my 4 blogs.  This will do it automatically and save me at least 10-15 minutes per day in manually updating.  But I found the Twitme plug-in has other applications as well and should be customized a little for a better auto-tweeting experience.

This post will walk you through completely configuring the Twitme Wordpress Plugin for Wordpress 2.7

Step 1 - Download your Twitme Wordpress Plugin <- Click Link to download it

Step 2 - Copy the plugin via ftp or scp to your wordpress blog site (place in the <site>/wp-content/plug-ins) folder

Step 3 - Open your wordpress dashboard, click on plug-ins and activate the plug-in.

Now that the plugin is activated you will see a new sidebar module called “Twitme” that appears under your Settings module.

Step 4- Click on the Twitme Settings Link in the Twitme Module

Step 5 - Enter your Twitter ID and Password in the Twitme Settings

Step 6 - Customize your Twitter Message (I didn’t like the default, I like using the %POSTTITLE% reference so that the post title name displays instead of just %BLOGNAME% which is the default.

Step 7 - Make sure Enable Auto Post is selected (it should be by default)

Step 8 - Turn “Use Short urls” on, this way your URL’s will be shrunk via tinyURL so that your tweet doesn’t risk exceeding 140 characters

Step 9 - Turn off “Notify New Followers” this is one annoying feature and you should disable it, it is one of the top peeves by all twitter users and nobody wants to see dozens of auto thank you’s every day.

Step 10 - Click “Test Now” you should see that your credentials worked and see a success at the top of the page.

Step 11 - Write a Post and Publish It

Step 12 - Click on the Twitme module “Twitme” link

Step 13 - Confirm that you see the Post ID and date that it was submitted to twitter, you can also resend for re-tweeting at any time.  (Click to enlarge image below)

Note:  Don’t click Submit All, this will spam out all your recent posts and blast out many tweets which really annoys people.

That is pretty much it for how to setup and configure Twitme and confirm that your posts are being published on twitter.  Check twitter and confirm the verbiage is to your satisfaction and if you don’t like it, play around until you like what the auto tweet’s say.

Now some of the other features of the Twitme plug-in include being able to see all of your followers 100 at a time on the wordpress dashboard, you can also easily direct any one of them by clicking on the direct symbol.  Clicking on their logo will create an @reply to the user, and clicking on the trashcan symbol will delete the follower from your dashboard.

Now at the bottom section of this page you can post tweets, see your most recent followers tweets, check your inbox for direct messages, check your outbox for your recent outgoing direct tweets and reply to tweets and set favorites.  It is like a fully developed web twitter client inside your Wordpress dashboard and casual twitter users probably won’t ever have to go to twitter homepage again and can do all their twitter posting right from their wordpress dashboard.

So now that I have shared everything I know and have learned about this plug-in let me know if you find this post helpful and if you enjoy my technical manual type posts.  If you enjoy this post Stumble or Digg away.

-Dragon Blogger

I finished upgrading the remaining three of my blogs to Wordpress 2.7 so all four now are running the latest version of wordpress.  I am still finding out new stuff every day and the new interface takes some getting used to, but I am liking it very much.  Here are some tips I have learned right off the bat.

First, if you don’t care to see certain tabs on your dashboard you can remove them altogether, by clicking on the “Screen Options” button at top right and then unchecking the segments you don’t wish to see, here is an example of a few I have unchecked to make more room on my dashboard.

(click for larger image)

I liked dragging some of my important dashboard modules around so that my interface has everything I need right at my first glance, so far I don’t see much use for the quick posting as you can’t use your SEO Title Tags, Tags to Technorati, or other post related plug-ins with the quickedit. You also can’t easily categorize your quick edit posts on the fly, I think it is good if you are doing many posts a day and giving updates every few hours, but for posts that you want to enhance for SEO it isn’t that helpful and takes more time in the end to have to go back and update the post manually.

The other thing is I have a comment image plug-in which shows the user’s image called “Easy Gravitar’s”, It was great at showing a double image in the comment when you view the post, but now when you look at the comment in the dashboard, it skews the 2nd image so that it renders fairly ugly in the new Wordpress 2.7:

So I have decided to remove the Easy Gravitars plug-in just because the dashboard comment module doesn’t look good to me. I require things to be cosmetically pleasing when I look at them, or I get annoyed and frustrated at my own interface. One other thing I noticed while creating this post is when you insert images, I can’t tell if its one of my plug-ins but after the 1st image the image details are minimized and you have to open it up and then select “insert into post”, but it does seem to remember if you selected Full Size previously it defaults to that for second image as well.

Thats all I have to share so far, I will post more updates as I learn more and play around with Wordpress 2.7 more.

-Dragon Blogger

I am trying very heavily to win Best Poetry Blog in November 2008 on BlogNetAwards.com, to help encourage people to click on my link and vote and comment.  To vote you must register at bottom right on BlogNetAwards, and then just click on the # of stars you think the website is worth.  IE, 10 stars if you think the site rocks.

I am asking for 2 minutes of your time to vote for my Wanderer Thoughts blog, or any of my blogs on BlogNetAwards, you can visit http://www.blognetawards.com and just search for “germino” and you will see all 4 of my blog sites listed.

Wanderer Thoughts is my poetry blog and the one I am heavily gunning for.

Anyone who votes and comments for me, I will reward you with 500 Entrecredits just for voting, just contact me via Twitter @dragonblogger, and I will transfer your 500 Entrecredits for your vote.

Click on the image below to go to BlogNetAwards and Vote For me:

Thanks in advance my readers

-Dragon Blogger

In trying to branch out my Poetry Blog more, I decided to post a new original poem here on DragonBlogger, and encourage my readers to visit my Wanderer Thoughts Poetry Blog, if you enjoy my poems then vote for me for Best Poetry Blog on BlogNetAwards.

Cuddle Against The Cold

A chilling wind whips past our faces
Noses frozen and lips drying out
I wrap my embrace around you
With the warmth of an electric blanket

Our eyes meet and our lips part
No icy stare between these faces
Our gazes warm the soul
This is the look of love

So we continue to walk and our fight
Against the cold and dark frigid night
Only to reach the door to our dwelling
Where I can feel our love still swelling

We get inside and the door slams shut
We cuddle against the cold bodies heaving
Clothes unravel and pile on the floor
As to what happens next I can tell you no more

-Poem by Dragon Blogger

I have decided to put some funny Thanksgiving strips in my post to keep it light and fun.  I hope all of you have a great time, and for those of you who work in the trenches on Thanksgiving and the day after, at least be thankful you are still working to help ease the sting of it.

I am thankful that in less than 4 months I have an average of 10,000 visitors to my blog and dozens of regular readers and several very good blog friends now.  All of this started with the thought of putting Dragonblogger together, and I am amazed at how much fun I am having and how much I enjoy sharing information with you all.

-Dragon Blogger

I wanted to be able to have 20,000 links on the web as recorded by Link Popularity Check (LPC) by December 31st 2008, and am now at 18,351 links for this blog.  This is just 500 links behind my mentor Damien Riley’s Postcards From The Funny Farm blog.  Aronil is still shooting way ahead with 22000+ links and her blog is just beautiful, I can see why it is getting so popular.

I decided to add my friend Jenn’s blogs BeforeIAmFamous and DragonFly Poems into the LPC and see how they stack up, BeforeIamFamous almost has 15,000 links, while DragonFly Poems has 3900.  My poetry blog Wanderer Thoughts has 7,851 links and my personal blog Justin Germino has just over 3,100.

Someone told me that the blogger who runs Dooce.com makes a ton of money with their blog, so I added them to LPC and behold dooce.com has over 2 million links on the web, just for comparison the famous celebrity blogger Perez Hilton has over 3.3 million links on LPC.  So I realize that if my blog can eventually reach the million link level I can start really earning some revenue.

My goal is to grow from 20000 links this year to 100,000 by the end of 2009, if I can gain 20,000 links in my blogs first 4 months I think I can grow that to 100,000 by the end of 2009.

Here is the latest image from LPC, click for larger view:

I had to stream the trailer here it is so exciting and I really like what I see so far.  The energy and enthusiasm being built around the Star Trek movie may revitalize the genre and the series altogether.  I particularly like how James Tiberus Kirk was always a rogue and fiercly independant.

My blog fans what do you all think of the new trailer?  Are you as excited to see the new Star Trek movie as I am?  It looks even great as Zachary Quinto who plays Sylar, does a great job it would appear playing a young spock.

-Dragon Blogger