The financial crisis sweeping the global economy is one of the most serious challenges ever, leading to a sharp slowdown in growth all around the world. Many people will probably lose their jobs due to the crisis especially in the United States. The economists believe that people tend to spend less, and look alternative ways to make money during financial crises.

During the great depression of the 1930′s, blogging was not an alternative way to make money, but today it is. You can make regular income from blogging by 2009 if you take some serious steps from today. There are some blog mentoring programs you should consider joining in order to become a pro-blogger.

Blog Mastermind Program

Yaro Starak’s blog coaching program, Blog Mastermind is a very serious mentoring program you should enroll if you are going to make money by blogging. The program is less than $100 a month to become a member, and you get direct access to your mentor Yaro Starak, plus all kinds of videos, podcasts, e-lessons to make you money online.I graduated from it, so I must admit that Blog Mastermind was a milestone in my pro-blogging career.

Unless you are an Australian you probably don’t know this. The Australian dollar has dropped dramatically, from 95 cents US a few months ago, to about 68 cents US due to financial crisis. Why this matters to you is that Yaro Starak’s blog coaching program, Blog Mastermind, charges admission in Australian dollars until Monday, 13th October. If you act quickly, you will save 30%.

I know it is not so easy to pay $97 a month over 6 months or $497 upfront for Blog Mastermind. Therefore I decided to offer prizes if you join the program through my Blog Mastermind affiliate link: Join Blog Mastermind and Earn Prizes from SearchForBlogging.com

Expert WordPress

WordPress has recently become blogger’s standard. You need to use WordPress perfectly well as a pro-blogger. If you can afford you should also enroll Alex Sysoef’s Expert WordPress program. The good thing about the program is that a custom script does the full blog configuration and customization based on a few answers you provide on web page and you got a clear winner. But you really must see the video that shows you entire process to understand just how simple it is. Watch the video Expert WordPress to see how anyone can create a blog in less than 4 minutes from Start to Publish.

Blogging in Action

Shaun Taylor’s Blogging in Action offer consists of a huge 260-page e-book that is current, accurate, and packed with insight. It’s been updated for WordPress 2.5 and WordPress 2.6. The book also comes with a keyword tools, four companion videos, three bonus administration videos, a 16-volume QuickStart video series, 10 Internet Basics videos, and several bonuses.

Shaun delivered ideas, concepts and strategies at a pace that eventually made my head spin. This is the kind of program you can read over and over again and still pick up more and more jewels of priceless information.

• Have you downloaded your free copy of Firefox 3.0? If not, then download it from here Firefox 3.0
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The web browser wars are back! Firefox 3 is to be launched soon by Mozilla. Microsoft is going to answer with Internet Explorer 8.0. Whose gonna win the war, we don’t know. However Firefox 3 seems by far better than Internet Explorer 8.0 on the paper. Whichever browser wins the war, the end users will also win!

Since very long time I use Firefox for blogging. I am quite satisfied with its performance and add-ons capability. Thanks to the folks in the Mozilla community, Firefox 3 will be even better than the existing version. You may download Firefox 3 Release Candidate 3 before the final version is launched. It is available in more than 45 languages as a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes new features as well as dramatic improvements to performance, memory usage and speed. Download a Firefox version that speaks your language from here : Firefox 3

You may also read Field Guide to Firefox 3 to get familiar with Firefox 3. I will later write a detailed report on Firefox 3 when the final release is available.

Now, please tell me which browser do you use for blogging? And why?

Individual photos which used to sell for thousands of dollars – thanks to a new concept called Microstock – now you can pick them up for pennies. Nowadays everyone is a photographer. Did you know that you can sell your photos online and make substantial amount of money from that as well?

What is Stock Photography?

Stock photography is a term mainly used to describe the images used by the companies on their packaging, leaflets, newsletters, and websites. Istockphoto is one of the most popular stock photography website. Istockphoto image prices varies between 1 credit per download to 20 credits. Credits are $1.30 each. Image size and resolution are decisive when it comes to pricing. High resolution images are more expensive than the low ones. Illustrations are usually the most expensive images at Istockphoto.

When I have money in my PayPal account, I usually buy some good quality photos from Istockphoto. It makes my blog posts more attractive and interesting to read.

Why Microstock is Good For You?

1. Free to participate and there are no work hours, no bosses and no due dates. Feel the freedom!
2. It pays money which is great given photography isn’t cheap.
3. It is also a great way to educate yourself about the commercial side of photography.

How to Make Money From Your Own Photography

I found great online resources where Microstock experts are telling about their tips and secrets. I am sure you will find the information very valuable. After reading them, I have set my goal to make money online by selling my digital photos through Microstock websites.

I know it is not easy to make steady income from it immediately, but a few years later it seems possible to make a substantial income from it.Read these blogs, and start your Microstock journey from today:

Microstock for Digital Photography Students – Make Money From Your Photography

Microstock Sites: An Overview

Microstock

Getting started with Microstock Photography I/IV

Getting started with Microstock Photography II/IV

Getting started with Microstock Photography II/IV

Getting started with Microstock Photography II/IV

Some Microstock websites to check:

• Shutterstock
• Dreamstime
• Crestock
• fotolia
• 123rf
• Stockxpert

I am looking forward to hear your experiences if you sell photos online through Microstock websites.

Quite often I receive congratulations messages from beginner level bloggers. It seems like an amazing achievement what I have done so far with my blog within 9 months from their point of view. Actually it was 5% luck, and 95% hardworking.

I was just another blogger from Dec 2006 till Sep 2007. I was using Blogger.com. Take a look at my blog at that time : Meeting-Continents. I used to write paid reviews from PayPerPost, Reviewme, Smorty etc. with that blog. I was making $20-30 per day with paid reviews. On the other hand I was writing about my lovely city Istanbul.

Even though I was making good money, I realized that writing paid reviews was taking so much time. I had no time left for social life. I was working for a full time job, and then at nights I was chasing for paid review opportunities to write. I started to think about smarter ways to make money online before it is too late.

I was so lucky that I somehow got an invitation from Yaro Starak for his Blog Mastermind blog mentoring program. At that time I knew little about Yaro. I started reading his blog before giving my final decision.

I found what Yaro wrote on his blog very valuable. His English was crystal clear, and his posts were very informative. I decided to write him an email to know him better.

He responded very quickly, and told me more about his program. I trusted him. I decided to sign up with Blog Mastermind in August 2007.

The lessons were coming to my email address on weekly basis. Yaro wanted his students to take some action in every week. It was not a one way communication. Yaro honestly told us that there is no easy way to make money online.

When I look back, I can clearly see that what Yaro was also trying to achieve a positive mind-shift with his program. He is indeed a very good motivator and teacher.

I finished Blog Mastermind in January 2008. The program totally changed my ideas about blogging. I learned  blogging concepts from A to Z, improved my blog writing and online marketing skills, developed very good relationships with other bloggers. In addition to them, I found my role in the Blogosphere.

As a Blog Mastermind graduate, now I know that it is not impossible to become a problogger if you follow a very well written road map. All you need is dedication, hardworking, and a mentor like Yaro to guide you.

Blog Mastermind – Season 2

Yaro Starak will be launching the new Blog Mastermind mentoring program for people who want to earn a full time income from blogging part time by mid-July 2008.

The program is less than $100 a month to become a member and you get direct access to your own blog mentor, plus all kinds of audios, videos and e-lessons to help you make money from your own blog.

You can read more about the program here: Blog Mastermind

Let me know If you decide to join. I will be more than happy to assist you when giving your final decision as a graduated member of the program.

My blog’s PageRank used to be 3 in November 2007. All of a sudden it dropped from 3 to 0 in one night. Since then I am trying to recover it. The good thing is my blog is not totally punished. My blog’s Google search engine results traffic tripled during the same period. However, PageRank is still perceived as one of the major indicators of a good quality blog by many bloggers/sponsors.

Since very long time I have been trying to recover my PageRank, but I have failed until today. When I see that http://www.sta.rtup.biz/ is offering free SEO for websites and blogs, I desperately jumped on it!

I signed up, and started a new discussion titled Free SEO for my blog Searchforblogging dot com I am very much surprised when I got a quick response from TheMaster.

I also got a very valuable response from a current member who has also suffered from PageRank faculty, but somehow recovered. See the post here: How to get reconsidered for PageRank after Google penalization

TheMaster could not fix the problem(I did not expect him to fix either!), but has given me some great ideas. I strongly suggest you to submit your SEO oriented problems to this site and get advice from TheMaster. It is completely free at this moment.

By the way, if you know how to recover from such a penalization, please tell me for the sake of humanity! Looking forward to hear your suggestions and experiences.

Buying old domains with PageRank is one of the easiest ways of making money online as long as you have some money in your pocket. I have been planning to buy an old domain with PageRank quite long time. Finally I have bought buzz4me.com (PageRank 3) by joining an online bid at GoDaddy with a surprisingly low $30 price.

Before telling you my future plans about buzz4me.com, let me step by step tell you how I bought this domain:

• There are certain websites where you can keep track of old/expired domains. I found two reliable websites you can refer for this purpose. One is Register Compass, and the other is GoDaddy.
• I suggest you to start with one day membership of Register Compass for $3.75. You will find thousands of old/expired domains inside this website. Also you can filter them by their PageRank and place your bid as a member of the website.
• In my case, buzz4me.com was parked at GoDaddy therefore Register Compass directed me to GoDaddy’s website where I can place my bid and wait for final results. Note that you still need to be a registered member of GoDaddy to place your bid under Domain Auctions menu.
• Luckily my bid was the highest, therefore I won the bid!

Not every old/expired domain name has potential to grow. When you check Register Compass and GoDaddy’s Domain Auctions menu you will find many odd domain names. Be as selective as possible when you are bidding for a domain name. Always think about the future when buying an old domain.

Buzz4me.com – Future Plans

I imagined buzz4me as a place for bloggers/website owners who are willing to have some buzz for their content and services. You will say buzz 4 me, and I will buzz for you!

PR News, contest announcements, service announcements, and many more will be welcomed to buzz4me.com. Also I will be writing product reviews there. In the long run I also hope to make some money online with paid reviews over there.

Currently I am trying to find a good magazine type WordPress theme for buzz4me.com. I will update you about the progress through my blog. You can also subscribe to my RSS feed and follow the updates via your RSS reader.