Hello friends. I wanted to take a quick second and let you know what's been going on here in Buzzland and to thank you for your help.

Things have been extremely busy, so I apologize for not being able to post as much. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I am currently in the process of transitioning from my full time job to becoming self employed. I had asked you to let me know if you or any of your friends needed help with software or blog/web related projects. The response has been tremendous! Thank you very much.

I'm still a month or two away from leaving the full time job, but I am in the process of handling all the "red tape" of starting my own business. I am making sure my wife and I have adequate health insurance, I am forming my own corporation, and I am starting to build a pipeline of work for when the faucet runs dry (ie - I no longer get a regular paycheck). I am doing all that while working full time, running two blogs, and oh yeah...preparing for the arrival of Buzz Jr! I stop and wonder sometimes if I must be crazy trying to do all this. But I know it will be worth it in the long run. Come January 1st, I will be cruising at full speed and look back at this time and say "Pffff...it wasn't so bad".

My good friend Bryan at GrandmasterB and I have starting working on some of the projects you've helped bring in. Thanks to Cuzzy and a few others for sending in the referrals. We're off to a great start, but we need many more to keep our families fed. So please, continue to let us know if you or anyone you know needs some help with custom software, a website, a widget, a plugin, a gadget, an app, a blog, or even an enterprise scale Content Management System. We can do it all. And we are happy to pay referral fees.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be making some changes here at BuzzMyBlog. I will be including a lot more information about my capabilities, experience, and education, as well as the way I run projects and how you can hire me. I will also be posting some examples of the work we've been doing. So stay tuned to learn more about the exciting things available from Buzz Software (the tentative name of my company - let me know what you think).

Unfortunately, I am sad to say that the Weekly Buzz will be going away. It is just too difficult to keep up with and people have been trying to abuse it. It was fun while it lasted and I hope some of you were able to benefit from it.

I will continue to provide regular content here on BuzzMyBlog as much as I can. The next few months are going to be crazy, but once I get past the madness, things should settle back down and I will return to a regular posting schedule.

So stay tuned, thank you for your help, and thank you for continuing to visit BuzzMyBlog.

Jeff

ps - So what are you waiting for? Quit being disappointed with that crappy Blogger blog and hire Bryan and me to build and design a custom WordPress blog for you!

Hello my friends. It has been some time since I've been able to share some buzz with you. I have some very exciting things going on right now, so I wanted to give you a quick update and let you know what I've been up to.

Personal Reflection

I had an amazing vacation, as you might know from reading my last post more than two weeks ago. The time off really gave me an opportunity to reflect upon my career and my dreams for the future. I love blogging, social media, and networking with people online. For the past year or so, I have been enjoying these online activities while maintaining a full job as a software developer. In April, I even started another blog, BuzzPirates.com, which has had tremendous success so far. But it has been a lot of work. I don't know how I've done it, but so far I've been able to run two blogs, stay active on a number of social media sites (I'm still addicted to Digg), network with people online, and help my friends with technical matters - all while working full time developing custom software. Upon my reflection, I realized that with a baby on the way, it will not possible to maintain this frantic pace. Something has to change. I can either give up blogging or give up working.

Making a Choice

I am a firm believer that if you follow your dreams, you can make anything happen. So instead of taking the conservative path of stability by slaving away working for The Man, I have decided to walk away from my job and focus my skills and attention toward earning a living online. This is a big step, but I can make it happen. It won't be an overnight change, but I have a plan that I will be implementing over the next few months. I hope to have it fully in place by the time Buzz Jr. is born, but I can really use some help from all of you.

Stop Earning Money and Start Earning a Living

We've talked about earning money quit a bit here at BuzzMyBlog. Now I need to take it to a whole new level and focus on earning a living. The best way to do that is to capitalize on your talents and make use of your best skills. For some people it may be graphic design or writing. Other people are natural sales men or women who have a knack for Internet Marketing. As for me, well...I am a damn good software engineer. Internet Marking is fun and all, but I'd be foolish not to utilize the multiple degrees I have earned in Computer Science and Computer Engineering from some of the best universities in the U.S. So if I could somehow combine my development expertise with my love of blogging and social media, I'd be a very happy camper...

The Plan To Personal Independence

So my plan is to become an Independent Software Developer. I am in the process of lining up a few gigs that will allow me to develop software for clients a few days a week and will bring in enough money to support my family. The remaining days of the week, I can focus on my blogs and social media software projects of my own. I have some very exciting ideas and believe that eventually, I can do less software work for clients and earn more from my own online endeavors.

Cha-Cha-Changes

So over the next few weeks, you might notice a few changes here at BuzzMyBlog. Don't worry, its not going away. This blog is still my baby and you can count on finding good information and advice here for a long time to come. However, I will also be using it as a tool to promote myself and my services. I have met some wonderful people here at BuzzMyBlog and I hope to continue to get to know many more of you. I will continue to write articles and share some of my online experiences with you. But in addition, I hope that some of you can also become clients or might know someone who has a special need for custom software. So in the weeks and months to come, you might see some new features here outlining my development skills and my professional experience. I will still post regularly, but during this transition, my posts may be a little less frequent.

I Need Your Help

As I make this big move, I will be relying quite a bit on my friends and the people that I network with. I hope that you can become one of them. Here is what I need your help with.

• If you need help with ANYTHING, let me know. I will continue to respond to emails and am happy answer questions. But if you have a technical emergency or a simple need that you'd rather bang out for $20 bucks or so, then I am your man. Whether its a quick banner design or some help getting your new WordPress blog working properly, I am teaming up with my friend GrandmasterB to offer technical support services. Not everything will be $20, but we'll give you a fair and reasonable price on anything you need help with.
• If you need custom software, whether its an AJAX web application, a desktop utility, or even an mobile app, then let me know. I have been developing software for more than 12 years for organizations like Honeywell International, Prudential Financial, the U.S. Navy, even NASA. I will be happy to work with you do understand your need and negotiate an accommodating hourly rate. I will also be happy to pay a referral fee to anyone who is able to send clients my way.
• If you have an idea for the next great social media application, blogging tool, or any other software that can be sold online, let me know. I am happy to discuss potential partnership opportunities. If you've got an idea, I can make it a reality, and we both can make a lot of money.
• Finally, I will be making some changes to BuzzPirates.com to offer more online advertising. If you have a desire to advertise on an entertainment blog that gets between 50,000 and 70,000 unique visitors a month, please let me now.

Its going to be an exciting couple months. I thank you all for your continued support and assistance. Its going to be busy, but in the long run, this is the best move for me and my family. Feel free to contact me anytime to chat about anything. My Google Talk user name is jeffbuzz13. And, of course, you can always find me on Digg.

Wish me luck!

Jeff

This day could not have come any sooner. My wife, Bailey (the dog), and I are off to Duck, NC for a weeks vacation. If you've never been to Duck or the Outer Banks of North Carolina, let me tell you, its a real treat. You cannot find a more relaxing vacation. It is not built up or commercialized at all. Its just tall dunes, long beaches, and beautiful homes that are affordable to rent. Duck is a cute little town with a few small restaurants and quaint shops. The Outer Banks, in general, is the perfect spot to get away and completely relax. With all we have going on right now, we sure can use it! 

So have a wonderful week everyone. I probably won't be on the computer much while I am gone...hopefully not at all. Instead, I'll be lying on the beach reading a good book or drinking a beer by the pool as I grill up some local fish. Yup...there's not much else to do in Duck, North Caronlina. And that is exactly why we are looking forward to it. 

I'll be back in a week with lots more exciting stuff to blog about. 

Have a great week,

Jeff 

  Duck, NC waterfront shops at sunset. Photo by asmythie. 

As wonderful as RSS feeds are in the distribution of information, they also have the potential to be a dangerous threat to your original content. In this post I will describe what happened to me recently and the very valuable lesson I learned on protecting your copyrighted material. 

What Happened 

I had a post on my entertainment blog, Buzz Pirates, go somewhat viral recently. I was giddy about all the traffic flying in and by the fact that my cheap WordPress hosting account was holding up. I was even more excited by all the new incoming links I saw in my blog statistics. Out of sheer curiosity, I clicked on some of the referring links to see what they were saying about my article. I was shocked and appalled to see my exact content republished on another website without even a word of credit to Buzz Pirates. But wait, it gets worse! I just so happened to come across the same content later that day on TheInsider.com. Yes...THE Insider, as in the popular entertainment television show. There I was, staring at MY original content on the Insider website, with a link to the thief that copied my article credited as the original source! My jaw dropped as my poor laptop almost became way too familiar with my stone patio. Needless to say, I was furious. Someone else was getting credit for my work and probably thousands of referral visitors from one of the most popular entertainment magazines. 

How It Was Resolved

I immediate fired off two emails, one to the thief directly (who will never get a link from me), and one to TheInsider.com. The thief was quick to respond and luckily, was willing to update his blog with a correction. But he was pretty smug about it. His response was "Well, I guess I can mention your blog since I got the list from you." The nerve of him! He guesses? Well I guess, I might just put my foot up his ass if I ever meet him.

It took a little while, but I eventually heard from The Insider as well. Unfortunately, the damage was already done. Their news aggregator got the content from his feed and automatically published the story. They couldn't change the text. They were super understanding about the whole thing and really sympathetic. While they were not able to correct the one article, they did end up adding a permanent link to Buzz Pirates on their "Friends" page! They are also now digesting my feed directly so in the future they will receive content directly from me.

In the end, it worked out well for me, but I learned a valuable lesson.

How To Keep This From Happening

Lucky for me, my original article contained a link to my own site. Otherwise, I never would have known about this fiasco. From now on, whenever I am writing a post, I will always end it with the following line:

You can't add this line to your theme template. You have to physically add this line in the text editor as you are writing the post. Otherwise, it won't become part of the feed's content and that is what you want.

If it does happen to you, be sure to stand up for yourself. Reach out and ask the website/blog owner to correct their story. While many of them may not be law abiding in the first place, most of them will be willing to make a correction if you ask them. No one wants to get sued. You are the legal owner of that copyrighted material. Contrary to what most people think, copyrights are automatic - you do not need to apply or register for them. When you publish your article you own the copyright and the content is legally yours.

I hope everyone finds this post and my lesson helpful. If you are ever in the same situation, I hope you are as fortunate as me and walk away with a permanent link from a popular website!

Jeff

This post was originally published by BuzzMyBlog.com

Welcome to the readers of ProBlogger. I hope you have enjoyed my guest post on Understanding the Blog Lifecycle to Avoid Common Downfalls. I thought I would take a quick second and give you a little more information about BuzzMyBlog.com and what we do here.

BuzzMyBlog.com is a blog dedicated to bloggers helping bloggers to become more successful. It is an open and interactive community that encourages collaboration and group discussion to learn how to improve your blog and earn more money. I am not a fan of pointless contests, annoying pop-up ads, or other gimmicky tricks to earn a few bucks. Instead, I prefer to focus on helpful articles, expert interviews, and dedicated reviews of my readers. I invite you to see for yourself why BuzzMyBlog.com is not your typical "Make Money Online" blog. Here are a few noteworthy posts worth checking out.

• The Weekly Buzz is a special feature we do here at BuzzMyBlog.com and explains how the blog got its name. Each week I spotlight a member of our community and provide a free review of their blog. I also award a prize each week that the winner can use to promote their blog. I said I am not a fan of pointless contests. This is not a pointless contest. It is entirely for the benefit of my readers. The general principle is if everyone takes a few minutes to give the winning blog some good "buzz", the effort will be returned to each person many times over when its their turn in the spotlight. You can join the Weekly Buzz community here.
• A Step By Step Guide To Monetizing Your Blog - I am currently in the middle of my six part series that outlines my blog's monetization strategy. I encourage you to follow along and share any experience you may have so we all can learn how to make more money with our blogs. 
• Ask A Pro is a feature of my blog that interviews well known bloggers. Instead of asking one blogger a bunch of boring questions, however, I ask many of the top bloggers one good question.
• Finding Your Place In A Crowded Blog Niche is one of my favorite posts that really sums up what BuzzMyBlog.com is all about.

Please take a look around make yourselves at home. If you like what you see, feel free to sign up for my RSS Feed and follow along.

Thank you for visiting.

Jeff

Notice anything different? Hopefully BuzzMyBlog.com is looking a little cleaner. I've been working on these theme design changes for some time now, and I am pretty happy with them. What do you think? My goal was to make the changes subtle in order keep some of the personality of BuzzMyBlog. But I also wanted to clean things up a bit and make it a little easier on the eyes. I would love to hear your opinions and/or additional suggestions.

Perhaps things are not that noticable until you look at how it was. Here is are all the changes:

• Made the font a little bigger and easier to read 
• Added a little color to the menu bar
• Added a special header to focus on the Weekly Buzz
  • Shows the last 4 Weekly Buzz Winners
  • Give a quick intro to new readers
  • Shows the current week's prize
• Put more focus on my subscription options, including my Twitter profile
• Got ride of the cluttered third column
• Axed BlogRush, MyBlogLog, and other useless crap

I'll be adding a few more things in the days and weeks to come. Some things I have in mind are my actual Twitter feed and some private ad spots. In the meantime, let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.

Thanks!
Jeff

Just joined Twitter. Getting the hang of it. Here's my profile http://twitter.com/JeffBuzz

I just wanted to drop a quick post to apologize for being a little quiet the past few days. I have been dealing with a slight technical issue. If you subscribe to my feed, you may have gotten blasted with a handful of my old posts the other day. Sorry about that. I have figured out the problem and will address it this weekend.

Ironically, I saw a nice spike in traffic because a lot of my older posts got some new StumbleUpon traffic. Thanks! I guess there really is a positive side to every problem. Unfortunately, in order to correct the problem, it might happen one more time. If it does, feel free to Stumble my posts once again.

Anyway, sorry for the inconvenience. I do have another post that I will be publishing later today. Thanks for your patience.

Jeff

Writer's block. It is an inevitable reality for all bloggers. What do you do when you can't think of anything to write about? I know that I need a good post in order to maintain the momentum of my blog. I just can't think of anything to write. So I think I am going to try something a little different. Its called a stream of consciousness. If you're familiar with characters like Holden Caulfield or Sal Paradise (aka Jack Kerouac), then you know what I'm talking about. I am just going to write what I am thinking. When you get hooked into this whole blogging thing, you're always thinking about it, right? So why not just write what you are thinking?

So the thing that is on my mind now is pretty obvious - what to write about. Here I am at my blog. I realize that the reason I have writer's block is because I am stuck in a perpetual state of repetativeness. I am sure many of you can agree with me that
    - all my traffic comes from either EntreCard or StumbleUpon
    - everyone around me is doing nothing but contests
    - a wake up everyday and do the same thing. Check my email, check my comments, visit the same blogs, and drop a few entrecards.

How can I possibly expect anything different to happen when I just do the same thing everyday? Does that mean I am going to jump on the bandwagon and do a contest too? No. But I think it is time to - dare I say it - think outside the box. In order to make in this blog world, especially when you are in a competitive niche like anything to do with money, affiliate or SEO, you've got to find a way to be different. BloggerNood is a perfect example with his Domain Tournament. Great idea. Another example is Daniel Scocco's Blogger Face-Off over at DailyBlogTips.com. These guys found something different and creative and it helped them to stick out from the rest. To make your blog successful, you've got to find something unique, creative, and something so totally different than anything thats been done before to separate yourself from the crowd.

Wow! This is so refreshing! I can not explain to you the feeling of just letting my thoughts flow through my keyboard. I started this post at 12:39 and it is now 12:47. What normally takes me 1 1/2 to 2 hours, I just did in 8 minutes.  I don't think my blog will last very long if all my posts are like this. But this was definitely a great exercise. I strongly suggest you try it. Even if you don't publish what comes out of you, just let your mind type. It could be a great way to get past that writer's block and let some enlightening thoughts that others might find interesting come to surface.

Have a great night.

Jeff

ps - this whole post was a true stream of concsiousness. It was done in 10 minutes and I didn't even proof read. I apologize for any grammar or spelling errors. I normally try to be very careful about that because I believe it reflects poorly on me and my writing. I will go back later and add links to those who deserve them.

Blogging can be a crazy roller coaster of emotions. You can go from exhilarating highs to lonely lows in no time flat. One minute you have a killer post that is literally making your server "buzz" thanks to Digg and StumbleUpon. The next minute you swear that the Internet must be broken because no one is commenting on your latest masterpiece-O-S. In order to make it through these ups and downs, it is important to keep a level head. Don't get too cocky when things are going well. When things are looking bad, keep your chin up. As long as you are staying true to yourself (and your blog), and continue writing the best that you can, things will turn around sooner than you expect.

This happens to all of us. The excitement that you feel when you write something that causes a reaction is the reason why we blog. Publishing a post that gets a response from people like Shoemoney or Graham Langdon causes an addicting rush that pushes us on. How many of you have compulsively refreshed your stats to watch the number of StumbleUpon referrals climb through the roof? I know I sure have. Its more addicting than crack! But the flip side is also true. It can be so depressing when something we really work hard on does not get the reaction we hoped for. Sometimes it can create a downward spiral of negative thoughts that even makes you contemplate throwing in the towel. The important thing is to see through these emotions and stick with it. If you've got a good plan for your blog, keep following it. It will pay off in the end.

I have seen these ups and downs myself very recently. I had a couple of recent posts that got an amazing response. I was pumped. Around the same time I noticed that "contest fever" had struck the blogosphere. I thought to myself, "what better way to help out my fellow bloggers than to help them run their contests?". So I put together the BuzzMyBlog Random Contest Winner Picker to take all the hard work out of tallying up the number of entries and picking a winner. I thought it would be a smashing success. Boy was I wrong. It barely got noticed at all. Not only that, but my stats were way down for the week as well. I was seriously down in the dumps.

Did I let that get to me? Of course not! That is part of the game we call blogging! I have a plan for my blog. I have lots of exciting things yet to come. I am going to keep working and I am confident things will turn back around. I was going to write more about having a plan for your blog and sticking to it, but Ben Barden summed it up perfectly in his latest blog post. Check it out to learn how to keep your blog on track. Instead, I'll leave you with a few words of encouragement. There will be good times and bad. It happens to us all. Don't let the bad times get you down. Keep your chin held high and push on. Things will always get better.

Jeff