Justin Germino Ramblings

You may have heard that you can make some money blogging and you would be right. However becoming successful enough to where you can quit your day job and be a full time blogger is akin to an actor going to Hollywood and becoming the next $20 million a film mega star. You have millions of people competing out there and you have to carve out a name and space in the internet for yourself.

You don’t have to look for business plan writers when trying to start a blog, you just need to sit down and have a basic idea, layout and theme in mind. I myself would have saved a few months of initial headaches and trouble had I learned and followed the basic outlines below.

• Monetary Investment

You will know right off the bat that to become successful or start any business, there will be some monetary investment. It costs far less to start a blog than most business, but know that you should spend the investment and get a self hosted blog. Using DreamHost, HostGator, BlueHost or any number of web hosting providers, but choose the best one and get a monthly plan that works with your budget. Many companies are no longer accepting free Typepress, Blogspot or WordPress.com blogs, so to be taken seriously and professionally you need to be self hosted.

Budget about $200 for your first year of blogging, this would include your hosting fees for a year, plus some initial spending capital for advertising, promotion and such. Many hosting providers will give you an AdWords credit to get you started, so leverage some of this. $100 in AdWords credit can get you hundreds of thousands of impressions for free.

• Topic of Interest (aka Niche)

The most successful and high ranking blogs are ones that cover a very niche market, though you only target a specific audience you will be higher rated in Search Engine rankings, earn more from AdSense and have a better job of capitalizing on KeyWords for that niche. Note, you can’t niche in “Technology, Health” you must be very specific about your niche. If you want to run a blog about Giraffe’s that would be a niche market. If you want to blog only about Google Android, that would be another niche market.

I recommend you keep your blog categories (these are general topics) to no more than 5 on your blog, unless you have a broad scope blog like a personal diary or are covering a huge category like Technology which I do with one of my blogs. Once you decide on what you will blog about, you must include the fact of the following: If I write 100 posts about this topic, 1 year from now will I still be interested in blogging about it?

Don’t just do product reviews and don’t just spew information on new gadgets coming out, know that to capitalize on blog paying programs they want to see your own opinions, stories and writing come out in your articles.

Stay Tuned, there will be more to come with Before You Start A Blog – Part 2 which will be published soon. Subscribe to my RSS so you don’t miss the next article in this installment.

-Justin Germino

Maybe it was overindulgence in the birthday cake for my three year old yesterday, or perhaps from the Turkey Pot Pies I had for dinner, but I spent all night feeling sick to my stomach and fighting the nausea.

I managed to survive the night by sleeping on the floor and am working exhaustively today with dark circles under eyes as a result of the lack of sleep.

You would think that I would know better, my body cannot tolerate certain foods and they cause me extreme gastrointestinal agony, yet I am like a hamster who keeps licking the same salt lick and getting shocked over and over again.

Foods I should avoid:

Dairy of any kind
Alcohol
White flour and starchy foods
Sugary foods
Nitrate riddled foods
Mayonnaise
Eggs
Sausage
Tomato Sauces
Pizza
Bananas (possibly, I have found a connection to stomach pains after eating banana’s, but uncertain)

Eating any of the above foods will usually leave me feeling sick or with intense stomach pain for hours after consuming such food.

Eventually my diet will be restricted to merely kibble like our dogs.

-Justin Germino

The National Toy Hall of Fame in New York has inducted the Nintendo Gameboy into the hall of fame for revolutionizing the hand held gaming platform when it debuted in 1989. Additional inductees included the Big Wheel Tricycle launched by Lous Marx & Co in 1969 and the “Ball” in all its forms.

25 assorted balls including the Golf Ball, Basketball, Soccer ball, Football, bowling balls to Nerf balls were included with the induction of the “Ball” which was long overdue.

The National Toy Hall of fame is located in Rochester, NY and has existed for 11 years, inducting select toys each year into its hall of fame.

-Justin Germino

My wife is considering hosting a type of Christmas party this year as a social gathering for friends and people she knows. Sending out Christmas party invitations is the easy part, as she would have to plan and prepare a multi course dinner, setup, cooktime, and we would have to clean up.

Plus we would have to figure whether or not to have the kids go over to Grandma or if the party would be late enough that the kids would already be in bed. Lots of preparation, planning and work go into hosting social gatherings, especially ones around this house.

-Justin Germino

Found this great article on Physorg.com about Laser Etching Grapefruit and how various studies have shown that grapefruits that had labels etched into the rinds via a laser showed no measurable loss of water or increase in decay while undergoing transport. This means Laser Etching produce is likely to become an alternative to sticker labels which saves the trees it takes to make the labels as well as the fact that labels fall off, get ruined by being wet and the annoying hassle of having to remove them.

I  personally think Laser etching makes much more sense as the labels are just temporary until the product is purchased and in the case of fruits and vegetables with outer layers that are removed, you save the paper product by just etching them with a laser.

-Justin Germino

Today my youngest son, my second boy turned three years old. He is so different in personality than his older brother, very strong willed, fearless and extremely social. Both boys are developing into children of good character and I am so proud to be the parent of my two sons. I just can’t believe that within a few months my youngest will be transitioning out of diapers and we had promised the two boys could bunk together in the same room, right now they have separate rooms but have been wanting to sleep in bunk bed together for a while.

Yesterday we had a big birthday party for the boys at Amazing Jakes in Mesa, and today we just rented a giant jumping castle for the whole boys. I am looking forward to just spending the entire day with them playing with new birthday toys and being a part of their birthday.

-Justin Germino

I am a lucky man, my wife makes me some of the most delicious culinary creations one could possibly imagine. The slow cooker pot roast I had last night is no exception.

She feeds me so well, that I am going to need weight loss pills if I keep eating seconds and third helpings of some dishes.

Meanwhile, I always appreciate the time she takes to cook for the family.

-Justin Germino

The boat trailer we had purchased back in the summer had its first base coat put on last month and we have been trying to find time to paint the 2nd coat. This trailer will hold a 12′ – 14′ boat which we are hoping to purchase a nice aluminum boat to go fishing next year. Lake fishing is more enjoyable when you can get on a boat and leave the crowded shores to just lazily fish in the center of lakes. There are less jagged rocks and nooks to get your line and hook snagged on while reeling in as well.

We had to purchase some extra truck accessories though as we didn’t have a complete tow package or a trailer light kit, we still need to get the trailer registered and titled and will be working to do that over the Winter. Hopefully by April/May of 2010 we will have the boat and the trailer all ready to go to start our first fishing trip where we own a boat instead of renting one.

-Justin Germino

My son needs a new computer and this is clear by the fact that he is playing more advanced games now that his older computer just cannot play due to lack of processing speed and weak video card. So in the next year I will be shopping around for laptop deals and desktops to find the best option for him.

I have been meaning to upgrade my computer and may just buy a case and build him a computer with my former Motherboard, CPU, RAM and Video Card which would make his computer 100x as powerful as it is today. This may be a cheaper option for me in the short run, since I would be getting a more powerful computer for myself and for him in the same upgrade.

So I save up my blog money now to buy a new combo of computer equipment, which includes

New Motherboard
New CPU
New RAM
New Video Card

I can salvage all my disk drives, SoundCard, DVD Burner, Case, Power Supply and etc, so I figure for the price/power I am looking for will need about $500 to get a powerful gaming rig.

-Dragon Blogger

Starting and maintaining your own hosted blog really takes an amazing amount of dedication and a wide range of knowledge and specialty. You often will delve into learning a bit about:

• WordPress
• HTML
• PHP
• Graphic Design (to tweak your own headers and logos)
• Journalism and Writing
• Social Media
• SEO
• Analytics
• Quality Assurance (for testing and QA browsers and various experimental themes and styles)

When thinking about putting together a blog you need to envision it like you are building a custom Ferrari, you wouldn’t just slap together any used parts or pieces, you would only use high quality Ferrari parts in your car. Your blog is the same way, you have to be choosy about the theme, header styles, fonts and layout.

You also have to be choosy about the quality of your posts, be extra diligent to write legibly and articulate your points well. Make sure you check grammar and spelling and proof read often before you publish a post live to the world. Do your research and use the highest quality keywords and tags for your post that you can, write your excerpt to be as close to 160 characters as possible but make sure you put in all the key information in that summary.

If you are serious about blogging you can’t give it 50%, you have to give it 110% and put as much into your blog as you hope to get out of it. This is what continues to motivate me to blog and drives me each week to continue blogging. I don’t get discouraged when my earnings drop one month and pick up the next, I don’t get discouraged when I learn other bloggers are making 10x what I am earning per month. I get driven to tweak, improve and optimize my methods, tactics and blog in whatever ways I can.

-Justin Germino