Blog Updates

What Are You Thankful For?

by Kristi Hines on November 25, 2010 · 15 comments

Happy Thanksgiving Snoopy

Although Thanksgiving is not an international holiday, I think it is one during which everyone can celebrate the spirit of thankfulness in three easy ways that is applicable to your personal and blogging lives.

What Are You Thankful For

The first way is by asking yourself what you are thankful for. This is a great question to contemplate the answer to because it will help you see what progress you have made this year. Maybe you don’t feel like you have accomplished everything you wanted to do in 2010. But with this question, you should stop thinking about what you didn’t accomplish, and be thankful for what you did accomplish.

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Are You In It To Win It?

by Kristi Hines on October 6, 2010 · 9 comments

It’s that time again – yet another guest blogging contest is full speed an underway over at Blog Engage, the social bookmarking and voting community dedicated to bloggers.

About the Contest

This contest is through October 31st, and to enter, simply write one post (or more) between 450 to 1,000 words on topics that are interesting to the blogging niche, including social media, SEO, and making money online. Learn more about the contest on the first official post, tips and answers, finer details, updates, best entries so far, how to be a winner, and latest updates.

My Entry

I really can’t resist these contests! My entry for this contest is the Truth About Making Money Online. This post was inspired by a simple status update by Danny Brown. It takes a look at the expenses that come with making money online, aka the flip side of the all of the monthly income reports that you see on various blogs, and poses an important question:

Is your making money online strategy profitable? Are you actually making money blogging, barely breaking even, or simply losing money online?

You will find out how to find the answer to this question, why you should not be discouraged if it is not the answer you wanted to find, and how to determine what monetization projects and ideas you have for the future will be the most effective based on the amount of effort they will take and the associated costs to implement them.

So if you are into making money online and turning your blogging into a successful business, this post is definitely for you!

If you enjoy it, please be sure to support it with your comments (dofollow and CommentLuv enabled), shares, likes, votes, and retweets using the buttons above!

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Who Do You Trust for Product Reviews?

by Kristi Hines on September 28, 2010 · 28 comments

In the last few months, I entered into the world of writing product reviews. My first was the Income Blogging Course Review and, most recently, the Copywriting Scorecard for Bloggers Review. I find that it’s really easy to write them under one condition: that I have used and truly love the product.

Since I don’t see Kikolani as being the right platform for writing reviews all of the time, and would rather use this site for strictly blog marketing strategies, blogging tips, and social media, I decided to start off a new site.

Trusted Affiliate Marketer is going to be my home for honest, comprehensive product reviews, as well as a focus on affiliate marketing and money saving tips.

Why product reviews?

Sure, it seems like everyone is doing them. But I have found that anytime I am searching for a product review that is going to really tell me what I can expect from said product, all I come up with are the “canned” reviews provided by product creators that have been edited with an image or two, and are really nothing beyond a sales pitch.

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Upgrading WordPress 2.9 and Thesis 1.6

by Kristi Hines on December 31, 2009 · 27 comments

I have spent the last two days upgrading all of my sites to the latest version of WordPress 2.9, and for Kikolani, the upgrade for Thesis 1.6 as well.

Upgrades generally make me nervous, as you never know what kind of issues you are going to run into with various plugins and other customization work you have done. Fortunately, I had a lot of sites to mess around with before moving onto this site and my client sites. So here are my experiences in the magical world of upgrading.

WordPress Upgrades

Dofollow – from WordPress 2.8.4 to 2.9
My first attempt at upgrading was with my Dofollow Blog Directory. It was sitting at version 2.8.4, and I used the automatic upgrade option which went smoothly. No issues with my plugins, which I forgot to deactivate before upgrading.

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Kikolani – The First Year

by Kristi Hines on May 26, 2009 · 46 comments

It is official… as of May 14th, Kikolani celebrated it’s first year anniversary in the blogging world.

Year in Review

Beginnings
Kikolani began as a place for my poetry. The poems I published here in the beginning were love poems I had written when I met my husband. The first – Neighbors – was written a bit before I actually met him, and the second – Moonlight – was written the night I met him. Then came a continuation of poetry and the love story from the start of our relationship through the time we were engaged, which has since moved to my latest site, Soulmates Wedding.

Evolution
After the poetry came posts on dreams, artistic expression, self-discovery and photography. Sadly, my poetic creativity only comes in spurts, and the last bit was haiku. When my artistic side bowed out, with exception to photography which has been my main creative outlet for the past several months, my technical side emerged into the world of blogging articles and tips, starting with an article on blogging writer’s block, something I had been experiencing at the time. Then I was invited to a post as part of a blogging project on social media marketing practices, which was my start into the social media category.

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