For those of you who have been following the Open Web Awards and this blog you already know that we’ve already had the nomination rounds and the first round of voting for those companies that you think should be finalists for the Open Web Awards.

Today marks the beginning of the Final Voting Round and while there are some great choices, I don’t agree with some of them.  But that’s neither here nor there.

Here is the voting widget for you to cast your votes.  You can only vote once per category.  Please choose wisely.

Voting ends Sunday, December 14th at 11:59pm PST. So get your vote on.

If you can’t see the voting widget in your feed-reader, please click here to vote.

Let me know if you voted in the comments!

When you start you journey into blogging, and want to see yourself making good money from it, you often first start reading other blogs that will teach you what you should do, or the kind of blogger that you need to be to make it.

Something you don’t hear as often are the things you shouldn’t do, or the type of blogger you shouldn’t be.

I wrote a post some time ago that outlines why you’ll never make money blogging, so I thought I’d follow-up with the 3 types of bloggers that won’t be successful.

The Set It & Leave It Ads Blogger

There are many bloggers, especially those new to the scene who are being told that content is king and marketing is queen, and as long as you have those two bases covered, you will be set to make great money with your blog over time.

While those two things are important, they are nothing without actively playing with affiliate programs, or other revenue generating sources.

I see many new bloggers, and even some seasoned bloggers, placing between 6-10 affiliate program banners on their blogs and just leaving them, hoping that their readers will click through and perform some kind of action, whether it’s signing up for something, or making a purchase.

What you should be doing is changing those banners out for new affiliate programs at least once a month.  Many of your readers aren’t new, so they’ve already seen the offers, and the ones that would click through, already have.  The others don’t want any part of that offer you have for viagra that’s been on your blog for the past year.

Another important step in generating money from your blog is by reviewing each affiliate program or advertiser that you work with.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

Your readers are here for one thing, and that’s to read your content, not peruse your sidebar ads.

The I’ll Get To It Blogger

Have you ever noticed yourself bookmarking a great affiliate program you saw featured on someone else’s blog?  Saying, “I’ll signup for that later, when I have the time.”

You’ll never get to it later!

Have you ever noticed yourself thinking of a great blog post, only to stash it away and say, “I’ll get to it later.”

You’ll never get to it later!

Have you ever noticed yourself talking to someone about a great blog event or expo coming up and say, “I can’t make it this year, but maybe next year.”

You’ll never get to it later!

If you see yourself doing this all the time, you’re procrastinating.  Instead of putting something off, do it then.  Chances are, whatever it is your wanting to do won’t take any more that 10-15 mintues.  If it does, then do 10-15 minutes of it.

You’ll feel better for at least having gotten started, and you’ll be more likely to finish it up when you can make another 10-15 mintues worth of time.

The Non-Passionate Blogger

Gary Vaynerchuk once said, “If you don’t like what you’re doing - Stop!“  He was right.

If you’re not passionate about what you do, you will eventually run out of things to say, or your motivation for continuing on will dissappear.

A blogger who isn’t passionate about their niche will find it hard to think of topics to write, they struggle everyday with putting up with their blog just to make a quick buck.

Blogging isn’t a get rich quick scheme, and shouldn’t be treated like one.  It’s much like writing a book.  You have to really be passionate and know what you’re talking about to succeed.  And it takes time.  Sometimes years.

A Word To The Wise

Be passionate, hustle your ass off, and constantly change and improve your affiliate and advertising strategies.  Don’t be the type of blogger that won’t succeed.

If you’re interested in learning what to do to be successful as a blogger, then get your copy of The Roadmap To Become A Blogger here.

What other types of bloggers do you see being unsuccessful?

Yaro Starak of the famous Blog Mastermind program, and Gideon Shalwick of Become A Blogger, have teamed up to create a FREE report called The Roadmap To Become A Blogger.

This report teaches things like:

1. How to ethically exploit the biggest wave in technology since the invention of the telephone.
2. Why not deploying the “X-Factor” in your blog could cause your blog to crash and burn, never to recover.
3. 13 secret strategies to attract traffic to your blog like bees to a beehive, turn your competitors green with envy and provide you with multiple streams of passive income.

I’ve read the report and it’s amazing the wealth of information contained within its pages, especially if your interested in successfully making money from your blog.

Here’s a video to explain a little more about “The Roadmap“.

If you cannot see the video in your feed reader, please click here to watch it.

The report is absolutely free.  So read it and let me know what you think about it in the comments.

I’m sure many of you may have been a little surprised and confused when you got a message in your feed-reader saying my blog feed was obsolete.

I know because about half of you unsubscribed shortly thereafter.

I want you to know that I’m back, and I should be here for a long time to come.

The Problem

I had my blog set up on shared hosting, which supported me until I started getting drastic increases in traffic, all within a two month period of time. Then my shared hosting provider shut me down because I was using too much memory on their shared servers.

It would have been nice of them to give me a little warning, but they didn’t, so I couldn’t even warn all of you about what was going on.

The Temporary Solution

When my blog went down, I called my hosting company, and was told I should move to Virtual Private Server hosting (VPS). This was supposed to give me the memory I needed to run my blog with all of the traffic I was getting and allow me room to expand even further.

It wasn’t enough!

The Permanent Solution

When I realized that VPS hosting couldn’t handle my blog, I looked to the help of Gary from Bluefur hosting, who I also follow on Twitter. Gary hosts John Chow’s blog and his other websites, and I knew if John Chow was using Bluefur, they could handle the traffic I was getting and traffic I plan on getting in the future.

I sent Gary a message on Twitter asking if I could talk to him about hosting. He replied back almost instantly. We talked some more and decided what I needed was dedicated hosting.

The 256mb of memory I was getting from VPS was barely large enough to handle cpanel on the server, much less my blog as well.

So I signed up with Bluefur hosting on a dedicated server and as you can tell, my blog is back up and running, and I will never look back.

Bluefur has been great with their customer support so far and I will never be able to honestly recommend anyone else for the hosting of a wordpress blog again.

A Word Of Wisdom

If you’re having trouble with your hosting provider or are looking for a hosting provider to start with, please do not hesitate to check out Bluefur hosting. Even if you can’t afford their dedicated server plans, Gary does offer special wordpress blog hosting plans on shared and VPS servers that will work much better than a hosting provider that doesn’t deal with blogging.  I like Bluefur so much that I teamed up with them to offer my readers 10% off of any hosting package that Bluefur offers.  All you have to do is use the promotional code: steven-sanders, at checkout.

It’s also comforting to know the owner is on Twitter, so he’s easily accessible when you need a hand.

Click here to learn more about what Bluefur hosting offers.

Do you have problems with your hosting provider?