Roberta Ferguson

My blog, Tragicomical, has moved to Pnn.com

Roberta — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 20:13:17 +0000

In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve moved my celebrity blog, Tragicomical over the Pnn network.

So please feel free to have a look around and let me know what you think!

If you have a gossip story that you’d like to see covered, please shoot me an email. I’ll credit you as the source!

Enjoy!

How To Become An Online Writing Ninja

Roberta — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:03:45 +0000

There are a whole lot of people that will blog about making money online and not really tell you how they’re doing it or the things that you need to actually make money online. I’m going to tell you the some of the things that I’ve had that have helped me along the way.

Stop making it about the money

Should I say that again for posterity? I know that you want to make money online, but if you write like you’re doing it for the money, people will take notice. Everyone wants to make money online, that’s a given. Not all that many of us will be that great at it. Use blogging as a hobby. It takes a lot of hard work to accomplish the money making objective. It took me over two years to actually make a decent salary online. Be prepared to wait, it’s worth it.

Patience

First off, you’re not going to become an internet sensation overnight. That almost never happens. Patience is definitely a virtue, even in the world of online writing. Those who make it sometimes are just the ones that have gotten there first. Wonder why Perez Hilton was such a success? It’s because he’s saucy and sarcastic, and says the things that no one else will say about celebrities. Sure he’s been copied a million times over, but he was the first.

Hard work

I’ve told several people about my success as an online blogger and how I’ve had the drive to succeed. What’s the question they ask? How can I do that like you? The answer is simple: Get ready for some hard work ahead of you. Put some hard work into anything and it will be a success. It’s just like planting a flower, if you don’t water it, it will die. If you give it a lot of love and attention, it will grow. Blogging is a lot like that, too. If your blog gets no love (posts), then it will die.

Making money online isn’t easy, but if you give it the college try, it just may work out for you. How are you going to know if you don’t try?

Some writing skill

Writing skill is definitely one of the things that you will need in order to succeed. You may have to ask yourself, do you even like to write? Are you good at it? Heck, give it a whirl right now and see what happens. You could possibly start emulating the writing style of those who you admire, but you will need to know how to write. Spellcheck is almost a necessity, as well. If your work is great, but you’ve made some serious grammatical and spelling mistakes, trust that I’ll be too busy concentrating on your lack of copy editing skills to give a crap about the article you just mulled over for the past hour.

Hunger

Is writing online fun for you? If it’s not, then maybe you’re not writing about the subject that you’re most passionate about. Do you absolutely care where Paris Hilton dined for lunch or what Lauren Conrad named her dog? If the answer is no, then maybe you shouldn’t take that celebrity blogging job just because it will put food on the dinner table.

Do you still get excited about waking up every day and giving others your unique opinions and voice on the world? Start a blog then and show the globe what you’re made of. Even if it’s to have something to show future potential employers that you actually know how to blog about something that you care about, do it now?

Why are you still here????

I’m a full-time problogger now

Roberta — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:16:49 +0000

Hello. Now that I have a few extra minutes, I wanted to give you an update.

I have decided to leave my full time job behind and pursue making money online. I figured since I’ve gotten quite good at it, I thought I’d share that with you.

For the past year or so, I’ve been building up the my online arsenal and working like a psycho at my full time job, and at the time, also taking care of seven other blogs. It was my dream to supplement my income by blogging, but now it has taken over and become my sole source of income. I started making more online than I did from my ‘real job’. Who knew?

Anyone else making the transition between a real job and working from home? I’ve found that I’ve had a lot more free time and no one is looking over my shoulder to ask how things are coming along. I like that, it’s a great feeling.

Traffic for my music blog, Earsucker, is at an all-time high, garnering around 360k+ pageviews per month. I’m popular, what do you want?

I’ve also taken off the do-follow on this blog. For those of the spammers, trying to get some of my Google juice, suck it. It’s not happening here.

I’ve been keeping an Excel spreadsheet of my income for every blog and I’m trying to stay organized as far as pictures for the blogs, as well as posts.

How do you stay organized?

Want to win a free guitar & other stuff? No strings attached

Roberta — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:53:28 +0000

I just wanted to put up a quick post to promote my giveaway over at Earsucker:

Free Guitar Giveaway & More!

Don’t click if you don’t want to win something really cool for VERY little effort.

All you have to do is leave a comment with a musical memory to get a chance to win a free guitar. Other prizes include an iMainGo portable Zune/iPod speakers, musical toothbrushes, and music CDs.

To get two other chances, you can link to the post or stumble it.

Comments close on June 18th.

Spot the difference online game

Roberta — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:31:45 +0000

I’ve been away for a while, making money online….I’m back for a minute to tell you about this little online game called “Spot the Difference” that you can play to earn cool prizes.

You’re welcome

The game is located here and basically all you have to do is take a really good close look at the two pictures and spot the differences between them. Of course, that is, before the time runs out.

How good are you? Try not to cheat!

The sweet prizes:
You can win $20 gift certificates from Amazon - get free movie DVDs, concert videos, TV series or books of your choice.

What have you got to lose except for three minutes?

Since I have an audience

Roberta — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:22:26 +0000

I may as well use this blog for what it really is….a personal blog. And I figured with the recent influx of comments (maybe not influx, but it’s good to know I’m not talking to myself), that I’d see what everyone is up to.

So, what are you up to? Are you trying to make money online? Are you chilling with the kids, playing Guitar Hero 2, biding your time until Christmas to bust out GH3? Talk to me, I wanna know.

Anything on your mind? I’ll tell you why I haven’t been blogging here so much, if at all lately. I have taken on some blogging jobs to try to make some extra cash so that I can quit my real job.

There’s of course Earsucker, my music blog. It doesn’t make a gazillion trillion brazillion dollars yet, but maybe someday….. Then there’s Star Offenders, which is a strong competitor for Earsucker, traffic-wise. Both blogs together brought in over 60k pageviews last month. So you can imagine that I have my hands full with those two.

Other than that, I have taken on a celebrity blogging job that pays per post. I can’t disclose the website name, but it’s a cool blog with a really nice design. Being the stats junkie that I am, I don’t have access to the amount of pageviews for this particular blog. That’s the only thing I would change for that job, though.

There’s also Newblogger, which I’ve been meaning to post about how much I’ve made from blogging last month. That site got it’s first review recently. Ten bucks is still ten bucks, right?

What have you been up to?

Awesome Guy Bloggers vs Rockin Guy Bloggers

Roberta — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:46:05 +0000

As I was creeping through the internet last night, I noticed that this rockin lady has created this nifty award, based on my Rockin’ Girl Blogger award.

Check it out:

As opposed to what I started in June, which was this ugly little button:

I really like the first one better. I know that this doesn’t speak for my design skills, but hey, that was in June. I’ve honed my skills since.

The idea behind these awards was that you get to start something. Anything. Get an idea and run with it. And that’s what she’s done for her friend, Victor. The Awesome Guy Blogger award never really took off like the Rockin Girl Blogger has. I thought I could attribute that to the ugliness of the actual button, but I still don’t know the cause.

If I had to redesign the Awesome Guy Blogger award today, here is what it would look like:

Grab that and nominate an awesome guy blogger that you read, today.

As seen on John Cow dot Com

Roberta — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:00:47 +0000

Updated: Sorry about the screenshot earlier, I was at work

John Cow’s site is rather nicely designed, very nicely indeed. So when I was tipped off that he was using this ad to advertise his advertising, I knew something had to be done.

Look at this:

I just wanted to see the cow have a nice ad to advertise his advertising. And he was gracious enough to give me a shout out.

Thanks to John Cow, enjoy your ad