Somebody has obviously taken over the blog because the advertisements have been removed and replaced with large ad blocks. There hasn’t been a post on Cash Quests for more than a week and neither the old nor new owners have even mentioned the sale. Compare this with the sales of Blogging Fingers and Ryan Shamus’ blog and you see a stark difference – those sales were open and publicized.

Cash Quests was pulling in $1,300 a month, but why would any of the advertisers continue with their packages now? Furthermore, who is going to buy a review from Cash Quests? Take a look at the Cash Quests advertising page and, oh, wait a minute – there is no advertising page! It now point to a page on the website of the new owner(s) – IEntry.

It’s hard to imagine why a company would spend that kind of money on a blog only to kill it. Even the “About” page is now redirected to an IEntry page.

The iEntry Network consists of the best business-to-business web search engine, several targeted “niche engines” and email newsletters reaching over 6,000,000 unique opt-in subscribers. Total newsletter delivery is over 50 million emails per month.

It’s hard to believe that the owners of Cash Quests would let their blog fall into these hands when other bloggers have made it clear how important it was to them for their sold blogs to be treated well by the new owners. But then, it’s all about money, isn’t it?

Cash Quests is dead.

I was tagged in another contest and decided to participate because it’s original and something I’ve never seen before. Prija over at Blogging the Movie is holding a nofollow link contest. It’s created a bit of a stir and received a lot of entries, so I decided to pitch in as it’s Sunday and Sundays seem like a good day for contests.

Anyway, the prize is a copy of The Four-Hour Work Week, which I don’t really want but winning it couldn’t hurt. Here is the obligatory contest copy with three blogs I decided to add:

Prize

1. Free 4-Hour Workweek Book.

2. A chance to have a permanent link on front page of Blogging The Movie dot com.

3. Sign the Records Book as it travels to 10 different winners.

Contest

This contest is sponsored by BloggingTheMovie – A featured documentary about Bloggers. This contest contains no-follow links. So it is Google friendly and by creating an original introduction you won’t be dinged for duplicate content. This is an ongoing marketing campaign. There will be 10 winners at which each winner will be able to host their own contest which will be sponsored by Blogging The Movie. 1st Winner: Susan Suarez | 2nd Winner: Investing Adventures | 3rd Winner: Can be you!

Rules

1. Write an original short snippet introduction to avoid duplicate content.

2. Just copy the section between the start and end.

3. Add your 3 favorite blogs with rel=”nofollow” in between the link on the code page. i.e. <a href=”http://www.url.com/” mce_href=”http://www.url.com/” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank” title=”url name”>URL.com</a>. This is extremely important to ensure that Google won’t ding us. Make sure you contact the bloggers and insist they participate so they can keep this going.

4. Email your URL of your blog post to Free4hourWorkweek@gmail.com

[Deadline: 12/31/07 ]

Favorite Blogs

Betshopboy | DerekSemmler | Enkay Blog | MsDanielle | JimiMorrisonsHead | Siteguide.us | Darin.cc | JonLee.ca | Samanathon | MrGaryLee | KellyCho | SusanSuarez | RobertaFerguson | Bloggrrl | TheKingKongBlog | TheBeefJerkyBlog | LifeisColourful | MarketingDeviant | MaleWail | RomanDock | 40hourstogo | TylerCruz | JonathanVolk | Egonitron | SuncoastScribe | Gnaka | WorldOfAngel | MyBlogContest | TheGeekBoys | Courtney Tuttle | Neil Duckett | John Cow | Add your 3 Favorite Blogs here (it is important that you change the link to rel=”no follow”)

If you were not tagged, you can still copy the list and add yourself on. No worries, it’s a win-win for everyone. So lets get ready. Get on the list to become the 3rd winner on the Train Contest

The Million Dollar Wiki hasn’t sold a page for over a month. The most popular pages, like “Business” and “Make money online”, got stiffed without any Page Rank. Out of 1,050 pages sold, only about half of those are even indexed in Google. The pages don’t rank high in Google for the chosen keywords. “Network marketing”, for example, isn’t in the top 100 on Google.

The Million Euro Wiki was picking up pace, but the owners who bought it from John Cow effectively killed it with their lack of ideas. It’s been over a month since the 73rd page was sold, the blog is never updated, the forums are empty, there’s no promotion going on – it’s dead. Cow did a great job of building the MEW up into something people were visiting, but since he passed it on, it’s died in the water.

I think this proves that products either need to be innovative or have constant buzz. The paid wikis weren’t innovative and the buzz died down after a while. Furthermore, people just didn’t know what to do with their pages, so the fad was never going to last.

The One Buck Wiki seems to be doing a little better, with 1,514 pages sold and most, if not all, of those are indexed in Google, but how long will it last?

Paid wikis are dead.

We had heard a few weeks ago from 45n5 a theory that each RSS subscriber a blog has is worth about $30. Blogging Fingers sold for $6000 and Ryan Shamus’ blog went for $.2,500 Whoever owns and runs Cash Quests – at this stage I have absolutely no idea who that is – dropped a few hints about wanting to sell the blog after seeing how much money could be made by doing so.

Cash Quests had an average of about 900 RSS subscribers a day. The site makes about $1,300 a month. There is another theory that a site will sell for 10 times its incoming revenue. I had no idea Cash Quests was even up for auction until right after the hammer dropped. The final price? As I reported a couple of days ago: $15,000. The 10-times-income theory seems to hold more weight than the RSS theory.

That $1,300 a month is not guaranteed. Do you think $15,000 is a fair price? It’s a pretty sweet payout, but looking at Cash Quests now, there has been no activity for several days and not a single mention of the sale. It looks like it might be the end for that blog.

In another surprise sell, 5xMom is selling 5xMom.com. The current asking price is $10,000, but reception to the sale is lukewarm because the blog’s income is only $600. It will be interesting to watch which other blogs go up for sale because we will all be able to learn something from how buyers react. It also means bloggers can assess the value of their blogs. I’d say that a fair price for 5xMom.com would be about $5,000 to $6,000 given the current climate.

At the moment I wouldn’t be able to sell this blog for much more than $200, but my priorities lie in making money through other streams. Perhaps I should focus a bit more on monetizing this blog and then sell it for a huge payout. $15,000 is more than a year’s salary for me (I live in Thailand).

Scot’s RSSXplosion offers a service that some people want. Despite many bloggers publicly lambasting this service, some have quietly taken Scot up on his offer. The problem is that Scot’s service is all about misleading people.

Scot left a comment on a blog inferring that I was a hypocrite because I’ve sold text links before, but the business of selling text links and passing on Page Rank is open and in the public. Doctoring RSS numbers is closed and conceited. No blogger who uses Scot’s service is going to come out and say they have a fake RSS count, whereas almost all bloggers are very up front about selling links.

The real problem with Scot is that he’s acted so aggressive throughout this whole ordeal. His defensive reactions to criticism have been childish at best. Scot’s lack of people skills and common sense will ultimately be his downfall. Using bloggers’ names to substantiate his claims was a mistake too.

If a blogger’s RSS count is to become the new Page Rank, as many have suggested, there will be increasing demand for services like RSSXplosion – it’s inevitable. This isn’t something that is going to just disappear. 45n5 wrote recently that an RSS subscriber is worth about $30. While you could theoretically buy 1,000 RSS subscribers and put your blog on the market, you have to remember that a large RSS count on its own is worthless. You also stray into fraud territory by selling a blog with fake RSS numbers.

You won’t get anywhere by buying RSS subscribers – you’d be better off spending the money on links or advertising space. We’ve seen it time and time again recently when bloggers have been called out only to act with hostility toward the whole blogosphere. That’s not the way to do business.

It happened to me recently. I have another blog that focuses on Thailand and my life here. I wrote a post about how Thai people have started wearing pink shirts in honor of His Majesty the King of Thailand. Just to bring you up to speed, His Majesty the King is universally revered in Thailand – and I mean in a big, big way.

The problem came not with my post itself, but with one of the comments that a reader had left. The comment was written about His Majesty the King and Thai people in a derogatory manner, which is as big a no-no as you will find in Thailand. I let the comment slide because I’m not in to censoring other people.

Two days after my initial post was written, I got a call to my office in Phuket. The call came from the Ministry of Information Technology (MICT) in Bangkok telling me to remove the offending content. Naturally, I obliged, because the MICT has the power to block certain websites. YouTube was blocked for months due to offensive videos posted about His Majesty the King.

There are certain topics that I can never write about as a blogger in Thailand. There are some topics I wouldn’t even discuss in public except with close friends. It goes back to the idea of self censorship. For me, if I write about some issues, at best I might offend my readers, but at worst I could end up with my blog blocked.

In more general terms, there are some opinions, words, whatever, that are best kept to yourself. You have to understand your audience. I’m not saying you should try and appease everyone, but sometimes you have to hold your tongue.

The number on rule I live by with my blogging is: don’t offend feminists. I’ve done it and I regret it to this day.

They are watching you.

The email was an invitation to the Google Elite Sector. I’d never heard of this group before, but according to the email, the Google Elite Sector is a collective of individual webmaster who have access to increased Page Rank, better SERPs and easier indexing in Google. Basically, you get your blog or website streamlined.

When you join the Google Elite Sector, you get an automatic Page Rank of at least 5, instant indexing of all your pages, a top-10 position for any 10 search phrases and a top-30 position for another 20 phrases. You have your website or blog turned into what Google calls an Elite Google Product.

It sounds like a great offer. According to the email, only 500 invitations are sent out to webmasters and bloggers every year. Each invitation is selected by a team of 10 Google employees based on five factors:

• Quality content
• Style of writing
• Topic of the website or blog
• Language of the website or blog
• The marital status of the webmaster or blogger

The more I read about the Google Elite Sector the more excited I became – until I got to the catch. To join Google Elite Sector, you need to pay a one-time fee of $10,000. I was shocked to see how much it cost to join this group. Would you pay $10,000 to get in Google’s good books?

Of the 500 people invited each year, only about 50 of them accept the offer and pay the fee. If you look around the blogosphere, you can start to see who has paid the $10,000 to Google. Invitations are sent out every two to three months. Once you have an invite, you are given seven days to accept the offer. If the time expires, then you become automatically excluded from any future Google Elite Sector invitations.

I did a bit of investigating and I am starting to see the Internet the way Google does. If you look at sites like Cash Quests, Shoemoney and Pro Blogger, you start to see patterns emerging. I don’t want to say for sure because I risk my neck if I’m wrong, but those blogs look to me like they are part of the Google Elite Sector.

I also read on an underground webmaster forum that both John Chow and John Cow refused entry into the Google Elite Sector, which is why they have lower Page Ranks than they should.

If this is the sort of level Google will stoop to, it makes you wonder what else is going on behind closed doors. Don’t be surprised if my blog “disappears” in the next few days. Lucky for me, I don’t live in the US. If I did, there’s no way I would publish this blog post.

Stay safe.

I have one other blog that has so far held it’s PR5 and one that has held its PR4. So long as those blogs don’t drop their ranks, I think I’ve done alright.

Even more surprising is that a health blog I started on a whim about three months ago also has a Page Rank of 3 now. I was actually just about to sell that blog, but will have to think about changing my asking price.

I’m writing this as I check all of my blogs, and amazingly, a blog that I bought on the cheap recently has a Page Rank of 3 as well. So that leaves me with one PR5 blog, one PR4 blog and three PR3 blogs.

Page Rank can easily be used to make money, so I’m going to spend the next week of so seeing how much I can make after this latest toolbar update. The problem at the moment is that with all the shifts in Page Rank, its value remains uncertain.

But whatever… I got Page Rank!

Addendum: While I’m excited to get Page Ranked, I’ve noticed that a LOT of blogs in various niches have been given PR3. Let’s hope this update is final. Also, Youtube is at PR3. If that isn’t strange then I don’t know what is.

The problem, however, is that people expect so much for so little. Compare the job of a writer with that of a designer. There is a guy on Digital Point who makes web 2.0 logos. He made my logo and a dozens of others around the web that you will have seen.

This guy charges $10 for these logos. He does a great job and he can turn one around in less than the time it would take for me to write 300 words of content. It’s no effort on his part, but his time is valued more than that of a decent writer.

I had offers of $70 for 100 posts and $3 for a 500-word article. As well as offers like this, you have people making posts questioning why the Internet content writers they employ suck. Here’s why: people are offering peanuts.

I would not write an article (about 300 words) for anything less than $10. When you look at magazine works that pays at least three times more in Thailand and even more in other countries, you have to put it in perspective.

If you are going to go down the content-writing route, don’t sell yourself short with dud offers. Compare to a ppc program that pays $0.01 per click. Sure, you could make money online, but it’s not going to happen any time soon.