Dear TopTut.com readers, Merry Christmas!! Thank you for dropping by to check my blog on this special eve when you were supposed to be with your families yet you chose to spend the time online with toptut.com. I really think you should get back to the table instead of sitting here alone (computer is still considered as non human company, serious!) But, since you are here, I will try to entertain you. Although I don’t actually have many special offers for you, except the following deals from our friends and partners…
- Get $50 discount + Free domain at DreamHost.com hosting, using coupon code “Lorelei”.
- Sign up with LinkWorth, and get $50 affiliate payout from every advertiser you refer, as well as start earning money placing links, billboards, blog posts and more.
- HostGator.com, one of the leading hosting service provider today, gives you 20% discount off everything (any plan, any registration). Valid until January 1st, use the code they give you on the front page.
That’s it for now. Don’t forget to send a FREE Christmas eCard to your friends and family and spread the wintry joy!
Christmas is almost here, don’t forget to avail of our free eCards service for the holidays! Just a little reminder as we will be adding even more cards for our upcoming holidays collection during the next week. Click below to see what we have in stock.
Most people bring each other something traditional for Xmas, — sweaters, books, or winter-related products… why no one ever brings sunglasses as a gift? It’s much cheaper as you buy them at this time of the year off season and you can purchase some great brand online (for example Dior sunglasses — would be an excellent choice!) and bring them to anyone in your family who likes to look like a celebrity. Since we always see the well-known brands (again, like Dior) on famous stars and singers, it’s always an amazing gift to get something “like the stars have”… Isn’t it? This about it, it’s a cheap way for a breathtaking gift and original as well — not everything has to be decorated with snowflakes!
Yay, today toptut.com celebrates one year online, not that anyone cares. And, in 16 days from now I will celebrate my birthday as well, not that anyone cares either, but anyway, let’s get back to topic!
So, 365 days online as well as 356 days of blogging, as this was my first ever blog. Spending time around the blogsphere teached me a lot, in fact from -200% knowledge I think I am successfully reaching for about +65% of being a good blogger, not only making money off this blog, but also producing my own WordPress themes and helping others (a bit).
History
Originally I got this domain free, off my DreamHost deal and was planning to make a blog, pull it to PR3 and sell for 50 bucks, putting 100% profit in my pocket. Upon the first Google PR update TopTut.com hit PageRank 5 and of course I couldn’t imagine selling it, let alone this whole blogging thing started to be interesting.
Notable MileStones
From the notable milestones I would outline 2 comments I got; one from Jim Westergen, and the other from Steve Pavlina, both gurus I highly value and learnt a lot from. Other than that, last month I got MyBlogLog installed and was pleasantly surprise to see 3 well known faces here — John Chow and his copycat, (who ended up beating his search results in Google — John Cow), as well as Cow’s blog designer Hyder. Looks like the whole family came to visit toptut.com!
Our first design got featured on Screenalicious (back then we used a free theme, now I have my own) and our Photoshop tutorials were published on pixel2life, good-tutorials, tutorialized, Photoshop Roadmap and dozens of other tutorials databases. Our Free WordPress themes got used by over 2000 (!) of websites, and at present, toptut.com is Top 2k Blog on Technorati! (On this occasion, also many thanks to Colleen Chard from Kalina Web Designs who kindly blogged about my first WP theme and help me greatly with getting started).
Moreover, we got featured on Paula Mooney’s Bloggers Salary list, although the blog revenue went MUCH higher since then, even back in April I was already on the respectable 90th place (let’s not forget that the first places are all monopolized by Wall Street blogs, CNN money blog, Times, USA Today and other empires).
So, How was this year?
Apart from the unpleasant and unjust fight with some other wp themes designer, and apart from the fact we got banned from digg.com– it was an awesome blogging year! Having my entire forum’s community support and people who willingly promote and link to this blog, it was really great being a beginner blogger, although I think my blogging revenue (x,xxx$ monthly) can easily push me into pro-bloggers category soon.
About half a year ago I also opened the Dark Light of Love blog, dedicated to romance and bedroom (to its farthest extent), which gets more and more exposure as well (surely people would be more interested in tips for improving their sex life rather than in tips for improving their SERPs! :D)
So, that’s it about the exiting last 365 days of toptut.com floating somewhere in the cyberspace of WWW. Cheers!
I decided to set myself a challenge with regards to readers count on toptut.com. I want to pull the number up by the end of the year to 300. Is it possible? I don’t know, it’s definitely a challenge, but life without challenge is tasteless. From last December until today, it took 11 months to gather 200+ active readers on a daily basis, adding 1/3 more to this number in less than a month would require a heavy promotion on my part, BUT… want to help? Please consider subscribing, and if you have a blog, I would love to return the favor, just drop me a line. 
Finally about 1 week ago I got my hands around Dark Light of Love blog, and redesigned it fully, using some more modern and memorable structure. After all, it’s my utmost personal weblog, and it look way too standard.
It’s not really my style as I prefer less colors in a design, however, it’s a blog about love and making it dull, black and white color would maybe reflect my attitude to the subject, but might put visitors off, which is why I employed so many hues. But, this is the typical case of karma that attracts itself — I made it colorful and it brought colors into my life!
