Desi Baba from the Random Ramblings of Desi Baba is a smart guy. He knew that I was coming over to his site in order to review it, so what did he do? He wrote a post entitled “Start Getting LinkBacks Effectively, No BS” and put it right on the front page where it would grab my attention immediately! It wasn’t just a catchy title as the content of the post was very solid and reflected some tactics that I’ve used myself. Showing me smart blogging from the moment I land on the site tells me straight away that there’s a mind at work behind the blog – and that’s often just as good as money in the bank!

A little bit of everything and it’s got what you want.

The site has a clean design and uses the tagline “Blogging, Entertainment, Technology, Money Making”. While that reads a little like a category list, it’s a pretty accurate description of what the site is about! Looking through the posts, I noticed articles on everything from celebrity weddings to technology reviews of the Apple OS.

However, since I’m sure that most of Cash Quests readers are primarily interested in making money online, let’s focus on that part of the site and see if we can pick up a few cashed up tips!

Desi Baba claims to have earned thousands of dollars online (I’m jealous!) from being involved in online businesses and you can call me skeptical, but this always rings a few warning bells in my head with questions of “How?” and “Do I believe it?”. However, from looking through his posts, Desi has written some very smart, logical and accurate articles that leave me confident that he knows what he’s on about.

As a smart blogger, Desi knows the importance of great headlines and the ones that grabbed my attention included:

• Double, Triple, or Even Quadruple your AdSense Earnings, Guaranteed – where he discusses the thinking behind the Adsense placements on his site and how tweaking them have helped him break the $1000 per month barrier. And he straight away tells you it won’t happen immediately which is always the mark of “real” advice!

• How To Make Money from YouTube – this a great idea that I haven’t seen before anywhere and involves embedding YouTube videos on your site via AdBrite rather than a direct embed from YouTube. The result is an extra bit of advertising on your site and more money in your pocket. Brilliant idea!

• Always Have Doubts for the High-Pay Keywords – A smart look at how to do your own research to find the high-paying keywords rather than lose your money with the useless internet gurus.

• Success Comes With Time – I doesn’t seem logical, but any blogger who tells me that they HAVEN’T made money quickly seems more likely to be able to help me make money online.

• How To Build A Visitor Base Everyday – A look at how Digg has helped him build a visitor base. I think his catchy titles have helped a lot in this area!

What I love about Desi’s posts is the style and tone of his writing. It comes across as very knowledgeable, logical and well-conceived. Despite using “Random Ramblings” in his title, I get the feeling that there’s quite a bit of planning behind each post and that Desi knows exactly why he’s writing it and who he’s writing it for.

The money making is also mixed up with a bit of humor as his Student Masturbation Is Not Allowed In Dorm Showers post clearly demonstrates! Don’t try and tell me that Desi is not great at creating linkbait!

Smart = Money?

So if Desi knows what he’s doing, then he should be making money, right? Well, my jealousy level increases as he made over $1,500 online in May and I get the impression that those earnings are going to rise quite rapidly!

The site appears to be monetized from a single piece of Adsense under the header which keeps the site looking good and I’m sure this “looking good” factor contributes to his growing readership.

Desi has also recently launched his $4.95 Business Offer where for just $4.95 you can download a package that includes:

• 25,000 ebooks
• 5,000+ ringtones
• 70 Flash templates
• 1000 templates
• 500 flash files
• 40 PHP scripts

There’s a lot more in the package and without sounding too much like an advertisement, I honestly feel that depending on the quality of the content it seems like an absolute bargain! Once downloaded, you can apply the files to your site or resell them to others to create your own profits and a great ROI. As Desi writes, it’s quite a lot of stuff for about the same price as a McDonald’s Value Meal.

To niche or not to niche

I honestly think that Desi has built a great site that is useful, informative and most importantly – entertaining. However, while it’s easy to find what you’re after from the category links, I felt that simply viewing the front page didn’t really give me a clear indication of what the site was about rather than the obvious “Random Ramblings”.

While there’s nothing wrong with having a site that covers a variety of topics, I believe that narrowing the site’s focus a little would the take site to the next level of success. I’m not talking about targeting a specific niche, but just narrowing the content enough to be able to label the site more than just “Random Ramblings”.

The first question that I ask myself when I visit a site is “What’s this site about?” and if I can’t answer that quickly and succinctly, it usually doesn’t lead the next (and more important) question of “Do I want to come back?”.

My look around the site told me that I do want to come back and I’ve subscribed to Desi’s feed to keep an eye on his smart money tips.

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