Today.com Exile? To-do list.

If you too are a today.com exile, you probably, like me, are not too thrilled with the thought of today.com continuing to profit from any traffic your blog brings in for them.

Of course, we can’t prevent that - and honestly, I don’t think it is going to be an issue for long, since they are clearly having serious financial issues and since they are SO very, very fond of shooting themselves in the foot that I can’t imagine they will pull through now that they are in the process of clearing out or chasing away most of their prolific and successful bloggers - but just in case, and because we can - here are some of the things that you will want to remember to do:

1. Of course, you’ll want to remove your today.com blogs from your profile in any directories such as blog catalog, linkreferral, etc. In most cases, substituting your new blog’s address is simple.
2. If you have Squidoo lenses or articles in other places that point to your Today blogs, make sure you remember to change those links too.
3. Change your Entrecard widget, if you still have it, to point to your new blogs - no approval required…and get dropping! You might also want to consider changing your paid ads settings, since a/ you can and b/ it looks like those who do are more likely to be able to cash in credits
4. If you have exiled today.com blogs listed in your EC favourites, consider removing them - no point to giving Today.com that extra traffic, right?
5. If you’ve been using BlogExplosion to bring traffic to today.com blogs, you’ll want to go in there and redirect your credits - or at least pause the blogs until you get new blogs approved and then can redirect there. Do NOT delete your today.com blogs from BlogExplosion until you have transferred your credits or you will lose them!
6. Update your user profile in any forums you participate in
7. Let people know where to find you! If you are included in other people’s blogrolls, drop them a note asking that they update your links. Also, if you want to be added to my list of Today.com rejects feel free to drop me a note. There are others as well: hospitalera (formerly GoldenPrague) has one, and here is Bookishgal’s list of Today.com exiles. Oh, and I just noticed that 30 Something and Searching has a list of Today.com exiles too.
   
8. If any of the pictures you used in today.com blogs are hosted on your own photobucket or flickr or any other such online accounts, you can remove them or better yet replace them with something creative (I wish I had some! You can BET that I’d be replacing every one with a new image)
9. Be happy! It might take a while, but everything you learned while blogging on today.com will help you to get your new blogs up, running, & making money. Who wants to stay on a sinking ship? You have SO many more options now - no more lists of banned widgets, no bothering to take the time to use their affiliate codes and then not getting a cent from any sales, and YOU get the money that comes in from adsense. It does take time… but adsense and affiliate programs do work. So - now it’s time to build traffic to build YOUR bottom line, rather than Dave’s.
   
10. Have fun! I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's new blogs - imagine! We can all make the look the way we want to again! No you're-stuck-with-it template! If you're looking for a blog makeover, I highly recommend Lady Java (but not till she's done mine!)