Seriously though why do some people have to share every single detail of their life on Twitter. I think the guys over at Penny Arcade described it best in their twitter comic:

Too Much Information

Soo true, but anyways I’m looking for some people to follow on there so if you’re a twit, err I mean if you tweat lemme know who you are so I can follow you. Likewise if you want, you can follow me on twitter. Maybe give me a nudge to update my blog more often and what not.

If you have any tips or suggestions on using twitter let me know about it too, as I useful tools.

No related posts.

Anyways to make a long story short I updated the Free Blog Reviews post so go check it out if your are looking for places to get your blogged linked to for free. Some of the sites do them for free, or require a reciprocal link back.

Also it looks like the list has dwindled down to about 11 or so bloggers, so if you do free blog reviews then leave me a comment or contact me.

No related posts.

However there are some stats that I have gathered about it already as well as some thoughts about it after the jump.

Selling Ads via Project Wonderful

I have my 3 Project Wonderful ad spots on the right hand side bar. It conveniently lists the current price per day to advertise on it. I just added it the other day, and theres seems to have filled up with another 20 more in queue. I’ll let try it out for a week or two with different amounts of advertising slots to see which brings in the best rate for this site.

I mentioned that I first saw this widget up in the forums for Entrecard users. They have quite a big 3 x 2 grid of 125×125 ad slots as seen here:

Each slot costs advertisers roughly $8 a day to advertise in. Yes that’s $8 a day x 6 slots, earning Entrecard a nice $17, 520 a year from this virtual real estate of theirs. That’s a good deal for those guys over at Entrecard especially for providing a great free traffic exchange program that helps get bloggers exposed to other bloggers.

My 3 slots up there after a few days is earning me $0.03-0.06 a day. Doesn’t sound like much, but it’ll add up (3-6 cents being about $1-2/month each spot). I chose to not put a minimum bid limit on the widget for now to see roughly where my rates go up to. If you wish to bid on some ad space via Project Wonderful you can do so via this link. Now I don’t get the people who have minimal traffic, and still want to charge $1 minimum/day for their site. Most advertisers won’t pay $30 a month for a no follow ad that gets less than 10k visitors a month.  If you do know people like that, send them my way to put bids on my ad spot.

I’ve also started to notice quite a bit of regular Entrecard users starting to pick this up as well since many already have a nice 125 x 125 ad image ready to use.  Also since the program is free to join, people can start making money, and use the money they earned via advertising to create ads for their own site.  Good deal so far.  I put in $5 to go bid on some 1 cent ad spots so lets see how that pans out.

Anyways the ad network is currently free so if you want, why not try out Project Wonderful.

No related posts.

The free blog review list seems to be getting some nice hits now, and I just added another blog to the list. One of the nice things about the list is that it even lets me get my blog reviewed as well =). In the past week I have gotten 4 reviews, and three of them were from the list. I don’t get reviewed quite often, so to get four reviews in a week is I guess is something to blog about. Here’s the most recent reviews of this site that I have received:Richard from Untwisted Vortex mentioned about my 125×125 ad slots. I agree that yes, they are common on making money blogs, and possibly over used by many. He wonders though if these spots do get clicks. Just to answer that question back though. Of the outgoing links I’m able to see (the non-javascript ones), they get about an even amount of exit clicks as the sites listed on my blogroll.It just depends on the 125×125 image, and whether or not that image makes people click on it. People should at the least put their page titles or maybe a keyword or two just so people know what ad page is going to go to. The Focial ad I have on that 3×2 grid gets the most clicks next to Valkor’s Gold Guide. So even if you have an ad on someone’s high traffic site, you should at the very least have that ad describe something if you want people to click on it. Thank you for the free blog review

Richard!

Max from Blog Badly gave me three thumbs downs! Which actually makes me happy. See the thing with his reviews is the more thumbs downs you get, the worse off your site is. So since my site only got 3 thumbs downs, I think I did alright =). He does bring up a good point about the widgets on the side bar thing though. I have to look in to that on. Anyways this site is also one of the sites listed on me free blog review list so check it out.

Tim over at the Affiliate Marketing blog has given me a quick review from his site. I’ve been going there alot, and leaving quite a few comments. As someone who is learning about affiliate marketing myself I’m finding alot of useful information to look over from there.

The Fat Kid Unleashed is the most recent addition to my list of blogger who do free reviews. The fat kid gives me a pretty straighforward review of what my good/bad points about my site so far. Like Max, he’s also noted that my side bar is a little messy, or visually lacking. I’ll be throwing that on my list of ‘to dos’ or possibly widgets ‘to do away’ with. My first priority is to get a working contact form up =P.

Updating regularly seems to get harder as time passes as I tend to get over worked from my real life job quite often of late. I know, I know I’m making excuses. You’ll have to forgive this wannabe full time blogger who has a 60 hour offline work schedule. However, the long work hours are my motivation to make my goal of eventually earning a living online true. Regardless its always great to get a nice kick in the rear to get me motivated to post something. So thank you Fat Kid for that =).

No related posts.

Any ways if your a blogger that offers free blog reviews, or know of a blog that does free reviews, please e-mail me the site so I can add it to my list.

No related posts.

While the best way to get your site linked to is to write quality content. Sometimes you want that extra exposure or specific keyword to rank in.

These sites are sorted by their current page rank.

PR 5 – Untwisted Vortex
PR 5 – Blogging Ads – Registration required
PR 3 – Blogsweluv
PR 3 – Blog A Day – Link back required
PR 3 – Inspirit Blog
PR 3 – The Weblog Review
PR 3 – Darn Good Reviews
PR 2 – Our Blog Review
PR 0 – Free Blog Reviews
PR 0 – Cikgu Azleen – Link back required
PR 2 – The Review Bunker
PR 0 – Aya’s Blog Review
PR 0 – Digital Point Product Reviews
PR 0 – Blog Review Daily

If you do free blog reviews, please feel free to add your site to the list by leaving a comment.

Updated:
1/18/08 – Added two new blogs to the list [Blog Bady, Manic Tasty Bites]
1/24/08 – Added Fat Kid Unleashed
2/14/08 – Added Aya’s Blog Review
9/23/08 – Cleaned out all the broken links, and updated pageranks.
9/26/08 – Added Digital Point Product Reviews, Blog Reviews Daily

No related posts.

For those of you guys who haven’t signed up for Entrecard yet. You should go ahead, and do so now for some nice traffic. Why? Entrecard is holding a contest as well for 2 Free 125 x 125 ad spaces on their blog for a whole month. And all you have to do is write a post about what kind of traffic results you are receiving from them.

What kind of traffic have I received from Entrecard so far? This is a pic from my analytics counter. So far I’ve received 107 visitors from Entrecard over the course of 5 days after joining it. Note this is just traffic from dropping my cards off to various websites. Averaging 30 visitors a day for minimal work is nice free traffic.

The real test will be from when the ads that I purchased start being run to bring in visitors. I’ll update in about two weeks for that since the John Chow ad I bought won’t go into effect for another ten days or so. It will be interesting to see what that brings in. Wish me luck when that happens.

No related posts.

Here is a quick 30 second YouTube video from Shoemoney about the program:

Its pretty easy to sign up for it, and the widget is javascript so you won’t have to worry about Google getting on your case.

Now the first thing that needs to be done after you get your widget up is to go out can drop your Entrecard off to other people with the widget. The Entrecard website has a nice little directory to browse through. This way you can gain credits by dropping off your card to other users.

Now I came across a funny post as I was surfing through other Entrecard users. Toni thought she could game the system by writing a script to drop off the cards for her, now as resourceful as that was she was caught pretty fast with all the points she’d gotten removed. Atleast its nice to know that the new program has fail safes in place from people trying to game the system.

Another thing about this program is that you can send your credits to someone else if your not using them. I found out about this feature from another BlogCatalog user Clyde who was nice enough to send me points to buy some ads. Its also letting people make some nice link bait articles with Entrecard points as the rewards too.

So far after having the widget on for about a day I’ve gotten about 30 or more hits from it. I went to visit about a hundred or more sites to drop off my cards, and bought some ads from various people. I have to maybe earn another hundred or so if I want to have enough credits to get on the number one sites though. Theres a few days wait time on alot of the ads so I’ll need to post a follow up report later on maybe in about a week or two.

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up at Entrecard, and get drop your internet business card of to show people who you are.

No related posts.

Anyways back to the subject matter on what I would do with $25. Since my blog is still rather new, I would use it to gather some exposure. What would be the best way to get some exposure for $25 though. I could:

Purchase a link for this website

With all the Google Page Rank penalties being sent out recently about paid links though I don’t think I’ll go with this one. Also sidebar or sponsored posts don’t really do great for traffic unless its from a very high traffic source anyways. I wouldn’t be able to purchase a good spot for $25 so nope.

Use Adwords or other Pay Per Click(PPC) advertising.

While this might be a great way to bring in targeted traffic, I would rather spend PPC money to a landing page that sells a product over just sending to my website. I guess this one won’t work for me either.

Buy a gift for Shoemoney

Yup, its decided. I’ll use my Cafe Press account for once, and make a T-shirt with my site on it for his Free T-Shirt Friday promotion. I think in my position this would probably be the best bet, since it’ll get a link from a high PR site, and hopefully some traffic. Worth a shot right?

So what would you do with $25?

Interested in participating in the contest? Read the post here for the entry rules. Its free so why not. If you don’t want to make a blog post, you can leave a comment with your answer to participate as well.

No related posts.

Lets take a look at their about page.
“rssHugger is a unique website that aims to bring bloggers and readers together. rssHugger aims to provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader.”

Why should I join now?

Its FREE now, previously rssHugger was a pay to join directory. (you may still join by paying $20 if you wish to skip the write a post about rssHugger part of application, and receive a manual review).
What are the benefits to me as a blogger?

Besides just a directory how does it help get me more traffic?

The more visitors you send to your rssHugger page, the higher you will rank on the Top 100 page. To keep everyone on an even playing field, the Top 100 blogs page resets everyone back to zero on the 1st of every month. This will allow those that actively participate or promote their page on rssHugger to receive much more promotion in return.

How does one send visitors to their rssHugger page?

Your page has the following address:
www.rssHugger.com/YourBlog.com

For example my page there would is:
http://www.rsshugger.com/moneyne-ws.blogspot.com

So if you go to my page you raise monthly votes by 1, which will then hopefully raise me up a rank or two in the listings.

A free service that gives you backlinks to your posts, and more exposure for your blog. If you think that’s a good deal, sign up with rssHugger now.

No related posts.