Football Terrace Exercise Regime

There is a new weight loss program in town, which do not require you to do any rigorous exercises or sweat it out in the gym, and popping of slimming pills. To be more specific, this fitness regime applies to UK football fans only.

According to a research done by 118Footie, a UK website featuring football fans, those passionate fans supporting their teams burnt between 1000 – 1145 calories per match on average in the 2006/2007 season, equivalent to 40 minutes of running.

The study also breaks down the average calories burnt as fans reacted to the on-field sporting actions.

• Celebrating a goal (jumping, dancing and screaming) – 81.5 calories burnt

• Reacting to a conceded goal and/or shouting at the referee in anger – 60 calories burnt

If you are in UK and looking for effective weight loss program, head to the terrace, be part of the passionate support, and come out of the stadium slimmer after 90 minutes!

Still on the subject of football, a research by sports marketing consultancy Sport+Markt, found The English Premier League generates more money from shirt sponsorship than any other league in Europe. Top flight English clubs have the biggest share of this revenue, pulling in 97.5 million euros (£69.2 million).

Manchester United has the best deal of any club in Europe, earning £14.8 million a year through its sponsorship with financial brand AIG. German team Bayern Munich is second, with a £14.2 million deal with T-Mobile, with Chelsea the fourth highest earner with its £10.3 million link-up with Samsung.

The research suggests that brands are willing to pay a premium for shirt sponsorship due to the increased exposure via television and other media. This summer, the Premier League agreed a multi-million pound deal to sell its broadcasting rights across Asia, a region where interest in football has rocketed in recent years.

Source: mad.co.uk

Babies Rock

Your wonderful marriage is going to or had already produce its fruit of labour and your precious child is born. Choosing a gift for a newborn baby can be a daunting and time-consuming process. With so many wonderful baby gift ideas out there to choose from it can be hard to decide on the right one. Take this short survey to get a feel of what factors to consider when buying gifts for the baby.

Mobile Phone Dirtier Than Toilet Seat

After being informed there were over 2 millions germs living on my keyboard (equivalent to the number of germs on 440 toilet seats!), I was once again reminded that I’m living life dangerously with my favorite gizmo – the mobile phone.

You probably won’t hold a used shoe to your clean-shaven or delicately powdered face, what with all the bacteria and germs your little swiss army knife mobile communication device pick up from everywhere and everything it comes into contact with.

So why is it that our mobile phones take pride of place, semi-glued to our face when a swab-test carried out earlier this year by UK-based mobile phone retailer, Dial-a-phone, found that phones harbour more bacteria than the soles of shoes and even toilet seats!

From the video,“there are tens of thousands of bacteria on every square inch of your mobile phone. The heat of the phone and the constant handling that it receives makes it an ideal breeding ground for bacteria normally found on the skin….”

Its time we get ourselves a pack of those anti-bacterial wipes!

Football Rich List

Foreign investors with a combine value of more than £13 billion have become involved in the English Premiership football club management over the past year. The power and control of overseas wealth is shown by these Premiership clubs:

Manchester United, Chelsea, Fulham, Liverpool, Manchester City, Aston Villa, West Ham and Portsmouth with boardrooms headed by overseas figures.

The Football Rich List, compiled by FourFourTwo magazine, shows Chelsea's Russian owner Roman Abramovich way ahead of his rivals at Number One with a personal fortune of £10.8 billion.

Management Top 10:
1 Roman Abramovich, Chelsea, £10.8billion;
2 Joe Lewis, Tottenham, £2.8billion;
3 Alisher Usmanov, Arsenal, £2.76billion;
4 Bernie Ecclestone, QPR, £2.5billion;
5 Mike Ashley, Newcastle £1.6billion;
6 Dermot Desmond, Celtic £1.6billion;
7 Malcolm Glazer, Man Utd, £1.25billion;
8 Stanley Kroenke, Arsenal £1.2billion;
9 Trevor Hemmings, Preston, £980million;
10 Lord Ashcroft, Watford, £950million.

Players top 10:
1 David Beckham, LA Galaxy, £112million;
2 Michael Owen, Newcastle £37million;
3 Robbie Fowler, Cardiff £30million;
4 Wayne Rooney, Man Utd £30million,
5 Sol Campbell, Portsmouth, £28million;
6 Andriy Shevchenko, Chelsea £25million;
6 Rio Ferdinand, Man Utd £25million;
8 Ryan Giggs, Man Utd £23million;
9 Michael Ballack, Chelsea £18million;
10 Steven Gerrard, Liverpool, £15million.

Source: Manchester Evening News

Get Paid Blogging

Blogging, which started off some ten years ago as an online diary, has gone a step further these days by turning into a source of income for most people. Who ever thought that sitting in front of your computer in your pajamas, typing and creating articles each day can actually replace or supplement the income of a 9-to-5 job.

As blogging become more mainstream these days, it’s no wonder that advertisers are casting their collective appraising eye to advertise on blogs in extremely high numbers. If you have a blog, it has never been a better time to put it to good use and make sure you grab these available opportunities to get paid for blogging. There are a lot of companies that pay you for writing reviews on products, services or websites.

Smorty is one such paid review company, which acts as a service connecting advertisers with bloggers. Make money from your blog by writing opinion articles about available advertiser campaigns. Recently Smorty started its referral program where you earn 5% commission of the total payments made to your referred blogger by Smorty. This is ongoing, so you will earn commission for the life of your referred blogger. The payments will only be paid if your referred bloggers post was approved.

Simply sign up for your free account, submit your blog for approval. You can place image or text banners in your blog to build your network. Any new bloggers which click through these banners, sign up to Smorty and actively write posts for campaigns, will earn you a commission of their blogger payment.

Sign up for Smorty.

Freaky Historical Facts

Here are some freaky historical facts (unverified) of former American
presidents.

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.
John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.
John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Both were particularly concerned with civil rights.
Both wives lost their children while living in the White House.

Both Presidents were shot on a Friday.
Both Presidents were shot in the head.

Now it gets really weird.

Lincoln ’s secretary was named Kennedy.
Kennedy’s Secretary was named Lincoln.

Both were assassinated by Southerners.
Both were succeeded by Southerners named Johnson.

Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln, was born in 1808.
Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Kennedy, was born in 1908.

John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, was born in 1839.
Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated Kennedy, was born in 1939.

Both assassins were known by their three names.
Both names are composed of fifteen letters.

Now hang on to your seat.

Lincoln was shot at the theater named ‘Ford.’
Kennedy was shot in a car called ‘ Lincoln’ made by ‘Ford.’

Lincoln was shot in a theater and his assassin ran and hid in a warehouse.
Kennedy was shot from a warehouse and his assassin ran and hid in a theater.

Booth and Oswald were assassinated before their trials.

And here’s the kicker…

A week before Lincoln was shot, he was in Monroe, Maryland
A week before Kennedy was shot, he was in Marilyn Monroe. (<== I can't stop laughing!!)

Review of CarGuyGarage.com

Besides being a parking space for your swanky set of wheels, the garage is probably the most multi-functional area in your house. Many owners double it as a work area, mini workshop, and storage area and even as playroom for kids. Using the garage as storage area or workshop is the most common use aside from parking one’s vehicle.

To organize your garage to become a clutter free multi-functional space, there are dozens of garage storage solutions you can look into. One of the best solutions to a cluttered and disorganized garage is to install garage storage cabinets.

The guys over at CarGuyGarage.com carry workbenches, tool boxes, garage flooring, garage storage, garage cabinets, garage door openers, garage heaters, garage floor tile, floor mats, garage floor paint, storage systems, and even and floor epoxy for your classic car. They also have proper tools to aid in everything from car washes to classic car restoration.

When your garage door opens to show your classic car, CarGuyGarage.com will be in the background making sure you have all the accessories you need to keep your muscle car in top form.

(This is a sponsored post)

Shopping - Gotta Do It

To many of us, shopping is a recreational activity. To some, shopping is a task of inconvenience and it feel more like a chore to them. And some are shopoholics who just can't get enough of shopping. These are the people who need the "shopping fix" constantly and who take retail-therapy a tad too seriously.

Shoppers sometimes are early adopters, they are willing to pay premium price to buy the latest products before it goes mainstream. Sometimes buyers feel ripoff-ed by exorbitant prices charged by rogue merchants. Other times shoppers get caught up in a scam.

So how are your shopping experience like? Take the below shopping survey to find out!

IT Support

UPGRADE FROM BOYFRIEND TO HUSBAND

Dear IT Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a slow down in the overall performance, particularly in the flower, gifts and jewellery applications that had operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.

In addition, Husband 1.0 un-installed many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5, but installed undesirable programs such as Formula One 5.0, NBA 3.0 and World Cup 2.0.

And now Conversation 8.0 no longer runs and House Cleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail.

What can I do?

Signed,
Desperate Housewife


Reply:

Dear Desperate Housewife,

First keep in mind:

Boy friend 5.0 is an entertainment package, while Husband 1.0 is an operating system.

Try entering the command C:\ I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME and download Tears 6.2 to install Guilt 3.0.

If all works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewellery 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.

But remember, overuse can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5, Happy Hour 7.0 or Late Night Teh Tarik 6.1.

Late Night 6.1 is a very bad program that will create SnoringLoudly.wav files.

Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-Law 1.0 or reinstall another Boyfriend program. These are not supported applications and will crash Husband 1.0.

In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have a limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly.

You might consider additional software to improve memory and performance.
I personally recommend Hot Tasty Food 3.0 and Tongkat Ali 6.9.

Good Luck,
IT Support

Review of 511 Tactical Outdoors

If you have an interest or passion for joining the law enforcement profession or are a fan of cops and robbers drama series, then I bet you must have entertained some thoughts of decking out in full police or SWAT gear fantasy at one point. There is an online police gear site that sells high quality police gears.

They are not just another online store, 5.11 Tactical Series creates superior products that enhance the safety, accuracy, speed and performance of law enforcement, military and firefighting professionals. Built on a foundation of durability, quality and value, 5.11 Tactical leads the industry by delivering functionally innovative gear, head to toe. On this site, you can locate a local 5.11 Full Line Dealer or order genuine 5.11 clothing, uniforms, outerwear, footwear, FR-x3™ fire retardant gear, ZB-7™ Trauma Pads and more.

At 5.11 Tactical Series, they create products that exceed the needs of their customers with functional innovation while delivering exceptional value. 5.11 Tactical Pants with the patented tactical strap and slash pocket design were originally developed for rock climbing. “5.11” is a rock climbing difficulty level as listed in the Yosemite Decimal System. With skill levels ranging from 5.0 (easy) to 5.10 (difficult), 5.11 is even more grueling. 5.11 is officially defined as, “After thorough inspection, you conclude this move is obviously impossible; however, occasionally someone actually accomplishes it.”

California Calling

Recently California has been in the news for an unfortunate reason – a wildfire that spread like, well, wildfire which destroyed homes and livelihoods of many Californians.

Photo source: National Geographic News

In the midst of all the smoky gloom and ashen doom, emerged a silver lining in the form of a new blog that talks about California, for all the good reasons.

In fact, it is Everything You Want To Know about California And More! This new blog was started by a California native named Jeff Irvin who resides in Long Beach, CA. Jeff had lived in California his whole life and want to spread the good words (and not so good) of California and the surrounding states, from the perspective of a California native.

As the blog title suggests, it is about all things Californian. For the month of October, Jeff is doing a special feature on his blog called Haunted Places In California, and he had posted some interesting write-ups which were accompanied by images of the mentioned places. Do you know that Disney Land is HAUNTED? Yes, the happiest place on Earth wasn’t spared the spooky stuffs and Jeff brings you the story! Be sure to check out the post if you're planning a vacation to ANY Disney theme park anytime soon.

Jeff is holding a blog review competition where the blog with the best review posted by November 1 2007 will get $50 Dollars by paypal! It is a nice and simple contest, so go check out the contest rules.

God bless all Californians and Happy Halloween!

Review of Pro360 dot com

For many people who like to gamble and have the money to burn, going to the glitzy casinos in Las Vegas must be an annual ritual for them. What about those of us who enjoy the thrills of poker game once in a while but do not have the financial luxury to afford a round trip to Vegas?

This may explain the increasing popularity of online gambling and online casinos. Gambling online, in the comfort of one’s home have advantages in ease of use, convenience and money save on air tickets and hotel accommodation. In addition, online casinos’ low operating cost compared to land-based casinos sometimes means the cost-savings are returned to players as bigger jackpots and prizes.

Out of so many online casinos that are available, it may be tricky for you to pick one but by doing some inquiry and comparing the facilities they provide may not be as difficult as it sounds.

Pro360 online casino reviews hundreds of best online casinos to help you avoid the time consuming and tedious task of doing so. It provide editor’s rating, player’s rating as well as full review of casinos, and rank them from top to bottom so that you can start gambling online in minutes, with less hassles and more enjoyment!

Love Installation

Received the below passage in an email my friend sent me:

Tech Support: Yes, how can I help you?

Customer: Well, after much consideration, I've decided to install Love. Can you guide me through the process?

Tech Support: Yes. I can help you. Are you ready to proceed?

Customer: Well, I'm not very technical, but I think I'm ready. What do I do first?

Tech Support: The first step is to open your Heart. Have you located your Heart?

Customer: Yes, but there are several other programs running now. Is it okay to install Love while they are running?

Tech Support: What programs are running ?

Customer: Let's see, I have Past Hurt, Low Self-Esteem, Grudge and Resentment running right now.

Tech Support: No problem, Love will gradually erase Past Hurt from your current operating system. It may remain in your permanent memory but it will no longer disrupt other programs. Love will eventually override Low Self-Esteem with a module of its own called High Self-Esteem. However, you have to completely turn off Grudge and Resentment. Those programs prevent Love from being properly installed. Can you turn those off ?

Customer: I don't know how to turn them off. Can you tell me how?

Tech Support: With pleasure. Go to your start menu and invoke Forgiveness. Do this as many times as necessary until Grudge and Resentment have been completely erased.

Customer: Okay, done! Love has started installing itself. Is that normal?

Tech Support: Yes, but remember that you have only the base program. You need to begin connecting to other Hearts in order to get the upgrades.

Customer: Oops! I have an error message already. It says, "Error - Program not run on external components." What should I do?

Tech Support: Don't worry. It means that the Love program is set up to run on Internal Hearts, but has not yet been run on your Heart. In non-technical terms, it simply means you have to Love yourself before you can Love others.

Customer: So, what should I do?

Tech Support: Pull down Self- Acceptance; then click on the following files: Forgive-Self; Realize Your Worth; and Acknowledge your Limitations.

Customer: Okay, done.

Tech Support: Now, copy them to the "My Heart" directory. The system will overwrite any conflicting files and begin patching faulty programming. Also, you need to delete Verbose Self-Criticism from all directories and empty your Recycle Bin to make sure it is completely gone and never comes back.

Customer: Got it. Hey! My heart is filling up with new files. Smile is playing on my monitor and Peace and Contentment are copying themselves all over My Heart. Is this normal?

Tech Support: Sometimes. For others it takes awhile, but eventually everything gets it at the proper time. So Love is installed and running. One more thing before we hang up. Love is Freeware. Be sure to give it and its various modules to everyone you meet. They will in turn share it with others and return some cool modules back to you.

Customer: Thank you, God.

God/Tech Support: You r e Welcome, Anytime.

Win an 8GB iPod Nano!

While surfing the blogosphere, I came across a blog called It’s Write Now (great domain name), which is celebrating its 3 months anniversary by holding an 8GB red video iPod Nano giveaway contest.

It’s Write Now is authored by Emma and the blog is about writing, and how, and where to write. It’s about getting published, making money, marketing and blogging. It’s about people, imagination and creativity.

To enter, simply create a post with a link to It’s Write Now and a link to the contest post. Then submit a comment on the contest post, with the URL of your entry post. The entries will be assigned numbers according to the order posted.

The contest will end on October 31st at Midnight. The winner will be announced by the following Monday, November 5th.

Good luck everyone!

The Future of Aviation

Singapore Airlines made aviation history with the completion of the inaugural commercial flight of Airbus superjumbo jet A380 from Singapore to Sydney. This is the historic day where the gigantic double-decker made its maiden passenger voyage and flew into aviation history.

It is a flight that sets a new benchmark for luxury, space and comfort. It isn’t just another first for Singapore Airlines. It is a defining moment for the global aviation industry.

The Singapore Airlines A380 is designed to carry 471 passengers in the grandest of style with 12 Singapore Airlines Suites, 60 Business Class seats and 399 Economy Class seats.

The A380 is the world’s largest passenger aircraft. It is a mammoth aviation engineering feat and a true environmental champion designed to meet the demand of air travel today and in the future. Here’s a sneak peek of its luxurious passenger cabin for the majority of us who are not lucky enough to be part of history in the making.

In other tourism-related news:

Singapore gets in-principle approval to host F1 night race

The sport's governing body, FIA, has given the in-principle approval to Singapore to host the night race on 28 September 2008 under the floodlights. The inaugural Formula One Singapore Grand Prix will be held on a street circuit of public roads around the Marina Bay area surrounded by skyscrapers and colonial buildings. It is also Asia's first street race

Contest Beat Contest

Psst! Wanna stand a chance to win some easy money? $100 to be exact and it is Contest Beat, which is giving away this ultimate blog contest prize.

You can enter this contest in two different ways (or both if you want):

1. Blgoroll Contest Beat (http://www.contestbeat.com) using any anchor text you fancy.
2. Blog about the contest linking back to the contest page and the homepage of Contest Beat (again, with any anchor text you like).

If you want do both then you can get twice as many chances to win the $100. Come October 31 the contest will end and one lucky person will be randomly drawn to win the $100, to be sent instantly via Paypal.

Ain’t that like the easiest way to earn some smackers? If lady luck doesn’t smile on you in the random draw, no one will end up a loser. Contest Beat will be linking back to everyone who enters, so now you really have no excuse not to get in on the action!

The Entertainment Adventure Capital of The World

The year-end school holidays are approaching soon and it’s the time of the year where the whole family gets together for an oversea leisure trip. What better way to celebrate schools out than to bring the children to an amusement park to reward them for a year’s hard work in school.

One of our top choice for our holiday destination is Pleasure Beach, Blackpool, which is Britain's No. 1 Resort Theme Park. With accolade such as “The Entertainment Adventure Capital of The World”, Pleasure Beach, Blackpool has some of the UK's and the worlds best rides as voted for by visitors. The Pepsi Max Big One, Infusion, Big Dipper, are all renowned worldwide and attract of 6 million visitors each year.

There's plenty to do at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, with over 125 rides and attractions and spectacular shows. Take a thrilling ride on the Pepsi Max Big One, turn your world upside down & get ready to do it again on the Revolution or experience the classic twin tracked coaster the Grand National. Such American style Amusement Parks not only are the favorite playgrounds of all children, it will surely make adults feel like children all over again.

iPod Video Nano Contest

With the gift giving season fast approaching, have you drawn up your Christmas wish list early to avoid last minute panic buying? The new range of iPods are sure to be hot items during this time, so make sure to get them early to avoid disappointment.

Unless you are banking on winning the iPod Video Nano that Jason Blanton from Success For Your Blog is giving away in his blog contest. Success For Your Blog is a blog about successful blogging, bringing the latest and greatest tips, tricks, tweaks and best practices to apply to your blogging, for both hobbyists and probloggers.

To enter, just post an article about the contest and write a little bit about the blog, with appropriate linking. Fairly standard contest rules to follow right? One additional interesting rule is to link to two blogs of your choice in the post. This will serve two purposes, to spread some link love, as well as to promote this contest to two more bloggers who may have missed this contest.

So I’m going to invite my friends to check out this contest:

Kirk from Jamipanese.com, who has Japanese culture flowing in his Jamaican blood! Cool...

Lori from BloggingCents.com who is doing such a great job since she started her new Wordpress blog.

Good luck to one and all and happy blogging!

Want Something For Nothing?

Who doesn't want free lunch? Now you can win something for doing virtually nothing! Ok, that's a bit far fetched I guess, considering you gotta make a blog post in order to be entered into this contest run by Jeremy of Online Cash Flow.

Online Cash Flow is a personal blog dealing with various opportunities to help you maximize your online income. In his quest to make money online, Jeremy have tried next to everything you can think of and have had both positive and negative encounters.

Jeremy wants to provide everybody with information about what he had learned when trying to make money online. Be it his personal recommendations, or what he had done to earn money, Jeremy will do his best to provide you with the information needed to make money online.

The winner of this contest will get all 3 of the following:

1. Free ReviewMe Review

2. Free Header Banner Design

3. Free 2 Month Featured Text Link

This contest will run until October 20th, 2007. Don't miss the boat to get your virtual free lunch!

Win up to $75 in the Stripping Aristologist Contest

Profitable Productive Blogging, a blog about Profitable Affiliate Marketing is running a contest The Stripping Aristologist where you can win $50 cash and a bonus prize valued at $25.

To enter, you have to guess Jonathan’s favorite Gourmet Chef on your blog post linking back to the homepage and contest page.

At the end of the contest, a winner will be randomly picked to win the grand prize of $50. If the winning entry also correctly guesses his favorite gourmet chef, the bonus prize of $25 will be awarded!

The contest will run until Monday, October 15, 2007 4:00 P.M. CST. Good luck to everybody!

Facebook Choir

Facebook had permeats most areas of our lives, it even has its own choir! During the time that Facebook released its platform, it also released an application of its own for sharing videos on Facebook. Users can add their videos with the service by uploading video, adding video through Facebook Mobile, and using a webcam recording feature. Additionally, users can "tag" their friends in videos they add much like the way users can tag their friends in photos. This feature was expected to increase competition with MySpace. However, the Facebook Video Application does not allow sharing videos outside of Facebook. Users will not be able to export or download videos from Facebook

What Lights Do You Use In Your Garage?

The garage is not only a place where people store or park their vehicles; it has become a general-purpose workshop to many people. If you plan to use your garage as your workshop as well as a storage area for your vehicle, you had better ensure it is fitted with proper garage lighting for safety purposes.

Garages usually don't have many windows, if any at all. If you want to do anything in the garage, you need a lot of light or else you just feel like you're in a dark dungeon. It's best to put up many lights in your garage and have them grouped on different switches. This way if you're just going into the garage quickly, you can turn on enough light to see without having to turn on the whole garage. And if you're working in the garage, you have the option to turn on all the lights so that you can work in an environment that's user friendly.

Over at CarGuyGarage.com, they carry over 1,000 products to make the garage another room in your house. When your garage door opens to show your classic car, CarGuyGarage.com will be in the background making sure you have all the accessories you need to keep your muscle car in top form.

(This is a sponsored post)

Be A Winner in ProBlogger's Birthday Bash

To celebrate ProBlogger Birthday Bash, Darren Rowse is giving away over $54,000 (USD) of cash and prizes! These prizes have been generously donated by over 100 kind sponsors and will be given out over a number of days through a variety of different competitions.

Prizes range from getting theme songs composed for podcasts/videos to iPods, to logo designs, to magazine subscriptions, to books, to cash and vouchers and so much more.

This particular post is an entry for the competition to win two 20” LG USB monitor sponsored by DisplayLink. With such huge screen real estate, you can spread yourself out and accomplish more in your blogging and online endeavors.

To see the latest round of giveaways check out the birthday prize giveaway category.

Bizzard Theory

Whoever came up with this theroy should be awarded the Nobel Prize!

Sorry ladies, no offence, just stating a fact! Ha ha ha ha....

Review of Biker Planet

When we mention about bikers, we often associate them with images of unruly people, often loud and brash and travel in gangs to terrorize people. This infamous reputation of bikers are the results of media type cast, especially in films, where bikers are often stereo typed as the proponents of massive brawls and unprovoked violence.

This is a false belief as the majority of bikers are responsible people who just happen to love bikes and motorcycles and riding in them. They are everyday common people like you and me, with steady jobs and some with families. As for those biker singles, being type cast negatively must have put a dampener in their social life.

Luckily for biker personals, Biker Planet has come to the rescue. Biker Planet is a dating site for singles who are looking to meet other biker singles. This site is the premier biker dating site on the net and has many features that other dating sites do not have.

When you sign up for Bikerplanet.com , you are joining an online community of single bikers looking to find like-minded people for a date or more. Biker Planet gives both parties something in common to discuss right away without having to dig into areas that may be awkward for either party, allowing communication to evolve naturally over time.

Online IQ Test

I've never taken an official IQ test from the MENSA guys during my school days. So I took this free IQ test online here's my result.

Dating For Seniors

As medical science becomes more advance and the average life span increases, more and more people are living longer. When one gets past retirement age and is still single or has became widowed, life can be a lonely experience for these senior singles. It is a basic human need to have companionship with someone you can share your life with.

Finding like-minded people to go out and socialize with can be a problem at any age, what more if you are a senior single. The dating scene can be scary like a minefield.

This need not be the case with Dating For Seniors, which is an online dating portal for older men and women to find suitable partners to spend their life with. The site feature only real seniors who are single and interested in dating, meeting as friends or looking for a partner in life. No fake profiles, no spam, just real life people looking for partners online.

Senior dating sites usually charge you too much and offer too little. Dating For Seniors is the number 1 seniors community on the net and their Seniors personals site will give you just what you want. Senior Single men and women who are looking for other Senior singles online.

Grab This Deal Now!!

DealDotCom.com is the place on the web to find all the Internet Marketing products you really want for rock bottom prices. They sell high-quality internet marketing/online business related products and services that help save you time and money when it comes to running your online business.

DealDotCom is so confident of their business model and price to products appeal that they only sell one item per day. This sales method tells me they will sieve through thousands of products to bring you quality deals only. That means you better get your grubby little hands on it before it sells out. If you miss out on the item or it sells out, then too bad. That’s why it’s so important to check every day to see what kind of steals are going on.

Why should you care?
I know many of you do not make purchases online or are too skeptical about such “huge discounts” and “rock bottom process” claims! Well, it’s alright if you don’t buy the products offered. You can make money by selling Internet Marketing products and if like me, you don’t have anything to offer, we can still make money via the affiliate program.

DealDotCom offers one of the best two-tier affiliate programs in the industry. They offer 35% commission on all sales from your referrals. What’s more, there’s no time limit applied on your commission, the DealDotCom commission is forever!

What you need to do now
What you need to do RIGHT NOW is click that link that reads “Get Your Free Account Now“. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to log in and get your affiliate link (all members automatically have an affiliate link which you can find on the “Your Account” page). Then tell everyone you know about this awesome program, and get them to join via your affiliate link.

You won’t find a much better deal than that. If you haven’t taken advantage of the affiliate program yet, you should definitely do so.

Get Your Free Account Now!

"deal dot com"

Review of Anglian Home Improvement

If you have been blogging out of your garage all this while, it is high time you contact the contractor to embark on a little home improvements project and build extra room in your house for all the family to use, for your blogging activity. Imagine that room bathed in natural light all year round and the addition will increased the value of your house. But choosing the right people to build your conservatory is important.

For high quality, service-based approach, look no further than Anglian Home Improvement. For more than thirty-six years Anglian has been renowned amongst UK homeowners as the place to go for high quality home improvements. They are the pioneer at the time to adopt a revolutionary concept to encourage the public to view the products personally and discuss their needs. They have many different style of conservatories for your selection.

Anglian is the most recommended home improvement company in the UK, and has more happy customers than any of its competitors, helping millions of satisfied customers to create their ideal home. With an annual turnover of £300 million, it ensure that it stay one step ahead of the competition with its continual programme of research and development, its 'state of the art' manufacturing plants, and its ever improving product range.

The process of buying an Anglian product shouldn't be complicated - from the original quote, right through to the after sales service, they aim to be as professional and impressive as they can. Each Anglian product is tailor made to fit your home exactly, so that you are 100% satisfied. Anglian are the experts in all areas of home improvements and they are committed to all customers in the service and the products they offer.

(This is a sponsored post)

Disabling Commenting

Those of you contemplating to disable comment on your blog, you now have a very good excuse!

Tongue Twister

Saw some interesting tongue twister, post them here to share with you. For more of them, see the link below.

She sells sea shells on the sea shore;
The shells that she sells are sea shells I'm sure.
So if she sells sea shells on the sea shore,
I'm sure that the shells are sea shore shells.

I saw Susie sitting in a shoe shine shop.
Where she sits she shines, and where she shines she sits.

I wish to wish the wish you wish to wish, but if you wish the wish the witch wishes, I won't wish the wish you wish to wish.

If you notice this notice,
you will notice that this notice is not worth noticing.

The owner of the inside inn was inside his inside inn with his inside outside his inside inn.

When you write copy you have the right to copyright the copy you write. ...

Through three cheese trees three free fleas flew.
While these fleas flew, freezy breeze blew.
Freezy breeze made these three trees freeze.
Freezy trees made these trees' cheese freeze.
That's what made these three free fleas sneeze.

How can a clean clam cram in a clean cream can?

Can you can a can as a canner can can a can?

How much dew does a dewdrop drop
If dewdrops do drop dew?
They do drop, they do
As do dewdrops drop
If dewdrops do drop dew.

Source: International Collection of Tongue Twister

Dial For Your Weekend Breaks

If you have been working your socks off and feel you are getting jaded, it is high time you give your mind and body a deserved break. If you cannot commit the time for a long holiday, you can consider taking no-frills short breaks to rejuvenate and recharge your mind.

Dialaflight dot com website is your starting place to find the holiday of your dreams. From here you can search for cheap flights, hotels, car hire and many travel ideas including weekend breaks, beach holidays, city breaks, spa holidays and travel insurance to help you to create the all-inclusive trip to any worldwide destination.

Jump on a plane and escape for a weekend break in one of many exciting destination. Whether you want sightseeing, culture, shopping, a beach, nightlife or somewhere to take the kids – Dialaflight has something catered for everyone. They will organize your flights and hotel leaving you to decide where to eat and what to see or do.

Share Your Germ Count

How Many Germs Live On Your Keyboard?

Studies have shown that your keyboard and mouse are some of the most germ-ridden devices you own, surpassing even doorknobs and toilet seats. Take this short quiz to see how many germs lovingly call your keyboard home.

2,202,060How Many Germs Live On Your Keyboard?

Mingle² - Free Dating Site

There are about 2,202,060 germs on my keyboard right now!
That's equivalent to the number of germs on 440 toilet seats. Ha ha ha ha!!!!

What's The Spin On Your Skin?

The planet is a huge place populated by human races with diverse backgrounds and cultures. What visually sets the different races apart is our skin colors. Europeans tend to have olive tone skin, Africans have very dark skin and Asians have yellowish skin color. Genetics does have its opinion on how we look, but one thing that transcends races and cultures is a common human trait to look good. Since the skin is the largest organ of the human body, it is important we practice good skincare. The ORIKI name is derive from: ORI – weaving and KI – life energy. Hence, ORIKI equates “Weaving Life Energy into your skin”. ORIKI is dedicated to “The Beauty of Skin Science and The Science of Skin Beauty” for AMO skin.

If you're born with pigmented skin, it's important to find the right skin care formulation, with the proper ingredients. ORIKI Cosmeceuticals have developed products specifically for those with Asian, Mediterranean and other Olive (AMO) skin types.

With more than 8,000 cosmetic products introduced each year, it's important for those with AMO skin tones to match the right products with the right skin types to avoid unnecessary side effects. Designed by an American Board Certified Dermatologist and Biochemist, ORIKI Cosmeceuticals incorporates the pigmentation factor into the formulation of its skincare line.

Asian, Mediterranean, and Olive (AMO) skin types are more pigmented. The more pigmentation, the darker the skin color and the more likely it is to darken further after a minor injury or acne breakout. AMO skin behaves differently than fair skin due to this sensitivity of the pigment cells. Although AMO skin is more protected against the sun, it is not exempt from the ravages of sun damage. Sun exposure may worsen certain common facial pigmentation such as dark patches and dark spots.

Because AMO skin is very delicate, it is imperative to use any formulation with hypoallergenic ingredients and avoid hydroquinone. The key to obtaining good results lies in choosing safe, yet effective ingredients. Some products can cause serious redness and other adverse events that can be minimized with gentler products.

Technorati Topics

Technorati has introduced a new feature called Technorati Topics. It lets you discover what's popping now from some of the best blogs on the Web. It works like a news ticker tape where live streaming of latest blog posts keep poping up.

Technorati Topics is a way for you to navigate the conversations on the Web, based on the categories you select. Let's face it: there are a lot of blog posts out there, and sometimes you just want the latest and greatest within a general topic, without the search. Now you can visit one Technorati Topics page and see just that: live streams of the newest blog posts, all around the topic you want. Topics pages are constantly updating so they're different every time you visit, and the posts you see scrolling down the page will keep you in-the-know about what's popping right now.

Hello Pingo

If you are a frequent traveler and like to keep in touch with friends and family when you are abroad, using a prepaid international calling card is the best way to make international long-distance calls due to its secure and ease of use. Owing to the increase in the number of private telecom companies and their price competition, the use of such cards have slowly developed into the cheapest way of making telephone calls from one country to another.

If you are one that uses these prepaid international calling cards for personal or professional purposes, then choosing the best prepaid international calling card company is essential for you, especially if you want to get the most out of your money.

Pingo international calling cards save you money on international calls; you get the savings of a discount calling card with the reliable quality of one of the largest carriers of international calls.

Pingo has packed their cheap international phone card with features and benefits, which include conveniences such as pinless dialing and speed dialing, recharge and auto recharge, and no hidden charges - just a 98 cents USD per month account maintenance fee.

Pingo provides consumers and business customers prepaid calling service designed to deliver the best calling card experience, including quality, convenience, and customer service at the most competitive rates available today. Pingo RateWatcher is always on the lookout for ways to reduce costs and pass the savings along to you. It saves you the hassle of comparing phone cards and looking for lower rates, because Pingo is doing it for you!

There are literally hundreds of prepaid cards out there that claim to have the cheapest phone card- but only Pingo works hard to live up to that claim.

With their reliable network that delivers over 1.1 billion global phone card minutes a month, that is a high industry standard and credibility you can depend on. Now you can get more bang for your buck as you will receive $5 of free International calls just for signing up for Pingo. On top of that, there is also a special phone card blog discount coupon: “ppp3” valid for $3 off Pingo. Effectively, you get $8 of free call, you will receive $25 phone card for just $17.

Rare Birds Sighting

These rare birds were sighted sashaying proudly among holiday makers in a hotel on a resort island.

These unusual host of the resort hotel were one of the highlights especially with children. They were so excited to see these peacocks roaming freely.

Upon seeing them , I couldn't help but whipped out my digital camera with video recording function to capture the precious footage.

Innovative Business Match Making System

DirectMatches.com is an innovative system for meeting people. The inventive combination of person-to-person marketing along with an original concept of a social and business network produces a new kind of service. Driven by a commitment to quality and customer satisfaction, the company markets a broad range of highly developed matchmaking technologies.

DirectMatches.com has been around since 1999 and is the first in the online business and social networking industry to deploy a multi-matchmaking system that helps people locate everything from business contacts to finding friendship and dates online. It is the first business and social networking service with a contact management system that operates on a "dynamic basis", where members are able to select from dedicated networking communities.

Whether you run a home-based business or small enterprise, you can rely on DirectMatches.com huge business networking site to help you connect with other working entrepreneurs and expand your online presence and business. Their network currently has over 65k members and is growing by the day. DirectMatches.com works a lot like LinkedIn.com and MySpace.com but with the business person in mind, and by the way you can get paid for promoting the site!

DirectMatches.com is looking to expand its membership of social networking consultants and the site is currently offering free registration to all.

Smells Like Scam Spirits

One of the contest I entered last week was concluded and the winner randomly drawn. For the winner, it was a less than happy revelation, if not a frustrating one! John Cow was drawn as the winner, unfortunately, he was informed that the iPhone cannot be given away as the contest did not reach its targeted entries of 30.

John Cow entered the iPhone contest in July, then 3 weeks into the contest, the rules got slightly changed and a minimum of 30 entries were needed for the iPhone to be given away. Anything under 30 entries and the winner would just get $100 instead.

Put yourself in the cow's shoes (or whatever footwear cows put on) and imagine how frustrating that can be! He said he felt let down by this less than favourable decision to pull the rug out of the winner's feet. He was still being nice with his words, I say "feeling cheated" would be more appropriate for this sorry episode. While the big beef is fuming mad, his herd is having a field day condemning this iPhoney contest. Does this smell of a familiar scam, which kind of remind us of a recent con-job-contest?

Your Optics Superstore

OpticsPlanet, Inc is one of the leading optics suppliers with a wide selection of sport optics, tactical and military gear, microscopes, and designer eyewear.

OpticsPlanet.net offers the widest selection of high quality binoculars - binoculars night vision, digital camera binoculars, bird watching binoculars, hunting binoculars, astronomical binoculars, marine binoculars & military binoculars. No matter what specifications you are looking for - zoom binoculars, waterproof binoculars, compact binoculars or giant binoculars, OpticsPlanet stock thousands of items and constantly expand their product lines and add new state-of-the-art products to have you covered.

In addition to binoculars at great prices, they also ship FREE UPS ground shipping with all binoculars over $29.95 - Nikon binoculars, Swarovski binoculars, Celestron binoculars, Leupold binoculars, Meade binoculars, Bushnell binoculars, Steiner binoculars, Tasco binoculars, Brunton binoculars and many more.

OpticsPlanet.com prides itself on exceptional customer service, outstanding product knowledge, lowest prices and secure online shopping environment. They have a wealth of product information, anything from binocular reviews to “how-to-buy binoculars” articles. OpticsPlanet.com will help you select instruments and accessories and answer questions about our products before and after purchase.

OpticsPlanet.com pledge to bring to their customers superb optics at affordable prices. In short, they want to be your Optics Super store.

If In Doubt, Ask Rea Maor

Internet GEEK Rea Maor claimed to own a great many unknown websites which are black-listed by Google for no apparent reason. In my opinion, it could probably be due to his plans for Internet dominance, which puts him in direct confrontation with Google's own ambitions. His only known sites which is not black listed by Google (it is still displaying Adsense ads) is AskReaMaor dot com.

Mr Maor was recently given an Apple iPhone by his online friend(can you introduce such kind of friend to me?) but he couldn't get network support for it from where he is situated, which is like 7000 miles away from any AT&T relay station in the US of A! Hence, he is going to give it away in a no-holds-barred contest in the form of a lottery draw.

To enter, write a small paragraph, no less than 100 words long, about his blog AskReaMaor dot com with relevant links stated in his contest page. You must also link to any post you especially liked, for me that will be iPhone death - sooner than predicted. To earn bonus entries for the raffle, the usual Stumble it or submit the contest post to Social Networking sites action applies. If you have other creative ways, surprise Mr Maor, he might award you with bonus tickets.

Win $100 from a Gentleman

A kind and generous Gentleman over at whassupjack dot com is holding a contest where a lucky winner can walk away with $100 cold hard cash! To be exact, the blog owner's name is Mike Gentleman who started whassupjack dot com for fun and also as a filter site for hot search topics. Mike run the blog in his spare time, when he is not trading stocks and futures in the finacial markets.

The $100 prize money represents good value as it is an easy contest to enter. You earn entries by subscribing to his RSS feed, commenting on his posts and/or blog about it. You can choose to enter through any of the 3 methods, or like Mr Gentleman said, the smart ones will do all 3 and earn 5 entries. The contest ends 31 Aug and winner will be drawn on 1st Sept, so hurry and submit your entries.

Here comes the Shuffle

The blog review contest I entered in June was randomly selected as the winner! The 1GB iPod Shuffle was delivered to me and here's a pic of it.

Thanks to Mark, you should check out his site, Productivity501, for more productivity tips.

Free LG 24" LCD Monitor Giveaway Contest

The Sneaky Bastard is on a direct collision course with the dot com mogul by offering similar prizes in their separate blog contest! Expect sparks to fly!! But I’m gonna put my money on Prija sneaking past the finishing line first, on the basis of him offering early bird bonus draw of a copy of 4-Hour Work Week, as well as grand prize draw in mid Sept.

The grand prize of a 24 inch LCD Monitor is sponsored by Elite Baseball Instruction, which is a four-part series on baseball training.

This contest ends 09/15/07, so you have roughly 2 weeks’ time to get paid an award winning LCD monitor. A good reason to enter early is that the winner of the early bird draw will get their blog url and tagline posted on the original contest page. With the popularity of Cash for Comments, this valuable backlink will surely generate good amount of traffic for your site.

Games Convention Asia 2007

The big boys of gaming are heading my way to this sunny island in the tropics! It will be games games and more games as Nintendo, Sony and Electronic Arts have all announced that they will be spearheading this year's Games Convention Asia in Singapore.

According to the press release (via MCV), Nintendo will use the show to launch the revolutionary Wii console in the Singapore market. About 9 months after officially launching in the major markets in Japan, US and Europe, the Wii is finally here!



The Games Convention Asia 2007 will be held from 6th - 9th September at Suntec City Singapore. I'll definitely be there to grab a set of this hot gadget.

Sony Playstation 3 Giveaway Contest

Darin Carter of darin.cc is giving away a free Sony Playstation 3 game console in his blog promotion. Darin is an entrepreneur and has been involved in Internet Marketing for over 9 years. In his blog, he shares his knowledge of Internet Marketing with the world, and wants to make a difference in helping others market their websites effectively!

This free Playstation 3 giveaway contest is co-sponsored by IAWMD – The International Association of WebMasters and Designers. To enter, just blog about the contest or write a review of his blog, with proper links as required by Darin. Multiple entries are accepted and contest close on 31 Aug 2007.

I Really Want to Win a Free iPhone!

The internet marketing guru Mr Gary Lee is giving away a brand new 8GB Apple iPhone to generate some buzz around his blog and also get quality backlinks from high PR sites. Yes you heard right, he is really giving away a free iphone!

He also wants to promote his work-in-progress project about golf equipment as well as another online shopping site which he had been working with Ms Danielle. Go shop at PinkDeals.net and get your online coupon code and save some money!

While many people camped outside Apple stores for days just to be the first in line to get the iPhone on launch day, Gary cruise by the short queue at his local Apple store and got himself two 8gb iPhone instead of one which was originally intended.

This ultra cool and sleek iphone will not be launch in local market here till sometime next year, so imagine if I can get lucky in this contest and win the iphone, it would be something special. Even though I don’t think I will be able to use the iphone with local telcos due to phone lock, I’m sure it will come in really useful as a babe’s magnet and ice-breaker anywhere I whip it out!

Mad Cowpetition

Many of you must have taken notice of the invasion of the mad cow, taking the blogosphere by storm over the past 2 months. If you haven't, then you must have been living under a martian rock! Even more had been living off the free milk delivered to them on a daily basis. So when the end of the barn was announced earlier this month, many milk drinkers worldwide must have felt a sickening jolt to their system.

Lo and behold, it potentially means their daily calcium intake will cease as the farm was to be taken down by some leagal beaver. To the relief of the faithful milk drinkers, it was just a mis-timed April fool's prank and the farm's door will stay wide open and continue to produce milk for all the boys and girls!

Not only that, JohnCow.com is holding a cowpetition, giving away a ultraasuperdeluxeawesomeradical prize of your choice worth $500 that is made available by the coolest web hosting provider in the pasture.

If you fancy your chance to win a Playstation 3, an Xbox360, a Nintendo Wii or an iPhone, be sure to check out their mad cow blog for full contest details.

Breaking Traditions

'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death.
I'm very disappointed with that attitude.
I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.'
- Bill Shankly

Most of you will know that I am a fanatic fan of European football, in particular English football. If you are new here or don’t know this fact about me, perhaps this is a good time to check out my “About Me” page. However, I’ve never posted anything remotely related to football on this blog before. Since the English Premier League’s 2007/2008 season will kick off in less than 24hrs, I thought I’ll break tradition and post a few tidbits about the English Premier League.

1. The Premier League was formed on 27 May 1992.

2. The number of teams in the Premier League was trimmed from 22 to 20 at the end of the 1994/1995 season.

3. Since the inception of the Premier League in 1992, the title has been won by only 4 teams – Manchester United (9 times), Arsenal (3 times), Chelsea (twice) and Blackburn Rovers (once).

4. Former Sheffield United striker Brian Deane scored the first ever Premiership goal in a 2-1 win over Manchester United.

5. The fastest goal in the Premiership was scored by Tottenham Hotspur’s Ledley King, who found the net against Braford City after only 10 seconds in a 3-3 draw.

6. Former Liverpool striker Robbie Fowler holds the record of scoring the fastest hat-trick in the Premiership. He took 4 minutes 33 seconds to complete his hat-trick against Arsenal at Anfield on 28 Aug 1994.

7. Evergreen Teddy Sheringham is the oldest goal scorer in the Premiership. He was 40 when he scored for West Ham against Portsmouth on Boxing Day 2006.

8. Manchester United became the first team to score 1000 goals in the Premiership in the 2005/2006 season after Christiano Ronaldo scored in a 4-1 defeat by Middlesbrough.

9. Arsenal is the only other team to have reached the 1000-goal mark.

10. Former Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United striker Alan Shearer holds the record for the worst number of Premiership goals with 260.

11. Alan Shearer’s 15 million move from Blackburn Rovers to Newcastle United in July1996 was a Premiership record that lasted nearly 5 years.

12. Leeds United broke that record when they paid West Ham 18m for Rio Ferdinand in Nov 2000.

13. The highest fee paid for a teenager is 27m by Manchester United when they signed Wayne Rooney from Everton in 2004.

14. The youngest player to play in the Premiership is Fulham’s Matthew Briggs who was 16 years and 65 days old when he came on as a sub in Fulham’s 3-1 defeat by Middlesbrough on 13 May 2007.

15. The oldest debutant in the Premiership was Fernando Hierro, when he turned out for Bolton Wanderers against Fulham on 21 Aug 2004, at the age of 36.

16. Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs is the player with the most number of Premiership medals. The Welsh wing wizard has 9 medals from the title winning seasons in 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2007.

17. Tottenham Hotspurs’ goalkeeper Paul Robinson holds the record for scoring the goal from the longest distance in the Premiership – 88 metres. On 17 March 2007, Robinson took a freekick from just outside his own penalty area, the ball was pumped upfield, bounced over the head of Watford’s goalkeeper and into goal.

18. The other 2 goalkeepers to have scored in the Premiership were Peter Schmeichel (for Aston Villa against Everton) and Brad friedal (for Blackburn Rovers against Charlton Athletic).

19. Portsmouth’s goalkeeper David “Calamity” James ironically holds the most number of clean sheets in Preimership history. The record stands at 143 as of 14 May 2007.

20. The most number of goals conceded in a season by a team was by Swindon Town in the 1993/1994 season when their defence leaked in 100 goals.

After nearly 3 months of off season "cold turkey" treatment, I can't wait for the new season to kick off! Football fans, are you ready for the new season? Stock up the beers and the chips, dust off those lazy couches, let the games begin!

Review of Thoof.com

I have often promote the idea of submitting your posts to social book marking sites or article directories to create exposure and attract traffic to your blog. I have just found a new website which allow us to do that and many more useful features.

Thoof.com is a website that offers interesting news articles, websites, videos, photographs, and other links from around the web. Everything on the site is posted by Thoof readers, and can also be improved and edited by those same readers. What makes Thoof unique is a sophisticated algorithm which discovers a reader's interests and tailors the stories to each reader's individual tastes. Every Thoof reader will see a personalized page with stories he or she will find interesting. All that you, as a reader, have to do is simply read what you like, and Thoof takes care of the rest! In short, Thoof is a smart site which has the capability to customize to your reading interest and feed you with personalized news. Isn't it great?

I was immediately sold to this revolutionary feature and signed up as a member without any hesitation. Registration was really a breeze, it was completed in under 60 seconds! You just provide a valid email address and will receive a welcome email from Thoof in your inbox. You have to click on the link to validate your email and continue the registration process, you enter a password, and then choose a user ID, and you are done! Simple as that!

Next, I submitted one of my post with ease too. I click on the submit story tag, enter the post url, post title, a short summary of the post and type in at least 2 tags to describe the categories that my story falls into.

Then I click on submit story button and was given a HTML code of a ThoofRank button, simply cut and paste this HTML code into the blog entry or web page story that you are submitting and you are done! You can return to the main menu and your submitted post will be on the front page! Expose to the thousands of readers who can read it and thus attract them to visit your blog.

Lucky 7s Contest Winners

OK folks, the random draw had been conducted and winners picked, it's time to announce the winners of the Lucky 7s contest and give a complete closure to this exercise.

My heartfelt thanks to all who participated and those who took the trouble to give a shout-out to the contest. My heartiest congrats to all winners!

OK, the 6 consolation prizes of $7 each goes to:

Aldwin Ho - Struggling Blogger Ramblings

Ruchir - WebScape

Enkay - Enkay Blog

Alvarado - The Ice Dragon Project

Miriguy - Dirty Little Secrets

Matt Huggings - Entrepreneurial Blog

And the top prize winner of $77 is (drum roll please.......):

RamKarthik - Daily Tech News

All winners will be contacted to confirm your PayPal address in order for payment to be processed.

Search Engine Marketing Blog

Search Engine Marketing is a blog created by Darin Carter to help educate the public on search marketing techniques. Darin had over 9 years of internet marketing experience and now controls an annual marketing budget of 4 millions at his current marketing post with an online company. That is certainly online credibility you can count on!

In one of Darin’s many useful post, “How to Escape Google’s Supplemental Index”, he shared 5 tips on how to get out of the Google hell. In those 5 tips, Darin talked about writing unique content, link building your way via more trusted links to gain “overall link weight”, deep linking into earlier posts and previous internal pages. All the points are rather self-explanatory except point 2 where I do have some problem understand.

Having been involved with internet for over 9 years, online terminologies may appear as second nature to Darin, but for someone like me whose work does not involve IT or internet, it is not as easy as it seems.

In point 2, Darin advised to “give each page a unique META DESCRIPTION”. I don’t know about you, but I do not know what a meta description or meta tag is. Are these two terms similar? And how does one give “meta description” to a page? I would also like to know how giving a meta description will help the blog to escape the supplemental sandbox.

Perhaps Drain’s articles are meant to help those who are already well-versed or at least understood some basic terminologies of SEO. Otherwise, for newbie like me, I will appreciate if Darin can come down to our “level” to touch base with us.

Darin is currently running a free Nintendo Wii promotion, to enter, just write a post about the most valuable information you have learned from his blog and also mention about the contest. In return, Darin will link back to you with your preferred anchor text (except Search Marketing). It’s a pity he did not clearly indicate the contest closing date as well as how the winner will be selected.

Contest Aftermath

All good thing must come to an end, it’s official folks, my first blog contest had run its course and is now officially CLOSED! I want to thank all who entered the contest, it had been a fun journey reading all those insightful reviews. I hope it has been fun for you too. I also want to thank my fellow blogging friends who had helped to spread the word of this contest in one way or another.

Thanks to David of PureBlogging for giving it a shout-out and also Walt of Blog-Contests for featuring it on his blog. Special thanks also goes out to Kumiko for making a case study of my contest, benchmarking it against some industry standards, and also John of disassociated.com for writing what is by far the most comprehensive review. Although his post had met and exceeded the contest requirements, John had graciously requested NOT to be entered into the contest for fear of possible conflict of interest as I’ve earlier entered his contest. John's gesture is much appreciated and his request is respected.

Thank you guys!

Contest Stats
The take up rate for my contest has been far from satisfactory; it was way below my target of at least 30 entries. I thought I had an easily marketable concept using the 7/7/7 theme that will attract huge number of entries, but I will put both hands up and admit the contest a failure as far as the number of entry submissions are concern.

For the contest promotion, I submitted it to the various blogs that specializes in listing blog contest. Unfortunately, not all help to spread the word. I’ve also sent out close to 100 personal invitations to friends to support my contest, less than 10% took up the invite.

So what are the total numbers of entries received? Well, let’s just say I had offered a total of 7 cash prizes for the contest and those entries received are guaranteed a prize each!

So what happen?
What had caused this catastrophic outcome and what lessons have I learn from it? It will be convenient to just point the finger for the low take up rate at the difficulty level of the contest being set too high. I’ve seen and participated in other contests which are rather similar in nature, if not tougher than mine, which were well received.

Could it be the prizes offered are not attractive enough?
How could it be? One stands to win $77 for writing a 200 words review, isn’t it good money for a 30mins(max) job? I deduced that if I can order a paid Review from Kumiko’s popoular blog with huge reader base, for a mere $70, my offered top cash prize of $77 is more than attractive.

Furthermore, I’m offering 6 extra smaller cash prizes to increase the odds of contestant winning something and not leaving the party empty-handed. It is important to note that some bloggers do sponsored post for only $6 each.

Observations
On hindsight, the below are observations I gathered which are possible causes for the eventual failings of my contest:

- Curse of the subdomain.
It’s a creditability issue and people might not take blogspot blogs seriously. They may find no value to participate or even to be associated with a blogspot blog.

- Too much work required.
Writing review and posting screenshot of RSS subscription may have turned people off. Bloggers are a lazy bunch and they want easy-to-enter contest by just leaving a comment. I noticed such easy contest can attract big number of entries, like 300 to 400! And such contests usually offer crap prizes like USB cooler which no one really wants and eventually gets regifted several rounds. What are your odds of winning something not useful?

- Contest fatigue.
July was a unique month where I noticed many contests being launched. It was a competitive “market” and contest was easily buried by newer ones offering big prizes like iPod, Wii, Xbox360, iPhone etc. being launched every other day.

Summary
All in all, I must say it was a jolly good experience holding my first blog contest. It wasn’t a roaring success which I’ve hoped but I don’t want to take credit away from those who supported. I’ve no regret whatsoever and I want to empathize, I am very happy to be giving away the prizes and hope the cash would come in handy for the winners!

Alright, after rambling like forever and keeping you guys in suspense, who is the winner of the top prize of $77? For that, I'm sorry you'll have to wait a while longer. I promise the results will be posted during the coming weekend.

Stay tune!

If you enjoyed this post, do consider subscribing to my full RSS feed.

Cowpetition Bingo!

Have anyone here played the game called, “Cow Patty Bingo" or knows how to play it? What about an online version of it? Michelle of Bloggrrl.com gave her readers a good rundown of the game, complete with the the spray painted numbered grid and the waiting-for-cow-shit-to-drop stuff!

In her Cow Patty Bingo online contest, there won't be any cow shit involve, why the hell does she called the contest as such was the result of overhang on creative muse.

You would be interested to know that the number one search term that lands people on this site is “How to masturbate”. Hold on a sec, don't click that exit button just yet. Michelle's blog is completely safe for work and I would say "family friendly" too. It is her way of playing with post title and maybe also the result of her incoherent-ness taking over at 3am in the morning!

Expect to read many such quirky titles and posts, written in her own funny, yet personal way that touches the heart of her readers.

The contest ends on July 31 at midnight in Texas.

The winner, in addition to getting the $50, will also enjoy a permanent spot of recognition on her Contest page. There will be five disgruntled runner-ups. These individuals will be recognized for their participation by being linked to in the Contest Winner!!!!! post. This is one easy contest you won't want to miss.