Essentially Yours!

To celebrate her blog's one year old birthday on 22 June, Charlene over at Essential Keystrokes is holding a one week long birthday bash where readers can expect a full week of spectacular posts and prizes galore to be won! Yes, you heard it right, you do not have to bring presents, instead prepare to win one! How fun is that!! The prizes just keep getting more and more as more sponsors donated generously for the blog's birthday bash! Charlene is indeed a very popular blogger.

I must admit, albeit embarassingly, I'm a new reader of Essential Keystrokes, and I'm already gate-crashing the birthday bash! The least I could do is to wish the blog a big

Happy Blogging Birthday!

One of her post I enjoyed tremendously is "How Do You Explain Blogging To Your Mom?" In the post, Char wrote about her brilliant analogy of the whole concept of blogging which she created and used to explain to her mom. Do check out this and many other interesting posts on Essential Keystrokes.

To enter the contest, just link to any of her posts and leave her a comment to tell her which prize(s) you would like to win. The contest closes at midnight EDT on Friday, June 29, 2007.

Win A USB TV Tuner from Beyond The Rhetoric

Beyond the Rhetoric is the official blog of Michael Kwan, who is a professional freelance writer based out of Vancouver, BC Canada. His freelance writing services can be procured on his website MichaelKwan.com. The purpose of his blog is to serve as an outlet for his creative juices to flow without inhibition.

With Beyond the Rhetoric, Michael writes in a more casual tone than is allow on his professional freelance writing site. It certainly brings a personal touch to his writing, and reveals some insights into the man behind the keyboard. From the categories section, some of the topics that Michael blogs about are automobiles, food and drink, technology, video games, and many other random stuff which he come across in the process of researching for his freelance writing projects.

Those blog posts are fun, interesting, and easy to digest(definitely not heavy subjects like SEO, or how to make that million bucks from your blog) and will appeal to casual reader who's looking for interesting read online.

Michael is currently holding a contest where he is giving away a USB TV Tuner with PVR and time-shifting capabilities, worth $80. Michael has provided 3 different ways for bloggers to enter the contest and you can earn up to 5 entries by combining all 3 routes. Reviewing his blog had earned me 1 entry, and adding Beyond The Rhetoric to my Technorati Favourite blog earned me another entry.

By subscribing to his full RSS feed, and posting the screenshot in this post, I've earned a bonus entry, making a total of 3 entries earned.

To earn the maximum 5 entries, you got to be the Top commentator for the month of June.

The contest is open to all residents of the world, provided that you have reasonable access to some sort of postal service. You don't expect Michael to mail the TV tuner to Antarctica right? The deadline for entering the contest is 12:01AM PST on July 1, 2007.

Post Comments and Make Money at Pure Blogging

Over at PureBlogging.com, David Culpepper is holding a contest which can potentially make you up to $200 of cold hard cash! Although you must be a really really lucky 'son of a blog' to win the $200.

This unique contest is broken into 2 parts. Part 1 of the contest is designed to increase comments that contributes to meaningful discussion in his blog posts. The blogger who post the 1000th comment will win $100 (paid via PayPal). This part of the contest is totally dependent on luck as all comments will be strictly moderated by David and short irrelevant comments will be deleted. (Comments made by David and his guest bloggers will not make the count towards 1000th)

Part 2 of the contest is base on the usual run of the mill 'link bait' strategy. To enter, just blog about the contest, linking to PureBlogging.com homepage and the contest page, then email David the url of your blog post. You will be entered in a random drawing for another $100 CASH prize.

This contest is open to everyone, anywhere in the world. As long as you have a blog, no matter what language your blog is in. You can choose to enter one or both part of the contest. This contest has no fix closing date but will be closed once the 1000th comment is received, which is likely to be sometime in the next two weeks, by David's estimation.

Review of Productivity501

Mark W. Shead is a consultant who use technologies to help business solve problems. He authors a blog called Productivity501 which is dedicated to bringing you regular tips and tricks to help increase your personal productivity. Mark focuses on publishing original content and share useful ideas which has helped him be more productive in his practice.

This blog is hosted on Wordpress with a 2 column layout. The header image of a jigsaw puzzle missing its last piece goes well with its tagline "Pieces of the productivity puzzle". It formed an image in my mind that Productivity501 hopes to be the missing piece of puzzle(yellow piece which stands out) to complete the whole set, which translate to being the missing link in the readers' life. Productivity501 is completely ad-free and without those flashing banners which try their darn best to shout out to readers to click them or to purchase the advertised products, the blog is uncluttered and gives a very clean feel. I admire Mark for not waivering under the huge temptation of blog monetization.

The furtherest dated post on archive goes way back to Sept 2005, so I'm assuming this blog got started then, some 21 months ago. During this time, Mark had published a total of 195 posts (till Jun 2007) which are confined in 11 categories. That average out to about 9 useful posts every month, not a lot for his readers to read in one month. But if you dig deeper, most of his posts are lengthy, very detailed and well thought out, containing very useful tips. I do have a slight problem with his categories though. Only 13 out of the current total 195 posts were spread among 10 categories, with the other 182 posts tagged as 'Uncategorized'. This sort of tells me the redundancy of too many different categories which were not properly utilized.

I particularly enjoyed reading and can relate to his post '4 Reasons You Should Use a Credit Card' as I subscribed to all those 4 beliefs myself. Another post I find very useful to most of our technologies-laden life is "10 Tips for Creating Secure Password". I'm sure most of us at one point or another had difficulty remembering or generating easy-to-remember yet secured passwords for so many of our online accounts. The tips offered in this post may be able to help us solve this problem.

Mark is currently holding a contest where interested bloggers can participate in 4 different ways to win an iPod Shuffle.

1. Full Review of his site - 10 chances to win
2. Link to Site & blog about the contest - 5 chances to win
3. Subscribe to RSS - 1 chance win
4. Subscribe to Email - 1 chance to win

Be sure to submit your entry to this iPod Shuffle contest before all the chances are taken up.

In conclusion
This is the first time I come across Productivity501 and I'm not going to pretend I know Mark, his blog and his writing style well. In fact, base on my first impression, I'm going to offer a humble suggestion that maybe Mark can do something to improve on the shortcoming of the categorization of his posts which I've pointed out earlier. I've also pointed out that his blog gives a very clean feel, sometimes to the point of being too clinical - hospital-kind-of-clinical. My humble suggestion to tackle this would be creating a personal touch to his blog posts, and one way he may want to consider doing would be to add and sign off his blog posts with his signature.

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

Book Giveaway: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

The winner of the Brian Lee's Day Planner 2.0 giveaway contest had been announced, it goes to the lucky Ms Caesi.

For his next contest, Brian is giving away a copy of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki. I am very familiar with this book, it has been on the bestseller list of major bookstores for many years. To be honest, other than reading the book review on newspaper column, I never get down to actually reading it!

To enter the draw, simply link to his review of Rich Dad, Poor Dad using the same anchor text and notified Brian of your post url by leaving a comment on his post.

Robert Kiyosaki is a Rich Dad because he don't work for his money(that's poor dad's style), instead, he let his money works for him! If I have the luck to win the book, I really do not have any excuses left not to read it and hopefully, start transforming from being a poor dad to a rich dad!

Why I Love PayPerPost

PerPerPost was the first paid-to-write program I joined right after I got my PR ranking at the last updates(end April 2007). I came across the PayPerPost banner in so many blogs I visited and wanted to join this wonderful program earlier but during that time, my blog was new and PR rank was zero. I waited as I thought with a higher PR rank, I could expect more and higher value opportunities to be avail to me.

I love PayPerPost because it made my dream of getting paid for doing what I love, which is writing, comes true! PayPerPost is the leading marketplace for Consumer Generated Advertising and I'm proud to be part of this growing online community of movers, shakers and money makers.

I really like the user-friendly feature of a self-service marketplace where posties like myself can browse for qualified opportunities and select those which are relevent to our blog niche.

With their huge network of thousands of bloggers who spans the globe and covers everything from stay-at-home mothers to technology gurus, I can make friends with people of internationally diverse backgrounds all coming together with a common cause - to make money blogging.

Win a 24" Wide Screen LCD Monitor

Back from his trip in Taipei for Computex 2007, John chow is back at his evil best to help his readers make money online. This time, he is holding another evil blog contest. No, he is not giving away his booty haul of goodies he got from Computext Taipei, at least not yet. For this contest, he is giving away a massive 24" wide screen LCD Monitor sponsored by the good people at Bluefur web hosting who wants you to know that they are hosting Canada and the rest of the world.

To enter the contest, all you have to do is write about it in your blog. The contest ends on July 31st 2007 and is open to anyone, anywhere in the world (as long as you have a blog). Non English blogs are also eligible as long as the correct linking rules are being followed.

Good luck and have fun!

90 Days Pit-Stop!

Today marks the 90th day this blog had been 'reborn' since 17th March. What I mean by 'reborn' is that I committed myself on that fateful day, last March, to blog consistently while having fun learning this online trade.

It has been one hell of a journey thus far, there were sweat and tears, and there were smiles and jubilation too! Blogging is fun but blogging is definitely not easy-fun, it is hardwork-fun I must tell you. My biggest obstacle is finding time to research and write unique and interesting topics , in between my regular 44-hours week day job, and balancing the demand of family time with 2 young children and keeping the household in operational-ready conditions (we do not have outside help).

Having said that, I've learnt a lot during the last 3 solid months of blogging(part-time). I've learnt blogging is not just about writing, it is much more than that. Blogging is also about branding, packaging, marketing, networking and much more. I've also made many great blogging friends, and definitely have fun interacting with people from internationally diverse backgrounds, all coming together as a community with a common love(for writing).

I'll take this chance to update some of my rankings here, some of them I'm quite satisifed with, but some I still need lots of improvement on. To begin with, 2 weeks ago, I posted that this blog manage to break into Technorati Top 100 most favourited blogs. And today, I'm glad to follow that up with the announcement that this blog had achieved the Technorati Top 10k ranking and is now rank 8831, with an Authority 401.



Compared to Technorati ranking, my Alexa ranking does not paint such a rosy picture. My ranking today stands at 397,599! The only consolation I can give myself is this ranking 3 months ago was in the region of 2.9 million! This stat is definitely my Archillies' heels, and my next phase of blogging with be skewed towards improving it.

The next 3 months

The initial phase of relentless link-building operations had achieved its desired result, far more than I have ever dream of. For the next phase, I'll be focusing more of my time on sniffing out useful web resources, and of course blogging tips and money making tips and resources! In short, I'll be focusing on writing and publishing quality content on a consistent basis.

Before I sign off, I want to thank everyone who had read, commented, linked, favourited and subscribed to this blog. You are the catalyst that keep me firing on all cylinders and keep me going. Stay on course with me through this wonderful journey and exciting adventure online!

Win Free Business Books!

Ever since doing a Review Exchange with Matt of the Entrepreneurial Blog of Matt Huggings, I've became a regular reader and had witnessed the transformation of his previous blog theme and layout design to the current new 'resorty' look. Despite the transformation, Matt still churn out great content for his Make Money Blogging series continuously to share and engage his readers.

In his effort to continuously improve and promote his blog, Matt is holding a easy contest whereby 6 participants stand to win free business books, on top of getting free link love from his PR3 blog.

Those promotional copies of Secrets of Successful Blogging were generously sponsored by Ted Demopoulos of Demopoulos Associates. Each is a 40 page compilation of 101+ tips for blogging more Efficiently, Effectively, and Profitably.

For this blog promotion contest, Matt was bombarded by a certain Mr Levison who rode on his high horse and critisized Matt for crossing the line by gaming the search engine when he asked participants to link to his blog using his preferred anchor text. There were some interesting exchanges in the comment section of his blog post "Since When Is Link Baiting Unethical", check out the post for various viewpoints about this common link bait strategy.

Here Comes The White Elephant!

Having won herself the new "white elehpant" gift from John Chow's contest, who incidentally also re-gifted after winning it himself at a networking event. Ms Danielle has no need for the "piece of crap" since she's already got 2 iPods, she is re-gifting the 30GB Microsft Zune in her own back link promotion contest to promote her new blog site.

Since she received the "white elephant" (disguised in doo-doo brown color) prize in mid May, Ms Danielle had been busy getting her swing right on the greens(or is it the range) and also busy hosting a flying trapeze artist from down under. She finally got down to postingthis contest and offering the Zune up for grabs!

To enter the contest, simply create a new post in your blog linking to both her home page and one other post on her popular site — pick any post you want. Use anchor text that includes the phrase “blog site.” Examples include Danielle’s blog site, popular blog site, blog site about marketing, golf beginner’s blog site, ppc blog site, etc.

The "white elephant" is starting its "world tour" soon, hope it makes a cross-continental trip to the far east and make a permanent stop at my doorstep! I'll make sure it is "white elephant" no more!

Review of Online Opportunity

If you stumbled upon Online Opportunity.org, then you have found yourself a blog about making money online. What's so special about Online Opportunity that differentiate itself from the tons of blogs out there about making money online these days. Well, for a start, this blog not only is about making money online, but is also about how to not make money online. Yes, you heard right, there's no typo erorr. Have I pique your interest already with that last statement?

Jay, who author this blog, confessed that he fit into the profile of most people who are looking to make money online, myself included. We have day jobs, and probably don’t like them much. So we’re looking for a way to make a living online. Most of us are juggling our day job with running a household, supporting a family and trying to make money online with what little time and energy we have left.

There are countless opporunities and online programs for people wanting to make a living online, but unfortunately, some of them are scams targetted at the gullible trying to make a quick buck. Most of the legitimate programs that promise people will make residual income and making auto-pilotincome even while they are on holiday or sleeping, required payments upfront before they'll show you the secrets!

If you are skeptical about such paid programs, this is where Jay come in. He’ll spend the money and take the risk, so you don’t have to! Where on earth can you find such help for free? Through his blog, Jay hope to steer readers in the direction of opportunities that have a better chance of realizing its promise, so that you won’t make the same mistake like so many people who get lured in by the hype and then fail at programs. If you come across an opportunity you’re interested about, but and can’t find a review of it on his site, let him know the details and he'll do the sleuth work.

To promote his blog using the link bait startegy, Jay is holding a review contest, where he'll pick the best review (whether positive or negative) and award the author $100! To enter the contest, see the rules here.

Let's get VIRAL!!

Following Andy Coat's Viralink, Jimmy Huen of Founders Cafe made some improvement to this viral concept by using anchor text instead of just a '*'. He called this ViralTags and the instructions are as follows:

***Copy and Paste below this line***

Instructions:
1.) Copy and paste the matrix of “ViralTags” below courtesy of Founders Cafe (to support Jimmy’s quest of launching his own Internet Startup with a shoestring budget, please consider subscribing to his Full RSS Feed to see his triumps and struggles in real time).

2.) Substitute the Host Tag and one of the “Viral Tags” in the matrix with your anchor text of choice with your blog’s URL. Please keep anchor text to a max of 3 words to keep the matrix size manageable.

3.) When you get a ping back from someone that has your link in one of their “Viral Tags”, practice good karma by copying his/her Host Tag’s anchor text (automatically the associated link will also be copied) and paste it over one of your “Viral Tags” below.

4.) Encourage and invite your readers to do the same and soon this can grow virally.

Host Tag: earn income online

ViralTags ViralTags Tech at Hand ViralTags Internet Marketing Austria ViralTags ViralTags Technology Music Life ViralTags Manila Mom ViralTags ViralTags Startup Entrepreneur Money ViralTags ViralTags Make Money Blogging ViralTags Agloco Internet Marketing ViralTags Tech Gadgets Stocks ViralTags Computer Seventy-Five ViralTags Learn about e-Learning ViralTags Jack Book ViralTags ViralTags Everything iPod ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags Earn Money Online ViralTags Revellian ViralTags Entrepreneurship Internet Web ViralTags Create a Blog ViralTags start a blog ViralTags ViralTags Tech Startups Web2.0 ViralTags ViralTags Plugins TV Blogging Mrs Sparrow ViralTags Hot Buzz ViralTags Weight Loss Really Funny Jokes ViralTags ViralTags Internet Marketing German ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags Business Blog Web ViralTags Anitokid Chronikos ViralTags esofthub’s web finds ViralTags Make Money at Home ViralTags Business Chats ViralTags Earn Income Online ViralTags Feedget ViralTags Really Smart guy ViralTags Ibujempol BundaWAH ViralTags ViralTags The Broken Bow ViralTags Cat On MY Head ViralTags Anything n Everything ViralTags Malaysian Stock INC ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags Mariuca's Perfume Gallery ViralTags Sweet Hacks ViralTags Huma B~ ViralTags Social Media Munching ViralTags Making Money Online ViralTags earn money blog ViralTags Good Jokes Motiveless Crime ViralTags dating 40s relationships ViralTags Nakanampucha ViralTags Nessa-Mumblings ViralTags The Junky's Wife ViralTags Blogging for Money ViralTags Left in Aboite ViralTags Agloco Hours ViralTags Aloemoney ViralTags Kev-walkabout ViralTags Nonsense & Tears ViralTags Investing Women Online ViralTags A Great Pleasure ViralTags Monetized Your Blog ViralTags Butterfly Feelings ViralTags Sexy Celebrity ViralTags The Millionaire Secrets ViralTags El Comentario ViralTags Kabatology ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags ViralTags

Important: Once I get a ping back from you (I promise to do the best I can), I will add your anchor text and the associated link you designate as “Host Tag” here, replacing one of the “ViralTags” from the matrix above. As more and more bloggers copy and paste this matrix, the more backlinks you will have with your anchor text. If everybody who copy and paste from your blog does the same, pretty soon this will spread and go viral. So, the sooner you participate, the more links with anchor text you will receive.

***Copy and Paste from Above this line***

That's it folks. This should help you improve your Technorati ranking, SERP and Google PR. Please leave a comment here if you have copied from this matrix so that I can link to you with your preferred anchor text.

Attack of the Spyware

For virtually everyone surfing the World Wide Web, having their PC infected by spyware is nothing new to them. In fact, spyware is so rampant that there is no way internet users can avoid it unless one do not use the internet. Spyware may be known by one of its many names: adware, malware, trackware, scumware, thiefware, snoopware, sneakware and becasue of its steathly nature, users may not know their PC has been infected.

Spyware is a general term used to describe software that performs certain behaviors such as advertising, collecting personal information, or changing the configuration of your computer, generally without appropriately obtaining your consent first. It is often associated with software that displays advertisements (called adware) or software that tracks personal or sensitive information. If you do not detect spyware on your PC, it not only will casue nuisance to your surfing experience but can lead to much more serious consequences like identity theft.

Internet users should take note of symptoms of spyware infection which includes:sluggish PC performance increased pop-up ads unexplained homepage change mysterious search results.

My own frustrating experience with spyware happened when I downloaded free softwares, wallpapers and surf some dodgywebsites. And all of a sudden, there was constant irritating ad pop up when I'm surfing the net. And I started getting unsolicited emails about Viagra, bust enlargement, penis enhancement and Lottery winning notification, all spaming my mailbox. I often wondered where these advertising networks got my email address? I felt being spied everytime I am online. To put it strongly, I felt naked and violated and definitely very insecured.

In a bid to remedy the stressful situation of my PC being infected by spyware, I downloaded and tried many free spyware remover programs but to limited success. Eventually I was so anxious to completely eliminate this frustrating problem out of my online experience, I had to re-format my entire HDD and painstakingly reinstall the windows OS as well as all other programs and applications.

Because of the threat that malware poses, a reliable spyware removal tool installed on your PC is essential. Spy Sweeper(Window Vista ready) is a powerful, award-winning anti-spyware protection which delivers the most advanced spyware detection, blocking and removal available to beat dangerous spyware programs. It gives you 360 degrees of protection with its new Smart Shields, blocking known and emerging spyware threats as you browse - before they ever reach your computer and personal information. If your PC is already infected, Spy Sweeper's advanced discovery methods find and completely destroy malicious spyware that hides within your PC - even spyware that hides using rootkit technology.

With Spy Sweeper, you can:

• Keep Your PC Safe from Spyware
• Browse Where You Want, When You Want
• Download Your Favorite Music, Pictures and Videos Without Spyware Intruders
• Stay Ahead of New Spyware Threats with FREE Defense Updates
• Rest Easy with Continuous Customer Support

Spy Sweeper is an excellent solution to allow a safer and stress free surfing experience

Win Court's Paycheck - Reloaded

The result for Court's "Take My Pay Check" contest was released. Unsurprisingly, no one came close to predicting within $1 of Court's May earnings to win his entire May's paycheck and laugh all the way to the bank.

The closest guess was off by $60.15, and Court was gracious enough to award this amount to Theda over at Crayon Writer. Court's exact May's earnings of $715.85 was more than doubled his April's earnings of $293.01. That was a whopping 240% increase! 99% of the entries submitted (my guess included) fell within the $300-400 range, far too many had under-estimated the potential earnings of his blog.

Since no one fully won the contest, Court is extending it for one more month. If anyone can guess within $1 of what he earn in June, he will give you all of his earnings for the month. He is determined to give his BIGGER paycheck to someone.

***Start Copying Here***
The Rules:

• Create a post on your blog, copy these rules and paste them into the post.
• Make a guess! Link to my homepage with the text ‘make money online $1.00′, replacing the $1.00 with the amount of your guess. Example: make money online $100.56.
• Leave this link to the rules page intact.
• Use my contact page to confirm your entry by letting me know (make sure to include the URL of your post)! I will find most of them, but let me know to make sure!
• Those who enter between June 1 and June 7 will get four guesses. Follow the rules for each guess - 4 links.
• Those who enter between June 8 and June 14 will get three guesses. Follow the rules for each guess - 3 links.
• Those who enter between June 15 and June 21 will get two guesses. Follow the rules for each guess - 2 links.
• Those who enter between June 22 and June 30 will get one guess.

***Stop Copying Here***

As I'm posting this entry within the first window, I will get four guesses and they are:

1. make money online $1001.10
2. make money online $1138.70
3. make money online $1234.50
4. make money online $1369.25

So what are your guesses? The earlier you submit an entry, the more chances you have of winning!

How to Have The Cake and Eat it Too!

Ever since I started posting paid reviews from early May, I was forced to remove the Kontera code from this blog's HTML. The reason was Kontera's in-text advertising clashes with the TOC of the various companies offering paid review programs. My first sponsored post was rejected becasue Kontera in-text advertisement pop up within the sponsored post's keywords. I was forced to decide which to let go and which to continue. Thereby ending my short but unproductive partnership with Kontera. Until now, that is.

I was alerted to the possibility of running both programs together on my blog when Courtney Tuttle posted his earnings breakdown for May which include those of Kontera as well as other paid-review programs.

I emailed Court to enquire how he manage to achieve this without encountering a clash in TOC and obviously, many other bloggers had also emailed him with similar enquiry. A couple of days later, Court posted the solution on his blog to share with his readers. I followed the easy hack, and it is proven to work as well on Blogger.

How To Block Kontera Ads From Appearing In Sponsored Posts
It is a simple but manual work(no short cut) of pasting special code at the beginning of every paragraphs and at the end of every paragraphs in your sponsored post.

For example, if you want to block Kontera ads from appearing in the below paragraph, you will have to click on HTML view and add in:

You can now run Kontera ads in your blog without violating the TOC of paid review programs of having other advertisers' ads appearing in your sponsored posts.

I have since re-employed Kontera's code into my template's HTML and add in the above 2 special code to every paragraphs of every individual sponsored post, past and present. It works! They can now co-ed on this blog without clashing, and I can add another revenue source into my basket!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider to subscribe to my full RSS feed

Free Day Planner 2.0

It looks like lady luck took a fancy on me and decided to stay a while longer. She came in the form of a handsome guy call Brian Lee!

Brian of Genuis Types visited this blog and emailed to inform that I was the lucky winner of his "Think and Grow Rich" Book giveaway contest! For that, I won myself a brand new copy of Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

Thank you Brian!

For his next contest, Brian is giving away a brand new zippered portfolio (similar to the one he is using) which is filled with thirteen weeks of planner sheets from his Free Day Planner 2.0.

To enter the draw, simply link to his Free Day Planner and Time Management System using the same anchor text and notified Brian of your post url by leaving a comment on his post.

This cool zippered day planner will really complement the copy of Think and Grow Rich (on its way to me) to help in my goal setting process. Isn't that enough reason for lady luck to shine on me, again?

News You Can Use

At the beginning of a new month, it is very common to read about bloggers posting their previous month's earnings and analyzing the ups and downs of their various revenue sources. But so far, I have not come across any bloggers who can boast earnings from embedding or publishing licensed quality news on their site. This bland situation will soon end as there is a new revenue source in town and it is call The News Room.

Once you join TheNewsRoom as a member(registration is free), you can easily access to hundreds of thousands of fully licensed news stories from more than 170 credible content sources like Associated Press (AP), Reuters, and Agence France-Press (AFP), to name a few. The videos are spread across many different news categories to cater to your blog's niche and relevance.

When you click on the mash button, and follow the easy step-by-step process and copy the code to embed a news story or a news feed (with advertising) onto your website or blog you start earning revenue. It is that easy! This is a win win situation for bloggers who value high quality content to enhance or support their opinion and who blog for profit.

That is not all. From your site, the content can then be redistributed to an infinite number of additional sites. TheNewsRoom provide a tracking system and dashboard that records where the feeds and stories have traveled on the Web and how often they are viewed. Is that revolutionary or what?You can focus on posting killer contents for your site while letting the system track your viral income!

As mentioned earlier, all content is accompanied by advertising. Members earn a share of the advertising revenue each time mashed news is viewed on your site. With TheNewsRoom's innovative, viral payment model, blogger can earn up to $4 per thousand impressions (CPM).

You'll also earn money when someone mashes content from your site and it is viewed on theirs. As the pay chart above shown, the CPM when the content is viewed on referred site is $1. This is well above current industry standards that are typically around $0.15 CPM. Take advantage by mashing and encouraging your friends to mash from your site!

Increase Your PageRank by Viralink!

Like I confessed in one of my earlier post, I have never been tagged in any meme before (reason being I am not in any inner circle of A-list bloggers). What I usually do to get involve in any online movement is to 'gatecrash' the party, uninvited!

I was reading Andy Coat's blog when I come across his post on Viralink, which he started in a bid to get lots of backlinks! My blog is forever in need of more link love, so I need to get VIRAL!

———copy and paste the Viralink and instructions below this line———
Below is a matrix of 120 stars, I have already added a link to my blog onto one of the stars, all you need to do is copy and paste the grid into your blog and add your own link to one of the other spare stars, and tell others to do the same!

Viralink
********************

********************

********************

********************

********************

*********************

When I receive a ping back once you have added the Viralink to your site I will add your link to this grid, and each person who copies the grid from here will also link to your site!
RulesNo Porn Sites

Only 1 link per person (i.e don’t hog the viralink!)

Please don’t tamper with other peoples url’s.

Enjoy!

———copy and paste the Viralink and instructions above this line———

If you want to know how this strategy works, in detail, Andy had done his work thoroughly by explaining the exponential benefits the viralink is expected to bring in this post here. He even threw in some DNA-like pics to backup his explanation. Get VIRAL here, now!

Inside The Secret Life of a Super Affiliate

The first thing that attracted my attention to Zac Johnson's blog is the super geeky cartoon of a crown-wearing geek holding some greenbacks! The cartoon did no justice to Zac's real look(check out his pics in photo gallery), but it does a good job making an impression on my mind! The image is also use as "Zac's stamp of approval" for his posts on network reviews, very unique!

Zac Johnson calls himself a super affiliate marketer as he has been making money online for over 10 years now and specializes in affiliate marketing. Through Zac’s personal blog, he'll share with you his secrets, successes and failures of a true life super affiliate and how you can start to making money online. He was even featured in Revenue magazine in his MoneyReignNetwork days. That is online credibility for you.

Zac's blog is very content focused and gives a "clean" feel with no advertising, a rare find these days, where plastering all kinds of ads on one's blog seems to be the order of the day.
Inspired by John Chow's success in "review my blog" link bait, Zac is starting his own "Review Me & Make Money" contest. Not only will he link back to you for reviewing his fast growing blog (predicted PR4 on next update), but also one lucky winner will be draw randomlyto win $50(pay via PayPal) for every 10 reviews he gets. Click here for his review rules.

Breakthrough!

Just last week, I posted about a bug on Technorati that made my Fan count became ZERO! I verified with a few fellow bloggers and concluded that it was a general problem that seems to plague every members. I emailed Technorati Support highlighting this problem but only managed to get a auto-responded standard reply.

Fast forward 1 week later and the bug appears to be fixed. The fan count is working normally again as this screenshot will attest.

Along with this normalization of service came the sweet realization that this blog had broken into the Top 100 most favourited blog in Technorati!! About 1.5 months after hopping onto the Technorati Favourite Exchange experiment bandwagon, I'm glad to report my current fan count is 221 and my blog resides at #98 of the top 100 most favourited!

If anyone thinks this feat was easily achieved by simply joining the experiment and blogging about it, then sit back and let virtual reality takes its course, then you are absolutely wrong! It was a lot of hard work, at least for a non-A-list blog like mine. A lot of effort was put into marketing this blog, visiting hundreds of blogs selling to the owners this idea and asking them to join me. As is normal in marketing or sales process, you will meet "buyers" who are receptive to your idea, and nasty "buyers" who slam doors into your face will be par for the course. Then came the mundane but necessary steps of reciprocating each individual faves one-by-one, manually!

The final home stretch was the hardest, coupled with the fan count bug encountered, a delay to achieve the objective was unavoidable. The journey so far has been fun and is worth every ounce of hard work I've put in. This journey is by no means completed as the breakthrough will definitely motivate me to continue climbing the ladder! The inital objective was to try to break into the top 100 most favourited, now that the benchmark has been reached, dare I raise the bar and set the next benchmark at top 50? Top 10? Stay tune or subscribe to my RSS feed to find out!

Last but not least, I want to shoutout 221 thank yous to all those who have joined this experiment and favourited and kept faith with me. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!

For those who would like to join this Technorati Favourite exchange experiment, jump on the bandwagon and start giving and collecting your Technorati Favourites by clicking

Related posts:
Technorati Favourite Exchange Experiment
Technorati Favourite Exchange Experiment (update #1)

A Closer Look At The iPhone

Get an iName & WIN an iPhone!

Watch the Croc!

Darin Carter came across an article about the Croc shoe being recalled due to certain part of it posing a choking hazzard to young children.

He hopes to get words out about the recall (and danger) by harnessing the power of the blogging community to digg the story and/or blog about it to reach as many people as possible, especially those with kids.

As a father of 2 young children, even though we do not own any Crocs, I felt the responsibility to help spread the word. I've dugg the story and you can help to spread the word too(whether you have kids or not doesn't really matter).

product recall

May Mayhem

Another extremely fun month of blogging had shoot by. The highlights in May came in the form of getting paid(realized payments) for blogging, making my dream of being paid to write come true!

At the beginning of every month, it is very common to see many bloggers posting their earnings for the previous month. I am still struggling to convince myself whether to disclose my blog earnings. Until I am absolutely sure, leaving no doubt whatsoever in my mind, I'll put off the idea indefinitely. Anyway, my earnings are way too low to be of any interest to you, and neither will it inspire others. Having said that, I am not against my fellow bloggers posting their earnings, especially those whose hardwork were being paid-off, it's great motivation to see their earnings climbing month by month.

Another highlight came as a sweet surprise in my email inbox. I was informed that the review I submitted for Shawn-Knight's blog won the cash prize of $25! This is the first ever online contest which I've won cash. Lady luck must have visited and put smiley all over! I hope she'll stay awhile more, as more contest results will be annouced in the month of June! Once again, I want to thank Shawn for his contest and the joy his fun blog brought me. His daily Ownage never fails to put a smile on my face, it is especially a good form of stress reliever after a hard day's work! Stay tune to Shawn's blog as he disclosed more contests are coming up.

Review of RandLife.com

By his own account, Randall Cornett of RandLife.com professed that "...I’m not the most experienced person on the net. Actually, I’ve had very minimal success on the internet. Which, is why I’ve started this latest venture of trying to maintain a blog, that at least is worth something..."

Digging a little deeper into his blog to verified those humble confessions, I find no justifiable cause that points to his claims. On the contrary, I find it to be a cool blog with great blogging resources, and informative articles, written in a very professional yet personal way, which I beleive will easily connect with his readers.

Randall is a 17 years old native from Las Vegas, Nevada - a.k.a "Sin City", the place where CSI orignated. He will be finishing high school soon and is planning on getting his college education in Computer Science and later transferring to The University of Las Vegas Nevada to get a Business Degree. Randall is honest enough to let us in that school is really not his thing, his heart(besides belonging to his beautiful girlfriend Gabrielle Morales) really lies with computers. The Internet to be exact.

As far as his polished writing style is concern, Randall appears to me a 17 year-old going on 30! Randall blogs about his passion in topics like Search Engine Optimization, web development, affiliate marketing and blogging techniques.

Some of my favourite posts on his blog are:
1. 10 tips to make the Digg front page

2. What must you do to have a big traffic boom?

3. 10 Content Producing Tools

Having seen the success of fellow blogger's "review me" contest to bump up tons of traffic, Randall is upping the ante in his own contest, dangling a cash prize of $100, for a luckyblogger who review his blog. I really really hope this last minute submission will be accepted by Randall.

The blog's header graphic had just been tweaked recently, with a cartoon of a man greeting readers added next to the original blog title. Even though his avatar can be seen in his comment replies, his photo is missing from the "About Me" page, or anywhere on his blog. Randall's impersonal tone of blogging can really connects with his readers, but if he can put up a photo on his blog, it will give a different meaning to personal touch.

In conclusion, I highly recommend one and all to hop over and check out Randlife.com, it will be worth every minute of your time.