Written by Mark of MeAndMyDrum | Fave MAMD | Subscribe to MAMD

ScratchBack is a method of purchasing links on another person’s blog and do so without being penalized as these links are nofollow.

Specifically, Scratchback is a widget you place in your sidebar that serves as a type of ad placement/blogroll. People who want their link to be included in your list can do so by clicking the link at the bottom of the widget and make the appropriate payment.

The cool thing is, YOU get to set the price. What’s more, you can decide to have every submission to be approved by you before it gets displayed. So while you can allow people to submit their links on your blog without your approval, it’s not something I would recommend.

If you’d like to see what it looks like, then click over to my blog to take a peek. You’ll find it in the far right sidebar near the top.

I’ve never been a fan of the “buy me a beer” thing or some variation of it. But with ScratchBack the purchaser is getting a link in return, which makes me feel better about the transaction.

Get in BAYB’s Top Spots for Only 2$ 

Written by Mark of MeAndMyDrum | Fave MAMD | Subscribe to MAMD

Magazine themes are making a stronger presence on the Internet for bloggers. What’s a magazine theme? It’s one that provides snippets on your blog’s home page for one thing, so readers can see a variety of things going on in your blog, not just a summary of posts you’ve made.

To give you a better idea of what one looks like, I’ve rounded up three magazine themes that I think are pretty cool. Only one of them has to be purchased, but I think you’ll see why when you take a look.

Mimbo Magazine (free)
Very clean and a nice balance between text and images. I also love the drop-down menus in the nav bar at top.

Revolution - Magazine Style (pay)
This is the one that’s pay-for, but honestly, you’ll get no argument from me. It’s a darn good layout that’s well-thought out. There are two other themes that are variations that you’ll find when you work the demo — all equally as nice. Single and mutli-use licenses are available depending on your needs.

Cybercafe Sandbox (free)
A very narrow theme, but still possesses elements that make it a magazine theme.

In the latest way to fight back against Google Pagerank, Payperpost has launched their RealRank system. Many bloggers have been weary about adopting this new way to rank blogs. Change is always hard to accept, but will it work?

PayPerPost Forums

There has been a lot of talk about Realrank on the payperpost forums. First off let me say that the forums are great for bloggers even if you aren’t into PPP. The members of the forums seem to be a little worried about the effect the new system will have on their blogs as well as money making opportunities.

Courtney Tuttle Says No

Courtney wrote a great article that RealRank Doesn’t Solve Anything for Bloggers. By accepting this new form of ranking, he states that google won’t like it. This may even cause some bloggers to get penalized, or further penalized. The only way this model will work is to cut out PR completely.

RealRank Won’t Work with PR

Currently there are several ways advertising can make PayPerPost opps. You can segment them by PR, Alexa, Tack score (quality rating), domains, and RealRank.

Advertisers aren’t forced to enter a RealRank, but can include a minimum Google Pagerank. RealRank Will Not Work if they don’t get rid of pagerank within opps. PPP seems to be backed into a little corner, opposers give them 12 months to live. PayPerPost has learned to adapt and change as the market does, which many sponsored services have not done. This isn’t the end of PPP (or IZEA).

If they don’t force their advertisers to use Realrank, it might be the short lived end of that. Where will you be when RealRank dies?

Written by Mark of MeAndMyDrum | Fave MAMD | Subscribe to MAMD

Download3000 is an archive of Windows programs, both for free and for pay software. The site loads fast showing you software by categories and alphabetically. It’s also a warehouse for scripts.

Looking for a new text editor? Find it here. Need an MP3 search tool? Yeah, gotcha covered.

If you want to share your finds on your blog, each program has a link provided at the bottom of each post, complete with the title of the program. Writing a review of the programs you’ve tried is sure to help others make a decision before downloading or buying the program.

Written by Mark of MeAndMyDrum | Fave MAMD | Subscribe to MAMD

Fawnt is not a repository of fonts. Instead, it’s a collections of links to fonts. So you could end up on another site repository or the font owner’s site.

What I like about this site is that it displays the typeface in a readable and fast interface. You view sample fonts 12 at a time. Click on one will take you to the source for downloading. But if you’re not happy with the selection display in that 12, just click the down arrow and you’ll get another set of 12.

Written by Mark MeAndMyDrum | Fave MAMD | Subscribe to MAMD

If you’ve upgraded to WordPress version 2.3.1, you may have noticed that you haven’t been receiving notifications when someone leaves a comment on your blog. For some reason, this doesn’t happen to everyone, but if you insist on getting notified the moment someone leaves a comment on one of your posts, then read on.

Now, I can’t explain the why’s and what’s, but the solution is really very simple. All I had to do was modify my pluggable.php file. This is located in every WP install at: root > wp-includes > pluggable.php.

You’ll want to comment out line 228:

$phpmailer->Sender = apply_filters( 'wp_mail_from', $from_email );

So it should look like this:

//$phpmailer->Sender = apply_filters( 'wp_mail_from', $from_email );

Once I uploaded the file, I made a quick test comment. Seconds later I received the glorious sound of Gmail notifying me I had a gift arrive in my inbox.

Written by Mark of MeAndMyDrum | Fave MAMD | Subscribe to MAMD

If you’re someone who doesn’t have time to learn cascading style sheets (CSS), then you may be interested in something called CSS Mate.

CSS Mate is a free online CSS editor that I just discovered. I was working on creating a new contact page on another blog of mine, Darn Good Reviews. I didn’t want to fiddle with the CSS, so that’s when I searched and found this editor.

Upon entering the properties in the forms, I could continuously see the results. When I was satisfied with what I had, I copied the code and pasted it into the page. Done!

P.S. I was creating that contact page to let everyone know I was accepting requests to be reviewed on that blog. Hint, hint.

Are you tired of logging in to your Google Analytics or your blog hosts CPanel interface to look at where your visitors came from? Those methods are absolutely great for analyzing data once in a while. How would you like to see who is visiting, from where they are visiting from and where they left to? All in real time.

FEEDJIT

FEEDJIT brings real time traffic monitoring to your blog right in your sidebar in the form of a widget. Some quick facts about this excellent service:

• No Registration required
• Shows you which location your visitor is from
• Shows you which site referred them
• Shows you what they clicked to leave your site
• Easy to customize options
• Customize the widget, colors of the widget
• Easy click access to add the widget to Blogger & Typepad blogs
• For other blogs, just simply copy and paste the script to your blog
• You could also get a live traffic map and it offers similar customization options.
• Its completely FREE!

Real time monitoring can be fun as well as informative about the behavior of your readers. Instead of trying to come up with ideas of how this can be useful, I am going to open up the comment thread to you to tell me how you would use this information.

By K-IntheHouse of ShanKri-la

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