Advertising is only as good as your ad. You target your ad for your audience whether it’s banner, commercial, radio, video, or social media. With an ad that fails, your campaign fails as well.

That forces companies, businesses, and bloggers to ‘think outside the box’. One thing for me was the idea of contests and giveaways after I had seen it so successfully done on other blogs.

One prime real estate for ads is SuperBowl commercials. They even have shows DEDICATED to the best/worst commercials. With the SuperBowl it’s at the top of tops. When you are spending millions on 30 seconds, you make sure it’s good.

Hyundai… Conspiracy?

Hyundai is taking a very different approach this year in their advertising and marketing counting down until their Superbowl AD. One that has been going around is a sheep behind the wheel.

I mean I get it, a sheep… follower… etc .The good thing is that it doesn’t really seem like it’s an ad, but the bad is that it’s definitely not clear WHAT it’s going after. It’s not your typical “hey here is out product, go buy it” campaign.

I do like the one about the car in reverse. Subliminal messaging and back masking is an interesting topic I have always kind of found intriguing.

Going after the conspiracy theory is definitely interesting. What do you think?

If my own subliminal messaging worked you have subscribed to my blog….

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One of our readers mentioned looking for a second host, to build links to his blogs and not have it on the same server. Running a different host can be expensive, but I think I found the solution.

Free Web Hosting!

Lime Domains is offering free web hosting! when you register a domain with them, you can get on their basic web hosting plan, absolutely free. It includes: 500MB Storage, 1GB data transfer per month, 10 emails, and of course ad free web pages.

This type of offer sounds good if you are trying to build different niche sites. Having the websites on different servers can make your links carry more value if you choose to link to your other websites on a different host.

Of course you can chose to use their “standard” or “premium” hosting to fit your growing websites. The standard package is $4.99 per month, and the premium is $9.99 per month.

Domain Registration

As I mentioned the free web hosting plan comes when you buy a domain name. For a standard .com you pay $8.99 each, which is pretty competitive from other registrars. I know my current web host charges more per domain than that.

Alternatively if you already have a domain name you can transfer it to Lime Domain for $6.99. If you do that you will still get the free web hosting.

Not only do you get free web hosting with each domain, you can also try the premium web hosting plan for 15 days free, just to try it out.

One Click Installation

Almost more impressive than the web hosting offer, is “one click installation”. I remember when I first made a Wordpress, I was pretty lost. I had to find where to install it, how to do it, and where to put it.

At LimeDomains.com they have and application page where you can see all the different platforms. This includes Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and phpBB. With just ONE CLICK you can install whichever application you choose.

Lime Domain

Usually you get a free domain with your web hosting, but I’ve never heard doing it backwards. What do you think? Is the free web hosting sufficient enough to host your site, or would you end up having to buy the hosting regardless?

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Have you heard of idooble.com? Me neither, but they are making their splash with a huge contest! It’s a great way to get users interested in their brand and already grow a base before they even really launched yet.

Win a Mac Book Pro and More!

The iDooble contest has 100 prizes to giveaway! Here is a list of the contest prize breakdown:

• 1st – Mac Book Pro
• 2-4 – iPod Touch
• 5-10 – iPod Nano
• 11-25 – iTunes Gift Card
• 26-100 – iDooble Tee

To get started, simply create an account. You will be asked to complete a short 12 question profile with a few of your interests in social media. Then the next step is just to start referring people!

For each referral you will receive 10 points for 1st tier, 3 points for 2nd and 1 point for 3rd. You can invite your “friends” via your blog, forum, or any social networking.

Right now the #1 person has close to 10,000 points, but to at least get a t-shirt it looks like you only need to refer about 1-2 people, so it may be worth it just for that. To get an iPod nano or touch is still very attainable if you have reach on your website or social media.

This contest runs through November 2009 so you have plenty of time to start recruiting.

Please join as my referral here.

What is iDooble.com?

iDooble looks to be a social media shopping comparison site. What I think is kind of odd is that they are doing so much promotion for this, but don’t have much information as to what it is.

Right now you can sign-up to be a beta tester and see some screenshot’s as to what the website is going to look like on iDooble.com’s homepage.

It looks like you will be able to shop, compare, review, and share all in one place. Maybe like a super Amazon, with all the stores in one place.

iDooble will give you ways to instantly compare prices for whatever product you are searching for. It will show you the price, reviews, shipping cost for all the different online stores selling the item.

You shopper profile brings in the social media aspect. You can add friends, favorite stores, your twitter updates, make lists of items you may want, as well as display your reviews.

Are you ready to take your online shopping to a social media level?

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Personal Branding is complex field of marketing and branding that would take an entire book to explain, but I would like to give you a few tips as to how to build your own brand.

What is a Personal Brand

Your personal brand is how people ientify with you.  You may be the “geeky tech blogger” or the “creative photoshop genius”.   Your brand consists of your blog posts, tweets, videos, photos and even the links you save on Del.icio.us.

Be Yourself, Be Open

You can use an alias online, but this will weaken your brand and make you harder find.  I use the same username for most of my social accounts, that same username is the name of my blog and is indexed in Google – People see my username and know its me!  Its also important to be yourself.  When writing blog posts or tweets etc. don’t take on an alter ego as people see straight through this.

Be Social

Create a Twitter, FriendFeed, Flickr, Youtube, Del.icio.us, Digg and Facebook account.  Your website used to be your homepage.  Now its spread across all of these sites.  Its also very important to use these sites properly.  Many people fail on Twitter by simply posting links back to their blog.  This just annoys the community. The same can be said for all other social networks.

Yes, you should be using all of those sites.  If you think they are useless its due to ignorance rather than actually believing they are duds.

Copy The Best

Take a look at Kevin Rose, Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington.  They all have strong personal brands. So its a good idea to look at what they are doing and copy.  And yes, that does require passion and commitment.  All three of those guys love what they do….and it shows.

Join In

Comment, Comment and Link.  When I see a cool article I link to it.  All my profiles are linked so posting it to Delicious will distribute it out to my network.  Giving link love (to quality content) is your most powerful marketing tool – so don’t underestimate it.

And once again – don’t bother talking about yourself and your content on Twitter, FriendFeed or your blog.  Limit posts about your own ventures to 3 per month, max!

For more of my content check out my blog feint.me – or follow me on Twitter.

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Godaddy has been running this promotion for a couple of days now, so I hope it’s still working. As I mentioned I registered a domain yesterday.

Use Godaddy coupon code test99 to get your 99 cent domain. After ICANN fee, it comes out to be $1.19. I believe this includes dot comes and dot net domains.

From what I understand is that this coupon code is valid once per account. So I imagine that people are creating several accounts to take advantage of this offer.

Can you beat $1.19 domains?

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Perfect Business Competition

Perfect Business is running a competition where you can vote for your favorite entrepreneur once per day. I’ve decided to try and throw my hat in the mix. The winner will receive $1000 in business seed money. I sure wouldn’t mind that! The top 10 will also receive prizes, which may be a little more realistic for me to get to.

You can vote for anyone, and you don’t have to be a member to join. You can vote for me here. Just visit my profile then click on vote for me.

As I mentioned Perfect Business allows you to network with other entrepreneurs and business owners. Worth a shot to set up a profile and get in contact with the other members.

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I’ve used VistaPrint before to get my own promotional items. Customized t-shirts can be expensive, but not that bad if you get them for free. Vista Print offers several items for free, but the catch is you usually have to pay for shipping.

VistaPrint Free Shipping Deal

Now through July 24th, 2008, VistaPrint is offering free shipping for those spending $30 or more.

If you’ve been putting off getting a few t-shirts made, or want to take your offline business campaign to another level with business cards or small giveaways, now is the time.

I could easily spend $30 just on promotional items for this blog! With free shipping you could pick up a few free items as well as save a load with the shipping.

VistaPrint Freebies

Here is a list of free things you can get from VistaPrint:

• 250 Free Business Cards
• 100 Postcards
• 25 Small Magnets
• 1 Small Car Door Magnet
• Free T-Shirt
• 10 Invitations
• 10 Letterheads

Have you used VistaPrint?

Visit VistaPrint.com…Customize Your FREE T-Shirt Now!

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I hate writing great posts on the weekend since they seem to get less views etc. So what I did last weekend was offer a little promotion with our $5 link sale. It’s still on by the way, you can get more information on our $5 Links Post.

This weekend I wanted to try something a little different. I saw Affiliate Obsession (and John Chow) try to offer some incentive for bloggers with entrecard credits. I thought we might try the same thing here.

I personally love Blockbuster and have had Blockbuster Total Access for over a year now. I’ve been able to rent over 200 DVDs, the value has been great. I want to pass that on to you, plus give you something extra.

If you sign-up to Blockbuster with my referral link, I will not only pay you cash (well paypal) for your first month, I will also throw in 300 entrecard credits.

If you are interested in the deal, please contact me and I will send you a unique URL to sign-up with. This way I can confirm it’s you signing up and that way I can get the payment for the first month to you as well as the entrecard credits.

Recap

Blockbuster is good. Sign-up and I’ll pay for your first month, including 300 entrecard credits. The first one to sign-up will also get a free text link for a month!

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With our recent web hosting troubles, I figure why not revisit Web Hosting Geeks. At WebHostingGeeks.com you can find the best web hosting for your needs. The website hasn’t changed as much since the last time we reviewed Web Hosting Geeks, however it is different.

Top 10 Best Web Hosts

One thing that is different is the top 10 list of best webhosts. The number one host is still BlueHost. Two new ones I’ve never heard of rank 2 and 3, Inmotion and HostingPad. HostMonster, our host, is at #5, with a 96% rating.

The top list is done by web hosting reviews of users. Each web host is reviewed, however I would definitely like to see more. The most popular web hosts obviously have more reviews and seem to rank higher because of that.

The top 10 list also includes the bonus features that each host gives. Many give you a free domain name, advertising credit (yahoo and google) as well as the ability to host unlimited domains.

Perfect for First Time Buyers

I wish I would of found a site like Web Hosting Geeks when I first was in the market to buy hosting and domains. They provide great web hosting articles for any beginner or even novice users.

You can even find web hosts by your budget or type of site you wish to run. Bluehost was named their best blog host. For Ecommerce they chose Yahoo.

Some Improvements Needed

I do like the site overall, but with so many different options, navigation wasn’t as easy as I would like. There isn’t even a search bar.

When I tried to find a particular host (that wasn’t Bluehost or Hostmonster which are written about everywhere) I couldn’t find it. Hostgator is almost nowhere to be found, except under the best reseller hosting. However on that page there are no reviews of the actual service.

Make sure to head on over to the Web Hosting Geeks and leave a review of your host.

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