In a small promotion for our new theme and the easy ability to use one of our favorite WordPress Plugins, OIOPublisher. We have been able to sell a few banner spots, however not any text links. So we lowered our price to $5 per link.

This deal will only last for our first 5 link buyers, after that the price will go back up to $8.

Any questions you have please leave us a comment. Looking forward to some new advertisers!

We are doing great over here. Our new theme is working nicely and I think we have all the kinks out of it. We’ve also had some great articles with more on the way!

If this is your first Comment Friday we give one lucky person a free weekly blogroll spot as our “blog of the week“. Along with that we are also giving that winner 250 entrecard credits.

I am putting together a list of great WordPress Plugins. If you had to chose one, what is your favorite? If you don’t use WordPress, what is your favorite online tool that makes life easier for you.

Some affiliate networks have come in strong with blogger referrals or excellent programs. Market Leverage has almost bought their way into bloggers hearts with so many great contests and buying sponsorships on blogs. As you can see Market Leverage is a new BAYB sponsor and we are happy to have them.Market Leverage Contests

We missed the boat with this one, however many bloggers were able to take advantage of Market Leverage’s generosity. This has lead to many bloggers joining the network, building their affiliates and winning some great prizes along the way.

I have joined several, but haven’t been able to win any. If you are running a Market Leverage contest please let us know!

Market Leverage the Affiliate Network

Most affiliate networks are similar, but each have their own things that set them apart. Market Leverage has a great layout to help you find the offers that you want to run. You can also view the top performing offers just with one click.

Being a brand new member I haven’t really seen anything that I dislike and I am excited to start earning money with Market Leverage.

Market Leverage Affiliate Program

Market Leverage claims to have the highest paying referral program among other affiliate networks. How do they know?

MarketLeverage researched and reviewed the lifetime referral programs of every affiliate network that attended Affiliate Summit West 2008 and ad-tech San Francisco 2008. No other affiliate network had a higher paying lifetime referral program publicly disclosed on their website.

If you aren’t in to running the offers, you may as well promote the network. You will earn 5% of the commissions that the publisher you refer makes.

A very common question I see bloggers ask is should they move off of blogspot. The simple answer is YES! If you really want to brand your blog and make money with it, you need to get off Blogspot. With that being said, I myself have several blogspot blogs. However, any blog I want to make money with all are .com.

Whats the Big Deal?

A new blogger may be thinking, what is the point? Wouldn’t it make more sense to stick with a free blog, instead of paying money for something else? Here are a few reasons why you shouldn’t think twice about moving off of blogspot.

Ownership and Branding

You never really own your Blogspot, Google does. They have the power to shut you down if they want to, just by suspending your blog.

You never see any of the big make money online bloggers, or any huge bloggers in general with blogspots. You don’t see John Chow Dot Blogspot or The Huffington Post Blogspot, do you?

Transferability

You can’t really sell your blogspot blog if you wanted to. You could figure out some way around it I’m sure, but it still wouldn’t have the value that an established .com would have. Some people are “weary” of just exchanging links with someone on a blogspot, why would they consider buying your blog?

Customization

With your own domain and hosting you can customize your website however you want to. There are thousands of WordPress themes and hundreds (thousands?) of WordPress plugins to make your blog function however you want.

Blogspot has some themes, very few already installed to choose from.

Affordable

Lastly to have your own domain and web hosting it is really affordable. A domain only costs about $6-10 depending on where you get it. Hosting can cost as low as $4.99 to about $10 per month. Use our Blogging’s Best Buys to find great deals on domains and hosting.

There are many reasons to jump on off the Blogspot wagon, with little reasons to stay. If you are asking yourself whether or not you should move off blogspot, I hope I convinced you.

WordPress users know how annoying self pings can be. Almost every post that I write, I generally like to link to another relevant post. This creates a “Self Ping”. It’s not really a problem, except that it generally looks bad if you are displaying recent comments.

Self Pings really don’t have a purpose either. They don’t do anything, so I try to delete them after each post. This takes time, it’s another thing to do when preparing and publishing posts.

Now you can turn self pings off with the WordPress Plugin No Self Pings by Michael D. Adams. All you have to do is upload it and activate it, the plugin will take care of the rest.

You can download the plugin at BlogWaffe.

What WordPress Plugins have been helpful to you?

I thought it would be a fun to reflect on the first half of 2008. We are still pretty far off our Blogging Goals for 2008, but we still have time.

I put together a few lists of our top traffic sources.

Top 10 Referring Sites

1. Entrecard
2. 45n5
3. Bloggeries
4. Digital Point
5. Daily Blog Tips
6. Scratchback
7. Total Web Review
8. Resource for Bloggers
9. Pay Per Post
10. About Blog Contests

Top Social Media and Search Engines Referrers

1. Stumbleupon
2. Google
3. Entrecard
4. Sphinn
5. Yahoo
6. Blogging Zoom
7. MSN
8. MyBlogLog
9. Site Hoppin
10. Mixx

Top 10 Most Read Articles

1. Stumbleupon Now Using Captcha for Reviews
2. Getting Paid to Take Surveys Online
3. Affiliate Marketing with Incentivizable Campaigns
4. Top 20 Contest Blogs
5. Search Engine Traffic is Easy With Tech Support Posts
6. What is Bounce Rate?
7. Social Media Could Put You On The Map
8. 10 Firefox Add-ons to Supercharge Your Blog
9. Bloggers Guide to SEO
10. Could Mixx Be the Next Digg?

This list was definitely fun to make, several of the posts were written by Blog about your Blog authors. I also included Entrecard on both lists because it does have a social media aspect but I also frequently use the forum to promote Comment Friday.

Are your traffic sources similar? Whats your top referrer?

You can’t lose with your blog. Have a look at the new contest roundup.

Free domains names

Two domain names for you every month! Subscribe to Webmaster Zone by email and you could be one of the lucky winners.

Cash from MoneyBites

Easy blog contest from Moneybites.com, a place that helps you on how to earn online. Three cash prizes: $50, $20 and $5. Simply write a blog post about the competition and subscribe to his RSS feed by email.

An Asus Eee Pc

The fantastic Asus Eee Pc may be yours with the Office Summer Fest from Shoplet.com! Make a little and fun blurb about your favorite office supply including provided keywords and get more points by referring the most people with your post.

Don’t forget about the great contests at Typo Buddy. The latest you can win eBay gift certificates for participating as well as linking to TypoBuddy.com and the contest.

If you’re looking for blog contests, if you want to promote your own competition, don’t forget to visit About Blog Contests!