Checking back into our contest, I did a quick tally of the entries. So far we only have 10 entries for our Laptop Briefcase Giveaway. With another week left, I hope at least for another 10. Remember, the bag is valued at 180$ and each bag they make is unique. The contest ends next tuesday august 7th.

I really want to show our sponsor, Eco-Handbags, that they made a good choice in sponsoring our competition. The prize is really great, and you have a good shot at winning.

For those in Canada who couldn’t participate the last time, you can enter this competition. To enter the competition all you have to do is link back to Blog about your Blog and our sponsor. See the contest post for more details.

In the comments section I will post the entries I have listed. If you don’t see your name let me know.

As I sit here waiting for my wireless router to sort itself out – again – I am mulling over a PPP post by Matt that touched on reviews; I am pondering an idea given to me on a visit to Jon Lee’s excellent web development blog; and I am also smarting at the realisation that I have written close on 200 mini reviews and full reviews, and been reviewed only a handful of times myself.

So now you know I am bitter and twisted and don’t have an original thought in my head, this is what I came up with to encourage other bloggers to write reviews about The Pisstakers.

Want a PR5 backlink and a spot on an upcoming widget? Write a good, bad or indifferent review of the Pisstakers in as few or as many words as you like, and send Ed the URL to the post. He, (as in me), will add a summary of the review to the widget, link the summary back to your site, encourage other sites to install the widget in their sidebar, AND give you a mention on the grooviest PR5 homepage on the internet!

Will it work? Technically the widget is proven, as it is a clone of a Funny Quotes of the Day widget which has helped propel The Pisstakers onto the first page of a hot search topic. Will it work with reviews as the main feature? Who knows. It depends if reviews are as popular and useful as people say they are! If I get bombarded with links, I will let you know.

Invesp is giving away 400$ just for subscribing to their RSS feed. The rules are simple, but a little different.

First subscribe to their rss feed. Sometime before the end of August they will post a secret word in their RSS feed. When you see the word you email it to contest@invesp.com. From there they will pick one entry at random and the person will win 300$.

To win the complete 400$ you have to join their mybloglog community.

Invesp definitely found a nice little spot on my feed reader.

I have written a couple of posts making fun of software titles that give no clue as to what the software does. eg Pando, Chirp? Any ideas what you might do with them?

I have also found a bit of resistance to the title of my blog, (the perceived disgustingness of the innocuous word Pisstakers being too much for some to mention, let alone visit.)

And finally, I was reading some SEO info about whether a domain name helps with search engine rankings. The upshot being that indirectlly, a cool and relevant domain name does help Google rank your blog.

So all in all, it got me thinking, is the title of your blog reflective of your content, and is the name aiding or abetting your attempts to build a brand? You are building a brand, right?

I have really been hoping to have more advertisers on our blog, we have tons of sidebar space that could be sold for a great value. Thankfully I recently was approached by Thoughts.Com

Thoughts.com have their own page on our blog now. There is quite a bit of information there about their website.

What are your thoughts?

“Thoughts offers blogs for everyone, so sign up for a free blog, upload your videos, photos and share your podcasts all in one site.”

I’m not sure how many people were into the online journals, like blurty, but thats what thoughts reminds me of. A super online journal/blog.

Win a Trip

Thoughts doesn’t really seem to be promoting their free vacation giveaway enough. So let me tell you about it! Five members will receive a free trip to Las Vegas! They are really just looking for active members, so to do so make sure to post some blogs and get active!

The winners will be able to take one guest and get…

* Roundtrip airfare for two from anywhere in the continental United States.
* 3 Night stay at a 4 star Las Vegas resort (to be determined)
* Complimentary dinner 3 nights
* Complimentary shows 2 nights

My First Impressions

When I was first contacted by thoughts, I thought it was another free blog service like blogger. However, thoughts is more of a community type environment, sort of like a myspace.

The only problem I could see for the more advanced bloggers, is that you can’t customize your own blog pages, so every blog is pretty much the same. I hope to see that change in the future.

Overall I like the idea, and there is quite a few features, yet they are only in BETA. It will be interesting to see what happens when they really make a full release.

What are your thoughts?

I just came across the coolest blog contest tool and immediately thought of BAYB. Now since Matt is on top of everything, he may already know, but in case he doesn’t and for everyone else’s information here it is. There is a blog dedicated to spreading the word about blog contests! It is logically named Blog Contests on the Net. This website is an awesome way to spread the news of all the awesome blog contests that go on here at BAYB or any other blog. It is completely free, and you write your own post to share the details of the contest. I think this idea was genius. Next month when Random Encounters of We hosts our very first blog contest, I intend to get the word out with this website!

Comment Friday had another good day, and received 25 comments. It was nice to see everyone responded so well to the topic, and had a few people to thank. I have to give a mention to Jon from SmartHealthyRich who was mentioned more than once.

When picking a comment friday winner, I always look for something more to grab my attention. Bob of The Four of Clubbs did just that. Not only did he leave a comment, but he wrote a post thanking a loyal reader. Is that not getting into the comment friday spirit or what? Congrats Bob and welcome to our blogroll, and the honorable title of blog of the week.

Is there something you want to see for a Comment Friday topic? Let us know!