I was thinking about setting aside a day where I would post in the morning/afternoon asking for comments from our visitors. I would select a random blog, and that website/blog would be added to our blogroll for the week and also receive a link to their site. The next week we would remove them an add another blog. Each Friday, hopefully we will get more and more comments 🙂

Would anyone be interested?

Our Blog of the Year Winner

After moving the blog to wordpress and doing all the editing and everything we’ve needed I’ve been so busy I haven’t exactly lived up to my promises for our competition. Not only that but my favorite fish died and I lost my lucky sock, ok I’m just making excuses, on to the review.
I promised a review on our winner and will try to give it the best I can.

First of all I love the art. Everytime I come to the blog it has a new very well drawn picture. RPG means… role playing game, so he must be drawing different characters and monsters. I am kind of lost in it all as I have just scratched the surface of this blog.

The first thing you will notice besides the art is the language. After the English it is translated to.. Italian?

Not many ads, the ones that are there are well placed and don’t take away from the drawings. The rest of the widgets and add-ons don’t either. MyBlogLog as well as a shoutbox are placed on the main page. I don’t like the fact that the shoutbox replaces the comment section, but it works.

To easily view the other drawings there is a convenient ‘next‘ button so you can just go along to the next page and the next drawing.

Obviously this blog has great support on winning the Blog of the Year and we want to congratulate them ones again for winning. Let us know if there is anything else we can do and you are always welcome to post on our blog if you’d like. Thanks for your participation and dedication to our contest to win.

Wow. It has been a really long time since I have posted over here at BAYB. As some of you may know, I have a book that is rapidly approaching its release date. I am starting to get pretty excited. If you are a subscriber of Pinstripes & Ponders, you already know most of this.

Arcadia Publishing has set a February 26, 2006 release date. The book is listed on pretty much every on-line retailer I can think of (see three options below – but if you want to order elsewhere, the ISBN is 073854129X).

Last week I received word that local retailers have begun receiving postcards to announce the book, so it looks like I am in store for a fun ride over the next couple months. Stay tuned for more updates (and contests) as the release date gets closer.

Photo courtesy of the Fort Wayne Wizards.

Amazon.com | Barnes & Noble | Arcadia Publishing

It’s strange how success can come about.  Anita Roddick, of Body Shop fame, said that when she started her very first shop she simply wanted sufficient money to survive and be able to feed her children.

The green colour for her stores wasn’t a flash of inspiration. It was chosen simply because it seemed the only colour that would cover the damp patches in her first premises.

Her story is full of coincidences that helped her along the way to a fortune. Even the way her franchises started wasn’t really her idea, someone approached her.

Similar coincidences appear in the Richard Branson, James Dyson and many other success stories. 

I believe that, once we start looking, things start to happen. It’s up to us to notice the opportunities that arise.  Unfortunately most of us pass them by or can’t be bothered to follow them through.

It’s a strange world.

Good luck,
Mike. 
Mike’s Money Making Mission

Rob from Million Dollar Experiment Down Under has been chosen to be our second Blog about your Blog author interview. I have asked him a series of questions about some personal things, blogging and blog about your blog. I hope you enjoy the interview.

First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Are you married? Girlfriend?

I am married, with 2 little kids, and live in Auckland, New Zealand

What do you do when you are not blogging?

I work full time in IT as a Database Analyst which keeps me busy… outside of work I enjoy running, the occasional game of squash and of course socializing with friends and family. The favourite sports I like watching are Rugby League and Rugby, these sports are however probably more popular in NZ and Australia than other parts of the world!

Both of our interviewers have been from out of the US!

What is your favorite blog to read besides your own?

I read a lot of blogs, my favourite at the moment is www.shoemoney.com , I do however take time to visit most of the blogs I link to that are a similar theme to my own.

I have read that too from time to time, very successful blogger!

Now the personal is out of the way, let me ask you a few questions about your blog

When was your blog created?

The Million Dollar Experiment Down Under began on the 14th October 2006, so its been going just over 3 months.

Seems to be about the same time we all started up our blogs.

Why did you choose your blog topic?

Being a Steve Pavlina fan for a while now I was impressed with his Million Dollar Experiment, so I thought why not give it a go and blog about the journey as I go along, which also helps to motivate me.

Did you think you were going to be instantly successful?

Not at all, I realize that it takes a lot of time to build valuable content on a blog site, as well as loyal readers.

What do you enjoy most about blogging?

There are two things that I enjoy the most, one is receiving and responding to comments from readers, this is great because no matter what your stats are saying it proves people are actually reading and interested in your posts. The other thing I get a buzz out of is reading other blogs that are pointing to a post on your site saying it is worth reading, or mentioning something you posted about that has helped them out in some way.

I love reading posts or reviews of Blog about your Blog! It makes it all worthwhile.

Where do you see your web site in one year?

In one years time I would like to have a readership in the hundreds and hopefully be well on the way to assisting my readers (along with myself) to increasing the wealth that they are making online!

Do you have any new upcoming projects or ideas you want to announce?

Myself and a colleague have just launched a new web site www.curryfocus.com – its about curries and curry restaurants all around the world!

I’ve only had curry once, and it wasn’t too bad! Interesting concept, I hope you get a post together on BAYB about it so we can read more!

What is the best feature on your blog?

I believe the best feature would be the 10 day summaries showing where the money is being made from in the experiment to date.

And the final series of questions, a little bit about Blog about your Blog

How did you find us?

I would have to say that you found me really, at the beginning you sent me an email asking if I would like to join up.

You were hand-picked lol

What do you like most about BAYB?

In a nutshell I guess the way that BAYB can be used to generate additional traffic to your site.

What new feature would you like to see?

I think as this site grows bigger one way to really crank it up would be to share the revenue of the site with the Authors of the content, obviously that is not an option whilst the site is in its infancy but in time it would be great to see.

Yes I would definitely love to do this. Of course we are starting small, I am getting an affiliate program together as well as free advertising to our BAYB authors. I would love to re-invest that not only in BAYB and further success of that, but also in the members who have been with us from the beginning and promoted us so much.

…For the hardest question of all…

What do you like the least?

Its looking much better since the centered text disappeared… lol, however although it is just a small thing I think the font size should be increased just a point or so. If you have a large screen resolution the font is quite tiny.

I found the evil source of the centered text and I defeated it. Next it is time to search where I can fix the font size. Thanks!

Who have you chosen to be the next one interviewed?

I choose Tom of the Soap Box Jury to be interviewed next.

Thank you for the interview, I appreciate your answers and timely response to it! Get ready Tom we are coming for you next. Remember if there was a question I missed that you want asked in the next interview please submit it by commenting on this post or emailing me at ff_n_stuff@yahoo.com

Imagine your life is falling apart and around you, so just to make yourself feel better, you sit down and write an angry letter to God, telling him exactly how you feel about how he has treated you. I think we can all imagine ourselves in that situation.

But what if, when the letter is finished, you find yourself sitting there with your pen still in your hand – writing a reply that seems to come from God? And what is more, a reply that seems to make sense!

That is what happened to Neale Donald Walsch – and his resulting dialog with God grew into the bestselling series of books called Conversations With God, a series of books which have changed the life of many people.

If you would like to find out more, check out the latest post at The Secret Of Life.

Simon
The Secret Of Life

Prompted by the post on commenting, I got to thinking about the other great tool for generating community buzz, the forum.

None of what I am about to say is my own work, as I have no original thought in my head about blog and website promotion. These pearls of forum (foral?) wisdom come from a podcast I recall by the great British web usability and accessibility guru, Paul Boag.

When you start a forum, make sure you have lots of regular visitors to your site already. Maybe 5% of your regulars have the time and inclination to frequent a forum and contribute. And of that 5% only 5% will become regular and reliable contributors.

When you set up a forum keep it very simple and limited in scope. ie Have literally 2 or 3 categories and no more.

Before you launch it, pre-prime as many friends and relations as possible and tell them to get their butts on your forum at x hour on y day and get writing intelligently. A tall order for some of our friends, but you get the idea.

That is a quick and easy way to get a buzz going within a confined space. And then, a bit like a house party, as it gets more rowdy, open up more rooms. Once a few sub categories suggest themselves, open them up and start to transfer posts across. That way there is always a sense of proactive community.

The Pisstakers get about 2 comments a week from around 500 unique visitors, so a forum is pushing it at this moment in time. However, we have a plan that when we hit 10000 uniques a month, we will have a forum ready and waiting to launch on the world. This time next year you are welcome to call by The Pisstakers and be funny.