Yesterday I blogged about ReviewMe announcing their Advertorials. I even wrote the post up about it before they sent out the email to the publishers and advertisers. I was pretty quick to post about it, but I jumped the gun a little bit. After reading the email sent, I wanted to post about it again. This is what the email stated

For Advertisers:

You control the message. Enter up to 250 words including links back to your website and also an image of your choice.

You can login and get full impression and click tracking on your campaign.

You choose which top blogs to place your Advertorial.

For Publishers:

Less work. Simply cut and paste our code into your blog.

All advertorials are by default marked as a “SPONSOR POST:” so the disclosure is done for you.

You retain full control. Accept or reject any Advertorials purchased.

Basically, the advertiser is writing their own review, all the blogger has to do is accept it, and post it. There are some positives and negatives to Advertorials that I see already.

Since the advertiser is writing the post, it is not truly reflecting what the blogger thinks about the website. This may not sit well with some bloggers.

There is also the chance that an advertiser will post the same advertorial on several blogs. Therefore the same exact content would be published. I like all of our reviews to be unique.

With that said, I would consider posting advertorials on this blog, for the same price as our regular ReviewMe listing (60$).

The email went on to read

We think our RM Advertorial will revolutionize the paid blogging world by giving advertisers complete control over their messaging, along with a branding opportunity and the reporting metrics they have come to expect with traditional online media buys. Bloggers will also benefit from an additional revenue source to supplement ReviewMe’s suite of offerings.

Did everyone else catch that too? I highly doubt advertorials will revolutionize paid blogging. I will go on to say that ReviewMe’s Advertorials will have little to no affect on paid blogging. Blog networks are already doing what ReviewMe is, twice as “effective”. I could buy a sponsored review, written by me, to go on 20-100 blogs for what it would cost for one advertorial.

I don’t think this is the big hit ReviewMe is looking for.

I logged into ReviewMe to update our rankings since we have seen a surge of links to our site, dropping nearly 1,000 spots on technorati.

I then noticed a new feature on ReviewMe called Advertorials. At first I thought it was something to compete with Text-Link-Ads , but after research I found out that was incorrect.

What it is, is what many blogging networks do. Have the advertiser write the post, and then put it on your blog. Instead of having the blogger write the post, now the advertiser has the chance to put exactly what they want written about their site.

There is definitely good and bad with this. The bad obviously is the same advert going out to several blogs. Also, it will not reflect the opinion of the blogger, so it may just be the advertiser praising their own site. However, I would consider posting them on this blog, the price is the same as writing the review myself.

Should ReviewMe have released this new feature? I can think of several different things they could have gone with. Not sure that this is the best idea. What do you think?

Sometimes your content may not be enough to continue to draw visitors as much as you would like. To keep them constantly coming back for more. Or maybe you just need to offer them incentive. We have received a huge response by just giving away a day planner that I got for free.

I have been writing about how important offering incentive to your readers is. Blog incentive is what I like to call it. I mention incentive most recently on my post about Three Steps to Keeping Your RSS Feed Readers. Incentive is important not only for keeping your readers, but getting new ones.

I received a great comment on that post asking about what incentive they should give for their blog.

Sheila said “I’m drawing a blank on how I might use an incentive. I really don’t know how many of my RSS readers are bloggers, so I’m not sure offering a link is valuable incentive that my readers would appreciate. I’d be grateful for any ideas you might have regarding incentives I could offer.”

Incentive can really be anything and sometimes it might depend on your niche. You basically just want to offer your subscribers something special, maybe a limited offer, cash, prizes, or exclusive content perhaps.

We recently gave away a mini fridge to one of our RSS Feed Readers, and that increased our subscriber count by nearly 100! It was a unique prize and received some buzz.

If your readers may not be bloggers thats ok. Obviously offering free links wouldn’t work here, but other things might. Open up discussion on how you can give back to your readers. Many people do fund raisers  or sell things, you may be able to help that way.

Incentive can also be something simple like a T-Shirt giveaway. Post a contest and select a random comment to win. Take Zac Johnson for example. He attended Ultimate Affiliate Summit and left with tons of free stuff. Now he is turning around to give it away to his readers. The only thing that will essentially cost him is small shipping fees.

If you really want to host a contest and still aren’t sure what to give please contact us and I sure can help. I am also willing to sponsor a contest on your blog!

Admit it you have been making a website, got bored, thought “sod it, I’ll come back to it” and thrown an image like the one to the right. Why? Is it because that coding HTML is as backbreaking as manual labour, or you feel the need to throw something up before it was ready, and think “at least it’s getting spidered”.

That’s very true, but the icon to the right is got as much to do with website design as Paris Hilton has with NASA. It’s just the look screams to potential readers “We design websites like it’s 1996”.

Or maybe, more likely, is that nothing online is ever finished. Take my blog (yes, I had to get a plug in somewhere), recently I launched a new site design which, despite achieving wasn’t quite there. It took a comment from a brave girl (she was brave, she criticized) called Celeste to put the finger on what was troubling me.

It was too busy.

Yes! That was it! Fantastic. I spent a few hours therefore this evening going through the template, stretching out the content and tidying up the god awful comment box. Now I am content, and I can get on with blogging.

Of course, if you spot anything on your travels, please do. Like I would with yourself. Therefore, we won’t need to wait with baited breath for your new site whilst a man shovels away at an endless pile of rubble.

Rhys Wynne is a 5 year blogger, 10 year web designer, and regularly wolf-whistles at attractive ladies whilst coding HTML. You can read more from him at The Gospel According To Rhys, or even talk to him on his forum.

It’s time for another Blog about your Blog competition. However this one won’t be as long as the last. I’ve decided to close this contest Tuesday July 17th. Now on to the prize.

Recently I received a day planner for attending a make money online conference. Now I am going to pass this along. I couldn’t find the exact image of it, but this is something close.

The day planner has a cell phone pouch, calendar, address book, pen, and a wallet type holder. It’s pretty much anything you need in a day planner.

There will be a few ways to win. The draw will be lottery style and I will make another youtube video of the drawing.

To enter you can leave a comment. That will count as one entry (one comment counts per person). Blogging about the contest will give you two entries. The other way to enter is by subscribing to our RSS feed.

Anyone can enter, even Blog about your Blog authors. The drawing will be completely random as mentioned.

Let the games begin!

Update: If you stumble this post it will also get you an entry! (remember only one comment counts towards your entry)

U.S only (sorry!)

Some digital day planners can include computer software to assist in even relatively advanced daily functions like bookkeeping. Because of the security concerns these goodies come loaded with anti virus software and have got capabilities to store, process and retrieve volumes of software data. By making use of various software scripts, similar to built-in any modern mobile phone software, these day planners are quite handy and beneficial.

I was a happy camper using the WordPress Rich Text Editor when I started blogging. But, as time went by, like a caveman discovering tools for the first time, I explored desktop blog editors. Performancing for Firefox was my first stint with an editor other than WordPress. But, soon I could see the productivity I gained from a desktop editor.

1. Write offline: You can write and save drafts even when you are online. You could do this in a notepad or a text editor you like, but with a desktop editor all you have to do is to hit Publish as soon as you have an internet connection. No copy-paste.
2. Manage multiple blogs: If you write to multiple blogs, own or guest authored, you will know the pain of having to switch to different admin tabs to post. With a desktop editor, it is as easy as a simple toggle!
3. Rich formatting: Depending on the editor you use, you may end up getting additional formatting options than what you get in the WordPress editor. For eg: Adding tables to your posts is so easy with Windows Live Writer.
4. Image Management: Provides better image management such as adding effects, resizing, rotation, etc.
5. Easy editing: Text or code view, if you write long posts, it is much easier to do the editing in a desktop application than the window in a browser even if you could resize the length of the box in WordPress, nothing beats the full screen text window option available in some desktop editors.
6. Quick View of Posts: Again, it is very easy to very quickly view your recent posts, drafts, etc from multiple blogs from one interface.
7. Preview: Current WordPress release have taken this functionality away but you could add this back with a WordPress plugin. Web preview of posts comes standard in most editors.
8. Spell Checking: Again could be achieved in WordPress with a plugin but comes standard in desktop editors.
9. Integration: Most desktop editors offer tight integration with various web services such as Technorati tags, del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, etc making inserting tags, bookmarks, pictures, videos, etc. from these services in a post a snap.

A couple of good free desktop editors are Windows Live Writer and Post2Blog if you would like to try one. If you use Firefox, Performancing for Firefox, now renamed to ScribeFire could be your first stop like mine before trying an all out desktop editor.

What editor do you use? Have I missed a better reason to use a desktop editor? I’d love to hear it.

This is my first post here and glad to be contributing back to the great community here. Thanks Mathew, for the opportunity to connect to your wonderful readers.

I also write more technology related topics at ShanKri-la – where technology meets daily life!. My goal is to make your life on the Internet a little bit easier, a little bit manageable and a little bit more enjoyable.

I figure I will do this every sunday. Link and enter a few contests. I also won a contest! Last week I blogged about Steve’s Tech blog’s contest, and I won 25$ because of it. It was a nice surprise to wake up to yesterday, I’ve already been paid! He officially announced his winners today.

In other contests:

At blog contests you can win 100$ just for blogging about them. The contest ends July 12th, so make sure to get your post about them. To enter, go to their contest page.

Our friends at John Cow are hosting a 100$ competition. The competition is just like the one Kumiko just finished on her blog. By blogging about it and telling you that they can help you make mooney online I’ve already got 50 tickets! Now give me the milk money!

Brandon Hopkins is giving away an iPod shuffle on August 1st. To enter just link to his post and to the sponsor site about free business cards and you can win. An Ipod Shuffle is a great prize, if I can keep Emma from stealing it from me if I win, it could be a great prize for BAYB.

That’s about it for today. Sadly we didn’t win anything from Ryan’s 777 Contest. All those winners and I got nothin’! He is sooooo off my buddy list!…

If you are hosting a competition or contest on your blog, let us know, we might just blog about it! We DO take bribes!