The Future of Blogging?
For my birthday I asked for donations, and received about 20$. I stated that I would use the money for blog reviews and I did just that. I had contacted Kumiko about possibly reviewing Blog about your Blog. She agreed and there I spent my birthday money!
I knew Kumiko was going to do a great review of BAYB, but I had no idea how it was going to be. After reading it, I decided that it was one of the best reviews of BAYB we’ve ever received.
The Stats
Before I get into the review, not only did we get an awesome review, we got a decent amount of traffic. We received about 150 unique visitors just from her review, and counting.
The Review
Of course she hit on the main topics of our website goal. By posting on BAYB you are promoting your own site, and building links to it. Not only that, but we do get a nice amount of traffic, so your articles filter that traffic to your own site as well.
She included a few posts that she liked, one was written by me! This is NOT a sponsored post
Comment Friday
Comment Friday has been a big hit among our readers, subscribers, and authors. I started Comment Friday way back in February, and the first couple weeks we only got a handful of comments. Our Friday’s now receive anywhere from 20-40 comments!
The Criticism
Too many bloggers? She mentions that too many bloggers could ruin the feel of the blog, and it could be just filled with affiliate links and self-promotions. That has been the argument against us since we started back in November, and I can’t say I have had an author really stink up the blog yet. We do allow our bloggers self-promotion, but the best self promotion is a good article, and I think our authors have realized that, which is why we have such great content.
Sponsored posts, could be a problem on every site, but I haven’t let it become on one ours. I imagine we will be able to maintain less sponsored posts, as our site has become more desirable to post on. Therefore, sponsored posts will generate more revenue.
AuctionAds is become a brand new way to monetize our website, and I believe I will be taking Kumikos advice on this. After the total reaches 10$ I will probably cash out, and remove the ads from the blog. It doesn’t fit our niche, and the ads aren’t very relevant or money earners.
Lastly, and probably most importantly (to our authors at least), she mentioned that our authors don’t get paid. That has been a concern for some, so they chose not to post with us. However, due to TLA’s Post Level Ads and other factors, we will be able to reward our active authors with the money that their articles generate.
This is a new experiment, and we’ve sold only one ad, however that article wasn’t written by me. Looks like someone will be getting paid. Remember with post level ads, the articles have to have their own page rank. So it’s extremely important for our authors to link to and promote the articles they have written.
Thanks Kumiko for our great review. I strongly recommend getting a review by Kumiko. Her price is pretty fair, it will only cost you 40$ on ReviewMe. Our review was definitely worth the money!
Generators That Can Save You Time While Having Fun
I’ve amassed quite a collection of bookmarks over the years. I was reviewing them recently and came across some that are similar in nature in that they’re generators — sites designed to do something for you. These could either take the boredom out of a task or create something for you that you don’t have the time or skill to do on your own.
Mycoolbutton: Those “glassy” buttons you see on sites nowadays may be difficult to create, especially if you don’t have the tools to make them. Well, now you do. You have control over the color, size and even the ability to add an icon from their list of offerings (e.g., del.icio.us, YouTube, Technorati, and others).
Sloganizer: Perhaps you have a client you’re working on a slogan for. Or maybe you need one for your blog. This sites for you. Here’s an alternative: The Advertising Slogan Generator. Though they may yield odd results from time to time, they’re sure to get your creative juices flowing.
Color Palette Generator: Now you can integrate your CSS colors with your header image on your blog (for example). Just give this site an image to work with and it will give you color swatches and hex values based on the colors in the image.
Web 2.0 Name Generator: This one’s pretty cool. Just click a button and it spits out names that sound like Web 2.0 companies. How about Realtune, Jabberdog, Pixoyo, Ooba? Availability of the names it generates is not guaranteed, but it comes in handy if you’re looking for ideas.
Fake Name Generator: Create fake names of people and associated information: address, email address, Social Security Number, credit card number, and a bit more. Please note that this is fake information, so the SSNs and credit card numbers is generates are not valid.
Official Seal Generator: Quickly create an official-looking seal. With seven designs to choose from you can control the size, the text that’s on it, colors, and more attributes. Be sure to check this one out!
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Comment Friday Winner: Blogging 4 Everyone
Comment Friday received a cool 24 comments. I know I posted it late, but thats alright.
This weeks topic seem to surround the weather. It’s hot for you, but cool for me!
This week I have chosen a new blog to be our Blog of the Week. Blogging4Everyone obviously seems to be new, so I figured they were in need of some link love.
They have some pretty decent articles, and posted a great comment. Too bad it was late in the comment friday for anyone to respond, it would of been a great topic starter.
Hope to have you all back next week!
Our RSS Feed Competition is CLOSED. We will be announcing a winner in the next few days, including a video of who won. Make sure to claim your prize in 48 hours or I will be drawing again! We may even have a 2nd prize winner!
All We Have Is Now
A few rambling thoughts on life …
All we have is now. The measure of our peace of mind, and the measure of our personal effectiveness, are determined by how much we are able to live in the present moment. Regardless of what happened yesterday and what might happen tomorrow now is where we are. From this point of view, the key to happiness and contentment must be focusing on the present moment.
One of the beautiful things about children is that they absorb themselves fully in the present moment. They manage to stay completely involved in whatever they are doing, whether it’s watching a beetle, drawing a picture, building a sandcastle or whatever they choose to devote their energies to.
As we become adults many of us learn the art of worrying about several things at once. We can allow problems and future concerns to crowd into our present so that we become miserable and ineffective.
We also learn to postpone our pleasures and our happiness, often developing a notion that sometime in the future everything will be much better than now.
The High School student thinks, “When I’m out of school and don’t have to do what I’m told, everything will be great!”
He leaves school and suddenly recognises that he won’t be happy until he has left home.Â
He leaves hope, starts University and soon decides, “When I have got my degree, then I’ll be really happy!” Eventually he gets his degree at which time he feels that he can’t be happy until he has a job.
He gains employment and has to start at the bottom of the heap. You’ve guessed it. He can’t be happy yet.
As the years roll by he postpones his happiness and peace of mind until he gets married, starts buying a home, gets a better job, starts his family, gets the kids out of school, retires … and then he dies before he allows himself to be blissfully happy. All his present moments were spent planning for a wonderful future which never arrived.
Living in the now is about expanding our awareness to make the current moment more delicious. Each of us has the choice, moment by moment, as to whether we really want to live and allow ourselves to be touched and affected.
Whenever we are living in the present moment we drive fear away from our mind. Essentially fear is the concern over events which might happen sometime in the future. This concern can be paralyzing to the point where we find it impossible to do anything constructive.
We are, however, only open to intense fear when we are being inactive. The minute we start to take action and actually do something our fear subsides.
Living in the now is about about taking action, without fear of the consequences. It is about putting in our effort for the sake of involvement, without worry as to whether we will get our just rewards.
Time doesn’t really exist, except as an abstract concept in our head. The present moment is the only time we have.
 It’s up to us to make something of the moment.
Good luck,
Mike.
Mike’s Money Making Mission
Comment Friday for June 1st
Trying to get back on track with our Comment Friday, I am aiming for 25 comments!
If this is your first comment friday, it is a fun and simple idea. Just leave us a comment about anything you want, and we can get our own little discussion going.
Each week we will chose one lucky commenter to be featured as our Blog of the Week and that blogger will get a link to their blog, and a spot on our blog roll for the week.
If you are hosting your own comment friday let us know.
Reading Faster Makes For More Free Time
There’s so much information we have to deal with nowadays. It’s hard to keep up with it all. By improving our reading skills we could save a lot of time and spend what we save on things that matter most, like family.
Spreeder can help you.
The interface is very simple as it should be because it’s only designed to accept the text you paste into its window and then shows you that text one word at at time for you to read.
Why one word at a time? The short answer is: subvocalization. It’s when we hear ourselves “speak” the words we read in our head. This results in slowing down our reading. The solution is to be able to recognize the words we read without having to say them in our head. So reading this way trains us to read faster.
When reading a book, the solution is simple: just trace your finger or the eraser-end of a pencil along the words as you read them. Make it go slightly faster than you normally read so you can make your eyes catch up a little.
When reading online try using this bookmarklet. Having this in your browser’s toolbar makes it easy for you to select text on a web page and have those words shown to you in the same fashion described above.
Inspired by zenhabits.
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Time to Give Away a Fridge!
For those keeping track, we have reached our goal of 150 RSS Subscribers. Not only did our contest help, but so did a few feed exchanges via forums. Not only will I be writing how we got 150 feed subscribers, but I can finally give away our Mini Fridge!
One lucky person will be getting our fridge, just for subscribing to our feed! We are getting some last minute entries thanks to Kumikos great review of our blog, as well as some forum postings. I am also planning a full review of Kumikos review. I hope you take advantage of her reviews, she’s great at them!
I am happy that Blog about your Blog is doing so well and I know it will continue to do so with such great authors. Just wanted to mention that Jennifer’s post about Increasing Blog Traffic by Using HTML in Comments of Other Blogs received 37 diggs and counting! If you haven’t dugg the article yet, please do so.
We are also exploring ways to start paying our authors for certain blog posts, but thats in the works. More on that to come!
With our great success in Feed Subscribers I am looking to add some sponsored links to our feed. You can purchase links at 6$ a month via paypal, or we can exchange advertising. Please use our contact form if you are interested.
No Comment Friday Winners: Just Link Love
Lee hasn’t been able to pick winners for the previous two comment friday’s due to his demanding schedule. Since it’s already Tuesday I won’t be picking any “blogs of the week” but I do want to give out some link love.
Next Friday we will be back on schedule with Comment Friday hosted by me, and the winner will be picked on Saturday.
Last friday we suffered a shortage of comments, but I am sure we will pick it back up to about 30-40 this week!
First I want to notice Jason Spence of Blisslogs. He has been an active Comment Friday participant. Last week he said:
“What’s up with only 15 posts at 8:30PM CDT on Comment Friday? Heres number 16. Lets get this going to get them to their goal for the day.”
Obviously we didn’t reach our goal, but every comment counts! Blisslogs are currently looking for guest bloggers and blogging about the new version of WordPress.
The previous friday our topic was what song gets stuck in your head. Our first commentor (who hasn’t been featured before) was Snapshots of Life with Cheng Leng. I have never seen them post on comment friday, it’s always nice to get a fresh face around here. Especially a snapshot!
Speaking of new faces it’s also nice to see all of our regulars around here. A previous winner, Windy, never seems to miss comment friday. Blog about your Blog would like to wish her a happy belated bday, and to keep on cooking.
If you would like your blog to be featured, make sure to come by on Friday and leave a good comment. You may just win some link love yourself.