New Site is Almost Up - I Already Hate GoDaddy

Well the new blog site is coming up, and it was a little bit of a headache to import all the posts over. I'll be spending the next few days rearranging things, fixing the spacing, minor coding, and adding back more widgets onto the blog. I'm wondering if I should just redirect everyone to that one now or later. I still have a few more plugins I need to install yet though, and I'll list everything I put onto the blog so you guys can flame/advise me on what else would be good for the site.

As for why GoDaddy is giving me headaches already is from the Wordpress import feature. Apparently when I try to import from my domain it times out trying to connect to https://google.com, which was due to not having SSL or some sort of thing. So the roundabout fix was to import everything over to Wordpress.com, and then port that into MoneyNe.ws.

Also trying to find an easy way to add some 125 x 125 ad slots onto the sidebar of the new home. Any have some ideas for that one? Anyways, if you haven't already checked out the theme I picked out, go check out my future home, and let me know what you guys think. I found the theme over at Brian Gardner's site, and the footer section I lopped off for now to fix later, but I'll need to add it in to give credit to him. Anyways, back to fixing up some blog posts for me.

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Microsoft Complaining About Google's Monopoly

Techcrunch had already posted an article about Google, and Doubleclick merging a few days ago. Normally I wouldn't post about stuff like that, but I came across an interesting response on Slashdot regarding it. Apparently the former Monopoly wannabe Microsoft is complaining about Google's monopolization in the advertising sector. That post can be found here on Google Watch, along with the pdf files that the NY Times released which had a 'confidential' tag written across each page. I'm not sure about you guys, but those diagrams have as much meaning to me as the Chewbacca diagram in the South Park episode. It just doesn't make any sense.



I guess its something that we've been expecting for a while, and it made me remember a post Ritu had about Google not lasting forever. So does anyone have any thoughts on this? Or are you all laughing to yourselves as the two monopoly giants collide.


VS

Round 1 Fight!!


[Queue Monopoly Kombat music here]

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Entrecard Contest Finale - Link Lovin - Link Bait Stats

I think the Entrecard Contest turned out pretty well. Lets see what's happened. There a total of 90 entries from 24 different people. 14 new subscribers, though how many will stay I'm not sure of, and about 6 extra back links. Pretty swell link bait results for throwing a contest with free credits if I must say so myself. I think I should have done this AFTER I move to the new domain. Oh well it was a learning experience for me as it was the first contest this blog offered. When I do run a contest after the domain switch I'll run it with a cash prize so that people who aren't Entrecard users will be able to participate as well.

From the looks of the entries though most people didn't come back to comment about dropping their cards for more daily entries. I would have expected more of those participants than the ones who subscribed to the rss or e-mail. Also it seems like I still get around 50-60 card drops daily from Entrecard users. Of which only a small margin actually stopped to read the post about the Entrecard contest.

As promised here are the contestants that participated through out:

1 @ Movie Cat
5 @ Colin King Marketing
1 @ OpportunitySeeker
4 @ Masters of Seo
1 @ Mike Blogging Ads
3 @ Alan Broken Red Line
2 @ Nick Throlson
5 @ Reno Cyber Street Report
3 @ Erz Blog Paradise
6 @ My Blog Contest
1 @ Swan Premiere Software Reviews
5 @ Artur Kim Word Press Themes Gallery
5 @ Abhijeet Life is Colorful
5 @ Bird on a Wire
5 @ Michael Slightly Mordant
3 @ 30 Day Man
6 @ Allen Silkenhut's World
6 @ Egon Contest U
3 @ Ruchir TechnoMoney
1 @ Jamaipanese
6 @ mc2w is me Whatever I feel Like Bloging About
6 @ contest master Contest Time
1 @ katie Divinely Crafty
6 @ blog contest blog Expert Boss


Our 3 winners are

Third place with a roll of #11:
Masters of Seo winning 50 credits

Second place with a roll of 7:
Opportunity Seeker winning 100 credits

And last of all the winner of the Christmas Entrecard giveaway prize of 250 credits is:
Egon of Contest U

Grats to all 3 of you, and credits will be sent to you shortly after this post is completed. Thank you all, and have a safe Holiday today.

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Only 11 More Hours to Join The Party

First off, I just want to thank the people who've took the time to sign up for this contest. With everyones entries I was able to find some interesting blogs out there. As you already know, the contest entries will be closing as of midnight tonight (Monday Dec 24th). So this is your last chance to take part. If you haven't already go to the contest post, and claim your entries. Please do note that I check for the Entrecard widgets to be displayed on your blog as part of the entry. Anyways its been a wonderful ride so far, and I just wanted to tell everyone thank you for riding with me.

Now onto today's winner out of the 84 entries listed.

With a roll of 61 that points us to Allen @ Silkenhut's World. Allen please verify that you have received your credits.

Good luck to everyone for tomorrow's contest drawings.

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Today's Winner - Also What's up With Alexa Today? Google PR Update Incoming?

Anyone know whats going on with the Alexa ratings lately? I've been running about the same traffic for the last two weeks or so, but yesterday my daily Alexa rank dropped to 69,000. Today I'm sitting at about 89,000, like I said all with the same amount of traffic. This makes me wonder how many people with the Alexa tool bars does it actually take to break the top 100,000 level. Apparently less than 150 visitors a day, because that was yesterday's visitor count.


When I was receiving closer to 300 visitors a day earlier this month posting about the Van Dame commercial, the rating didn't even show up in the top 100k. I guess the people who play World of Warcraft don't use the Alexa bar that much, and many of the Entrecard users do.

Also there's been some worry over at the Digital Point forums regarding Google de-indexing many sites. One thread I read had their site traffic drop from 50k - 20kday. Many of these same threads popped up back in September about a month before Google updated its Page ranks. Is this the start of Google getting ready to do the PR updates again? I wonder how many PR complaints we'll see this time around. Like I've mentioned before I don't like to pay too much attention on getting PR. Especially when the Whypark test site received a higher PR than my blog did. Page rank has no relation to traffic. Although now when I move this blog to the domain name I'll get a higher PR rating thanks to Whypark. So that's a good thing right?

Enough rambling for today, let's get on with the winners for the Entrecard contest. I sound like a broken record now, but just reminding everyone to drop off your cards for more entries daily. And leave a comment in the contest post that you did so I can give you credit for it.

Of all the times playing World of Warcraft, and rolling for loot I hated rolling 1 out of 100s. This time its a good thing hrmm? Congrats to Movie Cat for winning today's drawing. I'll be sending you the credits shortly after this post. Please confirm that you have received them from me. Grand Prize drawing is up in 2 more days so get your entries in while you still can.

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Winner of Day 5 EntreCard Contest

I'm sure the Holiday season crunch time is upon you all. Good luck with the last minute shopping if you are a procrastinator like me. As for me I've finally found most of the plugins I need, but still looking for an adequate Wordpress theme to switch to after this contest is done with. Anyways on to today's winner:


The winner for today's Entrecard Contest is Egon from Contest U. I'll be sending you credits after I am done with the post so please do take a moment to verify that you have received them from me.

The next two weeks I have quite a busy work schedule in addition to porting over all the blog posts from blogger. Hope it can all be imported in a day or so. Have fun, and don't forget the grand prize drawing is on the 25th. Enter now if you haven't yet, and don't forget to drop off a card/comment to claim your entry.

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Took a While, but I Finally Hit 20,000 World of Warcraft Gold

It took a little longer than I thought to reach this next goal, but I finally managed to reach 20,000 gold again in World of Warcraft. Real life work has me burnt out by the time I get home so I don't even log in for the 30-45 minutes daily to rack this amount up.

The Season 3 patch was quite a big sales day which raised the World of Warcraft auction house prices by quite a bit. The prices of some items have still not come back down since that patch was released, so that's great for people playing the auction houses. With school/college out there will be more people playing, so a greater demand of goods to be sold this winter break.

Back at the end of October I had hit 14,000 before Sparter increased its commissions. I was thinking with the commission rates doubling to 20% the gold rates would go back up to compensate. However if you look at this widget below you'll notice, that the Warcraft gold to dollar rate has been steadily decreasing. You can click on the full graph link to see a larger version of this graph.



So after hitting this amount, I decided to drop my rates to try to move some of this WoW gold inventory before the year's up. I hopefully plan to move about half of it, so roughly 10k. Maybe I'll pick up a Nintendo Wii or something for my kid before the new years.

With Blizzard releasing the expansion Wrath of the Lich King, and even more levels/quests. The price per 1,000 gold is just going to drop more so I'll need to cash out while the rates are still high. Its either that or buy some friends their epic mounts for Xmas.

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I Just Realized That I Can't Count - Day 4 Contest Winner - Entrecard Meme

It seems like I've become too dependent upon using a calculator that I can't do simple additions in my head anymore. Anyways for those of you who didn't catch my error, my contest started on a Tuesday, and ends Tuesday. This means the I was actually 8 running contest days for a total of 1,100 points not 1,000. So that's good news for the contest participants. The winner of which I'll announce shortly.

Hectic day today at the office, so I'll be jumbling everything today in one big post.

It looks like there is an Entrecard meme going about now. I had first heard about it while returning a dropped card from Buzz Bop. I left a comment there joking about how long it was going to take before I get hit with it. Low and behold a few hours later I get tagged by that very meme from Alan. I found it funny that Colin also had that same experience happen to him the day before it looks like.

Alan didn't post the instructions so I'll pull them from the Buzz Bop post that I saw it on.

Entrecard Meme Instructions

With the full realization that these Entrecard meme instructions are being read by some of the most brain-fogged, weary net travelers known to mankind, I am going to keep this VERY, VERY simple. Btw, I say “brain-fogged” for the fact that ever since Entrecard “dropped” onto the scene, it’s a fair bet that each of us is seeing, at least, 2-3 times more blogs per day than usual. I would even venture 5-10 times more.

So Here They Are, The Simple Entrecard Meme Instructions

1. Read these instructions twice;
2. Drop your EntreCard at this site;
3. Drop your EntreCard at the 5 EntreCard users’ sites listed below;
4. Choose 5 other EntreCard users;
5. Copy these instructions to your own Entrecard meme article and tag (link) those 5 people;
6. Include a link to the Entrecard meme article of the person who tagged you;
7. Link to the original article “Sam Freedom’s Drop Squad - the First Entrecard Meme Known to Bloggers“;
8. Notify the people you choose that they’ve been tagged;
9. Comment below so even passers-by can drop their card at your site, too (it shows you are active and will likely return the favor)
10. (optional) IF you tag your blogs , use both “entrecard” and “entrecard meme” as tags so that others can find them AND so that we can find them all later as this grows. (If you don’t know what tagging is, don’t worry.)

Hard part now is finding people I know that haven't already been tagged with the meme already. So I'll tag some recent contest subscribers as my prey.

Buzz Bop - I'm going to put the blame on you for this meme so you get a tag =).

Abhijeet @ Life is Colorful - You're the winner of today's Entrecard Contest so I'm going to also tag you with this meme as well. Please verify that you get the credits after I finish posting this.

Clyde @ The World As We Know It -

The two lucky or unlucky people who got tagged from this are:

The 30 Day Man - Slightly Mordant

I hope you guys are enjoying this contest as much as I am. I'm getting quite a bit of card drops every day, and finding new/interesting sites to read from. It still perplexes me though that out of the 70 people who stop by to drop off cards, only a few people actually want to enter the contest. They've already done the requirement, but haven't left a comment.

Here is the screen shot from the random draw today in case anyone was wondering. Now back to the office I go!

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Whypark Down? No Just Upgrading Check Your E-mail

FYI for those of you using Whypark, check the latest e-mail from Craig regarding Friday's server upgrade. The upgrade is due to them purchasing space on some new data centers, and high end servers. This should hopefully help with the occasional time outs on the sitemap validation check you see in the Google Webmasters section. From the e-mail:

We are migrating to a new data center with new, upgraded servers and more bandwidth. The Domain Manager will be offline on Friday, December 21st, 2007 from 7:30am - 9:30am EST. Your sites will remain online during this migration.

If you use our nameservers (ns1.whypark.com and ns2.whypark.com) you will not need to do anything. If you manage your own DNS, please change your A Record to 207.58.206.106 after 7:30am EST on Friday. Sites will still resolve to the current IP address for several days to provide time for propagation. We apologize for the inconvenience to those managing their own DNS.

Just a friendly reminder so you don't lose revenue due to your Whypark sites being down if you didn't use their nameservers. My Whypark trial results are here in case you got here via Google searching for a Whypark review. Craig if you read this you need to set up an updates section over at Whypark.com. I get all your visitors for people searching for 'Whypark news'. Not that I'm complaining of course, but it might be helpful for your users too. Happy domaining.

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3rd Winner for the EntreCard Credit Contest

Here we go the third winner for the EntreCard Contest today is #30 My Blog Contest. 100 Entrecard credits will be sent as soon as I finish up this post. As usual please verify that you have received your credits.



The contest is picking up more entries daily so increase your odds of winning don't forget to drop off your cards daily, and leave a comment in the contest post. You can get an extra entry every day by doing so.

Don't lose hope if you haven't won yet, as there are still 4 more days to win as well as the Grand Prize drawing on December 25th. Good luck to you all over the next coming days.

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16 Free Blog Reviews to Raise Your Presence and Authority

Update: Please go to my new domain for an updated free blog review list.

No I'm not doing blog reviews, and I don't think I ever will. Regardless of how much money you can make via doing blog reviews via Review Me, Smorty or other venues. I won't even mention the name of one, due to the fact that some people got hit with a Page Rank penalty for even mentioning their company. I'm not one to give professional advice on how a site should look or what it should change. However there are a good amount of sites that do all this, and currently for free. Some may require a link back others not. Check out their other reviews to see if its right for you.

While the best way to get your site linked to is to write quality content. Sometimes you want that extra exposure or specific keyword to rank in.

These sites are sorted by their current page rank.

PR 4 - Untwisted Vortex
PR 4 - Blogsweluv
PR 3 - Free Blog Reviews
PR 3 - Blog A Day - Link back required
PR 3 - Our Blog Review
PR 0 - Siyab's Blog
PR 0 - Shh I'm Blogging
PR 0 - The Weblog Review
PR 0 - OpTempo
PR 0 - Looking For Scoop - Definitely check other reviews first
PR 0 - Darn Good Reviews
PR 0 - Blogging Ads - Registration required
PR 0 - Cikgu Azleen - Link back required
PR 0 - Blog Sonar - Write your own review
PR 0 - The Review Jerk - Webmaster related sites only
PR 0 - The Review Bunker

If you do free blog reviews, please feel free to add your site to the list by leaving a comment.

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Entrecard Credit Giveaway Day 2 Winner

Looks like as of 12pm Hawaii time we're up to 40 entries in the Entrecard Contest. If you haven't left a comment yet, there is still 5 more chances to win 800 credits now. Check out the contest post for the rules, and entry requirements. Its as easy as dropping a card, and leaving a comment.

Today's winner of 100 Entrecard credits is Alan from The Thin Red Line. Thank you for joining in on the fun =). Credits being sent after I publish this post. Please verify that you received them in your Entrecard account.


Also while we're on the topic on Entrecard, I just wanted to say thank you to the Caveman from Caveman Conclusion for making me a nifty new avatar. Check out the before(simpsonized me), and after (Tauren Warrior) 125x125 pics. Thanks again for putting up with me Caveman.

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First Winner For EntreCard Credits Announced

So the first winner of the 1000 Entrecard Credit Contest is Erz from Blog Paradise. Congratulations to you, and if you did not win today, don't worry you still have 6 more days to win! If you haven't already dropped a card for today's entry you may do so now, and don't forget to leave a comment in the contest post.

Please do remember to leave your site link to make it easy to find the correct person to allocate the winnings to.

Entrecard credits have been sent to you Erz please verify your account.

Good luck to everyone for tomorrow's give away. Sign up via rss, e-mail, or write a post for more entries! You can drop your cards off daily for more entries.

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Verne Troyer aka Mini Me - Also a WoW Mage

So in the Mr T WoW commercial post I had, I mentioned that Verne Troyer aka Mini-Me was supposed to be coming out with a World of Warcraft Commercial. Well its here folks. Like the Van Damme commercial, Mini-Me goes with a mage. Somehow I would have though it would have been funny to be a Tauren or Draenai that's a large body race. Yet the Gnome in the commercial fits him pretty well.

[You Tube Link]

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7 Days of Christmas Entrecard Credit Give Away Contest

Like I mentioned in my post the other day I'll be throwing my first contest, and well just in time for the holidays. I present to you the 7 Days of Christmas Entrecard Credit Give Away in which I'll be giving out a total of 1000 credits over the course of 7 days starting Tuesday December 18th, 2007. Here's how its going to work.

Prizes

Everyday starting Tuesday there will be one announced winner everyday who will receive 100 Entrecard Credits via random drawing. On the last and final day there will be the grand prize giveaway of 250 credits, 100 credits, and 50 credits. Everyone who participates will receive a link back from me on the last contest date. Final winner will be announced on December 25th, 2007.

Entries and participation

To participate you need to comment in this post with your site after you do one or all of the following:

• Drop off your Entrecard - 1 Entry per day
  
• Subscribe to this feed - 2 Entries
• Subscribe to this feed via e-mail - 2 Entries
• Write a post about this contest linking back to this post - 5 Entries

That's 10 entries that you can get for the prize drawing. These entries will carry over each day so the sooner you get started the more chances you have of winning. Also you may drop off your Entrecard off daily to rack up extra entries, this is an incentive to keep coming back daily. Last day to drop off Entrecards will be Monday December 24th, 2007. All sites will be checked if they have the Entrecard widget running.

So let's get this contest started, and good luck to everyone!

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Bloggers Unite Day - Random Acts of Kindness

For those of you who don't know, today is the day Bloggers Unite for Acts of Kindness. There are already a number of posts going into today's events. If you have an act of kindness that you have done or want to share leave a comment there.

Anyways I just wanted to share a random act of kindness done to the blogger, that I found while dropping cards back on Entrecard. Seems like he lost his $300 railway pass, and some nice Samaritan gave it back to him. Good karma for you indeed Tom.

Anyways even if you don't have any Act of Kindness that you did, spread the word about Bloggers Unite today. Every little bit helps.

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Whypark Review Day 100 - Final Stats and Thoughts

About three months ago I started up a test domain on Whypark to try it out. Today will be the last day for my site MoneyNe.ws on Whypark as I will be moving my blog onto the domain. I made a list of all the Whypark posts I made for easy reading:

• Whypark Review Day 1
• Whypark Review Day 15
• Whypark Review Day 19
  
• Whypark Review Day 30
• Whypark Review Day 45
• Whypark Review Page Rank Received

Over all this is a nice program for those people who have some domain names that do not receive any hits while their domain is parked at sites like GoDaddy, NameDrive, Sedo etc. The reason is that Whypark will get your site indexed in Google, and other search engines. Parked domains usually will not get your sites indexed. If your sites already get type in traffic without the use of SEO then you will be better off developing the site or keeping it on the its domain parking host.

Overall Traffic Details during the complete Trial period from September to Current


The first few weeks after the articles in my Whypark site got indexed I was ranking very well for the keywords listed. I also got quite a bit of traffic from Google from the SEO on 2000+ pages. I did notice however that after 2 months the articles started disappearing from its index. In November the indexed pages were down to about 1,500. If you notice for December I started receiving little to no traffic as I currently have only 400 pages indexed with none of them ranking for keywords in the finance niche. This was the running stats with no articles published to push the keyword rankings higher. (I assumed people would want a domain stat tracking that for sites with little to extra work was needed).

Note that the finance niche has plenty of competition, so sites like Whypark will do better if you target less competitive keywords. My site got lumped into high authority sites like CNN Money, Wall Street Journal, and Business Weekly. Also every bank, investor, and stock guide so it is important that you do some keyword research first before jumping in.

Adsense revenue earned during the 3 months totaled out at a break even $5.50. If I had 100 such sites, and this was the average payout I would have netted $450, after paying for the $99 needed to buy the Whypark credits. If you have more than 100 domains I would try it out for 3 months, and then after your sites are done move them back to your previous domain park service, and move your other untrafficked domains into Whypark since your credits are not tied to a domain.

Conclusion

Whypark won't bring you thousands of dollars. Then again domain parking doesn't either for sites that do not get any type in traffic. If you do have sites that are aging with little to no traffic though I do recommend this. It will let you recover at least the cost of the domain name registration fees. When you do setup your sites; do some keyword research first. Do write some articles to give your keyword niche an extra boost in the search rankings. That about wraps it up. Since I still have a Whypark account I'll be running another test on another domain once I move this blog to Wordpress. As always thank you for stopping by.

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My Top 5 Favorite World of Warcraft Videos

I was browsing through my the pages in my histories folder, and came across these so I wanted to share them with you. These are my top five favorite World of Warcraft videos that I loved watching. I tried to include the creators of them where possible. If I got the names wrong drop a comment with the original author to link out to them.

Illegal Danish - Super Snacks



[link] [Tivas and Gobbler]


Leeroy Jenkins



[link] [Ben Schultz]


Frost Shock



[link][http://www.craftingworlds.com]


The Internet is for Porn WoW Version



[link][Evilhoof and Flayed]


World of Warcraft Dancing Origins



[link][http://youtube.com/animpinabox]


Well those are my favorite five. While there are some great machinima out there like the The Tale of the past series these are my personal favorites. Let me know what your favorite Wow videos are, I'd like to see them too.

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Happy First 5,000 Page Views - Heres to Many More

Happy Holidays to you all. Its been a little more than three months that this blog has been up and running. It looks like today I hit the first 5,000 page view mark. More than half of that has been within the last 3 weeks as I started promoting the blog more. I just wanted to say thank you for those of you who stop by regularly to make this a fun blogging journey for me.

Also want to note for those of you that check on the ongoing Whypark Review I've been doing. I will be ending that this month with the final cumulative stats. The reason is that I'll be using the domain MoneyNe.ws for this blog sometime in the future. Once I figure out the hosting/template design etc. It would be a good time to sign up to Money News by email so you don't miss any posts when I transition over to wordpress.

Now on to the good stuff! For those of you who use Entrecard stay tuned as I'll be putting up a contest of sorts for some Entrecard credits in the coming day or so. If you have an idea I should use for a contest entrance besides the usual sign up to my rss or blog about me types leave me a comment. If I use it I'll give you extra contest entries with a link back to you =).

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Sweet I Earned Money From Squidoo

Remember back in October I wrote about making two pages on Squidoo? Well I just wanted to post an update since I logged in recently just to check how things have been going with those pages.

I had a nice big rush of traffic from Google at the beginning since it was a newly created page, and then the SERP went down slowly no visitors a day after about two weeks or so. That's the Google engine for you, giving new engines good ranking for a day or so after release. Then sticking it into the infamous sandbox. I don't blame them though, the site only has nine back links so I'm still surprised that its even getting hits at the moment.

Anyways it looks like Yahoo finally indexed the page recently, and I'm seeing a steady steam of visitors daily from that search engine now for the keyword free 3d mmorpg. The other one I have for Team Fortress due to all the clan sites, and gaming site promotions isn't fairing well. This stream of people looks like its also pushing the Squidoo rankings back up as well. At its peak in October my Metin 2 site had around a 1400 ranking. This was just from being indexed in Google initially. Until recently I think the site has been sitting in the 25,000th position, but climbing back thanks to Yahoo Search to a currently around 9k. On Google for that term I don't even show up in the top 50. On Yahoo my site shows up as #4. How you like them Apples now?

Since Squidoo does the payments about a month out I finally get to see what type of money comes in from just having two pages. (well I'm just going to count one since the Team Fortress page doesn't bring in anything).

A nice sum of [drum roll please]: $2.07

Not bad, for a single page with only 9 backlinks, most of that being my own blog with the rest from my re-syndicated on some splog or rss sites. I think its especially good when the top earning lenses only earn about $10 from Squidoo.(they earn the rest via affiliate advertising) I think I should go back an maybe change a few things on that web page to help it out. And Yes there is an affiliate link on the site for the Metin 2 page I made on Squidoo. Also even if not many people visit the site, I've had 363 clicks outgoing clicks logged. Meaning this is a great free site to get pre-sell visitors to your affiliate links. I'll have to take a look at this site again to make some landing pages for more Clickbank offers I think. Its definitely cheaper than paying for 300 clicks via Adwords.

If you haven't made a Squidoo lens yet, sign up for one. At the very least to create a nice back link to your website for keywords on Yahoo, that you can't quite rank well on Google with.

Lets Pay Scrapers More - Making Money Online Blogs Just Moved to You Tube

We all know that people copy videos, and then upload them to You Tube. Why? So they can put a link to their site for some of the traffic. While they(Google) have tried to keep this down to a minimum, it still occurs on a massive level. The last Mr T commercial for example has 400 of them. When a popular video is released, people download them, and then upload them to You Tube to get some hits. While this is great in making some video advertising viral. It does mean it gets abuse with people ripping off other peoples work. Now the people who upload someone else's content will get paid even more.

Anyways guess what You Tube just announced a partner program that will let You Tube users get paid for people watching their videos. They haven't yet released how this was going to happen yet though the TechCrunch article seems to mention adsense ads from the You Tube site. I think they will start making the embedded videos more like the video adsense ads or the Metacafe videos that pop up ads in the actual screen even for embedded ones.

What's the criteria for joining the program?

You create original videos suitable for online streaming.
You own the copyrights and distribution rights for all audio and video content that you upload -- no exceptions.
You regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users.
You live in the United States or Canada.

Who will this benefit? Video bloggers who already get thousands of hits to their video blogs. Chris Crocker anyone? The people who sneak in camcorders to the movie theaters, especially for hits like the Star Wars trailors.

What is this going to do to the overcrowded making money online blogs? I think we're going to stop seeing wall of text niche keyword posts, and more video posts like Pam on Shoemoney. Videos while they don't have a lot of SEO power, will be a lot harder to scrape. Scraper sites that take just the videos, won't get any keywords from them to get money from adsense either.

What else are we going to see even more now? A major abuse of social networking like Digg, Stumble etc to just get the hit counters up. Don't we already see this now for sites like Metacafe? Yes we do. Is it going to get a lot worse from here on out if Google doesn't be careful? Definitely. Now excuse me while I go sign up to this, and buy a camcorder from Amazon.

World of Warcraft For Russians

Well good news for all the Russians that are currently playing on European or west coast US servers. World of Warcraft is coming to your home town. Blizzard just released a press located here announces the fifth translated version of the game.

Now why is it the the French are involved with this again? First the Van Damme commercial, and now the Russian version press release? Will the Lich King expansion come out for the French first too? What gives Blizzard, I shall fart in your general direction for not even letting putting that info up on the US Wacraft site.

Anyways in other WoW News for the US. The first week of contests winners for Warcraft's 3 year anniversary was announced here.

I Won a Contest From Dax Desai

Well I won my first contest ever! I didn't win first place, but I got third for a prize of 25 Entrecard credits to use for advertising. My thanks goes out to Dax for holding the contest, and letting me get some more credits to place ads on Entrecard. Also it looks like he's also in the running for the Bloggers Choice Awards under the business blog category. As a thank you please go vote for Dax, and well don't forget to vote for me too.


For those of you guys who haven't signed up for Entrecard yet. You should go ahead, and do so now for some nice traffic. Why? Entrecard is holding a contest as well for 2 Free 125 x 125 ad spaces on their blog for a whole month. And all you have to do is write a post about what kind of traffic results you are receiving from them.

What kind of traffic have I received from Entrecard so far? This is a pic from my analytics counter. So far I've received 107 visitors from Entrecard over the course of 5 days after joining it. Note this is just traffic from dropping my cards off to various websites. Averaging 30 visitors a day for minimal work is nice free traffic.

The real test will be from when the ads that I purchased start being run to bring in visitors. I'll update in about two weeks for that since the John Chow ad I bought won't go into effect for another ten days or so. It will be interesting to see what that brings in. Wish me luck when that happens.

WoW Commercial: Jean-Claude Van Damn Plays a Mage

Yup first the Mr. T Warcraft commercial, and William Shatner. Now we got Jean-Cleade Van Damme entering the scene. So without much further ado here is the commercial, and oh yea, its in French only.



What's he saying? Here's the translated transcript from an ign blog.

“My name is Jean-Claude Van Damme… and I am a mage.”

“Hand-to-hand combat for me: it's over!”

“Now I can cast powerful spells!”

“Just try messing with me… I’ll turn you into a sheep.”

“A sheep!”

“…Because we all are a bit like sheep, you know...”

“I am Jean-Claude Van Damme, I am a mage.

“And you?”

"What’s your game?"

Looks like Blizzard is advertising to Europe's World of Warcraft gamers with this one. They also released a Guillermo 'Willy' Toledo Paladin commercial. I've never heard of the guy either, but I guess he's a popular Spaniard romance movie guy. That would explain the night elf wooing him in the commercial.

Update 12/18: Mini-Me is also a mage. Check post here.

Does Starting Out Small Mean You'll Never Grow to be Great?

I was surfing the net, and stumbled across this page on Doshdosh about a CashCrate Review. With the check Maki got a whopping $5.28(picture is still hosted on a free image server). This got me thinking that everyone who starts out needs to start from somewhere. Back in 2006, it seems like Maki was doing quite a bit of reviews on Get-Paid-To websites, until moving onto the internet marketing niche which seems to be more of the focus nowadays.

What's the point of this post, your probably asking. I was just looking for a little bit of inspiration I guess. Knowing that another person who is currently successful in gathering a large audience also started out by doing programs like CashCrate is always enlightening. Especially if the first CashCrate check I got was bigger. It just means that I need to work harder, try out more programs, and find new things to do.

Its also good to know that people can change around or maybe change the focus of what their blog's talk about over the course of time. Its nice to know that blogs or the topic of blogs can evolve at the same time that the writer grows and matures. Sometimes for worse, but most of the time for the better. Who knows what I'll be writing about a year from today. Will I still be logged into World of Warcraft making gold to sell? Will my blog still be about me making money online?

Are you a blogger that is just starting out? What plans do you have a year from now? What inspires you or what makes you keep going?

Still Here in Maui, Though Thoroughly Drenched

Yep I'm still here. I haven't been able to log on since yesterday since the power went out for most of the day due to heavy rain, and wind. While it wasn't as bad as some other parts of Maui, some people in my neighborhood down the street got flooded like this pic from the Maui News. Note, this is after it dried out as their home got flooded only a few feet away from my house.

Get Free Traffic From EntreCard

Well I first heard about this program from Shoemoney's post a while back when I was off visiting Mexico, and I promptly forgot about it. Recently there has been a few posts up about it which reminded me that I was looking to install the widget back then. So I went ahead and put the widget up on Monday. If you already use Entrecard feel free to drop off your card. I'm kind of bummed that Shoemoney already took it off his site though, but other high traffic sites like Problogger, and John Chow still have it on their sites.

Here is a quick 30 second YouTube video from Shoemoney about the program:

Its pretty easy to sign up for it, and the widget is javascript so you won't have to worry about Google getting on your case.

Now the first thing that needs to be done after you get your widget up is to go out can drop your Entrecard off to other people with the widget. The Entrecard website has a nice little directory to browse through. This way you can gain credits by dropping off your card to other users.

Now I came across a funny post as I was surfing through other Entrecard users. Toni thought she could game the system by writing a script to drop off the cards for her, now as resourceful as that was she was caught pretty fast with all the points she'd gotten removed. Atleast its nice to know that the new program has fail safes in place from people trying to game the system.

Another thing about this program is that you can send your credits to someone else if your not using them. I found out about this feature from another BlogCatalog user Clyde who was nice enough to send me points to buy some ads. Its also letting people make some nice link bait articles with Entrecard points as the rewards too.

So far after having the widget on for about a day I've gotten about 30 or more hits from it. I went to visit about a hundred or more sites to drop off my cards, and bought some ads from various people. I have to maybe earn another hundred or so if I want to have enough credits to get on the number one sites though. Theres a few days wait time on alot of the ads so I'll need to post a follow up report later on maybe in about a week or two.

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up at Entrecard, and get drop your internet business card of to show people who you are.

ScratchBack - Tip The Blogger, Get a Link Back

Back at the beginning of October after I read a TechCrunch article about it, I had put up a widget on my side back called Scratchback. Since at the time I was preparing for my Cozumel trip, I had completely forgotten to write up a post about it. Better late than never I guess eh?


What is Scratchback?

Its an online tipping system that gives back to the tippers by allowing a publisher to “give back” links or images in return.

Isn't selling links bad? Won't I get penalized by Google?

Notably, the system has been approved by Google (they checked) as every link is “nofollow” and the widgets are built in javascript; this is a product that provides an alternative advertising model that won’t see publishers punished in future Google crackdowns.

What kind of templates are available?

There are quite a few different colors, but it seems like you can't customize them fully by setting your own bgcolor.

Does it cost me anything to sign-up?

No it doesn't, and you can actually make some money if someone gives you a tip.

Do I have to let someones link on my site if I don't like the contents?

You are under no obligation to show or approve any listing you find questionable for ANY reason. There are no refunds either. Your readers are tipping you for your efforts.

How Do I Get Paid?

Payments for earnings are ONLY paid through PayPal. If you don't have a valid, working PayPal account, you shouldn't use Scratchback as a publisher because you won't ever get paid. In the future we may add alternative payment methods so stayed tuned. Payments are made at the end of a thirty-day cycle. It can take up to 15 days to remit payment to your PayPal account at the end of each cycle. Publishers must earn at least $25 to initiate payment.
Note: Current payout is set at $10 according to this updated post.

How Much Do I Charge For My Top Spot?

Totally up to you (minimum $1.00). We suggest you set your pricing for tips based on your own perceived value of your website or blog. Mine is currently set at a bargain price of $1 until it fills up. I'll raise the price after the 10 slots are filled.

Does ScratchBack charge a fee or commission?

Yes, after Paypal fees they collect 10%, and give you 90% of the tip now. This is a lot better than the 50% they first opened up the program. The change was noted here in this post.

Okay I signed up for Scratchback how can I let people know I have the widget?

There is a blog post here that you can comment on. There is also a Scratchback user directory which has free listing.



I hope that takes care of any questions regarding Scratchback. Did I do a good job? You could always Scratch my back. =) Like I said earlier, for a limited time I will put tip cost at $1.00 until it fills up, after that I'll think about raising the tip jar.

WhyPark Update - Paying $100 For Templates

Some news from the WhyPark Creator Craig this month. Also if you are a website developer here is an opportunity for you too.

We Want to Buy Your Templates

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A common request from WhyPark users is "add more templates!" We are planning on continually adding more templates, but would like to reach out to our user base first. If you've developed or would like to develop new templates for WhyPark and we think your template will be a good fit for other WhyPark users, we'll pay you $100 for each template we use. To submit your template for consideration, please do the following:

• Reply to this message or email craig @ whypark.net with the links to your custom templates in action on WhyPark
• Your template must be unique that you developed and have the right to use and sell (you will be required to sign a short release form)
• We are looking for templates that can be used across a wide variety of domains and subjects.
• If your template is accepted, we will pay you $100 by PayPal and will add your template to our gallery for all users to use and enjoy!

Server Improvements

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We are constantly monitoring our servers for uptime and capacity. We are in the process of making several upgrades to our network for improved server capacity and to help display your sites quicker and more reliably. We will send you an email notice if there is any planned downtime related to these upgrades.

Upcoming Additions

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We have a number of new projects in the works right now and plan on releasing a number of new features in the first months of 2008. Watch for integrated statistics, tools to help import and manage your domains, shared revenue opportunities, and subscription and managed services.

Quick WhyPark Tip

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The best performing WhyPark sites tend to be niche sites with focused keywords. Rather than using very general terms to get a large number of articles on your site, try using more focused, niche terms. The result will be a smaller site, but very focused on one theme. This will help search engines and visitors see your site as an authority on the subject.

Activision Blizzard Merger Announced

Well there was a post up on Slashdot about Blizzard and Activision merging so is this good news? Activision has a big presence in console platforms from games like, Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, and do first person shooters such as Call of Duty 4, Doom 3, and Quake 4. Blizzard is carrying titles like Diable II, Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2, and World of Warcraft. Here is Activision Blizzards official press release.

What do I hope comes out of this?
What about a World of Warcraft for console games that operates in similar fashion to Final Fantasy XI. How about a Starcraft Universe that has first person shooter like Quake, but on a massive online server. Now that would be different, and interesting.

Call of Duty 4

Tony Hawk Proving Ground


Guitar Hero 3


Starcraft 2

All pictures from Activision Blizzard multimedia section.

Sparter CEO Dan Kelly Interview

Sparter doesn't usually put up blog posts so when this one came through I thought it was an interesting read. Its an interview of CEO Dan Kelly of Sparter done by Usable Markets Alex Kirtland.

Some interesting information from the interview for me was these points from Dan Kelly:

Globally there is a 2 billion dollar per year business for digital items in all the online games, from World of Warcraft to Maple Story, mainly centered on games in the Korean, North American and European markets.

Imagine that, a whole economy worth 2 billion dollars that could basically be erased if someone formatted each game company's hard drive.

A typical seller makes enough to play World of Warcraft for free - about $200 a year - but some make a lot more than that.

I chuckled at this one since I find making gold fairly easily. Why would someone just make a few hundred, and leave? I guess the answer to that is that I know a lot of people who stop playing wow, and just sell off their gold/characters never to come back to the game again.

Some guilds in WoW, for example, only want to raid. They prefer to buy the gold they need and focus their time — 20-50 hours per week — on the parts of the game they love most. This is not a bad thing.

Desperate times call for desperate measures I guess. I remember raiding with a not so full guild, and we were always hurting for certain classes or consumables. While hard core role players hate people who just buy a lvl 70 character or buy gold just to get mounts or gear instead of instancing. There are times when those people just shut up just to have that extra player or character around. This way the whole guild can experience end game raids, and get further ahead. The 20-50 hours a week raiding adds up, and when you have to farm for repair costs or consumables you either have to play WoW full time, make a lot of gold efficiently, or straight up buy gold to stay ahead in progress.

We think that online communities will continue to grow at very attractive rates. As they get bigger, more people will want to trade. And the secondary markets will have to be there because otherwise they’re absence will hold back the growth of the primary markets.

The black market for gold in World of Warcraft or currency in other games will always exist as long as it takes a certain amount of time required to maintain a character. The key is the time required to acquire those items. There's no black market currency for games like Dota, Team Fortress, Counterstrike since all players start out equal with items being reset at each session. However once you start involving time or ranks a market will appear to sell that service to save you time. Even if one were to try, and stop a virtual black market. They would just find another way to sell the services without getting caught.

WoW Season 3 Brings Great Gold News

Today and yesterday was a good day for many people in World of Warcraft. While people were hoarding arena points to get their new Season 3 pvp gear. The smart ones were hoarding materials to sell for today. Here's the WoW Professions thread in which some people claim to have made up to 58k gold. Many Miners, Jewelcrafters, Enchanters and even some Tailors/Leatherworkers were marking up their goods.

While I thought I did well cashing in at 1,600 gold today, I guess I was beat by those people who prepared in advance for this. I apparently didn't follow my own WoW Auction House Gold Tips regarding preparing for Tuesdays. Don't mind the Earned/hr part of the screen shot since I only logged in to check my mail so not very accurate on that part. Also my Titan Bar money mod is a little screwed up ever since Patch 2.3 came out, and I haven't bothered to fix it since I only look at it when I log in/out.

Anyways I want to know if anyone of you readers were able to cash in on this last update with some impressive numbers. Let me know, and good luck to you all for when the next Season's arena gear comes out.

Contest - Would You Do With $25?

$25 dollars doesn't do much now a days. It can't get you a pizza delivered to your house in Maui. It can't buy you a full tank of gas (unless your driving a moped). So why am I asking this question? Shai at JMMO is running a contest for $25. So this post is my entry ticket to the contest. By the way if you haven't read my free blog traffic tips, you'll find that holding contests are a great linkbaiting method to gain back links as well as exposure for your blog.

Anyways back to the subject matter on what I would do with $25. Since my blog is still rather new, I would use it to gather some exposure. What would be the best way to get some exposure for $25 though. I could:

Purchase a link for this website

With all the Google Page Rank penalties being sent out recently about paid links though I don't think I'll go with this one. Also sidebar or sponsored posts don't really do great for traffic unless its from a very high traffic source anyways. I wouldn't be able to purchase a good spot for $25 so nope.

Use Adwords or other Pay Per Click(PPC) advertising.

While this might be a great way to bring in targeted traffic, I would rather spend PPC money to a landing page that sells a product over just sending to my website. I guess this one won't work for me either.

Buy a gift for Shoemoney

Yup, its decided. I'll use my Cafe Press account for once, and make a T-shirt with my site on it for his Free T-Shirt Friday promotion. I think in my position this would probably be the best bet, since it'll get a link from a high PR site, and hopefully some traffic. Worth a shot right?

So what would you do with $25?

Interested in participating in the contest? Read the post here for the entry rules. Its free so why not. If you don't want to make a blog post, you can leave a comment with your answer to participate as well.