New Home Sweet Home

I've moved to http://moneyne.ws so please update your book marks. Those of you on my feed subscriptions will not need to change anything as I've already redirected you via Feedburner. Blogger's been nice to me, but a nice home awaits so I'll see you all there.

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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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