Is it a good time to invest in stocks?

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:18 pm

It seems as though the stocks are going up up and up, oil is dropping and the dollar is rising, so is NOW a good time to get into the stock market? Maybe yes for some people, no for others, but I say - YES IT IS. However, I do not say this without any backing of course. As always, the stock market is always a very vulnerable thing and you should never trust ANYONE with YOUR money.

So now why do I say you should look into investing in stocks, well that’s easy:

Oil
Oil has fallen over $30.00/barrel in the past 3 months, and this is a huge drop. With oiling falling, stocks are given extra room to grow as more people have extra money to put into the market. Prices of food lower, transportation, etc. When oil falls - invest in stocks.

Dollar
The dollars strength too has also grown over the past couple months, this is GREAT for stocks (and forex trading as well).

Companies Growth
Looking at many companies earnings report, most are turning a profit in the first quarter this year. With this kind of company growth, it gives you an idea that many other companies have the possibility to turn a huge profit as well.

So like I said, take this with a grain of salt.. but defiantly look into stock trading.





Keyword pump your posts - without boring everyone

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:18 pm

This is especially important if you have AdSense on your page, as it will target your ads ALOT better. But either way, it helps a lot with SEO as well. There is one important thing that you must remember though.. DO NOT BORE your returning visitors, they are your most important visitors of course.

You need to always post relevant information about what your posting about, for example.. if you are posting about back links, keep posting about links, URLs, etc.. but always stay true to what your title is in that particular post.

Of course, do not post just one word sentences, and try not to use links on important words, etc. Those just look really tacky and also annoying as well.





Cashing In on Your Own Niche Market Ideas

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:18 pm

Whoever would have thought there was a whole niche market for funny pictures of cats with crazy misspelled captions! What started out as just some funny pictures of cats, has massively grown into a very profitable blog and business. How did it get this way? User generated content and being different, led the way. How many times have you seen a LOL Cat, yet haven’t been to icanhascheezburger.com? They are everywhere!

The blog was launched less than two years ago, back in January of 2007 and is currently estimated at earnings of around $5,600 a month (Businessweek, July 2007). The site was then acquired by Pet Holdings, Inc. in late 2007 for $2 million. With massively increased traffic to the site, I’m sure these numbers are much higher now.

So what makes ICanHasCheezburger stand out from the rest? Taking a niche market and running with it. Instead of creating ICanHasCheezburger.com, they could have easily focused on creating a video web site or a general funny pictures site, but the competition is so fierce and broad, targeting something completely different and niche is where the money is at! To further support the blog’s growth, a community was built around the web site where thousands of their loyal followers can upload their own funny pictures to the site.

The group over at Pet Holdings, Inc. and ICanHasCheezburger understand how to conduct business, as they are now on their seventh web site focusing on funny niche areas, their latest being EngrishFunny. Other network sites include Ihasahotdog, Failblog, Totallylookslike, Punditkitchen and Graphjam. After visiting the sites, you will see they all focus in on tight niche areas…instead of having one big super site.

As reported by TechCrunch, “the family of sites is generating 3.3 million daily page views, and around 5 million unique monthly visitors. Total revenue per page is north of $0.80, he says.“.

What’s the next big niche market to come out of nowhere? They are happening everyday… is your idea next?





The Real Reasons You’re Not a Super Affiliate Yet…

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:18 pm

I hear a lot of affiliates who have been in this business for sometime tell me all reasons, I mean the bs excuses, why they’re not a super affiliate yet:

  1. I don’t have a PhD like you Amit!
  2. I don’t have the money.
  3. I just don’t have any time to work on my business.
  4. I have kids!
  5. You got in early, it’s too saturated now.
  6. I don’t know the right people like you do.
  7. Blah, blah, blah!

Yon can come up with a million reasons why you’re not a super affiliate yet, even though you been “doing” affiliate marketing for the last 3 years with little to show for it.

Let’s be honest, deep down you know all your excuses are complete bullshit!

Here are the REAL reasons you’re not a super affiliate yet:

  1. You keep focusing on all reason why you can’t do this business. Make your bs excuses the reason WHY you need to succeed at this business. If you don’t have time or money, make that the reason why you NEED to become a super affiliate, and NOT the reason you can’t become one.
  2. You’re thinking TOO small. You get an affiliate offer to $50/day profit and move on to something else, when the top affiliates may be making $1500/day profit with the same offer. STOP being happy with table scrapes and start working towards building your affiliate campaigns to 4-figure a day in sales. Your affiliate income will NEVER outgrow the level of your thinking. Kick it up a notch!
  3. You’re scared shit of losing money. Get over it. Your investing in your future, NOT “losing money.” How much money did you “lose” going to college? How’s the ROI on that investment working for you?
  4. You’re lazy. I had to work my ass off in the beginning to build my momentum and get my business off the ground. If you’re only testing one affiliate offer a month, you’re dead in the water, there’s no way you’re going to build momentum. I’ll talk more about this in the next post…
  5. You’re not consistent. If you do this business for 4 months and then take a month or 2 off and then try to get back into it again, you’re again killing your momentum.
  6. You don’t want it bad enough. Honestly this is the BIGGEST reason you’re not a super affiliate yet. You need to have a burning desire to succeed to become a super affiliate. You need to have a CRYSTAL CLEAR vision of what you want. Your attitude has to be like Micheal Phelps : eat, sleep, & launch affiliate campaigns. If you’re NOT having trouble sleeping at night because you’re so excited, then you don’t want it bad enough.

So if you’re sick and tired of just poking a stick at affiliate marketing then SUCK IT UP and take an honest look at why you’re not a super affiliate yet.





No More Minimum Bids…?

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:18 pm

Google just recently announced that it’s getting rid of minimum bids on keywords!

No joke.

Of course there’s a catch, they’re going to replace minimum keyword bids with what they call “First Page Bids”, that is, the minimum amount you have to bid on a keyword to show up on the first page.

Now does that mean your ad will show up on page 2+ if your bid below the “First Page Bid”?!?

Honestly, we won’t know until they roll it out.

If that’s not enough, Google has also decide to calculate the quality score on the fly, every time a user searches for a keyword you’re bidding on.

WOW!

The quality score will also be dynamic, meaning that depending on where your ad is showing, which country, which search partner, which website, it will have a DIFFERENT Quality score.

Read it from right from horse’s mouth.


Implications for PPC Affiliates…

It’s hard to say anything at this point.

If the on fly Quality Score calculations also apply to landing page quality score, the results could be disastrous for affiliate who survive by changing their domain name and reuploading their campaign every time they get slapped.

On the other hand, a dynamic quality score could potentially deliver more traffic and reduce the impact of Google slaps.

Cross your fingers, we won’t know the true effect of this Quality Score “Improvement” until we’re hit with it.





My Interview with Andrew Wee

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:18 pm

I recently did an interview with my good friend and fellow blogger Andrew Wee, for his Friday podcast on WhoisAndrewWee.com.

Click Here to Liston to the Interview.

Enjoy the call, I get into some really great content in regards to the mindset you need to win at PPC.





TechCrunch Elevator Pitch

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:18 pm

Check out my TechCrunch elevator pitch for SynthaSite - please cast your vote (green up arrow :-) ) - all votes are very much appreciated!





7 Reasons You Are Going To Fail At Blogging

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:18 pm

This article is guest posted by Christoph Merrill.

You want them you got them

Everyone whats to get into blogging, yet most never make it past the 3 month mark, Why? the following 7 items and the reasons why most will FAIL, check out BlogSavvy for the 7 ways to avoid Blogging Failure.

1. Your spell checker sucks

If you don’t use one, then you suck, and why aren’t you using one? Most of use try to do our best, and frankly that is all that is required, do your best, and once your done run it through a spell checker to make sure your best is even better. Even if English isn’t your 1st language, spell checker will help, and as readers get to know you, they will understand, or even help you become better

2. Your Irregular

I’m not talking bodily functions, I’m talking about the fact that you can’t keep to a regular schedule, sure it sounds great to post every day, but when it comes right down to it, you aren’t going to be able to do that, so you will have a post here, and then another couple of post there, but you can’t it up for very long. You are all talk and when it comes down to your readers, well you won’t have many of those. Keep your posting schedule regular!

3. Your Blog is generic?

You simply feel that you are better than everyone else, that your content is better your contests are better, yet you have a simply Wordpress themed site. You have done nothing to brand yourself or your site; therefore you do not stand out from the crowd. You are just another no name blogger, and you wonder why you haven’t made any money. No one knows who you are; therefore there is no value for you to get any money from advertisers.

4. You write for search engines

You are trying to hit as many “key” word as you can with in each paragraph, and while you may generate some traffic, your posts will most certainly be abstract and your blog won’t have any real focus, or authority for the specific subject mater, Stop writing for the search engines, write for your readers

5. You give No Link Love

You are simply selfish, and don’t play well with others. You can’t find anything to write about so you search the net, looking for your next target, kind of like a stalker, “here good article, here good article” you call, and when you find it, you simply COPY it and claim it as you own. While it’s ok to gain inspiration for a post from someone else’s post, if you don’t acknowledge that fact and create your own thought from their post, or create your own opinion you are simply stealing content, and no one like a thief.

6. You don’t “do” marketing

There are those who have a marketing budget, and those who do not, either way there are multiple ways to market the blog with or without money. The problem is you are too lazy to “do” anything; you have the “if I build it they will come” mentality. You can have the greatest content in the world, but if no one knows about it, your site will take forever to give you a Return on Investment (ROI)

7. You’re not Committed

Obviously… well, if you can’t omit it it’s probably true. The easy part is talking about it, sure many people see Carl and want to be like him, they want his money, his fame his whatever, but when it comes right down to actually doing what Carl does to make that kind of money and be famous, you aren’t committed enough to do it. You try, or yet you think you try, but when it get even a little bit difficult, or you experience any discomfort, you quit and say “ it’s not going to happen”. Everyone has difficulty, everyone had challenges, but if your are committed to becoming a full time blogger, then you will do it no matter how hard it gets. Commit yourself!

© Make Money Online With A 13-Year Old





An Interesting Developement with Yahoo

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:17 pm

I’m not sure when I first noticed an increase in Yahoo search visitors to this blog - maybe a month ago - but when the guests began arriving I did some investigating and sure enough I found this blog…



Please visit Make Money Online for Beginners for the rest of the post.





Great Halloween Costumes For 2008

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:17 pm

It won’t be long until we get to dress up and take the kids out trick or treating. This was one of my favorite holidays as a kid. Now that I am a parent, I also look forward to dressing up the kids for a night of fun. We usually participate in the Halloween Costume Contest at the school each year too. They usually have some sort of harvest costume where they have activities, a haunted house and more.

Last year, I even dressed up when we took the girls out. I was pregnant and dressed up as a nun. The kids enjoyed me dressing up. There are lots of cool costumes I wouldn’t mind dressing up this year. If you are looking to buy a costume online, be sure to check out InCostume.com. They have a large variety of costumes for adults, teens and kids. They have some classic Costumes as well as some unique ones you will find humor in too!

Enjoy
Stefani





1 Year Button Ad On Website For Moms

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:17 pm

Hey Moms,

I am going to start trying to add more auctions on Ebay for advertising. I try to add auctions for advertising that is not available through the website. This morning I have listed a 1 year button ad on our article section of the website. I have started this auction at only #$2.00. It is only a 3 day auction, so if you have a button to advertise, go get your bid listed.

Here is the link to the auction:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180281456851

Enjoy
Stefani





Getting Wet At Niagara Falls

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:17 pm

The last time I was at Niagara Falls, it was cold and cloudy and that prevented me from taking a boat ride to the base of the falls to experience what it’s like to get really really wet. However, there were no such problems today. The weather was hot and sunny. Although you wouldn’t know that when there’s a gigantic mist of water pouring over you.

The Maid of The Mist has operated at Niagara since 1846, giving tourists a close up look of the falls and a good soaking. The boat ride is one of the most popular things to do at Niagara and now I understand why. It’s a lot of fun and I highly recommend it to anyone who comes to Niagara Falls.

Here’s a video of the boat ride and a few photos of the falls, including a night shot. Niagara Falls is lit up at night with some very colorful lights. There’s also a fireworks show at 10PM. I may post the fireworks video later.

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What To Think About When You Sell Your Blog

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:17 pm

Today I would like to share some advice with you regarding selling a blog. The new owner of JohnCow has reveiled himself to the public, so it looks I’m not sworn to secrecy anymore. The blog was sold at the end of April for an amount equal to 12.7 high-end macbook airs. Not that I would buy that many, I just grabbed one :twisted: Even though it’s great to receive a big chunk of money, there certainly are drawbacks involved in any deal like that. I simply did not foresee some of the things that could go wrong because it was only the second blog I had sold.

Attached Strings

Most of you have probably setup a snazzy IMAP or POP account under your blog domain. During the lifetime of your blog, you have most likely signed up for a bunch of affiliate programs, traffic exchanges etc, and I bet that most have been registered with that same snazzy email address. Sold your blog? Sold your inbox!

I had added several JohnCow related accounts to the sale (e.g Twitter, Feedburner, OIOPublisher, Gmail etc) and transferred these to the new owner upon completion of payment. Unfortunately for me, the new owner quickly found out that with getting the JohnCow hosting account, he also got my emails. Sadly enough I discovered that several of my affiliate accounts, like PepperjamNetwork and Entrecard, which were not included in the sale, had gotten their passwords changed. I was locked out and the new owner took full access to those accounts, and whatever funds and credits were left in them.

It’s like selling your house, giving the new owner a spare key, and when you want to go to pick your stuff up, he has changed the locks. Make sure you create a separate gmail or hotmail account to sign up for stuff like this. If it ever comes to selling your blog, it’ll save you a lot of work and frustration!

Indentity Crisis

As the online persona of John Cow, I had met a lot of new and interesting people. My readers, the people on twitter etc. Once I sold the blog, the new owner wanted to keep the sale a secret, afraid it would backfire on the JohnCow image. I agreed to these terms and now feel this was kinda like selling my soul. He kept the persona alive, and I kept my mouth shut. I looked at how many of my online friends were getting ‘played’ by the ‘impostor’. Obviously this is my own mistake, and I should not have let it happen that way. On the other hand, I’m kinda glad it did happen, because it has clearly separated my ‘real online friends’ (as far as real goes online) and the leeches that were just trying to be friends with an influential blogger.

Come Undone

Be prepared to distance yourself completely from the brand you have carefully built. I’m the kinda guy that likes to call them as I see them, and this reflected in some of my posts, which by some would be labeled as ‘controversial’. By pure coincidence, I found out yesterday that the new owner has been deleting certain posts from the archives, most likely to keep the peace with someone else. I won’t mention any names here, but when I had published this post, the person in question even tried to bribe me with money to remove the post. I might not be the most diplomatic of bloggers, but I do like to keep my integrity. With the new owner applying ‘censorship’ to the content I had published, it just seems somewhat unsatisfying and pointless in hindsight.

Breaking Up

The deal involved the ownership of a dedicated server, which was sponsored by my friends over at tophostingcenter.com. Besides the Cow, I obviously utilized the server for other sites too. Soon after the sale, I went travelling to get some things sorted, and had little to no Internet access. My plan was to get a new server as soon as I was back, to transfer my other sites, leaving the sponsored server in the hands of the new owner. A few weeks later I get a chance to get online, only to find all my websites were down. Quickly getting in touch with the host, it appeared the new owner had been either abusive or unreasonable towards the staff, to a degree where the sponsorship was immediately canceled and the server taken offline. Thank god they still had the backups after that while, it would have cost me weeks to get everything back up again otherwise!

I had to explain several times that I had sold the blog, and that I did not work, or was affiliated with the new owner. Luckily the CEO understood where I was coming from, and we’re on good terms again.

The main reasons for the sale were the fact that I have since moved from Europe to Australia, and that didn’t have enough time to work on the blog. Besides, that bag of money has made moving over here a lot easier :twisted: If you are as passionate about your blog as I was, and yet you are looking to sell, try to take your time to make sure you are 100% happy with the potential buyer. I find that the blog has gone in a different direction. Instead of the using the parody factor, the cheekiness and controversy, it has turned into yet another MMO blog. Initially I was convinced that the new owner would pull it off, seeing the type of cheeky writing they use on DealDotCom, but to my disappointment he chose a different path. I guess everyone has their own expectation of what a blog should be about.

Something else which has let me down, is how I as the former owner am being portrayed in the ‘new and improved’ About Us page.

Over the first few months Bob was able to gain a lot of momentum with John Cow and with a new logo and new template it appeared like everything was going well… but the problem was Bob was not really earning a lot of money online and so how was he able to blog about it?
A perplexing question indeed!

Yes, perplexing enough for them to pay me a big chunk of change. There are a few more of those sort of remarks throughout the new content, I guess it’s his way of ‘payback’, because of a few things mentioned above, I decided to turn my back on the new owner. Technically, I still owe him 4 posts, but after all that’s happened, I doubt these will ever get written.

I hope this post will help you guys to experience a smoother transaction then I had when the time comes for you to sell your blog.

Come look me up if you’ve read enough about making money online today. :twisted:

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Visit To CX Digital Media

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:17 pm

CX Digital is an Canadian based affiliate network with offices in Toronto and San Diego. I met CX Digital at the Boston Affiliate Summit and they told me that if I’m ever in Toronto, I should give them a shout and check out their office.

The CX office is located on Toronto’s famous Yonge Street in a shiny glass tower. There are the normal array of private offices for the executives and a boardroom. However, all the action take places on the affiliate floor, which looks a bit like a stock trading floor.

The work environment is very lay back. The company doesn’t enforce a dress code. I talked to a few of the affiliate managers and Tal Hayek, VP of Affiliate Relations. They’re a great bunch of people and I can see why CX is experiencing over 100% increases in year over year revenues.

Lunch with CX Digital

I went for lunch with Waseem Khan at Moxie’s Classic Grill. After that veggie only meet up, it was nice to chow down on a big juicy blacken NY steak with Cajun spices. I added some dry ribs for an all meat lunch.

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Dot Com Pho Toronto

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:17 pm

Dot Com Pho moved to Toronto for the very first time and it turned out to be one of the best Dot Com Phos to date. We had a good turn out of 10 people making it out to the Vietnam Noodle Star. It was a good thing Sarah decided to make reservations because that place was packed!

Because this is the first Dot Com Pho and the first time we have ever met face to face, the conversation wasn’t anything like the Dot Com Pho back home. The topics were pure blogging and Internet related. We did get in a bit of politics and got to know each other a long the way. The group hopes to continue the Dot Com Pho meet ups after I’m gone.

Joining Sarah and me for Toronto’s first Dot Com Pho were Bart Dabek of About My Planet and BartDabek.com, ZK of Web Traffic ROI, Ahmed Dawn of A Dawn Journal, Francis Chung of Tech Viva, Chris Ye of Customize, Manuel Maniquis of Adobo Republic, Max of Money Bites, Blog Gears and OIO Publisher, and Antonio Leong. It was great to meet you guys. Hopefully, the next time I’m in Toronto, Dot Com Pho will be taking over entire restaurants.

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Your Blog Sucks, Give Up

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:17 pm

You know what really cracks me up in the whole make money online industry? The sheer amount of sleazy marketeers trying to sell their crap to other sleazy marketeers. Silly ebooks and membership sites filled with not-so-secret SEO methods and (you-won’t)-get-rich-quick formulas.

Ever got sucked in to leaving your email address somewhere because of the promise of a free product? I bet you’re regretting it more and more with every sleazy sales-copy-spam-email you get.

“Buy this wonderfull product now for $99 $69 just $39!” “Only available until midnight tonight!” “Don’t miss out, only the first 10 buyers get a 50% discount!”

B a h !

Someone should put a stop to the shit affiliate products. I look back at my time as the Cow blogger sometimes and think to myself; “Was it really worth it?”. Sure, I made a nice bit of cash, sold the blog when my offline life needed more attention, which came around the same time that I got seriously bored with it. But every now and then I have a sour taste in my mouth, thinking of the useless garbage I was ‘up-selling’ to my readers.

The thing with MMO is that you get absorbed in the whole scene. All you really care about is making money for yourself. Doesn’t matter how. Some bloggers say they blog about MMO to teach us, because they care. Bullshit! All they care about is cashing in at the end of the day, or do some serious networking to increase their future income.

Currently I run other sites, which also endorse certain affiliate products. Sure, call me a hypocrite, but the big difference for me is that I do not actively try to up-sell to my visitors. They come looking for my sites and find related affiliate products. I don’t have to write post after post about how great product xyz is. I don’t have to carefully pick my words, making sure that I don’t tick off the advertisers too much, I can just speak my mind. I can just enjoy what I’m doing, and make a nice chunk of change while doing it.

To all you newbie MMO marketers out there -don’t start yet another MMO/affiliate blog, please! There are enough resources as it is. Subscribe to the big boys, like Chow, Shoe and Darren. Learn from them and pick a niche you actually know something about. They’ve been there and done that. Making money off the newbies by sharing their knowledge works for them. If you’re a newbie with no knowledge, what do you expect to sell? Stick to what you know.

I for one like to talk shit, and that’s exactly what I have been doing since I got out of the MMO niche.

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John Chow Vs. Shoemoney - The Battle Continues

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:17 pm

The good folks at Logo Samurai has put out a demo of their animation skills with a flash movie featuring myself and Shoemoney in an ultimate battle to the death. I had a good laugh watching the movie and I think you will to.

Not only did Logo Samuari showed off their animation and design skills, they also show they know how to do linkbait as well. I’m sure Shoe will be posting this video once he sees it. Find out who won the battle by playing the video.

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Toronto Readers Meet Up

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:17 pm

I had a great meet up with some of my Toronto readers tonight. We got a nice big turn out of over 20 people and pretty much took over the entire patio of the Live restaurant. It was great to meet so many readers and also great to meet up with Yaro from Entrepreneurs Journey again. Yaro and I did a combined meet up when he was in Vancouver so it made sense to do another since I’m in Toronto.

The Live restaurant that Yaro recommended serves nothing but fruits and and veggies - they don’t seem to know what meat is. They even claim that protein comes from beans and soy. Ya, right! Live is an interesting place and the food is quite good. I wouldn’t eat it everyday but as an occasional “let’s try something really stupid” thing, you can’t go wrong.

Thanks to all the readers who made the Toronto meet up. I had a great time putting names to faces.

Dot Com Pho Toronto This Saturday

If you missed this meet up, you have another chance this Saturday, August 23. I will be holding Dot Com Pho Toronto at Vietnam Noodle Star (Unit 2 - 4188 Finch Ave. East, Scarborough, ON). The fun begins at 12:30PM. Please RSVP here if you can make it. And if you have something I can use for the Gadget of The Week, please bring it.

This Post Was Brought To You By

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Building Review Sites with Star Ratings

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:17 pm

While not everyone feels comfortable pumping out a 700 word review of a product, most people feel inclined to rate just about everything. They’ll hop onto Facebook and rate movies using one of the applications. They’ll go to Amazon and have their say with a product that they just purchased. You ever wonder if you can offer the same functionality on a website of your own?

As it turns out, all you need to convert your WordPress blog into a fully functional review site is the appropriately named WP Review Site WordPress plug-in. To make matters slightly more ironic, this is my review of the WP Review Site plug-in. Maybe I should have activated it for this post only?

The Strength of User Generated Content

For the purposes of making money online, the best kinds of websites are those that are able to run themselves. That’s partly why there are so many forums on the ‘net. The owners of those forums don’t really have to do anything, other than hire a couple of moderators and ensure that the site stays up and running.

The same can be said about review sites that are powered by the WP Review Site plug-in. You’ll need to generate some traffic at first, but the idea is that you will soon able to put together the briefest of posts and have the comments come flooding in. Aside from the comments themselves, each user is able to give a “star” rating on a scale of one to five.

In addition to the overall rating, you can also define additional categories for your site visitors to use. If your site reviews computer hardware, for instance, you can set up ratings for performance, build quality, and price/value. These star ratings can either be displayed horizontally or vertically. For more information, check out the features page.

A Look at the Options

Converting your regular WordPress blog into a fully functional review site is as easy as installing a plug-in. When you buy this product, you will be provided with a zip file. Unzip that, find the plug-in folder, and upload as normal. Activate the plug-in in WordPress and then you’ll find the configuration under the Options tab.

There are three sections to the options area:

In the first section, you can add and remove rating categories. If you find that there is demand for an additional category, like “support” or “appearance”, you can add those here.

The second section is for the automatic embedding of the star ratings in your posts, pages, and comments. You can shoose to use either tables or lists for the ratings display. Unfortunately, the plug-in does not allow you to automatically choose whether the ratings only show up in posts and not pages, for example. To do that, you need to edit your theme files.

The final section is for adjusting the CSS of the ratings widgets. You’ll want them to blend in with your site, after all.

Weighted Average Listing

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but it’s much more valuable to see a product in action. Award Winning Hosts is a website that was designed and run by the same people that created the WP Review Site plug-in. The site, as you can imagine, is partly powered by that plug-in.

Along with the individual reviews (and comments) for each of the web hosting companies, you’ll also notice that there is a list of all the web hosts along the right side. This list is not chronological or alphabetical. Instead, the list is based on the user ratings. Better still, this WordPress plug-in uses a weighted average to prevent a single five-star rating from ousting 40 four-star ratings.

Great for Affiliate Links

As you can imagine, WP Review Site was designed with affiliate marketing in mind. For each and every product (or service) reviewed on one of these websites, you can easily integrate some affiliate links. This way, any site visitor that comes to your site for information will get redirected to the vendor via your affiliate link. It’s important to get that “last cookie”, so to speak.

In case you’re wondering, the rating system becomes completely integrated with the comment system on your blog. This means that the ratings can still be moderated, marked as spam, and so on.

Pricing and Bonuses

For all intents and purposes, WP Review Site looks like it could be a valuable addition to any review or shopping site. Allowing users to have their say through star ratings is very appealing. That said, I did find that it was lacking in one major area: You still need to have some basic PHP and CSS knowledge to fully integrate this plug-in. If it’s supposed to be easy (and newbie-friendly), this shouldn’t be the case. You should be able to adjust these basic settings through the control panel.

WP Review Site is currently priced at $97. That includes the plug-in, a “free” review-minded WordPress theme, and some affiliate marketing features.

CLICK HERE TO BUY WP REVIEW SITE

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Mom! What Were You Thinking?

Monday 25 August 2008 @ 8:17 pm

Being in Toronto and hanging out with family has made this trip really great. The one thing that it has reminded me of was all the fun times my family and I have gone through ever since I was a little boy. My relatives have always wondered what I do for a living and some times it was hard for them to understand. Until now!

One of my relatives told me of a contest they’ve entered to blackmail one of their kids in the future (see, evilness runs rampant in my family). Actually, this contest is just a regular photo upload contest that is hosted by Family.com. It’s called "Mom! What were you thinking" and they’re basically trying to see which mom had the nerve to dress up their kids in the worst possible fashions! Normally, I wouldn’t enter these kind of contests but I couldn’t pass up the prizes up for grabs.

  • Macbook Pro
  • 16GB iPod Touch
  • Speaker with built in Dock
  • Printer/Scanner
  • Laptop Case

To spice this contest up a little bit, I want to challenge all bloggers to post their own messed up childhood pictures. I tried asking my mom for any pictures of myself as a younger boy so I can be a good sport and play along, but "unfortunately" my mom said she didn’t have any pictures that I could use. So, I’m putting up Greg Morgan’s baby picture to show you what you can use to participate.

The Rules Are Simple

Just post your messed up childhood picture on your blog or a messed up picture of your own kid. Then write a little blurb about what the hell your mom was thinking or what you were thinking.

Since Family.com forgot to add a very important item to their prize package - I will be giving away a new Flip Mino and 20" Monitor to the best/worst/funniest post I notice in my Google Alert.

The winner will be announced through an email blast to my newsletter subscribers, so if you want to know who wins this thing in September, you’ll want to subscribe to my newsletter. Sign up here:

By the way, if I find any pictures from bloggers that are just too great to pass up, I’ll do a recap post to highlight some of these great bloggers, while I keep looking for my own messed up picture!





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