Sorry For the Lack of Posting

Posted on February 27th, 2008 as Site News

Slacking
I am sorry about my lack of posting the last few days. It has been very busy at work. At work our payroll server has been acting up and has kept me busy. I am installing a new server today so work should not be so hectic and make it easier to focus more on my blog.

I have been toying with some ppc campaigns with offers from Rocket Profit with some success but need to work on them as well. I will give some updates about that too in the next few days. Also as another side project I am trying to launch a new blog. It will be about my weight loss and how I am doing it. So keep coming back and checking for updates.

Popularity: 100% [?]

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How My Goals are Progressing

Posted on February 15th, 2008 as Site News, Uncategorized

Planning goals
Today marks the half way point for the month. I wanted to share how I am doing on hitting my goals for this month. You should look at you goals regularly and check how you are doing and what you need to do to hit your goals. I check my traffic and subscribers daily but it is good to create a list and know where I need to focus more. In my previous post I set my goals as:

  • Finish my blog design
  • Get a better logo designed
  • 2500 Visitors
  • Write 15 posts
  • Get 25 subscribers
  • Comment on 3 new blogs a week Read the rest of this entry »

    Popularity: 22% [?]

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Win 500 Entrecard Credits - Just Be The Top Commenter For the Month

Posted on February 13th, 2008 as Contests, Site News

Entrecard Logo

Last month I gave away $10 to the top commenter last month. This month I am going to change it up. I am offering 500 Entrecard credits to the top commenter for the month of February. This will become a regular contest for the top commenter each month, the only thing that will change will be the prize. So keep checking out my site and give me some feedback.My only catch is no spam comments like “nice article” or “good post” I am looking for actual input.

Popularity: 14% [?]

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Great Way to Start the Week

Posted on February 11th, 2008 as Site News

The Winning HandI was doing my normal Monday routine; sitting at work drinking an energy drink and catching up with my rss reader. I normally don’t read my rss feeds on the weekend and try to do my best to semi unplug to clear my head on the weekends. Also I am 23 and single so I like to go out and have some fun on the weekends.As I was going through my reader I was getting caught up and got to the feed for Internet Marketing Blog with Josh Spaulding. I just recently subscribed to his feed, I found it mentioned on another blog and liked it. He had a contest Easy Blog Contest - $350, Books and Free Coaching. I really liked his idea for the contest to enter you had to answer 3 questions (and the usual subscribe to his feed): Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9% [?]

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Blog Redesign - Do I like Look like a Pro Yet?

Posted on February 7th, 2008 as Site News

After running my top commenter contest last month I realized how many people though my blog was bare or needed work. Out of my comments I would say 50% where about the design of my blog. I knew the design was not what I wanted but I realized I needed to do something new quick.

I wanted to do some big changes and when I ran a check to see if it was w3 valid it had a lot of errors. After talking to multiple people they told me the changes I wanted to make to my old blog I would be pretty much have to redo the whole blog including starting from scratch with the coding because it would be easier, cheaper, and quicker. After looking at cost and the headaches of modifying my old theme it just made more sense to start from scratch. So after some thinking and looking at lots of other blogs I came up with this. I know it’s a huge layout change but I think it looks good and has more of a web 2.0 feel. I admit I am a sucker for the whole web 2.0ish look.

Some new features of my blog are threaded comments, edit your comment after posting, separate trackbacks from comments, and the use of gravatars. Also they integrated the plug ins into the code so it makes it easier to manage for me.

Please excuse some of the issues though until I get them ironed out. I know the big one is no home button, he he I did not notice that on my test blog and once I went live it was a lot of work to move to the old theme. Also there are a few small details like the footer needs a little work and the sidebar needs a few minor changes. I will have them fixed asap I have already emailed my coder and he is working on fixing them.

I have learned a good lesson from this though. Thoroughly test a theme on a test blog before using it on your actual live blog. Hopefully the changes should be done by this weekend and I will start a fresh next week without design headaches. It has been a lot of work the last few weeks trying to get the design the way I wanted it but I know a design is important and it needed to be done.

I would like to hear what you think about my design. So let me know if it rocks or if it sucks horribly and I need to change it back.

Update: My coder contacted me with some of the changes but there where still some issues. Now the top commenter plug in is broke, related posts plug in is not installed, and threaded comments plug in is not working. It is a lot of headaches but I know when it’s done it will be awesome.

Update #2:  My coder contacted me and most of the issues have been fixed. Now there is a home button (I know it was a big one), threaded comments now works, related posts and top commenter plug ins are working. I think the only thing that is left is the related posts plug in each post. So I should be done soon.

Popularity: 10% [?]

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A Week with Entrecard

Posted on February 5th, 2008 as Site News, Social Networking

A little over a week ago I decided to finally join the Entrecard wave and put a widget on my site. I have been watching my traffic and wanted to share my experiences so far. I added the code to my website the 21st of January. I started with a basic design since I am still working on a logo for my site and have not advertised on any site yet. So far I have had 33 visits that accounts for 2.2% percentage of my traffic. Now here comes the kicker quality of traffic. Right now for traffic my Bounce Rate is 87.88% and the average time on my site is 30 seconds. My first impressions of Entrecard are not too high. I have gotten some traffic but it seems to be low quality. I am going to keep trying it but if the traffic stays like this I might take it off my site. I hope once I start advertising more now that I have built up some credits I will get some better quality traffic.

Entrecard traffic

If you use Entrecard I would like to hear your opinions. Also make sure to check me out at Entrecard and drop your card.

Popularity: 15% [?]

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