The first 10 are essentials, and I will write a little seller’s pitch for each of them. The rest are optional ones that I enjoy. I will categorize them so that you can learn what they’re about. MMO stands for Make Money Online, HTB stands for How to Blog or Blogging Tips, and AIM stands for Affiliate or Internet Marketing.

Bonus! I really enjoy reading Site Sketch 101 and am a good friend with that blog’s author, Nicholas Cardot. Thanks Derek Jensen for reminding me to add him to this list!

1. ProBlogger (HTB)
Excellent Blogging advice given everyday. Guest posts very regularly so you can get the best posts from multiple writers. He’s the top blogger for a reason.

2. Doshdosh (HTB)
Doesn’t post very much anymore but his site reached incredible success because of his great content. If he’d kept posting he’d be up there with Problogger, but his lack of posting has hurt him. There’s a gold mine in the archives though.

3. Thoushallblog (HTB)
Doesn’t post as often as I’d like, but he has weekly posts that are too good to miss. Excellent content and a great attitude, you can always count on Yan to be writing posts helpful for you.

4. DailyBlogTips (HTB)
The name says it all, daily blog tips that you won’t want to miss. He’s posts every day, so you can get great information very quickly.

5. ABloggerBlog (HTB)

This may be my favorite site of all. Unfortunately he only posts weekly if that, but his lessons are incredibly valuable. It’s like one massive ebook. Just start reading through his archives starting at lesson 1 and you’ll have learned everything you need to know, to start blogging successfully.

6. LinkersBlog (HTB)
This site gives great content on a consistent basis. Danny Cooper was incredible, but i’m still unconvinced about it’s new owner Donny. If nothing else there’s value in the archives hopefully Donny can continue to give us good information though.

7. How to Make my Blog (HTB)
This is by favorite new site. I just found it from a guest post by problogger but he provides great information. He posts every day or two days, and his posts are a breath of fresh air in this congested niche.

8. RajaieTalks (MMO)
Excellent blog by another teenage blogger. He keep you updated on all the happenings in the MMO blogging world. I really appreciate his fresh approach on things.

9. TheNetFool (AIM)
Here’s where I get my internet marketing and affiliate marketing help. Lots of great information on here, and unlike everybody else, he’s speeding up his amount of posts following christmas break, while everybody else is still recovering.

10. TheUniversityKid (AIM)
This site may lose it’s value because Jason has stopped writing for a while. But he’s written great articles in the past, and the guest posters should be pretty good if he’s accepted them.

11. IronBlogger (HTB)

12. DatMoney (AIM)

13. WebTrafficRoi (HTB)

14. Balkhis (HTB)

15. Johncow (MMO)

16. FranklinBishop (HTB)

17. MrJavo (AIM)

18. SearchForBlogging (HTB)

19. TeenProBlogger (HTB)

20. BradBlogging (HTB)

21. ShankerBakshi (HTB)

22. Problogineer (HTB)

23. WinningtheWeb (HTB)

24. Bloggingtips (HTB)

25. CopyBlogger (HTB)

26. Lorelle.Wordpress (HTB)

27. Shoemoney (AIM)

28. Preblogger (HTB)

29. Collinlahay (AIM)

30. DotcomDud (HTB)

31. OneMansGoal (MMO)

32. EnkayBlogging (HTB)

33. ImwithJoe (AIM)

34. ZacJohnson (AIM)

35. MoneyBites (HTB)

36. Tyler Cruz (AIM)

37. JimKukral (AIM)

38. Blogsessive (HTB)

39. BloggerUnleashed (HTB)

40. StandoutBlogger (HTB)

41. CarolineMiddleBrook (MMO)

42. Affiliate Confessions (AIM)

43. PeiProfit (MMO)

44. Ian Fernando (AIM)

45. GaryConn (MMO)

46. BlueVerse (MMO)

47. Retireat21 (MMO)

48. BlogAboutYourBlog (HTB)

49. Entrepreneurs-Journey (AIM)

50. Masters of SEO (HTB)

Now maybe you’re are wondering why stop at 50? There are hundreds more, why not list more great sites? Because there aren’t any more great sites. Even a few of these should be taken out because they merely copy the ideas of other bloggers and write posts about it. These are the top 50 MMO AIM and HTB bloggers on the internet in my opinion, this isn’t a list of All of those types of bloggers. These ones post original content in my opinion, in a congested crowded niche. They are all very useful to any type of blogger. I would recommend subscribing to all the HTB sites, because they can help you no matter what your blog is about. Making money and affiliates, are only for some. I hope this list will be useful for you, and please comment below if you think I missed any. Don’t be offended if I didn’t list you, most likely that’s because I haven’t heard of you. List your link below and I’ll check it out, and possibly add you.

This is was a paid review by Don Gilbert of mastersofseo. If you are interested in a paid review, check out my advertise page for more information. As you can see I cover all the aspects of your site. This is a great chance for you to get constructive criticism about your site.

Today I’m presenting you with retireat21.com which is administered by Michael Dunlop

Blog Template

The blog has a nice color scheme, with the green, grey and white coming together nicely. But the blog looks very cluttered, he has every possible feature I’ve seen on a blog. He’s got ads, blog posts, featured posts, recent posts, recommended sites, favorite sites, forum activity, about page, recent interviews, an ebook, the list goes on and on. The site looks very cluttered and needs a severe spring clean up job. There are several empty white spaces at the bottom of the page for some reason, which make it look like he wasn’t finished. The header and footer, are crammed with pages, and thus looks unprofessional. Very congested site appearance, with gives you a bad first impression.

Final Grade
4/10

Jonathan’s Suggestions:
Prioritize! Figure out which of your widgets are most important, and get rid of the rest, because right now it looks like you’re trying to cram too much information, into too small a space. This would be my opinion, but ditch the Michael’s favorite sites, or make it smaller and in the footer. Get ride of a lot of the pages. Make the about box on the sidebar, into a page. I don’t know how much money the shop is making, if it’s a lot then maybe it’s worth it. But I would recommend making that into a page at the top, or getting rid of it. A section called Retire@21 products would be a great way to advertise all of the things you’re selling. You could put your e-book and t-shirt links in this. I would recommend putting it where the about page is now, you’d probably sell more, and it would look more organized. Ditch the news post, and stop posting them as the featured posts. I would recommend either doing your featured interviews at the bottom, or just make it your most recent blog posts. I think if you made larger email/RSS buttons, you could improve your subscriber results. Maybe you could remove the search box, and then stretch the buttons to fill that space.

Navigation Through Site

All the pages are clearly in the middle of the header, but there are so many of them it almost makes it difficult. There are several unnecessary pages like news, creating websites, and then directory, hasn’t even been used for anything yet. It just has several test posts. Right now the site has recent posts/interviews options, so you can really take advantage of this. He seems to really be stressing new visitors seeing past posts.

Jonathan’s Suggestions:
I think instead of all the different widgets showing past posts, and nice archives system could do the job. You could set up a nice one on the homepage, and that would accomplish everything you are trying to do. Just make sections like Featured posts, Must Reads…

Final Grade
6/10

Extra Pages

There are Lots of extra pages. In total there are 37 page links, that is the most I’ve ever seen, and probably will ever see. Does that mean it’s bad? Not necessarily because each of them has great, informative content, but I think they could be compiled somewhat.

Final Grade 5/10

Jonathan’s Suggestions:
Many of these pages are very small, and have a couple posts on them, then seemed to have been forgotten about. Ones like website ideas, and press releases, should be removed. There are many others on there can aren’t necessary, and could be compiled into fewer ones. Again a nice archives system could help eliminate part of this problem.

Content Quality

This is the clear selling point of the blog. It is one of the top blogs on the internet in this respect. It has some incredible interviews of famous internet entrepreneurs like Yaro Starak, Darren Rowse, Aaron Wall, and tons of others. He has lots of great lists, ranking top young moneymakers, and top bloggers. These lists have been really popular. He also runs a full-time blog, and forum, that both have great content on them. This has, and always will be the selling point of this site.

Final Grade
9/10

Jonathan’s Suggestions:
There isn’t much to comment on as far as content wise. What you do, you do great. However, my only thought would be, is more How to articles. Maybe an article on the affiliate marketing, or site flipping or something. I get all fired up after reading all these success stories, to get out their and start making money, so some tutorials would be a great help to bloggers trying to take it to the next level.

Ads

There are five different sets of ads on his homepage, but you would probably never of known that if I hadn’t told you. It has two affiliate marketing buttons, for Blogging to the Bank. One google adsense ad, and a set of text links and 125×125 ads.

Final Grade
7/10

Jonathan’s Suggestions:
They really aren’t much of a problem, but I just wonder if they are worth it. It doesn’t seem like the google adsense ad would make enough money to make it worth it, maybe it does but it just seems out of place, especially with it’s irrelevant ads. Google ads don’t seem to do a good job of having relevant links typically, so I would consider switching if not taking it down. There are two affiliate marketing boxes which are the exact same. They are right next to each other, and so it seems rather pointless to have both. I would recommend removing one. The text link and 125×125 ads are fine, they are too big, and I’m sure are good money makers. It’s rare to see all the text links filled up so I guess he’s making good money from them.

Site Stats

This site boasts an impressive 70K Alexa Ranking, with a PR of 3, which is ok for a blog. It only has a Technorati ranking of 118K but these links are purely through direct links. He does almost no commenting, and so unlike most blogs that have manipulated their way to a high ranking to lots of commenting, these are all purely from blogs that liked his content. So in reality it has a much better ranking then you might think.

Final Grade
8/10

Jonathan’s Suggestions:
Both of these ranking systems are very skewed and don’t reflect the true stats. It is averaging a large amount of visitors, and the Alexa ranking is very impressive. According to siteanalytics it got about 40K hits last month.

Drum-roll Question

Is this site worth visiting right now, Yes or No?

Yes. Despite poor navigation, and a crowded interface, the content is too great to pass up. A poor homepage is not enough to doom a site. These interviews have priceless information, and should be read by all bloggers. Any future entrepreneurs, or people seeking to make money online should definitely stop by. Especially for the new wave of teenage bloggers, and young entrepreneurs, these articles will be really useful to them.

Please consider subscribing to retireat21 by clicking here.

Final Constructive Criticisms

I asked several bloggers, to give me their first impressions of retireat21.com. So these are the opinions of Daniel Scocco and Normal Joe.

Objective Opinions

Daniel Scocco from dailyblogtips.com

“I came across RetireAt21.com a while ago, and the name of the site intrigued me to I decided to check it out. The information I found was interesting, particularly the series of interviews that the author conducted with young entrepreneurs. The design is pretty clean as well.”

Normal Joe from imwithjoe.com

I like the site, I used to visit it frequently when I first started reading various blogs. I haven’t been over there in a while but I think it’s a
great site and instills hope in people by seeing folks that are so young have success just from their creative ideas. I think the theme layout makes it easy to consume the information without forcing you to focus on one particular story. They have features, but other stories strategically placed on the front page so everyone can chose which they want to read. It’s efficient and effective.

This is was a paid review by Don Gilbert of mastersofseo. If you are interested in a paid review, check out my advertise page for more information. As you can see I cover all the aspects of your site. This is a great chance for you to get constructive criticism about your site.

Please comment below, if you have constructive criticisms to add. I’m sure Michael would like to hear your opinion as well.

Today I’m presenting to you edubook.com which is administered by Peter Chang.

In the words of Peter, edubook.com, is a collaborative article marketing blog which allows people to publish their hand written articles in order to promote their authorship online. The site allows any free-lance writers to publish articles on subjects ranging all the way from Education, to Arts, to Business, Home Improvement, Sports, and many others. The site encourages you to join them, to see the benefits of article marketing.

Blog Theme

The Blog theme of edubook is very impressive in my mind. The orange, black, and white color scheme, flows together very nicely. The site looks very professional, with the articles nicely placed in the center of the blog, and large titles explaining their topic. The site doesn’t look very cluttered at all, and has nicely placed RSS and email subscribe options, in the top right corner. I am very impressed with the site, especially considering how most sites and blogs look very cluttered, as people try to cram lots of excessive widgets onto the pages. The site almost looks too bare, but as far as websites go that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Final Grade

8/10

Jonathan’s Suggestions

Though the site looks very professional, I’d love to see some type of graphic in the header. Though just the words “EduBook” is a good header, you have lots of free space to the right of it. I’d love to see a picture of something related to the site, to make the site a little less bare.

Navigation Through Site

The site has a very large archives system set up on the left sidebar. Though some people could find this annoying, considering the purpose of this site is to advertise articles, I think this is a great way to keep the old posts relevant, and thus is justified. However, I do not think a blog would be able to get away with something that large. The different topics have nice, click-able scroll downs lists, which are great because you don’t need to go to any new page to see the various sub-categories. The site also features a useful little search box in the top left corner, that allows you to find specific articles. The site loads very fast, because there is no excessive flash options on it. All of the sub-pages load very quickly as well, which makes it nice to browse through.

Final Grade

7/10

Jonathan’s Suggestions:

N/A

Extra Pages

The site has three pages on it’s header, Home, Join Us, and Contact. Again it seems almost too bare, it includes only the basics. The contact page is simple and professional, it does it’s job. The Join Us page is very inviting, and encourages you to join their team. Nothing much to say here, just the very minimum, essential pages.

Final Grade

6/10

Jonathan’s Suggestions:

A Top or Recommended posts page needs to be added. If this site is focused on articles, and they’re trying to get new writers to join their group, showing some example work would be a great addition. We need some sample articles, to get us to want to read more, right now it’s just the most recent posts, which more often then not are related to what I like.

Quality of Content

According to websitegrader the site has a reading level of highschool, which is a good level, because elementry isn’t good, but you don’t want college level. Blog posts are supposed to be easy to read, and “highschool level” is a good middle ground, for a site devoted to articles. The posts average about 500 words each, which though that is a bit small, if they can adequately cover the topic then that is fine. The articles are good at not beating around the bush, and cover the topics nicely. You can tell they use grammar, and spelling check, and so these make the articles flow very well. The articles were not fascinating to me, because they aren’t related to my niche, but they are informative and easy to read.

Final Grade
6/10

Jonathan’s Suggestions:
I would like to see some list articles, instead of always just block print. Bloggers love lists, and they are much easier to read, then just paragraphs all the time. I’d love to see you switch it up every now and then.

The Use of Ads

This is the disaster of the site. This is a rare, seemingly obvious mistake by Edu Book. The homepage isn’t that awful, there’s only one adsense ad on the right sidebar. But this ad is incredibly distracting because it is Green and White! It completely contrasts the colors of the site, and needs to be removed immediately. If you click on a post it only gets worse. Now the posts are surrounded by ads, and the left and bottom bars are replaced by totally irrelevant ads. Relevant ads are bad enough, but these have to do with losing weight, and vacation deals.

Final Grade
2/10

Jonathan’s Suggestions:
Fortunately ads are something that can be easily fixed. It’s better to have a problem with this, then with content or theme issues. My suggestions would be to first change the ad on the home page to text only. Right now it’s image and text, and I tried those ads before. The only image ads are “SEO Malpractice Apogee,” which nobody will click on, and the colors are very disturbing, with almost all blog themes. If you Have to keep the ads for some reason, then I would suggest limiting it to one ad. Find which ad is giving you the best results and keep that one, and discard the rest. You aren’t getting enough traffic to make it worth it, and right now you just look desperate, and unprofessional.

Use of Widgets

What widgets, you’re probably asking? Edubook has a nice subscribe button, though it could be bigger, with the standard option for email as well. The Technorati authority link, and the add to blog favorites link, seem unnecessary and a waste of space. The impressive technorati ranking makes you expect more then what it gives, leaving you slightly disappointed with the result. The ads we already discussed… The links to Author Pages are good. Again they are a bit large, but for a guest blog, that is needed to keep all parties happy. The site is very bare of good widgets.

Final Grade
5/10

Jonathan’s Suggestions
I would recommend ditching the technorati links, and the ad. Some of the author’s have little descriptions under them, but not all of them, so get rid of these because it makes it unneat. Right now the site is seriously struggling from a dearth of comments. The site looks very weak with almost every post saying zero comments. I would recommend, adding a top commentator list, to encourage blog commenting. I would also recommend ditching the copyscape warning, if people are going to copy your work, a warning isn’t going to stop them. I would suggest adding a links to the PR of the site. A PR of 4 is very impressive, and helps give credibility to the site’s articles. I would also recommend taking off the amount of subscribers, until it’s a more flattering number. I would also recommend adding a Recommended posts, where you can showcase the top articles of the site.

Site Stats

Right now edubook has a respectable Alexa ranking of 233K and a Technorati of 51K. These are especially good numbers when you consider the site has only been around for shortly over a month. The site has a PR of 4 already, and it looks like these numbers will continue to grow. It has 92 subscribers, which is a great number for a month. If the site has this impressive stats already, I wouldn’t be surprised to see these numbers continue to grow over time.

Final Grade
8/10

Jonathan’s Suggestions:

Honestly I think these stats are pretty flattering. I wasn’t incredibly impressed with the content, and so to have these good stats after such a short time is phenomenal. The stats I think are largely due to the wide range of topics covered, and the incredible rate of which new posts are added.

Drum-roll Questions

Is this site worth visiting right now, Yes or No?

Sadly, right now I have to say No. The key reason for that, is because right now, edubook has no section of articles having do do with blogging. Considering mastersofseo.com is a blogging tips site, I’m not going to recommend a site that has nothing to do with blogging tips. However, with that said, if you want information on practically anything else, there’s a good chance it’ll have an article on it. But right now, it’s not related enough to the niche I post in, to make it worth the read.

Final Constructive Criticisms

I asked several bloggers, to give me their first impressions of edubook.com These are the opinions of Max Miroff from Blogbadly.com, and the team over at BloggingwithSuccess.net Here are their opinions.

Alright, here’s what I think:

The design is very clean and professional – orange, black, and white are solid colors that go well together. The posts seem scattered about a variety of topics which isn’t such a good thing if you want to build a consistent readership interested in one topic, but there are 127 subscribers so perhaps that’s working for them. I don’t like the fact that some of the top rated authors have small bios next to their names while others don’t – it looks out of place. Either require a short entry or don’t add anything. The “Viewed By” on each post should be removed – it’s useless and the numbers are fairly unflattering to the sites traffic (viewed by twenty readers, for example).

-Max Miroff, Blog Badly – Blogging Tips and Tricks.

Here are my first impressions:

The blog has got too much categories which may be a good or bad thing. Because of so much randomness, people will have to think twice before subscribing. Participation of readers seems to be low as last 3-4 articles have no comments. However, blog has good chances of success and you can get traffic if your article is nice enough. You get your profile page at the blog, so it will be useful in publicizing your blog. Also, clean homepage means user can focus on your content and follow to your blog.

-A Team blog dedicated to helping new blogs succeed – Blogging With Success

I want to make a point of reiterating one point that Max said, the number showing the amount of post views, is incredibly unflattering. Make that your first change. Also a lot of the inner posts, don’t have meta keywords, and meta descriptions. I would recommend adding the SEO All in One wordpress plugin. My final thoughts would be, this site is quickly growing, and with it’s good SEO, I can see it getting a lot of success. Right now it’s not worth a subscribe to me, but in a few weeks/months, this site could very easily become a site to be reckoned with.

This is was a paid review by Don Gilbert of mastersofseo. If you are interested in a paid review, check out my advertise page for more information. As you can see I cover all the aspects of your site. This is a great chance for you to get constructive criticism about your site.

Please comment below, if you have constructive criticisms to add. I’m sure Peter would like to hear your opinion as well.

I have been studying different blog reviews on other sites, seeing what works, and what doesn’t. And mainly, what people like, and what people don’t like. I’ve been reading a lot about what all the different parties want to see in a review, including the reader, the writer, and the one being reviewed, so hopefully I’ve covered everything. Here is the format I will use.

At the beginning of every blog review, I will post a screenshot of the blog, with the author’s name, and a link to his site using the keyword of their choice. I will use at least two links to the site in every review, one at the beginning and one at the end, with the anchor text of their choice, following the Yes or No answer.

The different sections I will include are, Blog Template/Theme, Navigation through Site, Any pages they have such as Contact/About/Advertise… The Quality of the Content, Their Use of Ads, I will also try to include testimonials from other bloggers who know the site, Or have an objective opinions about it, that way you won’t always just be receiving my opinion but others as well. Finally I will talk about their current success by sharing their stats, and talk about Their use of Widgets.

I will wrap up with any practical suggestions I can come up with. And a final judgment on whether the site’s stats really reflect the site’s worth or not. Then finally the drum roll question, is this site worth visiting, Yes or No. I will give a one word answer, and then explain it as much as I can. Hopefully I will never have to say No, but it will happen. If I settle with a Yes, then I will also include a link to subscribe to their RSS feed. And links to three of their top posts, picked by the person who asked for the review.

Because the purpose of my reviewing your site, is to help you develop it, I will be giving a large discount for return reviewers. It will have to be at least a month later, but the purpose would be for followup. Hopefully, you will have fixed some of the problems that I pointed out in the first review, and thus you can have a chance to get a better rating.

My wish would be that this could follow somewhat of the same format as the Reader Blog Critique, on Blogging Tips, so that commentators would give constructive reviews as well. Any comments that I think are constructive, I will add in the post, with a link from the person.

If there’s anything that you think I should add to this format, please comment, and I will consider adding it to my list.

If you look in the sidebar I’ve added an advertise page. Right now it only includes the option of getting blog reviews, but starting this January I will be offering private ads. Check out the page now, if you’re interested in saving a spot in the first batch of ad sales.

As the second post in my series on blog contests, I am sharing with you a contest over at mrjavo.com, you should already know the format of how this works, if not you can read the first one here. Just a note, this contest ends Nov 16th. Which I realize is only in four days. But this contest is similar to the linkers blog one in that, you can easily give yourself a chance of winning, without too much trouble, within the next couple days.  

Here is the link to the contest, Mr. Javo 2.0

Prizes

1st Place

• $200 filled into an advertiser account on Bidvertiser – Value $200
• A custom blog design courtesy of Canadian Web Design – Value $195
• One hour consultation with Mattaw of MoneyBites – Value $50
• One copy of OIOpublisher – Value $47
• One copy of the Traffic Rush Course, courtesy of Caroline MiddleBrook – Value $47
• One copy of the SEO eBook Don’t Get Banned by The Search Engines – Value $40 NEW!
• One year VIP membership on CreateBanner.com, courtesy of Xavier Media – Value $35
• 50,000 BlogUpp! impressions, courtesy of BlogUpp! – Value $30 NEW!
• One copy of the eBook Work Smart, Get Rich!, courtesy of The Net Fool – Value $15

2nd Place

• No Compromise Logo Design Package, courtesy of Logo Design Team – Value $229 NEW!
• A professional audio Intro / Outro for your Podcast or an Audio Introduction for your Blog by Mary-Lynn at Bigg Studio – Value $150
• A copy of the UBD Citrus Theme, by UniqueBlogDesigns – Value $79
• One hour consultation with Benjamin of Big Ben Patton’s Place – Value $50 NEW!
• One copy of OIOpublisher – Value $47
• One copy of the Traffic Rush Course, courtesy of Caroline MiddleBrook – Value $47
• One year VIP membership on CreateBanner.com, courtesy of Xavier Media – Value $35
• 30,000 BlogUpp! impressions, courtesy of BlogUpp! – Value $17 NEW!
• One copy of the eBook Work Smart, Get Rich!, courtesy of The Net Fool – Value $15

3rd Place

• One WordPress theme from PremiumThemesNow.com, courtesy of Daniel Scocco – Value $50
• One hour consultation with Benjamin of Big Ben Patton’s Place – Value $50 NEW!
• One copy of OIOpublisher – Value $47
• One copy of the Traffic Rush Course, courtesy of Caroline MiddleBrook – Value $47
• One copy of the Instant Blog Traffic eBook, courtesy of Ben Pei – Value $47 NEW!
• One year VIP membership on CreateBanner.com, courtesy of Xavier Media – Value $35
• One month of 468×60px advertising on Big Ben Patton’s Place – Value $20 NEW!
• One copy of the eBook Work Smart, Get Rich!, courtesy of The Net Fool – Value $15
• 20,000 BlogUpp! impressions, courtesy of BlogUpp! – Value $10 NEW!

4th Place

• One WordPress theme from PremiumThemesNow.com, courtesy of Daniel Scocco – Value $50
• A blog review on Shanker Bakshi dot Com – Value $50 NEW!
  
• One copy of OIOpublisher – Value $47
• One copy of the Traffic Rush Course, courtesy of Caroline MiddleBrook – Value $47
• One year VIP membership on CreateBanner.com, courtesy of Xavier Media – Value $35
• One month of 125×125px advertising on Big Ben Patton’s Place – Value $20 NEW!
• One copy of the eBook Work Smart, Get Rich!, courtesy of The Net Fool – Value $15

5th Place

• A pre-made toon, which is a guy with a laptop “making money” while on the beach, courtesy of Vic Ocampo – Value ?$50
• One copy of OIOpublisher – Value $47
• One copy of the Traffic Rush Course, courtesy of Caroline MiddleBrook – Value $47
• One year VIP membership on CreateBanner.com, courtesy of Xavier Media – Value $35
• One blog review by Benjamin of Big Ben Patton’s Place – Value $30 NEW!
• One month of 125×125px advertising on iDesignStudios.com – Value $20 NEW!

6th Place

• A paid review on Balkhis, courtesy of Syed – Value $80
• Two months of 125×125px advertising on Direct Sales Web Marketing, courtesy by Dennis Edell – Value $50
• Thirty-minutes of blog consultations with Jim from The Net Fool – Value $30
• One blog review by Benjamin of Big Ben Patton’s Place – Value $30 NEW!
• One month of 125×125px advertising on WebTrafficROI.com – Value $20 NEW!
• A link after every post during one month on Piggy Bank Pie – Value $10

7th Place

• Thirty-minutes of blog consultations with Jim from The Net Fool – Value $30
• A blog review, a 125×125px advertising for a month and 1000 EC by Louis Liem – Value $30
• One month of 125×125px advertising On Mr Javo dot Com, courtesy of Revvenue.com – Value $25
• One blog review on Niessuh.com – Value $20
• One month of text-link advertising on WebTrafficROI.com – Value $10 NEW!

8th Place

• A Blog review on SponsoReview.com – Value $30
• One month of 125×125px advertising on IndoContest, 2500 EC – Value $20
• 1000 EC from Give Away City
• 1000 EC from Danandmash In Oz

9th Place

• One month of 125X125px advertising on Work From Home Business Blog – Value $10
• One month of 125X125px advertising on Blogging From Scratch – Value $3
• 1000 EC from KisahberuanG.com

10th Place

• 1000 EC from ThemeLib
• 1000 EC from Cash In Style
   

  There’s a Ton of prizes! Now, there is no way that I’m going to review every single one like I did last time. But I’m going to review them generally. My first impression, is that I’m somewhat impressed. That ten different people all have a chance at winning, is very cool, and I like that because it gives you more motivation to rack up more points

  The prizes consist of lots of Ebooks, including some of the same ones from linkers blog. Again like I said in the last one, you can’t really know if they are worth anything until you’ve actually read them. So, I’ll just assume they are worth something. There are a few blog reviews, and consultations which are great. An objective opinion is always good, and all the reviewers have fairly successful blogs, so they Should know what they are talking about. There are also several themes, which could be quite nice. I like the UBD citrus theme, but everyone will have different opinions on blog themes. There’s lots of impressions from BlogUpp, which is a traffic exchange program. I’m somewhat skeptical of those, I’ve tried a few of them, including easyhits4u and they’ve always been a waste of time in my mind. However, I could be wrong, so these could potentially be useful, if they are actually good traffic. This also includes several blog reviews, and advertising opportunities, which are very nice. And then there are several pots of entrecard credits which are always nice.

  Now the big advertisement for this contest is that it’s worth over 2,000$ worth of prizes. Honestly though, I’d take 100 bucks over any of these prizes, and be thrilled about it. If your going to run a contest, cash is best. The first prize totals up to being worth 659$! Thathat’s a Lot of money. And yet besides the 200$ in a bidvertiser account, the lot doesn’t seem worth 459$. The best set of prizes in my mind was the sixth one. A paid review by Balkhis is a great prize. I give props to Javo for getting Syed to give that. And then there are several good advertising options in here, as well as consultations with thenetfool. Jim is a great blogger and I really respect his opinion. If I do end up winning any of these prizes besides the sixth one, it’s possible I may be putting them up for a little contest of my own.

  These prizes suffer from many of the same problems as the linkersblog’s one, no wow factor. The one thing that makes these prizes better, is that there are Way more of them, and there are ten different prizes which I like. It definitely encourages you to spend more work on it, because you know that you have a higher chance of winning something.
  
  Final Grade on Prizes
  6/10

  Requirements

  There are only a couple options to get points in this contest. Like the last one, this one is based by points, and will be decided using random.org. There are only 3 ways to get points, which just shows you that he’s running it for a specific purpose.

  By signing up and confirming your email for his newsletter you get 3 points. (this is also required to be in the contest.)

  By writing about the contest, you get two additional points.

  And for subscribing to his RSS feed by email, you get one additional point.
  Pretty straight forward and simple, he’s trying to get RSS subscribers. And from the looks of it, he’s done pretty well to. His subscribers have gone up by at least a hundred in the last couple weeks, and probably more, but I can’t remember the exact number it was at.

  The contest ends on Nov 16th at 22:00 GTM -4. So if you are going to join, Do it now! There is still plenty of time to do all of these things, and you will have a shot at one of these ten prizes.

  I liked linkersblog’s one better in this respect, because he had more ways to get points, but these ones still aren’t difficult to do.
  
  Final Grade on Requirements
  6/10
  Easy things to do, but not very many ways to get points.

  Chances of winning

  Here’s one of the problems with the contest, there’s a lot of people in it. Like a lot more then linkersblog’s one. On his post there are 123 comments, that’s A lot. The other contest only had about 30 or so. You can’t judge by the comments, but that’s at least 4x more people, then the other one. And who knows how many more just subscribed to the newsletter, and didn’t comment. And so the possibilities are a lot less, but there are ten prizes. So kind of similar to the other one, I think it’s worth doing, but still only medium or less chances of winning something. Also, it’s a random draw, so you always have a shot, just it’s significantly lower because of all the people in it.

  Final Grade on Chances of winning
  5/10
  More prizes, doesn’t necessarily mean higher possibility of success.

  Overall Grade
  6/10
  More prizes, and better prizes in my opinion, but still a bit on the weaker side. And your chances of winning are significantly lower then with the linkers blog as a result of more people. Some useful things in here, but again not worth spending too much time on.  

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These are my final categories for judging.

Prizes

The most important thing of any contest is, what do I win? People entering it want to know what’s in it for them, why should they waste their time subscribing, or blogging about the contest, unless they can get something out of it. So, I will make sure to list all the prizes and what I think of them.

Requirements

Once you hear the prizes, typically you’ll already be getting greedy, so your next question is, what do I have to do? A popular type of contest now in days is based on points, and the winner is determined by randomizer.org, or some type of random draw. The host of the blog will award different points, for different ways that you help them out, such as subscribing, linking… I will list in this section, all the things that you need to do, to give yourself the best chance of winning.

Chances for Winning

Usually the prizes are great, and the requirements are pretty easy, so what’s the draw back? There’s 200 other people in the same contest, who are all doing the same thing, looking for the same prize. You’ve got practically no chance to win. In this section, I’m going to give the contest a grade, based on what your likely hood of winning is. 

Overall grade

This is just my final statements and opinion of it. All these grading will be based on a scale from 0-10, so I will give you a final estimate on the contest.

I’m going to start this off with showing you a contest that’s being run by Danny over at Linkersblog, and here is the link to the contest.

Prizes

·    A Copy of ‘Blog Flipping Blueprint‘ by Brian Clark – Worth $147!
·    One full license of the SuperPress Theme by Fresh Press Themes – Worth $97!
·    One Hour of Private Consultation with Jason from TUK – Worth $100!
·    Logo Design Service from Logopallet – Worth $100!
·    A Unique Video Review from IMWITHJOE.com – Worth $50!
·    A Copy of WP Auction Gold from SponsorReview.com – Worth $50!
·    Lifetime membership to OIOPublisher.com – Worth $47!
·    Entry to the Traffic Rush Course by Caroline Middlebrook – Worth $47!

The prizes total up to 638$ kind of a weird total…  But let’s delve into these things. First off a copy of Blog Flipping Blueprint… A copy of what? I’ve never even heard of it, hmm it’s worth 147 bucks… well Danny I’m taking your word on this one.

One full license of the SuperPress Theme by Fresh Press Themes, ok what does that all mean? Basically your getting a free wordpress theme. Okay I can digg that, (no pun intended) and it’s worth 100 dollars so it’s got to be pretty nice.

One hour of private consultation with Jason from The University Kid, now this sounds intriguing. I like to pretend like I know Jason pretty well, although the relationship consists of a few emails back and forth and that was all business related. His site is doing remarkably well, and so this sounds like it could be worth something. I’m a little skeptical at how much he could do in an hour, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Logo Design Service from Logopallet, this is another useful prize. It’s not incredible, but it’s a very useful tool. Everybody needs a 125×125 ad, and it’s always nice to have one that looks professional as opposed to one that you obviously created in photoshop.

A video review with I’m with Joe. This is somewhat similar to the thing with Jason. I mean they’re both very successful bloggers, but I wonder how much they can actually do. They can give you some helpful advice, but they can’t give you traffic, or links which is more important in my opinion. Now I know your going to say well your not going to get traffic and links with an ugly site, well we’ll see. I did okay with my atrocious black, silver and red. If you weren’t around when I had that, then be happy cause it was Ugly.

A copy of WP Auction Gold. This is another cool prize, another very nice template, however, I wonder what your going to do with two templates… maybe they’re assuming you have two sites. I suppose you could just sell it.

Lifetime Membership to Oiopublisher, this sounds interesting. It is a very popular site, so I’m sure they have some good advice to give.

Entry to the Traffic Rush Course by Caroline Middlebrook. From her site, it describes it has essentially a how to use stumbleupon tutorial. This could be useful, tips on traffic is speaking the bloggers language. If this is really any good, then this could be the best prize of the bunch.

Final Grade on Prizes
4/10

Probably a bit harsh but there’s nothing in there that makes you say wow! Lots of potentially useful things, but nothing incredible. 

Requirements

This is my favorite part about the contest, because I really like the requirements to join this blog. It’s nothing to difficult, and there’s tons of different ways to enter. I’ve never seen a contest with so many different ways to get points. He lists 12 different options, including an option for a special 13th one every week. Usually the bloggers have an idea in mind, to get subscribers, or get links… but I respect Danny’s pursuit to grow his blog in an all-around in this contest, and not just empathizing on one thing. Also, because of the many different ways you can enter, everybody and I do mean Everybody can enter it with no trouble at all. Here’s a screen shot of the different ways to earn points.

You can easily rack up five points with out any trouble at all. It’s nice because he includes the options of higher points for things such as linking, and referring people to him, but he also includes easier steps. I was somewhat surprised to see subscribers given such a low points amount, because he is also in the Blogging Idol 2 contest, but I guess he knows what he’s doing.

Final Grade on Requirements
8/10
He’s got a lot of different options, with many different ways of getting points. Very little requirements at all.

Chances for Winning

Now this is somewhat of a tough question to answer. Because you can with little trouble rack up anywhere from 8-12 points which would currently be the leader of the pack. However, because it’s chosen by a random chooser, you can be the leader by a lot and still not win. I find random draws somewhat frustrating but I don’t know if there’s any other way to really do it fairly. Because of that, we can draw out two things, first you should definitely enter this contest, at least by doing the easy things, because it’s possible you could win by merely stumbling the post, or adding him on twitter. However, this also discourages spending a lot of effort on advertising the post, because you don’t really gain too much, because it’s still a random decision However, you do have one major thing going in your favor. If you look at this picture, of the top rankings you can see that there are only about 30 people entered. That number could grow drastically in the next week, but right now there’s not very many. So your not going to be fighting against hundreds of other people in a random draw. So that greatly increase your chances of winning.

In case you were wondering, yes you can still enter this contest. It runs until Dec 1st. You will be a little bit behind, but if you look at that picture above again, of the top rankings, you can still easily be number one by simply blogging about the contest.

Final Grade on Chances of Winning
6/10
I am very wary of making an effort for random drawings, but the fact that it’s not very popular yet, and there are so many easy ways to join, makes it worth the effort.

Final Grade
6/10
Weak prizes, but easy requirements, and relatively low amount of competitors makes this contest one definitely worth entering, but not worth spending too much time on.

If you are running a contest feel free to comment with the link, or email me and I’ll review it. And I’ll check it out and consider whether it’s worth adding. However, I may bash it, so don’t send it unless it’s Really good.

If you liked this post please subscribe to my RSS feed for more tips on how to blog, and for information on more contest, that you won’t want to miss!

How to get Traffic by the Top Bloggers

Jason – www.theuniversitykid.com

When I started out, there were three main ways I got traffic to the blog:

Contests

Comments

Forums

I ran contests with prizes (mostly donated, and easily gotten like ad
spots, eBooks, consultation etc)… now although the prizes were not that
valuable, I made sure I got a lot of them so that the contest dollar
amount was a big one, which attracted more sponsors and readers.

I commented on other blogs extensively – often around 40 – 50 per day -
NOT A-listers, which is the mistake that many make, but smaller blogs of a
similar / slightly bigger level. This way, I was able to build
friendships, which helped me a lot – those bloggers then mentioned me and
I reciprocated.

Lastly, I used to put in a few solid hours daily on forums, which sent me
around 5,000 uniques per month. Around 40-50 posts per day spread across
various large webmaster and marketing forums like Digital Point, Warrior
Forum, Sitepoint etc.

Around a month or two ago, I added another main way of promotion to the
mix – viral marketing, where I told people to refer 3-5 friends to
subscribe to receive the password to a post where I laid out step by step
how I made $7,500 in a few months and could guarantee it. This sent in
around 200-300 subscribers in less than a week, which was a substantial
increase for me and I’ll be looking at more viral marketing for the site
soon.

Glen Allsopp – www.viperchill.com

Want to know how to get traffic? Drive traffic to others. Stumble peoples pages, give them links and flatter their ego. There’s something about humans that makes us want to give back to those who are helping us, even re-tweet peoples tweets. I’ve seen countless examples of those who are social and helping getting everything back (and more) in return. Of course, make sure you have something good for others to promote, but make sure you give before you expect to receive.

Collin – www.collinlahay.com

Here is a simple post that sums up what my blog talks about:

The best way to make money online for any website in any niche is to rank on the first page of the search engine results.  To accomplish this task, you need to know how to build links so that Google and other search engines know that your blog or website is the authority for that keyword phrase.  There are hundreds of ways to build links on the internet, and my blog is all about showing you where to find them.  Link building is the greatest form of internet marketing because the effects are permanent and once you rank #1 for a result, so long as you continue to build links, you will be receiving the most targeted traffic you could possibly hope for and you will be earning money for doing the least amount of work.  If you want free link building strategies to get you started, check out my blog at CollinLaHay.com

Jim – www.thenetfool.com

The Net Fool on Web Traffic

Getting traffic to a blog is one of the more difficult subjects sought after by beginners. For one, the first few months of my blogging career was spent fruitlessly trying to place links in attractive places to get a visit here or there… as I burned through my working hours just talking with other players in my niche area. I believe that receiving traffic to your blog is going to be largely catered to your ability to generate RSS subscribers and have them come back day after day. What this means to you, is that you will need to make it EASY for people to subscribe to your blog… but also, you want it to be something they just plain want to do.

What am I getting at? The number one way to get traffic to your blog is to be a good blogger! Yes, it sounds cliché… but in reality there is no better way to get traffic then by having a personality. Nobody wants to come by day after day reading re-hashed material. If you blog like that, than you WILL be the one staying up all night spamming forums and commenting our of your mind. Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t be commenting, but it will only count if the article you link people to is something they like and will pass on to your friends. Have a personality, retain your RSS subscribers, and you’ll get an unbeatable recurring traffic flow to your website.

Yan – www.thoushallblog.com

Unless you have perfected the art of SEO, the single most effective method of generating targeted traffic that has stood the test of time is blog commenting. Not only it helps to create the initial exposure and awareness, more importantly it does build long-term relationship with fellow bloggers.

Keeping in mind that getting the initial traffic is the easy part, converting them to be your returning visitors probably takes more than just commenting alone. Whilst commenting is considered to be the push factor, it remains true that your content is the key pull factor. Therefore, the best scenario is to know how to maximize both to your blogging advantage.

Jim – www.jimkukral.com

Stop worrying about traffic. Write good content. Differentiate. Be unique. And do it consistently. Traffic will come. Yes, it will take time, but if you think you can have instant success online just by “getting traffic”, you’re mistaken. Probably not what anyone wants to hear, but it’s true.

Danny – www.linkersblog.com

Two Ways I got Traffic for Free!

Forum Marketing

A lot of the bigger bloggers completely ignore forum marketing as they don’t believe it’s worth the effort. The truth is that forum marketing is worth all the effort and much more! A simple way to get started with forum marketing is to join a forum, think of a catchy title for one of your blog posts, and put a link in your forum signature.

Once you have created an account try to jazz it up a bit, add a profile picture and a little bio about yourself. On large forums such as digital point they get hundreds of new members a day so it is important to make yourself stand out from the rest.

After you have made your profile all pretty it’s time to start posting. The best technique to get people to click the link in your signature is to reply on threads related to the post you are trying to promote, although you won’t find this gains you thousands of new visitors instantly, it will bring you very targeted visitors.

After you have built your forum reputation a bit you may decided that you actually want to start threads of your own, if you do it right this can be a great method of gaining traffic for free, I personally have gained between 1,000 and 2,000 visitors in the past two months from a forum related to my niche.

Blog Commentating

Anyone who knows me will know that I am huge believer in the power of blog commentating. Not only do I preach the power of blog commenting, I also practice the art too.

I could go into blog commenting until the sun goes down, but for your sake I’m not going to go into it too much. What I can say is that if you are looking to gain traffic, friends, links and subscribers then you will definitely want to give it a try. The best advice I can give you in a line or two is just be yourself. Get out there and use commenting as way of introducing yourself to other bloggers, and the rest will just happen

If you liked this post please subscribe to my RSS feed so you can learn more on how to blog. I have several great post ideas that I am very excited about, and will be releasing this month, so make sure your receiving them!

Before you read this article make sure you read the first part of series here, otherwise this article won’t make much sense to you. 

Below is the list of those who responded to my email, I’m going to let you know how long it took them to respond, and whether or not they actually contributed. Yesterday I rewarded them all with links, for simply responding, but now I’m going to tell you who sent tips. Then tomorrow I’m going to give you the actual tips that they sent. 

Again remember, I’m not going to make any judgments, I’m just going to show you how their responses rank, by time, and amount of words.

Comparing the Bloggers by Time of Response

>1 day

Jim from thenetfool.com responded the fastest in an incredible, 8 minutes. He was able to help and sent a small google doc with his suggestions.

Jim from jimkukral.com, responded second in a little more then an hour, with a quick suggestion that has helped him, and will surely help you.

Jason from theuniversitykid.com, responded third within an incredible four hours, with almost a entire page of very useful information. 

Stephan from stephanmiller.com responded also fourth in a very short time, however he was unable to help me, because he said he wasn’t able to get to it.

Danny from linkersblog.com was fifth to respond. All three of these bloggers were within several hours. He was able to contribute with a relatively long list of helpful tips. 

David from affiliatedragon.com was sixth to respond, but he also was unable to contribute because of business.

Simon from otooo.com was seventh to respond, but he said, “I don’t have the time to write for my blog let alone yours at the moment so I am going to have to decline.”

1-2 days

Yan from thoushallblog.com was eighth, he responded a little more then a day later, which is still quite impressive.

Glen from viperchill.com was ninth, he responded in about two days. He was also able to help with some good suggestions.

Syed from balkhis.com was tenth, he told me he would be able to help, but I guess he forgot or something because he never responded with the tips.

John from johncow.com was eleventh, and he said he was to busy to help.

3-4 days

Collin from collinlahay.com was

twelfth, and he was the longest in four days, although he was also able to contribute.

4+ days

N/A

My Comments

I was very impressed with all this, I mean I don’t typically respond to my emails in less then a few days, and I’m sure I don’t get as many as these people.

Next I am going to compare the seven who did respond with tips, by how many words were in each of their contributions.

Amount of words in their tips

1^st

Danny from linkersblog.com, his tip was 365 words

2^nd

Jim from theuniversitykid.com, his tip was 254 words

3^rd

Jim from thenetfool.com, his tip was 253 words

4^th

Collin from collinlahay.com, his tip was 166 words

5^th

Yan from thoushallblog.com, his tip was 109 words

6^th

Glen from viperchill.com, his tip was 82 words

7^th

Jim from jimkukral.com, his tip was 48 words

My Comments

All in all I was very impressed with how quick people responded. Although, I was very disappointed that only 12 of the 21 bloggers responded, and of those 11 only 7 actually contributed. I want to thank again everybody who sent responses, and make sure you come back tomorrow, for the third and final part of this series. As I show you what these professional bloggers actually said are the keys on, how to get traffic.

If you want to get the third part of this informative series, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed, by clicking this link. Don’t miss tomorrow’s tips from the best bloggers on the internet. 

The purpose of this post, is to share tips from the top bloggers in the Make Money Online niche, on how to get traffic. I sent an email to 21 bloggers that I considered to be the top bloggers, asking them about how they got traffic to their site. As I thought more about it, I also realized it would be an interesting experiment to see which ones would respond, considering how busy they are, and how many emails they are receiving a day. So today I am sharing with you the list of bloggers I sent the email to, who responded, and who didn’t. Tomorrow I will be showing you the actual emails they sent, about not responding. And Saturday, I will be showing you the actual tips that they suggested.

Because there’s so much information that I’ve gotten, I’ve decided I’m going to drag this out into three posts over the next three day. I was very Very tempted to make the last post with the actual tips be password protected for RSS subscribers only, but after some thought I decided that I wouldn’t do that to you. However, I would greatly appreciate it if you would subscribe if you haven’t already. I am trying to win the Blogging Idol 2 which will give me a lot more technology to make these blog posts better, and more informative for you, and so we would all win.

The first post today, is a list of all the people who I sent the email to. And I’m going to tell you which ones responded, and which ones didn’t. What the excuses were for the people who were nice enough to respond, and also just the people who didn’t even bother to reply at all. I was surprised at the amount of responses I got that said they didn’t have the time to respond, even though what I was asking for you could do in less then five minutes. But regardless, without farther “adu” here is the the first list.

*Disclaimer*

I don’t want to get in trouble with any of these bloggers so I’m not going to make any judgments one way or the other. So I will merely present the information as I’ve received it, including copies of the emails, and I’ll let you make your own judgments. The ones who responded I am rewarding with a link to thank them for their trouble. Regardless of whether they gave tips or not.

First set of Messages sent 10/22-23

This is the list of bloggers that I sent emails to.

problogger.com

johnchow.com

johncow.com

shoemoney.com

blueverse.com

viperchill.com

doshdosh.com

jimkukural.com

ianfernando.com

entrepreneurs-journey.com

thoushallblog.com

balkhis.com

courtneytuttle.com

collinlahay.com

These Sent 10/23/08

otooo.com

thenetfool.com

whoisandrewwee.com

retireat21.com

zacjohnson.com

caroline-middlebrook.com

tylercruz.com

Responses to the First Email

I got very few responses from the first set. After I sent out the second group, several people commented the email got sent into junk mail. So there is no way for me to tell which ones did not respond, and which ones just don’t read their junk mail. J A lot more of them responded from the second group, but several people responded within several hours of the first message.

The University Kid,

Linkersblog,

Stephan Miller,

Affiliate Dragon,

These two also responded but within a few days.

viperchill.com Replied 10/24/08 2 days

collinlahay.com Replied 10/26/08 4 days

Note

Not all of these people who responded actually wrote any tips, some just responded saying they could not help me. This wasn’t as much a test of their willingness to help, but mainly to see which ones would respond at all. Therefore, I am still giving them the credit of a link simply for responding, whether they actually helped any at all.

Second set of Messages sent 10/31

This is a list of the people to whom I sent a second email. To make it shorter, I removed the ones who responded from the first email. There were also a few who I didn’t send a second email to for various reasons, it was only a couple, but just so you know.

problogger.com 2 messages

johnchow.com 2 messages

johncow.com 2 messages

shoemoney.com 2 messages

blueverse.com 2 messages

doshdosh.com 2 messages

jimkukural.com 2 messages

thoushallblog.com 2 messages

balkhis.com 2 messages

courtneytuttle.com 2 messages

otooo.com 2 Messages

thenetfool.com 2 Messages

whoisandrewwee.com 2 Messages

retireat21.com 2 Messages

zacjohnson.com 2 Messages

People to whom the first email was put in their Junk File

Again remember, several of these people responded to the second email saying the first message was put in their junk. So don’t jump to any conclusions. The ones that I know for a fact had the first email sent to their junk are listed below.

thoushallblog.com

jimkukural.com

balkhis.com

otooo.com

thenetfool.com

Responses to the Second Email

I got a few more responses from the second email, but still a depressing few amount of people who actually contributed. However, these are the links of the people who responded to the second message with some type of response.

jimkukral.com

johncow.com

balkhis.com

otooo.com

thenetfool.com

thoushallblog.com

The people who didn’t respond to either Email.

Not even so much as an “I’m too busy for you,” email which I did get several of. This list is the people were the ones who didn’t respond, despite two emails I sent them. Some of them I totally understand with how many emails they are receiving. Some other ones I was a little surprised about, but I’ll let you make your own judgments.

problogger.com

johnchow.com

shoemoney.com

blueverse.com

doshdosh.com 

courtneytuttle.com

retireat21.com

zacjohnson.com

Conclusion

All in all I got 11 responses from the 21 bloggers I sent messages to. Most of the 21 bloggers got two emails as well. I was honestly a little saddened by that, I was expecting a few more responses. There were several surprises in my mind, on both sides. Some people responded who I never thought would, and several did not, whom I expected to.

This is the first post in my series on the Top Bloggers in my niche. Make sure you come back tomorrow to see the second post. I will be showing the emails from the people who Didn’t respond, and again let you draw your own conclusions. Then make sure you come back on Saturday to see the actual tips given by the experts in their field. 

If you haven’t already subscribed to my RSS feed do it Now! Don’t miss these great posts, and tips from the bloggers whose success we can only hope to match.

The first one is not that new, but is still new enough so that with 30 votes you can reach the first page.

Sphinn

The next three are all very new and with 10-15 votes you can be the top post for the day. Which will give you some traffic, but remember. Find the people who voted for your blog and add them as friends. Comment and vote for their posts in return. Build a friend base and post your articles on it. As your friends and the sites grow you will recieve more and more vistis from these. Jump in now while you can!

Blog Competition

Blogengage

Postonfire

if you liked this please subscribe to my RSS feeder

and digg this here

Let’s face it, if Google hates your site, then it’s finished, especially if your trying to earn something like the adsense check of shoemoney. Google has complete control and can either make or break your blog. Nobody is comfortable knowing that their site, is merely a ship in the hands of the Da Mighty Google Ocean, and can be sunk at any point.

The question you have to face with google is, some money now? or possibly a lot of money later? Are you ignoring the smaller fish and keeping your net in for the big fish? or settling for money now. Every owner of a website who is interested in making money, has to decide between things like pay per post, bidvertiser,and paid per review programs, or the possible jackpot of adsense.

A perfect example of this is, the popular john chow and johncow sites. They have a page rank of 4 and 3. Now if you don’t quite understand how low this is then let me explain, this site has a page rank of 3 after a month. John chow has 15,000 RSS subscribers and thousands of visitors a day yet has an awful pagerank, that is not the only determining factor, but “generally” if you have a lot of visitors you have a high page rank. If you look at the john chow and john cow sites you will see links to the bidvertiser and pay per post sites, google hates these. If you go to problogger or shoemoney you won’t. Hence their page rank of 6.

Now people just starting websites hate this decision, I mean it’s like the TV show deal or no deal, do you settle for that first call from the banker or wait for possibly a jackpot. This is why everybody hates google, because nobody wants to make that decision.

And if you decide to try for the big fish, the 100,000$ ad sense check then you need google to love you, until you have such a steady source of traffic that you don’t need to rely on google anymore. Then you can kiss google goodbye and join programs like, ppp, and Bidvertiser… And rely on your consistent traffic to give you the tons of money provided in adsense.

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