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How To Become An Instant Contest Winner

Filed Under (Marketing) by User ImageBrian Hawkins (Check me out!) on 02-08-2008

winning.jpgContests are fun for both the contest holder and their contestants. Winning even the smallest of prizes can be very rewarding in the form of recognition, exposure, traffic, backlinks and new friends. The contest holder wins big with the same benefits. This week I found another way to participate in online contests that’s just as rewarding. It’s sponsoring a contest.

I recently decided to sponsor a contest being held by one of my online friends. It’s been about a week and I’ve already made several new friends and have received several backlinks from others posting about the contest.

“Thou Shall Win” Contest

“thou shall win” contestThe site that helped me realize that sponsoring a contest can make you a winner too is ThouShallBlog.com - Blogging Tips for Beginners by Yan Susanto. Yan is running a contest through August called ‘Thou Shall Win Contest‘. Our site, Extreme Ezine, is one of the many sponsors and I’m glad to see how fast the contest is building momentum. That’s due to Yan’s incredible networking skills.

Over $2500 worth of prizes are up for grabs and entering is easy. Get the details here: Thou Shall Win Contest

The Grand Prize

A ticket to the “Event Apart” which is held in the USA. The Ticket is worth about $1,000.00 and will be good for any 2008 event.

Courtesy of PB from Piss Biscuit

Winner #1

  1. 12-month private membership at LifeFoc.us, courtesy of FullTiltBlogging.com, the brain child of Aaron Abber (Worth $324)
  2. 30-min live blog consultation by Rockfuse.com (Worth $30)
  3. 1 month 468×60 Ad Spot from Tech Suave (Worth $30)
  4. 3,000 Entrecard Credits from Brian Hawkins @ Extreme Ezine

Winner #2

  1. $500.00 dollar credit for Blog Re-design courtesy of Piss Biscuit.
  2. 30-min live blog consultation by Rockfuse.com (Worth $30)
  3. 1 month 125×125 Ad Spot from Piss Biscuit (Worth $40)
  4. 2000 Entrecard Credits from Brian Hawkins @ Extreme Ezine

Winner #3

  1. Blog Review courtesy of Piss Biscuit (Worth $100)
  2. 60-min blog consultation by The Net Fool (Worth $60)
  3. 1 month 125×125 Ad Spot from Etienne Teo (Worth $25)
  4. 2,000 Entrecard Credits from Jay @ DatMoney.com

Winner #4

  1. 1 Copy of Premium Theme from WooThemes by Piss Biscuit (Worth $100)
  2. 1 Custom Banner Design (468×60 or 125×125) from DatMoney.com
  3. 1 month 125×125 Ad Spot from Yours Truly, Blog for Beginners (Worth $20)
  4. 2,000 Entrecard Credits from Jay @ iBlogtoBlog.com

Winner #5

  1. 1 Copy of the Revolution WordPress Theme from Brian Gardner (Worth $80)
  2. 1 month 125×125 Ad Spot from Etienne Teo (Worth $25)
  3. 1 month sidewide PR3 link on both DatMoney.com & iBlogtoBlog.com
  4. 1,000 Entrecard Credits from Michael Aulia’s Tech Blog

Bonus Prize

The contestant with the highest no. of points (both maximum and referral points) will win 3,000 Entrecard Credits from WP Beginners

Get more details here: Thou Shall Win Contest

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Ad Blasters Are Dag-Blasted Junk!

Filed Under (Opinion) by User ImageBrian Hawkins (Check me out!) on 27-07-2008

ad_blast_junk.jpgI have yet to see a legitimate ad blaster that works and is legal? You can find them to blast emails, Yahoo Groups, MySpace etc. and they are junk. Just like Free For All lists, they give legitimate advertising methods a bad name.

Guess who owns MasterAdBlaster.com? Yep, I do. I was so excited when I first purchased that domain. I already had the perfect product to promote there. I had purchased the resell rights to an ad blaster from a very respected marketer. It was the latest (Back in Nov. of 2005) Automatic AdBlasting Software that sent your ad automatically and instantly to over 1000 Advertising Networks and 2,500,000+ Websites and Engines across the net, day after day, throughout the year! Bla Bla Bla

The site was perfect. Great graphics and structure. Enticing ad copy that promised:

Have Your Ad Blasted To 2,500,000+ Sites Every Day
Automatically Using The Worlds Most Astonishing

“Set And Forget”
Technology !”

and

Get 5000 Hits To Your Website Per Hour!

I was nieve back then. I used the blaster everyday. I promoted my new site and sold a few copies. Then the inevitable came. I began receiving complaints and refund requests. You know why? Because I hadn’t bothered testing it. I faithfully submitted my ads daily just assuming they were being delivered just as the software displayed after the submission process. So I finally wised up and used a tracker. I tested many sites for weeks. Hundreds of ads going to what was supposed to be millions of sites and not one single click. I was so embarrassed.

Embarrassed but not defeated, I started looking for a replacement that worked. I tried several other email blasters that didn’t work at all. I found a nice Yahoo Groups mailer that showed promise but didn’t pan out. The latest was a piece of junk MySpace mailer that was being promoted everywhere last year. Again, zero clicks!

The Bottom Line

Here’s the bottom line - Are the ads even delivered? I doubt it but even if they are, the proofs in the pudding as to the results.

Are there any legitimate Blasters? I have yet to find one and I really really tried. Hey, I wanted MasterAdBlaster to be a success! Do you have one that is legal, ethical and actually works? Give it to me and I’ll test it but I’m done buying them. Don’t even bother unless every single person that receives the blast has opted-in to get the ads. If you can’t prove that then it’s unethical as far as I’m concerned.

Why they’ll never work - A blaster won’t work even if the ad actually gets delivered unless someone can resolve one huge problem. That problem has to do with targeted ads going to potential customers that want to see what you have to offer. It’s our greed and laziness that fuels the development of these fraudulent programs. Now if it was an opt-in membership based blaster then I would be of a different opinion but then it would be called a safelist :)

That’s Right I Said It,
Brian Hawkins

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One More Reason To Use WordPress

Filed Under (General, Opinion) by User ImageBrian Hawkins (Check me out!) on 24-07-2008

blogger_vs_wp_small.jpgBack in February I wrote a piece on why WordPress is a better choice than Blogger for setting up your own blog. That post is no longer available but it was basically my opinion that WordPress’ options and features allowed for much more control over your site making it a better choice over Blogger. Now it looks like there’s another reason to lean toward WordPress for your blog format - security risks…

I’m sure that no one is surprised that Web 2.0 isn’t only gaining popularity with good Google fearing web users, hackers are loving it too. Sophos.com just released their threat report for July 2008. The report highlights some interesting yet not surprising facts. Website infection rate is up 300% times faster than last year with Google’s Blogger being the number one host of malware.

“Sophos has identified that the number one host for malware on the web is Blogger (Blogspot.com), which allows computer users to make their own websites easily at no charge. Hackers both set up malicious blogs on the service, and inject dangerous web links and content into innocent blogs in the form of comments. Blogspot.com accounts for 2 percent of all of the world’s malware hosted on the web.”

To be fair WordPress may be in the news next. The fact is Blogger hosts 2% of malware on the web but that’s still a small fraction of the low lives out there. Blogs and Web 2.0 sites and other legitimate websites are at an increased risk due to their increased popularity.

I recommend that you always know what you’re clicking on before you hit the mouse button and keep your computer up to date with quality virus, malware and spyware protection. In my opinion WordPress is still a better choice than Blogger.

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Here A Blog, There A Blog, Everywhere A Blog

Filed Under (Blog Tips) by User ImageBrian Hawkins (Check me out!) on 20-07-2008

blog.jpgThis post is going to be helpful mainly to those fairly new to blogging. Can you remember the first time you heard the word ‘Blog’? I bet it wasn’t that long ago. I can remember posting on my forum about this new thing called a Blog asking if anyone know what it was. Shortly after that I was running my own Blog on Blogger.

Later I moved my two Blogs from Blogger, Google’s free Blog hosting network to my own domains using WordPress. That gave me three WordPress Blogs. Just six weeks later I had ten! When I had thirteen blogs I went to the opposite extreme and pulled all but three (This post was rescued from one of them). Blogging is here to stay. It’s just too contagious, too addicting. I converted ExtremeEzine.com to Blog format even though I knew we would be starting over in a sense as far as the search engines were concerned. We built ExtremeEzine.com to a page rank of 05/10 on our main page. Now that the URL of the main page has changed we’re down to a 02/10.

So why the change? It sounds crazy I know but there really is a method to my madness. There are many reasons to change over to Blog format and I want to share my thoughts on the subject.

Read the rest of this entry »

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101 Money Saving Tips

Filed Under (Money) by User ImageBrian Hawkins (Check me out!) on 20-07-2008

101tips.jpg101tips_cd_cover.gifBack in April I wrote an article for another site that I no longer operate. I also converted it to an ebook (.PDF format). I hate to let all that effort go to waste so I’m republishing it here. I’m also offering the ebook free of charge - Includes Give-A-Way Rights. Right click and save as to download your copy.

101 Money Saving Tips

Looking for cost cutting tips or need to start pinching pennies on household expenses to save money? From frugal shopping tips to common sense spending habits, it’s all right here. I have scoured the net and racked my brain to come up with the best money saving and cost cutting tips I could come up with.

These are very simple tips for the frugal and money conscious. They’re not what I would call ‘Extreme Money-Saving Tips’ like ‘Eat out of the pan’ but I might make that list too.

1. Shorten the time you take in the shower.

2. Drop the home phone line and use the cell phone.

3. Switch to basic cable and get rig of the premium channels.

4. Get your DVDs from the library rather than renting them.

5. Teach the family to ‘turn it off’ when not in use.

6. Walk or ride a bike when you can.

7. Cut and fertilize your own lawn.

8. Buy a water filter instead of bottled water.

9. Avoid car repairs at the dealer unless it’s under warranty.

10. Sell unwanted items on eBay instead of throwing it away.

11. Trade baby sitting services with family and friends.

12. Use coupons wisely by only buying what you need.

13. Pack your lunch.

14. Eat breakfast before you leave home.

15. Eat before you go grocery shopping.

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Ten Minutes Of Pure Funny!

Filed Under (Cool Video) by User ImageBrian Hawkins (Check me out!) on 13-07-2008

This isn’t much of a post but I just ran across this funny YouTube video and I just had to share it. If you need a laugh and have time for a ten minute break I think you will enjoy this…

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John Chow’s offer of 5000 Entrecard Credits

Filed Under (Good Deals) by User ImageBrian Hawkins (Check me out!) on 09-07-2008

entrecard_offers.jpgThis morning I noticed a link on Entrecard’s ‘Latest buzz‘ section. It had this single line, “John Chow has got a deal for you! 5000 Entrecard Credits in 15 minutes!“. One name that’s always going to draw attention, including mine, is John Chow.

John Chow and Entrecard are working together to offer you 300 credits to 3,000 credits by completing four offers with 1,000 bonus credits for completing all four offers. I’m a huge fan of both John Chow and Entrecard.

Two of the four offers involve completing online surveys and I’ve never been a fan of that whole niche. The biggest offer has nothing to do with online surveys. It’s simply ordering a Google Home Business Kit and paying only for shipping at just $4.95 (It looks like this offer is for US residents only). As of this morning you can buy 1,000 Entrecard Credits for $9.50 USD. on Entrecard’s site. It’s easy math to see that $4.95 is a fantastic deal for $28.50 worth of credits. I’m considering making the purchase myself. Who knows, perhaps Google SEO Supervisor will turn out to be the real prize.

Check out John Chow’s offer here.

BTW: I’d by crazy not to mention that we (Extreme Ezine) are running a contest through July that will be giving out 5,000 Entrecard Credits among other prizes. See the contest here:

http://extremeezine.com/win-big-in-july-with-our-promotional-contest/

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The Website Is Down: Sales Guy vs. Web Dude

Filed Under (Cool Video) by User ImageBrian Hawkins (Check me out!) on 06-07-2008

If you have ten minutes of free time this is pretty funny. It’s just the way you might imagine an actual tech support crisis in the works. I love this guy’s attatude. Oh ya, if you’re uptight about foul language don’t watch this.

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Buying Traffic Is A Waste Of Time

Filed Under (Traffic) by User ImageBrian Hawkins (Check me out!) on 03-07-2008

buying_traffic.jpgThe process of increasing web traffic takes time and there are many different methods of building that site traffic. It’s human nature to want things right now so it’s easy to understand why so many people fall into the trap of ‘buying traffic‘.

One of the sites that I run is an Ad Tracking site and the biggest complaints are from people that just purchased ‘hits’ to their sites. “Why does your tracking site show I only received 456 clicks when I purchased ten thousand?” they exclaim in the email. I want to shake them by the shoulders and ask why in the world they would waste good money to buy hits. But I try to stay professional and gently explain what happened without coming right out and telling them they’ve made a huge mistake. I’ve done that in the past, telling them they wasted their money, and they forward the email to the shady site they bought the traffic from. Now their problem just became mine and I’m not here to field attacks from angry (and greedy) traffic brokers.

Why Buying Traffic Is A Waste Of Time

Like I was saying, there are many different methods of building site traffic and that’s what this site is all about but buying it isn’t one of them. I’m referring to traffic brokers and purchased page hits. I’m not addressing pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-per-action (PPA) type of advertising. In fact, buying traffic is not advertising, it’s an attempt to bypass adverting and get straight to the rewards. Unfortunately that type of shortcut never works.

Traffic Scams

A handful of the sites offering you paid traffic are simply scams using bot-click schemes from scripts. This is equivalent to hitting your refresh button thousands of times. That may get your counter moving but you don’t have any traffic at all. It’s just a worthless waste of time and money.

Worthless Traffic Brokers

The biggest source of paid traffic comes from so called ‘traffic brokers’. Many have fancy names, flashy websites and fantastic ad copy. They offer common sense reasons to buy traffic. They use big attention getting words like guaranteed, authentic, targeted, and unique. They’ll start with telling you truths you already know like, “The more TRAFFIC you have to your website the more people YOU will be able to sell your products to“. They’ll offer ‘targeted’ and ‘unique’ traffic from a particular category or country. They may show all kinds of useless testimonials and every other proven tactic to separate you from your money.

Where Does The Traffic Come From

Paid traffic usually comes from traffic exchanges and “get paid to surf” websites. Auto/manual surf programs provide visitors that are not interested in your products or service. They vast majority won’t even notice your site much less read a single word on your page. They just wait the 15-20 seconds and click to get credit. To be fair, perhaps you have the perfect ad or graphic that grabs the attention of a handful of surfers and they may decide to look around your site but that’s going to be the exception not the rule.

Think about it! You have someone wasting hours on end clicking a button every twenty seconds to get their site to show for twenty seconds on another surfer’s browser. They are trading valuable time for what amounts to be pennies worth of advertising. Does that sound like the ideal customer?

Other services will get your traffic from expired domains or pop-unders. It’s just more useless traffic that will annoy everyone and get you nowhere, unless if gets you penalized or banned from the search engines.

Purchasing bulk leads, traffic and clicks is a waste of money - period! Whether from paid to surf sites, pop up ads or other shady dealings of traffic brokers, you can do much better by educating yourself a little and work toward developing a quality site with lots of natural traffic.

Start Here

Do you want real site traffic? Consider subscribing to the Extreme Ezine for more tips and articles. We won’t send you traffic but we will explore various ways of building traffic and discuss it. We offer or recommend resources only after we verify that it’s real and effective.

Your Comments

We welcome your comments to this post or any other. Feel free to leave your comments and you’ll get a search engine friendly link back to your site :)

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I Like My Gas Guzzling F-150

Filed Under (Opinion) by User ImageBrian Hawkins (Check me out!) on 01-07-2008

gas_pickup.jpgI drive a gas-hungry pickup truck and I have no plans to trade it in for a fuel efficient sedan much less a hybrid. It’s not that I haven’t been hit hard by gas prices too. I just spent $75.00 on a little over 18 gallons of gas last night. Many of you have known me for years as ‘CheapAzz‘ so you would think that I would be first in line for the savings of driving a smaller vehicle. I drive a F-150 and the mileage sucks. I like my truck. Can a Honda Civic carry a load of top soil home? Can it pull my trailer or haul the twelve sheets of plywood I just bought? Can it pull my wife’s car out of the ditch or drag my children’s broke down clunkers home?

I drive very little and if I needed to travel more I would probably consider buying a third car, used of course, to run errands. It’s a free Country and it’s my choice what to drive.

All of the sudden everyone is turning green. It was perfectly ok to run around in their SUVs and mini vans until it hit their pocketbooks. I understand the need to conserve and save money but let me say, “Just because you went out and over-paid for a lesser vehicle doesn’t make you any better than everyone else“. Concerned for the environment? Great, more power to you. Just get your nose out of the clouds and save your dirty looks for that car payment.

Far too many people have converted to the ‘Go Green Religion‘ for the wrong reasons. Not because they’re environmentalists or concerned citizens. They jumped on the green bandwagon to feel superior. They go around and give their unsolicited advice about what to drive and why. I have something to say to those obnoxious idiots;

You soft green Prius driving self righteous snobs can kiss my Gas“!

That’s Right I Said It,
Brian D. Hawkins

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