Saying hello to old Adgitize & CMF friends

It's been about 7 weeks since Adgitize closed and even longer for CMF. During the heyday period of those two blog advertising networks, my regular schedule was to visit many of the members participating blogs. But now that they are closed, I find myself daydreaming about the good old days.

While traffic for this particular blog has dropped substantially, my two lottery blogs have seen a dramatic growth in search engine traffic. This has kept my morale up and generates enthusiasm to keep on blogging.

To keep myself stimulated, I've settled on routine of regularly visiting a few of the blogs who were active participants in the above networks. In particular, I enjoy stopping in and reading the posts of:

• Orient Lodge and learning about Aldon's political, professional, and personal involvements,
• Sharkbytes My Quality Day which has helped me weather the winter and enjoy the Michigan scenery
• Dickster's Random Thoughts which shares Dick's personal thoughts and the family's difficulties with dealing with an autistic child
• Some Assembly Required that is written as a personal diary documenting the life of an successful advertising executive in Texas
• Carmen's Chronicles , an old favorite and a frequent commenter on my blogs, who has been recently visiting and living in India
• Quick Blog Tips by Ben Barden (of CMFads fame), and Floor15 (which will be closing shortly)
• English Wilderness by John who posts beautiful pictures scenic UK locations

While I rarely leave comments on the blogs that I visit, I just wanted to share my thoughts and let everyone know that I am still thinking about them!

PS: And of course, I continue to miss postings by our old friend Ken Brown!

Speedy Recovery Wishes for Jodi

As I was doing my daily Adgitize / CMF visits this morning, a few posts on Jodi's Journey caught my eye. One was about Counseling, one a 4th Grade Teacher's letter, and the last an indication that Jodi was to undergo a second back surgery.

So as I was driving to work, my thoughts kept returning to Jodi's surgery that was performed yesterday.

It is not too often that one of our fellow bloggers shares their feelings and their fears. But when they do, our little community often fails to notice. Please join me in

Wishing Jodi a Speedy Recovery 

and her know that she is in our thoughts. Hopefully, all went well. You can visit her blog and leave a note, send a PM, or email. I'm sure she would appreciate hearing from all of you.

Thanks,

JL..............

Followup - Yes! Blogging Contest are for Real - Thanks Pehpot

In an earlier post from February, we questioned:

Are Blog Contests Real?

To be honest, this question was posed as a response to an invitation to enter the Kaye And Pehpot Blogversary Contest!!!

While we had no doubt that this was a valid contest, we were hesitant to enter because we wondered whether an entrant from a location other than the Philippines would have a fair chance of winning. But, we entered anyway and followed all the rules by: Writing Blog Reviews and Comments. Even still, we didn't think we had a chance of winning.

Well, the contest ended and the winners were posted in:

It Ends Here

As expected, we didn't win the big prizes, but, we did win:

$5.00 as a Random winner for Posting About the Contest!

From this, we learned that some contests are indeed real and worth the effort to enter. We highly endorse contests operated by Pehpot and Kaye and encourage those of you in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and other places to consider spending the time to enter.

Not only did we visit some very interesting blogs, but we had a chance to learn about: How to Write a Blog Review. We enjoyed the commenting interaction, and liked the anticipation of winning (kinda like hoping to winning the lottery - plug, plug).

Lastly, we wish to thank both Kaye and Pehpot (and the other sponsors) for hosting the contest; and, we look forward to being invited to enter new ones they host.

Lastly, we wish all of you around the world, a very:

Happy Easter!

Christ Is Risen

Indeed He Has Risen

JL..........

Kaye & Pehpot's Contest Sponsors

As a follow up to the contest announcement, we have  listed the primary sponsors for your reference. Please take a few minutes and take a look at each of their blogs.

Below are the four MAJOR sponsors of Kaye and Pehpot's Blogversary contest:

I Am Buraot
A blog about politics, the environment, religion, philanthropy, and everything else that is life. Author is known for his generosity in sponsoring contests. The home of the famous EntreDropper.

Anak Ni Kulapo
Yet another blog of Buraot. If you want to die laughing, then go visit Anak Ni Kulapo. His life in the US and hilarious stuff about his home country are only two of the must-sees in this blog.


Seiko's Diary
The blog title says it all. This is Seiko's journal about being a mom to her five gorgeous kiddos, her take on life in general, and random musings of a woman who loves life.

Mom Conversations
A new blog about everything concerning mothers: pregnancy, health and fitness and babies are the current categories, under which are detailed articles containing tips and valuable information for moms everywhere.

Please drop by these blogs if you have the time and see why they are worthy of a special mention. :)

Are Blog Contests Real?

The past week, I received a comment from pehpot inviting me to join her contest! The steps are rather simple:

• Simply write a blog post about the contest
• Leave a comment with your first url here
• Write another post listing their major sponsors
• Leave another comment the with your url here

For this, I will get a chance to win a prize of some sort. They're giving away more than $500, and the contest runs until February 28, 2010.

Wow, a chance to win something!

My first inclination was to delete the comment, attributing it to spam. Of course, being from the New York area, I tend not to believe anyone, especially those who write in another language (because I don't know what is being said). So I thought:

Is this a Scam or Is it Real?

I really don't understand why a group of strangers are willing to give me money, but of course, it's a contest, so there is no guarantee that I will be awarded anything.

What do the organizers get out of it? Well, certainly a bunch of related blog posts that point back to their sites and a lot of comments. I guess that if you're trying to increase traffic, that's a great way to do it.

And, will they really be giving away money to those who enter? Who knows for sure. If there is a pot of cash, perhaps it will only be redistributed amongst themselves.

As I was thinking about today's post, I realized that this discussion should qualify as my first requirement. Although it's a skeptical viewpoint, it does talk about the contest and does display creativity.

So, I'll take the time to follow the remaining instructions and then wait and see. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised and indeed win a prize and learn that it's truly real, and not a scam!

JL....................

Blogger Users Can Publish Posts Automatically to Twitter

If you are a Blogger user who publishes your blog using Feedburner, you may now publish your posts automatically to Twitter!

To do this, you must publish your blog using Feedburner and have a Twitter account.

All you need to do is to

• Go to your Feedburner account
• Select your blog by clicking on the feed title
• Press the "Publicize" Tab along the top of the page
• Click on the "Socialize" Service link on the left
• Lastly, Press the "Add a Twitter Account" Button and enter your Twitter account
• Press the "Save" button at the bottom of the page.
  

That's it! You can use the default settings displayed on the page so you don't need to bother with anything else.

I can certainly say that this eliminates the drudgery of Posting to Twitter and definitely saves a lot of time!

So what are you waiting for? Get Socialized Now!

JL ............

Newbies Should Join Clickable Networks

In order to be successful after you launch your website or blog, you need to get visitors. But how to do this is often a mystery to the novice on an extremely minimal budget.

You may believe that you are doing everything that is right, such as posting interesting articles, updating content frequently, telling friends, and concentrating on keywords. But, still you're only getting 1-5 visitors a day. How can you improve this?

How do you get more visitors?

By joining the "Clickable Networks".

These are the organizations who enroll members, require you to display a widget of sorts, and encourage you to visit other member sites by clicking on their widget.

From our experience, we have identified 5 Clickable Network providers and have listed them below in alphabetical order:

1. Adgitize (Websites & Blogs - must have RSS Capability)
2. CMF Ads (Blogs Only)
3. Entrecard (Blogs Only)
4. SlogBite (Websites & Blogs)
5. Spott (Websites & Blogs)

Of the 5, two insist that you must be a blog. The other three allow both websites and blogs to join.

In our upcoming posts, we will present an in-depth review of each of these networks. We will discuss both the advantages and drawbacks of each. In addition, we will inform you as to whether your membership will be rewarding or a waste of time.

Until then,

JL..........

PS: The above list is comprised of the networks we joined. If you know of others, please leave a comment and describe them.