Blog Review: I Am Buraot

Introduction

As part of  of Kaye and Pehpot's Blogversary contest's bonus requirements, entrants are asked to review the 4 major sponsors. I have chosen to review these in the order of the links they presented, and thus, begin with a review of

I Am Buraot

This blog is written by a skeptical pessimist, who focuses on a variety of antisocial topics ranging from Entrecard, blogspot, to the road to nowhere.

Many fellow bloggers are already familiar with the  Entredropper section of the blog. This is the area where one can register their blog's url, and pick up the "Entrecard generator" widget to paste on their site. It is a free service that the author provides to help folks pop-up and multiple EC sites for the single purpose of saving time in performing the monotonous 300 drops per day.

Design

From the site, we find that I am Buraot  sports a free "Wordpress Agregado Theme". There is a menu across the top, allowing visitors to easily move from section to section.Underneath is the blog Title, followed by the content section and footer.

Of the pages I visited, each page presents a consistent format, making visitors feel comfortable and welcome.

Theme & Content

The theme of the site oscillates between Entercard dropping lists, and philosophical essays.  While the blogger's intent  seems to focus on the essays, it is apparent that the EC dropping list has dominated the content.

Writing Style & Grammar

But, don't be fooled, the author is a polished writer, with a natural gift of expression. One of the most interesting posts that I read was entitled: The Paradox of the Road to Nowhere. It is written in the "first person" and full of imagery. Quite reflective, every reader will relate to the road of life.

Trivia

While it seems that a blog offering a Entrecard Dropping Widget may not be popular, many would be surprised to learn the number of lists that are currently active. At present, there are 47 lists, each containing 10 sites. Wow, that's 470 registered members!

Recommendation

If you haven't already visited this site, you must. The EC widget is displayed on so many blogs that you already know.  And, while you are there, you should visit the home page and read a few of the enchanting posts.

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....................

Add Your Blog to Google Webmaster Tools

Several years ago when I created Lottery Power Picks, I added it to Google's Webmaster Tools. But, when I created my Blogger blogs, I didn't think that they could be added because they were simply blogspot subdirectories.

But after seeing the "Add a site..." button for years, I finally decided to see if I could enter them.

So, I pressed the button, and added my first blog.  Once entered, a Site verification page opened. Since I don't own the site, I knew I couldn't enter an HTML verification file, so I choose the "Mega tag". Google gave me a line of code that I then inserted in the head section of my blog (I did this by pressing the Edit HTML link under the Layout tab).  Once done, I pressed "verify" and my Blog was now added to Webmaster Tools.

It was only after I entered my 3 main blogs, that I realized that there was already a link to Webmaster Tools at the bottom of the Blogger Dashboard page under Tools and Resources.

Two different help pages that Google provides with complete instructions are:

• Adding a site
• Webmaster Tools and Blogger

Why would you want to add your blog to Webmaster Tools? There are several reasons. Information such as:

• Top search queries
• Links to your site
• Crawl errors
• Keywords

and more are given to you. Plus there is a Diagnostics and Labs section on the left side menu. Addtionally, the webmaster tools Home page provides a "Messages" area that Google will use to communicate important items to you.

I doesn't matter if you have a Blogger Blog, Wordpress, or a stand-alone website, you should add it (or them) to Webmaster Tools.

It's been very helpful to me, and it might help you as well!

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

Goodbye Dropaholics

Yesterday I read on one of the CMF Ads forums that DropAholics is ceasing operations and will be shutting down. Since I have its widget on 2 of my blogs, I wanted to make sure that this was indeed the case.

I clicked on one of the DropAHolic headers and was brought to the DropAholics website.The first line of the site states that: Dropaholics is closing down.

So it is true. The site was developed by Greg Mathews and maintained a ranking of the top Entrecard droppers. Over 1300 blogs were monitored and the Dropaholic widget would display the icons of the top EC visitors to your blog.

Apparently Greg was going to e-mail all registered blogs and let them know that he is turning off the system, but I don't know if this was done. I, for one, had not received any notification.

I know this was a very popular system and will be greatly missed in the Entrecard world.

If you have a Dropaholic widget on your site, you should remove it promptly. 

I wish to thank Greg for providing such a great tool and am sorry to see it go. However, life goes on, and I wish Greg the Best Success in the Future!

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

You can read more by clicking on the Dropaholic link above, or by visiting his post:  
Dropaholics is shutting down.

A Week of Ups and Downs

This past week has been full of surprises for our blogging communities.

First, the Down. Adgitize went offline, almost a year to the day from the previous outage. Unlike last year's episode, there has been little communication from Ken, placing a wee bit of anxiety in the it's member community. While the site is back up, one forum post indicated that full functionality may not be restored until next week. If history repeats itself, an advertising extension of some sort will be credited to advertisers. As of now, we are in a "trust-me" state. As an aside, one of Ken's own site is "You Can Learn Series" which is a mainstay advertiser on Adgitize.  That domain registration has expired and brings visitors to a parked site. This seems to be quite odd since most folks who own a domain name don't want it to expire. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come.

For the Ups, both CMF Ads and Entrecard released new innovations to their product lines.

Entrecard opened, without much fan fare, it's membership to websites. While many do not believe this is significant, I believe it is important. Sites like my Lottery Power Picks have already joined and are receiving new visitors. Now, both Adgitize and Entrecard are open to websites.

And, CMF Ads introduced Network Ads. While this is similar to Adgitize, it is a great addition to their product. The primary reason is that it fills up the empty Ad space that many members experience.  While the payback to publishers will be relatively minimal in the beginning, I am sure that Ben and all will think of a way to make it more financially benefical for members to display the CMF widgets. And, this new product is a great complement to its newly released Spikes because when people visit, they will now be exposed other CMF member ads.

JL.........

Two Rounds of Applause

This week I experienced two unexpected acts of kindness from fellow bloggers, and I wanted to provide them both with a special thank-you and round of applause.

First, I received an Alert from Ben of CMF Ads, indicating that I needed to provide a feed URL for my blogs. Since I use blogger and FeedBurner, Ben instructed me to Convert my Feed to RSS 2.0 format in order for him to read our content. I wrote back and indicated that Google recommends that we publish our feeds with Smart Feed, which will automatically send our our content in whatever format. Within a day of my reply, Ben wrote back and stated that he found a way to force the feed into RSS, thus enabling CMF to import most FeedBurner feeds. I didn't expect this speedy resolution and was impressed that Ben found a solution that is beneficial to all blogger and FeedBurner users. A round of applause to Ben!

Second, I received an Entrecard message from John of English Wilderness: Nature Photography indicating that the Entrecard chicklet that displays popularity / ad price was redirecting visitors to a parked domain. This meant that nobody could visit my blogs. This problem wasn't specific to me, so John warned others and wrote the post WARNING: ENTERCARD CHICKLET WIDGET. Additionally, he contacted the site owner and had the problem resolved before I had a chance to visit my blogs.  John suggested that I remove this chicklet from my blogs since it wasn't provided by Entrecard, and I followed his advice. I wish to thanks John for helping me and all other bloggers for his proactive efforts in protecting our micro-environment. To John: A hearty round of Applause!

Thanks again,

JL..........