Hyder, of EverybodyGoTo.com has just informed me I am a winner in his most recent contest.
He held the contest to celebrate the anniversary of his blog and I won a free copy of OIO Publisher. What that means is I’ll be able to sell advertising in various formats directly from this blog. I’ll still be running Google Adsense, Text Link Ads, NeverBlueAds and AdToll Ads, but now advertisers can upload the files, pay for the ad and I can turn around and put it up in much less time.
Previously, an advertiser would send me an email, send the paypal payment to the same email address and I would then upload the graphic, create the link and then notify the advertiser their ad was up.
OIO Publisher eliminates all that mess. I’ll be installing and configuring the plugin soon so if you’ve been wanting to place an ad but balked at the process, fret not! A new system shall soon be in place! Check out the Advertise page for more details.
» Post Ad Purchase: Banner Ad
Popularity: 12% [?]
I recently got a new laptop at work since my old one was 4 years old and showing its age. Not only was it slowing down a ton, it would take at least 20 minutes before I could do any actual work.
I’m loving the new dual core 2GB RAM model I have now. The downside of course is I have to reinstall all my software. That always takes about a day. At least i get paid to sit around and watch it install. That being said, I decided this time around to install the new version of Firefox. Firefox 3 is in beta and I love it. Some of the new features include a streamlined interface, new add ons and some updates to the button locations and look and feel.
I especially like when you begin typing an address into the address bar the history begins to show along with a favicon of the associated site. Pretty slick.
If you have been using Firefox 2 and want to try out 3, it’s out there ready for download. I don’t know if it will help you make more money online but I’m sure there are going to be a lot of add-ons that will make some tasks easier.
» Post Ad Purchase: Banner Ad
Popularity: 11% [?]
I love contests. I enter a lot of contests on the net and sometimes even win. The last couple times I entered a contest I won an Apple iPod touch 16 GB and a copy of An American Hedge Fund: How I Made $2 Million as a Stock Operator & Created a Hedge Fund by Timothy Sykes.
This time around I’m hoping to win a new Apple MacBook Air from Bloggin-Ads, who’s site is about doing blog reviews. You can win too, just head over to Bloggin-Ads and enter for yourself. If I do win the MacBook Air I’ll probably turn around and give it away here since I already have a laptop but who knows. Maybe I’ll keep it to blog with.
» Post Ad Purchase: Banner Ad
Popularity: 12% [?]
I just got an email, well actually a MySpace email from a friend inviting me to the second annual (I think we can call it that) Biggest Loser contest.
The details are, this Friday I weigh myself and submit the figure to my friend who is recording all official weights. Then between now and the end of August I attempt to eat healthy and exercise regularly to lose the highest percentage of weight (hopefully fat) by that date.
Last time we did this I came in second, losing 10 lbs (which since we are doing a percentage weight loss wasn’t enough to win) but still enough to make a difference and I have kept it off since then.
At last weigh in (Weight Watchers scales) I weighed in at 218lbs. Normal clothes, without shoes and I’m 5′11″ tall.
Looking at me you wouldn’t call me obese or overweight in any way, but according to the American Medical Association I am OBESE!
Yeah, that whole BMI thing isn’t accurate…it’s only a measurement for professional nutritionists or weight trainers to decide what they need to focus on. It is, however a good indication of the amount of fat compared to other mass you carry.
I don’t get too hung up on numbers though, I look for improvements in my physical appearance and my general state of mind. When my face thins out and I feel good and happy…I’m in the zone…I’m probably at my ideal weight…then when the stress hits hard and I feel like junk food can make it all better…that’s when I know it’s gone wrong.
But we all have those challenges. It’s when we push through those everyday challenges we find ourselves in the winners circle. Hoo Rah!
» Post Ad Purchase: Banner Ad
Popularity: 11% [?]
No not mine. Everybodygoto, one of the blogs that I read on a daily basis is celebrating 2 years blogging. Congratulations! To reward all his loyal readers he’s having a contest to give some great prizes. Ahem…I could use that OiO Publisher… 
Anyway, EverybodyGoTo is a cool blog because the writer is also a theme designer and web designer and does great work. His web design company, Weborithm is probably best known for his work on JohnCow.com and it is great work indeed. Clean, custom design always stands out above the crowd.
These are the prizes being given away:
Head on over to EverybodyGoTo and find out how to enter the contest so you can win one of these fantastic prizes.
» Post Ad Purchase: Banner Ad
Popularity: 15% [?]
Every month I go over my advertising systems I have in place and determine if they are really worth keeping. Those that are making money get to stay and those that aren’t get the boot.
This month I have decided to ditch Project Wonderful. It started out as a good idea. Offer a low cost alternative to the 125×125 ad boxes that seem so popular these days. The problem was, I had no control over the cost of advertising on my site. The cost was all determined by traffic and a lot of times, the code wasn’t read properly by the Project Wonderful site so my average price was $.01. Ideally, people would begin to bid on the spot they wanted and others would outbid them…etc etc until you were getting a decent price. In turn you could then bid on other sites to place your own ad, not unlike Entrecard only this is cash instead of credits.
At one point my account was up to $2.04 or so and I decided to take out some ads on other blogs/sites. That $2 drained fast and now for one reason or another my code isn’t working…and no ads have been placed recently.
So, that being said. I have removed Project Wonderful from my blog and I have no intention of reinstating it. Without the ability to set a price I think is fair for the amount of traffic I get, I just don’t like the way the system works. My traffic also didn’t increase much as a result for using PW. Entrecard on the other hand is staying. I get quite a bit of traffic from using it and the system works a lot better now after they changed their formula for calculating how credits are accumulated.
» Post Ad Purchase: Banner Ad
Popularity: 17% [?]
blah blah I always hear the same gripes about windows, whether its the latest and greatest OS or not. I have 4 computers in my house. 1 is an XP Professional system I have to use for work as it is a corporate thing and not under my control and works fine but is about 4 years old and showing age…ie…its incredibly slow now. Another is an XP Professional system (of which I am now writing a comment with…) and my game system is Vista Ultimate 64 bit with 8 Gigs of Memory and an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 Ghz. Last but not least is an iMac with the sphere like base and flat screen which my wife uses that is now starting to show age and slowing down and/or whining a lot…
My game system is flawless and runs everything. some software you have to tell to run as administrator but so what? after that it works fine. Some games I have had trouble with but I didn’t really care because they weren’t my core game anyway which is Everquest II. Not only that, but try using more than 3GB of memory on a PC without a 64 bit OS…can’t be done. I love having 8GB of RAM.
As for business applications…Vista runs my audio software fine and I am able to edit my podcasts just fine as well as do most normal things I usually do with a computer.
It’s unfortunate Apple has gotten such a death grip on the consumer and led them to believe their computers are the end-all be-all of the everday computing platform but it’s just not so.
I will agree with nearly everyone that the iPod in all its forms is superior to most everything of its ilk out there…except maybe the Zune. Oh yeah I said it, the Zune. I prefer an open format device over proprietary device any day. That being said, I use my iPod because it was free! I won it courtesy of John Chow.com.
Anyway…my point is that its easy to bash an operating system because of defects you find that don’t suit your needs. I find it more productive to discover and use systems that meet my needs instead. If I focused on hardware and software the fell short of what I needed to do instead of focusing on what works…I would go insane because there isn’t one piece of hardware/software/operating system on the planet that accomplishes exactly everything I want it to do when I need it to do it.
Yeah, suck on that haters!
» Post Ad Purchase: Banner Ad
Popularity: 15% [?]
