Many months ago I was tagged by Mitch of the Web Hosting Show to reveal 5 things you don’t know about me. Who am I? I am still trying to figure that one out, but I’ll be glad to share what I know. However, I will still try and preserve the mystique around the true identity of the Web Hosting Finds Guy Behind the Scenes. Don’t worry, I’m not famous, but hey, let’s create some suspense!

First, my apologies Mitch, for taking so long. I have actually had this in my WordPress draft for many months. This year has been insane and I have finally gotten a handle on my work load (now we’ll find out if the boss actually reads these posts).

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Mitch Keeler, I’ll give you a quick summary. Mitch is the guy who makes the potentially boring web hosting industry interesting, funny and entertaining. Nuff said.

Okay here goes…

If you guys below haven’t already done this and want to continue the 5 things meme, please do:

Brian at The Code Cave
Harvey at RagePank
Jeff at Phraction
Kokul at Kokul’s World
Dave at Earthling

Does Google Love the Orange Dog? The Super Bowl Ad Contest page for Web Hosting Finds showed up at number 2 in Google search results for the phrase “super bowl commercial contest.” The 2 minutes of ranking fame has descended below the fold now, but I loved coming up higher than Yahoo!, Search Engine Watch and Digg! for something, even if it’s not web hosting related.

My Experience with ReviewMe

ReviewMe is an online advertising service that pays bloggers to write about advertiser products. Although an advertiser pays for a blog post, there is no guarantee that the review will be positive. I can verify this from experience.

The first review that a ReviewMe blogger wrote for one of my sites was negative, to put it lightly. I was told by ReviewMe support that it had been “canceled either by the blogger or because the offer was not completed within the 48 hour time limit.” However, I discovered later that the review had in fact been published on another site, which looked to have been scraped in via RSS feed. The best way I can think of to describe the post would be to form a hybrid word from these: diatribe, invective, jeremiad, tirade, vituperation. And after reading my rejected ReviewMe review, I discovered all sorts of interesting things about my web site that I hadn’t known. The reviewer pointed out a few errors on the site for which I honestly was grateful to learn and correct. Other statements were, if not inaccurate, certainly in bad taste. This of course, seemed a reflection on the maturity level of the individual blogger rather than ReviewMe. I do question ReviewMe’s screening tactics because I have a friend whose blog was rejected by ReviewMe, even though in my opinion, her blog is of higher quality than many of the reviewer blogs I saw listed in ReviewMe. Perhaps that will change over time, I thought. The company is new, after all.

Call me what you want for giving them another try, but I did. I asked a second blogger to review my site. I really liked her site and it seemed to have good organic search standing. This second review was really not that exciting but it did do a good job of explaining my product/site and its purpose. I was happy to see a big fat organic link to my site in the article. Or was it an organic link to my site? To my dismay, the reviewed URI was canonically a different URI than the one I listed in my account and certainly for SEO purposes was incorrect. Despite the fact that a visitor technically landed on my site, it was not the page I wanted them to land on or rather, that I had paid for them to land on. Moreover, the URI was not the URI I had listed in my account for review. When I politely asked that the link be corrected, I was told that RevewMe “cannot make changes to the blogger’s review.” I followed up and asked ReviewMe to please credit me for the error. It has been a week after my last follow up email and I have not heard back from them. I may still decide to cancel the transaction with my credit card company, but I don’t plan to at this point.

So, then I thought, why don’t I just contact the blogger directly and explain my situation and ask that the link be corrected? It would ony take a few seconds for anyone with even mild traces of HTML resident in their bloodstream to fix the link. The blogger would be glad to help out an advertiser, wouldn’t she? Unbelievably, there was no method of contact available at the blog who published this wonderful review.

I don’t mind that my review is disclosed as a paid review. In fact, I like that aspect of ReviewMe. But, the blogger who reviewed my product placed the words “Sponsored Review” in the title and URI. Kind of blatant and could have been done with a bit more modesty.

Some ReviewMe bloggers are using the Google “nofollow” attribute in their review links so that “they’re not buying my link juice along with their review” as this blogger states (I don’t suppose I will use the nofollow attribute on my link to him).

Famed TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington states sums up his review of this better PayPerPost service in his The PayPerPost Virus Spreads post:

While we applaud the fact that ReviewMe requires disclosure and prohibits advertisers from requiring a positive post, we still think the very act of paying bloggers to write about a product is a very bad idea. Frankly, we’re not happy that one of our sponsors has launched this type of service, and we’ve notified them that we will not allow promotion of ReviewMe through TechCrunch.

Out of curiosity, I spent some time looking around ReviewMe.com for an “About Us” page. It ain’t there at the time of this writing. I think that it might serve ReviewMe’s interest to post this type of information, especially since they have their WHOIS record iprivately registered.

I really wanted ReviewMe to work and perhaps it will one day. Right now, it’s not. I hope to hear back from ReviewMe support with a solution to the problems I’ve encountered. I understand that Patrick Gavin of TextLinkAds is behind ReviewMe. I have listened to interviews Patrick’s podcast interviews and have followed his work with TextLinkAds since it’s inception years ago. I certainly respect the man and hope the best for him.

If you have had an experience with ReviewMe, positive/negative/neutral, please comment.

Combat Internet litter at the source: don’t blog. This story is a cynical look at the burgeoning blogging phenomenon and asks if you might just be happier doing something else.

What a buzz all the bloggers are making these days! It seems like just about everybody is pouring their musings into a text box. Are you feeling tempted to start a blog of your own? Here are some ways to bypass the trend.

1. Find five completely random blogs, and read them daily for a month. After thirty days, you will absolutely dread your self-imposed requirement to read all that dreck. Any blog you create will most likely be on par with what you’ve been reading. Don’t put anyone through that.

read more about fighting the blogging urge | see digg post

Ready for some Stories?

I saw this on Digg.com and Earthling last week. In touch with your RSS feelings. We all have busy lives with very little time. Web surfing is fun but can take hours going to visit every single website and blog you enjoy. Would it not it be fabulous if you could just get all the headlines of the most current stories from all your favorite websites and blogs in one place? Well now you can, and it is called RSS feed. “

read full rss oprah story | read digg story

A bit of a diversion from our topic of web hosting, but interesting…Everyone asks questions. When you conduct a usability test, you ask questions. When you gather information from a client, you ask questions. When you write a customer survey, you ask questions. It is interesting that effective interviewers sound like effective interfaces in many ways. These interviewers lubricate information flow by getting out of the way.

read more | digg story

“A reinvigoration of civics”

NPR (National Public Radio) has a neat interview with David Sifry: Search Site Tracks Blogosphere’s Rapid Expansion. David gives a few interesting facts about the blogosphere (he’s the creator of Technorati.com, the famous blog aggregator site that helps users “sift, search and sort through blogs”).

• 175, 000 blogs are created each day
• There are about 50 million blogs in the blogosphere
• The number 1 blog on Technorati is not even in English; it’s by someone who could be considered “the Paris Hilton of China”

A “state of the blogosphere” report from Technorati founder Dave Sifry says 175,000 new blogs are created each day. Sifry finds that about 55 percent continue blogging on a regular basis. The blogosphere is doubling in size every five to seven months. Sifry offers more numbers and observations in a conversation with Scott Simon.

I got really excited when I read a CNN Business 2.0 article my friend Jamie sent me about how the guy from TechCrunch, 36 year old Michael Arrington quit his job to blog: Blogging for Dollars. The blog brings in 60k per month in revenue. Amazing that one guy’s talent and enthusiasm for the niche attracts all those loyal readers. I’ve been reading TechCrunch Blog for a while and I will certainly look at it differently now.

(Business 2.0) — Michael Arrington is a partying kind of guy. While showing off his home in Atherton, Calif., he boasts about how he crammed 500 people into his one-acre backyard at a bash in February. Then there are the official parties, like the one he threw in mid-August at August Capital, a nearby venture firm. Arrington posted an open invitation on his website at 3 a.m. By sunrise, all 500 spots were taken; the onslaught of traffic crashed his site. “I knew it would be fast,” says Arrington, who houses so many out-of-towners in his ranch home that he often isn’t sure who’s crashing on which mattress on which floor in which room.

Arrington, a 36-year-old entrepreneur behind a long list of unrecognizable startups, has suddenly become one of the rising stars of Silicon Valley. Why? The answer lies in TechCrunch, Arrington’s blog about new technologies and companies. In the year since he launched the site, he has amassed such a strong following that he’s become a go-to person for VCs and tech execs looking to leak corporate tidbits or announce news. More than 1.5 million readers regularly check out his site. But here’s what gives Arrington real distinction: He’s pulling in $60,000 in ad revenue every month. That’s 10 times what the site was making earlier this year, which was when Arrington, convinced of the potentially monstrous riches ahead, quit his day job as president of a startup to blog full-time.

Pencil, paper and notebooks may have just become more antiquated. This blogger is working with another on a project about using blogs in the classroom and explains the tools one could use in a classroom environment. Blogging platforms, Flock, NetNewsWire. RSS is an important part of the project. We didn’t have blogs in my high school. If so, I might have showed up more often and stayed awake

I thought I would start by sketching out the technical tools, programs, web services etc. that Jenn has decided to use, as well as provide some background on those decisions. If this is not all clear here, please have no fear, I intend to develop this all in much more detail later.

Although many of us don’t have to “fake” it, Penguin Pete’s Blog’s about How To Totally Fake Being A Geek:

Yes, it’s come to this. The same people you raked on in high school now run the world and control every gizmo you own or want to own. And, as you hold your “normal” identity throughout your life, there are times when it may be advantageous to pose as a geek. Maybe to convince your first date that you have job prospects beyond “Walmart clerk”. Maybe to slip in the door at Comdex. Perhaps even to escape being hacked to death by the evil-looking punks at the Internet cafe, the ones with the Tux penguin tattoos and the Mohawks who are eying your laptop. Hint: They don’t like you because of the suit and tie; they HATE that!

 This is another Donyell Nelson blogging article that points out some blogging mistakes that lots of bloggers seem to make. Donyell has a way of keeping things simple and to the point. Read, learn and enjoy.

1.You have your own domain name and web hosting but you decide to host your blog elsewhere. Why? If your website is www.anythinghere.com then your blog should be hosted at www.anythinghere.com. There is no reason for you to use an external blog service. First of all you are putting the control of your blog in their hands- what happens when they decide to erase it? - Believe me, it happens. The second reason this is silly is because you should want to brand yourself and your business. Using another company’s domain is great for their branding but not yours.

2. Long blog entries bore people. Don’t be afraid to break up entries, you don’t have to post the whole story in one day. Also, make use of bullet points, numbered lists, and pictures.

3. Save the long words for your doctoral dissertation. We know you are smart, we know you have a nice vocabulary but we don’t want to read “magnanimous” when “noble” will do. Keep it simple.

4. A RSS subscription option is very important. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t run from it. If you want people to read your blog on a regular basis then you have to make it easy for them to do so. Having an “enter your email here” box is a nice start. But if I have 25 blogs I read, I am not going to want 25 different emails coming to me each time someone updates.

5. Writing for search engines and contextual advertising is not the best way to make money. Sure, you may get a few adsense clicks here and there but do you really think that people will come back for more if your sentences read like “I think you should make money with your financial payday loan so you can work at home and be rich with this banking information that I will give you for more money.” To put it simply, write for people-not for machines.

Do you ever get blogger’s block? I do. Well, I just happened to fall upon this brief but poignant article by Donyell Nelson that inspired me to escape that problem. She is a business oriented blogger and host of Bold Business Talk. Read on for more…

A lot of people want to blog because they see it as something they should have, but they don’t want the chore of maintaining one. You have a business to run, you have a family to manage, and perhaps you really don’t enjoy writing. That doesn’t mean that you can’t create interesting blog content to post on a regular basis.

Here’s how:

1.Think of something that really bothers you. Consider why it bothers you and think of how it can relate to your business. There’s your first blog post. For example, I don’t like it when people send me rude emails that I perceive to be short in tone so I wrote a post about how to jerk-proof your emails.

2.For post number two think of a few questions that people ask you about your business. Write down the questions and the answers and there is your second blog post.

3.Did you read something interesting lately? What was it and why was it interesting? Can you find a copy of it online? Find the link and post it along with a quick summary and commentary of why you find it interesting.

4.What’s going on in the media? Think of a popular headline, movie, or TV show and come up with a plan for writing a blog about it. For example, when The Devil Wears Prada came out, I wrote a post called “Are you a Devil in Prada?” which discussed how people should strive to treat each other in business environments.

5.When all else fails, make a list! Think of a topic that you know about and come up with a top 5, top 7, or top 10 list. For example, look at this article.

Donyell (DJ) Nelson is an entrepreneur, writer, and speaker who gives people the inspiration and information to create successful online businesses. She is the host of Bold Business Talk and the author of Jump Start Your Success: 9 Insider Secrets to Running an Online Business. Find out how to jump start your business at http://www.Donyell.com

‘Bad’ Words Earn Blogger Big Fine

The Associated Press reports that a media watchdog group protested the conviction of an Italian blogger for defamation, warning Friday that such a verdict could lead to censorship of blogs in Italy.

Blogger Roberto Mancini, 59, was convicted of defamation last month in Aosta, northern Italy, and sentenced to pay $16,900 in fines and damages.

Four people, including two journalists, had filed a complaint against him over the content of his blog, which reports on local news in sarcastic and sometimes crude terms.

The problem for the legal authorities: How do you prove the guy actually made the post?

Read ‘Bad’ Words Earn Blogger Big Fine

Blogging isn’t just for fun anymore. More and more companies are starting their own business web logs. What are some of the reasons they do it? What are the benefits of blogging? This article gives several arguments and ideas and asks the question: is blogging the right choice for your company too?

read more | digg story