Archive for August, 2007
Contest Ends Tonight!
Aug 16th
Hi everyone! As you all know, today is the last day to enter my 1GB Video Player Giveaway Contest! Tomorrow, I will be drawing a winner and showing you how much of an impact the contest has made on the blog and what your options are if you win! For those of you who don’t win, do not worry because I will be planning a second link train that will benefit everyone! Also, before the contest results tomorrow, I will be posting one last batch of entries and if once again, if you don’t see your name mentioned, please be sure to email me so that I can make sure I have you listed! So, hold on to your seats as the contest has only another 16 hours to go!
I will try to provide a video of the name drawing but I cannot make any promises as that depends on whether my software is able to edit the video or not. Either way, be assured that the contest drawing will be executed in all fairness to everyone who entered and that nobody will receive preferential treatment. I also want to let those who entered know, that if you haven’t taken advantage of the 2 additional ways to increase your chances to win, you might want to do so (look below!). Once again, Thank you to all who entered and for those of you who haven’t, today is your last chance! Once again, heres how to enter:
How can you WIN this player?
Well, I wont make it too complicated to enter this contest. All you have to do is write a line or two about me hosting the giveaway and link to the blog ( http://www.enkayblog.com ) and this post. You don’t necessarily have to have a new post but if some entries get a bit jumbled then I will let you know. I’m not too picky so this shouldn’t be a problem. The anchor text I prefer is “Enkay Blogâ€Â.
Example:
Enkay Blog is giving away an Mp3 Player with Video Playback capability in his giveaway contest. I hope I win!
After you have made the entry be sure to send me your name, your email address and the entry URL through my contact form and I will respond to you confirming your entry. Please re-check the links and anchor text before you submit your entry and I will randomly pull a name when the contest is scheduled to end. Also remember, that all entrants will receive a FREE back link so either way, everyone becomes a winner with this one! This player retails for around $100 and this could be yours!
2 Additional Entry Methods
These following two methods of entry will give you an additional of one entry each. There are not many people who have taken advantage of this and if you have already blogged about it, then these two steps should require minimal effort.
# 1: RSS Feed
Link: Subscribe to My Feed
All you have to do to gain an additional entry into the contest is to subscribe to my RSS feed and take a screen shot of it and then send me an email. Obviously, you can’t send attachments through my contact form so save the screen shot and in my reply, I will request you to send it to me. The reason for not posting my email is to avoid additional spam, so I hope you understand. This only takes a few minutes and will get you an entry into the contest.
# 2: Technorati Favorites
Link: Add Me To Your Technorati Favorites
This one is also quite simple. All you have do is add me to your Technorati favorites and send me an email with your Technorati username and you just got yourself another entry upon confirmation.
Once again, the winner will be declared tomorrow and a last batch of linkbacks will be published tomorrow! Thank you all for entering and Good Luck to all of you!
[Update]: Some of you asked me for additional pictures of the player so here they are:
Jump Start Your Page Rank Batch #3
Aug 15th
Here is the third batch of entries into the Jump Start Your Page Rank Train. The train is still continuing strong till today and there are a lot more people that need to be linked back to. This is just the third batch of many more to come! Thanks again for signing up! 
Riches of Destiny
BISEAN
Agloco Hours
Net Business Journal
Milton Ramirez
Adsense Tracker
Mischief
Gaje Master Blogging
The Life of Socrates
Rowan Forest Homeschool
3 Month Blog Birthday
Aug 15th
Slowly but surely my third month of blogging is here at my doorstep! I never imagined that the blog would get as much success as it has in this past month making it probably the most successful month for the blog. Compared to last month, I made approximately the same amount of money however this time I gained a lot more readers and the statistics skyrocketed. A few things could be attributed to that success and I would put the blame on my wonderful giveaway contest and ofcourse my “Jump Start Your Page Rank” train that till today is going strong. That reminds me, the next batch of Jump Start Your Page Rank should be up later today. Either way, this month has seen a lot more than I expected. First, lets take a look at the earnings.
Adsense – For this past 30 days, there wasn’t much of a change in ad placement other than the fact that I added a banner ad at the bottom of each post that won’t appear on the home page but on a post page. I tried to follow Google’s advice and attempted to integrate ads into as many posts as possible without violating their terms of no more than 3 ads per page. The result was that only about 20% of my posts had the ads, meaning 2 out of 10 posts had the ads displaying when there was an opportunity to have several more than that. As a result, I have now installed the Adsense Deluxe plug-in and will be seeing how this works out for the blog in the upcoming month.
Buy Me A Beer – Same as last month, there were no earnings through the Buy Me A Beer Plugin and I will consider removing it by next month if it doesn’t work out too well because it would speed up load time
Text Link Ads – After a surprising start, TLA hasn’t earned anything for the blog. I figured that at a price of $15 per month, there would be a quite a few people willing to jump on the bandwagon but that doesn’t seem to be the case. If you want to jump on this deal, then go here to order. If you aren’t a member and want to sign-up then click here.
Kontera – Although Kontera doesn’t earn as much from each click that is received, it does bring in money consistently. Even though I received more clicks this month, the earnings were down quite a bit. Hopefully, this can pick up in the future!
ReviewMe – I took it easy on the reviews this month and when you look at the earnings, you will notice the drop. The only reason was because I didn’t want to bore my reading audience with nothing but reviews. I will try to focus on not accepting any campaign offers anymore and try to see how well my half-off reviews works out for the coming month. ReviewMe can be a great way to increase your income so consider signing up for it, if you aren’t signed up already!
Bloggerwave – I think this was probably the last time I would use Bloggerwave. I only did one review for them and even though the Review was accepted and is currently displayed as “pending” they are about 15 days overdue! They failed to make a payment and as of yet, I will report that earning as “pending”. The reason I have given up on Bloggerwave is also because they have only had 2 offers in the past 40 days and thats not good for publishers, such as you and me.
Sponsored Reviews – I only did 2 reviews for SponsoredReviews this month and one of them was regarding the charity organization that was well accepted by my readers. They were very prompt and paid me yesterday without any delays. Their service is easy to use and the best part is, you pick who you review!
Contests – I did win a few more contests this month. The one that you see reported is the 7-7-7 contest that my friend BetShopBoy was hosting. The other two were contests by Derek Semmler where I won the shoemoney and flipping rich t-shirts (see post here), and lastly I won second place on the Sweet Hacks competition where I get a 3 month long text ad and a full website review! I was hoping to take first on Abdalla’s competition mainly because he gave away an xbox 360! Anyway, now lets take a look at the earnings.
3rd Month Earnings Report
Google Adsense – $8.74
Buy Me A Beer – $0.00
Text Link Ads – $0.00
Kontera – $1.40
ReviewMe – $45.00
SponsoredReviews – $35.75
Bloggerwave – $10 (pending)
Contests – $6.43
Grand Total Earnings: 107.32
These earnings are from July 15th to August 14th and if I remove the contest earnings from this month and last month, you will notice that there was not much of a change in earnings but I want to change my focus for the next month. I would like to focus more on traffic and statistics of the blog because that will help me increase my earnings in the long run. For the next month, I will be setting tougher goals in terms of statistics and I hope to reach those goals by the next time around. Lets take a look at the statistics for this past month.
Traffic: Last month, I received 5,000 visits and that wasn’t enough to satisfy me and that resulted in a 50% increase in the number of visits. This month, the blog received hits in excess of 7,500! That was a dramatic increase and the contest and the Jump Start Your Page Rank post were partly responsible for that. By next month, I hope to bring the number of visits close to 10,000 and I really feel like a good post could help me in reaching that goal.
Alexa: Last month, I had set a goal for Alexa to be in the 250k to 300k range and my alexa currently stands at 225,000 which is a dramatic drop from last month’s 400,000. Although, the drop was good, I am setting a tough goal of 100,000 by next month! The traffic goal and the Alexa goal have been set in accordance to each other and I really feel that getting the extra boost of visitors can definitely help in reaching my goal.
Technorati: Once again, Technorati was set to be under 100,000 but I never expected it to be close to 25,000! To be honest, I would have set next months goal to 40,000 if it wasn’t for the dramatic drop in Technorati. Since I am currently at around 26,000, I would really wish for that to be near 10,000 and if possible to be part of the Top 10k on Technorati.
RSS Subscribers : My RSS Feed has been gaining a lot of readers and I can’t mainly attribute that to my contest mainly because a lot of people didn’t take advantage of the additional entry methods that I had. Here is what feedburner stats looks like, for reference, I have marked the number of RSS subscribers for month 1 and month 2 on there.
Anyway, as you can see the traffic and statistics goals are very tough and I really hope that I can meet those goals and you best believe that this month I will be stepping the game up! Once again, I cannot be more thankful to my readers who have helped me and supported me in making this 3 month long journey so enjoyable and I couldn’t have done it without you! Thank you for reading and commenting!
Contest Ends Tomorrow
Just a small reminder, my 1GB Video Player contest ends tomorrow so you better hurry to get your entries in! There are close to 48 entrants and I hope to see the number of entrants rise above 50. With that said, the odds of winning are still pretty high!
Give Your Blog A Workout!
Aug 14th
Don’t take this literally but you need to give your blog a little exercise once in a while to keep it looking fresh and healthy just like me! If you keep your blog the way it is and let it be that way forever, your visitors may get a little bored eventually. The only thing that could keep them coming back is great content. Look at Problogger for example, he recently went through a complete makeover and his blog is still highly successful. Considering that his RSS counter is over 27,000 subscribers, it was a no-brainer that a design change was the last thing turning his visitors away. Forgetting the JohnChows and Probloggers of today, lets look at most start up blogs. You have to know that working on updating the look and feel of your blog will help with keeping your blog alive in the long run. Here are some workouts you can do for your blog:
1) Design Changes – if you notice, my blog went through quite a few design changes before I settled on this one. You have to realize that templates are a great start but a certain degree of customization is needed to personalize the design to meet your needs and to reflect your style. If your design remains the same as the day you downloaded it, then your readers and visitors won’t have anything to remember it by. For example, when you think of JohnCow.com you instantly think grazing cows and thats because of the image at the top. If they kept the “Misty Theme” header you might haven’t taken the site as seriously. You need to keep up with the times by maintaining a certain image for your blog. If you talk about money and your website has a “Halo” template installed then you just aren’t appealing to your target audience. Work out the design kinks and ask someone for help if you have to, but personalize your template to suit your needs.
2) Plug-in Extravaganza – nowadays, its almost as if you wish for a certain WordPress feature and the next time you look, theres a plug-in that meets that need. You have to keep your plug-ins updated because sometimes there may be new feature additions that you might have hoped for. Making sure everything is updated means that you won’t have security threats to your blog. Also, adding plug-ins can help make your life easier. For example, Better Comments Manager, is a plug-in I started using recently and it allows me to leave threaded replies to my commentators without having to fill in any information and those replies can be made with a simple click of the mouse! Plug-ins can even make it easier for your visitors and thats why if you feel a plug-in can help improve blog performance and productivity, then do not shy away from giving it a try!
3) Graphical Use – graphics can slow down your page, but if you use simple graphics then they can be as small as 2kb and as large as 10kb and still add a nice visual appeal to your blog. You should rotate the graphics on your page to avoid appearing stagnant. If you see the graphic for promoting my contest, its only 6kb and it helps promote my contest and adds color to the page. You don’t have to be a graphics expert to create nice graphics. Look at Prija from CashForComments.com, his graphics are highly information and in some instances quite hilarious! You need to brighten up your blog with images that will be entertaining and also help break the text apart. This way, your readers won’t get bored too easily.
So there you go, those were a few workouts to help you while you are on your way to blogging success and even though there are many more to come. These tips can help you regardless of whether or not you are a new blogger. So in the end, design, plugins and graphics are what need to be looked at to help your blog always look its best. Hope you enjoyed the post and I wonder, how many of you customize your themes to personalize it?
This Week In Blog!
Aug 13th
Theres always so much going on with my blog that having a post for each update could lead to a series of posts about not-so-interesting things. The reason I did this post was to pick out a few of the very important things and shed some light on it, so here goes!
Thanks to Ms. Danielle, Ed Lau & Abdalla
I have a few Thank You’s to send out this week and first thank you goes to Ms. Danielle who was kind enough to mention my contest in its last days on her blog. Secondly, I want to thank Abdalla for mentioning me in his great guest post that he did over at JohnCow.com. Lastly, Ed Lau deserves a thank you because he actually entered my contest at his blog! Thank you guys!
EnkayBlog.com Awareness
It seems that a lot of people don’t know that I actually purchased EnkayBlog.com a long time ago. I still get a few emails that say that my domain is too long to remember. On the contrary, I agree that the forwarded web address is quite lengthy and it took me a few weeks to remember that one myself, but I do own www.enkayblog.com and its a much easier way to get to this blog. So if that was keeping you from finding me then I hope this clears it up!
Monitor Dilemma
Lately my 19″ Dell LCD that is about 4 years old has been acting up. It seems that dullness has settled into the monitor over years but that isn’t part of the problem in this case. The monitor has begun to actually flicker from dull to bright and that gets quite a bit annoying while i’m working. I figured the cables were loose but even after a little cable wiggling, it didn’t seem to fix the problem. Then, about 2 nights ago, the monitor decided that “turning off” was a bad idea. Instead, it turned from a black screen to nothing but complete white brightness. The fact that the monitor sits in my room while it acts as a permanent flashlight wasn’t appealing either. So anyway, I decided to get a new monitor and ended up buying the 22″ Samsung 226BW. It cost me a fortune, but I am hoping that blogging will help me pay for it over the next few months. The problem was around for a while and I was banking on winning John Chow’s 24″ Monitor Giveaway but that was not the case so I had to go out and purchase one. Just a note, the monitor is actually a lot more than I expected, so if you are in the market for one, you should definitely go check it out!
3rd Month Blog Birthday
This is my third month of blogging and you will get to see how much I earned this month as well as how well or not-so-well my efforts of increasing my blog popularity turned out. As I said earlier, for the upcoming fourth month, I will be concentrating more of my efforts on trying to increasing my Technorati and Alexa ranking rather than focusing on boosting earnings for the blog. I will also have a post as to why blog popularity and rankings can affect your earnings in the long run and that’s why I am trying to lean more towards trying to focus on my rankings more than the earnings.
Contest Ends
Last but not the least, my blog contest ends on Thursday the 16th of August at Midnight CST. On the 16th, I will try and post the last batch of entrants and will try to email all the entrants to confirm their entry into the contest to ensure that I am not missing out on anyone. I want this to be as fair as possible to all who entered and if you don’t see your name on the list on the 16th or don’t receive an email then please do not hesitate and email me so that I can get that corrected. All entries should be received by Midnight CST on the 16th and will then be printed on a large excel sheet and later cut and put into a hat. A lucky winner will be picked on the morning of the 17th of August and will be announced later that day. Hopefully you can get your entries in! Also, JohnCow’s contest ends a day before mine, so I am hoping to score that one!
