This is non-exclusive. You can do whatever sort of cooperative efforts you are already doing with others. The more traffic you generate elsewhere, the better this works, so go for it! This doesn't affect your ownership of your blog, your advertising, your links, your membership in other networks, your content, your blog design, etc.

I have found one very interesting and potentially very big opportunity to generate lots of quality inbound links for each other's sites and that's a big part of the impetus behind this project. A half dozen members is sufficient to create a «critical mass» with this particular tool, though we might add a few more if all the original members agree. This is something I stumbled onto in the backend of the Google Webmaster tools. I managed to find one SEO guy that has spotted this same thing and that is it. Darren Rowse hasn't written about it, John Chow hasn't mentioned it. I don't read Shoemoney, but if he wrote about it, it didn't show up in a Google search.

You'll need to have two websites to join. (If you only have one and want to team up with a friend who has one and be considered one «member», that's fine.) These should preferably be sites with their own domain names. If you have an existing Blogger blog or something similar that is well established, indexed in Google and Yahoo, with some «Page Rank», that might be acceptable. At least one of the sites needs to already be indexed in Yahoo and Google. The other site can be new and PR0, but sites that have been banned for spam, etc. are not allowed. The sites have to have original content. They have to be more than just link blogs and they definitely can't be scraper sites.

This is going to be first come, first served and I'm not revealing much of anything to anyone I don't think is serious. If you're already active with things like EntreCard, social networking, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. you're going to get first shot. To «apply» send me an email tomhanna a-t tom-hanna d-o-t com.

Here's what I'm offering to get this thing moving for all of us:

1 - Links from an existing PR 5 blog for every member. This is a bonus, in addition to my own equal contribution as a member. Want a free link from a PR5 blog? Join and devote half an hour a day to driving traffic to your own blog and others. That's called «win-win».

2 - I've set up the system so we can all do this in a matter of a half hour a day or less.

3 - I'll be offering my help or advice as needed to get setup.

Post from: RenaisNet

There were a total of 24 entries from 6 entrants, so anyone who took the time to enter and follow the rules had a good shot at a prize worth roughly $100. And they are all automatically entered 1 time in the next contest where Everybody Wins! That's a lesson worth learning for the current contest where the top prize is $50 cash, 2500 EntreCredits (worth roughly $25) and a year text link. Plus, every website/blog owner who enters gets something of real value just for entering - a nonreciprocal link, the most valuable kind. Everybody who enters wins. You just can't beat it. The lesson - ENTER!

Anyway, congratulations to Mark and thank you to these folks who followed the rules and sent their entry email:

• Brandie from BrannRay.com (site down - I'll put a live link when it's up and running)
• Erz from Blog Paradise
• Kent the EntreBanker of My Internet Marketing Adventures fame
• Debbie (link to follow)
• Andrew who blogs at Environmentastic - the best of several great conservation blogs focused on personal action that I've run across through EntreCard.
• Sweet Mummy of It's OK to be WEIRD!, who is «(striving to be) a wife of noble character.»

To those who recognize that they entered and aren't on this list, a consolation prize - send me the entry email you didn't send to start with and I'll enter you in the next contest (where Everybody Wins!)and add your link to the list.

A few odds and ends:

I used the random number generator at Random.org to pick the winner. This generator uses atmospheric noise to create a true random number instead of the pseudo-random numbers typical of software randomness generators.

I listed the entrants and assigned them one number for each entry.

My original plan was to generate a random number between 1 and the number of entries and count down to the individual email it represented. With a large number of entries that would have been a quick and workable solution. Since the number of people who sent the email was so small, quick and workable wasn't an issue, fortunately.

Post from: RenaisNet

My 2007 gross was $7,938.05. Google Adsense accounted for $3,264 of this. Text-link-ads.com accounted for $4,406.49. Yahoo Publisher Network and BlogAds accounted for the rest. These numbers should have been higher. I had very low growth from 2006 as I let some sites lapse due to other obligations and dealt with some problems on others. (One entire site got banned from Google because the information I was publishing appeared to be keyword spam. It consisted of bank and government owned home listings and it duplicated city names hundreds of times a week. It was all legitimate information, but the duplication got picked up as spam. It didn't help that I was selling text link ads on that site, I'm sure.)

My expenses were probably higher than average as I added unlimited wireless internet from AT&T midway through the year ($50/month roughly) and the cost of a DSL connection in this backwoods area is $65/month.

I also purposely pay for multiple web hosts for a couple of reasons:

• Multiple IP addresses may marginally improve search engine results
• Redundancy. I've been burned three times now by very good web hosts suddenly turning to crap. I'm now using the highly recommended A Small Orange for one site, Daily Razor for another site and GoDaddy for the balance.

Finally, I've plowed a lot of money into long term domain registration during December. That should mean lower expense for a few years and it should also increase the earnings as longer term registrations reportedly get a higher authority from at least one big search engine that starts with G.

My advertising expense on the other hand is fairly low. I ran a couple of BlogAds - basically spending the money I made selling BlogAds - and that's it. I have year old unused credits for AdWords and Microsoft's advertising network. Guess I ought to use those...

Post from: RenaisNet

The weekly prizes won't start until the first week in February, but you can jump on board now and get a slot in the first set of Everybody Wins! prizes. There are multiple prizes with this contest and it will be simple for any blogger to enter - no email, comment, or subscription required as long as you have a way to be contacted at your site.

The EntreCard credit contest for January is still going with over 7600 credits and counting to be awarded and very few entries. Entering the January contest earns a bonus entry in the EveryBody Wins! contest!

The prizes:

1. $50 (US), 2500 EntreCard Credits and a 1-year text link
2. 200 EntreCard Credits and a month of advertising (Monthly)
3. 200 EntreCard Credits and a week of advertising (Weekly)
4. Everybody Wins! - nonreciprocal link to your site from this one

2 Ways to enter:

1. Write a blog post with a valid link about any blog post on any RenaisNet blog and send a trackback. (If you don't have trackback, use SimpleTracks or leave a comment manually.)
2. Post a link to any RenaisNet site on your own site and leave me a comment or send me an email.

A complete list of sites you can link to or blog about follows along with details about the prizes.

Rules:

1. Enter as often as you like, but only one link or blogpost to each RenaisNet site from each of your sites.
2. First prize will be awarded when there are 500 trackbacks or links.
3. Contest will start again with a new first prize after 500 trackbacks or links and all original entries will be included in the new contest.
4. Anyone who entered the current EntreCredit contest gets an automatic entry.
5. «Bad neighborhoods» aren't eligible for the Everybody Wins link.
6. Please no adult or gambling sites.
7. Legitimate links - no «nofollow» or similar cloaking and no javascript links.
8. Your link or blog post should say something that would make the reader want to take a look.
9. Links should have reasonable anchor text - some keyword reasonably related to what you're linking to should be included.
10. No «splogs». Your trackback has to get past Akismet and Spam Karma II set to «Total Beeatch» setting. It also has to pass muster with my nose test. My decisions on this are final.
11. Cash prize will be sent by PayPal or check at the winner's option.
12. Don't be an idiot.
13. Any threat of legal action will immediately end the contest with the cash prize donated to the American Tort Reform Association.

More on the prizes:

A year text link - This will be a text link network wide for a year. It wil be a «dofollow» link but may be below the fold.

A month of advertising - This will be a 125x125 pixel ad (you supply the graphic) on 5 RenaisNet sites of your choice for one calendar month. This will be in prime territory above the fold.

A week of advertising - This will be a 125x125 pixel ad (you supply the graphic) on 1 RenaisNet site of your choice for seven consecutive days. This will be in prime territory above the fold.

EveryBody Wins! links - These will be posted as blog posts monthly on RenaisNet.com. If your entry points to RenaisNet, I'll post your link on another site so you get the nonreciprocal link benefit.

Site List

RenaisNet

Internet and Technology

Blog Carnivals

Blog Carnival Strategies for Readers and Bloggers

Googleholism

Googleholism: Online Support for Googleholics

Entertainment and Media

McGossip

Grey's Anatomy: The McSteamiest Gossip around!

Talkster

Talkster the Talk Radio Resource

Politics

Election 2008 Countdown

News, Information and Resources on the 2008 US Election

Election 2006

Archived news and information from the 2006 US Election

Tom Rants

Flyover country libertarian Republican perspective

Business and Consumer

Tom's Reviews

Product, Service and Website Reviews

The Barter Blog

Trade and Barter News

Financial Options

Investing and Financial Planning

EconoIndicators

Economic Indicators and Statistics

Building Wealth

Business Opportunities and Asset Protection

Safe and Secure

Keep your family safe and secure in a risky world

New Jobs' Caling

Your new career is calling

Real Estate

RealNews

Real estate and mortgage news

RealAnswers

Answers to your real estate and mortgage questions

Luxe Homes

Luxury, Executive and Resort Homes

REO News

News from the Foreclosed Real Estate Industry

RealStake

News on commercial and investment real estate and development

Growing Global

International Real Estate

Missouri REO Foreclosed

Foreclosed properties on the market in Missouri

Books

RealShelf

Lists and reviews of business, real estate, finance and investing books and magazines

My Library

Personal Book Collection - With Reviews

Other

Floater

Outdoor fun and travel adventures

Post from: RenaisNet

I was about to get to the nitty gritty of designing a new theme, which having produced one so simple I even called it UltraSimple, I can tell you is not a small undertaking. At the last moment, I was saved, when I ran across the 1 Blog Theme written by Javier García of the 1Blogr network.

Javier has the theme billed as «WordPress template with lots of customization options.» That's an understatement. The theme can be so thoroughly customized, from color to header images to column widths to the insertion of ads/text/scripts/objects virtually anywhere on the page, that the only way you'd know two different sites were both using it was by looking at the credit in the footer.

I expect to write a full review on 1 Blog Theme on my review site in the next few days. For now, I just want to note that I'm using the theme here and will be rolling it out across many of the RenaisNet sites as I have time to customize it. And I want to say a Big Thank You Muchas Gracias to Javier for a very nice piece of work.

Post from: RenaisNet

I Volunteer

Giuliani Tax Cut Plan

On Diplomacy, Giuliani Gets It

Thompson Tax Cuts Big Enough?

and

Giuliani Tax Cut Plan... featured again under the Business and Finance category.

(Note that this is a conservative-libertarian political blog. If you want to leave comments on the views expressed in the pieces, please do so at that blog. Comments must, in any case, be civil or they'll be deleted.)

Post from: RenaisNet

• Inspiring Quotations and Poetry
• Fantasy Baseball
• The Thin Red Line
• Arohan's Investing Life
• Turnip of Power
• Computer Tech News
• «My Blog»
• Internet Dreamer
• The Mountain
• Jean Costa

That's about all I have to say on EntreCard for the moment, but check Blogcarnivals tomorrow for a special double EntreCard treat and be sure to check out the 3001+ EC credit giveaway updates.

Technorati Tags: EntreCard, Top Droppers, contest

Post from: RenaisNet

Don't miss the Everybody Wins! contest - prizes up to $50.

Complete details, how to enter and rules here.

The pot is well over 5000 points at this point and should be a couple thousand larger by the time the contest ends. The pot will be at least 10,000 EntreCredits to the winner.

Before the full update, a couple of thank yous. Dark is Easy added 75 points to the pot as I won the Dark is Easy weekly EntreCard contest.

Another thank you to my top ten droppers, as well as the several others who drop nearly every day and added quite a few points to the pot.

Thanks to the people who bought ads on my widget. Unfortunately I didn't keep track and can't find a way to look up all the past ads, but the current advertiser is Lobo Links and past advertisers include Scott McKinnis's The Mountain (also my first dropper) and The Optimizer SEO News. I'll ad others as I remember them and as new advertisers come on board. If you advertised, leave a comment or contact me and I'll add you. Thanks again. New advertisers: SEOJr. and EZ DIY Electricity. Dark is Easy, Lobo Links, Ask Shari About Fantasy Golf and Hulag.

Now the latest results:
January 27, 2008

• Minimum Credits to Winner: 10,000
• Currently in account: 9,082

January 18, 2008
2 AM

• Minimum Credits to Winner: 6,719
• New advertisers:
  • Lobo Links Blog
  • Affiliate Lounge
  • A Million Readers in About 365 Days or so...
• Credits Added Today: 56 (as of 2 AM)
• Number of entries so far: 16
• Expected value of an entry: 419 credits
• Cost to advertise on my card: 94 credits
• Number of blogs with the card: 4

January 14, 2008
1:30 AM
2 AM

• Minimum Credits to Winner: 5539
• Credits Added Today: 6 (as of 1:30 AM)
• Number of entries so far: 7
• Expected value of an entry: 791 credits
• Cost to advertise on my card: 102 credits
• Number of blogs with the card: 4

January 13, 2008
2 AM

• Minimum Credits to Winner: 5268
• Credits Added Today: 28 (only 2 AM)
• Number of entries so far: 7
• Expected value of an entry: 753 credits
• Cost to advertise on my card: 110 credits
• Number of blogs with the card: 4

January 6, 2007:

• Minimum Credits to Winner: 3184
• Credits Added Today: 400+
• Number of entries so far: 4
• Expected value of an entry: 796 credits
• Cost to advertise on my card: 117 credits
• Number of blogs with the card: 4

Post from: RenaisNet

Want 3,000 plus way over 3000 Entrecard credits in one fell swoop? Here's your chance.

At the end of January I will be giving all the credits in my Entrecard account to one lucky
winner. At the current rate, that should be over 3,000 credits. If the rate drops off, I will turn over the credits I have at the end of January and keep clicking until I have 3,000 total to give the winner. As of evening of January 6, I have 3184 credits. I'm adding hundreds a day, spending none and the winner will get them all at the end of the month. Get the latest updates on the credit count here. So don't forget to drop a card whenever you visit - the credit from the drop could be yours, too!

Bonus: If I get at least 500 entries, the winner will get a $25 Amazon Gift Certificate. (Why $25? Because Amazon gives free standard shipping on $25 or larger orders.)

Bonus 2: Everyone who enters will get 1 entry in my next contest, whatever it is.

Rules:

So far several dozen people have attempted to enter, but only 4 have sent in the email to complete the entry.

To give people with lives offline and no Man in India to help, I'm limiting the maximum entries for each type.

The big rule for all of these is that whatever you do has to be legitimate - no spam, no flaming - legitimate comments and constructive criticism only. Don't Digg something you really don't like just for a point - find something you can honestly recommend.

For each individual entry, send an email telling what you did to entrecontest at gmail dot com. I will not save your email address, sell it or use it for spam. I'll send a thank you at the end of the contest and notify the winner by email. The only other use would be for a bonus giveaway with no obligation and no cost. To make things a little easier and increase the chance that I'll pay your blog or other page a return visit, put something informative in the subject line like «Blog post» or «Digg» or «MySpace».

At the end, I'll use a random number generator to pick an email and I will verify every entry from that email address. If I find cheating, I'll pick another email at random and do the same until I find someone who has all legitimate entries. If you cheat, I reserve the right to visit your house and cause chaos.

So, how do you enter?

1. Add me as a friend on one or more of these sites (1 per site):
   • LinkedIn
   • Twitter
   • Orkut
   • Facebook
   • CouchSurfing
   • Friendster
   • MySpace
   • LibraryThing
   • Ryze
   • Yahoo360
   • A Donkey and An Elephant
   • Xing
   • Jobster

   Check back - if I discover the latest greatest Web 2.0 site and join before the end of the month, I'll add it to the list!

2. Post on your blog. Do a legitimate blog post about any site, article, post, etc. in the RenaisNet network including this one. What's legitimate? Well, it needs to include a real link (no «nofollows,» cloaking or other similar techniques) and it needs to at least recommend that people visit. Constructive criticism is ok, posts that disagree with me on issues are welcome - flames criticizing where I part my hair or my big nose are not. (20 max)
3. 3. Digg or Stumble. Do a legitimate Digg, Stumble, Furl, Reddit or Delicious post on any site, article, post, etc. in the RenaisNet network. What's legitimate? It should be something that you honestly recommend. There are lots of quality pieces in the network that have been written up lots of places but never made it to Digg. Look around and help fix that. (20 max) (Need a point for a blog post or Digg - look at the bottom.)
4. Join my network at (1 per site):
   • Join Doostang with my invitation. Email me at invitemetom at gmail.com introducing yourself so I can send you one - let me know why I should recommend you as this is a closed group! Put «Doostang» in the subject line, please.
   • SalesSpider
   • Moola
   • BlogRush (In your email, let me know where your widget is displayed and the date/time you joined.)
5. Write me an endorsement or recommendation on (1 per site):
   • Doostang
   • Rapleaf
   • RateItAll
6. Tip me using any of the TopSpot widgets on any RenaisNet site (1 per widget). I have these all set at $1 currently and you get a link advertisement for your family friendly site included. (Currently up at Tom Rants - I'll be adding more.)

Pointers for blog posts, Diggs, etc.:

1. EconoIndicators - a relatively new site that provides quick «At a Glance» summaries of all the major economic indicators with the full reports available. Need the latest economic news on your finance or business site - use of the feed for republication is encouraged!
2. RealAnswers - devoted to answering questions about real estate and general business. Ask a question and if it's something I'm experienced with I'll answer. If not, I'll research it. Get your answer in plain English, easy to understand, minimal jargon.
3. Financial Options - The Weekly Financial Roadmap feature gives a look at the major scheduled financial news events of the coming week - economic indicator releases, central bank announcements, Treasury security auctions - so traders and investors can plan their week. This feature has been written up on About.com, Business Week and others, but it has yet to be Dugg (Digged?).
4. Free Resume Posting - Get your resume posted free of charge at my job and career site, New Jobs Calling.
5. Do a review of a review - Book reviews up at My Library. Find something good to read and share it.

Post from: RenaisNet

Technorati Tags: economic, news, feed, free, webmaster, website tools

Post from: RenaisNet