Bush Mackel

With SO much going on in this post, I just HAD to have a name to reflect it all!

Even though I still haven’t been able to beat Zuma Deluxe, or “Green Grass and High Tides” in Rock Band, this has been a pretty good week for myself both in terms of this blog and for other sites I have going on.

So for today I present you with Saturday Speedlinkin, the last word in the first contest, and the results of the super secret second contest I had a day or so ago!

Saturday Speedlinkin XII
18 Amazing Yet Simple Photo Effects to Make Yourself Look Different by Rajat – I’ve really been getting back into more design and image manipulation lately, so this is right up my alley.

Garry Conn Shifts Gears by Brown Baron – I knew about Garry’s other blog, Blog the Internet before this post, and it looks like he’s changed the look of it a lot since I was there last… I’m definitely interested in seeing how he does with it.

Six Defining Moments of a Problogger by Darren Rowse – I always love getting into the heads of the successful, and this post lets us all do just that. And I think it’s cool that the six things Darren has on there I DEF would not put on my personal list. Well, accept for maybe starting THIS blog. (#):)

And of course, you’ve all been stumbled!

Secret Contest Winners!
So as many of you know, I posted details on how to enter my secret contest a little while ago. The post went up very late in the day and was limited greatly by time but despite this, I still had some people find it and enter it. And the winners are…

ALL OF YOU!

So congrats ES, Mary, Apexad, and Teeni! I’ll be sending you kids an e-mail back for your address so I can send you your *drumroll* And before I forget, not only do I have to thank you for playing, but thanks for the thoughtful e-mails. Learning more about you guys makes this whole thing more fun for everyone!

SanDisk Sansa m240 1 GB MP3 Player w/ FM Tuner!

Contest 1 of 3 Wrap Up
And for the rest of you (and ES, Mary, Teeni and Apexad who are still eligible), remember that the first contest is wrapping up today, so make sure you get that last word from my feed and e-mail me the secret phrase before 1pm EST Sunday Feb 17th.

Good luck everybody! (P.S. I forgot to change the secret word when I originally posted this, so if you don’t see it, make sure you refresh the feed or something).

Boy oh boy did that power outage last night mess me up in regards to posting.

I had planned to get home, catch up on e-mails, write some posts and continue to fight the good fight.

But as you know, that didn’t exactly happen when MY source of power, electricity, was ripped from my life leaving me w/o a dream in the world.

It was so funny… At one point last night, I just grabbed my laptop and started to slink into my dark family room when my wife said, “Did I do something?” I replied, “No… I just don’t have a reason to go on.” ha ha I can really be over the top sometimes but seriously! – I had planned to do my posts, write e-mails, work on my sites, finish Zuma… It RUINED my night AND my post for today. So instead of anything useful, I’ll just give you an update of what’s crackalackin’ on my side of the street.

Video Games
As previously stated, I still need to finish Zuma Deluxe. That game is still a blast and I’d feel like less of a person if I never got those achievements for it. And after that, I have to go back to Rock Band and continue to work on that one.

Web Stuff
Well this site seems to be going pretty well for the moment, so I’ve finally turned my attention back towards LSO and going forth what that project. Don’t worry, details of that will be forth coming. Aside from that, I’ve also gotten some ppl who are interested in me doing some web work for them, so I really should be working hard this weekend to get that stuff done or at least progress talks with those persons.

Everything Else
I guess the only other things worthy of mention are the contests on here. Remember: The first contest wraps up manana, and tomorrow I’ll also be revealing who won the secret contest from yesterday and what exactly those people won! BOOYAKA!

Admittedly, the title has nothing to do with anything other than the fact that it’s Valentine’s Day. So before I forget, Happy Valentine’s Day!

I’m not sure what yours consisted of, but a quick recap of mine was I lost power for a very very long time, and you know that for a tech guy like me that just breaks my heart.

Thankfully though, it just came back (right before I was going to go to bed) so I thought I’d jump on and just let you know that it’s Secret Contest Time (2 out of 3)!

How do you play?
Just e-mail me and tell me what you want to accomplish in life. In can be anything… Something professional, something personal, but I hope you’ll sincerely make it honest. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to pick winners for this one, but the deadline is Feb 15th, 1pm EST. Good luck!

“Woah ho hO HO! STOP THE CAR! We got an emergency can’t you see!?”

If you hadn’t heard – That emergency is the one year anniversary of this site and me having to find a way to celebrate it! WAHOO! (Can you tell I’m very excited for a Monday!?)

But hey, you should be excited too because I’m giving away some tremendous prizes for all of you kids out there in blogland! Because I wouldn’t still be at it if it wasn’t for all of you!

“You gotta be IN IT to WIN IT.”
So here’s how the contests are going to shake out. First off, they’re going to take place between this week and next week and are aimed at not only giving YOU guys some cool stuff, but also upping my subscriber count. So to play two out of the three contests…

1. Subscribe to my feed!
2. Once you’re reading it, check out the footer on the post to get the “Word of the Day“.
3. At the end of the week take the five words, put them together and shoot me an e-mail to enter the contest!

You HAVE to e-mail me all five words to enter the contest. So after you e-mail me, you’ll automatically be in the runnings with one entry. If you want more entries do the following and make sure you let me know with URLs on your entry e-mail…

• Comment on this post +1
• Post about the contest on your site. +5

And that goes for each of the RSS contests – One this week (starting tomorrow) and one next week (starting Tuesday of that week too).

The Mystery Third Contest
I’m not gonna tell you what the third contest is, how to enter it and when it’ll be… Only that it’ll be during these next two weeks. So stay tuned to the site and to the feed, and when you see it, pounce like a cat!

Prizes
At this point, I’m going to say what the prizes are for any of the contests but I’ll say they’re certainly things I’m going to spend money on (i.e. not services) and should be stuff that you guys will like if you like this site. You kids gave me a lot of good ideas on my previous post on the subject, and I’ll probably take a few ideas from there. (#):)

One of the great things about having a site like this is when you’re in unchartered waters, you can throw yourself upon the helpfulness of your community!

If you couldn’t tell, I need some contest help from all of you out there in blog land… This site is coming up on its 1 year anniversary next week and to celebrate, I’m definitely having a contest. (wahoo!)

The problem is, I’ve never really run a contest before.

How Do You Go About Marketing a Contest?
So the first thing I really need help with is how to market this bad boy. Obviously when you have a contest, one of the big things you try and do is bring in new readers. And common sense says that if potential new readers don’t know about your contest, they’re not going to become new readers because they’ll never find your site.

Now I already know that one of the contest conditions is – “If you blog about the contest I’m going to give you better odds to win it”, but I need to know of places that specifically promote blog contests that I can get my little site onto. I could search into this info myself, but why waste the time when I’m sure SOMEONE out there has already talked about it on their site ad nauseum. (So especially if you have a post about it, please feel free to throw in the link on your comment).

What Do You Kids Like Nowadays?
By far this is more interesting part of my plea, but I’m asking you guys for some ideas as what you’d like to win! I already have in my head a few things that I think would make great prizes, but I know you can probably offer up some stuff that I haven’t thought of yet. And while there’s no guarantees that I’ll follow your suggestions (especially if it’s way expensive) – I’ll at least ENTERTAIN the thoughts. (#):)

Thanks everyone!

Oh, and I updated the blog earnings report with more ppl’s figures – So make sure you check it out!

Last month was a good month for me.

I think I did a lot of things good, cut out a lot of the bad stuff and in the process tripled my page views and unique visitors (not to mention the continued increase in my feed subscriptions).

As you’ve probably guessed though, I’m not content to rest on my laurels! I certainly want to keep up these good trends and definitely want to keep meeting friendly people. (#):)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
In regards to the “bad” things I was doing, I don’t think it was limited to June. In fact, I know it wasn’t. But June just happened to be the month where I figured it out and did something about it.

• Posting Frequency – I’m so proud that I managed to write a post everyday. It wasn’t easy at times but I knocked it down. Having the calendar in the sidebar really helped to keep me honest.
• Upping the Quality and Upping the Relevance – In the past, I think I’ve written more about what was happening in my personal tech life…Stuff that doesn’t necessarily interest anyone but me. I tried to shift that a bit, in focusing on what what was going on my tech life that you guys would care about and would be of benefit to discussing for everyone. This has become a bit easier as time has gone on because I’m starting to get a small feel of what you guys like and what you don’t.
• “How-To” Posts – Last month was the first month where I wrote a series of posts or a “how-to” post and the response has been phenomenal. I couldn’t ask for more. Sometimes we take it for granted that the stuff we know won’t be of use to others, but you just never know. And best of all, everyone chimed in to add some great tips for everyone’s added benefit!
• Scannable Posts – It wasn’t until I really started reading ProBlogger that I was able to really significantly improve upon the way I write posts. I was looking back at some old ones last night, and it was really hard to read them, even for me. The reason is I didn’t make them scannable so it was taking more effort than I would’ve wanted to get my eyes to go through them. Making lists and using bold text makes things a LOT easier for everyone.

Still to Come
Despite my successes, there are still many things that I need to implement and improve upon. And I’m looking forward to getting that underway soon…

• AdSense – In the next couple of days, I’m going to post what I think will be my first revenue post. I added AdSense about three weeks ago, and I’ve made pretty much next to nothing with it. But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up. Thanks to some of my friends, I’ve received some killer tips and look to implement them this next month to try and get those numbers up. (I also have to report about Review Me, Pay Per Post and Sponsored Reviews).
• Alexa and PR – This also lies on the monetization front but there it is anyway. Currently my PR is at 1. I need it to go up. I know the PR update should be happening any day now, but the suspense is killing me! And on the Alexa side of the ball, I’m still working to drop my number. *laughs* This is a fun game to play isn’t it? For competitive people like myself, it really is a lot of fun.
• Contests – I started this blog in February so this is its 6 month anniversary! And that means I gotta have a big ol’ contest! I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I’m going to do but it’s going to be a lot better than my last one!

Even though I’ve never thought about it ’till now…Had you told me months ago that today I’d have 100 posts under my belt, I probably wouldn’t've believed you. I especially wouldn’t've believed that I’d be writing so consistently but like I’ve said so oft before, it’s all because of you guys! Your comments, e-mails, and all the stuff in the middle makes this little thing of mine such a dynamic and fun place to be. So thank you!

I don’t remember when exactly, but sometime ago I said that this blog was X months old. Well regardless of what I said, I’m pretty sure it was lie because as it turns out, I started this blog well before I implied I did in that post. To get to the point, next month in August will be this bad boy’s official 6 month anniversary. So on or abouts August 1st, I will have my biggest contest yet! (Which shouldn’t be hard considering I’ve only had one other.)

BUT – I don’t know what the contest is gonna be, and I don’t know what I’m gonna give away! So if you have ideas on either, let me know! This time, I’m taking requests. (#):)

Not too long ago, I had my first contest for this blog. If you’re new here or just don’t remember what I’m talking about, you can read up on it real’ quick. As for the prize for the contest (some months later ha ha), I really wanted to give away something in the spirit of inspiration. I know as bloggers we all need something to drive us forward and for everyone it can be different. Personally, there has always been a certain movie that gave me the strength I needed to keep going when the going got rough but unfortunately Best Buy didn’t have any in stock. And so I got something else…

How’s THAT for a title?! Ok true believers, a little while ago I said that I was thinking about having something to reward you guys for being a fan “loyal and true”. I asked for ideas and of course, I got none. So I came with something on my own! It kinda relates to my last post, but instead of expressing (kindof sortof) my mindset about blogging and the Internet and the like, I want to know what you think about it!

If you’re a blogger and/or work on the Internet, why do you do it? What brought you to it? Why do you enjoy it and or why do you hate it? Post a comment to this thread (and make it more than 2 sentences), answer any or all of these questions and I will send you an e-mail for your snail mail address. After that, I will send you a super fantastic prize in the mail! What will it be? A Super Fantastico Surprise! So yeah, respond to this post between now and 9PM EST Thursday June 14th and again everyone, thank you!