I’d update more, but I like covering a bunch of topics at once, so I’ll probably be going with this once a week (or so) format for now.

Today I’ll be covering the following:

• SEO contest
• Sitepoint
• Logo for Marchingbandforums.com
• Mobile Herald starts earning
• July Roundup

SEO Contest

There’s a new search engine optimization contest called ambatchdotcom seocontest that started a couple of weeks ago which you can read about here. I briefly thought about entering, just for the experience as I certainly wouldn’t have a hope of winning (especially with a late start), but I decided against it. Mostly because Work Boxers is offering $100 if you link to his entry so long as he wins. I figure my odds of getting $100 this way are exponentially greater than attempting it myself, so that explains the new link in my sidebar. So good luck James, go get ‘em. = )

Sitepoint

I just finished up a logo contest at Sitepoint that went pretty well, but I’m still done with them. They’ve increased fees all over the place, which is reasonable enough in the forums where you’re trying to sell something or get work done, but they’ve also started charging for things like link requests which I find utterly ridiculous. I recently posted a text link ad on Sitepoint which cost me $10 and netted me one response and one sale. I posted the same ad on Digital Point and nearly sold out my inventory in 24 hours. And the ad on Digital Point was free.

I’m also not interested in supporting a forum where the owner addresses the members like so:

Look, I said we’re working on it. I’m sure most of you don’t read the rest of the thread before you post. You’re like a pack of sheep. I’m not sure why you all feel the need to tell us you’re going to DP. If you want to post “me too” rubbish and you have no interest in helping us improve the forums by submitting well thought out constructive feedback, then seriously we’re happy for you to go to DP, see you later. Waste their bandwidth!

I’m sure I’m not a big loss for them, I certainly didn’t post alot there, and I’ve only spent $50 or so dollars there in the past few months. However I’m sure there are plenty of other members who feel the same way as I do, and I just can’t understand why a business would actively drive away customers and potential customers the way SitePoint is currently doing.

And if you look at some of their Marketplace forums it’s clear that people are staying away in droves. The Want to Buy forum has had five total posts in the last four days, and many of the other forums have slowed down just as much.

I might consider selling a site there in the future (if it’s a bigger site), but that’d be it. SitePoint has lost me as a customer.

Logo for Marchingbandforums.com

Here is the logo I selected, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out:

Next step will be to get a Vbulletin skin designed and coded based on this logo. If anyone has recommendations for designers/coders I’m all ears. I’m hopeful that this forum will be launched by September, but we’ll see.

Mobile Herald starts earning

Mobile Herald is a cell phone blog I purchased from David Krug a while back for what I thought was an excellent price. The design is top notch, and it has some pretty nice backlinks so I was pleased with the purchase. Mobile Herald picked up a Page Rank of 5 in the last update, and I’ve managed to sell a handful of links, enough that I’ve now made back the purchase price. It only took a couple of months.

Apparently there’s some sort of controversy with another site that David sold, but all I can say is that my experience with the guy was top notch.

July Roundup

The summer months are rough for me, so July wasn’t a huge month by any means. I managed to increase my dollars earned per day by exactly one dollar, which, while not much, is at least a move in the right direction. August is looking to be a tough month as well, but I’ve managed to make a good bit of unexpected money in the past couple of days that’ll help alot.

I also have a new writing project with a major company that’ll bring in an extra $20 or so dollars a day that starts this month. I’d actually like to do more writing for pay, cause I’m a fan of steady income, but it’s tough when there are so many internationals that are willing to write content incredibly cheaply. But anyway, I’m pretty psyched about this new endeavor, and I should be able to talk a lot more about it in the next update.

Hope everything is going well for you guys, have a great week!