I contacted customer service and posted on the help forum, with no response from either, as expected. This went on for five days, then suddenly this morning the feed count jumped back up to normal numbers. It didn’t jump up again for the other site yet, so we’re yet to see what happens there.

Did anybody else have this issue?

Imagine it like Kontera (or any of the other in-content linking services) except with normal-looking links and no annoying pop-ups every time you hover over the word.

I would imagine this would be automatic in that you place the given script in the footer and it automatically links these keywords for you when you approve it, but I would prefer to place the links myself.

This system is great for bloggers because it take no ad space (no more cluttering up your blog,) and makes it very difficult for search engines to find these links and PR-slap you. The links look very natural.

The links looking natural is also the biggest benefit for advertisers because you can choose the terms you want to rank for and it’s within the article, surrounded by 100% related content.

As bloggers though, you have to make sure the websites you link to are quality sites, so be sure to visit them first.

Let’s just hope that they don’t consider Google Page Rank when determining the price of links, that’s really been throwing a wrench into the gears of paid link services.

Egonitron.com is not my primary website. It never has been, and it never will be. Contrary to my tagline (“Helping Geeks Make Money Online”,) this is not just another Make Money Online blog, it’s not an affiliate marketing blog, or anything of the sort. Egonitron.com is my personal blog on which I write about whatever the hell I feel like writing about at the time. That’s the very reason I don’t update as often as I should, and it’s the reason I don’t do any marketing for the blog. I’ve never intended on making any money from this blog (although I have,) and I never intended on getting this blog to be popular (which it really hasn’t.)

While I do give the occasional tip on blogging and marketing and SEO, etc, it’s only because I feel like sharing some information on the subject. Those subjects interest me, so I write about them.

Let me give a little bit of background. While many newer bloggers just name their blog after their own first and last name (there’s nothing wrong with that,) the term “Egonitron” actually came from a nickname back in high school. When I met Danielle and Gary at BlogWorld Expo outside smoking, I believe it was Gary who made a comment expecting me to look like Egon from the Ghostbusters cartoon. If fact, that’s where the name came from; I used to look identical to Egon from the cartoon. I digress…

I like to dabble in all sorts of online ventures, and test out everything. While my primary business is blogging, I play around with PPC, affiliate marketing, domaining, SEO, web development, and all sorts of other stuff. What I really need to do is focus on one or two things and become very good at that before I try other stuff, but it’s really fun For my day job, I actually work in IT for a very large company, but that gets monotonous very quickly.

Again, Egonitron.com is my personal blog in which I do give the occasional tip, list, or other article about things I’ve learned along the blogging way, as well as business stuff, marketing, IT stuff, SEO, or any other cool stuff I feel like writing about. I hope you’ve found some interesting things along the way, and I hope you continue to return to read more. I’ll probably be changing some things soon. Nothing major, but I’ll most likely play around with changing some things on the sidebar, etc.

Don’t be shy, let me know your thoughts…

So I’ll do my part and return the favor. Here are a few blogs I fancy:

Blue Hat SEO
Daily Blog Tips
Automoblog
Dosh Dosh
Nate Whitehill
Ms Danielle
Mr Gary Lee
45n5
Uber Affiliate
How To Geek
xkcd
ProfitableProductiveBlogging

Regardless, I may still do sponsored posts here, and I’d like you to know what my stance on them are.

I take sponsored posts from various 3rd-party companies as well as direct. My favorite places to take sponsored posts: PayPerPost, SponsoredReviews, ReviewMe, and LinkWorth (LinkPosts.) It’s a good stream of revenue, but they’re still too reliant on Page Rank. Fortunately, Izea (PayPerPost) is working on RealRank which has already been implemented in response to Google dropping the PR of a lot of blogs in their system to Zero (including mine,) so be careful.

Anyway, I don’t have anything against sponsored posts unless the advertiser requires a positive review, or no in-post disclosure. I believe it’s very important that for your blog to remain trustworthy, you need to be transparent. That means not recommending something that you don’t like just because you’re getting paid for it. Tell the truth. If the advertiser doesn’t like it, maybe they need to listen, and change the service. You did them a favor; companies pay tons of money for real customer’s opinions. Why would this be any different?

I once got a request to review a financial services company on an old blog of mine. I did the review, but there were a lot of problems with the site that I not only said was a problem in the post, but offered a good way to fix each issue. The advertiser didn’t like the fact that everything in the review wasn’t positive, so they didn’t pay me. I “nofollow”d their links, and never took another post opportunity from that post broker.

But I digress. My point is that I believe sponsored posts are great, as long as they’re honest and fully disclosed as sponsored posts. Each of these that I do on Egonitron.com is included in the Sponsored Posts category and also have a disclosure inside the post, usually at the beginning or end.

How do you feel about sponsored posts? Are you OK with not disclosing them as paid, and why?

TNX.net is another link-back solution aimed at bloggers. So what makes it unique? it’s based on a credit system. Instead of purchasing links (which you can also do if you choose,) you earn credits by displaying other’s links on your site. The process is completely automated, all you have to do is place in the code on your sidebar or footer, and it takes care of itself.

Blogger

From a blogger’s standpoint, you’ll just have another link or two on some of your pages, depending on your preferences. Each page will have a different link on it, and you can view the links from your control panel at TNX.net. To see an example of the links, browse my archive and click on some of the posts. Look at the bottom of the right sidebar for the links. Some posts have them, some don’t. The links on your pages will earn you points based the Google PageRank of that page (which may pose a problem,) and Yahoo Backlinks, which you can then use to place your own links or sell them for cash. They don’t offer much in terms of cash, so you’re better off using it for your own links; they’re cheap.

After you place the code on your site, you’ll want to keep an eye on what links are being placed there from the TNX control panel. I noticed a lot of unrelated links, which I delete, along with the whole campaign for that advertiser if it’s spammy. Google does penalize you for linking to low-quality sites, so make sure to keep an eye out.

Advertiser

From an advertiser standpoint, you’re in luck. You get points by both displaying links on your own site and buying points. Points are pretty cheap, and links cost anything from 6 points for a low ranked site, and go pretty high.

What can you do with 20,000 TNX-Points?
In case website characteristics are not important (YahooBacklinks [YB] below 500, category “Fun and Games”), then you can buy a month (in case spots are available) of static links to your site:

- 20 000 different PR0 pages from different websites
- 400 different PR1 pages from different websites
- 200 different PR2 pages from different websites
- 100 different PR3 pages from different websites
- 40 different PR4 pages from different websites
- 20 different PR5 pages from different websites

When you start a new campaign, you’re taken to the first step in which you name your campaign, choose it’s categories, chose the Yahoo Backlink count and Page Rank, and languages of the pages on you want to display your ad. The main suggestion I have here is that they expand their category choices significantly. They often lump what should be multiple categories into one, such as “Family, Home, Beauty, Nature, Health, Food” all in one category. They should be separated.

The second step is to actually create the ad, and this is where they shine. You can stick with the simple editor, but I go right to the new Advanced Ad Generator. Check out this DigitalPoint thread for the conversation about it. In short, it allows you to create literally thousands of variations of ads fairly quickly, all linking to your chosen URL. This really helps to keep links looking natural to search engines because no two ads are identical. You can create variations of anchor text, as well as the text before and after the link.

Those 10 lines used to make the ad above actually create a total of 270 different ads! Adding just one line with no variations creates a total of 324 ads. It takes a minute to get used to, but you’ll get the hang of it. Hint: only use one variation per line or you’ll drive yourself nuts trying to figure out why they won’t generate This tool is very helpful, and hopefully they can fine-tune it to make it even better.

During the last step, you choose the amount of links you want for each category/PR/YB combination you chose in the first step. They recommend choosing 30-100 links for each combo. You’ll also want to make sure that you change the “Limit number of links that will be displayed on the same website” to 1 or 2 (they recommend 2,) otherwise you’ll have a bunch of links on one domain instead of distributing them out to other sites, and you don’t want that.

Interface

As far as using the website, there are quite a few things I would like to suggest. First, there are times that I’ve spent 20 minutes or so creating an ad, try to move on to the third step, then an error appears and I lose the ad completely. It’s very frustrating. Part of this is due to the fact that they do a database backup at a certain time throughout the day for about one hour and do not recommend that you create ads during that time. Unfortunately, they don’t tell you when that time is going to be, and worse, it says nothing about it on the site, so you kind of just have to guess. Basically you have a 1/24 chance of getting screwed while creating ads. Not good.

Another annoying thing about it is that you cannot actually edit the ads in any way after you’ve created them, so make sure the ads are perfect before you submit them. But don’t take too long, otherwise your session will time out. You can’t even rename the ad, and neither can customer service. You have to delete it and re-create the ad from scratch. Same thing if you mess up the URL or ad variations. You also cannot view your settings after creating the ad, so you just have to remember the specifics. Fortunately, you can view and edit where your links are placed, and you will want to do that. Make sure your ad isn’t placed on any spam sites, etc. It’s time-consuming, but so is any other method of link-building.

Customer Service comes in two forms – Live Chat, and the forums. I’ve used live chat a few times, and they are very helpful, although with limited abilities (not being able to change the campaign name or links, etc.)

Affiliate Program

TNX.net has a referral program which earns you 13.3% of all TNX points generated by your referral’s websites, as well as 5% of all their payments via Paypal. The very convenient thing about their referral program is that you can add URLs to the system and instead of adding an affiliate link, you can just link to tnx.net and when someone signs up, it detects that the click came from your site and gives you credit. No affiliate link cloaking required So this link just links to the main page (not an affiliate link,) and if you sign up through this link: TNX.net – I get credit as your referral (hint )This is also useful in forums, as you can add the thread URL to your TNX page and get credit for any click-throughs without looking like a jerk, adding your affiliate link to forums.

TNX has a few different graphics to use to promote the program, including two 125×125 ads, one 468×60 banner, and one 468×49 banner.

As an SEO Strategy

So is TNX.net a good strategy for SEO? I’m no SEO guru, but it seems to me that it’s a great way to gain some cheap back-links. I just started a few campaigns for various sites, so I’ll keep you updated with any noticeable changes in SERPS results or Page Rank increases. Of course nobody really knows what’s going on with Google right now, so these links (as with any other link program) could be quickly devalued. It’s definitely worth a try though, and I look forward to setting up some more campaigns.

Go register with TNX for free and you’ll get 2,000 points right away to test out some links. Also be sure to check out this DigitalPoint thread for 5,000 bonus points.

Have you tried TNX with good or bad results? Keep me updated on any of your results, I’m interested to see how this works for others.

Well now, ooprint.com came up with a great idea to design business cards specifically for bloggers – tag cloud and all:

What a cool idea. And the best part is, they’re free. Just pay for shipping. But if you do a PayPerPost article about it, you can get a voucher for free shipping, so the cards don’t actually cost you a dime!

Get your 100 FREE business cards, blogger style by going over here to ooprint.com

After looking around the site a bit, it looks like ooprint could even be a good competitor to VistaPrint. Some of their free designs are more attractive, but I’m not sure about the prices yet for the premium cards. I’m going to order a set of these blogger business cards, I love the tag cloud thing.

***** Start Here ******

Prize

1. Free 4-Hour Workweek Book.
2. A chance to have a permanent link on front page of Blogging The Movie dot com.
3. Sign the Records Book as it travels to 10 different winners.

Contest

This contest is sponsored by BloggingTheMovie – A featured documentary about Bloggers. This contest contains no-follow links. So it is Google friendly and by creating an original introduction you won’t be dinged for duplicate content. This is an ongoing marketing campaign. There will be 10 winners at which each winner will be able to host their own contest which will be sponsored by Blogging The Movie. 1st Winner: Susan Suarez | 2nd Winner: Investing Adventures | 3rd Winner: Can be you!

Rules

1. Write an original short snippet introduction to avoid duplicate content.
2. Just copy the section between the start and end.
3. Add your 3 favorite blogs with rel=”nofollow” in between the link on the code page. i.e. <a href=”http://www.url.com/” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank” title=”url name”>URL.com</a>. This is extremely important to ensure that Google won’t ding us. Make sure you contact the bloggers and insist they participate so they can keep this going.

4. Email your URL of your blog post to Free4hourWorkweek@gmail.com
[Deadline: 12/31/07 ]

Favorite Blogs

Betshopboy | DerekSemmler | Enkay Blog | MsDanielle | JimiMorrisonsHead | Siteguide.us | Darin.cc | JonLee.ca | Samanathon | MrGaryLee | KellyCho | SusanSuarez | RobertaFerguson | Bloggrrl | TheKingKongBlog | TheBeefJerkyBlog | LifeisColourful | MarketingDeviant | MaleWail | RomanDock | 40hourstogo | TylerCruz | JonathanVolk | Egonitron | SuncoastScribe | Gnaka | WorldOfAngel | MyBlogContest | TheGeekBoys | Automoblog | Daily Blog Tips | Dosh Dosh | Add your 3 Favorite Blogs here (it is important that you change the link to rel=”no follow”)

If you were not tagged, you can still copy the list and add yourself on. No worries, it’s a win-win for everyone. So lets get ready. Get on the list to become the 3rd winner on the Train Contest

***** End Here ******

BlogWorld was awesome, as was Las Vegas in general. I had a great time, and I hope everyone else who attended did as well. I got to meet some really cool people there who I’ve talked to online quite a bit but never actually met in person.

Here are some quick reviews from some of the folks I was proud to hang out with (in no particular order):

Ms. Danielle
John Chow
Zac Johnson
Gary Lee
Darin Carter
Jeremy (Shoemoney)
Nate Whitehill (and the guys from UBD)
Vinay and Anthony
Prija (from Blogging the Movie)

Everyone I met there was so cool, even more than I expected. John Chow took us out for a much appreciated dinner at Benihanna Japanese Steakhouse (photos to come,) I got a chance to meet the great Zac Johnson, who I didn’t expect to be there, that was a surprise. What a cool guy! I met Vinay and Anthony from CarZi and MadWhips, who I also didn’t expect to be there. The guys from Unique Blog Designs, who are currently working on a theme for me had a booth there, and I think they got a ton of business from walk-ups and word-of-mouth.

Anyway I’m going to get my photos situated and put up another post here soon, so stay tuned!

Matt had some interesting things to say, and he’s a very smart fella. I’ll post more about it later, they just opened up the vendor floor…

Sadly, I won’t have much time to do much else while I’m there, since I’ll be going to PostieCon too, and my flight leaves at 6AM Sunday morning.

As of today, I’m offering a Blog Consulting service. I can cover all the things mentioned above and more; starting a blog, monetization help, installation of blogging software, themes and plugins, modification of themes and plugins, design, and probably more I haven’t though of. I’m very affordable, and work with your budget.

If you need assistance with anything related to blogging, head on over to my Blog Consulting page and let me know how I can help you!

It’s very simple, actually. Let’s say you have one blog with little readership (100 visitors per day) that you would like to promote. Let’s call it Blog A. You have another, more established blog (Blog B) with let’s say, 3,000 visitors per day. With the referral system in BlogRush, we can take advantage of this.

Sign up on BlogRush with Blog A and begin displaying the widget on your site. If we stop here, you will get about 100 credits per day (one for each visitor.)

BlogRush allows you to add more than one blog per account, but that would be foolish. Using your affiliate link, sign up Blog B under a different email address and different account, then display the widget on Blog B. Since you earn one credit for each page view on all blogs you refer, Blog B will be receiving about 3,000 credits per day, and Blog A will get about 3,100 credits per day.

If you want to add another blog, use the referral link from Blog B. Then Blog A will be receiving credits for our new Blog C as well!

Repeat as many times as you’d like. The referral system goes 10 levels deep, but the credit-to-visitor ratio goes down the deeper the levels get. But hey, free traffic is free traffic!

I try to stay away from most internet memes, but I’m giving in here. I know it’s a tad messy, but that’s how I roll (click for a much larger picture):

As a side note, I’m not just a blogger, I’m pretty much an all-around IT guy, so I’m addicted to buying computer stuff. That third monitor is actually running my file server, and I’m missing 2 more laptops out of that picture. Show me your setups too!

Every weekday, he will release a new t shirt, and will draw a winner each Saturday. To enter, just write a post about the contest! It’s as easy as that. In the mean time, check the funny t shirts he’s designed. I’d buy a few if they weren’t at the ridiculously overpriced Cafepress.

Win a free t shirt