Don’t touch my stuff.

ContestBlogger has helped tons of people with publicity by linking to their contests, and of course also entering with his humor-filled posts.

He recently posted a contest, to which the contest guy emailed him stating that he’d allow our Contest Blogging buddy to pay him for a link on his blog! The nerve!!

Even though I’d like to know who did this nonsense, I’m sure Phil is keeping mum.

Here’s hoping that the perpetrator of this crap learns his lesson. Check out the full post on Blogging Manners.

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You know what they say, if it sounds like it’s too good to be true, then it probably is…?

ContestBlogger alerted me recently to this “full of crap contest” scam. I love the title of this post, “I told you so Ashwin Kanna is full of crap”:

The reason this makes me so angry is because of the way he did it: by hosting a total sham blog contest and promising bloggers that he would give one lucky winner $2,500 if they would link to his pukebag blog.

Well, check out what happened over at Ashwin Kanna’s blog. No, I am not linking to this fool. Please type in the URL yourself if you wish to see what kind of disgrace he has pulled on the unsuspecting internet public.

Some of the blogosphere were sucked in by this nonsense. Thankfully, I was not part of the bloggers that gave this guy a link back. His blog has literally jumped in popularity from no-nothing status to up in the top 10k.

Evil, you say? Yes, it sure is. It’s also wrong.

He awarded a winner alright. Some blog called bloggerslogger that is hosted on wordpress.com. This “lucky” blogger only had one post as of the drawing date of the contest. Suspicious indeed.

If you’ve done a review of Ashwin’s blog, then I’d urge you now to delete the post that links to his site. He doesn’t deserve your linklove or your loyalty. And they say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity? If you don’t want to delete your link, please feel free to update the anchor text to “crappy blog” or something similar.

To say that someone needs to review a lesson in blogging ethics should go without saying.

Here’s what another blogger has to say about the contest sham:

AshwinKhanna.com is a disgrace to the hustle. Please remove all links to his site if you have any in your blogroll or posts, and spread the news so he cannot start another one.

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Or, how not to be a complete moron with your $400.00.

Andrew of AndrewTalk, ordered a ReviewMe from John Chow. All of this was prior to scraping John’s content and then shucking out $400.00 for a paid review.

Instead of refusing to do the review, John takes this guy’s money and does it, and goes all out. To take this guy down, John rips him a new one, and rightfully so. Unfortunately, we cannot see the site now, because Andrew took it down. I guess it was how John explained it:

This is a blog about online business. It is presumably own by someone name Andrew. AndrewTalk is a good example on how not to do a blog.

Ouch, that had to hurt…lol

I can’t imagine not having your own content, then being dumb enough to order a review from someone you stole content from. This is a big no no. If you are trying to live in the “make money online” niche, then please be original. At least have some design skill and try to have some creativity. All kinds of traffic poured into that blog today, courtesy of the money spent for the review. Unfortunately for Andrew, no good came from it.

Money wasted from a ‘make money online’ blog. I guess we all have to learn the hard way? Or not. A good followup post would be about blogging ethics.

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Recently, I was meandering through my stats for this blog and the thought hit me, where are you going to when you leave my site?

Are you heading to one of the more popular sites, like John Chow, or Problogger? Or are you heading back to the site that you came from?

Were you here long enough to grab the link for or comment on the Rockin’ Girl Blogger post or are you an RSSer? My mind is wondering.

Do I need to put more links on my sidebar? Or, am I not linking to enough of the other blogs out there?

What do you think?

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Have you put up a theme that everyone else has or has been downloaded 80,000 times? Or is it a theme that you’ve taken the time to customize so that it doesn’t look like your run of the mill theme that’s on display at the blog next door?

If you’ve decided to carve out your own design, that’s the best option for those of us that know a little about theme design. Otherwise, if you’re looking to get a spiffy design and don’t have the PHP/HTML knowledge, then you may want to look into hiring a professional designer.

If you are more content focused and have no grudges against going with a design that’s been used a lot by other bloggers, then you can find a free theme that will suit your needs just fine. A lot of themes are good to go right out of the box and need little or no help from you. Except maybe to upload the theme, just activate it and you’re good to go.

People will be more apt to stick around on your site, either way, if the content is compelling. Be sure to write in detail about the subjects that you know best. If your content is that wonderful, people will read it and they will most assuredly come back to see what you have to say the next day.

What makes your site sticky?

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I’ve made some interesting changes to the site, I hope you’ll grow fond of them, as I have.

First off, I’ve killed Kontera. I can’t live off of ads that make 60 cents for three months. That just makes no sense…so bye bye to that.

I’ve changed the graphics around. I was never a big fan of the pink hues anyways, so this is more in line with my personality. Hope you like the header, it took me all of five minutes. It’s simple, that’s why I like it.

In the history of this blog, only one person has bought me a beer/drink, so that widget has disappeared. While I wouldn’t mind it if more people had donated enough to get me drunk, it just wasn’t working. So, for that, I’ll have to rely on my paycheck…

I’ve taken out the advertising spots, except for Adsense. If you want to advertise, I’ll accept sponsored posts and reviews only. Sponsored posts will go at the bottom of the post that you wish to sponsor. 100+ people and more everyday go to the Rockin’ Girl Bloggers post, “Why not start something?”, sponsorship for that is up for grabs, too.

That blogger chicks thing bit the dust, too. I found that no one had added me to their blogrolls for that, so see ya. I do still support the do-followers and my link at the top of the page still goes to all who do. I hope you like the content and the theme edits, I think it’s now more clean looking and easier read.

What do you think?

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We got here yesterday afternoon at around 6:00pm. It’s a cute little place, but it’s hot in the afternoons. It’s not as muggy as Florida, but it’s just as friendly.

Steve is outside right now, helping his grandmother with the yardwork and I’m inside where it’s cool because I’m not used to that kind of heat. We went for a walk a little bit ago and saw the new houses that they’re building down here on Wilmington island. They are very nice, but I’m sure they’re expensive, too.

We’re planning to leave tomorrow morning sometime for Cleveland. We’ve got another long drive ahead of us. It should be another 12 to 14 hours for the trip home.

Last night, we went to this place called Carey Hilliards for dinner. It was good food, but the waiter offered us dessert before we had our food.

This hotness does indeed make you love the air conditioning inside.

It’s hot right now and I don’t envy those guys outside right now. It’s muggy and it makes you thank God for air conditioning…

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