BloggerVenue

In case you haven’t noticed, i have not been updating the blog these past days.

Unfortunately, my internet service provider suspended my internet connection due to the lack of payment.

I share an apartment with a couple more friends, and one of them, is responsible for the internet contract, and he forgot to pay the last 2 months despite the constant rememberings of the companie.

Last june 2nd, they cut the service leaving us with no connection to the world. lol

The payment has been made, and only today they re-established the service aleluia!!!

I must admit that i am a bit addicted to the online life… I had a little itching these days lol.

Anyway, when i got online i had a wonderful news. I have won my first contest prize.

Jim at thenetfool.com has announced the winners for his outrageous blog contest. I have won $50 from Adesblog that have already been paid

I have also won a website review from webmasterplaza, a One Buck Wiki Page and a
Beer Stock Page.

I have also sponsored a few prizes, and i will contact the winners soon.

So my congratulations to all the winners, and my thanks to jim for this contest and the great feedback it has given to my blog

Just a quick alert. I am still doing rss subscription exchange. If you want to get me has your feed subscriber by email then check my exchange post.

About 2 months ago, Ahkong made a proposition in where he asked his visitors to subscribe his RSS feed by email, and in exchange he would do the same. He had a great feedback and managed to get a good increase in his rss subscribers count.

So i will try this method here.

So here is how we are going to do:

1. Subscribe to my RSS feed by email;
2. Place a comment here about your subscription;
3. Remember to place your email used to subscribe, so that i can confirm it;

I will then subscribe to your feed by email and reply to your message.

You will get one subscriber with little work. I know it is only one more subscriber, but brick by brick we build a house.

Is this an evil way to increase RSS count? :p

All kinds of business are made on the internet, and due to the value of RSS subscribers, it is no surprise that i see business like rssxplosion appear on the web.

Current RSS subscribers market price is arount $27 to $35 they say.
Rssxplosion promises to deliver you the amount of subscribers you pay for a promotional price of $1 each only… And delivered weekly or monthly.

It seems they have already made some big sells:

BloggingFingers: USD$6,000 / 204 RSS Subscribers
Ryan Shamus: USD$2,500 / 94 RSS Subscribers

Truth or not…..

The question is: Would you pay for RSS subscribers using this service?

My answer is no.

$1 each is not much. But, they are no real subscribers. You are paying for fake subscribers in my opinion. And it is somewhat easy to create a bunch of emails and subscribe them all to your site. With a little knowledge and with the right tools you can do this in almost no-time.

Now, if you were buying RSS subscribers directly, then it is another issue. You would be buying real rss subscribers, because you negotiate directly to one person for one subscription.

But instead of of buying, why not exchange them? If you want to exchange RSS subscriptions with me then feel free to subscribe my RSS by mail, and i will do the same for you! :p

I haven’t done any contests lately on this blog due to several factors, but i have decided to sponsor one. In case you haven’t heard, netfool’s blog is having a contest with over $4,500 in prizes.

The winners will be selected on June 2nd, and it is so easy to enter. You just need to subscribe his rss feed, and if you want to increase your chances then Jim has some tasks for you.

I am sponsoring the contest with:

1. 2 125×125 Ad Spots
2. Full Blog Review
3. 5000 Entrecard Credits

Here is the complete list of prizes:

Cash

• $250 Cash from PepperJam Network
• $50 Paypal Cash from Ades Blog
• $25 Paypal Cash from Sohaib Thiab

Web Hosting

• 1 Year Web Hosting from Young Online Millionaire

WordPress Themes & Design

• $500 Custom Premium Blog Design from Pixel Jig
• 2 Copies of the Revolution WordPress Theme from Brian Gardner Media

WordPress Scripts & Software

• 2 Copies of the FruitfulTime TaskManager from FruitfulTime
• Liscenced Copy of OIO Publisher from OIOpublisher
• WP Auctions Gold Version from WP Auctions

Blog Advertising

• Featured Listing on Aviva Directory from Aviva Directory
• Blog Listing and Bundle Pack 2 from 1 Cool File
• 125×125 Ad Spot from BlogTrepreneur
• 125×125 Ad Spot from Life Is Colourful
• 2 125×125 Ad Spots from Webmaster Plaza
• 2 125×125 Ad Spots from BloggerVenue
• 125×125 Ad Spot from BobbyT Blogging To A T
• 125×125 Ad Spot from Hedge Against Speculation
• 720×90 Banner Ad Spot from Webmaster Plaza

Blog Reviews

• Full Blog Review from Wayne Liew
• Full Blog Review from Article Snatch
• Full Blog Review from Life Is Colourful
• Full Blog Review from Webmaster Plaza
• Full Blog Review from BloggerVenue

Subscriptions

• 2 Year Subscription to GoStats Pro from GoStats
• 5 One-Year VIP Memberships to CreateBanner.com from Xavier Media
• Premium Subscription to DotSauce.com from DotSauce

Entrecard Credits

• 5000 Entrecard Credits from BloggerVenue
• 2000 Entrecard Credits from Article Snatch
• 2000 Entrecard Credits from Big Free Articles
• 1500 Entrecard Credits from BobbyT Blogging To A T
• 1500 Entrecard Credits from Webmaster Plaza
• 1000 Entrecard Credits from Tim Yimto
• 750 Entrecard Credits from Let’s Talk About Money
• 750 Entrecard Credits from The Work From Home Professional
• 500 Entrecard Credits from DotSauce
• 3x 168 Entrecard Credits from Bloggin-Ads

Miscellaneous

• Professional Blog Consultation Report from Scribbles & Words
• 2 One-Hour Blog Consulations from The University Kid
• 20 One Buck Wiki Pages from OneBuckWiki
• 20 Beer Stock Pages from Site Hoppin
• Unique List of 20 Available Domain Names from Word Fuse
• Aviva Directory T-Shirt from Aviva Directory
• Unlimited ‘”Dollar Million” guides from The University Kid

i admit, that the full custom blog design is a very tempting prize!

So what are you waiting for? Submit your application for the contest

A few weeks ago i found an interesting post about “Anti marketing design“.

Anti marketing design are sites that use ugly designs, but manage to be very successful.

The example used was Plentyoffish.com, a site that makes more than $10000 each day with google adsense. According to the founder, Markus Frind , one of the main reasons of this success is exactly the ugly site design.

He evens gives examples of other ugly sites that are very successful such as myspace, craiglist, google.

Markus Frind says that sites with an ugly design tend to generate more revenue, build better brands, and are more fun to participate.

When i read this i thought to my self “what the hell!?”. But i must agree… I have stumbled with sites that in my opinion are very very ugly, but i was surprised with the amount of traffic they had, the amount of users, readers, rss subscribers, the money they made! Even the blog where i found this post had an ugly design and ranks 19,895 in alexa, and has more than 300 comments on that specific post.

Why do we tend to use ugly sites?

I can just give my opinion. I don’t like these kind of ugly sites. But there’s ugly, and there’s UGLY. myspace is UGLY, google is ugly, but extremely simple and effective. Web surfers like simplicity, effectiveness, quickness, and not to many information at the same time.

For me, ugly sites resumes only to a simple equation: ugly sites = less distractions

The users are not distracted by a “state of the art design” with great graphics, and can focus their attention into the content, in what the site really has to offer.

Think a little bit about this, and tell me what you think…