Alright then.

Today was the last day of my exams; Statistics was the last one and while I didn’t excel, I did alright. I guess not studying hit me hard… I’m not sure whether I passed Math (which is a total bomb, because if I don’t I’ll have to redo the damned thing) but I did fairly decent in the other three. Now I have a month off; I’ll be looking to break previous months earnings as well as launch a few big projects that are in the pipeline. Last but not least, I’ve launched my eBook that I’ve been talking about for a while (and was one of the reasons I didn’t study much) – it is one that talks about launching your own product and dominating the market… the sales page is all written up and once the graphics are made I’ll give you guys a sneak peek.

I started a contest on Digital Point to get graphics; that’s a small tip I’ll throw at you guys if you need anything done in the future. You see, I want a 125 x 125 ad – now, if I were to pay someone to get it done… it would probably cost $5 minimum, most likely $10. For that amount, I’d be getting a banner done from one person with not a lot of revisions… you know how Digital Point designers are. For someone a bit more professional, it would cost around five or more times that; for example, Tyler Cruz revealed his designer yesterday and they charge $28.95 for a 125 x 125 ad… now, whilst they do produce decent looking stuff, I’d prefer a lot more choice – say having 4-5 banners to choose from. Thinking about that, I started a contest on Digital Point with a winners prize of $20.00 and a runners up prize of $5.00 – with a clause that I could use any banner entered into the contest, whether they won or not. Now, for the winner, this will be a great deal – getting paid $20.00 for something that took around 10 minutes to create and something they’d normally get $5 – $10 for… however, this is a lot better for me as I’ll get variety, cheap. I’ve already had six entries into the contest; a couple of them are decent, and I’m expecting a lot more entries when a few of the other designers wake up – anyways, even at just six entries, that works out to $4.17 an entry… cheap, or what? A somewhat evil way if you want a lot of decent variety for cheap

So there’s a contest going around the blogosphere; tis the brainchild of two of my favourite bloggers – Tyler Cruz and Gyutae Park (and no, me sucking up has nothing to do with the $100 up for grabs ). My vote goes to the latter; mainly because he promised a free tshirt . Seriously though, Gyutae has some good ideas; the blog hopping thing, his interview with Tyler Cruz (a competitor now) and of course the fooking massive contest for a free review on John Chow/Cow. Anyways, enough of me getting Wordpress trackbacks on his most popular posts the roundup; here’s why I’ll be voting for Gyutae:

1) His posts are informative, yet funny – whilst I’m not saying Tyler doesn’t post interesting stuff, Winning the Web is one of the blogs I read mainly due to the content, rather than just because I know the writer.

2) The free t-shirt. Now, no offense Tyler, but after this post of mine on how bad Entrecard was turning (and you know the credits I tried to give away? The winner didn’t even claim them!) with around 1k credits sitting in my account and no big boys to advertise on (apart from TylerCruz.com, ironically – which yours truly got a slot on December 9th for ) the last thing I need is more credits. Now, wearing a shirt of another blogger in public is akin knifing yourself in the back, but as long as it’s a nice shirt, I don’t really mind (If it’s made of crap material from one of those Asian sweatshops, I can always use it to sleep in… ).

3) The look. Whilst the cartoon design of Tyler is nice, Park’s design is unique in the blogosphere, and the sexy car on top pushes it over the finish line. As for the cartoon, take a look at this post about it – it’s not nice, but I laughed…

Now, those of you that are a bit dense; here it is – I vote for Gyutae and Winning the Web Dot Com. Here’s the link to Tyler’s contest post and here’s the link to Gyutae’s.

Alright, that’s done for. Speaking of cartoons, my header is done – it’s well worth the price I paid for it, and I’ve instructed the designer to treble his prices – he declined, but agreed to raise them – a bit. I’ll have a post about him when he gets the website of his up. As for it being put up, that’ll be done by Hyder, the creator of the theme (and the owner of EverybodyGoTo) – he’s on business, so when he gets back

I’m going to revamp this blog as soon as the header goes up – a lot of it doesn’t make sense anymore (read the advertise page and you’ll see what I mean) – I’m also going to remove my rates on the About/Hire Me mate as they’re a bit low (in my unbiased opinion, of course ). Loadsa work! I’m also going to concentrate on selling advertising space; I haven’t really marketed this blog – it’s still doing well with nearing 100 subscribers and under 100,000 Alexa (as pointed out by one of the wonderful TUK commentators yesterday) – I’m going to send those statistics on steroids. Also have to try and start building an opt in list – ah, loadsa work!

Anyways, apologies for the long post, but I have been away – a big thank you to the three guest posters from Can’t Get Rich, ThomasSinfield.com and Fka200 – would love to have y’all again when I need a break have urgent work. If any of you guys want me to fill in, just drop me an email and I’d be happy too – as for anyone else interested in guest posting, I’m always open to people – not right now (should be having one come in tomorrow), but in a couple weeks sure.

I’m sure I’ve missed out something in this post, but I’ve gotta concentrate on a couple things – more tomorrow

(Just got another two entries into my banner contest. That’s $3.12 a banner – pah! )