I did say that I had spent the week just moving around, checking up on other blogs amongst various things; anyways, here are a few things I came across. I have recommended roundup, “link love” posts in the past mainly because a) it lets others know you appreciate them and b) can send quite a bit of traffic your way depending on how you phrase it; anyways, enjoy. One tip that I’d give to all when doing a weekly roundup post is make sure that you link to a post of a blogger if possible, rather than the main page – trackbacks count as links if the blogger has dofollow enabled, so be evil and build some.

Gyutae Park recently posted about this and I think I did somewhere earlier; check out the archives the search in the sidebar.

Contests

Every man and his dog (note, for all those that are easily offended, I’m not calling any of the below people a dog ) is running a contest nowadays; I’m still slowly sending out prizes for mine. Anyways, here you go:

Jay at Dat Money is running a “Get Traffic” contest where you can get reviews and ad spots on blogs which total around 300,000+ visitors monthly; not bad if you want to get your name out there. I’ve sponsored something, as have a few other fairly decent sized bloggers – head on over if you want some free exposure.

Not to be outdone, Jim @ TheNetFool has also run his own contest with around $4,500 in prizes – ranging from sponsored ad place to cold hard cash. Again, it’s fairly easy to join, and the contest post itself shows as PR4 on my toolbar, so head on over and grab yourself a free link. Edit – apparently my toolbar is messed up and it isn’t PR4. Nonetheless, it should gain PR in the next update due to all the targeted backlinks, so get in early.

A personal friend, Reid @ Mooney Quest is having a slightly smaller contest but one that it easier to enter; there are over $900 in prizes up for grabs and all you have to do is subscribe to stand a chance of winning. One of the prizes is a year of free hosting which anyone should be able to put to use – check it out.

Last but not least, probably the biggest contest of them all; Webmaster Talk recently bought out Earners Forum for some obscene amount and they are celebrating with a contest. More than $25,000 in prizes, including some pretty sexy electronic goodies – you can guarantee yourself a win if you work hard enough, so head on over and start contributing.

Wordpress Themes

There are three that are out at the moment that I came across – these could be premium, and in fact one even used to be premium however as of today, they are all 100% free. I will be using a couple of them for a few of the websites I run/am thinking of running – take a look and you’ll probably feel you have a way to put them to good use.

First off, one done by a reader of TUK, that is ChiQ Montes who recently started WP Theme Designer – with a killer domain name like that, how can you not visit. Anyways, the theme she’s realised is the very clean “Mag On Wood” which has a polished look and could fit nearly any kind of blog you could think of.

Secondly, Brian Gardner has released another addition to the Revolution series, however this one is free. Pretty clean and matches the quality of the others – it comes in two and three column formats too. You can see the blog post about it here.

Last but not least, Purple Fever – they sponsored a couple copies for my contest, but the website sold for $8,000 and the new owners decided to make it free. Excellent news for the rest of you, eh?

Other stuff

Big Ben Patton is going to get together a contest soon – watch his text video. I had the sh!t scared out of my half way through, watch it and you’ll see why – not fun at all.

Grizz talks about a perfect example of how to f**k up trying to game your stats. Stuff like that is pretty hard these days with the availability of tools like Blog Perfume . His post is heavily tied to the one I did earlier – one that was going well until the Hostican screwup.

Mark over at Monkey Blogger spammed me on MSN enough times that I’ve linked to his latest post on Originality. Check it out, it’s a fairly good read.

Blog Storm talk about how to launch a new website – something most online entrepreneurs need to learn how to do… well. It’s a good read if you look at all the posts they have linked too.

Alan over at Affiliate Confession doesn’t like explaining sex to virgins. Or he’s talking about Twitter – you decide . Twitter is slowly but surely making waves in the blogosphere and most are starting to use it – follow me.

Bill @ TBE talks about nine ways to make money… away from blogging. A couple of which I’m seriously interested in, and will get around to doing sooner rather than later (one hopes). Jay complements his post but talking about why you should NOT start an MMO blog.

Geoff @ Can’t Get Rich talks about gaming Facebook. Oops, wrong post. This one is actually about how to setup and optimize a campaign – stuff that is basic, but stuff that a lot of us pass up. I haven’t tried Facebook yet for marketing (the applications piss me off and you need a credit card anyways) but that post is a fairly decent guide for beginners . I will also be Skype-ing with him sometime tomorrow or the day after and revealing enthralling stuff (or goofing off for half an hour, you decide) – feel free to add JPereiraOwns on Skype for more of the same.

Mark @ 45n5 removes ads and explains why. Fairly noble. I’m a money hungry bastard (oops, did I say that out loud) – well, I mean that the ads pay for hosting and stuff, so I’m not removing them… yet. Something I may consider in the future.

Zero and Up talks about the Bloggers Condition. A fairly short, but decent read.

And this post is long enough for now; enjoy the roundup, even though you aren’t going to read half of it.
I will talk tomorrow about one time vs recurring commissions, and will be looking for guest posters soon (damned exams) so stay tuned for that