How Much Would You Pay For A Free Review?
Since I’m not really the world’s greatest blogger (i know, you’re shocked) I sometimes find myself struggling to find things to write about. Because I try to keep the blog focused on “how I do it” with regards to GrownUpGeek.com, I don’t have the luxury of posting things like “random rants“, “where I ate for dinner last night“, “the difference between buffalo and bison” or “airport bathrooms I hate the most” when I run out of real ideas like many other bloggers do. This leaves me with far fewer options to choose from when I’m trying to come up with good topics to write about.
In my quest to find more stuff to blog about in my downtimes I’m considering offering free paid reviews. That’s right - FREE paid reviews. Since my blog is “anti spam” and “Ad free” I can’t really charge for them so I’ve been thinking of doing these “paid” reviews for free - but I’m not sure how many of you would be interested in paying even that much.
The reviews would be written from my perspective and would be brutally honest -I would interject my thoughts and ideas for improvement, I would let you know if i like it or hate it, if I would visit the site or if I think others would, etc. Of course all reviews would include links to the site/blog I’m reviewing, but because I just moved from my old PR3 Blogger.com to my new sub-domain I don’t yet have any PR-Juice to squirt.
Since I’m really just toying with the idea, I’d like to gauge the interest in having your blog/site reviewed by the Great Randy Brown. If you think this is a lame idea or if you’d be willing to beg for a review by me, please cast your vote and/or post a comment.
Loading …StumbleUpon Is Still Good For A Few Hits
I’ve used StumbleUpon a few times in the past to generate traffic for GrownUpGeek.com and it’s worked moderately well for some pages, but for “run of the mill” pages it generated virtually no traffic at all. After the last several (failed) attempts at using Stumbleupon I finally gave up on it.
A few days ago, after writing my rant about Read more
It’s ME vs. MICROSOFT - Who Will Win ?
About every 90 days or so, Microsoft decides that GrownUpGeek.com is a spammer, and totally blacklists our IP. I don’t mean they send our mail into the Hotmail “bulk” folders, I mean they totally “blackHole” all of our email - it just goes nowhere.. This time around they are further insulting me by returning all my mail with the following lovenote: “550 Your e-mail was rejected for policy reasons on this gateway” - and I can’t even send email FROM hotmail TO my domain!Each time this happens I go to the Report Hotmail Email Problem page at Microsoft and file a report, they send me an email to do a bunch of tests, then after two or three days they fix their screwup and email starts being delivered again. Never once have they said they’re seeing spam coming from my server, never have they said there is a problem with my SPF or my SenderID file, they just say “sorry for the inconvenience”.
After this happened the second time I replied and complained a bit, and asked why they continued to blacklist my IP. After going back and forth a few times with a very helpful technician, he sent me an email from his HOME email address and indicated that my IP was blacklisted due to other spammers in the neighborhood. That’s right - other servers in my IP-block were sending out floods of spam, so Microsoft decides to blacklist the entire IP range. This is a bit like arresting everybody in an entire apartment complex because the guy down in apt. 3C is selling crack! So Microsoft’s super-sophisticated anti-spam techniques that they boast so much about boils down to finding a spammer then blocking all IP’s anywhere near it. And, if they find they accidentally blocked an innocent webmaster, they are totally clueless on what to do or how to fix it… I hardly think this is what Bill Gates had in mind, and I’m sure he knows nothing of how stupid his little MSN/Hotmail network appears to be..
This time around I again asked what Read more
AuctionAds Should Hire John Reese
I just finished reading John Reese’s “Shocking Changes At BlogRush” post and I am completely amazed at how he so totally gets it.
Let’s compare another new startup company AuctionAds, to BlogRush, and how they’ve handled a few situations:
Both ventures are very young, both experienced explosive, unexpected growth almost immediately, and both have experienced growing pains due to their success. For both, this has resulted in system wide problems like incorrect stats, downtime, etc - very similar in many respects.
Now lets look at how the two companies have dealt with these issues:
- AuctionAds: Ignore the problem(s); Make no announcements in the blog or give any other information to customers for weeks (if at all), claim to have fixed the problem(s) when they are not fixed, ignore user/support requests; blame publishers for the problems
- BlogRush: Post updates that members cannot miss each time they log in for even the smallest of problems; DO/accomplish what they say they are going to do; listen to user feedback and actually give (some of) what is asked for; Post a two-page letter that members cannot miss explaining how they’ve made mistakes, how they plan to fix them, publicly identify other problems with the system and how they plan to fix them, explain other issues and why they are important to the company, and remind all BlogRush users that THEY are what is important to the company
Now; I know these differences are subtle - but if you look very closely you may see Read more
