Sponsorship Giveaway Winners

My first contest is officially over and the winners are listed below. But first I want to say thank you to everyone who entered my sponsorship giveaway. With 138 entries, the response was greater than I thought it would be, especially for a blog this young.

Now back to the contest winners. To pick the winners I assigned each entry a unique number and then used random.org to pick 3 random numbers. The first number is the winner of the 125×125 banner sponsorship, the second number is the winner of the featured site sponsorship, and the third number is the winner of the RSS sponsorship. Here are the winners:

Winner of a 125×125 Banner Sponsorship
Ivan Yuen (feedm8.com)

Winner of a Featured Site Sponsorship
Ad Tracker (adsensetrack.blogspot.com)

Winner of a RSS Sponsorship
Day Job Nuker (dayjobnuker.com)

Congrats to the winners and again, thank you to everyone who entered. The sponsorships will begin on October 1st (or whenever you get me your banner or text information) and run through the end of the year. Please send banners and link information to advertise@avgjoeblogger.com.

Weekend Reading: September 29th, 2007

Here are a few articles from around the blog sphere (and my RSS reader) that I found interesting and that may be of interest to you as well.

Avoid Blogging Burnout
One of the top reasons bloggers quit blogging, and abandon their blogs, is because they suffer the dreaded burnout. However, with proper planning and self evaluation, burnout can be avoided. For tips on how you can avoid burning out read this article on 12 Ways to Avoid Burnout.

Stick to Your Point
When writing a post it’s important to have a single, unified point that will stick with the reader. Blogging Tips has some helpful Tips for Having a Point and Sticking to It.

What is StumbleUpon and How Does It Work?
StumbleUpon is a fantastic resource and if used correctly can send thousands of new visitors to your site or blog. If you new to StumbleUpon, PureBlogging has a nice article on what SumbleUpon is and how to get the most out of it.

Don’t Forget the Newbies
Tay from Super Blogging reminds us that even though you may be writing for a more advanced audience, everyone’s level of experience is different and the beginners should not be forgotten.

Tips For Driving Your Visitors Away
Ben over at Binary Moon has a fantastic set of tips on what you can do if you want to drive away your visitors.

Contests

Here are a few contests happening around the blog sphere.

Free advertising, blog review, and text link
Sly from Slyvisions.com is currently hosting a contest with a prize of a free 125×125 ad spot, a free review, and a link on his blogroll! You can easily enter and win just by reviewing his blog and the contest, or by donating $5.

Noise isolating headphones
Andy from fyddyp, creator of the CommentLuv WordPres plugin, Stumbleupon Widget for Wordpress and the Hello Stumbler WordPress plugin, is holding a contest where he is giving away a set of Noise Isolating Headphones worth 69.99 GBP.

To enter this contest you must write about it on your own blog and link to this url: http://www.fiddyp.co.uk/fiddyp-blog-contest/ with anchor text of FiddyP Contest, FiddyP Blog or just plain old FiddyP. The post on your blog needs to be at least 100 words and should mention the CommentLuv WordPres plugin, Stumbleupon Widget for Wordpress and the Hello Stumbler WordPress plugin.

Quick and Easy Way to Check Your Theme and Plugins Before Upgrading to WordPress 2.3

Upgrading your WordPress installation can be a scary thing. Especially if it’s a major upgrade and you are not intimately familiar with how the new changes will impact your blog. However, with the release of Doug Smith’s Wordpress Upgrade Preflight Check plugin, upgrading just got a little less scary.

What is the Wordpress Upgrade Preflight Check plugin?

The Upgrade Preflight Check is a WordPress plugin that scans your themes and plugins and reports any errors or problems that may occur when upgrading to WordPress 2.3. The purpose of this plugin is to let you know ahead of time what compatibility problems may be hiding under the surface before going through the upgrade process.

How It Works

The Upgrade Preflight Check plugin works by scanning plugins and themes for the appearance of text within that may indicate compatibility problems with WordPress 2.3.

The plugin currently looks for these compatibility issues:

Use of the old category tables that are now gone.

Use of wp-admin/upgrade-functions.php, which has been moved and renamed.

Use of the get_the_title function, which works a little differently.

Use of deprecated permalink functions, which still work for now but should be replaced.

Installation and Use

As with most WordPress plugins installation is a snap. Just upload the file to your plugins directory and activate it. Once it’s successfully activated, navigate to “Options” -> “Upgrade Preflight”. Within a few seconds your results will be displayed, notifying you of any possible incompatibilities.

Note: While this is an excellent plugin to help you prepare for upgrading to WordPress 2.3, it is by no means a guarantee or replacement for a proper backup routine.

Last Chance to Enter for Sponsorship Giveaway

The deadline to enter my Sponsorship Giveaway contest is quickly approaching (11:59 PM CST on September 29th, 2007), however you still have some time left.

3 Prizes, 3 Winners, 3 Months

Just to recap, I am giving away (by random drawing) one 3 month sponsorship in each of the available sponsorship areas. Here are the three sponsorship spots I am giving away.

1st Random Draw - 125×125 Banner Sponsorship (3 months)
2nd Random Draw - Featured Site Sponsorship (3 months)
3rd Random Draw - RSS Text Ad Sponsorship (3 months)

There are lots of ways to enter but you’ll need to act soon. For further information and ways you can enter visit the Sponsorship Giveaway page.

BlogRush Appologizes for “Goof”, Releases Flavors and Promises BIG Changes and Tons of Targeted Traffic

Wow! That title is almost as long as the email BlogRush members received from John Reese, founder of BlogRush, today. From the tone of the email you can tell John is fired up and after a lengthy rant about “cheaters” of the BlogRush system and apologies for “some real goofs” and data center outages, he promises some BIG CHANGES for BlogRush.

Those of you who have already signed up for BlogRush should have received this email, but in case you didn’t, choose not to read it, or haven’t signed up, here are the highlights.

Big Changes Coming in the Next 48 Hours

Manual Review & Anti-Cheat Measures
“Our team is going to be manually reviewing every single new blog that registers to participate in the BlogRush Network… If a blog does not meet our guidelines and criteria, THEY WILL BE REJECTED from the network and not allowed to join… BlogRush needs to only have members that have quality blog content… The only accurate way we’re going to keep these junk blogs out of our network is to REVIEW EVERY SINGLE ONE BY HAND.”

“We’ll be reviewing every single blog that’s currently in our network (or that registers before the Manual Review Process becomes active.) And we’ll be completely *REMOVING* any blogs in our network that don’t meet our quality guidelines and criteria… I don’t care what it costs us to hire more people (if we need them) to review 100% of any blog trying to join our network. We will be reviewing ALL OF THEM from here on out.”

“We’re also deploying several new Anti-Cheat measures to SHUTDOWN AND WIPEOUT the cheaters and unethical users that have abused our network. Sorry, crooks, but THE FREE RIDE IS OVER… BlogRush is about to go through a major TRANSFORMATION.”

“If you attempt to cheat or abuse our network in anyway, shape, or form, we will not hesitate to come after you. …punish you to the fullest extent of the law (and civil court process).”

“IF you were one of the people that has been cheating our network I’m going to give you ONE opportunity… quit now and we’ll pretend it never happened. BUT… if you continue after this point, all bets are off. We WILL eventually discover what you’re doing, where you’re trying to send traffic, and we will prosecute you. I GUARANTEE IT.”

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