Today, May 31st was supposed to be the last day people were able to claim their prizes for DatMoney’s “Get Traffic” Contest.  Though, because I’m writing this post late and most of my e-mail subscribers won’t be getting this until tomorrow, I’ll be extending it until the end of June 1st, 2008.

To see if you are a winner, go to the winners post.

In the beginning, I considered contacting people to let them know if they won or not, but then I thought, it’s not fair for people to just subscribe, then never come back to this blog and then win.  I rather give my loyal readers a better chance of winning than someone who comes only once, wins with luck and then “bye bye sucka, thanks for the prize chump!”

And I understand people won’t come to my blog every single day, but if you read once in a while and you simply just looked out for the contest winners post, then you should be fine.  And if I know for a fact you come to this blog regularly, I probably considered contacting you if you didn’t claim your prize yet.

So, for those who didn’t unsubscribe to my RSS Feeds yet and for those who recently subscribe via e-mail, you are automatically entered for the prizes that are not claimed by the end of the day on June 1st.  The rest of the people who originally entered are eligible to win the unclaimed prizes  as well.

So, to johnnyflowerboy@gmail.com, n8balcom@yahoo.com, and ptmoneyblog@gmail.com (who unsubscribed 20 minutes after he found out he didn’t win anything), technically, you could still have won prizes because there’s still a bunch of prizes unclaimed but oh well.

And there’s still a handful of people who contacted me and I haven’t replied back.  Don’t worry, I’m going to be contacting you this weekend since I have more time.  I think it’s Barry, Tejas, Edian, Erica, and Jean Harris.

And lastly, if people don’t claim their prizes this time around, I guess it should just be forfeited to… me!

Well, I wasn’t planning on posting this but then again, people should learn from my mistakes. Plus, it’s pretty easy to do and people should get in the habit of doing this; write all your posts and articles in a Word document prior to posting.

Now, it doesn’t necessarily need to be in a Word document, it could be a notepad, on a piece of paper, etc, basically, anything that you would have as a backup just incase anything happens.

And yes, that “anything” happened to me yesterday. I was writing the John Chow post directly through my Wordpress because I was in a bit of rush (plus, I was at work… my day job) and I basically finished the entire post… then my Mozilla Firefox froze!

Luckily, Firefox has an option to “Restore your last session.” Unfortunately, though, once I restored, it brought me back to where Wordpress last saved my post; which was only the first paragraph! So, I had to write the entire post over and of course, I didn’t remember every single point I originally made.

Now, I usually write all my posts on a Word document prior to posting that way I can just copy and paste it, plus, I can check for grammar and spelling mistakes easily.

Another reason, you should write a draft before posting. I know a lot of people don’t have time to do this (and neither do I, sometimes) but when I say “draft” I just mean a backup and something you can review or read before the post goes live and published for your readers.

Lastly, I know people backup all their server files regularly but what if one of those days someone hacks into your account or your server crashes and you lose all your posts? Well, maybe not all but usually when that happens you’ll lose your most recent ones.

Don’t believe me? Ask Jason of Theuniversitykid.com , it happened to him before. Also, it happened to Tyler Cruz of Tylercruz.com when his account got hacked into. Of course, it was one of the days where I guest posted so my post was deleted. Luckily, I was smarter back then and had a backup on my Word document!

The only thing was I made some minor changes directly in the Wordpress post, so I just had to remember what those changes were.

So all and all, wouldn’t you rather be safe than sorry?

Oh, and the picture of the people grinding, I put that there because people need to "back it up." Okay, that was corny…

Yes, some people love him and some people despise him, but either way John Chow is a well established dot com mogul. Don’t worry, I’m not here to suck up to him in anyway shape or form, but I do have respect for him. But the purpose of this post is to tell you that John Chow can help you get good traffic… and get this, you don’t even need to subscribe to his RSS Feeds, visit his blog, or even know about him!

So, how does John Chow help you get traffic without going to his blog?

Simple. All you need to know is “John Chow.” Yup, that’s it. All you need to know is the keywords “John Chow,” well, you also need to know some search engine optimization. But after you get past those two things, you can potentially get hundred(s) of unique visitors to your site.

And don’t worry, even John Chow’s blog won’t be competing with you!

Wait, what? Yup, the dot com mogul himself won’t be competing with you for the keywords “John Chow!” Don’t believe me? Well, just try Googling “John Chow” for yourself and I can assure you he doesn’t appear on the first page, or even the first five (probably more but I was too lazy to search past that).

For those you guys that are too lazy, I took a screenshot of the top five searches for that keyword. But again, you should try Googling it for yourself, it’s pretty shocking for those who don’t know the background between Google and John Chow.

See the image below (click on it to make it bigger):

I won’t go into details but let’s just say Google didn’t appreciate some of the SEO technique’s Chow was practicing.

Still don’t believe me on John Chow helping you get traffic without needing to go to his blog or know anything about him? Well, then why is it that so many people come out with these knock off blogs? For instance, John Cow of Johncow.com , which is currently ranked #1 for the keywords “John Chow” and supposedly gets close to a hundred unique visitors a day (those stats are old and I’m sure it’s more than that now). Even Not John Chow of NotJohnChow.com ranks on the first page.

Now I’m not guaranteeing you’ll get tons and tons of traffic but if you can get yourself ranked in the top 3 spots on those keywords, that’s almost a guaranteed 100+ unique visitors a day!

And if you take my advice and get to the top 3 positions, please let me know the exact stats. I’d definitely be interested!

A lot of people tend to jump into trying to make money online too quick and they tend to overlook a few things.

First of all, a majority of people who make money from their blogs actually started making money online prior to it, or at least has a lot of experience in the field. Look at John Chow, Shoemoney, Uberaffiliate, Zac Johnson, and the list goes on. Maybe that was a bad example because I just listed affiliate marketers but notice how making money from their blogs came after the fact they already had their source of income flowing in?

Let me give you another example - I blog for a few different blogs, but I do it for fun a majority of the times. Though, I find various ways of making money online and my main source of income is not from blogging. One of the ways I make money is by designing banner ads and that has brought in a pretty steady income since I started it back in January. Surprisingly, the word has spread about my banner designs and now I do not promote or market it, and people still continue to find me.

Just imagine if I focused primarily on banner designs and promoted it like I do for my blog(s)?

When it comes down to it, you should handle your business first because your blog will still be there. Plus, you don’t need to post every single day, just enough for your readers to know that you didn’t abandon them!

And I know I’ve been bad the past few days but that’s because I was out-of-town attending a graduation.

A fine example would be Jason a.k.a. The University Kid (and I’m not trying to suck up) because he continues to find ways to make money outside of his blog. And if I read right, he makes a pretty good chunk of change and he’s willing to help people out with his ideas on how to make money.

But when it comes down to it, you should focus on your strengths and what’s bringing in your biggest and most steady income. In my case, I should focus more on banner designs but do not rely only on one source of income! That’s just one small thing people tend to do - put all their eggs in one basket. And if you do that, you’ll be screwed on those down months.

So, however you make money online, focus on that first and foremost before you blog. And if you happen to make a pretty good chunk of change from blogging, I guess that’s your first and second focus.

I know people are pretty excited, yet, anxious about winning some sort of prize(s) from the “Get Traffic” contest but please bear with me. I honestly didn’t expect a large majority of people to contact me within the first 24 hours lol!

I will be responding to everyone individually, though, this will take some time and I won’t be around tomorrow because I’ll be out-of-town attending a special persons college graduation.

And Jason a.k.a. TUK, if you’re reading this, have you been on Yahoo recently? I always seem to miss you on there. I have to ask you a couple quick things lol, especially with the eBooks.

So, for everyone who has contacted me already, I didn’t forget you, it just might take me a couple of days to get you your prize(s).

Thank you everyone for your patience!