First of all, I want to say thank you to all the sponsors and all the people who was willing to participate in this contest - You guys are all winners to me! Yup, I said it and it sounded corny when I said it but I do want to thank all of you guys.

I know I originally said I was going to put the winners on my RSS Feed Footer but since Feedburner acted up a few times, I can’t trust them. And also, I do apologize to everyone for the extra delay in getting the winners posted.

Now, there were some people who tried to enter the contest but their entries didn’t count. The list of possible reasons would include such things as:

- Subscribing to my RSS Feeds via e-mail but never confirming
- Writing about the blog contest on a blog that has less than 10 total posts or less than a month old
- People who initially wrote about the contest but removed the blog post when I went to double check it
- People who spammed with irrelevant and non-post related comments
- Blog post entries not in English (sorry about that, but there’s no way I can actually confirm anything since I couldn’t read what anything meant)

Okay, okay, enough with the delay, let’s get some of the winners!

Winners of the eBook “Seven Tips to Live a Better Life” donated by Jason of http://www.blogpremiere.com/forum : Everyone who entered the contest! Yup, Jason was nice enough to donate to every single person. To claim your copy of “Seven Tips to Live a Better Life”, please contact me via my contact form with the subject “Winner of the eBook.”

Winners of the $5 phone cards generously donated by Pingo.com (to claim these prizes please contact me via my contact form with the subject “Winner of Pingo Phone Card”:

Now, for the Ad Spots at Reviews! Winners are determined as a random pick according to Random.org. And please contact me via my contact form with the same e-mail you used when entered the contest so I don’t have any imposters. Also, please include in the subject line: “Winner of *the prizes you won*”

All winners have until May 31st to contact me to confirm or I’ll move down the list and pick someone else. (Notice how I’m not giving the unclaimed prizes to DatMoney.com like I said I was going to!) But the reason why I have to move on if people don’t confirm is the fact that I understand that their may be some subscribers who don’t have websites or anything to be reviewed. And if you’re one of the winners who simply doesn’t want the prize, if you would be kind enough to contact me letting me know that so I can speed up the process for the next person.

Winner of the “One month Text Link on Adesblog.com : http://wensonlinebusiness.wordpress.com
CLAIMED!

Winner of the “One month 125×125 Ad spot on Yimto.com” : travel2kauai@gmail.com

Winner of “Two Months 125×125 Ad Spot on Etienneteo.com” : abdulalbino@yahoo.com

Winner of the “One Month 125×125 Ad Spot on Garryconn.com” : barryfromtexas@hotmail.com CLAIMED!

and Winner of the “Footnote Ad on Garryconn.com” : nizbila@gmail.com

Winner of the “One Month 125×125 Ad Spot on Winningtheweb.com” : http://carmenrao.com/sensetoday

Winner of the “One Month 125×125 Ad spot on Jonathanvolk.com” : http://bloggin-ads.com/- CLAIMED!

Winner of the “Review on Piggybankpie.com” : email1@yellowfound.com

Winner of the “Review on Blogaboutyourblog.com” (Written by yours truly): xfactorsports@aol.com

Winner of the “Review on Bloggernoob.com” : bradblog2@gmail.com- CLAIMED!

Winner of the “Review on Theblogentrepreneur.com” : alarosausa@netscape.net

Winner of the “Review on Theuniversitykid.com” : http://pentads.blogspot.com/- CLAIMED!

Winner of the “Review on Garryconn.com” (“Winner must write the post and talk directly with the blogs readers.”): http://pearl.1journal.net/

Winner of the “Review on Carlocab.com” : aksn1p3r@gmail.com

And lastly, instead of my 125×125 on DatMoney.com , I will be giving away two month text link on every single one of my blogs to five winners (5 blogs in total - 2 are PR4, 1 is PR3 and the other 2 are PR0): http://blog.beyourowndetective.net/ CLAIMED!, travel2kauai@gmail.com, http://earnersweb.com/ , erica@voices.com CLAIMED!, and mann3r101@yahoo.comCLAIMED!

So, there you have it ladies and gentle-fellas! Finally! And if you didn’t win, don’t worry, if people don’t claim their prizes by May 31st, 2008 you have another shot to win!

Oh, and if you won and need a 125×125 ad made for you, I can do it! Check out my examples and prices on my Banner Design Page.

I know what you’re thinking, "why should I play poker to make money? I’m taking a risk! I’ll lose money!" Well, if you think about it, a majority of bloggers lose more money than you think and they probably invest a lot more time into it than playing poker online.

Okay, a lot of people don’t know how to play poker but I bet you it’ll take less time to learn all the details than it would to learn other ways of making money online, especially with blogging.

Think about it. Blogging requires you to continue writing about the latest trends and news (or just write in general), you have to socialize and network, you have to promote, promote, promote, and even after learning the curves, it’s still not a guarantee! Sounds like gambling to me, and if that’s the case, you might as well make money online playing poker.

I mean, I can guarantee you that if you’re an affiliated marketer you’ll spend more money - and I mean a LOT more money - and yes, the rewards might be slightly greater but playing Texas Holdem poker can make you just as much.

Also, right now most people probably spend at least a couple hundred dollars for hosting, design work, advertising and promotion, etc to start up their blogging career. And for most people, it’s a one way street of spending and never earning enough, or at all. You may think you’re making some change each day with Google Adsense but if you don’t hit that $100 mark, technically, you’re make nothing at all .

My last point, I bet most people spend a lot more time trying to make money online or with blogging that you’re losing two valuable things in life - time, in which we can never get back and money.

Now, before people jump down my throat about the morals of gambling, this was just a simple suggestion, you do not have to gamble. I was just simply stating making money online is exactly like gambling, especially with your time and money. It’s risk reward but so isn’t blogging, affiliated marketing, etc.

So, if anyone needs to know how to play poker, particular Texas Holdem, you can read the basics here . And if you’re looking for a challenge or just want to play at a $0.01/$0.02 table for fun, I play at Pokerstars. I know Mr. Tyler Cruz plays and if he happens to read this, I wouldn’t mind playing at a table with you. Well, online because I’m not traveling to Canada lol!

Does it spark controversy? Hell yeah. Is it good publicity? Hell yeah. Will there be a winner? Well, it’s made official, their will be a winner between John Cow and Garry Conn! And if you could careless about competition, it’s still worth the read when the trash talking began; especially for those who like controversy in gossip. It’s almost like rappers battling through their songs and lyrics, but instead, blogs and posts. But I bet all the hype about it, the trash talking, the "I’m going to take you off my blogroll" stuff is just controversy which will lead to great publicity.

Now, I don’t know the entire story so I’m not going to choose a side and give my two cents on the situation but whatever the case may be, they officially started a competition against each other to see who can make more money online or something?

How did this all start?

Well, if you’re in the "Make Money Online" niche or at least follow it, then you would know that there has been (and continues to be) controversy with Onemansgoal.com blog being sold for $10k to someone who doesn’t have too much knowledge in the "Make Money Online" niche. Well, I think Cow gave his opinion on a situation related to that and Conn called him out on his blogging and making money practices.

And if you know Cow, which I don’t know him too well but I read his blog once in a while, he never makes down on putting people in their place. The conclusion, they start a competition and this will ruin someone’s reputation in the blogosphere!

Well, maybe not to that extreme but definitely for bragging rights and shutting people up. But who will that person be?

Personally, I’m not cheering for either person and I’m still convinced that the whole entire thing is just a publicity stunt because who doesn’t like the controversy, the drama, the gossip - and they’re putting their heads together and it should really pay off for them in traffic, exposure, gaining more RSS Feed subscribers, making more money online, etc.

So, what do you guys think of the situation? Publicity stunt or not? Matter of fact, wasn’t Cow selling his blog or something?

Below are all the links from the beginning of the trash talking leading up to the competition.

Conn:
- John Cow dot Com’s Lifelong Dream of Scamming The Blogosphere
- John Cow VS Garry Conn in a COWpetition - MMO Case Study Enroll Today!

Cow: I couldn’t find that great post I read where Cow really went off and he even turned off the comments. It was a great read…
- John Cow dot Com called out Garry Conn dot Com
- Learn How to Kill Your Competition - A Case Study of How We Beat up Garry Conn
- Cow vs Conn and WIN Affiliate Elite Enterprise
- Cow vs Conn a Case Study for Making Money Online

Wow, Cow is giving away some good prizes… lol… I think I just might have to reconsider!

Since most of you guys won’t be reading until the end of this post, I’m finishing up the entry counts for DatMoney’s "Get Traffic" contest and I will be announcing winners via my Feed footer so make sure you check your RSS Feeds to see if you won!  Update: Feedburner is currently not displaying my e-mail subscribers so I will have to postpone the drawing until Feedburner gets their act together!

I’m sure many of us use Feedburner as a way of keeping track of our RSS Feeds but lately, it hasn’t been that reliable. Should we all consider switching to a new RSS Feed service?

So, I’ve noticed that Feedburner tends to not include some of our subscribers, on more than one occasion. The very first time I noticed this was a few months ago when I dropped like 75 subscribers within one day. I panicked a little bit and hit up a couple of forums to see if I was the only one. I wasn’t. Luckily, it was just Feedburner not including Google Reader subscribers or e-mail subscribers.

But aren’t we all relying on that number, a little bit? I mean, especially for those of who work hard to get that number up and display it for our visitors to see.

This past week it happened twice. And honestly, that’s twice too many times.

The first time, they didn’t include my Google subscribers and my RSS Feeds went from 311 and dropped to 226, and this time (today) they didn’t include any of my e-mail subscribers so it dropped from 309 to 193.

I know that isn’t as bad as most but I do value my subscribers. And the more Feedburner miscounts my stats, the more I could possibly be losing more subscribers, or even advertisers and sponsors.

How?

Well, besides the content, a lot of people tend to view the daily subscribers as a blog’s loyal readership. And when new visitors come to my site, they would see my subscribers and probably think "wow, that many people are subscribed? I come here pretty often, maybe I should subscribe as well!"
I mean, there is a reason why we all flaunt our reader counts, right?

Also, a lot of advertisers will stop by your blog to see that number and determine if they want to advertise with you or not. Because that feed count is determined on the minimum amount of people who would view your content every single day .

So, I said it once and I’ll say it again "what in the hell is up with Feedburner?" and "Should we all consider switching to a new RSS Feed service?"

Wow, oh, wow. Everywhere we go, spammers will be right there! I mean, it’s part of daily life, it seems. Junk mail, spam e-mails, telemarketers, comment spammers… wait, “comment spammers?!” Yup! It seems people have just found a new (it’s actually old) way of spamming. And get this: These comment spammers are just regular bloggers!

First, What is Spam?

“Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it.”

Now, as for comment spamming, a lot of people seem to use the drop-and-go method, sort of like Entrecard droppers. Instead, they copy and paste a generic message that seems legit so it gets past the spam filter(s). Here’s an example:

“The ideas and insights are very worth reading. You really gave me valuable information. Thanks for sharing it!”

So, it looks like a regular comment, right? But if you check out a post it was commented on, they didn’t mention anything on the actual article. So, I was curious and decided to use a simple technique I remember Maki of Doshdosh.com mentioning - Google that exact comment with quotes around it.

And looky, looky, guess what I found? As you can see from the screenshot below, there are quite a few results. So, I decided to go to these blogs and “oh look!” it’s the same exact person who spammed me with that generic comment.

So, of course if you clicked on the screenshot (or Googled it for yourself), you’ll see that this person put the same exact message in quite a few comments on peoples blogs.

Now, is this right or wrong? Well, given the fact that I highly doubt they even read the article post(s), then they’re just abusing the commenting area to get backlinks or some traffic?

And if you need to be aware of this comment spammer, it’s Aurelius Tjin. And I was thinking, should I give this person a backlink? Sure, why not. I mean, he’s comment spamming for a reason, right? So, I guess that’s what he’s looking for.

In my next example, it was a person who happened to leave the same message on two of my blogs.

The message:

“I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.”

Now, I highly doubt that this person found me on Technorati for both of my blogs he left a message on. And that makes me think if he really added me to his Google News Reader. But wow, if you read that for the first time, you would think “Wow, I got another RSS Feed subscriber, that makes me feel happy!” And he would’ve gotten away with it if he didn’t leave the same exact comment on two of my blogs.

So, yes, I Googled the quote. But this time I had slightly different results.

What was it?

Well, it seems that quote has been used quite a few times. And I’m not going to lie, I checked out a few sites and the difference from the first instance I gave was the fact that every single blog I went to, it was from a different commentator, a different name, a different site.

My assumptions (even though they say you make an ass out of yourself - too late!): Either people are using this comment because it a low-radar quote and would pass as a regular comment, plus, who doesn’t love hearing that someone subscribed to your RSS Feeds? Either that, or the same person was commenting for others with the same exact quote.

I was thinking, why would someone comment for others? My only conclusion would be the fact that people would possibly pay for people to do that. Believe it or not, you’ll find some interesting ways for people to get paid just a few bucks. I mean, do to DP forums and you’ll see the wide range of things that people offer for a few dollars.

Now, I have to ask, are you a comment spammer?

Honestly, I knew a few of my blogging friends who has used this technique, and don’t think I don’t know who you are. But I’m not going to put you out there because you’ve never really done it to me. (Or at least I don’t know you have )