It looks like the Presidential Race is all but over. With the recent win and close loss Obama is the clear victor. Clinton will of course never give up….until she does or is forced to. But I wonder how much time the Democrats have lost and how well they can do in the presidential race. If I was a Democrat I would be a little concerned about another Republican president.

Popularity: 8% [?]

We are probably all aware (or at least we should be) that Google PR was created and is given by Google. It is basically a measure of how much Google trusts your site or likes your site. It has been given and it can be taken away. If you do not follow Google’s rules they can manually penalize your Google PR to 0. So why then do advertisers, publishers, and advertising companies use PR? The answer is they shouldn’t. Why not base your advertising decisions on actual statistics like the number of unique visitors to a site, the number of page views per day and more? Well that is exactly what the IZEA RealRank does. This unique ranking system provide a wealth of information including weekly and monthly averages, interactive charts, and way more information that a simple 3 out of 10 PR. It is free and easy to register and get your own RealRank. You simply insert a small JavaScript into your blog. You can choose whether to disclose or keep private certain statistics. The statistics are updated every evening around midnight. Which would you rather advertise on: a blog that has a PR of 6 but only 50 visitors a day or a blog that has one thousand visitors a day? The decision is easy. All you have to do is look at the current click through rates for text and banner advertising to understand that you need thousands and thousands of impressions to return the number of clicks you are looking for. Try it out for yourself and see how you like this new system.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Social Spark is now in Alpha testing! Although it is a pretty limited Alpha test with only ten users. CEO of IZEA Ted Murphy announced the news after slowly handing out “golden tickets” for the first 10 Alpha users of Social Spark.

The IZEA boards were abuzz today: http://boards.izea.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=11528&start=192

I think we are all very excited about this. It looks like the limited Alpha will be followed by a Beta test with an official release 90 days from now.

Popularity: 19% [?]

I am not sure if anyone has done this but I am laying claim and royalties to the idea I am also accepting sponsors for this although it is still in development stages:

Blogging Survivor - The Ultimate Blogger Challenge:

16 bloggers are trapped on an island with only their laptops and the internet. They are divided into teams and take on blog challenges competing against eachother. The weakest link of the loosing team is eliminated by vote.

Here are some of the Potential tasks:

1. Create a new blog and fill it with original content. The team that creates the best new blog wins this challenge.

2. Create a new theme template from scratch

3. Market your blog. Whoever drives the most unique visitors in 3 days wins

4. Monetize your blog. The team that makes the most money from their blog in 1 week wins

5. Create a blog network. The best blog network wins

6. Convince writers to “guest post” on your blog. Whoever has the most original guest posts in 1 week wins

7. Sell an individual blog. Whoever receives the highest price via paypal wins.

8. Sell your blog network. Whoever receives the highest price via paypal wins.

There can be only one Blogging Survivor!

Popularity: 15% [?]

It bothers me that the Air Lines are increasing their fees across the board. Everything from ticket prices to fees to carry on a second bag. This price gouging has to stop. Not only is this happening but service is worse with less features. For example, meals are served less and less or not at all. You do not even get peanuts in some cases. It has to stop.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Here is a joke about Gulf oysters:

Two oysters walk into a bar. One oyster is thirsty so he turns to the bartender and orders a drink. The second Oyster is hungry so he turns to the bar tender and orders some sand to eat. The bar tender makes the drink for the first oyster and serves it to him. Then the bar tender grabs the second oyster and slams him into the bar. The first oyster says “What are you doing?!”. The bar tender replies “You wanted sand….This is a SAND BAR!”. Ha ha ha.

Please take a minute from your busy life to find out more about oysters including Vibro Vulnificus symptoms and treatment, risks from eating oysters, and oyster recipes at Be Oyster Aware.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Removing PR from PayPerPost may take some time for IZEA

In an initial blog post IZEA CEO Ted Murphy said they are currently working on removing Google PR as a quality measure from PPP. This was in response to a recent blogger and advertiser survey that identified the removal of PR as the top issue on everyones mind. This project has been “fast tracked” and should take “a few weeks”. This post was dated March 03, 2008. I originally interpreted this to mean that IZEA would remove PR from PPP by the end of the month. After a response from customer service manager Gordon King and other contacts at IZEA it now seems like this will not be the case. Gordon pointed out that the developers are currently working on other projects. Ted Murphy has not since commented on the time frame. Based on the implementation time of Real Rank and other feedback it now appears that we are at least two to three months away from a long awaited removal of Google PR from the PayPerPost system.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Google Continues to Piss People Off: Adsense Referral Changes

After Google slapping hundreds of thousands of bloggers for making money with a program other than Adsense “paid links and paid postings” by reducing their Google Page Rank to 0 (while leaving the big boys alone and either not reducing or only temporarily reducing popular blogs while screwing over the little guy); Google has now announced they will be greatly changing the Google Adsense Referral program. These changes hugely cut referral payouts if you live in North America, Latin America, or Japan. Oh and it gets better. If you live anywhere else in the world there will be no Adsense Referral program. Sorry International Countries, Google doesn’t want your business and doesn’t want you to promote their services.

ShoeMoney is pissed of as is ProBlogger two of the largest names in Professional Blogging. I would expect John Chow to weigh in soon as well.

I’d be careful Google. Piss off two many influential people and you will have to do some major damage control. Oh and while you are at it why not give me back my PR on this blog?

And Yes I am running Adsense on this Blog……

Here is a link to the Adsense Blog with a Nofollow on it I might add

I just find it ironic that Google is trying to expand into other countries such as China but is sending out such a negative vibe to those other countries at the same time.

Popularity: 41% [?]

The Go Go Shopper web site is currently offering a 50% off coupon for Picaboo.com. The Go Go Shopper web site provides promotion codes and online coupons for over two thousand different online merchants. December and January are traditionally the best times for bargain shopping. Make sure to get your free shipping and dollar off discount coupon codes and get those deals while they are hot. I hate paying full price and you should to. Why would you pay full price for a product online when you can get a nice discount and/or free shipping for your online order? Please visit the Go Go Shopper web site today for more information.

Popularity: 25% [?]

It was announced that Mukesh Ambani is now the richest man in the world with a net worth of $63.2 billion.

Both Mukesh Ambani and Carlos Slim Helu need to start giving more back to the poor like the Bill Gates foundation. India and Mexico have some of the worst poverty in the world. I call on the governments of these two countries to seize 10% of assets of Both Mukesh Ambani and Carlos Slim Helu for emergency poverty relief of their countries.

Here is the financial information of the five richest men in the world:

1. Mukesh Ambani ($63.2 billion)

2. Carlos Slim Helu ($62.2993 billion)

3. William (Bill) Gates ($62.29 billion)

4. Warren Buffett ($55.9 billion)

5. Lakshmi Mittal ($50.9 billion)

Financial Information provided by Fourtunewatch.com.

Poor mega billionaires; that would leave them with only $55.8 billion instead of $62 billion. How many poor people can you feed with a combined $12.4 billion in India and Mexico? Let’s take a look:

You have 12,400,000,000

Let’s say you want to provide $6 per day to people in India and Mexico to provide for food, shelter, clothing, and medicine. If you did this for a full three hundred and sixty five days it would cost only $2,190 and you could do this for 56,62,100.46 people. That is right 56.6 million poor people in India and Mexico could receive food, shelter, clothing, and medicine for a year. What if 10% of those people after 6 months of being healthy decided to VOLUNTARILLY give something back and work full time to improve social conditions in their country. That is 566,210 people who have pulled themselves out of poverty and are now working to improve the conditions in their own country.

And what is 10% to these mega billionaires? Nothing. Would you give $5,000 of your $50,000 a year salary if you could change the world forever?

DID YOU KNOW that many mega billionaires can receive special high interest return rates exceeding 10% with little risk for their investments?

India and Mexico should at least seize the interest Mukesh Ambani and Carlos Slim Helu receive.

I appreciate your comments.

Popularity: 43% [?]