Karlonia.com

After looking at the category listings last night, I realized that I have not made a post for the humor topic since the article on April Fools Day jokes. So today as I was doing my usual surfing at the traffic exchanges I started paying attention to any humorous stories that might be contained in people’s pages and links. I eventually ran across two stories that were relevant enough to fit into the category but that most of you have probably not seen yet because these kinds of stories seldom make it into the front page headlines.
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Leo di Milo has launched a new blog called IdiotAffiliate.com that is quickly becoming a valuable resource of information for novice webmasters and affiliate marketers. I was an avid reader of his site DrunkOnLife.com back in the heyday of autosurfs and HYIP around 2-3 years ago, so I was pleasantly surprised to learn about his latest project. Here is an excerpt from an email newsletter that I received from him a few days ago:

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The Royal Surf traffic exchange is temporarily increasing the regular credit bonuses beginning today and is also increasing the frequency of randomly occurring letter bonuses that appear on the surfbar. It is unclear exactly how long these increases will last, but I can confirm that they are still in effect right now, which is approximately 10 PM Central time on the date of this post. Here is the latest email from the current admin detailing the latest developments:

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Another popular “spam & scam” method that is often used by phishing artists is the notification of fake lottery winnings. This tactic takes advantage of the fact that despite the incredibly small odds of winning, many people play in the various state and national lotteries around the world in the hopes of miraculously solving all of their money problems in one fell swoop. Since many such people are already fairly desperate, they are vulnerable to being more easily duped by scams such as this one. People in these situations sometimes get fooled even if their better judgment suggests that not only is it unlikely that they could ever win the lottery in the first place, but it is even less likely that they would somehow win a lottery for which they did not even purchase a ticket, not to mention the fact that they do not even reside in the same country in which the lottery took place.

This latest spam mail that I have received is a good example of the above method, but was very poorly targeted in this case. Not only do I generally not play in lotteries (the odds of winning in an HYIP “gold game” are actually much better than the odds of winning a state or national lottery), but I do not even live in Ireland and certainly do not remember purchasing a ticket for this particular program:

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Since the beginning of this blog, I have been debating about what to do with the design of the site. For those of you who do not recognize it, the current design is the Kubrick theme, which Wordpress blogs now begin with by default. While I have nothing against this particular theme, it has become apparent that I must eventually change it to something with a more “professional” look if I want to promote this blog with any real vigor. Otherwise I run the risk of being regarded as a clueless newbie (or worse) even if my content is of a relatively high quality. However, I am not really much of a designer or programmer, so instead of getting bogged down in time-consuming, headache-inducing internal debates over which theme to use or how I should customize it, I have decided that the best course of action for now is to simply declare an open thread and let you, the readers, make suggestions on what kind of theme or design you would like to see.
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One method of promotion that is sometimes overlooked by Internet marketers is that of the simple press release. Through online distribution centers such as PRweb.com, it is possible to generate a significant amount of traffic and inbound links to your website by sending out a well-crafted press release. However, since most media outlets have some type of editorial process usually involving human editors at some level, it is important that your document is written according to professional journalistic guidelines so that it stands a good chance of actually being published. Here are 10 things to keep in mind when writing your “killer” copy:

1. Keep the tone of your content on a professional level. In other words, no abusive language, personal attacks, silly stunts, or anything else that would be generally regarded as unprofessional should appear in your final draft. You can use a certain amount of light humor if it seems appropriate for your genre, but if it does not look like you’re capable of communicating in a professional manner, your letter is unlikely to make it past the editor’s trash can.

2. Use the proper format. There is actually a certain format that press releases are supposed to follow according to generally accepted journalistic standards. Here’s the scoop:

Headline: Often called the “hed” in journalistic jargon, this should be written in a way that captures the editor’s attention and entices further reading.

Dateline: This indicates the name of the city from which the press release is being sent and the date of its publication.

Body: The standard convention is to begin with your most important points first, then move on to secondary information. You should aim to cover the five basic questions: who, what, where, when, and why.

Company Boilerplate: You may write a brief history of your company here, including any relevant products or services.

Contact Information: Provide basic information such as the name, address, phone number, and website URL that you want to use for receiving inquiries from the media and general public.

The End: In a press release, the end of the text is indicated by placing “###” at the end of the very last sentence.

3. Don’t be overly promotional. Remember that it’s supposed to be a press release, not a sales letter. You don’t need lots of puffed-up ad copy; a straightforward, plain English style will suffice.

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If at first you don’t succeed…copy someone else! This appears to be the motto of a new site called Bux.to that was launched earlier this week and is now making the rounds in traffic exchanges and paid-to-read (PTR) programs. A fairly shameless clone of the popular paid-to-click site AdBux, it has already managed to attract over 6,000 members in its first three days and is currently experiencing ongoing server maintenance because of the heavy traffic.
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Just as things were sailing along smoothly for me in the June contest at Medieval Hits, a relatively new member named Marina Afanasyeva suddenly managed to collect enough referrals to win first place in the daily competitions for the past two days. Although this was quite unsettling (I had won first place for most of the previous days), the admin allowed her to write up a quick summary of how she managed to gain all of these referrals in such a short time and displayed it under the daily updates on our member page. As I had suspected when I saw the numbers, this success was the result of her previous efforts in list building.
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It has been a while since I have received a product sample from paid surveys, but this morning we finally got another one in- this time it’s two 16-ounce jars of mayonnaise, apparently under the Kraft label.
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IrfanView is an impressive freeware photo editor and graphics viewer with significant image processing capabilities. It is a very handy utility program that can open nearly all available image files and formats. Originally developed by Bosnian programmer Irfan Skiljan and sporting a public release history dating back to 1996, it is still being actively maintained and receiving very favorable reviews. The latest version is 4.00 and includes improved compatibility with Windows Vista, along with new options for image displays and batch processing.

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Another spam mail arrived today, this one from someone with the username of “Super Bomber 388″ and a referral ID of “topsponsor”. The spammer seems to be advertising some kind of randomizer program, so I might as well take this opportunity to explain what randomizers are and why they usually do not work.
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