Karlonia.com

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 graphics viewer with significant image editing and 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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While spammers will often use all sorts of interesting tactics to disguise the content of their messages, I have received an email earlier today that shows that even legitimate marketers sometimes resort to tricky techniques because so many emails get blocked by spam filters even when they really shouldn’t.
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Displays of members’ accumulated credits and page views at the manual traffic exchange Crazy-Traffic have been behaving erratically over the past few days, leading to speculation that this particular program may have been appropriately named.
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Terror-related Stupidity Strikes Boston Three Times in a Row

While I have long recognized that there is plenty of stupidity in the world, the Boston, Massachusetts area seems to be generating more than its fair share recently. One of my favorite sites, Homeland Stupidity, has uncovered yet another fake bomb scare in which city officials have grossly overreacted and saddled businesses and taxpayers with unnecessary costs.

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Although it may seem difficult for some of us to believe, even in the 21st century there are many people who still refuse to learn how to use a computer. Interestingly, many of these people are writers, publishers, journalists, or music composers, for whom one might think that a computer would be very useful. Author Gore Vidal, for instance, not only does not use a computer, but apparently he also does not even use a typewriter. Instead, he sends his handwritten manuscripts to a typist in another country, who then sends them to a publisher.

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Earlier today, I noticed a site called DrumCash.com that I had not seen for a long time being promoted in the StartXchange traffic exchange. I also saw this site appear at least once over at Crazy Traffic as well. Since I have some prior experience with this particular program, I figured that it would be a good idea to inform whoever is still promoting this page (along with any other innocent newbies out there who may have recently signed up) that this program is almost certainly a scam.

Drum Cash (also often spelled as DrumCash) is supposedly an affiliate program that allows members to promote their referral page and receive 5 cents per click for every unique visitor that lands on the page within a 24-hour period. One of their “hooks”, aside from the too-good-to-be-true $.05 just for getting a visitor to the page (no action or sales required) is that they will accept a wider spectrum of traffic than most other affiliate programs, including adult and even warez sites. They also offer 10% referral commissions on clicks from anyone that signs up through your referral link.

According to their terms, they are supposed to pay on a “Net 30″ basis, which means that paychecks are sent out 30 days after the end of the last month in which you had earnings that exceed the minimum payment threshold, which in this case is $100. I signed up with DrumCash back in mid-2004 and tallied $142 worth of clickthroughs but have never been paid, nor have I ever received even a single email from the company. At the time, I searched through many of the popular online money making forums hoping to find out more information about the program, and although there were several other people that had joined, there was not a single report of anyone actually being paid.

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Today I have removed the nofollow attribute from all comment links by installing the Nofollow Case by Case plugin, thus allowing all commentators to receive credit for links back to their sites.

By default, WordPress blogs automatically apply the “rel=nofollow” tag to all links in the comments section, which prevents those links from being followed by search engine spiders or counted in Google’s page rank algorithm. Ostensibly this was done in order to prevent spam and abuse of SEO practices, but recently a growing number of bloggers have begun rebelling against this one-size-fits-all type of system. Several plugins have been created that remove the nofollow attribute from all links in the blog so that comment authors who add content to the site can receive credit for their links. Bloggers who have discovered the existence of such modifications and actually use them become part of the NoNoFollow community, alternatively referred to as DoFollow or IFollow.

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Clix Sense, one of the better PTR programs out there at the moment, has officially processed paychecks for members’ May earnings. I have managed to earn a little over two dollars from clicking here so far, but I have not really tried to bring in any referrals yet. I may want to write some ads for this one though; apparently they are offering a special incentive for signing up referrals during the month of June. You can read about the details of this in their latest email:
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One of the world’s most notorious spammers was arrested this week and indicted on some 35 counts ranging from mail fraud to money laundering.
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