End Of Poll: Tick For ReviewMe

This poll ran on for a whole lot longer than anticipated, mostly thanks to my holiday to Egypt. As I forgot to end the poll earlier, it has continued to collect votes and as such, has managed to become the 2nd most voted poll with 34 votes!

The question up for review was whether this site should continue writingReviewMe.com reviews (which I get paid for). The pie chart on the right shows the result of the votes:

- Yes = 18 votes (53%)
- No = 10 votes (29%)
- I Don’t Care = 6 votes (18%)

As we can see it was a downright win by “Yes”, which in turn means that I will continue to write reviews for money but of course will always inform you if I do so.

On top of this I also learned another lesson. Whilst the readers of this blog deserve to have a right to the content they read, it is I who should be making the final decision and I should trust my gut instinct. Thanks should be given to Yaro Starak, Ray Dotson and Dave Starr for giving me some sound advice.

I liked the idea (given by Yaro) of posting 2 or 3 non-paid posts directly after the paid post. As the moderators of ReviewMe only check the post itself and not the surrounding articles this will have a more positivie effect amongst my blog readers and will help to minimize the “losing reader” effect I experienced last-time.

Most importantly, next time I will take matters into my own hands: As a fellow named Ricky Nelson once crooned, “… ya can’t please everyone, so ya got to please yourself …” Dave

5 Things You Didn’t Know About The Blogtrepreneur

Whilst I was away, it seems like a cool little post has been going around the blogosphere based on the topic of “5 Things You Didn’t Know About Me”. During the time I was away, I was tagged, but I can’t find the link back to the person who did it annoyingly (so if you’re reading this and you tagged me let me know and I’ll put your name in the post).

Anyway, here’s 5 things you most probably never knew about Adnan:

1) Im extremely accident prone - Yep when I was 3, I was jumping up and down on a hotel bed in Amsterdam and I hit my head on the corner and cut open my eyebrow (scar number 1). When I was 9, I was on a swing and smacked my head against a pole (6 stitches). Then I slammed the car door on my head (yet more stitches) and Im forever banging into something or hurting another part of my body!

2) I ordered an XBOX 360 today - Im excited about this a lot. I got it off Play.com and it includes Gears Of War, Project Gotham 3 and Fifa 2007 (with 2 wireless controllers). It was my brother who made me buy it really but I can’t wait to check out the amazing graphics (but I am a noob at all these fighting games - I juts stick with the sports).

3) Following on from number 2, I love sports - Love might even be too small a word - in fact I dream, sleep and just about sporten everything up. I play football, cricket, golf (16 handicapper), tennis, a bit of rugby.

4) Following on from number 3, Im way too competitive - I can’t help it honest, its just when Im in the heat of a game of tennis for example and I hit one into the net or over the base line I get enormously frustrated. Trust me, it would be unwise for you to partner with me in a game of doubles ;). Take my holiday to Egypt - I partnered with my bro and ended up shouting at him when he loses the point!

5) I support Chelsea Football Club - some of you actually may know this because I have Chelsea’s logo as my MSN display picture. Anyway, everyone hates us because we’re the richest club in the world (Roman Abramovich - oil tycoon - is our owner). BUT we also have class players: Drogba, Shevchenko, Lampard, John Terry and the like.

I suppose its my turn to tag loads of people but seriously speaking there are NO people left. But in the slight chance you havn’t caught the viral post, then leave a comment and I’ll tag you fair and square. I hope you enjoyed getting to know me a bit better!

UPDATE: Andreas and Ray: you’ve been tagged!

Back from Egypt and Ad Revenue On The Up!

Well Im back from my holidays to Egypt. I arrived in the UK at 3am on Tuesday all thanks to flight delays at Heathrow. Apparently there was loads of fog at Heathrow Airport whilst I was sunbathing in 26 degree weather! Anyway I had a really good time reading up about Ancient Egyptian history whilst visiting some tombs, old temples and an odd museum. In short I really feel fresh and ready to take on another year of business as a young entrepreneur.

A quick thankyou is in hand to Matt for helping to moderate the comments while I was away. Unfortunately the Forums gained spam traction but I will be debating whether to let it go in the next few weeks as there doesn’t seem to be much action taking place there.

I hope you and your families had a really good and joyful Christmas. Holidays like this are only one of a few opportunities you as a mogul can get the time off and really distract yourself from your busy lifestyles. I hope you grabbed the chance to do so and are feeling invigorated after the short break.

During my 7 day break I was pleased to see that I gained another Adbrite advertiser turns out they’ve just left me! But I do have another Text Link Ads advertiser AND a referral from TLA (thanks Rohail!). The 2 extra ads can be seen in my sidebar so by all means go check them out! This means that income from online activity is starting to build up really nicely so Im really excited about what the New Year will hold for me.

Merry Christmas 2006!

I just wanted to take a few minutes to say Merry Christmas from Blogtrepreneur for 2006. I hope you have a really great day!

Im flying back from Egypt today (this is an advanced Wordpress post), but will be online from tomorrow. Once again, I wish you a joyous 25th of December!

How To Boost Indexation Using XML and XHTML Sitemaps

Recently I discovered an awesome blog that I had stumbled on a few times in the past. Most of you may know the author for his brilliant design work with blogs or maybe for his talented video production and teaching skills. Either way, Chris Pearson from Pearsonified.com has gained me as a reader, and it his him who gave me the following tips on better indexation in Google.

Communication is the key to any relationship. There’s no “I” in “Team”, and so talking to your spouse, business partner or football goalkeeper is vital for success. In the same way, in order to nurture a website teeming with success its necessary that you network properly with the one being that can make or break your internet glory - the Googlemeister.

So how can I form this bond with the master?
It’s simple and there are 2 main ways to do so, each giving you that extra bit of love that should boost your rankings and drive more traffic to your site.

1. Add an XML Sitemap

With Wordpress, adding an XML map of your masses of pages couldn’t be easier. These days there are plugins for just about everything you could ever wish for. So of course, you won’t be surprised to hear that the Google Sitemap Generator is your key to solving the puzzle.

All the normal procedures apply - Download the plugin, Unzip it, Upload the contents to your Plugins directory then Activate the Plugin in your Admin section. The sitemap will then be on autopilot, pinging MSN, Yahoo and the G-Daddy periodically so they can stay up-to-date with your ever expanding online presence. For the best effects, I link to my XML Sitemap in my footer just for that extra peace of mind.

2. Add an XHTML Sitemap

This second phase of SEO is a tad harder to complete but none-the-less the results are great, especially for you webmasters who sites are cluttered with a mass of information and whose Archives are a disgrace. The XHTML map will serve up a page which will contain links to every single page you’ve ever created - neat huh!

To save me from repeating everything that Mr Pearson says, go and check out his post on Using XHTML Sitemaps for Better Indexing. In it he shows you how to download the plugin (yet another one!), and how to style the HTML page that results from using it to suit your sites look and feel.

Again, by linking to this sitemap it will help Google to journey through your whole site which then should get picked up by the bots and slapped onto the search engine for browsers to enjoy.

I hope this information helps your site to compete even more in the world of SEO - and if you’ve got any more tips or hints on better indexation - let me know through commenting!

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