FREE Domain Name and 1 Year Web Hosting Contest

Feabionsu says:

Thanks Michael (and Yan too)! And you know, you were right when you said you discovered some of your favorite blogs by having to read through them, Michael. Not only to I get all the cool tech news, I got to know YOU better too – but we owe that to Plurk as well, hey?

And well, I /do/ try to get noticed – I mean, it’s not like I’m going to deny that I really want that domain name, because I do! xD It’s a great contest, the best of all the free domain name contests I’ve looked for and gave up on – and I gave up on a lot of them – so it’s worth to be making such an effort for me if I actually do win.

And now that Michael’s giving away TWO free domain names, to two winners – it just makes it all the better. It just means that there’s another winner, another person who’s not going to be disappointed by whoever wins the first domain and will be also jumping on his bed!

Anyways, about the questions – there’s two reasons why I shorten the links. For the ‘advertisement01′ and ‘advertisement02′ and so on – that’s just because it just makes it easier to read the post, rather than pasting super long links that break halfway through the post and go on forever. And it only takes me a second (Metamark’s the best shortening link website!). And it just looks nicer on the comments than an extra long link!

As for the actual link that I give out to people, the one that’s also shortened (http://xrl.us/onxhr) there’s the first reason of course, that when I paste it in an email or anywhere else, it just looks nicer and it saves characters when there’s a character limit.

The second reason is that I /am/ hoping that it counts as backlinks – the url is a direct link to this blog post. It redirects yet, but Metamark doesn’t take you to their own page where they say “WARNING: this url redirects you to http://www.cravingtech.com/blog...”.

I don’t know, but when I use StatCounter for my freewebs sites, it always says if the visitors use http://website.webs.com or http://freewebs.com/website or a shortened link like website.tk or .co.nr. So in a way, I’m hoping it does the same for Michael, so that he can tell where his visitors are coming.

And again, it’s just because it looks nicer and I love Metamark! By the way Michael, did you like my article on Knol/Squidoo. Like I’m not talking about how much visitors find your site through it, just talking about the actual article itself…

Oh and about my username on Plurk and over here – since you mentioned it – want to know how I got it? From the verification code I used to sign up on YouTube! Well, I /did/ want something original, and Feabionsu sounded like a cool nickname… so there you go!

Sorry I write so much, but I can’t help it… Hope that answers all of your questions anyways!

Feabionsus last blog post..Another Domain Name, Another Chance

Feabionsu says:

Okay, time for another daily scoop. Since hearing the news today that Yahoo Buzz finally opened up it’s beta to everyone, and seeing how each one of your blog posts has a “buzz” button, I thought I’d buzz as many recent blog posts as possible – considering that their offers aren’t expired or that they aren’t just your blog statistics!

All in all, I’ve submitted seventeen of your blog posts to Yahoo Buzz, and all of them can be found in my “Buzz Activity”, right here: http://xrl.us/advertisement06. Some of them didn’t get buzzed up yet at all, but two of them, one about your Gmail skins, and the other about the ALT attribute got buzzed up five times already!

Which of course compared to other people’s buzzes isn’t much, but seeing as I only posted them today… And anyways, I hope as time goes by and more people visit your blog, they’ll take the time to buzz up your posts as well. Which is the whole point of this thing – to make your blog and this contest more known, so don’t worry, one of those 17 buzz submissions IS about the contest…

I also submitted your entire blog as a whole to Yahoo Buzz as well, as well to Digg.com. You can check it out here… http://xrl.us/advertisement07! Submitting individual blog posts is good as well as spreading word about the contest, but telling people about simply your blog and what it features I thought was a good idea too.

Lastly, I made little cards on the computer that told people about your contest – a screenshot of what I did can be seen here: http://xrl.us/advertisement08. As you can see, I duplicated the cards, then printed three copies (that’s 30 small cards) and cut them out.

So where I did I put these cards then? Did I hand them out to people on the street?! Of course not! I’m not THAT desperate! But I /did/ go to my public library, believe it or not, which ten minutes walk away thankfully, and put them out in visible places for people to see – on the keyboards of free computers, on the tables where one reads, on the armchairs where people sit – and even on some of the shelves where computer books are put!

It might seem crazy, but hey, it actually works! You have to see with your own eyes how people notice the piece of paper lying on their computer keyboard and pocket it after reading it! Maybe not every one of my cards had such attention – but I tried!

Now that I think about it, I should’ve taken a picture with me at the library and one of those cards at the shelves! Maybe tomorrow – I have lots of ink in my printer left, so nothing’s stopping me from printing and cutting out more of them! And as you can see, this is one of the cases where my link shortening actually helped me!

Like Rjani, I too plan to use some more social sites like digg and facebook, paste the link in some more forums, and answer some yahoo questions – but for now, I’m focusing on my more creative ideas, since I have inspiration at the moment! Yep, creative ideas like cutting up little cards… xD

It’s actually fun coming up with all these new schemes to popularize this contest and your blog! I hope it’s actually helping you at least a bit – I doubt you get hundreds of visitors because of my little cards or me posting your blog on Digg; but I do hope it does get you at least a little bit of traffic!

Until tomorrow’s scoop then!

Feabionsus last blog post..Another Domain Name, Another Chance