We had the privilege of being invited to BOX NYC last week by the folks at WCMG Events. The event was a mixture of boxing, poker, and stand-up comedy, so we sent our resident MMA expert and stand-up comedian Hugh to cover the festivities. He filed his report of the evening, which you can now find over at Gunaxin Sports. We also sent Mike Gogel from The Gunaxin Show to handle some interview duties, and represent us in the Poker Tournament. He was able to score some time with Darryl Strawberry, Doc Gooden, John Starks, and Dmitriy Salita. We plan on using some of that audio in a future episode of our Sports Podcast, so stay tuned for that. The guys had a great time at the event, and look forward to opportunities like this in the future.

Me, with the Crown, and a Playoff Beard

This past weekend I was invited by Crown Royal to attend their race at Richmond International Raceway. I had never been to a NASCAR event before, and lucky for me, they used their connections to make sure I got a behind the scenes looks that few fans ever get to experience. I was there to participate in a competition, entitled “Capture the Crown.” For this epic all day event, I was teamed up with two fellow members of “new media.”

Kaitlyn trying out the Headset Scanner

First was Kaitlyn, the ridiculously cute face behind HotforNASCAR.com. She produces weekly video blogs, and will soon be sharing them with our audience here at Gunaxin. We relied on her experience and charms to help advance our cause in the competition.

Josiah with Rutledge Wood

The other member of our team was Josiah from NBCSports.com, who you may know as Shakey from the House of Punte Podcast. Josiah was full of youthful energy and really made the day fun. At times it felt a little bit like we were chaperoning him on a school field trip, but it was clear that he was enjoying himself.

Team Photo before our Pace Car Ride

So there is our team, poised to jump into a Pace Car and take a few laps around the track. I had never done anything like it, and although we only got up around 90 mph, the short track and the banked turns really let you feel the speed. You may be able to get a little bit of an idea from this video :

Matthew Hansen at Press Conference

The race was actually titled “Crown Royal Presents the Matthew and Daniel Hansen 400“, in honor of Matthew Hansen (pictured above) and his twin brother who fell on the battlefield in Afghanistan. The focus was squarely on the Military at this event, and Matthew Hansen and his wife were truly treated like Royalty by the folks at Crown.

Matthew Hansen and Matt Kenseth

After a welcoming ceremony at the Crown Royal RV, we were joined by Matt Kenseth, driver of the #17 Crown Royal car :

Team Photo with Matt Kenseth

Matt took some time to pose with our team, and then sat down with all of the competitors for an interview inside the RV. He was a great guy, very down to earth and easy to talk to. I think he could tell that some of us were at our first race, but he took his time to answer our questions thoughtfully, and we all appreciated his time.

Scavenger Hunting

From there, the Capture the Crown race was really on. We were each given a booklet with over 100 scavenger hunt items of varying point levels. The strategy of course was to knock out as many high point items as we could. The hunt was designed to really give us a complete look at the entire NASCAR experience.

Posing with Miss Sprint Cup

Items varied from finding certain information about the track or key figures, experiencing the event, and documenting it with photographs. I focused mainly on the photographic proof, and relied on my teammates more to interact with the people and find the things on the list.

Pre-Race Car Inspection

We were given complete access to the track, which allowed us into the garage and pit area prior to the race. Apparently many other people had that particular access as well, and the pre-race atmosphere was really great. You were really able to get up close with the cars and crews, and experience all of the work that went into race-day.

Interview with Rodney Atkins, Matthew Hansen, and his Wife

Crown Royal had also brought in Rodney Atkins to participate in their race, and perform a pre-race concert. We had the chance to interview Rodney with Matthew Hansen and his wife shortly before he went on stage. This interview was honestly a bit awkward, as each team had their own carved out time, and we were all trying to answer the same questions in the scavenger hunt booklet.

Rodney Atkins Performing

When Rodney went on stage, we had stage-front VIP access, which of course allowed for some great photographs. Honestly I’m not typically a fan of Country Music, and didn’t really know who Rodney was. But like any music, experiencing a live concert can really make you a fan, and I enjoyed both the sound and lyrics.

Rodney Atkins with Matthew Hansen

Rodney brought Matthew Hansen on stage to talk about why the race was named after him and his brother. Those were some very touching moments, and although Matthew was nervous for it, I think he’ll look back and cherish the entire experience for a long, long time.

Drivers waiting to be introduced.

After the concert we made our way to the back of the stage, where they would be introducing the drivers. The pageantry leading up to the beginning of the race was far more then I ever realized existed.

Matt Kenseth taking an introductory lap

All 43 drivers were individually introduced, and then made their way around the track in the back of a Corvette that was provided by a local club. From there they found their cars lined up in order on Pit Road.

Whiskey tasting in the Crown Royal RV

Once the race began, we eventually made our way back to the Crown Royal RV for a Whiskey Tasting. I personally don’t drink, but the other members of our group clearly enjoyed the opportunity. They were given samples and the full story behind each of Crown’s 5 varieties : Deluxe, Black, Reserve, Cask #16, and Extra Rare.

NASCAR Fans

I could really tell how much of an event a NASCAR race is. Compared to other sporting competitions I attend regularly, most people really dedicated their day / weekend to this race, in order to get in the full experience. I guess compared to other sports, a NASCAR race in your town is really a once a year event, and the fans take full advantage.

#17 Car Pit Crew

Our Hot Passes even gave us Pit access during the race. This is something that very few race fans ever get to experience, and was truly a once in a lifetime thing for myself. The crew worked very hard during the race, and were often times running back and forth. It was a chore just to stay out of their way.

Team Pit Box

As someone who is interested in both sports and technology, I was amazed by the Pit Boxes and apparently previously had no idea what an actual NASCAR pit looked like. They had 43 of these lined up, one for each team. The crew kept track of all kinds of information, and had video replays of their pit stops in order to make adjustments on the fly. NASCAR really is a team sport, with technology playing a large role in a driver’s success.

We Captured the Crown!

Oh yeah, so about the Capture the Crown competition. We Won! Apparently the LONG day in the sun, trying to get every single point possible was well worth the effort, as our team captured the crown and will be traveling to Las Vegas during Champions Week to celebrate. In addition, our team gets to select a charity for a donation from Crown Royal. Thanks to my teammates, my competitors, Taylor PR, and Crown Royal for such a fabulous first race experience.

For more views on the weekend’s festivities, please check out recaps from our friends :

• Inside the Crown Royal Matthew and Daniel Hansen 400 (Smoking Jacket)
• My Weekend at the Matthew & Daniel Hansen 400 – A Toast to True Heroes (Midwest Sports Fans)
• Photo Recap: The Crown Royal “Matthew and Daniel Hansen 400″ NASCAR Race (Complex)
• Chasing the Crown: NASCAR Pays Tribute to Marine and Fallen Brother (The Rugged)
• Chase for the Crown: A Weekend as a NASCAR VIP (Off the Bench – NBC Sports)
• The Capture the Crown NASCAR event (Hot for NASCAR)
• Our Complete Photo Gallery on Facebook

Tomorrow I am heading down south to Richmond, for my first ever NASCAR experience. I’ve been invited by Crown Royal to participate in a “Capture the Crown” weekend with a group of other bloggers. We’ll be involved in a bit of a scavenger hunt in the hours leading up to a race titled, “Crown Royal Presents The Matthew and Daniel Hansen 400.” Rolls off the tongue doesn’t it?

So here’s the deal :

From Bobby and Donnie Allison to Ward and Jeff Burton, NASCAR has featured its fair share of famous brothers. However, this weekend at Richmond International Raceway, the names of two new siblings will be on the tip of every tongue in the NASCAR garage: Matthew and Daniel Hanson, U.S. Marine twins and grand-prize winners of the Crown Royal “Your Name Here” contest. The contest awarded them with naming rights to the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race on Saturday, April 30, officially titled, “Crown Royal Presents The Matthew and Daniel Hansen 400.”

Matthew and Daniel Hansen

Traditionally, the race has donned only the name of the contest winner, but this year’s race will recognize Matthew, as well as his identical twin brother and fellow Marine, Daniel, who was killed in action on Feb. 14, 2009. Matthew Hansen, a San Marcos, Calif. native, was unveiled as the grand-prize winner earlier this year during a ceremony led by country music star Rodney Atkins at Daytona International Speedway. Atkins performed his hit song “These are My People” during an acoustic set and added the Hansen brothers’ names to the lyrics signifying their selection as winners.

Under the lights in Richmond

From what I understand about NASCAR, Richmond is a pretty good track to visit for a virgin. Not only do they race at night, but the shorter than average track allows for pretty intense action. On top of that, it looks like I’ll get the chance to meet the man badass enough to race in purple, Matt Kenseth :

So expect some Tweets this weekend (hashtag : #CTC) and some content next week coming from a great weekend hanging out with Crown Royal and representatives of these sites :

• The Smoking Jacket
• Complex
• The Rugged
• NBC Sports
• Midwest Sports Fans
• Hot for NASCAR
• NASCAR Race Mom
• Daddy Tips

1. Select Site
2. Select Zone
3. Select Dates
4. Select Impressions
5. Set Target URL
6. Upload Creative
7. Pay

Once an order is placed, we’ll be prompted to approve it, and then it can go live on the site right away. This is a very exciting development for any publisher, allowing them to offer self-serve advertising in a simple manner. Hopefully some advertisers will find it just as exciting.

This is all made possible by the folks at iSocket.com. I was recently made aware of this service by Jerod Morris over at Midwest Sports Fans. Your site must be approved before you can utilize the service, but from there its relatively simple to get started.

Like any new service online, there are some things I love about iSocket, and some things that I’d like to see changed. I’ll have a full review of the site coming in the next few weeks, once I’ve had a chance to give it a more thorough test-drive.

Bryan Douglass (Twitter / Tumblr) did a great job for a few months as our Associate Editor for Sports, but then he quit. He actually has an exciting new opportunity coming in front of him, and it was apparently good enough to get him to step down from his role with our site. However, before he did, he was a guest on Josh Zerkle’s House of Punte Podcast. The episode was recorded back in the beginning of March, but was buried on Josh’s harddrive for awhile, until now.

So when I finally got a chance to listen to it today, I found it a bit weird to hear other people discussing myself and my site. After butchering my last name (no worries), Josh and his panelists then spent a few minutes debating how to pronounce the site name. As they said, I don’t really care how your pronounce it, it was a few minutes of free publicity. For the record though, I’ve always pronounced it “Gun – ox -in.” But as long as you’re talking about us, I’m happy. Thanks to Josh for having Bryan on the show, and thanks to Bryan for representing.

Listen Now:

Link Dumps

If you’ve hung around on new media sites (blogs, etc.) enough, than you have probably seen these or done one yourself. Essentially it’s a post which has the sole purpose of listing links that you suggest your readers click on. Many sites do them, with varying success. After about a month online, I began doing a daily link dump, which I called “Gunaxin’s Happy Funtime Links.” I would link you to an example, but I actually have removed them from the internet at this point, for three reasons :

• Due to our interface, those OLD link dump posts were getting highlighted as related content, or in other widgets.
• Many of the links became outdated or broken, as sites tend to come and go on the internet
• I replaced these posts with another solution, which I’ll get to below

A daily link dump post can actually be fairly time consuming. I went through several iterations of this post, but in general it requires a few steps, repeated as many times as you wish. Finding a good post, copying over the title, copying over the link, and acknowledging the site it came from. At first I did about 10 links per day, and eventually increased to about 20. At first I had one image at the top (usually a girl, I’ll get to that in a moment) and that image linked to the top story.

I quickly came to the conclusion that the image received the most clicks (duh), and thus began adding a second image halfway through the links, or eventually a line of thumbnails, linking to 7 more posts. Of course that required saving images, cropping thumbnails, uploading, etc. A good link post would easily take me over an hour to complete, each and every night.

When we split our site into the subdomains by category, I then decided it would be a good idea to do one of these link dumps on each site. I began paying contributors to handle these posts for me, while I continued the main link dump, renaming it to “Stuff for Guys on the Web”. We proceeded that way for several months, increasing our linking effort substantially, and also the time and cash I was willing to toss at the problem.

The Boob Problem

I always tried to vary what I was linking to, linking to various sites, and various types of content. Since we have our 6 categories, Sports, Girls, Humor, Media, Gadgets, and Grub, I made an effort to link evenly to each category. Of course the issue is that on the internet (and everywhere else in life I suppose), people are attracted to hot girls, and will click on them first, EVERY TIME. Even when I didn’t use images for the girls, those links always received the most clicks. Thats obviously great for driving traffic to that content, but not great for the sites that don’t have that content, and I want to drive some clicks to them.

Obviously this isn’t an unknown phenomenon, as sites that really have no business posting that type of content, make it a regular occurrence. Just look at the Huffington Post or Bleacher Report. In fact, to illustrate that point, I’ll copy this tweet from Funny or Die :

“Huffington Post is the middle handle on a frozen yogurt machine that serves glorious boobs & tragic news.”

While many sites just give up and post some boobs, there are still other sites that stick to their guns, and stay true to their purpose. Unfortunately it’s as difficult to drive traffic to that content from our site (when it appears right next to boobs) as it is to drive traffic to non-boob content on our own site. I don’t really know the solution to this issue, as it still exists even as I progress into the alternate linking solutions that I’ll present below.

Link Exchange Ratios

As I said yesterday, we don’t have any formal agreements on link exchanges. I understand that other sites do, and some even require a certain amount of traffic from you before they’ll even consider linking to you. I personally find that ridiculous, but I’ll leave that specific rant alone for the moment.

I’ve always just tried to do our best. While I don’t normally add up statistics and keep close count on who is sending us what traffic, I do look often enough to have a reasonable idea. If I realize that another site is really making an effort, then I try to make sure I return the favor.

It’s a really tough thing though. A smaller site could link to us every day (thus helping us with SEO), yet send less than 10 visitors a day to us, and therefore be difficult for us to notice. A much larger site could link to us once per quarter, and send so much traffic that it would be almost impossible for us to ever catch up. So how do we handle this?

Well as I said, we don’t. I would go nuts trying to watch over those numbers like a hawk. We do the best we can, try to be good net citizens, spread the love around, and try to stay friends. From time to time I will get an email from a site that mentions we’re having trouble keeping up. They’re right, we do sometimes, so then I need to pick up my efforts and do my best to keep em happy, and stay friends.

At the same time, there are sites that are larger than us, that we’ll link to daily, sending them thousands of referrals per month, without a link back. I guess to them, we are that small site sending traffic of little consequence to them. Does that mean I should stop linking to them? Does that mean they should throw us a bone every once in awhile? Who knows? Every site does it differently, and some are much more generous than others.

Apparently some sites like to keep things at a 1:1 ratio. For every visitor they send to us, they want us to send one back to them. They have this requirement regardless of the size of their site. So I suppose they will never link to a site that can’t keep up with that requirement for traffic. I personally feel like the exchange should be more proportional to the size of the site.

If my site is sending 2,000 outgoing clicks per day, and another site sends about 200 total, then a 10:1 ratio makes sense to me. That means if I link to them and send them 100, I would hope that they send me back 10. Over time they’ll grow (partially thanks to our help I guess) and eventually be able to send us more. Again, I don’t really pay attention to this closely, but I’m never going to email a small site and ask them why they didn’t send me back 100, if I know pretty damn well they can’t do it.

Applying the same concept, if I’m exchanging links with a site that sends out 20,000 clicks per day, then I would think a 1:10 ratio with them would be fair. However people I have spoken to have asked me, “why would they send you 1000 referrals if you can only send them 100 back, when they could send those same 1000 referrals elsewhere and get 1000 back.”

Well thats a damn good question. The only answer I can provide is my post from yesterday. I guess that’s just me being naive, and forgetting that this really is a business. I guess I should cut off all of the smaller sites that we link to, and instead focus all of my attention on sending traffic to large sites, who are able to return the favor. That sounds lame to me though, so pardon me if I don’t follow your rules.

Widgets

One of the main problems with the link dump on our page is, due to our magazine style layout, that posts are only highlighted for a relatively short period of time. Once that link dump post scrolled off of our recent posts widget, the traffic it received went down substantially. So I was looking for a way to have a live link dump, that could be updated automatically, and always live on the sidebar of the page.

I began playing around with Widgets (from Widgetbox, future post) and a custom RSS feed of my “favorites”. This was a reasonable solution, but due to technical constraints, it would only display text links (no images) and I was only able to construct one widget (with all types of links in it). We ran this widget for about a year, and it was fairly effective.

Around that same time, 3rd party widgets for link exchanges started to become popular on the internet. Obviously other people had experienced the same issues that I had with linking, and had begun to create link exchanges such as Marketgid, 2Leep, Wahoha, BloggerEx, etc. Essentially these services all work the same way, in that you submit your links and thumbnails, and then run a widget on your page. They populate that widget with other people’s content, and when your visitors click on it, you get credit for an incoming link.

It’s a solid concept, as it manages that link ratio thing I discussed above, and in general works well. However there are issues with quality of content, and quality of traffic. Many of these services are flooded with low quality sites, which steal content, and obviously exist strictly to make a buck. When the balance of ads to content is so severely out of whack, and a site has obviously stolen all of its content, then it’s obvious what the sole focus of that site is. While we’re all trying to make money, there is definitely a right way and wrong way to go about that. In addition, much of the traffic can be from overseas, from countries that honestly don’t monetize well. Not to mention the fact that these link exchanges always insert their own landing page in between your site, and the destination site, where they run their own ads.

So after experimenting, we’re currently running two widgets. The first is one we’ve been running the longest :

Uproxx Ulink

Ulink doesn’t happen to be the best when it comes to exchange ratio, however it’s my personal favorite due to quality of content and traffic. Our friends at Uproxx have made this invite only, and they only invite sites that they know and trust. When I look down the list of sites that we are sending traffic to, and receiving it from, they are sites that I would be linking to every day anyways. To me, it’s the ultimate time saver, as it allows me to send and receive traffic from quality sites, with minimal effort on my part. They also don’t insert themselves in the middle of the transaction. When a user clicks on a thumbnail in Ulink, they are taken directly to that content.

Ulink also has an excellent interface for submitting content, and tracking performance. Here is a screenshot of the statistics :

I’ve been using the platform for probably 2 years now, and I still don’t understand how they handle the exchange numbers. As you can see there are plenty of sites that we are sending less traffic to then we receive from them. I believe this is mostly due to the number of posts they have available, and what thumbnails they use for those posts, but I’m not entirely sure. I honestly have very little control on who and what our page sends traffic to with a system like this, but I know that these are all solid sites.

The Uproxx Widget has the added bonus of being configurable by category. This has allowed me to construct widgets with content in them that is tailored to each of our subdomains. An example of the widget can be found below :

Scribol

The second link exchange, Scribol, is much more similar to the other services I listed before. We’ve just started using it recently, and it’s providing by far the best exchange ratio we’ve received. While the control and transparency isn’t as high as what we received with Uproxx Ulink, the exchange ratio has been about 5:1 for us, which is difficult to pass up. There are always some discrepancies in numbers, due to many technical reasons, but the traffic has been mostly legit. So with Scribol, I feel like we’re getting quantity, to add to the quality that we get from Ulink.

Gunaxin Links

Those link exchanges are great, but I still wanted to have a system with tighter integration to our site, and a higher level of control. I essentially wanted to re-create those categorized link dumps, but do it in a dynamic way that could live on our pages all of the time. This is where Gunaxin Links comes in, and it will be the focus of my next post.

For additional discussion on these topics, you may want to check out my appearance with “On the DL Podcast” where I discussed much of this, and the previous article with Dan Levy.

The community that exists on the internet, and the atmosphere of sharing, and  helping, is one of the things that attracted me to this business in the first place. Compared to legacy industries, there is something really human and satisfying about this business that we are in.

So I shouldn’t be breaking any news to other publishers, or to our audience, that sites like ours tend to link to each other often. Gunaxin doesn’t have any formal agreements in respects to this, but in general I feel that you get what you give, and then some. We pass traffic back and forth with other sites, highlighting some of the great stuff they have done, and they do the same for us. Ever since we’ve existed, from day one, other sites have linked to us, and thus sent us traffic. So we’ve always tried our best to do the same. I’ll get into some of the challenges of that, in a post tomorrow.

I personally believe in linking to sites we are friends with, and content that we feel is good, and would be of interest to our readers. I don’t care if that content is on a small site, or one that just arrived on the internet yesterday. If it’s good, it’s good, and we’ll do our best to send some traffic their way. I feel we have an obligation to give back to the industry in general, which was obviously so helpful in getting us started.

I could probably do some math on this with Google Analytics, but instead I’ll just toss out a number, because I’ve learned that is how business people roll. For every visitor we send away from our site via an outgoing link, 5 more are returned to us via an incoming link. Ok, maybe a real number would have been beneficial, but that isn’t really the point. It could be 1 to 1, and the same benefit would still exist.

We don’t see that 1 visitor as 1 visitor who viewed 2.37 pages per visit, and thus is worth some fraction of a penny to us in terms of advertising revenue. We see that as 1 person, who might like what they see with our site, and may become a fan, a subscriber, a commenter, or someone likely to tell their friends. You never know who that person is, and in my opinion it’s tough to put a value on them. What I do know, is if those new people stop experiencing the site for the first time, then we will cease to grow, and eventually cease to exist.

So we’re constantly looking to expand our network, link to new sites and in turn hopefully have them share our content with their audience. You never know what link, what article, or what visitor is going to be the one that pushes your site to the next level. When we get to that next level, we won’t forget where we came from, and set some threshold on who we will or won’t link to, purely based on numbers.

Nobody has any way of knowing which will be the biggest and best sites of tomorrow. It seems very likely that a new site today, could be bigger than us a year from now. So in a sense you are paying it forward, not necessarily expecting anything in return, but knowing that it just always seems to happen as long as you help out others. As I said, it’s that part of this game that attracted me to it in the first place, so don’t expect me to turn away from that, regardless of how large we may get.

I’m not really here to teach you how to make transparent graphics, but essentially you create a layered image in Photoshop, and then use the Save for Web option to export out a PNG-24 graphic with transparency. For twitter of course I would recommend designing for a square. Once you have it added to your profile, it will look something like this :

Notice the background color in those two versions of the "G"

The result is an avatar which first of all stands out from everyone else, because it’s not a square box, but also will adapt to whatever background is behind it, in various twitter applications. Here is what our new avatars look like in Tweetdeck for example :

I suggest creating a fairly large image, so people can see a crisp avatar when they look at it by itself, or when viewing your profile page. At larger sizes, you can even see the drop shadow transparency, which leads me to believe that alpha channels are respected as well.

So I guess it’s time that we all start breaking out of that square box. Have fun!

Unfortunately a hot backup means that your database is just copied without closing it, and your backup can have data corruption issues. In addition, a nightly backup doesn’t really do anything to bring back any content that has been created since the previous backup. On a site like ours, we can have anywhere between 5-10 posts completed each day, and contributors might be working on 5-10 more in draft format. Hence a more robust back-up solution is needed to be truly protected. Enter Vaultpress from Automattic (makers of WordPress) :

So we’re now Vaultpress customers, and everything seems to be working fine. Granted I haven’t had the occasion to restore anything just yet, but the service was very easy to install and configure, and it has great transparency to what it is doing. It takes snapshots of your site at shorter intervals, and makes them available to you for download (among other features).

View from the Plugin inside of WordPress

View from the Dashboard at Vaultpress.com

The service does cost money, and currently we are on the lowest plan at $15 per month. To us it’s clearly worth it, but it’s obviously a decision that is effected by the size of your site, and the importance of your content to you. For much more on the service, definitely check out the site. They are currently in one of those “invite only” beta modes, so if you’d like to try out the service, let me know in the comments, and I can send you a “Golden Ticket” like Willy Wonka. No, this is not an affiliate thing, I don’t make any money, just trying to help out some fellow publishers.

About a year ago I began adding some additional accounts to the mix, but never really promoted them all that heavily. For a time our Sports Editor was manning the @GunaxinSports account, but currently that position is open. About 2 weeks ago, I spent some time making sure that we had an account for each of our subsites. Each of these accounts has content automatically sent to them via their corresponding site, and their corresponding category on our Links site, Gunaxin Links :

• @Gunaxin
• @GunaxinSports
• @GunaxinGirls
• @GunaxinHumor
• @GunaxinMedia
• @GunaxinGadgets
• @GunaxinGrub
• @GunaxinPodcasts
• @GunaxinLinks

The hope is that eventually we’ll have an Associate Editor manning each one of those accounts (thus making them more useful and personal), however that is not currently the case. The idea though is that you can follow the account that interests you, and get content related to the interest. So for example, on @GunaxinHumor, we automatically tweet links to any content that we publish on our page in the Humor Category (http://humor.gunaxin.com), however we also tweet links from other sites, that have gone popular under that category on Gunaxin Links (http://links.gunaxin.com/category/humor). If you are going to follow the individual category accounts, I would suggest that you NOT follow @GunaxinLinks, as it would be providing duplicate tweets.

In addition, I have tried to be more active recently on my personal Twitter account, @PVanderVossen. Here I will be sharing links from this blog, along with my own personal tweets and interactions with people in the industry. The hope is to move some of my more personal tweets to that account, and off of the main @Gunaxin account. In addition, you may have noticed over the past few months, that links to the Author’s twitter account are now provided at the tops of all of our content. So feel free to follow your favorite writers as well.

So there you go, if you ever wanted more Gunaxin in your Twitter feed (doubtful eh?), we’ve satisfied that need.

Dan Levy and Nick Tarnowski aired their final episode of “On the DL Podcast” today, and I was pleased to contribute a voice mail, and BTTF reference to the show. Accompanying the final episode is an epic post which matches figures from the sports blog community with Muppets. To my shock and delight, I was included on the list and compared to Doglion. I’ll take what I can get, and consider it an honor.

I first met Dan at BWB 1.0, and had to tell him that I had never listened to a real podcast, let alone his show. From that point, I became a semi-regular listener. I preferred the shows where he conducted interviews, so honestly didn’t hear much of Nick, and mostly enjoyed the discussions on sports media more than sports themselves. It’s tough to keep up with a daily show as a listener, so I can’t even imagine what it was like for the creator. The variety of topics that Dan presented made it rather easy to drop in a couple times per week when the show piqued my interest though. His show, along with some others that I was introduced to around the same time, served as the inspiration for the idea to create our own podcast.

In all they produced 555 shows, and I’m proud to have been a guest on Episode 436. It’s tough to make a go at an independent venture like that for so long. Eventually everyone loses a bit of steam and wonders why they continue on. Some larger sports media outlet should have picked up the show by now, but for whatever reason it didn’t happen. I have no doubt that Dan will find success in this business in some other format, and I wish him luck in however he decides to spend his time. The show will be missed.

I’ve never been a book person. I’ve always gotten by in life by reading the minimal amount possible. Which is probably the main reason I’m such a horrible writer (if you haven’t noticed already). It’s not that I don’t enjoy learning, or the content. It’s the physical act of reading a book that always killed me. Something about holding a book in my hand and attempting to read it almost certainly put me to sleep. Even when I was able to stay awake, I’m one of the slowest readers you’ll ever meet.

I can read stuff on the internet all day long, but as I tell our contributors all the time, I need it broken up. Photos, videos, or at the very least variety of formatting allows me to read things on a computer relatively easily. So do I read everything on my iPad now? Nope, they’re still books, just in a different format. Instead I’ve discovered Audio Books.

Now I’m obsessed with reading, errrr listening, and I can’t get enough of non-fiction content related to what I do here at Gunaxin. So a couple of times per month here on this site, I plan on sharing my thoughts with you on some books I’ve “read.” To date it’s been a ton of stuff by Seth Godin, with a few other writers sprinkled in. I’ll try to recommend a variety of authors, so I have my iPhone loaded up with some additional stuff that I’ll be checking out in the near future.

In the meantime, until I can get to those future posts, I’ve added a recommended reading widget here on the site. It’s connected via Amazon, so I guess theoretically I’ll make some cash if you buy one, but really I just used that because it was the simplest way to do it. My real motivation is to share the information and the experience with you. So if you prefer to read on your iPad, or listen via Audible, feel free to check these out in whichever manner you prefer, and don’t worry about my affiliate link.

As I get into individual books, I certainly welcome your thoughts, and even your recommendations about what you think I should listen to next.

The official name of the business is Gunaxin Media LLC, and it’s currently a single member LLC, with myself being the single owner. Originally however, Gunaxin was formed as a partnership, with 2 members on the initial LLC agreement. That arrangement terminated in 2010, which makes it still relevant for the taxes that I am about to file. This return will however be marked final, and next year’s returns will be filed under a new Tax ID #.

I utilize H.R. Block’s software, and handle my own taxes. If any I.R.S. agents are reading this, it could mean I’m prone to error and ripe for an audit. It also means we’re probably too small for you to really worry about. Gunaxin actually has no employees, only an owner, and an army of freelance contributors. The contributors are considered independent contractors, and thus require a 1099-MISC form be sent to them if they earn over $600 in a year. This year we had 8 contributors who earned more than $600, and those forms were generated and sent back in January.

Tax software obviously simplifies things greatly, but the end result is that I filled out a Form 1065, U.S. Return of Partnership Income. Essentially any profit that we earned in 2010 is reported on this form, and split amongst the partners by their ownership percentage, regardless of how much was actually distributed to them during the year. Each partner is given a Schedule K-1, in order to report this income on their own personal taxes, and they are responsible for taxes on that income. The business itself doesn’t actually pay taxes.

Since we’re based in Maryland, we also needed to complete a similar form, “Maryland Pass-Through Entity Income Tax Return” and a nasty little sucker called a Personal Property Return which is accompanied by a $300 processing fee. That is essentially your yearly fee to run a business in MD.

New to me this year, since I just recently took this as my full-time employment, is the necessity to pay estimated taxes quarterly. Based on earnings in the 1st quarter, I’ll be expected to pay estimated taxes on the profit that the business made (which is essentially my income now), and fill out a 1040 ES. I haven’t tackled this problem just yet, but don’t anticipate much trouble.

Tonight I was invited by the folks at Cîroc (another fabulous Diageo brand) to join them in a suite at the Verizon Center for the Wizards final home game of the season. The opponent was the Boston Celtics, who decided to bench their entire starting lineup and still took the Wiz to overtime. Their fan base seemed to dominate the arena at times, but when it mattered, the Wizards pulled out the victory and their fans even did some cheering.

I was joined in the suite by Josh Zerkle from With Leather, Chimpanzee Rage from Deuce of Davenport, and Kevin Burke from The Hoop Doctors. We even had a visit from Gheorghe Muresan, and then were joined by the Cîroc Girls, who brought the party with them. I only had my iPhone camera with me, so the picture kinda sucks, but you get the idea :

The ladies were on hand to take photos with fans and promote responsible consumption by providing consumers free mass transit passes for a safe ride home after the game. So please remember to enjoy your CÎROC Ultra Premium Vodka responsibly.

Following the game, us bloggy folk worked our way down to the locker room because for some reason they gave us media passes. I’ve been in the Capitals locker room plenty of times, but this was my first time both at a basketball game, and in a basketball locker room obviously. The procedures were completely different than what I was used to, and honestly it was quite awkward with dozens of press members standing around in the locker room waiting for the players to get dressed right in front of them.

I really only found two things interesting. First is the throng of Chinese press that follow Yi Jianlian around, and gushed over him after a 6 point game. The second were the catalogs I found on the sideboard underneath the televisions. There was one for mansions, one for yachts, and 2 for luxury vehicles. I even saw a couple of players pick one up on their way out of the room :

I’ll take one of each.