I’ve seen blog contests for everything from single backlinks to pretty high-end computer equipment. But…a car!?!?

Yes, that’s where he’s heading next. It’s all happening at his Blogging The Movie site, where you can register now to not only have a chance to win a car but also receive a few other very worthwhile benefits and do some good.

I have to say this is very tempting, and as he pulls this idea together the buzz generated will exceed what most bloggers will ever produce in their blogging lives, most likely reaching beyond the sphere and well out into conventional media.

This may be a chance for some bloggers with huge ambitions for publicity, or at least some brand recognition, to take a major step in that direction. Click the link above, check out the concept in more detail…and consider, as I am, becoming a sponsor of this super-sized blog contest from the soon-to-be promoter/film-maker extraordinaire - Prija

I have my personal opinions of both Mr. Chow and Mr Schroeder and without getting too deep into them here, I regularly check in with emonetized for some of the best technical guidance and useful info on making my blog a better blog. As for Mr. Chow…well, he’s no longer in the google reader and for now I’ll leave it at that (but I will offer a hint - it has to do with his no-follow tag approach, see this post on Untwisted Vortex!). Here’s the required text from emonetized to get some bonus entries to win the ad spot on JC’s blog:

Tim Schroeder of eMonetized is giving four people the chance to have their own 125 x 125 banner ad shown on John Chow for free. Your can read more about his John Chow Banner Ad Contest Here.

Why am I bothering to enter a contest for space on a blog I don’t particularly like? Fair question - because there is no denying that there is in fact a John Chow effect…getting an ad placed in the available spot will definitely benefit someones blog…just not mine. I want to win this so I can put someone else’s banner in that spot. I believe if I am lucky enough to be randomly selected Tim will allow me to put whatever banner I choose in the ad. Will it be yours? I haven’t decided yet who I will donate that spot to, given the chance, but you can bet it will be a site I feel would benefit in some way other than strictly commercially. In other words, I’d rather expose a site that will benefit the wider sphere than just boost the traffic of yet another blog about blogging. This could all be a moot point anyway if I don’t win, and from the comments Tim has received so far there will be a ton of entries! But if I do win, maybe I can generate some good karma out of the JC effect for the rest of us!

Here’s a nice little intersection of professional, or at least serious, blogging, and the protocols of high-performance, high-altitude jet flight. Not long ago as part of Problogger’s 31 Days to Building a Better Blog, Darren presented participants the task of Digging Into Your Blogs Statistics. Similarly, Chris posted about his breaking the Technorati Top 100K on Chrisblogging. Read those two articles, if you haven’t already, and what follows here will make even more sense.

Watch What Develops!

Trend monitoring is a mandatory procedure in professional flying. The pilots flying the last airliner you were on ,whenever that was, at some point may very well have spent a few minutes systematically reviewing the instruments and, importantly, making log entries into some kind of notebook to record the present readings for comparison to the last few sets of entries.

The “why” of this concept should be obvious. 45,000 feet is not the place to discover that your pressurization system has been developing a problem that is about to…um…explode on you! That’s one example of a problem you’ll want to catch onto early!!

You don’t have to be at the helm of a jet airplane for this to make sense, pilots of small personal planes should probably be doing the same thing for the same reason. I personally know a couple of individuals who do this sort of exercise for their cars…maybe a bit OCD but you can’t be too safe can you?

Inflight Blogging Emergencies?

Well…no, but wouldn’t it be helpful to know a few basic stats? Here’s an excerpt from Chris on his Technorati experience:

“The first time that I checked my ranking it was 700,100. Of course, this was a few months back after my first post. As of writing this, my ranking has dropped to 94,996. As you can see, this is not the best ranking, but it does show that I am moving in the right direction. Even more so it shows that other bloggers are willing to link to ChrisBlogging.”

It’s the “…moving in the right direction” part that I focused on. If you checked Alexa every so often and noticed a spike…in one direction or another…in traffic, you might want to revisit your activity for that time period to see what you may have been doing, or not doing, that caused the spike. For example if I saw that I had a jump in traffic at a certain point in time and I could look back and see that it corresponded to when I was on vacation and had guest writers at the helm…that, I suppose, would tell me something…like maybe I waited too long to take that vacation! Thank you Darren, for this example.

Keep In Touch

I think you get the idea here. This is not a post about the statistical analysis of adsense placements, I’m talking about keeping in touch with how your blog is being received out there in the wider sphere. If you have an idea of what works well and what might not be worth the trouble, you’ll have a better chance of maximizing your efforts, and time…something many of us have too little of for this shared passion…to get the best results from your blog.

You may yet find yourself in the smooth air at FL450….above the weather and the congestion…cruising along on autopilot…ahhh success - whatever it is for you and your blog.

The above is an article from Black Perspective.net. It is a call to action that I’ll be acting on, I invite you to join us.

The “movement” is the situation in Darfur.  The action we’re after is a letter writing campaign to HBO, for the rest of the details I encourage you to read the post. You’ll also find more on Darfur on Hell On Earth.

Two of them actually, one to the right of this post in the sidebar and one in the footer. Plus a scattering of smaller banners throughout this post. Of course if these were revenue generating advertising for me, I don’t think I would dedicate a whole post to directing readers to them. Well…maybe I would, but I don’t really have that kind of advertising on this site yet anyway…”nothing to write about” you might say.

But having found GoodSearch, now I do indeed have something worth writing about.

To wit:

“We all have a cause we care about - whether it’s finding a cure for cancer, saving the environment, finding homes for abandoned pets or so many other worthwhile endeavors. But what we don’t all have is the time or money to support these efforts as much as we’d like. So, what if we could raise money for our favorite charities and schools by doing something we do every day — searching the Internet?”

That’s from the about page, the whole site is easily navigable so I’ll let you explore the rest on your own if you’re so inclined.

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We’re back. After the brief recess that I described in my previous post, I feel re-energized to get back at it.

However one may notice, over the next few posts and beyond, a different hue to the writing I’ll be doing here. Let me explain.

The Anti-Wall Street Journal

While I was busy not writing any new posts here for the last week, one of the things I did manage to accomplish was a little more discovering and reading of new, and in some cases familiar, blogs. An inspirational experience to say the least.

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One of the very few reasons I would do this is to help someone set up their own blog…and not just anyone, my beloved partner (Californiaese for wife here in LA!) is finally seeing the light on this “slightly more grown-up chat thing” I’ve been so lost in lately!

The site is Moms Writing. We’re only just now bringing it online and trying to get the start-up content going to have something for new visitors to see when she lures them there.

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That’s from the home page of The Arial Home Intitiative, a non-profit organization established in 1997 by Tom Pirelli.

Everyone knows of the philanthropic activities of The Gates Foundation and Warren Buffet, but dot com successes that don’t quite reach that rarefied air of the billionaire club have also yielded charitable activities that need to be recognized for their creativity and dedication to whatever niche the founders have been drawn to.

Mr. Pirelli made his fortune in the late 1990’s when he sold his $80-million-a-year medical software company, Enterprise Systems. The rest of the details of his story can be found in this article on CNNMoney.com.

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I’ve just discovered, almost simultaneously, two recent web articles that go together, in the words of the sage Forrest Gump: “…like peas and carrots!”

On ChrisBlogging.com, Chris Bibey reveals much of the detail of the life of a freelance writer in a writing style as clear and simple as it is elegant. For example, just today Chris posted an article titled “Freelance Writing Income: July 2007.”

As the post title says, Chris shows his total freelance writing income for the month just finished, but he also breaks down the number of assignments he had to complete to achieve his listed total and the method by which he received payment.

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But I can share with you a couple of interesting posts I’ve recently found on the subject.

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