Reviewmore

New MyBlogLog Cool Widget

noreply@blogger.com (Medhy Aginta) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 12:47:00 +0000

Breaking news. :)

I just checked my MyBlogLog account when I found that they have a new look MyBlogLog "Recent Reader" widget. You can also read the buzz at their blog here.

This new widget is really cool. :)

It has a glossy finish, multi-colored shading, and new, eye-catching icons to add readers to our community. For Reviewmore, I just updated mine with the new one and choose the black color as it most suit with my theme. Check mine at the left sidebar of this blog.

This new widget also has a new feature of "flyout" which will fade in when you hover over a reader's photo for more details on the visitor. You can quickly browse more information about that reader and directly click through to that person's MyBlogLog profile or their community pages.

I love this new widget much.

Go have at it, update your sidebar widgets and give it a whirl. :)

Reporter vs Expert - Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting

noreply@blogger.com (Medhy Aginta) — Wed, 28 May 2008 07:35:00 +0000

There are basically two types of bloggers in the world - reporters and experts - and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report).

If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I’ll be frank; you want to be the expert.

Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc… experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.

Most Bloggers Are Reporters

The thing with expertise is that it requires something - experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).

There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it’s a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts - there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.

Don’t Replicate Your Teacher

If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a “guru” (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.

The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry - the Internet marketing industry - not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it’s next to impossible to succeed.

Even people, who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it’s fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche - Internet marketing - and rarely have any key points of differentiation.

How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things - email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It’s a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it - making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) - your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.

If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.

Report on Your Process, Not Others

The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.

It’s okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it’s fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things using your opinion - your stories - and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.

Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.

You Are Already An Expert

Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.

Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life, who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of…well fear.

Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven’t much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.

Reporting Is A Stepping Stone

If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from “scratch”, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.

Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.

Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link: www.BlogMastermind.com

Erykah's New Album: "New Amerykah Part One"

noreply@blogger.com (Medhy Aginta) — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 21:26:00 +0000

Time to listening a very new released CD collection (I think also available in MP3, already) and shoot my review. This time is Erykah Badu's turn. Yap, her new released album, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War).

This is once again a combination (or mixed) of baduism and classic soul music. I got her new single "Honey" is a catchy upbeat retro funk ditty which still manages to sound contemporary. It's so joyful. No wonder it was picked as the lead-off single for her third studio album proper.

However, those who looking for more of the same on "New Amerykah Part One: World War 4" (This is actually the first album of a planned trilogy. Sound great.) will be sorely disappointed as nothing else on the CD sounds like it. Maybe that is why "Honey" gets tucked as a hidden track at the end of the CD.

For me Erykah is like the Radiohead of soul music. After her introduction to the world on the multi platinum, multi Grammy winning "Baduizm", she went off on a different tangent, largely eschewing regular song structure for intricately structured musical movements, and cerebral, often indiscernible lyrics.

This new 11 track CD is even more off kilter and uncommercial. It can best be described as a futuristic fusion of funk and jazz beamed from Mars, and I'm sure her record label Motown must have done the same head scratching it did ages ago when Marvin Gaye presented his magnum opus "What's Going On" for release. To fully appreciate it, one has to put aside expectations of regular song structure and just go with the flow.

This CD might be bewildering at first, there is simply nothing else out there that sounds like it, but it is one that with time most will go, "Oh, Now I Get It!" while others never will.

If you got her CD already, I wanna hear your opinion. I think not so many folks already got this new CD as it's just released a couple days ago. You like it? You hate it?

Just drop your words here, guys. :)

Get Smart with Your Plastics

noreply@blogger.com (Medhy Aginta) — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 04:46:00 +0000

I'm a heavy user of credit cards. I got 5 different plastics during 3 years.

One big problem of using so many credit cards in my pocket is that I can so easily got trapped into credit debts. Sometimes I do lose control and make everything worse with my personal shopping lifestyle. In short, I'm not a good person in handling my plastics and money.

Recently I read a really nice article entitled "Credit Card Deals - Brilliant Ideas for Savvy Customers" by RequestCredit.com. It has a great point of how to use your plastics wisely, how to choose the right card for your different purpose and more importantly how to save extra money for your credit cards payments.

I found this article useful so I decide to share them with you here in my blog.

Hope that it will be useful for you as well. Just check out the article by yourself at the link above.

Adsense for Video Beta Released

noreply@blogger.com (Medhy Aginta) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:28:00 +0000

I just got an email from Inside Adsense, an official blog of Google Adsense, informing about the launching of their new ad unit named Adsense for Video (Beta version).

I've checked their demo and thought that this new ad unit will be HOT especially if you have a video blog or site and huge visitors. Awesome ad unit. :)

According to Inside Adsense, AdSense for Video is now only available to publishers who, at a minimum, serve one million video streams each month and are based in the U.S. with English language sites. However, in the near future, this new ad unit will be expanded to more publishers of various sizes and locations.

If you live in the U.S and got all of the requirements, you can apply for this program now. For you who live outside the U.S (like me), it seems that we have to wait for some couple months before we can jump into this game. :)

If you want to know more in details about Adsense for Video, please check out this video by Google Adsense team.

What do you think guys? Wanna try?

Cash Advance Writeup

noreply@blogger.com (Medhy Aginta) — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:14:00 +0000

When you got trapped by unexpected bills between your paycheck, what did you do? When you faced unexpected expenses during a temporary loss of income or a time of financial duress, what did you do?

In my case, I signed up for cash advance online from PowerPaydayLoan.com. This is an online quick payday loans service which provided you with such a great cash advance solution. If you are at least 18 years of age, receive a regular source of income, and have direct deposit enabled on your bank account, you may also already be pre-qualified for their payday loans services.

I found that using their service was as easy as sending an email to my friend. What we have to do is just fill out the online sign up form, click the button and done. They did the rest for us.

Very fast. Convenient. Safe. No fax. No queue. Loans are direct-deposited into our account on the next business day after we are approved. And more, we can get up to $1500 for our loan.

What a great deal.

If you are getting difficulty to find payday loan service, why not try to sign up for a payday loan with PowerPaydayLoan.com now and get up to $1500 on the next business day. I recommend their excellent service for you.

Spring Vacation Break

noreply@blogger.com (Medhy Aginta) — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 11:52:00 +0000

Spring vacation will arrive soon and my best plan I can think right now is to travel abroad. France will be my first priority. I planned to go with my family so it will be nice if we can get a vacation package, including flight, hotel and car. However, finding the right place for the right information in the web is not as easy as I thought.

One travel related site that I found great is HotelReservations.com. This nice and easy navigation site is a wide one-stop shop site for all travel-related things we ever need. The site has 6 different languages and currencies that makes easy for us to find the best place to travel. They provided us with all-easy searching tools to find our best vacation including hotel, motels, resorts, vacation rentals and vacation packages. Furthermore, they also have a wide variety of offers including flight, cruises, car and condo rentals. For each of these, HotelReservations.com offers competitive prices, making our vacation dreams affordable for almost any budgets.

HotelReservations.com also has what they call "lowest internet prices guarantee" where we can save up to 70% and get paid up to $100 with their rebate coupon when booking a hotel. If we join their discount club, we will get more with their club rewards. Very nice offers.

One thing that I love about HotelReservations.com is they have very complete destination guides full with recommendations on attractions, restaurants, and hotels, and up-to-date weather, health tips, and general information for thousands of destinations no matter we go in group or alone. This destination guides is really useful.

I've decided to use their service. I just called them (for free) to make my reservation. If you are looking for one-stop travel and hotel reservations shop online, I will encourage you to visit and try HotelReservations.com.

This site is really great!

Turn to Balance Transfer Credit Card

noreply@blogger.com (Medhy Aginta) — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:27:00 +0000

Recently my friend Chris told me that he has turned his three credit cards accounts into one balance transfer credit card. As you know, balance transfer credit card is a great deal which enable us to saving money and transferring our debt from one account to another.

I want to follow him to move my debt to balance transfer credit card and Chris asked me to visit CreditcardBest.com, the site where he applied for his card online.

Chris is my close friend so I think I will listen his recommendation. I just checked CreditCardBest.com and found what Chris said on this nice design site.

First of all, CreditCardBest.com has very comprehensive section of credit cards things. We almost can find anything about credit card. And for my purpose, I found their section about balance transfer credit card is very useful.

In this section, we can find many balance transfer credit cards offers from Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and others with their advantages. And one thing I love about this site is they offer 0% balance transfer credit cards! That's really great deal. All we need to do is just to look through all the offers available, pick out the most suitable one for our needs and apply for it online.

So simple, easy, and of course secure.

I think Chris is right. I will get mine too. I will also encourage you to give CreditCardBest.com a try in case you are looking for the best balance transfer credit card deal online.

Just Love This Video

noreply@blogger.com (Medhy Aginta) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:04:00 +0000

I'm not Barack Obama supporter. I'm not a Democrat.

Even I'm not an American. :)

I just love this video, "Yes We Can". Check it out, pals.

Cool, huh?

Protect Your Identity with LifeLock

noreply@blogger.com (Medhy Aginta) — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 14:11:00 +0000

Now we are all seeing a fast growing number of white-collar crimes. More and more people reporting incidents of credit card fraud and identity-theft crimes.

Thanks to many identity-theft protection services available now, we can protect our identity easily. However, finding the best identity-theft protection service is not as easy as we think.

One identity-theft protection service that I found has the best offer is LifeLock. I got information of this service from my personal accountant. LifeLock has a very nice fraud alert system for our credit card records. In case someone try to open an account using our identity, LifeLock will contact us to confirm that it’s really us submitting a credit application. The best offer of LifeLock I think is they give us a $1,000,000 guarantee. Simply said, if for any reason LifeLock fails and identity thieves use our identity information, they will pay us up to $1,000,000 to make things right.

LifeLock service costs actually only $10 a month. But if we use the LifeLock Promo Code, even we can receive great discount as a new customers. If we use Life Lock Promo Code we only have to pay $9 per month (so we save $1) or even better if we prefer to pay per year, only $99 (so we save $21). That's very nice offer.

I think it is a wise decision to get their service now to protect our identity. And if you on the same page with me, I will encourage you to visit their site and get Life Lock Promotion Code for your great discount.

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