MarketLeverage is helping raise funds for one of their employee’s two sons, Brisan and Parker Stult, who have just been diagnosed with a genetic, fatal disease, with no cure.

The disease is know as “Childhood Alzheimer’s,” and the drug that Brisan and Parker are currently taking to help extend their life costs $190,000 a year.

So MarketLeverage has stepped up in a big way with all of the proceeds of the Bowl-A-Thon going to Niemann-Pick Children’s Fund in honor of Parker and Brisan Stults.

If you live in the Orlando area, this is an awesome opportunity to help out a great cause as well as network with some amazing people and it’s only $25 to bowl the night away. There will also be tons of door prizes and free t-shirts.

If you are unable to make the bowl-a-thon, you can still help out by sponsoring the event, for as little as 10 cents per pin. For more information please contact Dina at 407-268-7667 or dina [at] MarketLeverage [dot] com.

If you would like to donate to Brisan and Parker you can do so here. Your donations will be most appreciated and help with research and grants that will eventually lead to a cure for this horrible disease.

Thank you Dina and MarketLeverage for putting on this great event!

Cool Theme Features & Benefits

• Cool two-column design, perfect for personal blogs
• Built-in UBD Block Ad Plugin allows you to manage and rotate your 125×125 ads
• Theme Options panel allows to you integrate codes and tracking scripts without touching any code
• Built-in Flickr integration to show your latest photos
• Built-in Twitter integration to show your latest Tweets
• Styled comments and built-in Gravatar integration
• Fully widget-compatible
• Clean design means it is very easy to modify
• Wordpress 2.7 Recommended

Get this Theme for Free with Blog Hosting Signup

This theme retails for for the low price of $47, but you can get it for free by signing up for a Blog Hosting account with one of our Blog Hosting Partners. For more information on our Blog Hosting offer, click here.

Arguably the most memorable event of the show was the dinner that Market Leverage hosted. The venue was fantastic! 

If you ever get a chance to eat at Switch, a restaurant in the Encore Hotel, you will not be disappointed. The name ‘Switch’ comes from the fact that every 30 minutes or so, the walls of the restaurant rotate. See the video below:

During the dinner, Market Leverage’s CEO and Founder, Michael Jenkins, made an announcement of their new program they just rolled out. It is called Green Links.

Green Links is an interactive video education tool for affiliate marketers. The program offers affiliates the opportunity to learn about the basics of affiliate marketing in real time by clicking on the green text links within the Market Leverage website.

If you are interested in getting started in affiliate marketing, I highly recommend you check out MarketLeverage’s affiliate program.

If you weren’t at the dinner, here are some pics to motivate you to get involved with Market Leverage and go to the next Affiliate Summit conference!

AverageGal will win her choice of iPod Nano, Flip Mino, or Amazon Kindle.Thanks to everyone who entered and congratulations again to AverageGal.

If you haven’t yet signed up to be an affiliate with Market Leverage, you can do so here: Sign Up To Be A Market Leverage Affiliate

Losing data (your blog posts and design) is a nightmare that many bloggers have. Commonly, servers will crash in mid-step when making changes to your blog. This will undoubtedly cause you, or your webmaster, to have a throbbing headache. Knowing that server crashes and data corruption is a problem, you’ll want to do something about it.

We’ve worked with almost every major hosting provider out there in the past 16 months, and have learned quite a bit when it comes to identifying the strengths and weaknesses of blog hosting.

Here is a list of five things that Unique Blog Designs looks for when working with a hosting provider:

• Daily data backups
• Great customer service – both on the phone, and via email
• WordPress support and “one-click” installations
• Great bandwidth and robust server response
• Easy to use admin panel (C-Panel or Plesk)

To be honest, there is only one provider that we recommend for WordPress users. That would be Bluehost!

They contain all five of the characteristics seen above, and they aren’t too bad when it comes to pricing, too. We strongly recommend that you migrate to BlueHost, if you want to make things easy on yourself!

Who do you host with, and do you have any horror stories to share?

Although the UBD team has been on Twitter for quite a while now, we hadn’t setup a company account until now. We have a lot of exciting things planned for 2009 that will definitely surprise you!

In Q1 2009, we have something very special to show you and we will be announcing it first on Twitter. We also plan to use Twitter for exclusive contests, promotions and giveaways.

We have been beta testing WP 2.7 for the past several weeks and we are thrilled to say that this is the best version of WordPress ever! We are happy to report that all of the UBD WordPress Themes have been tested and are 100% compatible with WordPress 2.7

There are so many new features that it doesn’t even make sense for me to list them all. Check out this video which details all of the cool new functionality and user interface enhancements..

Perhaps one of the best new features about WordPress 2.7 is auto-upgrading and plugin installation, all from within the WordPress Dashboard. Yes, you read that right. Now, everyone can upload their version of WordPress and install new plugins without ever having to touch a line of code or boot up an FTP program.

Download WordPress 2.7 Now

If you are using WordPress 2.7 now, what is your favorite new feature?

What is this contest all about?

Market Leverage is working with some of the top blogs out there, including this one, to spread the holiday spirit. They are giving away some exceptional gifts, i.e. not your typical low-buck prizes!

One winner from this blog will receive their choice of either an iPod Nano or a Flip Mino HD!

There will also be three top winners (selected across all of the blogs in the contest) who will win an Amazon Kindle, a ML rewards card worth $100, and a $50 iTunes gift card.

How do you enter?

1. If you haven’t already, sign up to be a Market Leverage Affiliate.
2. Take a look at all of Market Leverage’s offers.
3. Make a video or a blog post about how you could promote one of their offers. Make sure you blog about it on your blog!
4. Once you’ve made a post or video, make sure you link it back to this blog post!
5. The contest ends 12:00AM EST December 31, 2008.

Why is Market Leverage having this contest?

This contest is meant to help spur ideas for your fellow affiliate marketers. The hope is that you will all share ideas, tips, and recommendations for campaigns that you may not have time to implement yourself.

How to Win

We are looking for the most creative and the most substantive submission. If you have a great Idea for an affiliate marketing relating campaign using one of Market Leverage’s offers, enter NOW!

Please keep in mind that you can only use an offer from Market Leverage in your submission. Otherwise, it will not be counted.

I’ve been using Intel based processors and hardware platforms for more than a decade, and every single one of the UBD computers runs Intel processors. That says a lot about how much we trust them to create and support their awesome line of hardware products.

What’s Inside You?

Intel is currently running an awesome contest, with some very expensive prizes. Check them out:

• Grand Prize: Your choice of any Intel® Centrino® 2-based Laptop valued up to $3,000 / $300 cash / $200 Amazon.com gift card
• First Place Winner:
  Your choice of any Intel Centrino 2-based Laptop valued up to $2,000 / $200 cash / $100 Amazon.com gift card
• Second Place Winner: Your choice of any Intel® Atom™-based Netbook valued up to $1,000 / $100 cash

All you have to do is go to the Contest Page and share your story about how Intel has helped you! It could be anything, but some ideas are help with photography, gaming, business, school, etc.

So I have to ask… How has Intel helped you?

Our good friend and blogging mentor, Yaro Starak, has released the free Roadmap Report – which is a guide to becoming a successful blogger.

I know that when I started blogging, almost two years ago, I could have benefited HUGELY from reading a report such as this.

Yaro and his new partner, Gideon Shalwick, have also released a series of 10 free Become a Blogger Videos. The videos are easy to watch and very informative. If you are trying to grow your blog, I am sure you will find them worth watching.

In the Roadmap Report, Yaro promises to explain “how he stumbled upon the “X-Factor” For Blogging Success, and how it turned upside down everything he thought he knew about blogging….”

We’ve been following Yaro’s blogging methods for over a year now, and he is one of the few people that really understands how to grow a successful blog.

10 Easy To Follow Videos Showing You How To Create Your Blog From Scratch!