Any way, as I mentioned I have a few projects I am working on. One I am particularly excited about. The mock-up is complete and the coding has begun. Hopefully it will be finished by the end of the month so I can share it with everyone.

I am also getting ready to completely redo DynamoPro.com. There is going to be more functionality and a better design. None of this is going to happen until the previously mentioned project is finished.

On a final note, tomorrow is my birthday. Nothing special planned but I am looking forward to dinner with my wife, son and friends. I hope everyone is doing well and hopefully I will have some news for you all soon.

Flippa.com

Fans of the Sitepoint Marketplace were in for quite a change yesterday when Sitepoint switched their website marketplace over to Flippa which bills itself as “The #1 marketplace for buying and selling web sites”.

Judging by the comments left on this thread the reception to the change seems to be more negative than positive. As @sitepoint pointed out to me on Twitter this was also the case back in 2005 when they started charging for the marketplace.

What are the people most upset about? The new fee structure, of course. It is now $19.00 to list something for sale plus a 5% “success” fee if your site sells. Though as @sitepoint also pointed out to me, you can split the fee with the buyer or charge it as a buyer premium.

Other complaints included the site colors, gui, name and that the site seemed to be buggy. To be honest I have no issues with these. I found the site to be pretty easy to use, the colors pretty nice (though I would prefer a clean white background) and haven’t really had any problems with site bugs.

I don’t want to stick up for the Sitepoint owners but some of the complaints have no foundation. Especially the ones complaining about having to register for another site. If they would have taken any time to read over Flippa’s FAQ they would quickly find out they can use the same login information they do on Sitepoint. This type of complaining almost justifies the poor behavior from a Sitepoint co-founder.

This brings me to this thread. Someone on Twitter put it best: how tacky. I really surprised at Marks inability to take criticism. I understand it pissing him off because I am sure he has put in a lot of hard work on the new site but he really should think more before he types. His arrogant undertones seem to imply that Sitepoint is invincible in the website marketplace business. This mindset is very dangerous in the world of business and could hurt Sitepoint and Flippa.

Yesterday when I saw the switch had been made I had intended to go over to Flippa and use it as I have the Sitepoint Marketplace. After seeing the attitude of one of the co-founders I am reconsidering this decision. I will see how the rest of this plays out since I believe and second chances and think that Mark’s emotions may have gotten the best of him when he posted his message.

I have already updated a few of my sites. As of right now I don’t see a lot of difference but can tell 2.8 is a bit faster and also supports timezones and automatic daylight savings time adjustment.

Bounce rate, which is sometimes confused with exit rate, represents the percentage of visitors who exit your site on the same page the entered it without going to any other pages on your website.  It represents those people who go to your site and then click the back button or type another site into the address bar.

How do you improve the bounce rate of your site? First you need to determine if you need to.  First, if you bounce rate is below 50% you are doing pretty good.  Typically you want to shoot for a bounce rate of under 30%.  Like your golf score the lower you can get it the better.  Another reason you don’t need to worry about your bounce rate is if your site is there for the sole purpose of directing traffic somewhere else, such as a landing page for an affiliate offer.

Now if you have a site such as a blog you want to make sure you are working to improve your bounce rate.  Here are some tips.

1. Take the opportunity in your articles or posts to link to other articles on your site.  If you have a WordPress blog a ‘related posts‘ plugin is a good option.

2. Feature popular articles.  Have a section on  your site, preferably above the fold, that highlights popular articles or content on your site.

3. Create pages that you can reference often such as a glossary of terms or other types of reference pages.

4. Take advantage of the social aspect of the Web and provide a comments section or forum.  Give visitors the option to interact with you and other readers.

5. Have interesting content. Give people a reason to explore your site.

Taking these five things and implementing them on your site should put you on the right path to improving your bounce rate.

If you have questions please leave them in the comments and I will do my best to help answer them.  As always you comments are welcomed (and are DoFollow).  Thanks for reading.

Twinkini Screenshot

I have been using Twinkini on a daily basis for approximately 30 days now and thought I would share my experience with everyone.

Twinkini is a Windows Mobile Twitter application made by Trinket Software.  It is the second Windows Mobile Twitter application I have used.

The Twinkini software is written in C++ and compatable with all Windows Mobile devices.  I have an HTC Touch Pro with Windows Mobile 6.1 and it is very fast.

As for pricing Twinkini offers a value shopper option for $4.95 and a business user option for $9.95 which includes increased support.

The GUI

The Twinkini GUI is uncluttered and easy to navigate.  When typing out a tweet you are taken to an editor that counts the number of characters you are up to.  Also, if you don’t like the default color scheme there are several other themes to choose from.

Another thing I really liked was the easy access to my @replies.  The only thing I couldn’t find was how to access direct messages.  I may have missed it but I looked through all the options and could not find it.  Then again Twitter’s mobile website doesn’t seem to offer this either.

Update: I was informed by the Twikini developer that version 1.1 has support for direct messages.  I installed and have confirmed that it does.  In my opinion that makes this the best Twitter application available for Windows Mobile.

Other Features

Other features include integration with TwitPic, so you can easily share photos and Windows Media Player, which allows you to tweet what you are currently listening to.  In addition to that Twikini also works with several URL shortening services including Bit.ly and  TinyURL.

Another feature I really like (Probably my favorite) is how easy it is to retweet.  All you have to do is select the tweet then tap retweet.  I would never even consider retweeting something using Twitters mobile site but now do all the time since Twikini makes it so easy.

What I Think

I have nothing bad to say about Twinkini.  The only thing I wish it had was support for direct messages.  It is nice to use a program that just works.  I load the application and am tweeting within seconds.  It is much easier then trying to access Twitters mobile website and has a lot more features.  If you are looking for a Twitter app for your Windows Mobile device look no further then Twikini.

I do this for one reason; my desire to earn the trust and respect of my readers far outweights my need to earn a couple of bucks. It is very important for me to be trusted by my readership.  Because of this I will NEVER post an affiliate URL in a product review. It just doesn’t seem right to me.  Plus, I would never purchase a product through an affiliate URL that is in a review.

Reviewing products is something I really enjoy.  Unfortunately I can’t afford to spend the $100’s of dollars to purchase the products I wish to review.  With that said if anyone has a product they would like me to review please contact me. All I ask is that you provide a free copy for me to review and one to give away to a reader (this is negotiable).  This site receives approximately 2000 unique hits a month and that is growing.  Some of the things I can review:

• eBooks
• Software
• Membership Sites

Also, if you don’t have a product but would like to see a particular product get reviewed let me know and I will see what I can do.  Please contact me and we can get the word out about your product to some great readers.

In an effort to make this site more commenter friendly I have decided to install a plugin to remove the nofollow attribute from comments. The WordPress plugin I chose is called NoFollow Free. It is quick and easy to setup and lets you choose which links to remove nofollow from.

Google introduced the nofollow attribute in 2005. They did this so that the link would not influence the linked sites PageRank. It is also said that they believed this would eliminated comment spam. If you run a blog you will know this is not the case. I have never messed with the nofollow attribute up until now and I get quite a bit of spam.

With that said, if you do decide to remove the nofollow attribute from your blog make sure you have the proper setup to eliminate spam. You will definitely want to use Askimet and moderate your comments. Use common sense and monitor the comments and make adjustments accordingly.

The reason I chose to make the switch is because I was tired of punishing good comments just to prevent the bad ones. Askiment does a great job of catching spam so I am not worried about an increase in irrelevant comments.

As always, if you have any questions on this please let me know.

Jeremy Shoemaker of the popular blog shoemoney.com has released a group of free ebooks called ShoeMoney Xtreme Internet Marketing Guides.

Here is what the 12 week course covers chapter by chapter:

Week 1 – The Beginner’s Guide To Internet Marketing
Week 2 – Affiliate Marketing 101: Everything You Need To Know To Start Promoting Products
Week 3 – Market Research: How To Crush Your Competitors And Discover Hot Niches
Week 4 – Pay Per Click: How To Earn Cash With Each Click
Week 5 – SEO: How To Rank Higher And Increase Traffic
Week 6 – Site Creation: How To Build A Site With Zero Programming Knowledge
Week 7 – Content Creation: How To Create Articles That Attract Users And Increase Sales
Week 8 – Marketing: How To Use Social Media To Spread Your Brand
Week 9 – Make That Cash: 10 Ways To Monetize Your Site And Increase Profitability
Week 10 – Testing & Tracking: How To Optimize Your Site & Make Sense Of The Figures
Week 11 – Building Your Team: How To Network With Others And Find Long Term Partners
Week 12 – Launch Day: How To Kick Start Your Business And Manage Your Projects

This looks like a great course, hard to believe that it is actually free.  If you have any interest in doing affiliate marking you need to sign up immediately.

Sign up for the ShoeMoney Xtreme Internet Marketing Guides

It is no wonder that affiliate marketing has a bad rap. You can thank all those marketers who choose to sully their reputations by using deception and lies to promote an offer. Case in point, look at all the fake weight loss blogs people use to promote weight loss offers. You could probably make a pretty good income by actually trying the product and documenting your results on a blog but thanks to unscrupulous people nobody will believe that blog is real.

I understand it is not feasible for people to try out every product they wish to promote, but that is no excuse to make up fake reviews. It is simple, if you haven’t used the product then you can’t review it. Why not just share information or your opinion of the product instead of lying?

So in conclusion, stop promoting affiliate offers as if you have used them. Though it is a lot harder taking the honest approach is the best route. In addition to not feeling like a snake oil salesman you will probably make a lot more money in the long run if you are honest and the people you are promoting offers to trust you.

To say that there are a lot of Twitter related sites and applications would be a major understatement. I thought I would share some of the tools I use on a daily basis that have helped me boost my follower count to over 4000 in less than a month.

TweetLater.com – This was one of the first tools I started using. I use it to help me out in following everyone who follows me. It is a great tool with a lot of nice features. A couple that I use are auto DMs and the tweet scheduler. I am most likely going to upgrade my account so I can setup recurring tweets. If you aren’t using TweetLater you should definitely check it out.

Twitter Karma – In an effort to keep my follow-to-follower ratio close I use Twitter Karma to unfollow those who are not following me, with a few exceptions.

TwitterCounter – I like to check out TwitterCounter on a daily basis just so I can see my followers in graph form. It is also fun to play around with the predictor to see how many followers I will have in 30, 90 or 365 days.

Twitterholic – This Twitter web application is great for seeing where you stand in your city. I can do a search for my username and see that I am number nine out of 2000+ in Kansas City. This is mainly to feed my fragile ego.

TweetDeck – Last but not least is Adobe Air app, TweetDeck. I like this application because I can view my @replies, direct messages, timeline, and what I call the Gold List. The Gold List is comprised of folks I follow whose Tweets I want to make sure I read.

This list covers the Twitter tools very well. Please leave a comment and let me know what your favorites are. Also, are there any tools on this list you would recommend I replace with something else?