What are some of your favorite android apps for the HTC Incredible that I may have missed?

I’ve always been intrigued by new phones. Part of me has always wanted an iPhone but I’m unwilling to move from Verizon to ATT. I know there is some rumors that iPhone is coming to Verizon soon but I’m getting the “new phone itch” now. My 2 year agreement has been up for a while and I’ve been eligible for an upgrade for a few months. The day “Android” was announced I was intrigued because I’m a Google guy. Love everything Google does and I seem to use about every product they have (Gmail, Reader, Goog411, Google Maps, Adsense, Adwords, Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Calendar, Voice, and more). So it only made sense for me to look into Android and what phones were compatible.

The first phone released for Verizon that used Android was the Motorola Droid. I have been throwing around the idea of getting this phone for months but just never could do it. The early reviews were positive but most said they were hoping the 2nd version of an Android phone would fix some issues. Some talked me into waiting for either the Nexus One or the HTC Inredible. Well, that day has come.

Just the other day I got an email in my inbox telling me that I could “pre-order” the HTC Incredible and have it by the end of April. WOW! I resisted this offer at first. But then I did some research on the Incredible. Most tech reviews gave this phone a huge thumbs up and called it truly Incredible. They called it the only Android smartphone you should own. I fell in love with it just from the reviews and videos I watched. I’m not typically a spuratic buyer but something gave me the urge to do something a little crazy the other day. So, I went ahead and pre-ordered this HTC Incredible online. $299 marked down to $199. Plus it will cost like $10 per month more for the data plan. No biggie. I’m so pumped for this phone to get here.

You might ask what I’ll use this phone for and what I’m so excited for? Well, here is a list of things I’m pumped about:

• Productivity. I rely on Gmail and Yahoo mail for everything I do. With the instant apps and the 1GH processor I can manage email all day long very quickly.
• Facebook and Twitter. Yeah I know, social networking could be a waste of time. But I use it and so does everyone else. The Incredible has some great Droid apps available for playing around on these sites.
• Mobile Browsing. I own an Internet business and make money online. I’m always doing web work. This makes it essential for me to browse on the go. My LG Voyager did “ok” in this area but the Incredible should be lightning fast.
• Camera. This is like a bonus. We recently bought a new family camera and it’s a bit bigger and bulkier than I wanted. Sarah will carry it around but it won’t fit into my pocket. The Incredible has a ridiculous camera on it so I can use it for all my picture needs as well. Oh, and a few videos here and there!

So those are the biggest things I’ll use this for. Basically managing my online businesses and keeping track of my life all in one phone. I’ll be sure to give a follow up once I’ve received the phone and let you all know how I like it. Anyone else getting the HTC Incredible?

The problem?
So as I posted a few years back – my “make money online” strategy was going to be to create sites by bulk. I figured it was easier to create 100 small sites earning $20 a piece than it was to create 1 large site that made $2000. Little did I know how much work and overhead would go into managing 100 sites. Let me tell you – IT SUCKS. Hosting, domain names, upgrades, templates, designs, content, and on and on and on… It is impossible to keep up.

How to respond?
Now you might wonder what I’m going to do about it? Well, I have decided it’s time to go back to the drawing board and get back to the basics. One of the hardest parts about having that many sites is you are not working with what you love. The easiest part about blogging and growing a website is when you are doing it on something you are passionate about. So I am getting rid of (either selling or dropping the domain) all of my sites that I’m not passionate about. I plan on going from 200+ domains down to about 10.

In more detail
So remember the USportsNetwork? I wanted to have a blog for every single sports team. Well, yeah, that is gone. No way in the world can I manage all of these sites. And even if I do grow them, it’s nearly impossible to stay excited about them. I will go into another post later about my true passions and which sites I’m keeping – but all in all – this network is scaled down dramatically. The second piece I am getting rid of is all of the random niche sites that have some content, bring in some traffic, but don’t really have any monetary value or I just don’t care about the topic.

My passions
I have a few things that I’m pretty passionate about right now and I’d like to really ramp up my blogging on. 1) Cardinals/Cubs baseball. I have a few sites that I would love to continue growing in this space and this will allow me more time and to become an authority in this area. 2) My family and life blogging. This blog for instance has gotten no love. I miss talking about my technology thoughts or my website thoughts. My personal family blog is taking a hit too. More to come in this space. 3) Lastly, poker and sports betting. The UGambleNetwork is where the money is at. I plan on starting up and managing a GREAT sports betting site and a GREAT poker site in the near future. Can’t wait to spend more time on authority sites and not mini sites.

Ok, I guess that is it for now. Sorry for the rambling but you should be hearing a lot more from me now that I’ll have more time on my hands. I may have some quality sites for sale as well if you are interested in taking on more sites. Hit me up and let me know.

I told you so. This shirt is one of the finest pieces of clothing I’ve ever put on. It feels good, it looks good, heck, it even smells good. So what is affiliate.com? Affiliate.com is an affiliate network that pays webmasters like myself for generating leads and sales to other programs. They pride themselves on being a “next generation” type affiliate network. For more information about affiliate.com you can check out their website available here.

My whole family wanted it!

As soon as I got my shirt in the mail I ripped the package open and tried this thing on. Immediately, my wife started winking at me, my kids started gravitating towards me. I was insta-popular! This shirt truly does amazing things. Before I knew it, my whole family was begging to have their shot to wear this tshirt. I finally gave in as you’ll see below.

My youngest son Bryce just can’t stop smiling in this shirt!

My oldest (and most stubborn) son wouldn’t turn around so I got a nice back side photo with him wearing it!

My wife even begged to wear it!  Amazing!  I wanted her to wait and hold out for the “queens version” but she couldn’t wait.

Finally I got the shirt back to myself. I’m fairly confident I’m going to need to buy some kid sizes for them to wear in the near future though! I’m hesitant to even wear this thing around my friends for the fear of them tearing it straight off my body in a jealous rage.

This tshirt looks good everywhere!

Not only does everyone want to wear the affiliate.com tshirt – but it looks good everywhere.

• I can wear it eating lunch…
• I can wear it hard it work…
• I can wear it when I’m sleeping…
• I can wear it out to dinner…
• I can wear it … ANYWHERE!

The options are endless on where I could wear this tshirt. It just looks so good. That black piece of cloth with the silver outline of a King on one side and the K of diamonds in red at the top. Truly state of the art. It has sort of a grunge feel to it as well making it ultra-cool to wear. Just ask my wife – she hates tshirts but has given this one the stamp of approval obviously. The poker flavor to the shirt makes it a must to wear when playing cards or at the local casino. I’m sure it is “lucky” as well!

The word is spreading…

So word is spreading quickly about this new shirt. Everyone who is anyone has now been seen in this shirt. Check it out…

Lebron James smiling in his affiliate.com tshirt!

President Obama really enjoys the shirt.

Phil Helmuth rocking the shirt at his latest tourney…

I’ve even caught wind that some of our favorite affiliates in the industry are wearing these shirts.  I don’t have an action photo of them but the rumor is Missy Ward, Zac Johnson, Murray Newlands and John Chow have all been spotted rocking these sweet shirts!

Why this post?

So many of you are probably thinking – why in the world is Knup writing this post? Well, as most of you have probably figured out, it is for a contest. Affiliate.com is offering up $1000 in cash and $1000 donated toward the Haiti fund to the most creative and unique affiliate.com tshirt post. I think I should qualify don’t you think? But this post isn’t all about the money to me and to prove it – I’m going to show you exactly what I’d do with the $1000 if I were to win this contest.

$100 BUY MORE SHIRTS – If I win this contest I will buy $100 worth of tshirts right up front. These shirts I will give away over the next year to other affiliates and webmasters via contests, promotions and giveaways on my site. I will help spread the word about the awesomeness of these shirts (or future affiliate.com shirts)!

$100 WIFE APPRECIATION – This little bit has to go to the wife for letting me use her and the kids as models above. Cmon, she deserves it at least for being a good sport, right?

$200 POKER ROOM – If I win this contest I will take $200 straight to our local casino. I’ll buy in for $200 at the $1-$2 poker table. Of course I will wear the affiliate.com shirt all night and take the pictures to prove it. I will stay there until I either lose the $200 or double it up. If I double up this money I will be buying another 10 affiliate.com tshirts to give away as prizes on some of my gambling/poker related websites. How could I not buy more at this point as it’s truly proven to be the luckiest shirt on the planet. I know you all want to see pictures of me at the local poker room in my affiliate.com tshirt!

$300 CRAPS TABLE – You probably know by now that I like to gamble, errrrrr invest, my money a little bit from time to time. So here is another opportunity to double up or go home. I love craps and if I win this contest I will take $300 to the Craps table sometime over the next week. I will be wearing my affiliate.com tshirt for all the rollers and bystanders to watch and lust for. This is another deal where I’m going broke or doubling up. If I lose the $300 well that sucks. But if I hit a few points and double up the money, again, I will be buying 10 more affiliate.com tshirts to give away! This batch of tshirts will go to local poker and casino players I know. I may even require they wear the shirts out to the poker room the next time they go

$300 ME TIME - Ok, so doesn’t all of that above sound like fun? I think it does and I’m looking forward to mapping out my progress on each of these tasks if I win this contest. The last $300 will go to me. I gotta feed my kids too right?

So there you have it. I think it’s very apparant that I feel the affiliate.com tshirt rocks. I look sexy, feel sexy and am sexy when I’m wearing this shirt. Thanks for listening to my rambling and go grab yourself a shirt. Either that or wait around and see if I win and maybe you’ll be one of the lucky winners of my affiliate.com tshirt giveaways! One thing is for sure, this post didn’t lack creativity I’m out!

Knup

So I turned on Google Buzz the other day.  I have to admit I’m not 100% sure what value it’s going to have or even how much I’m going to use it.  But I’d love for all of you Buzz people to follow me.  Here is my profile at Google Buzz.  I’m knupnet.

Here is a little overview video that explains Google Buzz a little bit.

If you use Google Buzz comment or send follow me on Google Buzz and I’ll follow you back!  You think it’s going to be a good thing?  Overtake Twitter in time?

There are many reasons I like to play poker online. First of all, it’s so easy. You can literally play any time of the day, any day of the week you like. 24 hours a day there are thousands of players playing poker online. Some of the top online poker sites I like to use are Full Tilt Poker, Aced Poker, and Poker Stars. Each of these three sites offer something a little different and have different types of players.

The second reason I love to play poker online is I can multitask. I know, I know, I should multitask while playing poker because I am not fully concentrating on the game at hand. Well, that is sometimes true. But sometimes I want to play poker as an outlet – to just relax. These are the times I’ll respond to some emails, chat on IM, do some work all while playing a casual poker game. It’s also cool when you do multitable games. The most I can handle is 2 games at a time. I have a good buddy who plays poker online Australia, and he is able to play 6+ tables at the same time. My mind would go absolutely crazy trying to handle this much poker action.

Another reason I like online, is I just don’t have the option to play “offline” very much. My buddies are so busy. The local casino games aren’t real close by. It’s just not that easy to find a local game where I live. So playing online gives me that instant poker action whenever I need it. I probably spend roughly 15 hours a week playing online. I know some spend way more than that but I don’t consider myself a serious diehard player.

Honestly, I’m more interested in the affiliate side of things for most of these online poker rooms. How can I help promote their brand and make a little money along the way. Problem comes when I end up spending all those earnings playing online poker So where do you like to play? Do you play tournaments? I play very few tournaments as I’m just not patient enough. Every now and then I’ll jump into a late night poker tourney that has 1000+ players to see if I can catch some kinds. But it’s more often than not a big waste of money – and time.

Big thanks to Luke over at http://LukeJeffrey.com

He hooked me up with a Wave invite.  So now I’m all setup with Google Wave.  Problem is – I have no idea where to go from here.  How do I start?  If any of you readers have Google Wave, please send me a “wave” and lets test some things out.

My email is: knupNET@gmail.com for wave.

I am going to pick 10 of the blogs and write 1-10 articles on each and every blog. So, for Blog1 I will write 1 article, Blog2 I will write 2 articles, Blog10 I will write 10 articles, and so on. I will write this content over the next month. So at the end of the day, each site will have different number of content entries. Then, I want to start monitoring the traffic on these sites and see if there is a direct correlation between content and traffic. I’m fairly confident there will be but how much correlation?

So what will this do? For one, it will force me to get content rolling on my NFL sites. Secondly, if it proves what I think it will prove – this should motivate me to focus more on content. Because as we all know, traffic = money in this industry. So what do you all think?

So I have come to the realization that I suck at being a poker affiliate. Why? Well there are 2 reasons I know for sure.

1) My ideas are bigger than my work ethic right now. I would like to think I have a pretty good work ethic as I have always done everything 100%. But have you ever got to the point that you have so many ideas and open ended projects that you just feel burned out and sort of, lost. Well, that is me right now. I feel lost and like I’m drowning in my ideas and my projects. How do I take all of these half-assed projects that are opened and convert them into money makers? Where do I start? Should I even do it? Those are all the questions I have. Most of the time ideas will race through my mind and I’ll act immediately by securing a domain name. The next day I’ll jot down all these ideas for the site and have it all ready to go, dreaming of the millions (lol) it’s going to make. Only to find out that the next night, I have another great idea that’s even bigger and better. So project A just sits and so on… It’s a never-ending cycle. I have to get some of these projects out the door. Until then I will always suck at being a poker affiliate.

2) I’m just not a good “salesman”. The other approach to getting real money players under you is to sell it. Recruit and just flat out ask people to play under you. I’m not good at that and I know it. I need to be a little more direct and learn how to not get offended when someone says, screw off! I have that fear of rejection I guess. In the near future I plan to talk with all the local poker groups that have home games. I have a plan to work with them and offer them some online opportunities. But of course I’m too scared to go forward with it. Why? Who knows but I need to get over it.

Ok, rant over. Until I work on these two things I will always suck at being a poker affiliate. Any advice fellow poker affiliates?

So why are directory submissions good? Well, the major search engines need to find and index your site. These links play a large role in helping you get indexed quicker. Your site will build link popularity and increase its visibility. If you submit correctly and use your main keywords in the anchor, this will help you “rank” better for these terms as well. When you are trying to rank for certain terms in Google or Yahoo or Bing, the more relevant links back to your site the better. These inbound links from online directories could play a huge role in moving you up the ranks.

I realize there is some debate about online directory submissions in the industry, but I’m still a believer that they are a good thing. Build your links up and move on without looking back.