Nate Whitehill dot Com

Say Hello to ColorMatic Theme

Nate Whitehill — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 00:07:49 +0000

ColorMatic is the newest theme from UBD and Theme Wars. What makes ColorMatic Theme special?

In our humble opinion, ColorMatic Theme is not just a “premium theme” – this would better be classified as a “super premium theme” because of its multiple layout options, font changer, and multi-color picker.

I am such a fan of ColorMatic Theme that I decided to redo my blog design using it. In fact, using ColorMatic Theme, this new customization only took me about an hour. Not bad for a fully custom design!

It is SUPER EASY to customize ColorMatic Theme for your needs. You can select from four effective website layouts and use an UNLIMITED number of color combinations!

Get ColorMatic Theme Today!

ColorMatic Theme Standard Features

Pick any color, automatically! One theme can now be applicable to a wide variety of niches. Pick the background color, foreground, text color, sidebar color, and many more!
Four (4) effective website layouts: Whether you need a business design, product-featured design, or a personal blog design, ColorMatic Theme has got you covered!
Pick any color, automatically! One theme can now be applicable to a wide variety of niches.
Powerful Theme Control Panel: Translation: No coding required. Configure your theme with incredible ease.
Upload your logo with 1-Click: Forget the days of uploading your logo via FTP. Now, upload your logo with just one-click.
Featured content sliding gallery (optional): Display your featured posts via an elegant featured content slider.
Feedburner integration: Track your RSS subscribers and allow your visitors to subscribe via email to your blog.
Built-in My Social Networks widget: Display links (and logos) to your social networking profiles, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Technorati, Digg and Delicious.
Built-in Twitter widget: Display your recent Tweets and encourage your visitors to follow you.
Built-in Flickr widget: Display your recent Flickr photos with just a few clicks.
Built-in Blog Navigator widget: Display a slick DOM-tab style navigation to highlight your popular posts, comment, featured posts and archives.
Basic SEO controls: Basic SEO controls allow you to fine tune the search engine optimization of your site.
Automatic image resizing: Avoid resizing/cropping your featured post images. Just select your image, upload and blog.
No custom fields – built-in post extras: Custom fields are a pain so we kicked them to the curb. Set your image thumbnail and featured image all within the post-edit window.
Advertising management: Manage your ad codes directly within the Control Panel. You can display 125×125 block ads and 468×60 ads – all without third party plugins.
WordPress 2.8 REQUIRED: Say hello to threaded comments, sticky posts, and all the other benefits of WP 2.8.

Check out some examples, below, of how ColorMatic Theme can be used:

Theme Examples

Get ColorMatic Theme Today!

The UBD Money Theme! Almost like free money!

Nate Whitehill — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:26:51 +0000

This is one of many new things I have been working on lately. Let me know what you think.

UBD Money Theme

The UBD Money Theme is a clean, two-column WordPress theme with affiliate style landing page. It utilizes some of the newest theme technologies, such as Twitter integration, Facebook Connect integration, automatic image resizing and one click logo uploading, just to name a few features.

Money Theme Features

Although Money Theme is free, it packs a ton of incredible features into one groundbreaking package! Listed below are some of the many cool Money Theme features:

Powerful control panel: We make it SUPER easy for the newbie and advanced blogger to get their Money Theme setup in as little time as possible. Not only that, but you get powerful customization options at your fingertips.
Upload your logo with one-click: Forget the days of uploading your logo via FTP. Now, upload your logo straight to your site with just one-click.
Affiliate-style homepage design: Works great for blogs and affiliate marketing style landing pages! Display your featured products and/or recent blog posts.

Download the UBD Money Theme Today

Gary Vaynerchuk on Jimmy Fallon

Nate Whitehill — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:30:14 +0000

Continuing with the Jimmy Fallon trend, here is a video clip of everyone’s favorite wine freak (I mean that in a good way as I am slowly becoming a wine freak myself!), Gary Vaynerchuk, appearing on the Jimmy Fallon Show last night.

I met Gary at Elite Retreat earlier this year and he gave one of the best talks I have ever witness on hustling and succeeding in life. After that, I got the chance to talk to him for a little bit about some of our newest unreleased ventures and he gave us some good advice.

Gary is an awesome guy to watch/talk to and I highly recommend everyone check out the clip below and follow him on Twitter!

Congratulations for your Jimmy Fallon appearance, Gary!

Project Natal Demo on Jimmy Fallon

Nate Whitehill — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:57:53 +0000

Project Natal is going to change video gaming. Microsoft will release this as an upgrade for all XBox 360 systems in 2010. It truly is what the Nintendo Wii should have been. Check out this video of Project Natal being demoed on the Jimmy Fallon show.

What do you think? Are you going to buy Project Natal when it comes out?

Been awhile, huh?

Nate Whitehill — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:22:28 +0000

So this is the longest I have gone without a post in a while. This blog and its audience definitely deserves an update though:

Affiliate Theme
My last post was announcing Affiliate Theme. Well, Affiliate Theme received a ton of awesome exposure and a TON of people are using it to more easily set up affiliate marketing websites. We have a lot of cool new features and additions planned which we will be adding in the upcoming weeks.

Moved back to Seattle, from Arizona
I moved to Arizona from Seattle almost 3 years ago for school. School didn’t last long (I dropped out) and eventually started this blog and building online businesses. Six months later, UBD started and since then we have been running and growing the business.

Many of you who follow me on Twitter know UBD recently moved back to Seattle from Arizona. This was due primarily for business reasons as we have many more business connections and opportunities in Seattle. Not only that, but all of our families still live here and it is a definite plus to be able to say hello to the family more often.

What’s next?
We have some really cool projects we have been working on lately which are going to change the blog design industry. I am excited to announce some cool stuff in the coming months.

As I get more caught up with work, I definitely will be blogging more. I need to start doing video – it is so much easier!

Affiliate Theme

Nate Whitehill — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 04:46:34 +0000

WordPress has become the content management system (CMS) of choice for not just blogs, but also websites and even landing pages/review sites for affiliate marketers!

Why? Ease of use, familiarity, and more uses than Grandpa’s Swiss army knife.

We have worked closely with and picked the brains of some of the top names in blogging and affiliate marketing, including:

John Chow
Jeremy Schoemaker
Yaro Starak
Zac Johnson
Paul Bourque
Jonathan Volk
Jim Kukral
Gobala Krishnan
John Reese

They have all told us the one thing they wish they had was a WordPress theme optimized for affiliate marketing websites. Well, now the wait is over…

Affiliate Theme is an innovative new WordPress theme built exclusively for affiliate marketers and make money online bloggers who build landing page, review sites, and other mini-sites for niche products and offers.

Watch how Affiliate Theme works

How is Affiliate Theme different from other WordPress themes?

Unlike ALL other WordPress themes, this is not a WordPress theme built only for bloggers.

This is the first WordPress theme built exclusively for affiliate marketers and those who build mini-sites, review sites and landing pages.

While you can easily use Affiliate Theme as a blog theme, its true value lies in the fact that you can build multiple variations of your affiliate marketing landing pages/review sites and track the conversion rate of your changes.

We give YOU options!

An innovative Theme Options panel allows you to change virtually everything about your theme – from layout, colors and fonts, to logo, header graphics, and even the wording on your call to action buttons! Save time and money! No longer will you have to re-input all of your offers each time to make a major change to your landing page or review site.

Why use WordPress to build affiliate marketing websites?

There are a few distinct advantages when using a CMS to build your websites. Just like you can change the look of your site without having to recreate all of your content, you can now build multiple variations of your affiliate marketing web pages without having to re-input all of your affiliate offers. This means you save time from the tedium of creating multiple variations of pages. Of course, this means you can spend less time building and more time testing and making money!

Who should use Affiliate Theme?

Both new and veteran affiliate marketers will appreciate Affiliate Theme’s ease of use and the time they will save when it comes to building affiliate marketing sites. New affiliate marketers who are generally unfamiliar with creating effective affiliate marketing websites will be able to easily create, test and track the effectiveness of landing pages.

Not just for code monkeys

You don’t need to be an expert web developer to use and customize Affiliate Theme. Affiliate Theme features one of the most customizable Theme Options panels a WordPress theme has ever seen. This means you can customize the look of your landing pages to suit any niche or vertical.

What else?

Create affiliate websites using the best content management system! The first affiliate website creation tool built for the best content management system in the world – WordPress.
Whatever kind of site you want! Six (6) unique layout options means you can easily split test and find the highest converting layout, which means more money for you.
Perfect for any vertical! Photoshop-like color picker allows you to easily change the colors of your page background, headlines, navigation, call-to-action buttons.
Brand your Affiliate Theme easily! Choose from a variety of header options – including integrating your logo, full header graphic, a pre-made UBD Niche Header Graphic, or plain text.
Gorgeous affiliate websites, ready for your use! Forget about having to upload custom artwork. You can automatically choose from dozens of professional, pre-made header and background graphics, all for popular affiliate niches.
Customize the heck out of your Affiliate Theme! Take your CSS-level modification to the next level by enabling and utilizing the custom stylesheet.
Get featured! Add a “Featured” offer box to any layout, giving you, in effect, twice as many layouts!
Insane typography options! Select the font, font-size, and font color for your headlines, post captions and main body font.
Improve conversion with simpler navigation! Remove the navigation from your Affiliate Theme to make it more like a landing page. Otherwise, select between displaying the categories and pages in the navigation.
Less coding for you! Integrate header and footer tracking scripts without touching a single line of code.
Get more clicks! Customize the call-to-action buttons for all of your offers! Choose font, background color, size and rollover changes as well.
Affiliate blogging made easy! Easily enable/disable RSS feed, author name, date, post headline, comments and trackbacks

Incredible Support – vast knowledge base and video screencasts show you how to do everything!

Affiliate Theme is not just any WordPress theme. With your purchase of Affiliate Theme, you get access to our incredible Affiliate Theme Resource Center.

We have put together a wide array of video tutorials (screen casts) and knowledge base articles you can access to make the most of your affiliate marketing efforts.

Not only that, but with your purchase of Affiliate Theme, you get access to the helpful Support forum where you can post your questions and see how other members are using Affiliate Theme most effectively.

Get access to exclusive super affiliate podcasts

UBD goes the extra mile by giving you access to podcasts with super affiliates such as Jonathan Volk, Zac Johnson, Jim Kukral, John Chow, Ryan Wade and Yaro Starak.

So, what are you waiting for? Get Affiliate Theme now and create affiliate sites faster than ever!

Funniest Moment of 2009 NBA All Star Game

Nate Whitehill — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 07:23:46 +0000

At the last minute on Sunday, my Dad (who is visiting from Seattle) and I scored tickets to the 2009 NBA All Star Game, which amazingly took place in my current residence of Phoenix, Arizona.

I have been to several professional basketball games in the past, including three separate Michael Jordan games (another story for another time), but no games since the late 90’s, and nothing as star-studded as an All Star Game. w00t!

The NBA has changed a tremendous amount in the past 15 years with the dominant players being Lebron, Kobe, and still Shaq, who is now on Twitter. Anyone who follows Shaq knows how much of a goofy, fun guy he is. During his intro, Shaq put on one of the funniest dances I have ever seen.

I won’t even try to describe it. Just watch…

You can see the TwitPics I took from the game: NBA All Star 2009 Twitpics

I also took a bunch of video with my Flip Mino HD which I will be posting shortly. What an incredibly fun experience!

UPDATE: Video I took with my Flip Mino HD of awesome SHAQ DUNK!!!!!

Seth Godin’s Advice to Internet Startups In the Down Economy

Nate Whitehill — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:02:39 +0000

The other day I was perusing Mashable and I found this video by Seth Godin in which he explains how businesses should change their focus in the down economy. It is short, but worth watching.

If you don’t know who Seth Godin is, he is the author of many popular business books and a speaker with appearances at Google, TED and a number of charities. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing.

What advice do you have for online businesses and other startups in this down economy?

Top 5 Ways NOT To Use Twitter

Nate Whitehill — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 09:41:37 +0000

I have been Twittering now for quite a while – since November of 2007. In my 1583 tweets (at this time), I have learned a lot about how to use and how not to use Twitter. It has taken me a while to get accustomed to the flow of Twitter – it definitely requires a different communication style than chat, email, or IM, even though it is a combination of the three.

Here are my top 5 ways NOT to use Twitter:

5. Don’t complain/whine about personal matters – Complaining 140 characters at a time is not going to make anyone want to follow you. Instead, reframe your frustration and use it as an opportunity to poke fun of yourself/the situation, or better, tweet something inspiring/positive for people who may be in a similar place as you.

For example, Zappos CEO, Tony, recently locked himself outside of his hotel room in Mexico – on his porch, no less. Instead of tweeting about the situation in a negative way, he tweeted about it in a neutral/fun way and it ended up being an enjoyable conversation with his followers, while he waited 45 minutes for someone to rescue him.

Tony says that Twitter can make otherwise frustrating situations actually enjoyable. According to Tony:

I now almost looked forward to situations that would normally be frustrating, because I’ve learned that almost any situation can be reframed to be funny as a tweet, which then makes the situation in real life funny as well.

(original article)

4. Don’t use Twitter to endlessly self-promote.. Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool for getting your “brand” out to the world, but it is equally important that you engage other people and not just promote your agenda.

For example, by asking questions and posting links to interesting articles, you are taking the “me” out of Twitter and instead using it as a conversation-generating tool, which will be far more valuable to your followers. I always try to tweet or re-tweet interesting articles or topics that I believe people will have an opinion about. As a result, people respond to my tweets, thereby creating an ongoing conversation about a wide variety of interesting topics.

3. Don’t constantly tell the world what you are doing. As funny as this sounds since it is the default question Twitter asks of us, no one is interested in constantly hearing about the mundane activities of your life. I understand how a random tweet about what you are doing is innocent and can be fun, but Twitter is much more valuable for engaging an audience/starting conversations than for telling people about the otherwise boring activities we all partake in.

Instead of just telling people what you are doing, SHOW them. You can do this by using a service such as TwitPic to post pics from your camera phone. You will notice on my blog’s sidebar that I have a widget which automatically displays my most recent TwitPics. These are pics I took from my phone and uploaded directly to Twitter. Pictures tend to receive a lot of click-throughs, as people rather look at something than read about it.

2. Don’t use Auto-DM’s and Auto-replies. This is just as bad as spam. Auto-DM’s and Auto-replies are so common now that they are simply annoying. If you want anyone to take you seriously on Twitter, turn these functions off and manually engage your followers via replies or direct messages.

1. Don’t use Twitter to massively follow and unfollow people. I understand that people run auto-follow scripts on hundreds of people at a time in order to gain new followers themselves, but if you are going to do this, don’t automatically unfollow those people the next day; that looks disingenuous. If you are going to follow someone and they mutually follow you, it is kind of sleazy to automatically unfollow them the next day. Where is the appreciation for their reciprocal follow?

So, there you have it. Those are the ways I recommend using and NOT using Twitter. If you enjoyed this article, please consider re-tweeting this post by clicking here.

Do you have any tips about how NOT to use Twitter? Share them in the comments!

Crazy Fast, Exotic Cars at the Barrett Jackson Auto Auction!

Nate Whitehill — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 07:27:58 +0000

WARNING: For anyone who is not a total gear-head like me, this post may be of little or no interest to you. That being said, you have to admit…half-million AND MILLION dollar cars are pretty cool no matter what you think about cars, right? Yep, that’s what I thought.

This was my second time going to the annual Barrett Jackson Auto Auction and Car Show, which plays host to 250,000 people every year. It is a week long event that features some of the most amazing classic cars, modern day super cars, and even vintage and new race cars. Truly an epic event for anyone who is a car nut like me.

There is a new class of super-ultra-cars that are incredibly light weight, high in horsepower, and well, insanely fast. Those are usually my favorite cars to hang around, so I took most of my pics/video of these rare, exotic monsters.

I took my Flip Mino HD and digital camera to the event grab some footage/pics. Some of the most epic vehicles:

Koenigsegg CCX
4.7 L twin-supercharged V8
806 hp and 782 ft-lb of torque
Price: $1.2 million

Gumpert Apollo
640hp Audi V8 Engine.
Weight: 2400lbs
0-60 in 3.0 seconds.
Price: $425,000

Cadillac LMP-02
600 hp Twin Turbocharged V8
1984lbs (it’s a damn racecar)
Price: Auctioned off for only $145,000. This is the deal of a century. Some day this car may be worth MILLLLLLLLIONS of dollars!

Now, here is a video of a 1000HP Saleen S7 Twin Turbo rolling up. This thing was auctioned off for only $375,000 despite it’s $700,000 price tag! It was featured in Iron Man!

Saleen S7 Twin Turbo from Nate Whitehill on Vimeo.

Better start saving up! Check out my photo entire album here!

Video Exclusive: Zac Johnson Talks About Facebook Advertising

Nate Whitehill — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:27:25 +0000

This is my first in a series of videos I made from my trip to Affiliate Summit West. In this video, super affiliate Zac Johnson talks about Facebook advertising and it’s pros and cons. This video was shot using a Flip Mino HD (video quality needs to be worked with) and was recorded at the Market Leverage affiliate dinner at the Switch restaurant at the Encore Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Back to Vegas for Affiliate Summit

Nate Whitehill — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:28:41 +0000

All of UBD will be heading up to Las Vegas this weekend for Affiliate Summit West. This will be our first time to vegas where we are not exhibiting, which is kind of a relief given the hassle and stress of setting up and managing a booth.

Yep, this goal of this trip will be exclusively to network, hang out, and party with our dot com mogul friends. I am especially excited to sit down with a certain dot com mogul to talk about possibly starting a new venture that will take over. I can’t say anymore now, but you will definitely be hearing about it in the next few months.

I am going to take a lot of pictures and video as I just got a new Flip Mino HD which takes outstanding video. I plan on doing mini interviews with the likes of ShoeMoney, Shawn Collins (founder of Affiliate Summit), Jim Kukral, and hopefully even Gary Vaynerchuk.

If you are gonna be in Vegas this weekend, make sure to hit me up! There is no limit to the size of our group, so feel free to tag along if you want to meet some cool people!

Yep, it’s gonna be fun times! I will definitely keep you updated!

5 Tools All Web Developers Should Use In 2009

Nate Whitehill — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:19:23 +0000

Out with the old, in with the new. 2008 was, by far, the hardest working, yet most productive year of my life. I have been fortunate to discover an incredible useful array of different tools that have made my life as a web developer MUCH easier. Now, I want to share them with you!

Here they are:

Rescue Time

Over the past two months, I have been using an online tracking program called RescueTime which has allowed me to track how long I am working and how productive my work has been. Rescue Time allows you to assign numerical productivity values to different tasks, so it has ben useful to see how efficient my time spent on the computer has been.

You can use this to keep track of how often you are slacking off, or how long you are spending on a particular project.

Coda

Coda is a text editor + file transfer + svn + css editor + terminal + resource center. It is by a software company called Panic and it is only for Mac. Why do I use Coda?

It is extremely easy to manage and work on multiple projects with its visual CSS editor and built in file transfer. Combined with Apple Mail and Photoshop, Coda is my MOST used application. You can check it out how awesome Coda is here.

Twitter

Twitter is great for getting new ideas. I follow a wide variety of other talented web developers, so it is always interesting when they tweet what tools they are using to make their jobs easier. Many of the tools on this list I found only through following people on Twitter. You will see Twitter go mainstream in 2009, meaning it will receive significant press coverage and more non-tech savvy people will start using it. Don’t forget to follow me and UBD on Twitter!

1Password

If you are a developer that works with clients, you know the pain of having to keep track of hundreds if not thousands of passwords. 1Password is the solution for managing A LOT of passwords. Again, if you are not a Mac user, you are out of luck.

1Password is also universal across all the browsers on your system, so if you use FireFox and Safari, you have will have access to the same passwords in both browsers.

MAMP

The abbreviation MAMP stands for: Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP. With just a few mouse-clicks, you can install Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X! If you setup lots of client sites, you will appreciate the speed of being able to test files on your own system.

Since installing MAMP, I have saved a lot of time from having to upload to various test servers.

Those are my top 5 web development tools from 2008. What tools do you use that makes your job as a web developer easier?

Follow Unique Blog Designs on Twitter

Nate Whitehill — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 04:06:10 +0000

Unique Blog Designs is finally on Twitter! It is certainly about time, as I have been using Twitter for over a year now.

Make sure you follow UBD on Twitter to stay up to date on all of the cool things happening.

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.

WordPress 2.7 Is Teh Coolness

Nate Whitehill — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:09:13 +0000

I’ve been beta testing WordPress 2.7 for the past few weeks and I have to admit, I am impressed to my highest degree of geek. It is so much cleaner looking, has cool new functionality, and the fact that you can upgrade and download new plugins from with the WP Dashboard is pretty sweet.

Check out this video which explains how cool WP 2.7 actually is:

Most people are not comfortable with making big upgrades to their blogs, but I have been testing WP 2.7 pretty extensively with all of our WP Themes including Citrus Theme and the UBD Moneymaker Theme, and it has been working perfectly.

Download WordPress 2.7 Here

If you are using WordPress 2.7 now, what is your favorite new feature? Run into any weirdness? Tell us about your experience.

Awesome Podcast from John Reese & Frank Kern

Nate Whitehill — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:55:30 +0000

I have been up all night listening to this awesome podcast from Internet marketing legends, John Reese and Frank Kern.

I follow John and Frank on Twitter, and earlier today, Frank tweeted a link to a 6-hour podcast he and John recorded back in 2003.

Now, I know what you are thinking… isn’t Internet marketing advice from 2003 outdated? That is exactly what I was expecting, but you will be surprised at how many fundamental truths Frank and John cover in this podcast, which are all true today.

I know 6-hour is a long time to listen to discussion, but if you are into Internet marketing and making money online, I highly recommend you check this out – especially because it is free and there is no opt-in required.

Let me know what you think.

Win a Bathtub Full of Cereal and Help a Family

Nate Whitehill — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 04:21:22 +0000

Everyone’s favorite wild man, and CEO of IZEA, Ted Murphy, loves cereal so much that he is giving away 52 boxes (enough to fill a bath tub) of it in his first “super promotional happiness giveaway.”

How to Enter

Each person can enter up to 2 times, once via their blog and once via twitter.

Enter with your blog. To enter with your blog simply write a short post including one of the promotional images or video below and link back to this post. Please make sure you drop the URL of your post in the comments.

This is a great opportunity to win a lot of cereal and donate the boxes to a local food bank, which is what a lot of the contest entrants are promising to do.

You can learn more about the contest here.

Win a Bathtub Full of Cereal from Ted Murphy on Vimeo.

The Internet Wins.

Nate Whitehill — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:14:27 +0000

With the recent election of Barack Obama, there is going to a new Presidential precedence in using the Interwebz to communicate with the US citizens.

There was no question Obama’s Internet marketing was top notch. He and his team had the most effective marketing of anyone who ever ran for office.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr – Barack Obama’s team has and is participating in all of these new mediums.

Even though he will likely have to give up his Blackberry when he gets to the Oval Office, Obama will still be the first president to use a laptop at his desk.

Add to that, Obama will now be giving a weekly address via YouTube. This is obviously a HUGE step in the right direction – not since JFK using TV has a president involved himself in new channels of communication.

With regards to his technology policy, perhaps what is best about the election of Obama is that he is a strong proponent of Net Neutrality, the purposed laws and measures which will keep the Internet open and free for a long time to come.

Obama will even be appointing the first Chief Technology Officer of the US. Hello, change.

Check out this video of Arianna Huffington (Editor in Chief of Huffington Post) interviewing Google CEO, Dr. Eric Schmidt about the underlying potential of the new Internet Presidency.

Hopefully, the US government will be able to be as increasingly transparent as businesses/corporations have become through the use of social media.

Whether you agree with the rest of his policies or not, with Barack Obama in the White House, the Internet wins.

What do you think?

Win A Blog Design Makeover From IZEA and UBD!

Nate Whitehill — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:52:38 +0000

In September, my biz partners and I spent three weekends of the month at blog and Internet conferences. One of the conferences we attended was IZEA Fest in Orlando, Florida, where my biz partner, Matt Blancarte, gave a speech on blog design for the Blog Design Makeover panel.

Needless to say, IZEA Fest and the Blog Design Makeover panel were incredibly successful for both UBD and IZEA. Matt and the other panelists did an excellent job at discussing the blog designs they made over. You can watch the full video presentation here.

Win A Blog Design Makeover From UBD

At the recent Blog World Expo in Las Vegas, Ted Murphy, CEO of IZEA, mentioned the idea of doing a monthly promotion to for bloggers to win a free blog design makeover. Of course, we thought it was a great izea, I mean idea!

We are huge IZEA fans and we are proud to partner with them for this opportunity. Even cooler, the first Blog Design Makeover promotion is now launching.

Entering this monthly contest is super easy! Read more details here »

Thanks to IZEA for their promotion and support!

Blog World Expo ‘08 – What A Blast!

Nate Whitehill — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:03:11 +0000

Just like last year, Blog World Expo has come and gone way too quickly. This was my second appearance to the second annual Blog World Expo, held in Las Vegas Nevada. Overall, the BWE08 weekend far surpassed last year!

Last year was our first conference ever and first time we exhibited, as well. This year, UBD designed and implemented the official Blog World Expo Blog, so we were upgraded to a 10×20 booth (twice as big as last year). KA POW!

On Friday afternoon, only four days after returning from Orlando (IZEA Fest), we packed up our monitors and UBD supplies, and we drove the 4.5-hour trek from Phoenix to Las Vegas.

Friday

We arrived in Vegas around 9:00PM, right when the Tech Set party was kicking off. We first met up with our Blog World Expo buddies from last year, Ms. Danielle and Greg Morgan.

New friends Gary from iPhoneinCanada.ca and Derek Semmler also joined us and we went to the Tech Set party at the Mirage where we met up with our Market Leverage home girls, Dina and Debby, and ShoeMoney.

At this point, the bar was closing at the Tech Set party, so we went another bar in the Mirage where we saw IZEA CEO Ted Murphy and also Pete Cashmore from Mashable. After a few drinks with everyone, we basically called it a night.

‘

Saturday

Saturday was the first day of the conference, so we spent the majority of the day at the conference hall talking to a wide range of different businesses and individuals. As you can see, I look a little more tired than the night before.

ShoeMoney and Ted Murphy stopped by to let us distribute some of their t-shirts, stickers and buttons. Did we mention we love IZEA?

Later that night, the fun started when we went to the Market Leverage-hosted Super Panel dinner with Internet stars such as Zac Johnson, Ian Fernando, John Chow, Jeremy Schoemaker, Brian Clarke and Jim Kukral. We had dinner at an awesome steakhouse. Big thanks to Market Leverage!

Sunday

Sunday was the final day of the expo, but luckily, I was much better rested than the previous night. We exhibited all day, and afterwards, we had dinner with John Chow, ShoeMoney, the Market Leverage girls at the Red8 Chinese restaraunt in the Wynn.

Unfortunately, my camera died earlier that day so I wasn’t able to snap any more pictures.

Overall, it was an incredibly productive weekend and some of the best networking I have done since, well, the week before.

Sometimes people ask me if I have any tips or tricks for people looking to get started online and how they can become more well known in their online field. My answer is always:

The best way to network online…is to do it IN PERSON!!!

Remember that next time you are thinking about going to an industry conference/tradeshow.

More photos here »

IZEA Fest!

Nate Whitehill — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:51:46 +0000

IZEA Fest has been off to an incredible start. It has been great to meet and catch up with many of our past clients including John Chow, Shoemoney, Neil Patel, Israel Lagares, Michael Brito, Zac Johnson and Andrew Bennett.

It has also been great to meet some familiar faces such as IZEA CEO Ted Murphy, Tamar Weinberg, Ian Fernando, Brian Clark, and John Reese.

So far, Matt, Josh and I have been kicking it in the “La Playa Lounge” where we have a table and booth setup.

Here are some pics:

Exciting September Plans

Nate Whitehill — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:11:40 +0000

As many of you know, my work with UBD has dominated my time over the past year. We have been very fortunate to have met and worked with some of the top bloggers and companies online, including John Chow, Shoemoney, and Yahoo!

Our networking experiences have been one of the most important factors that have helped grow our business. Last November, we attended Blog World Expo in Las Vegas. That was a huge branding benefit for our business and it also where we met Yahoo! and IZEA.

IZEA Fest

On Thursday, my biz partners and I are flying to Orlando, Florida to speak and exhibit at IZEA Fest. My business partner and senior UBD designer, Matt, will be speaking on the “Blog Design Makeover” panel with two other top web designers.

We will also be exhibiting with a booth at IZEA Fest. This will be our first east coast conference, and hopefully no category-4 hurricanes will get in our way!

John Chow dot Com Design Version 3

I am also happy to report that UBD will be releasing the next iteration of John Chow’s popular blog later tonight. We have been working on this with John for the past several months and we are very excited to debut several new features and functionality which we have built into this theme.

Affiliate Marketing Product

Over the past few weeks, I have been working with Paul from UberAffiliate on a new affiliate marketing product. I can’t say much more, but we should be releasing this in the next two weeks! I can promise you this – everyone will be talking about it!

Blog World Expo

Five days after IZEA Fest, we will be driving up to Las Vegas (4-hour drive from Scottsdale) to attend the second-annual Blog World Expo. This will be our second time exhibiting at Blog World Expo, and this year, our booth is twice as big – 10×20! What will we do with all of that space? Good question. On a side note, we are proud to have worked with the Blog World Expo team this year on the Blog World Expo blog.

Citrus Theme

Nate Whitehill — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:39:59 +0000

Back in the Olden Days, when I used to work at the Apple Store, I met friend and fellow Apple enthusiast, John Ellenich.

Almost two years since I started working at and quit Apple, John and I decided it would be smart to design and release a premium theme together in conjunction with Unique Blog Designs. We are proud to release Citrus Theme in six beautiful colors.

You can learn more about Citrus Theme here… Let us know what you think!

Happy Birthday UBD! 1-Year Anniversary Contest

Nate Whitehill — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 07:13:06 +0000

Today, August 22nd, 2008, is the 1-year anniversary of Unique Blog Designs. One year ago, UBD was born with the redesign of John Chow dot Com.

Fast forward one year, and we have worked with over 200 clients, including John Chow, ShoeMoney, Zac Johnson, Uber Affiliate, Fat Man Unleashed, Alex Shalman, MakeUseOf, Here.org.uk, Blog World Expo, Entrecard, and now, Yahoo!

Enter the UBD 1-Year Anniversary Contest

In celebration of our one-year birthday, we will be running a contest for the remainder of August (until Sunday, August 31st). The contest is open to everyone on Earth! If you are not from Earth, you are responsible for the cost of shipping. So, what are the prizes?

Grand Prize – Brand New 8GB iPod Touch ($299 value) and One (1) Copy of our New UBD Citrus WordPress Theme (coming next week).

Three (3) runner-up prizes include copies of our new UBD Citrus WordPress Theme.

How do I enter?

Entering the UBD 1-Year Anniversary Contest is super simple!

For one (1) contest entry – just reply to this post with a comment. Only one comment per person will be counted.
For five (5) contest entries – write a blog post about the UBD 1-Year Anniversary Contest and link back to this post. If your blog post does not appear under the “Pingbacks,” leave a comment with a URL to the post.

The winner will be randomly chosen Monday, September 1st, 2008. We will draw the winner via streaming video from the UBD office.

Official Contest Rules

The contest runs from 12:00AM PST Friday, August 22nd, 2008 to 11:59PM Sunday, August 31, 2008.
Winners will be chosen Monday, September 1, 2008 through a random drawing.
Only one (1) comment entry per person and one (1) blog entry per person. The total number of entries any person can receive is six (6) entries.
Prizes include (1) grand prize of an Apple iPod Touch 8GB ($299 value) and three (3) copies of our new UBD Citrus WordPress Theme ($99 value) – coming next week.
Contest is open to everyone world-wide.

Thanks to everyone who has supported us over the past year! We have many exciting things planned for this next year!

What Cars Do Dot Com Moguls Drive?

Nate Whitehill — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:48:58 +0000

My friend, Kieron of Here.org.uk and WhiteCarWorld.com, recently interviewed some of the top business bloggers (including Shoemoney, John Chow Neil Patel and many others – even me) about their daily drivers and ultimate-if-money-was-no-object fantasy cars. It is a great read if you are a car-nut like me! Kieron is the proud owner of a white (of course!) Range Rover SE Supercharged. Sweet car, Kieron!

You can read the full article here:

Internet stars and their cars!