Let me get straight to the facts:

• I started my blog in January of 2007 (almost 1.5 years ago).
• I started a blog design company in August of 2007 (almost 9 months ago).
• Since then, I have been using a free, but highly customized theme by Ed Merritt called Ocean Mist…until now.

Welcome to Nate Whitehill dot Com 2.0.

Now, you may ask yourself, “why did the guy who started Unique Blog Designs wait so long to design a unique theme for himself?”

Good question. Before I give you the answer, let go’s back in time and let me give you some history on how Unique Blog Designs got started.

It was July of 2007 - I had been blogging for a solid 5 months and had built up a solid base of 500 RSS subscribers through consistent and informative blog articles. My previous experience in web design led me to consider the benefits of starting a blog design company.

Anyway, one particular summer afternoon, it was 100+ degrees outside, and I was at the pool with my good friend and biz partner, Matt Blancarte.

We were talking about how insanely popular blogging was becoming, at such a fast rate. At that time, there were over 100,000 new blogs being started everyday. (I am sure that number is WAY higher now). The problem was that 99.9% of people were using free themes, which, of course, all looked extremely similar and did not represent the author’s brand and originality.

Even our favorite blogger at the time, John Chow, was using a slightly customized version of the MistyLook theme.

With John’s blog exponentially growing in popularity, I am sure he became aware of the need to differentiate himself from the many other bloggers using the same theme, which, as far as modifications go, consisted of a sports car in the header and the words “make money online” keyword-stuffed onto the page.

Essentially, with so many new blogs popping up each day, it was quite clear that there was need to appear “unique” in the blogosphere. It was in this thought that the concept of Unique Blog Designs was conceived.

That same day, I rushed back from the swimming pool to my apartment to check to see if the domain uniqueblogdesigns.com was already registered. Incredibly enough, it was available and I immediately registered it. That was July 8, 2007.

One Month Later

One month later, I wrote a post entitled “23 Things I’ve Learned After 7 Months and 500 RSS Subscribers” that ended up being linked by none other than John Chow.

It was at that time that I began casually chatting with John on IM. Inspired by the recent ProBlogger redesign, it was at this time that John and I decided to work on a new blog design his blog.

This was an opportunity to place special emphasis on some key conversion elements of his blog, such as RSS subscription and advertising. On August 22, 2007, Unique Blog Designs launched with the redesign of John Chow dot Com.

At the time, John had approximately 7,000 RSS subscribers and was earning ONLY $17,000 per month.

As I mentioned, we decided to place extra emphasis on his RSS subscription options, advertising placement, and his “make money online” ebook, which allowed him to collect a targeted group of email addresses from people interested in making money online.

What did John have to say about his theme after several months of use?

A new theme helps generate renewed interest and buzz for your blog. Readers who haven’t checked out your blog for a while will come to see the new look… the theme [from Unique Blog Designs] created a significant increase in traffic. Unique Blog Designs has exceeded my expectations on every level. My readers love the new John Chow dot Com theme and my traffic is up 125%.”

Effective Monetization Requires A Plan

By placing two rows of 125×125 block advertising buttons on his sidebar, John was able to instantly gross and extra $8,000 each month from his blog. Block advertising is one of the most effective ways to monetize a blog - you can see it in action on monster blogs such as ProBlogger and TechCrunch.

By the end of 2007, John was earning over $25,000 per month, and that number is now closer to $30,000.

Not only that, but by including direct links to his preferred affiliate programs (a.k.a “Recommended Moneymakers”), he begins earnings commissions for all of his network referrals.

As if that is not enough, John’s RSS subscribers have more than tripled from 7,000 subscribers in August of 2007, to almost 25,000 subscribers currently.

After launching John’s blog, one week later, we were contacted by another top 100 “make money online” blogger, Jeremy Schoemaker. A week later, we launched the redesign of Shoemoney.com and the rest was history.

Not surprisingly, after designing blogs for two of the most renowned bloggers, we received a lot of traffic (and orders) for new blog designs.

To make a long story short, I have been too busy working on blogs other than my own over the past nine months and simply have not had time to redesign my own blog, until now.

Hello to 2.0

As I mentioned before, my previous theme was a free theme, but I added several customized elements to it, including a header graphic, featured elements and especially RSS subscription emphasis.

This new theme I was able to build from the ground up. Here were my requirements:

• Maintain similar color scheme to previous design. I believe this is an important thing to take into consideration when redesigning a blog with a relatively large number of readers. I have enough of a readership where I think maintaining a similar color scheme is necessary in order to not confuse new and existing readers.
• Maintain similar layout and “feel.” This is also related to my philosophy of “don’t fix what’s not broken.” My previous blog design received a lot of positive feedback and several people even contacted me wanting to purchase the design as I had customized it.
• Unique display of RSS subscribers.” Are you just as sick of the Feedburner chicklets as I am? Luckily, there is a Wordpress plugin called Feedcount which allows you to grab your RSS feed count directly from Feedburner’s API. Just to give it some fire, I added the Feedburner fire icon. Way cool.
• Widen the layout. My old design had a width of 780 pixels in width which is quite narrow for many of the monster 22″+ displays nowadays. This new design is 900 pixels wide, which fits perfectly even on a 1024×768 screen.
• Make the design even EASIER to read. One compliment I frequently received on my previous blog design was how readable it was, and that is something I had place importance on in the past.
• Unique comment layout and design. As much as I love threaded comments, I like Gravatar support, highlighted author comments, and cool looking comment boxes even more. I am proud to announce a cool new commenting layout with integrated Gravatar support. Just so you know, Automattic, the company that owns Wordpress, bought Gravatar late last year, so we will be seeing a lot more of Gravatar in the near future. That’s great news to me, because I think Gravatars are a lot cooler (a.k.a. higher res) than MyBlogLog avatars.
• Increase the sphere of influence by integrating my social media buttons. Social media is the next evolution in online brand building. I have blogged a lot about branding in the past and how a blog is an incredibly powerful way to develop a personal or corporate brand. Another emerging brand development tool is becoming participation in various forms of social media and networking. I am talking about Facebook, Twitter, Digg, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, etc.

  Although it may seem futile to some people, by having more followers, or “friends” on different networks, these are simply other opportunities for people to find common interest with you and possibly participate in your community. Not only that, but many of these sites can drive targeted traffic to your blog, because these are already people who have chosen to “friend” you on given networks.

  Many bloggers are beginning to integrate their social media buttons on their blogs as to increase their sphere of influence. MostlyLisa is a great example of someone who has leveraged social networking to increase her sphere of influence, and of course, pageviews, which equal advertising dollars. For example, by frequently posting her videos to Viddler, she is able to send her blog a tremendous amount of traffic as her videos typically receive 10,000+ views within a few days.

  In summary, social media is your next opportunity to increase your sphere of influence. I draw the line at Myspace, but feel free to add me on any of the various network icons you see on my blog.

Summary

I hope you like the new look of Nate Whitehill dot Com. Over the past year and a half, my blog has become the most important networking, branding, and business tool in my life. If it were not for my blog, there would be no Unique Blog Designs or any of the other dramatic life changes which I have experienced over the past year. Time to get black to blogging!

Roll your mouse over the image below to compare the old design to the new one:

What do you guys think?

P.S. - Happy Mothers’ Day 2008! I love you, Mom!

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Hello Nate Whitehill dot Com 2.0

Some of you may have remember that when I first started my blog back in January of 2007, I was awarded with a PR5 during my first PR update. Unfortunately, when the Google PageRank slap hit everyone six months ago, I was bumped back down to a PR4.

Today on I read on Courtney Tuttle’s blog (nice blog, Courtney that Google is undergoing its quarterly PageRank update. I decided to verify this for myself by checking a few blogs in my Google toolbar. I am happy to report that my blog jumped back up to a PR5. This is a another nice surprise from Google because less than two months ago, I was awarded with a Google authority listing for my name.

Every blogger can do things to increase the chances of them receiving a higher PageRank update. Almost a year ago, I wrote on article on how to prepare for a PageRank update.

How about you guys? Have you noticed a change in your PageRank? Usually, the update takes a few days to be accurate across all Google data centers.

For more information on this mysterious force of Google, check out this Wikipedia article on PageRank, which interestingly, outranks Google’s page about PageRank.

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PageRank Update Underway?

The Journey Of A Thousand Miles Begins With A Single Step
- (Lao Tzu)

I recently saw an excellent movie called Rabbit-Proof Fence. The movie is based upon the true story of 3 young Australian aborigine girls who were removed from their families because they were of mixed heritage (their father’s were white and their mothers were aborigines). These girls were taken over a thousand miles from their home to the other side of Australia. They were to live in a camp where they would be trained, based upon the goals of a government bureaucrat who thought he knew what was best for them.

These girls missed their families so much and hated the camp so much, that they ran away and walked over 1000 miles home. They had no roadmap. No GPS systems. Instead, they followed a simple barbed wire fence designed to keep out rabbits. They were told this fence ran the entire length of Australia and they knew part of the fence was in their village. Demonstrating an incredible amount of courage and cleverness, they walked home, all the way, simply by following the fence. 2 of the 3 girls were able to elude bounty hunters who were sent out to recapture them. It was an amazing story.

When the government eventually recaptured these girls from their home and took them back to the camp, they walked away again and walked all the way home. These girls were incredible.

The point of their story is that they never gave up. No matter how far they had to go; no matter how long their journey; they simply kept going. They followed the only roadmap they had (the fence) and they kept going. One foot after another, they kept going. If they hit a roadblock, they dealt with it and found a way around it. Eventually they reached their destination. When they hit the ultimate roadblock (being recaptured and taken back to the camp), they simply started walking again until they reached their destination.

As you embark on your personal re-creation process, you are going to have to do the same thing. You are going to have to come up with your own roadmap and you are going to have to keep walking until you reach your destination. You may be able to find shortcuts along the way and you may find a way to drive a “speedy sportscar” (instead of walking), but you are still going to have to start and you are going to have to keep going until you reach your destination.

By reading this article, you have taken the first step upon your journey; your personal re-creation process. Now it’s time to come up with a roadmap (i.e. your “rabbit-proof fence”).

Stanley Bronstein is an attorney, CPA, author and professional motivational speaker.

If you want to read more Achievement oriented articles posted by Stanley F. Bronstein, check out the links below.

Stanley Bronstein’s Achievement IQ Blog

• Stanley Bronstein’s Articles on SelfGrowth.com
• You can also subscribe to his daily RSS feed for his blog or subscribe to his email feed for his blog (by clicking here) that will send you my new blog postings daily directly to your email.
• Also, if you subscribe to his weekly newsletter, you will immediately receive a link to download his latest free e-book called Re-Create Yourself Now. It’s full of great ideas to help you get started.

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The Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step

It seems like everyone these days is now Twittering - the micro blogging platform in which people “follow” each others’ updates via a live, instant message-like chat stream. You will see my recent Twitter updates on the top of the sidebar on the right-hand side of my blog.

I first started Twittering in November of 2007 when UBD attended the Blog World Expo. I used Twitter to keep my readers up to date of what I was doing while we were in Vegas at the expo.

At that time, not many other people were using Twitter and I had less than 10 followers. Now, in the past week, the number of people following me on Twitter has more than tripled!

What accounts for such a rapid increase in the number of Twitter users and followers?

I have no idea! Twitter is simply becoming more viral by the day. Way too many of my homeboys and homegirls are now using Twitter.

About a week ago I told John Chow to get on Twitter, and within a few minutes he was signed up and following me. In the past week, John now has almost 500 people following him on Twitter.

Many people seem to think Twitter is just useless bantering, but I have started to see its benefits. For example, Twitters allows you to:

• Keep up to date with what your friends and colleague are doing
• Be on the cutting edge of breaking news - for example, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington posts tidbits of upcoming news which have not yet appeared on his site
• Keep you readers updated of your new blog posts using the Twitter Updater Wordpress plugin
• Share interesting stories or websites you have found with your followers
• Start conversations with people whom otherwise you may never talk to
• Network and become more well-known within online communities
• Ask questions and receive answers from the people who follow you

I asked John, “Is Twitter just useless chat or do you think it allows you to better keep in touch with your readers?” This was his response:

Twitter is like having one big mega chat room. It can be a huge time waster or a good marketing channel depending on how you go about it. I got on twitter as a marketing move and I’m trying very to keep it from being a time waster. It’s VERY HARD!

I have noticed that as more of the people I know have started twittering, I have become more a more active Twitterer myself. In the past week, for example, I have updated Twitter (a.k.a “Tweeted”) over 70x… Compare that to less than 10x in the previous 5 months.

Writing a quality blog post takes significant time and effort, but with Twitter, you only have 140 characters to post, so no one is expecting a novel. A good “Tweet,” as they are called, may simply be a link to a cool blog post, or a question/answer to a problem a fellow Twitterer is having.

I highly recommend Twitter to anyone who is looking to network within a community and potentially increase new readers for their websites or blogs. I know that I will be using Twitter more over the next few months to stay in contact with my readers and also to network with people. I have even started to receive quite a few “follow” requests from many people local to me in Scottsdale, Arizona.

So, what are you waiting for? Follow me on Twitter!

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Twittering Up a Storm

BIC Promo Pens is a company that specializes in creating promotional pens for corporate events and other functions. BIC Promo Pens was kind enough to send me this awesome golf shirt and a few of their latest and greatest pens.

Notice the carbon-fiber weave on the silver pen - now, that is what I am talking about!

If you are looking for BIC pens for your next corporate function, I highly recommend BICPromoPens.com

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Thanks To Bic Promo Pens

It’s been quite a while since I’ve updated my blog, but a lot of that has to do with how extremely busy I and the rest of UBD have been over the past month.

I want you to introduce you to a new friend of mine, Stanley Bronstein.

Stanley is not just a successful attorney and CPA, but also a professional motivational speaker and published author. Widely known as “Mr. Achievement,” Stanley’s mission is helping people position themselves for success. He is about to release his third book on achieving success, “Achievement IQ: The Laws of Positioning.”

Stanley recently started his blog on personal development in the hopes of connecting with people online to help them achieve more success in their lives and careers.

Some of Stanley’s best posts so far have been:

• Laws of Positioning - What Are They About?
• 100 Laws of Positioning
• Stanley Bronstein’s Purpose In Life

For his new book, “Achievement IQ: The Laws of Positioning,” Stanley drove around the country to interview some very successful and remarkable people. He chronicled his journey through dozens of hours of audio and video, with much of the current material being available for free on his website.

What are the Laws of Positioning?

The premise behind the Laws of Positioning states that:

The most successful people and organizations tend to have four traits in common:

VISION - They recognize details and opportunities that most others do not see, thus putting themselves in a position of readiness;

ATTRACTION - They put themselves in a position to attract opportunities;

READINESS - They put themselves in a position to be ready to take advantage of those opportunities once they do come their way; and

ACTION - They take action upon those details and opportunities in a manner that most others would not, thus putting themselves in a position to be more successful than most.

Stanley has only been blogging since February, but he has already managed to crank out almost 60 posts. I highly recommend that you check out Stanley’s blog if you are interested in learning how to position yourself for success in both your personal and professional lives. Visit Stanley Bronstein here.

More posts coming soon…

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Meet Stanley Bronstein - Mr. Achievement

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Meet the Newest Member of Unique Blog Designs

You can read my interview here.

Be sure to check out some of the other interviews - there are some great ones!

Thanks for the interview, Michael!

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Interview with Michael Dunlop from RetireAt21.com

Many of you know that two weeks ago, I finally moved into a house (pics coming soon). In case you didn’t read that, it basically outlines why I so grateful to have finally moved out the tiny apartment and finally into a big house again. Well, that same weekend, I also found out that Google finally granted me an “authority listing.”

What’s an authority listing?

When I first started blogging, there were no other “Nate Whitehill’s” who ranked for their names in Google. Within a month, I ranked #1 for my name. Now, not only do I rank for my name, but I have been given an “authority listing” in Google for my name.

Similar to an “indented listing” (see below), an “authority listing” is a site which has received a significant of natural backlinks, total number of daily searches, and high quality linkback “authority” from other high PR sites, over a long period of time. Many of you know that I have been blogging since January of 2007, so, it took me about a year for my name to receive an authority listing on Google.

Not only does an authority listing appear as the first result, but it also has 4-5 other links directly under it pointing to other high PR pages within your site. I am sure that Google listed my “23 Things I’ve Learned After 7 months” post only because it is probably the most linked-to post on my blog.

What does this mean for the future?

Well, for one, I will start to receive more traffic for my name than previously. In this Google Analytics chart, it shows the number of searches per day for my name over the past year.

As you can see, search traffic spiked in late September, but has also been steadily rising over the past month.

Why is it good to rank high for your name?

On the Internet, your reputation is a lot more important than your resume. Anyone can start a business online or make money, it doesn’t take any special degree or incredible resume. However, online reputation can help tremendously when it comes to effectively networking or marketing online.

Not to mention, if a potential employer really wanted to find out about you, they would Google your name and not just look at your resume. Just as long as you have surrounded your online reputation with positive and noteworthy achievements, then it can only benefit any online OR offline new job opportunity.

Any other “Nate Whitehill” who wanted to rank #1 for his contact would have very difficult time doing so thanks to my new Google Authority listing.

What do you rank when you type in your name? Do you have an authority listing?

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Google Authority Listing Boosts Search Engine Traffic

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Amazing

Ever since I moved from Seattle to Scottsdale, Arizona in July of 2006, I have been living in small, cramped apartments with my business partners and best friends since high school, Josh Mullineaux and Matt Blancarte. While living with my best friends and business partners is awesome, they will both agree that three guys living in a small apartment has not been the ideal situation.

Our first apartment, The Palladium, was located right in the heart of Old Town Scottsdale, right across from several upscale nightclubs. For a first apartment, it was very nice, especially given that it was situated directly across the street from the happening Scottsdale nightlife. I believe the square footage was around 1200 square feet, which for two guys (just Josh and I, at the time), wasn’t bad by any means.

You might think that being so close to so much nightlife, I must have spent a lot of time partying. Nothing could be further from the truth! During my first six months in Arizona is when I really started spending ALL of my time working to develop a sustainable online business. Needless to say, given our goals at the time - to create a sustainable online business - we didn’t get much use out of the local nightclubs. During the eight months we lived at The Palladium, I think we went out less than half a dozen times. Josh and I eventually figured out that if we were going to spend all of our time working on the business, we may as well move to a cheaper, quieter location.

As a result, in March of 2007, Josh and I moved to a less expensive, more suburban apartment in North Scottsdale. Even though at this new apartment we were paying half of what we paid before, the quiet and somewhat suburban location made it much easier to consistently work without being distracted by the local partying and nightlife. Not to mention how we saved a lot of money by downgrading our living situation.

In August of 2007, when we started UBD, our other business partner (and best friend since high school), Matt, moved in with us into our 900-square foot apartment. Why did Matt move in (and more importantly, where did he sleep!)? Matt moved in because previously he had been living in Tempe, a 45-minute drive away, and given how crucial his role in the business quickly became, he started spending all of his time up at our place in Scottsdale. Prior to that, Matt was commuting 5-6 days a week. We finally managed to save up some company dollars and bought Matt a futon, so he has been sleeping in the living room for the past six months. Talk about boot-strapping!

As much as I enjoy working full-time with my business partners and best friends from the “comfort” of our own place, “comfortable” is NOT the word I would use to describe our living situation over the past several months. We have made a lot of sacrifices over the past 18 months, including saying goodbye to partying, living in a relatively uncomfortable situation, and working long hours with no end in sight.

Finally, however, the day has come! We are moving out of our apartment into a real, live house! Not just any house, but one in which we will all be able to be in the kitchen at the same time. In our current apartment, our kitchen is so small that it is nearly impossible for us to have the oven and fridge doors open at the same time!

Anyway, we have been planning and saving to move into a house for the past several months now. As far as our requirements, we needed four bedrooms and a three car garage. Why four bedrooms? We can use the master suite as our office and write off a hefty portion of the monthly payment.

Not only is this house perfect for our current situation, but the location could not be better. The best part about it is that it has a pool and yard, so now Matt can finally move his puppy, Jojo, in with us (Josh, and I, and my two cats). Anyone who has ever lived in Arizona knows that if you plan on spending any time outside in the summer, you’d better be near a pool. Summer temperatures typically range from 100 F (37 C) at night to 115 F (46 C) during the day.

We are moving in this weekend, but I will definitely post some pics as we get set up!

What has everyone else been up to? At least it looks like we won’t be seeing a Microhoo anytime soon…

Here are some pics from the surrounding area we are moving to… Looks kind of like another world, doesn’t it? The third pic down is a crazy rock mountain called Pinnacle Peak.

Making sacrifices in the present in order to benefit in the future can be dicey. You really have to carefully weigh what you’re giving up and what you have to gain. Right now our “sacrifice” for the past few months is feeling like it was justified: we like the position it has put us in, and we all feel like we can see the benefits. However, it is a subtle proposition that only each individual can negotiate with confidence. I look forward to hearing what your own challenges in that regard are.

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Moving, Finally!

No joke. Microsoft made an offer of $44.6 billion to acquire Yahoo, thus FINALLY creating a competitor to Google. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, publicly released the following letter discussing the merger.

January 31, 2008

Board of Directors
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Attention: Roy Bostock, Chairman
Attention: Jerry Yang, Chief Executive Officer

Dear Members of the Board:

I am writing on behalf of the Board of Directors of Microsoft to make a proposal for a business combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!. Under our proposal, Microsoft would acquire all of the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 based on Microsoft’s closing share price on January 31, 2008, payable in the form of $31 in cash or 0.9509 of a share of Microsoft common stock. Microsoft would provide each Yahoo! shareholder with the ability to choose whether to receive the consideration in cash or Microsoft common stock, subject to pro-ration so that in the aggregate one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be exchanged for shares of Microsoft common stock and one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be converted into the right to receive cash. Our proposal is not subject to any financing condition.

Our proposal represents a 62% premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock of $19.18 on January 31, 2008. The implied premium for the operating assets of the company clearly is considerably greater when adjusted for the minority, non-controlled assets and cash. By whatever financial measure you use - EBITDA, free cash flow, operating cash flow, net income, or analyst target prices - this proposal represents a compelling value realization event for your shareholders.

We believe that Microsoft common stock represents a very attractive investment opportunity for Yahoo!’s shareholders. Microsoft has generated revenue growth of 15%, earnings growth of 26%, and a return on equity of 35% on average for the last three years. Microsoft’s share price has generated shareholder returns of 8% during the last one year period and 28% during the last three year period, significantly outperforming the S&P 500. It is our view that Microsoft has significant potential upside given the continued solid growth in our core businesses, the recent launch of Windows Vista, and other strategic initiatives.

Microsoft’s consistent belief has been that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective shareholders, as well as create a more efficient and competitive company that would provide greater value and service to our customers. In late 2006 and early 2007, we jointly explored a broad range of ways in which our two companies might work together. These discussions were based on a vision that the online businesses of Microsoft and Yahoo! should be aligned in some way to create a more effective competitor in the online marketplace. We discussed a number of alternatives ranging from commercial partnerships to a merger proposal, which you rejected. While a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! that we are proposing.

In February 2007, I received a letter from your Chairman indicating the view of the Yahoo! Board that “now is not the right time from the perspective of our shareholders to enter into discussions regarding an acquisition transaction.” According to that letter, the principal reason for this view was the Yahoo! Board’s confidence in the “potential upside” if management successfully executed on a reformulated strategy based on certain operational initiatives, such as Project Panama, and a significant organizational realignment. A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved.

While online advertising growth continues, there are significant benefits of scale in advertising platform economics, in capital costs for search index build-out, and in research and development, making this a time of industry consolidation and convergence. Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers. Synergies of this combination fall into four areas:

Scale economics: This combination enables synergies related to scale economics of the advertising platform where today there is only one competitor at scale. This includes synergies across both search and non-search related advertising that will strengthen the value proposition to both advertisers and publishers. Additionally, the combination allows us to consolidate capital spending.

Expanded R&D capacity: The combined talent of our engineering resources can be focused on R&D priorities such as a single search index and single advertising platform. Together we can unleash new levels of innovation, delivering enhanced user experiences, breakthroughs in search, and new advertising platform capabilities. Many of these breakthroughs are a function of an engineering scale that today neither of our companies has on its own.

Operational efficiencies: Eliminating redundant infrastructure and duplicative operating costs will improve the financial performance of the combined entity.

Emerging user experiences: Our combined ability to focus engineering resources that drive innovation in emerging scenarios such as video, mobile services, online commerce, social media, and social platforms is greatly enhanced.

We would value the opportunity to further discuss with you how to optimize the integration of our respective businesses to create a leading global technology company with exceptional display and search advertising capabilities. You should also be aware that we intend to offer significant retention packages to your engineers, key leaders and employees across all disciplines.

We have dedicated considerable time and resources to an analysis of a potential transaction and are confident that the combination will receive all necessary regulatory approvals. We look forward to discussing this with you, and both our internal legal team and outside counsel are available to meet with your counsel at their earliest convenience.

Our proposal is subject to the negotiation of a definitive merger agreement and our having the opportunity to conduct certain limited and confirmatory due diligence. In addition, because a portion of the aggregate merger consideration would consist of Microsoft common stock, we would provide Yahoo! the opportunity to conduct appropriate limited due diligence with respect to Microsoft. We are prepared to deliver a draft merger agreement to you and begin discussions immediately.

In light of the significance of this proposal to your shareholders and ours, as well as the potential for selective disclosures, our intention is to publicly release the text of this letter tomorrow morning.

Due to the importance of these discussions and the value represented by our proposal, we expect the Yahoo! Board to engage in a full review of our proposal. My leadership team and I would be happy to make ourselves available to meet with you and your Board at your earliest convenience. Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.

We believe this proposal represents a unique opportunity to create significant value for Yahoo!’s shareholders and employees, and the combined company will be better positioned to provide an enhanced value proposition to users and advertisers. We hope that you and your Board share our enthusiasm, and we look forward to a prompt and favorable reply.

Sincerely yours,

/s/ Steven A. Ballmer

Steven A. Ballmer

Chief Executive Officer

Microsoft Corporation

2008 is going to be an exciting year, no doubt.

Full story here

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Microhoo! Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion

This month has been, by far, the busiest month I have ever had for UBD and the rest of our activities. Clearly, I haven’t yet been able to devote time to my plan for a regular blogging schedule again. In the meantime, I want to give some shout-outs to some of my friends in the blogosphere who have had the time to craft effective ways to market their blogs, including everything from powerful posts to crazy contests to e-mazing ebooks!

Win $1000 From The Rating Blog
My top commentator, Alan Johnson, is currently giving away $1000 in a contest, with sponsors such as Bidvertiser, Copeac, and LunarPages. There are multiple ways to enter, including blogging about the contest and subscribing by email. Good luck with your contest, Alan, and thanks for consistently being a top commentator on my blog!


Win Pirates of the Burning Sea From Michael Kwan
My Pubcon schwag contest winner, Michael Kwan, is holding a contest himself, giving away a free copy of Pirates of the Burning Sea, which is an online multiplayer role playing game for the PC. Just like Alan’s contest, to enter Michael’s, all you have to do is sign up for his RSS feed by email.


Trying to find the right niche? Ask yourself these questions!
Samuel from Wake Up Later helps us find the right niche by purposing six questions to ask yourself. Among the questions, “are you passionate about your idea,” is one that rings very true with me for being important to success in anything.


Are you a Wordpress Dummy?
My Wordpress Rockstar buddy, Adii, is giving away a free copy of “Wordpress For Dummies.” How do you enter? Just give him feedback on his new design concepts for his wildly popular Premium News Theme. Adii is looking for your feedback to make his new Premium News Themes even better!


Don’t be an out-of-shape blogger! Stay fit with these workout techniques from the Fat Man, himself!
Fat Man Unleashed releases his first mini ebook, “Blogger Proof Workout Mini Ebook, Volume 1.” In the book, Fat Man shows us how to keep fit with several of his tried and tested workouts. Getting to the gym more has been one of my resolutions this year, and something I plan to take very seriously.


Create a profitable freelance business for under $50!
My favorite Self Made Chick, Christine OKelly, has just released an ebook of her own called “How I Built A Profitable Freelance Business for Under $50 (And How You Can Too!)” I know from first hand experience that Christine’s advice should be taken very seriously - in the past few months she has grown her RSS subscriber count to over 1000. Not only that, but she has also built a very successful freelance copywriting business, as well. Congrats, Christine!


Win a $5,500 Colnago Road Bike!
Do you want to win a $5,500 road bike for only $100? Your odds to win are very good: 1 in 100! My buddy, Tyler Ford, is giving away a brand new Colnago Carbon Bike in a raffle on his blog.

Do you need Wordpress Blog Design? Contact me for details.

Mentions In The ‘Sphere

It has been exactly one year now since I wrote my first post. Funny story: Vinay Menon was the first person ever to comment on one of my posts. I became friends and have kept in touch with him and his business partner, Anthony, over the past year through our mutual interest in exotic sport cars. In November of 2007, I was fortunate to meet Vinay and Anthony at the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. How many people can say that they actually met the first person to ever comment on their blogs? I can.

Let’s recap a little bit: I came across the entire concept of blogging back in November of 2006. Wow, that feels like SUCH a long time ago! It was after I had first moved down from Seattle to Phoenix, Arizona, and I was becoming more and more dedicated to producing a sustainable income from the Internet.

I was also a “MySpacer” at the time and enjoyed socializing with my real-life friends online. That was all about to change.

My Motivation

It soon was apparent that there were no real professional and and business benefits from MySpace. I deleted my account, and later that month started doing Internet research on Mark Zuckerberg (creator of Facebook). I was fascinated with how someone his age (he was 22 at the time, just like me) created such an incredible Internet empire from his dorm room.

Researching Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg led me to a Valleywag article about Mark and Kevin Rose (creator of Digg). To make a long story short, I ended up on Digg, and eventually stumbled upon John Chow’s blog, who, at the time, was gaming his way to the front page of Digg for days at a time.

John’s blog was the first “blog” I had ever read. What I liked about the blog was that this was a personal account of making money online. This was exactly the type of information I was looking for. Not only that, but John had (and still has) a fun and easy-to-read writing style. He had written quite a few articles by that time. I remember reading his blog voraciously, with each post becoming more knowledgeable about the various aspects of advertising, domaining, SEO, affiliate marketing, and e-commerce.

John wrote some fantastically useful posts in his first six months of blogging, many of which contain the fundamental knowledge of a lot of the various ways to make money online. If you ever get the chance, I recommend going back and reading some of the October-November-December 2006 posts on John’s blog.

Seeing John’s success made me even more motivated, although not to make money off my blog - I was most interested in using my blog as a journal to document my learning and hopefully teach other people about different aspects of Internet specialization such as SEO, domaining, web design, and branding.

Establishing an online identity in order to run a business was certainly one of the major goals of blogging. Why? People are much more likely to do business with you if they have a sense of who you are and whether you are trustworthy. Obviously, it was much harder to do business and get an audience when I was a new blogger. Now, a year later, I feel as if I have a true community of like-minded professionals.

The Six-Month Game Plan

When I think back to what helped me the most, it was having a six-month game plan for establishing my online identity. Six months is a long time in the Internet world, and a lot can change in that time span. At the same time, six months is short enough of a time that if clearly planned out, significant goals and life transformations can be launched.

When I first started blogging, one of my sub-goals was to generate more business for my web design company, infinFX. My plan was that after six months of blogging, I would be running a 100%, self-sustaining, Internet-based web design firm. Little did I know that infinFX would have to morph into Unique Blog Designs for this to come true. Either way, sticking with my blog for six months made it much easier to accomplish that next goal.

How long have you been blogging? Why did you start blogging? Do you have a six-month game plan for your blog? How has blogging helped your business? I look forward to hearing!

Do you need Wordpress Blog Design? Contact me for details.

Why I Started Blogging…From Motivation to Game Plan

It took me 362 days, but, today, January 10, 2008, my blog finally registered over 1000 RSS subscribers, 1009 to be exact. My first blog post ever was on January 13, 2007. What can I say? It’s been an incredible journey and one that I plan to continue for as long as possible.

On August 8, 2007, my blog hit 500 subscribers and I wrote a post “23 Things I’ve Learned After 7 Months and 500 RSS Subscribers” was ended up being linked by John Chow. It was originally because of that article that I first struck up conversation with John. It was only 2 weeks later that I redesigned his blog.

I am preparing another “23 things I learned” post to celebrate my journey from 500 to 1000 subscribers.

I want to thank everyone who has ever commented on my blog or taken the time to read an article.

By the way, check out the new UBD.

Do you need Wordpress Blog Design? Contact me for details.

1000 Subscribers!

In the past I have talked a lot about the importance of analyzing and setting goals for the future. It has been almost a year now that I have been blogging and trying to make money online. In fact, January 17th will be my one-year blogiversary.

This past year has been, by far, the best year of my life. I have learned an incredible amount of useful knowledge, met a ton of extremely cool people, and made more overall professional progress than any year previously.

To my relief, I completed almost all of the goals I set for 2007, including creating a sustainable, enjoyable business and hiring part- and full-time employees.

Since it is now a new year, here are some of my plans and goals for 2008.

1. Continue to have fun. I’ve been working crazy long days for months now, and have learned if I am not having fun working, I could easily lose incentive. When work is fun, it’s win-win.
2. Blog more. Blogging is what got to me to where I am today. I want to get back to a more consistent, regular schedule of blogging and use it as a centralized location for information that has helped me. Hopefully it can help other people too.
3. Build a social network. That may sound like an unlikely goal, but it is something which is now much easier to do thanks to new developer-driven social networking platforms.
4. Redesign my blog. You would think that someone who has a custom blog design firm would have a custom-designed blog. Although I have significantly modified my blog design, it is not an original theme. I am still using a free theme from Ed Merritt. The truth is that I have simply been way too busy designing other people’s blog to focus on redesigning mine. I recently started customizing a new blog design for myself, so hopefully I will be able to finish that within the next month or so.
5. Work out 3-5x per week. Being on my own schedule is great, but I always seem to get too distracted by work. I don’t need to talk about the benefits of working out, but it will truly improve effective working time. I plan to do more.
6. Release phase 1.5 of UBD. This is something we plan to release within the next few months.
7. Respond to more comments. Comment interaction is often the best content of the post, and I regret that I have not made it a priority in the past. My goal is to spend more time writing back to my readers and commenting on other people’s blogs.
8. Attend more tradeshows. Blog World Expo and Pubcon were, by far, the most fun I have had this entire year. Not only were these events very beneficial professionally, it was also very rewarding to meet lots of new and familiar people. I highly recommend that everyone try to attend at least one industry show a year. UBD staff are already signed up to exhibit at Blog World Expo 2008 in September!

Those are some of my goals and plans for 2008. Last year was an exciting and interesting time for me professionally, and I am sure this year will be even more so.

What are YOUR goals/plans? Remember, we are all more motivated to follow through once we’ve made a public commitment!

Do you need Wordpress Blog Design? Contact me for details.

My Goals for 2008

It’s amazing that Christmas and the holidays are already here. It feels like just yesterday, it was August and I was spending half my time at the pool and the other half working on the new design for John Chow.

The past four months have by far been the craziest and most exciting of my life. I have met a ton of really cool and familiar people at Blog World Expo and Pubcon.

Being a blogger who owns a blog design company, it only seems justified that I spend more time blogging and reading other blogs. Below are a few *interesting* posts which I have stumbled upon in the past few days…

Are you an more of an expert than you realize?

Christine OKelly, Self Made Chick and world-class copywriter, posts another intellectual gem - 9 Ways to Drastically Increase Your Perceived Value.

Super Affiliate and Super Poet

Zac Johnson is not just a super affiliate, he is also a super poet! Zac wrote a clever version of his own “Twas the Night before Christmas.” A must read!

Reminiscing over Christmas Cartoons

Ms. Danielle brings back the good old days when all we did over winter break was watch Christmas cartoons“Top 5 Favorite Christmas Animations.”

How Important Is Robots.txt For Google?

The Cow writes a detailed analysis of the different methods that some of the top bloggers are using their robots file. Definitely an interesting read and something which is causing me to rethink my robot strategy.

What happens when you unexpectedly lose your domain?

On a more serious note, my good buddy and UBD logo designer, David Airey, recently had his domain and email account hacked when he was away on vacation. Not only did the hacker steal his domain, he did it through a GMail security exploit. Read about how GMail’s security failure left David’s business sabotaged. And if you link to David, make sure you update your links from davidairey.com to davidairey.co.uk. I wish you the best of luck in the proceedings to get your domain back, David!

Small pets are here to stay - Keep yours healthy!

Being the animal lover that I am, I enjoyed this post written by Mike from Bloggin-Ads. Mikes shares with us 10 care tips for owning a hamster. So, for all of you kids who get hamsters from Santa, make sure you read this…

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. I can’t wait for 2008 - I’ve got a lot of cool things planned that I can’t wait to share with you guys!

Warning: Don’t go to this page (SFW). You can’t say I didn’t warn you.

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Holiday Ramblings

I look forward to hearing everyone’s opinion of the new UBD. I will post a comprehensive write-up about that as soon as it is finished (by Friday night).

In the meantime, I have almost finished writing a new post on an exciting phenomenon which is going to turn the movie industry upside down. More on that later tonight/early tomorrow.

In the other meantime, Bernard Griffiths took the time to interview me recently. To read that interview, follow this link:

Interview with Nate Whitehill from NateWhitehill.com & Unique Blog Designs

Thanks, Bernard, for the interview. Now, back to work.

Do you need Wordpress Blog Design? Contact me for details.

Almost Finished With My Mega-Project (+ Mini Update)

Congratulations to Michael Kwan of Beyond the Rhetoric who was randomly selected out of ~70 people who now subscribe to my blog via email!

Michael is a freelance writer and being so, he writes a lot of interesting and entertaining articles over at his blog. Some of the articles I have particularly enjoyed are:

• Finding the Life-Work Balance
• Aim For A Needle, Not A Haystack
• Five Myths About Freelance Writing

Congratulations, Michael, and Happy Holidays too! Make sure you take a pic for all of us with your UBD t-shirt and all your new gear!

Thanks to everyone who entered! I will be holding more contests in the future for everyone who is subscribed by email - so make sure to subscribe by email, so I know who is reading my blog!

Do you need Wordpress Blog Design? Contact me for details.

Winner of My Pubcon Schwag Contest