Welcome to the newest category on MasterTheWeb: Contests! From time to time people have cool contest for webmasters so we might as well spread the love.

Here’s the first contest that I’ve found (description copied straight from website).

Make a blog post and win $250

BlogParty is a new network of sites that help leverage your blog, but we need help getting the message out there. How about some motivation? How about the chance to win $250 for writting an entry in your blog about BlogParty with a link back to www.blogparty.net?

Easy enough?
First, make a post to your blog about BlogParty with a link back to www.BlogParty.net. Verbose or short - sweet or critical - wordy or terse - it makes no difference - it is your blog and you post with your normal style. Only one entry per blog! However, as many entries as you have blogs - as long as it is only one entry per blog.

Second, go to the Blog Party Blog and enter your post’s PermaLink with your email at. Don’t forget to opt-in to the BlogParty newsletter here on this page.- Of course you are not obligated, but heck - we are here to help you and your blog, so why not?

Third, wait till March 15, 2006. On that date, we will select ONE blog that still has the link active and that we are able to contact via email (If you give us a bad email - how are we going to let you know you won??). The selected blog’s owner will be the winner of $250 paid via PayPal.

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I know I’ve mentioned in passing that I’m addicted to forums. Well here’s a good joke for you. You know you’re addicted to forums when on your birthday you get 20 happy birthday emails from forums alone. Whats even worse is when you don’t even recognize all the forums…

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PR6, tons of webmaster traffic, craze that is sweeping the internet—all phrases that describe Digg.com—yet somehow they fail to properly sum it all up. Digg has quickly become one of the fastest growing websites on the net and has developed a cult-like following. It is not uncommon for sites that have news stories featured on Digg’s homepage to receive massive boosts in traffic. Many sites report 5000+ uniques from Digg within hours of making the homepage. Fabio, owner of TotalWebTalk, confesses that he is “amazed at the traffic” that he has recieved to his forum after a valued member ranted about the possibility of a registrar taking a great domain name that he had searched for and found to be avalaible but later appeared to be registered to the registrar. It was set to be one of the normal community discussions that TotalWebTalk is becoming well known for when an unknown visitor or member posted it to Digg. (Digg It). Five hours later Fabio says that he, “had to upgrade [his] hosting package to deal with the traffic” because “we’ve gotten 6000 visitors since the link has been up”

You might be asking yourself, “What is digg and can I get that kind of traffic too?” The answer to both questions is simple, but hardly easy. Digg is a revolutionary community news site where the users provide the news and decide which news articles are worth the time fo other users to read. (Digg FAQ here) So first of all, to get traffic, you need a news story that others will find interesting. Then you or someone else needs to submit it to Digg; you have to be registered to both post and digg stories, but like the best things in life, registration is free. The way you get the most exposure is of course making it to the homepage. To make it to the homepage readers have to dig your story. Rankings are based on the number of diggs in a period of time.

So if you have something interesting to share, then digg it. Its free advertising with the potential to generate huge amounts of traffic. Just don’t become a diggspammer!

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A few days ago I started using Firefox a little bit because I decided that it was easier to install a plugin to show me pr of pages then to use websites that may or may not give accurate results.

So I go to my gmail inbox and I find that it has a whopping PR of 8. Not to bad for a page that has no backlinks. I open up one of my emails and it has a PR7.

Now, I know that Google crawls my email so that they can show me ads. So if someone were to email me a link to their website, might they get a PR7 backlink? Its certainly something to think about. Try it out. Have someone send you an email promoting one of your websites and see if it does any good.

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I can’t wait for the PR Update that should happen very soon. I have two sites that are predicted to go to PR5 and since that’s somewhere I’ve never been I really enjoy the prospect.
4-5: http://www.iwebtool.com/www.mlinkz.com
3: http://www.iwebtool.com/www.display-ip.com
4-5: http://www.iwebtool.com/www.studentproxy.com
2: http://www.iwebtool.com/www.mastertheweb.org

So if all of those do as predicted then I will hold a combined PR greater than I ever have before. Google needs to get a move on it.

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Yesterday was the official launch of my newest website: StudentProxy. Yesterday I made over a dollar by adsense from the homepage only and today I’m almost there again.

Google
Google has sent two bots to StudentProxy and has already listed it in the index. In fact, I’m already receiving traffic from google which bodes well for the site since I have never had a site that got much search engine traffic at all.

Promotion
I’ve spent all of five to ten minutes promoting StudentProxy. I exchanged 1 link (which I’m getting most of my traffic from) and I joined three topsites. This has yielded me in total on day 2: 141 unique visitors!

Future
I’m looking forward to this site growing. I can’t wait to finally own a successful money making site.

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Today is the first day that I’ve ever made over $1 in adsense! The best part is that the site wasn’t even live until late last night. Today was the first day that it received any traffic. With a simple link exchange I’m listed on a very high traffic website which I’m already getting traffic from. Additionally, the site only has one page and Google and MSN have both already visited.

I’m seeing big things in the future for this site.

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Could it be that a site is impossible to sell? What is it that makes people decide to buy a site only to back out when it is time to pay?

I’m of course talking about one of the sites that I mentioned in my post about patience. The other I’ve heard from the buyer and found that he’s just waiting for some money to come in which is perfectly acceptable and puts my mind at ease, but this site has just got me so confused.

I listed it for sale several months ago when it was in its prime and I didn’t even get any nibbles. I was really anxious about giving it up so looking back I don’t think that I was ready to give it up. But this time, I have complete peace about giving it up. Quite simply, it is time for me to move on with my life. After all I’ve put into it I can’t bear to see it go to waste, but at the same time I know that with my limited knowledge that I’ve done all that I can with it. It’s akin to loving a pet but knowing that it would have a better life without you. I’m just not the right person any more.

But I can’t get the thing to sell. Remember that this is my second time to offer it up for sale and it is at about a quarter of what I originally wanted for it the first time. So the price has settled on $200. I’ve had 4 people offer to buy it at this price. The first backed out after 2 or 3 days of me waiting for payment because he didn’t think that he could manage the transfer. And the second lowered his offer because “everything doesn’t seem okay”. The third I haven’t heard back from after her initial offer of interest. I just hope that buyer 4 will come through for me.

I’ve now had someone else offer $150 for the database and $100 for the vB license. I acepted because I was ready to be done with it. Not 15 minutes later someone offered $275 for it all. So it ended up selling for much less than what I wanted, but I have glad that it is off my hands and that I have some money to work with.

All that remains now is for the vB licensed to be transfered and I will glad that this process is done with.

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I’m always looking for ways to promote my brand new blog and so far, the most handy dandy thing I’ve seen so far is FeedBurner

Publicize
Share your new FeedBurner feed address by:
Providing a link on your web site. Learn how to modify your blog template to advertise your feed on your site.
Modifying auto-discovery settings on your blog so people can find your feed easily. Learn how to do this to your site and watch circulation grow.

Optimize
Enhance and extend your feed with FeedBurner’s array of services. Use SmartFeed to maximize feed compatibility, improve feed appearance with BrowserFriendly, or easily create a podcast with SmartCast.

Analyze
Get an up-close look at who’s using your feed, and how. Track feed circulation, readership details, clickthroughs and item views (if you’re a PRO subscriber).

Monetize
Place context sensitive advertisements (that is, ads that make sense with your content) in your feed using Google AdSense. Burn your Amazon.com Associate ID into any links to Amazon.com in your feed.

“Troubleshootize”
It’s true, some good feeds go bad. Learn how to diagnose and solve the most common problems FeedBurner encounters when working with your original feed. The best part? We also notify you about any issues we discover using our FeedMedic reporting service and place the alerts right here.

If you haven’t joined FeedBurner and you have a blog you need to do it now!

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MLinkz is my only site that I own that has already had any measure of success.

MLinkz is general web directory that I started in early August because I wanted to try my hand at owning a directory. It isn’t costing too much to run and it doesn’t take much time to manage. It’s made several times what it’s cost to set up and advertise and I take pride in owning it.

If you’re looking for a free backlink with PR then submit your site to MLinkz. I accept any family friendly website and generally acceptance or denial is within 12-24 hours or your submission. And although I appreciate any reciprocal links, it’s certainly not required.

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