If you are new here then you will want to CLICK HERE to enter to WIN an LCD TV, Ipod Touch, Flip Mino and More!

11 Moos » ~ ~ Random Post

Contests rule the blogosphere these days and whoever is giving away stuff for free can count on a lot of new subscribers and readers. Obviously it all depends on how cool the freebies are, but we’re pretty sure that we’ve got a nice prize for you bloggers out there, courtesy of InternetBabel dot Com, one of our previous advertisers. They wanted us to let you good folks know there’s some neat stuff to be won. Three Killer logo’s from the Logo Samurai guys, who also happen to advertise with us as you can see. We know for a fact that their work will get eyeball’s attention - their own ad on this here has a higher than average CTR.

Internet Babel has recently had a few more competitions and we’ve just missed out on winning a PS3! Ah well, we’ve signed up for the feed to make sure we won’t miss another opportunity with all the freebies they keep giving out.

Enough of that, here’s the breakdown of their contest, where there’s three cool custom logo’s to be won. Perhaps you could get something done like our header?

• Sign up with Internet Babel via email (so they can pick a random winner from the list)
• Leave a comment on their contest post

That’s all folks! Seems simple enough eh? Reading RSS feeds and leaving comments on other blogs is what all you boys and girls should be doing anyway as good little bloggers. Add one more and you could be brushing up your blog with a nifty new logo at no cost! Branding is important these days, remember what we said about that a few weeks ago. The Logo Samurai and Internet Babel can certainly give you a nudge in the right direction with that.

*Contest runs to the 18th of Jan.

21 Moos » ~ ~ Random Post

Thank God December is nearly over and done with. You people have had us slaving over all these half price reviews this month and we’re tired of it! Come 2008 and prices will return to normal. (for all you smart-asses out there, yes you can order a review for the discounted price before the month is over and have it published at a later date.) Anyway, on with the show!

The boys and girls from Sivatar.com forked out their savings and have spend it wisely on this review of their neat-o website. It really is something neat-o, because we think they might just be onto a winner with this concept. It seems to be something like Mybloglog meets Blogcatalog meets Entrecard meets You! A highly interactive community where you can hang out with the cool kids, (*edit* removed bad Michael Jackson joke )

The Sivatar community is aiming to increase it’s members personal branding by sticking a name to the face. All avatars/sivatars link directly to one’s blog and since they’re spread throughout the sivatar site, changes are people will click through to your blog. You’ll have to have an attractive 50×50 button to stand out though. Something sexy to lure the traffic in like we did.

To have a bit of a chitchat with other bloggers and not having to use their or your blog’s comments section, there’s a chat page (ironically enough the URL calls it spam.aspx instead of chat, perhaps they’re trying to tell us something) A very cool feature here is definitely the star power system. The more you’ve been promoted, the bigger your text becomes and the more people will notice. We love this functionality, being the attention whores seekers that we are! Others will promote you by replying to your comments and you can upgrade yourself by leaving comments. More attention will most likely result in more clicks to your site, something which we really didn’t have to point out seeing only smart people read johncow.com, but we just did it nevertheless.

We’ve tried to see if we could speed things up a little by trying to reply to ourselves - nice try, didn’t work.

Overall Sivatar’s team did a great job so far, although in Beta phase, it has a lot of potential to grow big in 2008. The simple, straight forward interface is definitely a strong point and the concept is quite unique. A bit of feedback from us; The tag system will work wonders for SEO, but we’d try to make it look a bit more organized. Try to generate a tag cloud with different font sizes. The more a tag is used, the bigger the font becomes, kinda like the star power system. There’s a reason why big sites like Technorati use this. Another thing we’d love to see improved would be the avatar upload function. Try to create an auto-resizer in there. It’ll save new users a bit of hassle, trying to resize their own avatars for their profiles.

We’re curious how this site is going to get monetized further down the road. Signing up is free and obviously there are no ads around. There are no special features available for users to buy (yet?) and there’s no option to upgrade to anything. Guess we’re gonna have to stick around to find out!

28 Moos » ~ ~ Random Post

As December is expensive enough, todays paid review is one that for some of you will help lower the cost of your online adventures. Promo-Code dot Net might be the best next stop you make if you’re planning on investing in new web hosting for 2008. These guys keep tabs on most of the popular web hosting companies in the world, just to offer you some great discounts and coupons on web hosting.

Seeking out the best deals for your web hosting needs since November 2006, Promo Code has tons of lucrative offers that will fit anyones needs really. We even found an entry for the sweet ‘15% off everything’ deal that our hosting provider micfo has agreed to setup for John Cow readers.

Besides hosting discounts, we’ve found posts about cheaper domain names, free PPC vouchers worth $50 and reviews of hosting providers. It’s obvious that Promo Code seeks out useful and relevant information for it’s visitors. It’s even setup a tidy section where you can just see what the cheapest possible web hosting is, without having to compare all the options.

You can actually make some money from the Free Promo Codes website as they reward anyone that can give them details for a new deal that any webhoster has. They’ll hand over a free $10 amazon voucher to anyone that points them in the right direction. Another great thing they guarantee is to give you the best possible discount; If you happen to use a promo code on their site, but later discover that you could have gotten a greater discount with another promo code (available at the time of purchase), they will refund you the difference. That sounds like a win-win for everyone except the hosting providers!


Promo Code is a clean site with no ads and a straight to the point attitude. There’s really not much we can make a fuss about as they do exactly what you’d think they does. Its pretty pointless for us to try and sell you on the idea of free stuff and hosting discounts as that pretty much sells itself. For obviou reasons, it might be a smart thing to subscribe to their RSS feed and keep on top of any upcoming discounts and giveaways.

10 Moos » ~ ~ Random Post

So here’s the review for Micheal’s RetireAt21.com (part two!) Where to start, we’ve used all the funnies we could think of about retiring at 21 when we reviewed the wrong site last week (fortunately this was also one of Michael’s sites, so not all was lost) and truth be told, there’s actually nothing funny about this site. Its one of the closest things of what money making sites should look like in our opinion. We actually learned a trick the minute we hopped over to RetireAt21, because our fat hooves mistyped something which made us land on the 404 not found page. Hah, very clever of Michael to utilize this page too, trying to sell more of the affiliate products he endorses!

Let’s get down to business, what does RetireAt21 have to offer for its visitors? Besides a lot of young entrepreneur interviews, Michael really finds a lot of stuff that has to do with young people making money online, one video that made us chuckle was the wedgie-proof underwear, invented by two tiny eight year old entrepreneurs. (Ok so there was something funny over at Michael’s site!) Even though the blog has been online for a year, focus seems to be directed towards ebooks and tools to help out any aspiring online entrepreneur and not so much as updating the blog. Guess we sometimes forget that there’s more to the Internet than blogging.

Take a look at the Make Money Online section for example, plenty of information and short descriptions of over 25 ways to earn some extra cash online. We’ll certainly be looking into this part since we’ve just started our affiliate adventures! Why Michael doesn’t link to all the programs with his affiliate links though remains a mystery to us. Obviously he’s been getting some good traffic and we’d certainly try to convert any visitors into cold hard cash if we were a money making site. (Oh wait, we are! )

It’s a good thing you’re reading this post now. It’s Michael’s birthday in two days and instead of whining for gifts like we would do, he’s generously handing out ten prizes on his money maker blog. Obviously its all things that are related to making money online, to stick with the theme, but it looks like there’s some very useful gifts coming from RetireAt21 dot Com; Free advertising opportunities, some signed copies of money making guru books and a bunch of Amazon gift vouchers. (speaking of Amazon gift vouchers, today’s the last day to enter our $250 Amazon gift voucher contest so you’d better hurry if you’ve forgotten to enter!) To us, giving away stuff on your birthday is a pretty solid indicator that you’re doing well for yourself online.

We couldn’t find any examples of RetireAt21’s earnings, but we’re sure that Michael is well on his way to achieve financial freedom at an admirable young age if he keeps it up. Seems we can all learn something from his drive and passion for online business. To keep up with this young entrepreneur, you can find his RSS feed right here, or you could choose to sign up for his newsletter.

Happy early Birthday Mike! We hope you’ll have a blast!

13 Moos » ~ ~ Random Post