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!

If you’d ask us, we’d say that roughly 85% of you guys have a blog. And 80% of those that do, use wordpress. We use it and we love it. So here’s a free tip for you; switch over to wordpress if you’re still with blogspot or some other limiting service. Take matters into you own hands and start working your way up to the top of the blogosphere!

Yesterday we wrote about how you need to brand your blog and one of the things that does just that is the way your blog looks like. There’s a large amount of templates out there and even still loads of people use the same themes! Even we aren’t original with the theme we run on. Unfortunately it’s a necessary evil if we want to get our copycow point across.

The friendly folk over at Bloginon asked us what we thought about the new and free worpress theme they are currently offering in our two favorite flavours. Chocolate and vanilla! We had a look and we must say, we like it! Elegant and smooth.

The themes have been approved for bloggers of all ages since there are no sharp edges to be found. Adsense intergration and replacing the default logo with your own is made very easy and straight forward. It’s seems to have done a great job with the ad placement. Not too intrusive, yet clickable. One tip I’d give the author of the themes is to include the tips as a readme.txt in the zip file so the bloggers can use it to it’s fullest potential.

What do we specifically like and don’t like about the theme?

• We are a sucker for round corners!
• The design is elegant and doesn’t distract us from the most important thing on a blog; the content.
• The integration of ad codes is made pretty easy and explained well.
• The featured and recent posts on the top is clever. This might have first time visitors browse around a bit longer.
• It’s free! Seriously, do you need another reason?

---

• It could use a little kick. Perhaps some different bullets for the listings.
• It doesn’t have any cow pictures anywhere.

Sweet Corners is a great free wordpress theme which can easily be adapted for any blog, no matter what your niche is. It’s still a version 1.0 so we’re probably going to see some updates. Tells us what you think about the theme and leave some constructive criticism in the comments. We’re sure the good folk at Blogion will be reading this sponsored review and take your suggestions into consideration. We’ve been told that there’s probably more free themes to come from these guys, so if this one isn’t quite what you’re looking for, bookmark them anyway to see if any future releases will suit your style!

37 Moos » ~ ~ Random Post

Know the feeling when you’re telling someone a joke, and halfway through you give away the plot? It sucks donkey balls! Our last ‘cease and desist‘ post unfortunately was published a little early. We were so sure that we had timestamped it for April 1st! (yeah right!) And on top of that we messed up our config which made our blog redirect to John Chow himself? What can we say? We suck! Oh well, poor John could use the extra visitors and it’s not like this was an obvious form of LINKBAIT or something!

So anyway, if anyone suffered any significant emotional stress from this unfortunate misunderstanding, we hope you won’t sue because we really can’t afford a lawsuit! Even though the Big Beef offered to step up for us on his blog! Ad for those that thought we were trying to sneak out on the $500 competition, don’t worry! We’re not going anywhere!

Well, that’s all in the past now. Let’s get back to mooney making business, shall we? That’s what you’re here for so that what you’re getting. Perhaps an all expenses paid holiday to Las Vegas will make you forget our tasteless joke!

The creators of Thoughts.com thought it might be smart to grab a review from us cows, so we could tell our moo-tastic readers, that’s you, about the free holiday to Las Vegas they’re giving away! The way to earn one of these 5 holidays is quite simple really. The easy part is to sign up with them and start your free blog there. The hard part? Beat the rest of the bloggers!
It’s not just a competition you can win by luck, you can actually influence the outcome!

Here’s the main prize which is given to 5 individuals and they can all bring a friend too!

• Roundtrip airfare for two from anywhere in the continental United States.
• 3 Night stay at a 4 star Las Vegas resort (to be determined)
• Complimentary dinner 3 nights
• Complimentary shows 2 nights

Our user rating system allows your fellow thoughts.com members to rate each of your blog posts, photos, podcasts and video blogs. We average your overall ratings to determine your overall user rating. Members with overall user ratings over 4.0 are allowed to make posts in our community blogs sections of the site. These are the most commonly visited pages and are reserved for the highest quality of posters.

One of the great things about Thoughts dot com is that besides free blogs, they offer a forum for all the members to discuss their…well…their thoughts! A great idea to mingle with alike minds to see if you can work together to improve your blogging skills! Like we have said in previous posts, other bloggers can inspire you and provide material to write about. Thoughts is great for that.

Something which everyone seems to be doing these days is podcasting. Although we have been thinking about it, the bloggers over at thoughts dot com are actually doing it. Check out their podcast listings. Who’s done podcasting before? Wonder if anyone would want to hear us moo! And if you’re curious as to who’s blogging with thoughts dot com, have a browse through the users photo gallery. Surely you’ll be able to find a topic which interests you via the fashionable tag clouds around the site if you don’t care about looks.

To conclude this review, we think that nobody can sell themselves better than themselves. (Did that sentence make sense?)

Thoughts.com is more than a free blog community. We also allow you to upload and organize photos and videos, rate other member’s posts, participate in the forums and stay up to date with the latest news from around the world. When you make a blog post or leave a comment on another member’s blog, your post is instantly published on to the web site and other members are able to read immediately read what you have to say. Are you ready to get started?

To be honest, we’ve already got a blog and don’t really see the need in getting another one since we don’t live in the US and are therefor not able to win the prize. That’s good news for you guys because we would have beaten all of you in the competition! We’d take the whole herd to viva Las Vegas! Check out some Siegfried and Roy tiger shows!

P.S. Because of all the commotion regarding our brief absence, we’ve got the Stupid Cow Award for someone special in our next episode. Stay tuned kids!

P.S.P.S Can Mahdi Yusuf and CoolioJones perhaps email us their paypal details so we can pay them?

57 Moos » ~ ~ Random Post

A young and successful entrepreneur who gave away a Nintendo Wii not long ago is at it again. Not only has he got another Wii to give away, he also had enough spare change to order a review with us. He must be doing something right! Being involved in Internet Marketing for over 9 years, Darin’s success is no surprise.

When we were approached for this review, Darin initially wanted a big push for his new Nintendo Wii promotion but we felt his site deserved a little more attention. It’s a great place for relevant SEO and SEM information! Darin knows what he’s talking about. Just have a look at one of his random posts.

Probably the most impressive work he’s delivered is his series on PPC (Pay Per Click) Management. These articles cover pretty much everything there is to know about PPC and covers topics like organizing, keyword research, how to write an advertisement, Google alternatives and targeting your audience. Don’t rush and waste your money on a badly organized PPC campaign. Take your time to read what Darin’s experiences are and benefit from his knowledge. As he is after all a certified Google Advertising Individual, you can rest assured that Darin knows what he’s talking about.

Enough about Darin, lets talk about what we like and don’t like about his blog.

+ Very informative, certainly one to bookmark if you’re into the whole SEM and SEO marketing. He’s got some great tips and tricks for us webmasters.

+ Easy to read, plain English. He doesn’t beat around the bush but tells you what you want to know. If you cant find what you’re looking in the archives, there’s always the nifty tag cloud in the sidebar to guide you.

+Darin likes to give away cool free stuff all the time like Nintendo Wiis!

---

- You really don’t need to impress us with all those wiglets on your sidebar. All they do is slow down your site and waste your page rank.

- Having cool buttons is one thing, but make sure you integrate them with the back ground color! This looks like it’s been plastered on there by someone who doesn’t care what their site looks like.

- You might want to consider getting a nice header. We’re glad you took off the sports car but you really need to brand yourself! You’ve got the fav icon, now get the logo!

Not interested in SEM and SEO marketing? Fine. But we bet you’d love to get your hands on a brand new in the box Nintendo Wii! Darin told me he’s got three of them so figured he might as well give them away in competitions to reward his readers. What a guy! Here’s how you can Win a Wii with Darin.cc!

The process is very simple - Write a post about the most valuable information you have learned from my blog and I’ll link to your post. The post must be at least 150 words and you have to include a link to this blogs home page and this post using the Anchor Text “Search Marketing“. Here is an example of what i’m looking for:

Since reading Darin.CC (a blog about Search Marketing) I have learned how to successfully start a Pay Per Click Campaign and Escape Google Supplemental Results! He is offering to link to your blog if you post about his blog and you could win a Free Nintendo Wii in the process!

Please feel free to link to any other interesting posts as well. I prefer you be completely honest with your thoughts about the site - state what you like and don’t like about the site. It doesn’t matter what niche your blog covers and it doesn’t have to be in English. I will accept any and all entries.

Yes it’s that simple, do yourself a favor and join in on the competition, We assume you’ve entered ours and it’d be silly if you didn’t double your chances of getting your hands on a free Nintendo Wii!

12 Moos » ~ ~ Random Post

Online Marketer Pedro Sardinha asked us if we could make his site known to the world via a sponsored review. Since we’re not too busy with our other 10 sites we figured why not? What he had to offer seemed interesting enough. Hold on tight Pedro, here goes nothing!

Pedro managed to get a domain which is hard to come by these days, his “own name” dot com. Pedrosardinha.com struck us as slightly different because we’ve seen a lot of WP themes out there but never came across this one. We like it. If we might make one suggestion though Pedro, please get rid of that annoying “Sign up for out newsletter” floater on the left. It makes us want to kick the screen. The rest of the site is organized and straightforward. Looking at the links it’s obvious that a lot of love goes out to some of the marketing gurus like Mike Filsaime, Gary Ambrose, Craig Haywood, Ewen Chia, Joel Comm, Henry Gold, Matt Morris and then some. We’ve only heard of Joel Comm but what do we know about Internet Marketing? Not much! That’s why it’s good for cows like us that guys like Pedro are offering Free eBooks that include some nice reading material like traffic secrets unleashed and The Ultimate Guide to YourEasyList.

Browsing through the site we found that Pedro might have the answer how to to win the lottery and he’s got movie material about what many believe is the next big thing on the Internet; eVo. (Boy that left sidebar floater is getting on our nerves!). Some of the posts are covering rumors about Internet scams, Is MySpace paying users? Is Gary Ambrose’s ListBandit a scam? We don’t know but it seems Pedro can tell us for sure that Gary is OK, he says he’s worked with the man several times.

Alright, let’s cut to the chase. Pedro asked us if we could introduce our readers to the free ebooks that he’s giving away which hold the secret to online success. Obviously there must be something good in them since Pedro was able to afford this review. He comes across as a nice guy on IM so we believe Pedro is doing something right. He’s not just all talk like us, he’s got another project running, TopBlogBox dot com. It seems this is something similar to blogtopsites and blogflux. We’re not quite sure yet how this is going to be monetized as that market might be saturated by now. Not everybody likes to stick another widglet on his or her sidebar which is required to get your blog submitted.

There’s not much more to tell you guys about Pedro’s operation. Have a look for yourselves and see if this is for you. The stuff he’s giving away is for free so there’s no harm in surfing over for a bit. If anything, you can kill some time clicking on all the links he’s got. Boys and girls, we give you; pedro sardinha dot com

(PS we told Pedro this could have been a better review with the deadline we gave him but he was in a hurry to get published so he got a quick and dirty!)

24 Moos » ~ ~ Random Post