Sometimes bloggers make grammatical mistakes.  That’s fine, I make them too.  However, it’s a whole different ballgame when you are a big company like Slingmedia.

Check out this little mistake that I found while looking for their latest gadgets announced at CES this week:

It’s not really a big deal, but we should expect better from a company trying to sell us stuff.

Man oh man…what a tough choice. How is one supposed to select something knowing that either choice is right? It’s one of those “there is no wrong answer” type questions that my professors ask from time to time and it is my responsibility to convince them that my choice is the better of the two. This time I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place and need to cast my vote of support for either Tyler or Gyutae. It’s like choosing between your favorite movie or your favorite song…it’s a difficult choice for sure!

The Contenders

Tyler “the man, the myth, and the legend” Cruz has been my “coach” these last few weeks, has provided me with some valuable tips to make my site better, has given me the awesome opportunity to make guest postings on his site, and has really inspired me to be a better blogger in general.

Gyutae “nice guys finish first” Park has also been influential in my blogging sphere as of late. Gyutae is proving to be a marketing maven and has been able to generate huge buzz for his site by giving away 1 review (valued at $450) on John Chow’s website, and has brought traffic to his and others’ sites by offering free blog audits to anyone who makes 10 genuine comments on his blog. Gyutae is a genuine nice guy and is rapidly making a good name for himself in the blogosphere.

The Prize

This is where the contest gets interesting. As with every contest, there seems to always be a winner and a loser with the winner getting a big prize. Think the Superbowl, the BCS Championship, the World Series, the World Cup, Wimbledon, World’s Longest Fingernail, and so on. The winner gets something for winning.

With this contest, the winner doesn’t really win anything but the voters are the ones who win. If you vote for the winner, you enter for a chance to win up to $100 paid for by the LOSER of the competition.

In addition to perhaps winning $100, each candidate is giving away a freebie to sway voters one way or another. Gyutae is giving away a free T-shirt to his first 30 voters and Tyler is giving away 100 free Entrecard credits to each of his voters. Some schwag for a vote can’t hurt, right?

My Vote

Unlike big government elections, I feel as though my vote actually counts in this race, and it is with a great degree of difficulty that I cast is. The aforementioned candidates are both very deserving of my vote. This is not a popularity contest nor is it a measure of the quality of the website. I am not voting on the basis of monthly earnings nor am I voting on the basis of friendship. I am, however, voting for the candidate with whom I can relate the most, I am voting for the guy who started his blog at the same time that I started mine and I am voting for the guy that makes me feel like I can reach my goals just like he is reaching his.

Also, since I like movies and sports where the underdog is triumphant, I am voting for Gyutae’s Winning the Web. I know that Tyler has some tricks up his sleeve and like the Chow vs. Shoemaker RSS contest, Tyler will probably unleash the hounds closer to the end of the contest.

Wow, 2007 is surely ending with a bang for this young website.  Since starting in October, this site has steadily increased in daily visitors through the use of social bookmarking programs such as Entrecard, Reddit and StumbleUpon.  This month, though I’ve slowed down in post count recently, is ending with a big bang.

Firstly, this site will probably not see many new posts until January 7th because…I’m going on a cruise!  Depending on the availability of Internet access wherever we are, I may post once or twice during the cruise giving you updates, but I’m really looking forward to this vacation as a time to relax and recharge my batteries for the year ahead that will start once again at a roaring pace once we get back home.  School, work, blogs, and other ventures will be in full swing so I hope to be tanned and charged for the new year.

Secondly, I have been selected to write guest posts for Tyler Cruz and his blog, www.tylercruz.com!  I am honored to be able to share my views with Tyler’s visitors and am working on my first post for his website.  I think that my post will be a success and have been putting in a lot of thinking and hope that this post will be a good start to a long working relationship between Tyler and me.

With these two things, I wish you all a fantastic end to 2007 and hope that you all have had a relaxing Christmas break.

Happy new year!

Now that school is over I have had a few spare moments to think about the the look and feel of this website.  Although I based the design on what other bloggers were doing about 2 months ago, I know that I could do better.  I’ve never been one to really think inside the box too much so I’ve decided to let my creative juices flow.  Being that I’m quite a terrible artist, I’ve decided to stick to pure CSS for the layout and use a couple of borrowed colors and gradients for the graphics.

I’m still working on the details and figuring out exactly how I want everything to look and where I want everything to be, but I think it’s coming along nicely.  I’ll have this done eventually.  I’m pretty much done with the design aspect of the site and any changes from here on out will be easy to make.  My next step is to convert my working and VALID HTML (and CSS) into a Wordpress theme.  This is still a little new to me but I’ve done it 3 or 4 times now so it should only take a few hours.

Want a sneak peak?  Leave a comment!

2007 is almost out of here and 2008 will be with us in just a few weeks.  In time for the new year, I am making several Blog Resolutions and setting up goals for this site.  I decided that in order to measure my blogging progress, goals are a definite necessity and I was prompted to write about them today when I saw this post over at Daily Blog Tips.

Out of the laundry list of metrics from the Daily Blog Tips post, I have selected 5 that I think are important to this blog at this stage in the game.  This blog is only 2 months old and it has already seen an increasing number of visitors on a daily basis, but I know the numbers could be much better.  That’s why I selected these 5 metrics for 2008.

Daily Visits

Currently this blog averages 32 unique visitors per day, up from 18 on its first month.  I know that the quality of my blog posts are good, so I need to work on marketing the site and meeting other bloggers to help me raise the number of unique visitors to this site.  I don’t think it would be all that difficult or unlikely to hope for a 10x increase in visitors, so by the end of 2008, I would like to see at least 320 unique daily visitors to this blog.

RSS Subscribers

Another metric dealing with the visibility of this site, I want to keep raising the number of readers that subscribe to my RSS feed.  I feel that an RSS readership can help to spread the word about my site in addition to adding another income stream for when this site starts receiving more visitors.  Currently, I have exactly 9 RSS readers.  This number has fluctuated to 15 in recent weeks and I think it will continue to rise as the site gains momentum.   By the end of 2008, I want this site to have no less than 200 RSS subscribers.  If you’re not yet an RSS subscriber, sign up today!

Weekly Posts

As a measure of my stamina as a blogger, I will keep track of the number of posts I do per week.  I currently do not keep track of this stat but think that I write 4 or 5 times per week.  I think this is a good number but would like to average 6 posts per week for 2008.  This may be in the form of multiple posts per day, one post per day, or a combination thereof.  With 6 posts per week and 52 weeks in a year, that means at least 312 posts next year.

Alexa Rank

Alexa measures the popularity of a given site but you can only see detailed stats for a site if it is one of the top 100,000 sites.  Currently, LearnHow2Earn.com is sitting at 881,320 and at the end of 2008 I would like to see this site in the top 100,000, according to Alexa’s rank.  With a rank better than 100,000, this site will be in good enough shape to start bringing in some money through affiliate offers and advertising sales.

Monthly Revenues

As of today, December 19, 2007, this website has not made me any money yet. Although I have a few ads running on the sidebar, these are affiliate ads that I put there to see if people clicked on them.  Given that I have received a few clicks from those ads, I have not made any sales yet.  If I am able to reach my goals of 320 unique visitors and 200 RSS readers by the end of 2008, I don’t think it would be unreasonable to expect this blog to sell advertising spots, “pay per post” type reviews, and affiliate products.  With 320 unique daily readers (up to 520 if you factor in the RSS subscribers), there is no reason why I should not make money with the site and I think that I can position myself nicely to make at least $1000 a month from this website.

There you have it, my goals for 2008.  I have made a list, printed it out several copies and hung them around places where I will see them on a daily basis.  I enjoy sharing my ideas and experiences with my readers, appreciate all of the comments that I have received and look forward to meeting more people in the year to come.  Thanks to all who have come to this site, those who have subscribed to the RSS feed, and those who have linked to my posts.  I wish you all a great end of the year, safe travels, good holidays, and a successful 2008!