Sure, the Asshat Conartist — err, Ashwin Khanna — thing left us all with a bad taste in our mouths.

     But it amazes me that a legitimate, $50 Contest sponsored by SomeMakeMoney.com is still short five entries after several months.  The contest was setup July 29th, and entries have only trickled in…

     For a few more “legitimate contests,” be sure and check out Contest Blogger, which contains not only some great contests, but a few nice SEO tricks to help bloggers build a little ‘net value.

     There’s no doubt about it … everybody’s website needs a good search engine ranking, especially if you’re trying to run a web-based business.  But when you’re running a blog, full of personal thoughts and random ideas, it can be a daunting task to figure out what niche your blog fits into.
     Hell, take us, for example … We’ve got tech articles.  We have “what’s going on in my life” articles.  We have political and current events articles.  And, past that, we have a lot of things with varying degrees of humor (I say varying degress because regardless of how funny the eight of us might find it, many people will have absolutely no clue what the Hell we’re on about).

     My favorites are the “What the hell?” articles.  The screwing-with-google-on-a-regular-basis (and especially Joseph Ferrante) articles, we’ve had some pretty decent results… especially since we’re traveled enough to get same-day-indexing. 
     These things work, ladies and gentlemen, and don’t let any wannabe SEO firm tell you otherwise.

     However … When you’re out of a specific niche, social rankings come heavily into play.

     Mybloglog has been given us a ton of traffic, for instance.  I was introduced to BlogCatalog last night, and that’s pretty cool.  Fuelmyblog has been freaking tremendous.  Linking to your site from a MySpace blog also helps.  And if you’ve got a lot of bloggers in your community (like we do here in Knoxville), reciprocating links with your neighbors is a Hell of a good way to bolster some new visitors.
     Digg, Tehcnorati, del.icio.us and such are useful, but unless you’re getting the traffic in there to start adding to those sites, they’re not gonna help all that much.  But what you can do is join any number of social organizations, such as Dosh Dosh’s Technorati Favorites Exchange, where you’ll actaully stand a chance of improving your Technorati rank — which definitely improves your readership and your ability to sell advertising.

     Actually, Dosh Dosh’s article made me take pause.  I’ve been pretty good about adding local blogs to my Favorites sections of those types of social networking sites.  As long as there’s some reciprocity, it can really help increase the rank of all of the sites involved.
     Now, if only us locals could organize and effort to reciprocate links, then, uh… Like I said, it only stands to help us all.  ;-)  [ *makes mental note to get Instapundit onboard ... heh* ]

     For a few weeks now, Fracas has been pointing out the fact that plenty of people are searching for Shyamali Malakar, and crotch shots, and ending up at her blog.
     Just a few minutes ago, she did a pretty decent post about the whole Shyamali hysteria… Seriously, the girl has attained a level of geek-obsession higher than anyone I can ever remember — even after livinh through the Sam Fox, Amy Weber, Teri Hatcher, Alicia Silverstone, Kate Moss, Gillian Anderson and Callista “Ally McBony” Flockheart years (those were prior obsessions, not my picks).

     Fracas is also doing the “FuelMyBlog” thing. She’s entered the Design a Widget competition over there, and done a helluva job, too, but they haven’t updated the competition page with it just yet.

     Nice job, Fracas!

      Now let’s see if we can channel teh Internets your way a little…

     Ya know, though, Fracas, I still think doing one with Shyamali and ALT’ing it “Shyamali Malakar Nude” would get some serious traffic headed in your direction…

     (God, after writing this, I feel so dirty…)

     Okay, it’s almost midnight … But it looks like, with just a few more clicks, we’ll be the #1 most voted blog on FuelMyBlog!

     Ok, well, as of 11:32PM, we’re now tied for #1 on the Top 100!  One more click, and we set a speed record:  from a lowly 13 votes to the #1 Blog in only 10 days!

     Whoop!  There it is!  At 11:36PM, we’re the #1 most voted blog on FuelMyBlog.

     So here’s where it started:

• On 11-Apr-2007, I put the FuelMyBlog button in the sidebar.  Over the course of a week, a total of 13 people clicked it — and that’s it.
• On 18-Apr-2007, I posted a blog about it.
• On 19-Apr-2007, I was amazed to see we had more than 60 votes due in no small part to the post.
• By 20-Apr-2007, we had around 130 votes.
• By 22-Apr-2007, we made it to #13, so I posted about it again.
• On 23-Apr-2007, I amazed to see us ranked #3.
• On 27-Apr-2007, I made yet another post about us being at #2, and hoped to hit #1 by Saturday.
• On 28-Apr-2007 at 11:36PM EDT, we hit #1.

     So that’s it … I consider this experiment concluded.  You don’t have to hit the button anymore.  We made it in 10 days, and that’s all I really care about. 

     The FuelMyBlog logo went away from the sidebar last week, but thanks to the wonders of Feeds, it appears that we’re still getting a crapload of clicks.  I figured making it to the Top 10 (of the Top 100) was good enough… but…

     You guys kept clicking!  We’re now #2 on the Top 100 and closing fast on #1.  Click it some more!  I wanna set a record:  from a lowly 13 votes to the #1 Blog in only 10 days!

     Something Kevin said the other day —

Noticed in my stats today that one of the search phrases to get to the church was “I hate Mark Steel.” Look, you’re getting famous!

     — stuck with me, although as a humorous sidenote.  I loved it!

     I’ve also seen a sudden surge in Google searches for “i hate mark steel.”  I love that sort of thing.  I also saw several of the blogs from our blogroll in the top 30.  But, why all the hate?
     Alternatively, I decided to check out “i love mark steel,” to find that I’m actually ranked #26.  I hate that.  I didn’t see much familiar around there, either.  C’mon, where is the love, people?

     I mean, I’m not saying I’m the world’s smartest man or the greatest living American or anything like that… But I do have a reasonable amount of knowlege about how this stuff works. 

     This is all a joke to me, and this post is just a silly experiment.  I’ll post the outcome in a couple of days, as I think it might teach someone a little something about SEO…

     Besides, I’ve already labeled John Kerry as the World’s Smartest Man… albeit, sarcastically.  And the antidisestablishmentarian in me still believes Bill Gates is the greatest living American…

[ UPDATE - 26-Apr-2007 @ 9:26PM EDT]

     THAT’S what I’m talkin’ about!  I moved up from #26 to #1 in less than 10 hours!  Now I’m #1 for “i love mark steel” and “i hate mark steel.”
     Now I feel balance!
     That’s SEO.  Thpft!

     I put the FuelMyBlog logo up in the sidebar a week, maybe a week and a half ago, and nobody really clicked it — 13 votes.  So on Wednesday, I wrote the article about it.
     It took off like a rocket!  All of a sudden, we’re ranked #4 on the Top 100.

     That far exceeded my expectations.  I gotta give credit where credit is due — I asked, you clicked.  I thank you all for your participation.

[ Update - Monday, April 23, 2007 @ 10:33AM EDT ]

     And the forward momentum continues, with us at #3…

     I didn’t think anyone noticed the “Fuel My Blog” button on the right side.  I put it at the top with ”Vote Often, Vote Daily!” next to it, but it’s been relatively ineffective.

     Today, a couple of people have asked, “What is that?  I didn’t want to click it.”  Well, it’s a, uhh, well… I don’t know what it is.

     But I figured with the tens of thousands of sessions we get weekly, maybe it’d go over well… I did it as an experiment to see how much people will actually click something that might look new and exciting.

     Apparently, not much.

     This merely proves that we have some discerning readers who come here for text more than titillation. (*cough* *cough*  Sorry, I couldn’t say it with a straight face.)

     Anyway … I wanna get blogitude.com up there on the “popular” list.  So, uhhh … Click away!

[ UPDATE 19-Apr-2007, 9:31AM EDT ]

     “Ask and ye shall receive,” I guess — not only did you guys do it, but you got us up in the top third of the List.  And we’re blog of the day?  Sweet!
     I’m interested to see how long that can go on…

[ UPDATE 20-Apr-2007, 1:27AM EDT ]

     We’re actually in the 13th spot, approaching twelve pretty quickly!  If people keep clicking, I can see us actually making 10 before the day’s out. 

     Arne Brachnold’s Google Sitemap Generator for Wordpress is a pretty neat piece of software that’ll build a Google-style XML-Sitemap, and ping Google with it every time you update your blog.
     Good stuff for SEO, good stuff for making sure Google has your site indexed. 

     After setting up a few blogs with the latest, I found a caveat that just annoyed me to death: you’re in the Admin, but when you manually update the sitemap, it comes back with a blank page. Sure, I know how to work around it, but they guys I’m setting this stuff up for get all huffy about it.
     Pretty quick bug to figure out.  There’s even a nice ticket on Trac (Ticket 604) that I’m unable to post this solution to…
     Line 2463 of sitemap.php is:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”list-manipulation.js” mce_src=”list-manipulation.js”></script>

     Of course, that doesn’t exist, but if we change it to:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”../wp-includes/js/list-manipulation-js.php” mce_src=”../wp-includes/js/list-manipulation-js.php”></script>

     …then all is right and good with the world.

     Hopefully, Arne’ll drop this in his next release — and be able to close Ticket 604 on Trac. 

[Ed. Note: The text of this article refers to "the latest" Wordpress (2.1.x) and version of the plugin for it (3.0xxx).]

     There are a few people who tell me I waste money.  Like, every now and again, I’ll throw down $8 on an apparently useless domain name.  Funny thing is, I’ve gotten some pretty decent traffic out of most of them.  This blog has done very little in the way of pushing Advertising, but still, it has consistenly made eight-to-ten dollars every month.
     Paid for a domain, got a few more readers.

     I watch a lot of people throw $5 into the lotto twice a week.  Most of them have never, and will probably never, win much of anything.  Case in point, a friend of mine won $3 after ten years of $10 a week.  That’s a lot of money to waste.

     To me, throwing $5.25 down on an Ebay listing that’ll probably go nowhere is fun.  It’s certainly more productive than a lotto ticket, and it might actually sell…

     Some people just don’t get it.  One of the best thing to know is that every dollar counts.  The more spend-$8-and-make-$9 things you can do, the more chance you have at coming out $1 ahead each time.
     Sometimes, I’ll do one or two from time to time between job silliness.  Other times, I’ll sit and do it all day.  Though boredom often starts the process, the process is certain anything but boring.
     Those days are fun, because I’m bouncing around doing three or four hundred different things.  So how much do I actually make on what most people consider a “waste of time?”

     It’s fun stuff to think about.