Review my Blog and WIN 1 month FREE Ad spot (125X125 banner)!

[debasis]

Hi Friends,

I have been tweaking the design of my little blog (http://software-testing-zone.blogspot.com) since past few weeks. Though I am far from being done yet, I wanted to get an idea as to where I am heading! Could any of you be interested to write a Blog Review on my blog (design, content, potential issues, recommendations, suggestions for enhancements etc)? Be rest assured that your time spent won't be in vain. I will pick a Winner randomly at the end of December 2008 and will offer a 125X125 banner Ad spot absolutely Free for a month. My blog has a decent PR of 3 and Alexa Rank of 419,000 (constantly improving) if that might trigger your interest. :) Apart from the Winner (chosen randomly), if I find someone's review really worth appreciating then I would not hesitate to give him/her a Free Ad spot on my blog.

What is the deal?
1. I get your opinion (hopefully honest) about my blog design and my writing.
2. I get (at least) one back link from your blog.
3. In return you get a Free Ad spot worth $$$ on my blog for 1 full month.

I am subscribing to this thread on BloggingTips. In case you are interested in participating in this mini-contest, post a review of my blog in your blog and comment back on this thread. I promise I will keep an eye on this post.

[Rarst]

Ok, I'll share bit of metabloging secret with you. Don't tell anyone. When someone offers blogger a deal special surgically injected part of brain lights up that is called deal calculator. If deal is not positive body want budge.

So here is what my brain tells me.

Deal will cost me day of my posting schedule, 1-2 hours of my time, will influence opinion of my readers about my blog and affect my Google index.

Deal will cost you month of ad spot you are not using anyway.

Deal will bring you review (pretty good one in my case) and excellent backlink (in content) for as long as my blog is alive. Multiply by number of people that will bite offer.

Deal will bring me temporary low-quality (in sidebar) link. Or nothing at all if other person gets it.

So do you think it's good deal for me? :) I suspect if you simply asked for some feedback here on forum you'd get some by now. But making deal out of it you hand't bothered to make that deal good one.

[sarahG]

Rarst is right debasis. You're asking for people to write a review of your site for free, and just one of those people get a on month backlink in return.

Either post up in the blogging forum, requesting feedback about your site to be posted in the thread, or work out a better offer where everyone who participates, benefits. You need to be offering a permanent link from either your sidebar on your front page (at least) or a well visited links page. Even if the list of links in your sidebar are randomised from a group of bookmarks, so that you can limit the links to say 5.

However, if you want people to take their time to review your site and give you a backlink, you need to offer each person something as good if not better in return.

[Donace]

as cynical as it may sound to me...I have to agree with Rast; Though a quick few points:

- Get of blogspot :p Buy domain name if you can and move there...it helps build a better identity.

- your copyright notice at the end has your email in it...unprotected etc...protect it mask it etc..otherwise it just spammer bait.

- The translate buttons at the end, are they actually utilised? If not get rid of them.

- I like the way you have integrated google ads under the categories from a 'grey hat' view but from a user view it could lead to a bit of...negative trust?

- Saying the above, you have google ads more than three times on the page against their TOS.

- under 'related websites' (end of sidebar) It's a blank space for me...

- Lastly move the 'listed' 'alexa' and the 'map' to the footer...I think it would look neater there. (though I didnt like the Map :p)

[debasis]

I am glad that all of you responded to my thread. I will like to respond you one by one below:

@Rarst,
I guess the offer (chance of winning a Free Ad spot) that I made was not enticing enough! :) May be you were skeptical about your chance of winning by a randomizer! But as I said in the original thread, if your review was insightful enough I would not restrain from giving you a free Ad spot along with the winner choosen by the randomizer! Talking about spending 1-2 hours of your time, I already appreciate that; and hence the offered prize in return. While I agree that it might affect the opinion of your readers about your blog (as it depends on your niche), I have no clue how it might affect your Google index! If giving a backling does mean risking your Google index then I wonder what do you do when it comes to give a link to another site! I am almost sure you don't attach a rel=nofollow tag to every outward link on your site fearing a Pagerank leakage :) However, I must disagree with you when you said the Ad spot that I am offering is one that I am NOT using anyway! How does anybody know if I am using that spot or not?! :rolleyes:

@sarahG,
Thanks for making me realize that You're asking for people to write a review of your site for free, and just one of those people get a on month backlink in return. I am taking your suggestion of giving backlinks to ALL my reviewers a linkback from my blog sidebar. But I have an idea that might be still better. I will talk more about it later on this reply!

@Donace,
First of all thanks a ton for coming up with these feedbacks. I appreciate them.
1. Regarding the move from blogspot to a custom domain, I am already seriously considering that move.
2. I realize the risk of having an unprotected email id on the copyright notice! Need to address that issue soon. You can however call me lucky as I have not been bombarded with tons of spam yet (well, not in my inbox). May be, I should thank the spam guard of yahoomail! ;)
3. Translate buttons - Need to either remove them OR move them to top of the fold with smaller flag buttons.
4. Talking about trust of users, don't we risk playing with our reader's trust every time we use a contextual ad (like Adsense)? All the effort that we put to blend the ads etc. :rolleyes:
5. No I DON'T have more than 3 Adsense blocks on any of my pages! Where did you notice it?
6. I am aware of the blank 'related websites' (end of sidebar) issue. Hopefully soon you should be able to see some links there :p
7. Moving the 'listed' 'alexa' and the 'map' to the footer - I am already planning to make a 3 column footer to accommodate all those semi-garbage! As you must have seen, I am no web designer :mad: Need to figure out a way soon to implement it.
Thanks once again Donace, for all your feedbacks.

Coming back to Sarah's point, I realize that my initial offer was not exciting enough for potential reviewers. Sarah suggested to give them ALL a permanent backlink from my blog sidebar or from a well trafficked (not sure if that is the right spelling though :confused:)Link page. The little SEO knowledge that I have suggests me that sidebar links (like blogroll) probably no longer give as much SEO boost as the in-content links! So,

1. I will write a post talking about this blog review with backlinks to All my reviewers. I guess those backlinks would be far much better than sidebar/linkpage linkbacks! What do you think?
2. The initial prize of 125X125 Ad still remains.

Does this deal sound better now? ;)

[Donace]

@debasis...I counted the ads at the top of each article and then the ones under category, (the well blended ones:p)

re: no7 if you get your own domain, grab a nice wordpress theme, the footers are usually widgetised now.

[Rarst]

While I agree that it might affect the opinion of your readers about your blog (as it depends on your niche), I have no clue how it might affect your Google index! If giving a backling does mean risking your Google index then I wonder what do you do when it comes to give a link to another site! I am almost sure you don't attach a rel=nofollow tag to every outward link on your site fearing a Pagerank leakage

My policy is no nofollow links at my blog at all. But notice the difference. When I am posting and linking to something I use for years and like - I obviously don't hesitate to link.

But I don't know your site for a week, yet you ask me for same lifetime link my favorite sites get. :)

However, I must disagree with you when you said the Ad spot that I am offering is one that I am NOT using anyway! How does anybody know if I am using that spot or not?!

Out of 4 spots at moment 1 is "Your ad here" and 1 is "Advertise here" filler performancingads show when spot is free. You are obviously not fully booked. :)

1. I will write a post talking about this blog review with backlinks to All my reviewers. I guess those backlinks would be far much better than sidebar/linkpage linkbacks! What do you think?

Hint - check out how I handled results from participating in Reader Blog Critique
http://www.rarst.net/web/blog-critique-results/

I've made links to people that were most helpful (on top of $10 project prize each of them got), promoted how much valuable feedback project send my way and showed what amount of work I am willing to do on feedback from my visitors. Notice amount of extensive comments to that post as well.

This all was for feedback in form of comments, no other commitment. Was that bad deal for anyone (including my readers who got that post) ? Surely not.

I am not saying you should do exactly same. I did something original and it was accepted positively. Do something original, offer value that people will like. :)

[sarahG]

- Saying the above, you have google ads more than three times on the page against their TOS.

Just a point to make. More than 3 google contextual ads are against the rules, however Google can and do control this themselves. For example if you set a context ad to appear after each post, and had 5 posts on a page, after the first 3 the rest wouldn't display.

I can't see any ads on the site so I can't fully comment, but my guess is that they were a mix of contextual ads and link blocks, which in total can be more than 3 if I remember correctly.

[brandmantra]

why don’t you utilize the whole space provided for meta-title (generally within 80 characters)? make a long title which describe your blog, use some keywords.

your posts are too long. Remember that most of the readers don’t want to waste their precious time to read your post thoroughly. Try to make it short and to the point.

[debasis]

@ Brandmantra

Thanks for the suggestion to tweak the meta title field! In fact I am on my way to redesign my entire blog header. Comparing different options that are available to me and looking to figure out the best one. So, honestly I don;t know how my blog header section would look like in a couple of months! Anyway thanks for that point.

Talking about unusually lengthy posts, even I don't remember when I started writing so long posts. :) And the good thing is that my readers like me for such long detailed posts. These posts might seem unnecessarily lengthy to a reader outside from my niche, but let me assure you my loyal readers like it so much. And fortunately they have not complained yet about wasting their time reading my long posts. :p All my posts are, to the best of my belief, to the point. May be I need to keep it mind to make them shorter if possible. Thanks for your feedbacks... :D

[George K.]

What I would do is give the add space forever. An honest review can really attract viewers to what a pro thinks. It should be worth more than a months space.