Zac’s Blog|Tech, Issues, Whatever

Yeah, that’s right. I’m going to be giving away free “sponsored by” links for the rest of this month. I’ll be putting in three per post, and they will rotate through each post, so far I have three sites that I got from a post at DigitalPoint, but I’m looking for some more blogs to add to the list. This is the first post in which people will be receiving their links, so you will be able to see how they will appear. I’m also going to offer a 50% discount to anyone who signs up for this now for later advertisements. So regardless of the price, or what type of ad (100×100, vertical banner, whatever) you will always get 50% off that price. This will work on a per client basis, and not on a per website basis. I reserve the right to deny linkage to anyone, even though its free, so everything is up to my discretion. Just post a comment here, and use the link you want me to include in the “Sponsored By” section, and I’ll add it to the list. I’m probably won’t take more than nine, and I already have three. So get them while they’re hot! First come, first serve!

EDIT:  Spots filled!

This Post Is Sponsored By:

The Don’t Shut Down Fourms

ZakShow.com - Latest News, Tips & Reviews

The Button Directory

I ran across a post about this pretty sweet WordPress Theme Generator over at Tip o’ the Day, and have to say that it is pretty sweet. It has many features, and is really easy to use. It’s basically like a MySpace Theme Generator (if you’ve ever used one of those). With this generator you can change the location of the sidebar, change the size of the sidebar, change the menu layout, add a side column for Google Adsense, change every single color thinkable, change the background, and more.

I’ve been thinking of starting to make some free WordPress themes, and I think I’ll give this a try and see if I can’t use it to get some good jump starts on themes. This will greatly decrease development and coding time, so I think it will be really useful. So, watch for me to start putting out some free WordPress themes now that I can greatly decrease the monotonous coding process.

Nick Sullivan over at Internet Babel posted about how to find how much your blog is really worth, yesterday.  In it, he talked about Technorati, which is an absolute stretch, and should never be trusted, DNScoop, Google PageRank, and Alexa Rank, which should also never be trusted.  His conclusion was to use DNScoop, which is great for suggesting a site’s value, but I was thinking, “What if I just want to know the value of a domain that I plan to flip?”  My answer is midFlux.

midFlux is by far the cheapest, and highest quality domain appraiser available.  I know, it’s not free, but the $2,95 is well worth it to find out whether or not you’ll be wasting your money.  Plus, if it helps you find a hidden gem worth thousands, then it’ll more than pay for itself with one successful domain flip.  midFlux also has the fastest turnaround time out of paid domain appraisers, with an under 24 hours guarantee, while GoDaddy and others give around 2 business days.  Sedo charges $29.95, and you have to wait 7 days to have it back.  midFlux also offer great, friendly support via IM and Email, just in case you have any questions.  I doubt they’ll tell you their secret formula, though.  I can’t say, however, as I haven’t tried asking that yet.  Basically, I highly recommend this company if you want a good, realistic idea of how much your domain is really worth before attempting to sell it.  Good luck, and happy domaining.

Here’s a little update to let everyone know how well I’m doing with my freelance writing.  Last month, I started writing on April 14th, and managed to scrape in $113.30.  That’s a huge number for me, considering I’ve never worked before in my life, and the most I normally ever get at a time is like $50 at my birthday or Christmas, since most people still like to get me gifts.  At that rate, I should easily be able to make $200 this month from writing, and hopefully pull a little income from this blog as well.  And then, during the summer, I’ll be able to work a lot more and hopefully pull in $500 in June.  So, I’m looking at being able to buy a new computer hopefully somewhere around mid-June.  I can’t wait!

Chris over at Chrisblogging.com made a great post the other day about how to sell yourself as a freelance writer in a letter to a potential client when vying for a job. His five points are:

1. Show experience
2. Show relevant experience
3. Show references
4. Show research skills
5. Show awards

Number 2 is probably the best tip, as most people can write on one or two topics really well, so they will normally include samples from that niche, but if you show that you have actual relevant experience in the area, then you will automatically gain some bonus points with the client, and they will be more likely to hire you.

For example, I can write seamlessly on any sort of tech topic, but when it comes to cars, I have to research it a bit. I would still rather include my past work on cars for a job relating to cars to honestly show what kind of quality that the client can expect to me, even if it is a tad lower than my tech articles. If I show my tech articles, which are really great, then the client will expect the same amount of quality on the car articles, which I most likely will not be able to provide. This will cause a disgruntled client, and nobody wants that. So, its better to be honest with some relevant material if available, than to attempt to mislead a client just to get the job. That will hurt you in the long run.

The Quality Business Links’ Blog is hosting a really cool blogging contest of which I plan on competing in.   I’m also helping get the word out about it, because I think its really great that someone would value blog contributors that much to give the kinds of prizes they are giving for one measly post on their blog.  The first prize is an 8GB iPod Touch.  Second is an 80GB Microsoft Zune.  Third prize gets a 1GB Silver iPod Shuffle.  So you can get one of those things for just a 500 word post relating to business on their blog, which is pretty awesome.  You can also get the Shuffle that is offered as the third prize for reviewing their website in a blog post, kind of like what I’m doing here.  It only has to be 300 words to qualify, so that’s even easier to try and win.

If you’re going to compete in a contest, you might as well know a little about the website you’re doing the contest for.  Quality Business Links is a huge business directory containing many links to a a lot of businesses.  You can browse the directory by category and sub-category, or you can go by state.  There’s also some other categories listed with the states that I’ve never heard of.  I wonder what they are.  Anyway, the best asset of the website is by far the blog.  The Quality Business Links’ Business blog is a quality business blog, containing many great tips such as how to establish business credit, and how to establish business relations overseas.  Both the directory, and blog seem to be fairly new, but they have great potential, so I recommend keeping an eye on them, and see just how fast they will be able to grow.   With the blogging contest, the blog should be able to grow a great deal over this month, and the directory should follow closely behind.

TypeRacer may be the way to test students’ typing ability. It’s simple, fun, and it takes Mavis Beacon’s speed tests to a whole new level with head-to-head action. The “scoreboard” looks like one you would see at one of those carnival games where you squirt water at a target to make your horse go from left to right in the quickest amount of time. The faster you type, the faster your car will race across the screen to the other side. I first discovered this game when my Computer Math teacher had us play it as a fun little thing, which we do every Friday. I believe he found out about it from Webware. com’s review, which briefly talks about the game. What their review fails to mention is that the game pulls quotes from movies and books in order to give you good and realistic sentences in order to better your typing ability.

TypeRacer allows you to connect to your Orkut, Hi5, and MySpace accounts, so you can show your scores to your friends. Their dev team is also working on a Facebook application, as well as private racing rooms, which you will be allowed to chat with your friends in. All that is missing is for you to be able to create a login, and play on your account from any computer. Right now, you can only save your results on one computer, so when I buy my new computer, which I am currently saving up for, my average WPM (Words Per Minute) will not carry over. This isn’t a huge deal or anything, but I really wish they would fix this, so I can play at school, and keep my average WPM, too.

I’d also like to extend some kudos to the TypeRacer people for no ads on their website. I hope they keep it this way, because I hate when popular websites get too caught up in the money, and load up with annoying ads, especially animated flash ads. They detract so much from my experience that I don’t want to visit that website anymore. That’s why you’ll never see annoying animated banners on my blog, and that’s a promise.

Hello, my name is Zac Davis, and yes this is yet another blog. My blog, which is coincidentally names “Zac’s Blog”, will be an opinionated blog about tech, current events issues, and whatever else seems to interest me at the time.

Before you begin to read my blog, however, I would like to tell you a bit about me. I’m a 15 year old sophomore in high school. I am also a Freelance Writer, Blogger (obviously), and Webmaster/Entrepreneur. I’ll be chronicling my advancements as a Webmaster/Entrepreneur as well as a Freelance Writer. I will also be providing you information that I find handy and is worth passing on. On the tech side of things, I’ll be pointing out software that I like, and giving honest reviews on it. I’ll also be giving my opinion on any news that comes out that I feel strongly enough about to comment on. As you can see, this blog might seem like a jumble of categories at first, but given time, I’m sure there will be a method to my madness.

Thanks for reading my blog, and I hope you have some fun, and remember comments are free, so don’t be shy. I appreciate any and all feedback my readers have, and love engaging anyone in conversation.