MoneyM8.com
It’s About More Than Just The Money M8

The ShoeMoney shirt I won on 8-8-08 in ShoeMoney’s comment contest arrived last week and I finally had a chance to get a pic of me wearing it.

YES IT WAS SUNNY INSIDE!!!!

I am not as photogenic as ShoeMoney and I smile about as much as he does, but I think I have a lot more hair though

I’ll be sending my mugg with the ShoeMoney shirt to be added to ShoeMoney’s gallery with other ShoeMoney fans and friends sporting the ShoeMoney logo.

There’s still some time to win a ShoeMoney shirt by posting comments on ShoeMoney.com and have a chance to win a MacBook Air. The current comment contest runs until August 31.

You could win a shirt, get your mugg in ShoeMoney’s gallery and possibly win a MacBook Air, all for just leaving a comment.

Are you ready for another contest M8s?

Unique Blog Designs, who created my WordPress Theme, are having a contest to celebrate their one-year birthday.

The Grand Prize is a Brand New 8GB iPod Touch and One Copy of their New UBD Citrus WordPress Theme.

Three runner-up prizes include copies of their new UBD Citrus WordPress Theme.

Entering the UBD 1-Year Anniversary Contest is just as simple as all the other contests I’ve posted about. You get one entry for posting a comment at the contest post and you get 5 entries for posting a blog post about the contest and linking to the contest post.

Can’t get any easier than that to enter and have a chance at some cool prizes!

The contest runs from 12:00AM PST Friday, August 22nd, 2008 to 11:59PM Sunday, August 31, 2008. The winner will be randomly chosen Monday, September 1st, 2008.

For more info and to enter, go to the contest post.

Happy Birthday UBD and Good Luck in the contest everyone!

You may have noticed I have posted about quite a few contests on this blog. Some of you are probably wondering if this is a Make Money and Save Money Online blog, why am I posting about contests?

First, I have an opportunity to win prizes, which I can turn around and sell if I don’t really want or need them myself. Second, I give you my readers an opportunity to win.

What’s important though is you should also notice that I link to each blog post of the contest, and sometimes a contest sponsors. We all know how important links back to your site are. Creating a contest for your own blog or website could generate those same types of links back to your blog or website, which can also increase traffic to your site.

You do need to offer prizes that will interest your visitors so they will want to take part in the contest. You can get prizes on your own or find sponsors to donate prizes.

You then have to give your visitors tasks to enter your contest. For most of the contests I’ve posted, you’ll notice they offer different amounts of entries for different tasks.

Some will offer 1 entry for registering for the RSS feed. This is a great way to get repeat visitors

Some will offer 1 entry for commenting on their blog. You could do this one several ways. You can only allow maximum of one comment for one entry at the contest post, or you can allow many comments for 1 entry each throughout all articles on your blog. The latter will bring visitors back often because they know they get more entries. Repeat traffic is always good right? Of course you have to set some rules to prevent useless comment spam. Perhaps a minimum 25 word comment is needed for entry and the comment has to be on topic.

Some contests offer an entry for a Twitter post about the contest. There are several other social sites that you could use as well.

The task that usually gets the most contest entries for completing it is posting a blog post about the contest (and sponsor if there is one). This will get many links back to your site and there should be an increase in traffic from it too. How many entries you offer is up to you, but the contests I’ve posted about have offered 5 entries up to 15 entries for a blog post about the contest (and sponsors if applicable).

So you can see how contests can help increase links back to your site, increase traffic and repeat visitors. If you’re planning on having a contest feel free to stop by and let me know. I’m sure I’ll post about it if I like the prizes

I will be planning a contest in the near future when I start posting on a daily basis here, so keep an eye out for that.

JohnCow.com and StoreStacker have come together for a huge contest with some great prizes.

There are numerous ways to enter in which you get tickets for each entry task you complete - you get 1 ticket just for subscribing, all the way up to 15 tickets for posting about the contest and StoreStacker, plus there are several other ways to earn tickets. Go to the contest page for more info.

Here are the awesome prizes up for grabs…

Winner 1 Prizes:
Xbox 360
StoreStacker Full with all plugins
RSStoblog
ContentSolution

Winner 2 Prizes:
Choice of an Ipod touch or Iphone 3G
StoreStacker Full with all plugins
RSStoblog
ContentSolution

Winner 3 Prizes:
Bose companion 3 speakers
StoreStacker Base
ContentSolution

Winner 4 Prizes:
Bose around ear headphones
StoreStacker Base
ContentSolution

Winner 5 Prizes:
Ipod shuffle
StoreStacker Base
ContentSolution

The more tickets you earn, the better your chances, so get on over and enter by Sunday August 24th at 11:59 midnight eastern time

I recently won an iPod Nano, and I have won numerous prizes from contests over the years. I would love to add some of these prizes to the mix and I’m sure you would too.

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I showed you the other day how to create a custom BBcode tag so you can embed YouTube videos on phpBB3.

Today, I’m going to show you how to create another custom BB code tag for your phpBB3 forum, so you can make money with eBay Partner Network by letting your forum members post their eBay auctions.

(1) The first thing you’ll need to do is log in to your eBay Partner Network account and click on “Tools“:

(2) Then click on “Link Generator“:

(3) In the Link Generator Options:

For Advertiser choose: eBay
For Link Type choose: Item ID
For Item ID enter ANY eBay item # Example: 0123456789012 (note: this is just to create a link and the BB tag will auto-fill this when posting in your forum)
Leave Geo-Target as is.
For Select program to apply choose: The ebay site you want visitors to land on Example: eBay US, eBay CA, eBay UK, etc.
For Campaign Name or ID choose a campaign or create a new one. Example: phpbb3auctions

The rest of the options you can ignore and now you just click Generate Link.

(4) Get Your Link - Copy the link from URL Only:

(5) From the link you just copied above, replace the eBay Item #’s at the end of the link with the {NUMBER} tag. (Note: I am only showing the end of the link below with the eBay item #’s but you will be keeping the full link intact.)

Change:
…customid=&ext=0123456789012&item=0123456789012
Into:
…customid=&ext={NUMBER}&item={NUMBER}

The changed link will be used in (8b) below.

(6) Log in to your Administrative Control Panel (ACP) of your phpBB3 forum and click on the the Posting tab on the top menu…

(7) Click the Add a new BBCode button in the bottom right hand corner…

(8a) Enter the following in the BBCode usage box:

[ebay]{NUMBER}[/ebay]

(8b) Enter the following in the HTML replacement box (Important: Replace ENTER YOUR LINK HERE with your link you added {NUMBER} from (5) above):

<a href="ENTER YOUR LINK HERE" target="_blank">Click Here to View or Bid on This Auction Item</a>

(8c) Enter the following in the Help line text box:

Enter eBay item # - Example: [ebay]0123456789[/ebay]

(8d) Ensure that Display on posting page is checked.

(8e) Click Submit

You have now created a new custom BBcode tag [ebay][/ebay] that will appear in the posting editor for you and your phpbb3 forum community members to use.

To post an eBay auction item you and your phpbb3 forum members just need to use the [ebay][/ebay] tags and enter the eBay item # of the auction item - Example: [ebay]0123456789012[/ebay]

Be sure to create a “How To Post Your eBay Auction Items” post at your forum with instructions on how your members can use the [ebay][/ebay] tags to post their auction items.

Each time a members posts their eBay auction item, your eBay Partner Network code will now automatically be inserted. You are giving them an opportunity to advertise their auctions and you make money when any members or visitors click through from your forum to bid, purchase or register at eBay.

If this post was helpful please leave a comment letting me know or if you have any questions or need help feel free to ask and I’ll answer any questions or help if I can.

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I just received an email from ShoeMoney.com stating I WON a ShoeMoney T-Shirt. AWESOME!

You may recall that I posted about ShoeMoney’s comment contest a few days back. He is giving away a Shoemoney shirt everyday in July and August, and all those that win a shirt are entered into the grand prize draw for a MacBook Air. All that you need to do to enter is comment on the articles on his blog. My winning comment came at this post, which happens to be a Free Shirt Friday post. And I win a free shirt! Now I have a chance to win a MacBook air.

Winning the shirt is cool as it is because I’ll be able to take a pic of myself in the shirt and get my mugg among the others in Shoemoney’s gallery. My 8 minutes of fame

Thanks Jeremy aka Shoemoney

When you use the Wordpress.org blog script there is a lot of duplicate content created from the various pages and category pages that the WordPress script creates. If you’ve been reading about SEO, you probably know Google doesn’t like duplicate content and therefore your blog will likely be penalized for it.

Thanks to reading a post by Jeremy at ShoeMoney.com and reading about different User-agents, I was able to create a robots.txt file that will help eliminate duplicate content from Google indexing.

Add the following in your robot.txt file to prevent Google from indexing duplicate content in your WordPress blog:

User-agent: Googlebot

Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /archives/
Disallow: /index.php
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: */feed/
Disallow: /feed
Disallow: */trackback/
Disallow: /page/
Disallow: /pages/
Disallow: /tag/
Disallow: /category/
Disallow: /*?

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /wp-includes/

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:

User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

User-agent: duggmirror
Disallow: /

The above should help with duplicate content on your WordPress blog website.

With bulletin boards such as phpBB, you can’t embed videos just by copying and pasting the embed code in a post. With the new PHPBB3 they have a feature that allows you to create custom BB code tags, which I did for a forum so I could embed YouTube Videos in a post, and I’ll show you how to create a custom BBcode tag so you can easily embed YouTube Videos in your posts on your phpbb3 forum.

(1) Log in to your Administrative Control Panel (ACP) and click on the the Posting tab on the top menu…

(2)Click the Add a new BBCode button in the bottom right hand corner…
(note: The “youtube”, as shown in the photo below, won’t appear at this point on your forum)

(3a)Enter the following in the “BBCode usage” box:

[youtube]{SIMPLETEXT}[/youtube]

(3b)Enter the following in the “HTML replacement” box (note: you can adjust the width and height to what you want):

<object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/{SIMPLETEXT}"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/{SIMPLETEXT}" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object>

(3c)Enter the following in the “Help line text” box:

Insert YouTube Video ID# - Example: [youtube]xmLa_W_afH4[/youtube]

(3d)Ensure that “Display on posting page” is checked.

(3e)Click Submit

That’s it!

The new custom [youtube][/youtube] BBcode tag option you just created will now appear in the posting editor for you and your phpbb3 forum community members to use.

Now, to use the new [youtube][/youtube] BB code tags you just created, you just need to insert the YouTube Video ID of the YouTube video you want to add in between the tags.

The Video ID is the #’s and letters after the =

For Example: The Video ID in the YouTube Video link below is: xmLa_W_afH4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmLa_W_afH4

To post the video you would then put the Video ID in between the tags like this:
[youtube]xmLa_W_afH4[/youtube]

You will now be able to embed YouTube videos on your phpbb3 forum.

If you found this post useful please leave a comment. If you have any questions or need help, please feel free to ask and I’ll answer or help if I can.

I know the few of you that visit just love all the contests that I post about and perhaps we should call this blog Contest M8. Well, I have another contest for you that has been ongoing for awhile.

ShoeMoney is having a comment contest and you can win a Shoemoney shirt or a Macbook Air just by going there and commenting on any of the articles.

Shoemoney is giving away a Shoemoney shirt each day for the months of July and August to a randomly drawn commenter on his blog. Daily winners will also get an entry to the grand prize draw for a Macbook Air.

I know I’m a bit late with posting this, but you can still get your entries in by posting a comment…But PLEASE make it a useful comment and not a spammy type comment just to get an entry