I have joined the 2 weeks trial access to 'Become a Blogger' coaching course by Gideon Shalwick and Yaro Starak and here is my very superficial review.

Note that new members of the course will not be getting instant access to all the videos available there, hence the subscription model of $77 per month for 6 months, which upon completion of the duration, you are granted life-time access to the site and the resources there without any additional charge.

It is indeed unfortunate that all I can hope to learn from this site is limited to at most 2 weeks' training videos. Of course, I am not complaining. For the price of $1, I managed to view high quality videos as well as download the bonus 'Master The Mindset' motivational audios.

While I enjoyed the opportunity to catch a glimpse of what a professional coaching course is like, I am disappointed to not be able to access further modules. From what I hear, these are the modules available to the life-time members of the course:

1. Get Your Blog Up And Running Fast And FREE
2. How To Optimize Your Blog For Maximum Search Engine Performance
3. How To Create Powerful Content For Your Blog, Consistently and Without Fail
4. How To Use Images On Your Blog To Make You Stand Out From The Crowd
5. How To Create A Different Dimension To Your Blog By Adding Audio
6. How To Breathe Life Into Your Blog Using Online Video
7. How To Create Multiple Streams of High Quality Traffic To Your Blog
8. How To Make Money From Your Blog

Then again, I don't really expect to access over a 100 training videos at the price of only $1. Although the first 2 modules contain good quality videos, I already roughly know about the topics. I suppose module 3 onwards would be most useful for me. Perhaps Gideon and Yaro could introduce (an optional) pay-per-view model, so that bloggers could pay to get access to module(s) which they really need.

The videos in the first module is intended for newbies. Nevertheless, it has reinforced my knowledge and I am also glad to learn bits and pieces of new facts (for me) from the basic videos. Beyond this, I cannot give further testimony. What I can guarantee is that Yaro has great knowledge and experience in teaching about blogging and that the quality of the videos and audios are superb, PDF transcripts are also provided (especially for those who are not used to the Australian accent).

Unfortunately, $77 per month for 6 months is not something I could afford right at this moment. Therefore I am planning to discontinue my subscription when my 2 weeks trial ends. I have to thank Gideon Shalwick, Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse for making this possible.

If you wish to see for yourself the quality of the videos, do follow the link below. 10 videos from the first module is provided for preview, free of charge. Don't forget to claim your free copy of "The Roadmap To Become A Blogger" too!

Become A Blogger Coaching Course

What do you think about this blogging course? Have you joined any blogging/online coaching course before? Which course would that be? Feel free to share your experience and advices with us.

If you are a frequent visitor to this blog, you will no doubt know that my favorite domain registrar is Name.com. I have written a post explaining why Name.com is my number one choice when it comes to domain registration.

This is not the first time I have written about Name.com positively and I am quite certain it would be the last time either. Unfortunately it does not offer any affiliate program opportunity at this moment, perhaps I should pitch the idea to the people behind it.

OK, back to the topic of this post. Just recently, a new feature has been added to Name.com's DNS Management tool (see screen shot).

To serve advertisements on your domains using AdSense for Domains, you have to make changes to your domain name's DNS settings. With Name.com it is easier to make those changes compared to other domain registrars. Just press the button "AdSense for Domains" shown above (pointed by the red arrow), then put in your unique AdSense for Domains publisher ID and you are done.

Compare this with the (multi-steps) settings required with other domain registrars:
Domain Setup Guide (link to Google AdSense Help Centre)

Too bad the domain setup guide does not include Name.com. Perhaps it is so easy that the Google AdSense team think it is not necessary to include domain setup help for Name.com domains? Who knows?

Today as I was checking my blog statistics, I was shocked when I see a blackout (literally) across the main content area of my blog. The screen shot below show how the blackout looked like.

Notice how my pictures and ads were showing fine, even the PPC advertising links served by InfoLinks were visible against the pitch black background. At first I panicked, I suspected that the blackout is due to the photobucket account hosting the images of the Ads Theme Blogger Template has run out of bandwidth. However I don't really have time to weed out the problem by going through hundreds of lines of code, and I considered changing to another theme, especially if this problem is going to last over a long period.

Fortunately though, I found the solution from the place where I downloaded this theme - eBlog Templates. This template has apparently been downloaded over 17,000 times, no wonder the bandwidth runs out. There were already about 10 comments complaining about Ads Theme Blogger Template not functioning. Anyway the good people at the URL above has shared the following solution (credit goes to funny guy and ramaraobobby mostly).

1. Search for the following code in your template codes (Dashboard -> Layout -> Edit HTML):
.contentwrapper{width:920px; margin:0 auto; margin-bottom:5px; background:#0000 url(http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh92/eblogtemplates/adstheme/sbbg.gif) repeat-y right}
2. Upload the sbbg.gif file to your own photobucket account or other free file hosts.
3. Replace the URL of the file:
.contentwrapper{width:920px; margin:0 auto; margin-bottom:5px; background:#FFFFFF url(http://www.free-file-host.com/your_account/sbbg.gif) repeat-y right}

That's all the steps. Save your template once you have replaced the original URL with your own. Your Ads Theme Blogger Template should be functioning perfectly again. No more Ads Theme Blogger Template Problem.

Before I fixed my theme, I googled for some blogger templates just in case the Ads Theme blackout is beyond (quick) repair. Here are some posts which showcase the best blogger themes there are, I shall not waste my efforts, so I will share the posts with you if you need some good blogger templates.

70 Fresh And Modern Blogger Templates
Roundup Of Best Blogger Templates
120 Best Free Blogger Templates Around
125 More Excellent Blogger Templates (The Best Yet!)

There are indeed many recurring themes among the four blog posts, those are certainly themes which are proven without doubt to be the best blogger theme there is. Pick whichever ones you like, they are all free.

P.S. I know it's weird, how could we access the sbbg.gif file if the photobucket account has run out of bandwidth? And how do we subsequently mirror it? It does not make absolute sense but I would not be digging deeper into how photobucket works and its bandwidth restrictions. Anyway photobucket is an absolutely great service, I applaud them for offering optional free service! You should check them out if you need a free photo or image hosting service.

PayPerPost has largely dropped out of favor (and sight too!) since slightly more than a year ago. It has turned from a major paid blogging platform (the first one too if I am not mistaken) to a mass links buying marketplace full of rampant spams, questionable links and unethical posts, not to mention the high PR requirements but extremely low payment offers by advertisers. Even its parent company IZEA was promoting SocialSpark (another paid opportunity platform for bloggers and advertisers) aggresively and left PayPerPost to rot.

I am aware that certain bloggers (and advertisers perhaps) were still making good money and having fun with PPP for the previous 1 year but I believe these people are the minority. Prior to PPP v4.0, many bloggers could only earn the initial $20.00 post opportunity from PPP and they received no further opportunity, maybe due to a lack of good pageranks or international geo-targeting opportunity. Furthermore, bloggers are unable to add additonal blogs as long as they have not written 10 paid posts on the first blog they added to the system. This restriction paralyses many bloggers, who may have other blogs with high pageranks. Personally I am more than willing to return $20.00 to PPP provided that I could add other blogs with good PR so that I am eligible for new paying opportunities. Unfortunately, in the end bloggers who were receiving opportunity were also discouraged when they are only offered $5.00 to write a post on their PR2-4 sites.


However, it seems IZEA is now pushing PPP again with this new revamped PayPerPost v4.0. I wonder why? Is the market in SocialSpark slowing down? I am not one to dig too deep into a company's strategy and come up with all sorts of conspiracy theories. Therefore, let's just enjoy the improvements. Briefly, these are the features of PPP v4.0 (mainly for bloggers):

• bloggers could set their per word rate, like $0.05 per word, a 200 word post would earn you $10.
• bloggers could set their per link rate, if each link is set at $3.00, advertisers requiring 2 links would have to pay you $6.00 in addition to the per word costs of the post.
• bloggers could choose whether to allow dofollow or nofollow links only or both. Unfortunately there is no way to set different cost for dofollow and nofollow links.
• bloggers could add as many blogs as they want, these blogs do not need approval by PPP admins, as long as advertisers would like to advertise on your blog, you're all set!

Being a blogger who values his own time and blog space and not wanting to degrade the perceived value of a freelance writer/blogger, I have decided to raise the costs of advertising when I add this blog to the PPP 4.0 system.

My price per word is $0.05.
My price per link is $.500.
Conservatively, a 200 word blog post and one link would cost an advertiser $15.00.

I doubt I would get any advertiser anyway on this blog, it lacks updates and critical news. If there is miracle though, I will certainly share the good news here.

Lastly I would like to applause IZEA for coming up with these improvements. I like your innovations but would be curious to see how well PPP v4.0 performs once it runs under full steam.

Click here for PayPerPost v4.0 alpha
PayPerPost v4.0 alpha FAQ (for advertisers and bloggers)

If you have previously registered with SocialSpark, you can use the same login to access PPP v4.0. I tried the old PPP login, but it was not working.

What do you think about PPP v4.0 and the improvements? What are improvements or additions do you think are necessary? Would PPP v4.0 return to its glory days and make advertisers and bloggers alike happy? Has anyone managed to make money from PPP v4.0? Share your thoughts with us please.

Did I mention having problem with the payment system of GoDaddy domain registrar? I have paid for domains using PayPal many times before.

Then the last time I tried to take advantage of its mystery 199DOMAIN coupon which allows us to register a new dot com or dot net at a super low price of $1.99, the only payment option available is credit card.

After that incident, I again renewed my expiring domains with GoDaddy using PayPal. All these made me quite confused but I thought the above incident may just be a one-off incident or a temporary glitch which would be fixed as soon as the GoDaddy found out about it.

Today I decided to google and see if there are any new coupon codes which I could use and I found this page:

Godaddy Coupons For June 2009

The site is called Godaddy Coupon Codes which I suppose will feature new coupon codes every month. From the post above, I found this:

199DOMAIN still active, just purchased 1 Domain Name. It works only if you pay with credit cards not paypal

Now apparently I am not the only one faced with the forced credit card payment problem, I guess the payment option available is set depending on the coupon code that customers use.

I don't know why GoDaddy does this but perhaps they have a monthly credit card charges target to achieve, possibly if they have a large enough volume, the amount of service charges billed by the credit card merchants would be reduced for them. This is just a wild guess, obviously I would humbly take any lessons about this matter from anyone with better knowledge and experiences.

I find it a little disturbing that this issue is not addressed by GoDaddy in its FAQ or knowledge base, or perhaps it was highlighted but it is certainly not easy to find from its site.

The GoDaddy site seems overcrowded, the navigations are confusing and overall it is not user-friendly at all. Important information is not easy to be found, there seems to be too much offers and promotions flying all over the whole site, don't you think? Am I the only one who feel this way? What is your opinion? Don't you think other domain registrars' interfaces are more neat and organized?