Bloggers are like any other PC user and have their own specific computing needs. We’ve compiled a list of the best notebook computers for bloggers, but you will notice that these machines are all very different from each other and offer different benefits for different bloggers.

Sony VAIO P

What could be better than an ultraportable machine that was designed around the smallest, functional keyboard? With over four hours of battery life, under 2 pound weight, and a high resolution 1600×768 resolution screen, the VAIO P has some great specs on paper. But in the end this machine will have a very divided following: some will hate it, while others will love it. It is also rather expensive for what is a glorified netbook, starting at $899 but surging to $1200 or more with a reasonable configuration.

HP EliteBook 2730p tablet

While it’s no surprise that HP made this list, but what may surprise you is that it is a convertible notebook with a tablet screen. You can fold this diminutive 12 inch convertible in half and use the tablet functionality to write by hand with the stylus. Another great use of the tablet is reading. Yes, reading; bloggers tend to do a lot of that. With the tablet in slate mode you can view a ton of text and easily scroll with one hand.

Asus Eee PC 1000HE

You knew you would see a netbook on this list, and here it is. Many netbooks are difficult to distinguish thanks to the ubiquitous Intel Atom platform and meager specs. However the new 1000HE model from Asus has the latest Atom processor and accompanying chipset, but more importantly a high capacity battery! Asus calls for up to 9.5 hours and with a pre-order price of $399, this is the netbook to get if you can stand the small keyboard and pokey performance.

Lenovo ThinkPad X200

Cool, quiet, tiny, powerful, and a perfect keyboard make this machine a top pick for any user, but it is especially great for someone who needs to be typing anywhere, anytime. Users are reporting over four hours of usage on the 6 cell battery or you can nearly double that on the 9-cell, which does stick out the back. The keyboard is a true full-size design with the impeccable ThinkPad quality we all know and love. Did we mention it’s super light, doesn’t get warm in your lap, and has your choice of blazing Core 2 Duo processors? The price is pretty reasonable too.

HP Pavilion dv2

HP’s latest notebook has a lot to offer with its 12.1 inch screen, 1 inch thick design, and 3.8 pound weight with an LED-backlit display, nearly full-size keyboard, discrete graphics, and plenty of other goodies. The optical drive isn’t integrated, as with the Lenovo X200, but a matching external drive is available with regular DVDRW or Blu-ray capabilities. AMD’s new Athlon Neo chip is at play here, with a respectable ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3410 graphics chip under the hood. While it is small and slick, the $699 starting price tag is even more attractive.

Five Great Notebooks for Blogging

The blog’s RSS feed reach tells how many of your subscribers actually took a look at the feed and what posts they read. You might have 35 subscribers who read the latest post, with 10 or so reading the previous post.  What if you had 130 subscribers? That’s about a quarter of your possible reach. How could you possibly increase that reach?

How did you obtain your subscribers in the first place? Did you run a contest or were they all organic additions? If you ran a contest to gain subscribers, then the subscriber may have used a secondary email or filtered the feed out in their email software. It could be advantageous to contact your email subscribers one-by-one to create a dialog. This would help gauge their interest in your content. If you run a photography blog, then inquire about their needs. Find out what makes them tick. Do they need support on their particular digital camera model, photo development tricks, or software enhancements? Once you create that dialog with them, they’ll be more likely to interact with your content in the future.

All email subscribers are listed in your Feedburner account. You just have to dig a little to find them. Go to the Analyze tab –> Subscribers under the Feed Stats (on left) –> Scroll down to Email Subscription Services –> Click on it then open the link to Manage your Email Subscriber List. From here you can see every email subscriber in Feedburner, including their email’s status, like whether they’ve verified their subscription or not.

While I don’t condone using these emails to spam a copied letter, I do think it would be fine to send them one email asking them if they’ve returned to your site in a while, what they think of the content, how you could improve the content, and possibly if they remember how they found the site. Realistically most won’t respond, but many might. Those that do can help you improve your brand. I would only send one email though…don’t force the issue if they do not respond.

RSS Reader Subscribers

To increase the reach of those RSS subscriber readers who use a feed reader rather than emailed updates, the solution becomes much more difficult. The reach really is dependent on whether they check their RSS reader software or not. Once you have them open your feed, you need to keep them interested, so they survey all the information. I would also include branding logos inside the feed, which Feedburner allows, as well as a footer message to encourage their interaction with your site. I’ve seen this done quite artfully in the past. A little personal message enticing them to check out your new feature or site design can do the trick. At this point though, you’ve already accomplished what you set out to do — increase your reach.

Aside from stepping into someone’s office and pulling up their Google reader to your feed, there’s not much a blogger can do. We can make our content stand out a little from the other feeds in our readers, write quality content, and ask for feedback at regular intervals. Most of all we need to keep at writing content and the challenges that our blog presents.

Increase Your RSS Feed’s Reach

The site continued in this state for how long? Some new visitors smelled the smoke, and searched in the archives for the fire. They hung onto hope by subscribing to the RSS feed, hoping either to see rebirth from the ashes or never to be bothered again.

Meanwhile the earth continued revolving, endlessly spinning, shifting, changing. The writer, Jason Boom, felt the urge to grab a shovel and begin moving earth, but something kept him from it. His wife, at home, was pregnant. The freelance writing had taken hold. The web development projects trailed off into the night.

Then, a miracle happened. A light. Jason woke one day with energy to spend towards cleanup. There was a lot of work to be done. It’d been three months, since he’d visited the site, but he knew he could still pull something out of the ashes.

He began by upgrading Wordpress to the latest 2.7 version. The new digs helped brighten the back end of the site some, but what could be said for the content? Would people still care? Would they understand?

Jason noticed that feedburner still had subscriber numbers. How awesome! Survivors! They’re out there. So he pleaded with them.

“Forgive me! Content is king, but lately my content has been absent, off fighting the good fight in the real world. But now I’m back to clean up this mess and make the site no longer stink.”

“I’m back,” he whispered softly into the blogosphere.

Did they hear him?

What Happened Here?

The Advent 2.0 Interface

When you log into your Motive Interactive account, you’ll be introduced to many of the publisher offers through a spotlight feature. You’ll also notice the graph showing your account’s performance metrics, like the number of clicks, conversions, the rate at which you convert, and more, like the amount of revenue you’ve earned to date.

The site breaks down the offers so you can search for four different types like CPA, CPL, CPS, and CPS%. Each offer has an associated distribution type, like email or banner ads. By narrowing down your search criteria you can find the offer that works for your method of affiliate marketing. This means less of a time sink for finding those ads that work for you, and more time generating leads and creating revenue.

The Advent 2.0 dashboard greets you with a lot of AJAX, allowing for on-screen changes and quick searches of existing offers. The affiliate network really shines with the various tracking features. I would say the campaigns should be broken down into user-generated campaigns. If I push a product through my emailed newsletter then I would want to see specific performance metrics related to that campaign. Right now the system only allows for an overall view of every campaign you run. This waters down the feature somewhat, but for those interested in only doing one type of campaign, like banner ads, then this shouldn’t be too much of an issue.

Reporting Features

The reporting features gives you what you would expect. You can select a specific time period to view the conversions, and you can narrow down the results to the different types of offers you’re running. Although the same limitations on custom campaigns exist here too. The reports can be downloaded in Excel format with the click of a button. It’s a nice feature many publishers would probably use frequently.

Referral Program

Motive Interactive’s referral earnings program is 5.5% lifetimes referral earnings. That’s a pretty good chunk if you happen to refer someone who makes a decent amount through the network. Imagine sending 20 people who each make around a $100 a month. That could add up month after month. You have to remain active as a publisher with no lapse greater than 12 calendar months to continue receiving your referral income. The referral system is accompanied by the rewards program they have in place as well.

The rewards program gives users a tiered bonus type of reward system, similar to the one Amazon affiliates enjoy. The rewards program pays out according to how well you do within their system. The tiers are based on how well you’re doing with their offers and the like. So if you want to make more of an impact, you’ll push their offers more. The tiers for the reward program look like the following:

Commissions - Rewards
$1,000 - $10
$2,500 - $25
$5,000 - $50
$10,000 - $100
$15,000 - $150
$20,000 - $200
$25,000 - $250
$30,000 - $300
$50,000 - $500
$100,000 - $1,250
$150,000 - $2,000
$200,000 - $3,000
$500,000 - $10,000
$1,000,000 - $20,000
$1,250,000 - $25,000

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and work towards that 25K reward!

Conclusions

Overall the Motive Interactive Advent 2.0 site offers publishers and marketers a great place to find decent types of offers. The site caters to publishers of many types, like those who may own a good email list or website. Every user has access to slick features, like the stat tracking and decent reporting. What about the payout? You can choose to receive payment through a number of methods, including check, bank wire or Paypal. They pay out after you’ve earned $50, which isn’t too bad and shouldn’t be too hard with the number of offers they have available to each and every publisher. If you’re interested in trying out a new affiliate network, then I suggest you watch the video that follows. It should help to give a good view of the network and introduce you to Advent 2.0.

Motive Interactive: Advent 2.0 Review

Thanks everyone who took the time to enter. I hope you all had fun with it. Let’s all take a minute to check out the winner’s blog.

Visit the Not Just a Mama blog

Adspace Contest Winner

I must confess this is a paid review for a label and sticker manufacturing business. I only took the review because I liked what they had to offer and felt it could maybe help one of my readers with a need either now or down the road. This review presents the idea of the business to you, as I have not purchased any stickers from the company at the point of writing this.

Stickers and labels offered from Frontier Label could be used to promote a startup or to improve packaging for any number of products. The company uses state of the art technology to reduce costs and to improve output of the stickers. They use digital printing to create the custom labels and stickers. The savings get passed on to you.

The Sticker Ordering Site

The Frontier Label site has a lot to offer the end-user. The site looks terrific and really lends the company credibility from the start. You can quickly see they types of stickers they’re offering from the home page. You can also go through the site to create a custom order for everything from coffee bag stickers to bumper stickers.

Once you select the quantity of your desired sticker, then you can begin making decisions about its printing, quality, and size. They offer a wide variety of options for the laid back consumer and the need-it-now type. The prices are dependent on the type of printing your have done — HP Electroink or thermal transfer.

Buying from Frontier Label

Purchasing stickers couldn’t get any easier. The site offers a wide variety of stickers — good for any marketing venture, product image enhancement, or simple goodwill gesture. The site caters to small businesses, startups, and even bloggers if you had the need. Sending a bumper sticker through the mail to a reader might seem like a trivial thing, but it could encourage loyalty to your brand. If you have a need for stickers or labels, then you at least have one new place too look.

Frontier Label - A review of a sticker manufacturing company

I was pleasantly surprised by the simple interface. Google created the browser from scratch, knowing that users like to watch videos, play flash games, and browse quickly from site to site. They also know most Web 2.0 sites have dynamic code to make them work. When I browsed to sites like Digg or Youtube, I was amazed at how fast they loaded. Others are comparing it to Opera.

Everyone should at least download the browser to see how your site looks in it — make sure it renders properly. There are also some neat features to mess around with, like the address bar suggestions/search and the incognito window.

The Incognito Window

I love the description of the Incognito window. They say to be wary of the following: 

Going incognito doesn’t affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:

• Websites that collect or share information about you
• Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit
• Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys
• Surveillance by secret agents
• People standing behind you

Yes, be wary of the people standing behind you, secret agents, and other tin-foil hat wearing paranoids. Google’s got your back on this one. 

The Skinny

My sythesized thoughts on the new browser. Tell me your thoughts in the comment section. 

• The browser has no obvious IE 6 type of errors for my site. 
• I can access many sites faster now, especially dynamic sites. 
• I’m also scared of Google owning all the web. 
• It will likely work well for dropping EC, except the EC toolbar won’t work with it. Well, no plugins work with it now. 
• The “Most Visited” default tab rocks! It lets you quickly search, click on recent sites, and view recent bookmarks. Definitely a smart default screen. No reason why the IE one couldn’t do something similar. 
• I like the search on both the history and favorites. It’s nice, not sure how much I’ll use it, but handy. 
• I’m excited to see how they integrate other Google products with the browser, like Google Reader and Gmail. Any plugins related to those apps would be great. 

The Google Browser Chrome Released Today

I can’t say the experiment was a complete success. I don’t think I have the social ability to push out tweets every five minutes or get into debates with random users, like some do. Most of the time I’m too busy working to bother with updating. I used the services to unwind and to catch up with people I’ve come to know online.

All in all, I Plurk much more than I Twitter. I think its because Plurking allows me to converse rather than just speak into a void with the hope of someone echoing back a statement or two. On Plurk I’m almost guaranteed some eyeballs on my thoughts or a funny conversation to look in on.

What Results Did I See?

The immediate results have been tangible. I know I’ve attracted a few new readers to my blog, making friendships along the way. I’ve networked and found someone to help with another project of mine. I’ve received a few link backs from various people who found me through Plurk. On the scale that I used the service, it helped me branch out and find new people to read my blog, comment and to network with me both on the Micro-blogging site and in my other networks.

The statistics show a much blander result. Throughout August I had 17 visits from Plurk. Of those 17, 58% were new visitors. They stayed on average 2:37, which is well above my site average. Unfortunately Twitter sent me 10 new visitors and they didn’t stick around long. (Just noticed Squidoo sent me a decent amount of traffic, but not sure for what.)

Proportionate Results

You really do get what you put into these networks. I know I’ve made a few new connections, laughed a lot, and learned a lot too. Micro-blogging sites may cater to a specific personality, but everyone can enjoy at least some aspect of one of these sites — you just have to find the right one for your tastes. I gravitated towards Plurk, but maybe your message can get out there better through Twitter.

Micro-blogging Olympics Closing Ceremonies

What is the Link Building Wiki?

The LinkBuildingWiki.com compiles links to authoritative articles, blog posts, forum posts, and their sites for users to find information quickly.  The  site is completely free to use. If you’re new to link building or SEO, then this wiki should be your first stop on the journey.

Unlike other wikis, the Link Building Wiki is not open for everyone to edit. Those who would like to participate in building content can apply for the privilege. I understand why they have it closed. Imagine the amount of spam a link building wiki would receive — now you understand too.

The site lists link building resources including SEO blogs, forums and active posts in those forums, link building articles, and link building tools. The resources are first rate and should help anyone become acquainted with tips, tricks, and lessons related to link building.

Throughout the site, you may notice recommendations for certain material from two of the creators, Rob and Jarrod. They make it easy for you to spot their favorite material. The recommendations guide you towards quality information on link building.

The Hands off Approach

For those who simply want someone with the know-how to build links to your site, you can hire the experts behind the Link Building Wiki. From their link building services page offers everyone the information needed to hire their staff for link building work.

Conclusion

The wiki introduced me to quite a few sites on link building and SEO I hadn’t heard of before this review. If you’re looking to build back links to your site, increase your search engine rankings, or just gain SEO knowledge, then the Link Building Wiki should be part of your arsenal.

A Review of the Link Building Wiki

I see you came to my site looking for “web 2.0 skills”. I’m not entirely sure why you found my page, but I’m glad you did. I’m afraid you didn’t stick around to learn any skills, but maybe that’s already a sign you have web 2.0 skills. It says here you bounced from the first page you visited? How did I lose you so quick?

I guess you came to my site expecting big buttons to push, tons of videos instructing you on the neo-art of converting social activity into dollars, and titillating internet memes. I’m sorry to have disappointed. I can tell you my site will give you tips on writing, marketing, and various blogging tools.

I could have inspired you to begin writing a blog of your own, if you didn’t already own one. You might even have been able to quit your day job. I’m not a money making blog, but your writing skills would have improved. Trust me. You would have wanted to take this route.

If you did own a blog, then I could have helped you write powerful messages to your readers.

I know Web 2.0 skills are hard to come by, just like computer hacking skills.I’m wondering where you went. Were there other Web 2.0 skill sites to visit? I’m checking now.  I see now that I come up on the first page of Google for Web 2.0 Skills (not anymore). It’s not a huge surprise. I’ve got skills like that.

If you’re here looking for web 2.0 skills, sign up for my RSS feed so you don’t miss my skill building seminar.

A Letter to a Random Search Engine Visitor