Hey Net Fools,

I’d like to slow down and wish you all a Happy Easter! In the spirit of the holiday, I’ll take today’s post to outline what I am going to be doing this week rather than post anything that is actually useful, haha.

In an attempt to build some traffic around the blogosphere, I am going to do hopefully 3-4 guest blogging posts on some other popular places. I feel that guest blogging is the single best way to network around and generate some real interest/buzz about your website… not to mention the free link back. If any of you readers are interested, and have a blog with 75+ subscribers, shoot me an email and I’ll be happy to provide some quality work for free on behalf of me being such a blip on the radar at the moment.

This week, I will try to put out that much anticipated “about me” post. Jim Cramer is coming to Penn State, and will be stopping by to hear a stock pitch in my Nittany Lion Fund, LLC. fund managers classroom (about 20 people), so hopefully I can snag a picture to use in my profile. I will also have a possible appearance on Wednesday’s show, so stay tuned for that!

Other than the “about me” post, I have another sponsored post in the queue, should be a good service review. I know you would prefer original posts, which is why I pledge to never do more than one a week. We can all handle that right? (I hope).

You guys have been doing an awesome job with commenting and everything. We even had a visit from a world-renowned gold commodity investor in my most recent stock market pitch! Definitely liking that publicity, and it shows the true power of blogging in my opinion. Jimvesting is really gaining ground around the net as an established blog site with some good content, so this one goes out to all of you that help make it what it is, and which it will become.

March Madness continues to dominate my life, and it has been one hack of a tournament so far. If you guys are in the United States and aren’t watching, I’d suggest keeping an eye on what is happening. You don’t have to love college basketball to feel the rush behind this huge annual tourney!

The big-ish March contest continues to roll on, those of you who have stumbled or dugg posts I want to thank especially… I have gotten some stellar traffic off of those pings. As previously stated, we are gearing up for a gi-normous April contest. If you subscribe now, as always, you will be eligible already. If you would like to sponsor a prize for this big competition, just contact me. Everyone that donates will get some great coverage, links, and a small review.

Stick with it!
- Jimvesting

You’ve heard about my Big March Subscriber Contest that is taking place this month. But regardless of what I do, it seems like nowadays there are always going to be people offering higher rewards to their readers. I want to bribe you guys as much as possible, so let’s see just what I can do here .

I have been noticing an increasing amount of contests that offer not prizes provided by the bloggers themselves, but provided by sponsors that donate to have their name and image displayed. The advantage here? Prizes are enormous when given away collectively. Winning The Web now has a contest valued over $12,000 and increasing by the day. The University Kid has a contest over $2,000. What does this leave for the other blogging websites?

I think that contests have taken a lot of value out of reading. The blogging world is turning into not who posts the most, but who bribes the most. I am really interested to see just how easy/difficult it is to organize a pool of prizes from bigger sponsors, so I am hereby announcing an April sponsored contest where anyone can donate prizes (over $5 in value) of virtual goods, services and just plain ol’ cash .

Subscriber numbers are important. Everyone seems to “get” that, but it seems like people are starting to increase these pulls only by offering some incentive to read. Contests are a great idea to increase your traffic… and hey, once you get people suckered in ( ), them reading through your content on the regular is a lot more likely.

One of the primary ways I am planning on getting sponsors for this project is essentially by asking. Sure, this isn’t the most popular blog around as of yet, but I think the growth potential is clear and people will see this. I am working on a list of bloggers/companies that I think might be interested… I think the possibilities are definitely there. Asking around in general is a great idea, as the personal touch simply cannot be denied.

I am interested to see just how big this can get for an upstart blogs. You’ve seen the mid-range bloggers get it done, now lets experiment and see just how many people are willing to sponsor some publicity around here! If you are interested in donating to this contest, please shoot me an email (via contact page) or post in the comment area.

-Jimvesting

Good afternoon Net Fools,

Thought I’d take the time today to talk about a few updates and going-ons over here at theNetFool.com. Ever since I have put out the new layout, traffic has been on the up and up and it seems that a lot more people are digging my content . About every other day, traffic has been doubling unexpectedly from Stumble Upon and Digg coverage, and we are getting some awesome press coverage form other bloggers. Let’s talk a bit about where I’m headed for 2008!

Stock Market: We are just about ready to conclude our last installment of 2008 performance reviews and stock picks sector-by-sector. This has been a great learning experience for me, as well as readers, as we have conquered every sector of the market. These pages are definitely the most researched work I do, spending about 3-5 hours for each post, but its worth it! After the final post (Utilities sector), I am going to move into stock pitches on the weekly and some market news every now and then.

GPT Reviews: The get paid to (gpt) review process is going very nicely. Lots of websites have submitted their businesses for review and approval form theNetFool.com (only one has emerged victorious thus far). I am planning on continuing reviews on these great money making services, made popular by completing offers online, in order to increase our search rankings in the field.

Making Money Online: As traffic flows in, we have a lot of reviews and commentary on multiple ways to make money on the internet. There are a few services I have used that you should know about, and I have a couple of ongoing schemes to pull profits online (including starting on my own eBook, a work in progress).

Contest Update: I have had a tremendous response to the March contest that I ran alongside the new layout. It seems to be serving its purpose, and a lot of new readers have come by (from 8 subscribers to 30 subscribers so far ) that seem genuinely interested in my content. Lots of Diggs and Stumbles, as well… a great traffic driver as many of you know. I just want to encourage all of you to keep commenting and checking out my daily updates.

Housekeeping: Currently, I am at home on Spring Break. Knowing this, I don’t have a lot of my normal gear (camera, etc.) but when I get back I will be getting around to making an “about us” page. I have had a lot of requests for this, and I think that it is fair to give you guys a closer look into the blogger behind Jimvesting dot com .

I have a lot of great new articles and posts planned for the blogsite, so be checking back daily for more information on how to make money online. I know we have been experiencing a little downtime over the past few weeks (96.5% uptime last week), but don’t worry… this is temporary and we will be transferring services shortly to correct any future incidents. One more thing, the March contest is going great so far, but be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed if you haven’t already!

-Jimvesting

As you should have noticed by now, there is a new design in town . I have been developing this new website layout over the past two weeks, and it is finally ready to be released to the public!

This design has really come a long way. I hired a freelancer designer (“Pinky” from getafreelancer.com) to do the header work. He did this for $60, which was pretty fair. I basically cannot draw freehand to save my life, but I did all of the logo and the navigation bar myself, as well as all of the other graphics that you see on this website. $60 ain’t bad for the drawing alone, but hey… the amount of work I put in on top of that makes the monetary value a lot higher!

To go with this $60 drawing, I purchased a template made famous by John Cow (no, not Chow) and again… modified the heck out of it . Regardless, it was nice to have something solid to base my work off of. After affording this $100 sunk cost… I figured, hey, why not get me a nice sales program while I’m at it. So naturally, I sprung for the classy but thrifty OIO Publisher (which I will review later) which allows me to handle all the ads you see on this website automatically via PayPal! Ad spots are going fast and are still dirt cheap, so navigate over to our advertising tab to get your spot secured up now.

I have planned out a contest set to launch within 24 hours. More details on that later, but lets just say I have a few big prizes to give out totaling about $100 that will definitely help a lot of you out. This will be focused on gaining subscribers, as is the primary interest for the month of March. Stay tuned for more updates, and please leave me some good feedback in the form of comments if you like what you see.

-Jimvesting

I am currently in the process of designing and bringing together a lovely new layout for theNetFool.com! This new template should be available in about a week, and should show major improvements from the current model. There were many questions raised about our current site not functioning properly in IE6, so we are going to go ahead and create a more flexible design that should allow for full compatibility so everyone can read.

In the meantime, I will make the usual stock post on Monday and a GPT review on Wednesday. We are going to shift focus away from sportsbooks temporarily, but those links will always be around for your convenience. The exact time that the new design will be fully working is unknown, as some of the graphic work has been outsourced. I will let you know when everything is fully operational! Thank you for your patience.

-Jimvesting