Ouch! I had to delay the link love and announcements all the way to Tuesday? Well with the contracted launch of my October Spectacular, and the promised results show for my September Hosting Bonanza… there really wasn’t too much wiggle room. Regardless, we all need to be updated and refreshed… so let’s head into the rest of the week strong!
Post quality from this past week was extremely high, and I enjoyed a lot of things that I read. After meeting a few new bloggers, and calculating my head off in the face of contests starting, stopping and everything in between, it’s time to take a look back at five of (what I felt were) the best articles for the week ending October 4th, 2008.
- Freddie Taylor – Capitalize on the Long Tail
- Linker’s Blog – What’s On Your RSS?
- CopyBlogger – Is Your Blog Ginger or Mary Ann?
- Thou Shall Blog – The Best 15 SEO Tools for Beginners
- Enkay Blog – What Advertising Can Do For You
Kicking things off with Freddie Taylor, he had a great logical step through of the “long tail.” This is a neat theory of sales and marketing that you just have to hear! Linkers’ Blog wrote an interesting run-down of what blogs he reads on the daily. Clearly, he left my name clear out of the list… but I’ll cut him some slack on that one this time. CopyBlogger had the funniest post I have read in awhile… taking a cue back to popular American television pastime “Gilligan’s Island.” Thou Shall Blog put together a brilliant list of SEO tools and Enkay offers some clever insight into the world of advertising.
Stock Market Update
Well for starters, today was a bit nuts. After seeing the biggest point drop in Dow Jones history, we had a mid-major reversal to close down 3.5%. It’s a bit amusing how 3.5% down was good news, eh? Essentially, what is happening here is that as the Dollar and Yen soar against other currencies, the world is turning to staple holdings in panic as global turmoil is destroying 
everyone’s market systems. Just a few hours ago, Australia announced that they would be cutting rates by 1 full percentage point. This has sent Asian markets into mixed territory, so I’ll wait to see how this effects the rest of us.
The big discussion going on now is whether we will experience a sort of universal rate cut of sorts. When you have a “rate cut,” people are usually referring to the rate at which banks borrow from each other (and from their governments). By lowering rates, you make credit easier to obtain and theoretically boost buying interest. As credit markets have become almost completely frozen, we need something like this from every government in order to escape the financial terror.
Over the weekend, in news that was dwarfed by macro-economic trends, Wachovia was reportedly “sold” to Citigroup. In this deal, Citi effectively saved Wachovia from failure in a deal backed by the FDIC. But just when things seemed set in stone, Wells Fargo stepped in and made a better offer. A day later, our government decided that it was illegal, by the contract with Citigroup, for Wachocia to have talked to Wells Fargo at all! So, now we are frozen in the balance, and the SEC actually stopped trading altogether on the company. Let’s wait and see how this one turns out!
Blogosphere Update
As the owner of a new financial community, Bullish Bankers, I have been absolutely astounded by the recent sale of financial website Bankaholic.com to BankRate.com for $15 million dollars. $12.4 million in cash up front is absolutely nuts for a blog that I quite frankly don’t think is very good. A standard design with lax posting, commenting and an insane amount of monetization shouldn’t fetch that kind of premium. Nevertheless, it seems that I’ve hit the hot niche at the right time, and thus may have a nice valuation on Bullish Bankers right now.
PageRank had an update! Yep. Not too happy about that one. I got dropped officially from a 4 to a 3, and right now I am fighting to get my old ranking back. Unfortunately, Google isn’t the most accessible bunch. 
Despite my valid complaint they have yet to respond and I can only hope that they do (as they haven’t ever before). You can try your hand by requesting a PageRnak reconsideration. Here are some directions on how to do that.
OIO Publisher updated to version 2.0! Now you can finally get the best monetization tool around not only for WordPress, but for any other service online. It’s totally standalone, and the features on WordPress have been optimized even more! My favorite feature is the ability for advertisers to upload their own ad to the server, cutting down on messy linkage problems once and for all. You can get $17 OFF for a limited time by using the coupon “JimvestingDEAL” at checkout!
This Week In Focus
I’ve been in a blog posting frenzy this week so far, and I already have two posts that I want to put out on the docket… ready to write. In addition, we are going to continue the series of Google Keyword optimization while I look to capitalize on the “make money online” niche with some ranking power there. Heck, maybe Google will reward me with a higher PageRank if I can pull it off.
I’m actually thinking of writing a fun, slightly controversial, post this week. However, it’s going to take some time to brainstorm it… so hopefully it will be up before the end of the week. I’m fighting for some higher traffic and the eventual breaking of that elusive 750 subscriber mark. So stick with Jimvesting, and turn your time into cash!
-Jimvesting
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Jim, my man! Thanks for the link love! You have some great blogs and articles on that list. I just started visiting CopyBlogger myself.
The concept of the Long Tail is hot and really drives the niche markets.
Yes, the market is insane right now. You have solid grasp of what is going on. But you are right, you might be in the right market at the right time if those other sites are selling in that price range. Jim could cash out and be a professional student! (Wouldn’t that be cool?)
Anyway, thanks again! Peace!
It’s been a busy month indeed! Oh, and it looks like you struck gold with your stock site!
The stock market niche indeed has a lot of monetization potential. But I find it impossible to believe blogs selling for millions of dollars.
Thanks for the link to get a Pagerank consideration. Time to get the Pagerank that my blog deserves.
What is your valid point against Google?
I have heard that the best strategy with Google is to acknowledge/admit why you may have been penalized even if you feel you are actually innocent. You then tell them how you will correct the “problem” and then you have a chance of getting your page rank restored.
It’s kind of funny that you let me off this time, because I do actually have you on my RSS reader but for some reason I missed you off the list
I gotta say thanks for the link love man, you are probably the biggest blog (in terms of readership) that has link to me so far
Thanks for the updates.
what’s new in oio ?
Twitter: @ZanderChance
October 8, 2008 at 9:21 am #
As long as you’re selling advertising, Google will ignore your please for better PageRank.. We have a site with tens of thousands of authority backlinks, but because we sell advertising (our revenue model depends on it), we were dropped from a PR6 to a PR3 about a year ago, and it’s never moved since.
Matt Cutts will tell you straight up.. It sucks, but what can you do?
Thanks mate , this is something new I learnt ..I always knew that PR would be devalued for ad based sites but not to this extent..Your present site shows a PR of 2 …
I believe that the hardening of the dollar is temporary as everyone and his uncle is wanting to buy dollars. I believe that Euro will become the universal currency, not in the too distant future. Unless the USA can back all the dollars with demonstrable gold reserves, there is no way that the dollar can continue to be the primary currency of the world. When, not if, the US economy slides further, this will become even more urgent. The way things have turned out, the biggest borrower in the world, the US has just spent much over what it can earn, and is now in a position to borrow to pay interest rates. Sad.
Twitter: @jimvesting
October 8, 2008 at 9:40 am #
I’m long the dollar versus the Euro. The trade really has NOTHING to do with gold or any other reserve backing… the dollar is backed on confidence and I believe that we can (and will) continue to see things appreciate. I remain confident that the dollar will remain the universal commodity of choice. I really don’t see why you think that the U.S. has spent more than it can earn, because this is simply not true. We have one of the stronger economies going forward, as the European market is going to struggle for a long while more.
Hey The Stock Market has totally Gone down.Here in India.Sensex suprising go up with 600 points.Good post JIm
Dow is Down and my sales from PPC campaigns are also down. I had zero sales 3 days for this week. Only one sale from US, thankfull I had sales from other countries which compensated the PPC budget but this trend affecting online sales for sure
- Nice post..
- Looking forward to read the keyword research post
- There is limited scope in top searched key phrases and market is saturating, this is the time to explore the long tail key phrases now.
I think I should come here for the latest updates!
Thanks for the Link Love and Announcements.
Good compilation, I ‘m interested in tracking The Current Financial Crises hitting the world.
You’ve got a good blog here, I’m glad I found you. Thoushallblog, and linker’s blog are both quality blogs. I didn’t realize there had been a page update though, obviously that means mine didn’t change lol, but how do you know when there coming up?
Jonathan Muller