For a while now, I’ve been stuck on finding a niche for this year’s challenge, as it always seems to be the case every year.

But this year, kind of taking [...]]]> Hello, Universe! Can you feel it? I really feel like the third time’s a charm for my experience with the Thirty Day Challenge.

For a while now, I’ve been stuck on finding a niche for this year’s challenge, as it always seems to be the case every year.

But this year, kind of taking Karl Moore’s advice, I just said f**k it and instead of trying to find a niche in something I’m interested in (which either ends up not having high traffic, no category phrases, or a ton of competition – not SEOC, but very established sites already ranking), I just went on clickbank, looked at a niche that already had a ton of products and tried to find keywords based around that.

The keyword I chose wasn’t the one that had the most traffic per day, but was one that had the most generic term that I could use for the domain name. I’ll be using the high traffic keyword as one of my categories.

The SEOC matrix for my chosen keyword is a bit more competitive than I’d hoped for, but it’s still pretty doable. If I can get a site ranking on the first page of Google for a broad matched phrase that has 32+ million results, I can definitely get this site to rank broad matched since the keyword only has 6+ million results. And the sites that are ranking don’t have my keyphrase anywhere in their URL, so that’ll probably make it easier. It’ll be easy to rank for the phrase match term since there are less than 2,000 competing pages.

I didn’t feel like signing up with Host Gator since I’m very happy with my current web host that I’ve been with for about 5 years now (or maybe longer). But since my host doesn’t use cPanel, I can’t use WordPress Direct with it. Not a big problem for me since Marty of WPD posted which plugins are used when you install WordPress using their system. I was able to get them all installed and working properly and find a related theme.

I thought about using the Atahualpa theme and customizing it, and I still might do that, but I just wanted something up and running quickly.

I published my first post to it, changing the default “hello world” post – though it might be better if I deleted that and reposted it as a brand new post so that it could ping the services I have set to ping.

Even though the niche is something that I’ve never had personal experience with, it was still not so hard to rewrite an article for it. I was kind of amazed by how fast I actually did it.

All that’s left is to start submitting my site with Traffic Bug and creating more articles. Reading on the forums, people have been having problems joining, so I’m gonna wait a few hours and hope that the site still isn’t getting hammered by then.

I can see myself earning that dollar this year (and more!) really soon, especially once my site gets indexed and ranking.

Pretty awesome that I was able to do days 1-7 of the challenge all in one day.

It may seem like I’ve stopped playing, but I’m still here and not going anywhere! I’ve just been busy the past few days.

$54,000 +55,000 +56,000 ———- $165,000 going towards the rest of the 11.7 acres of land.

$57,000 +58,000 +59,000 ——— $174,000

The entire amount of [...]]]> Hello, Universe! I haven’t forgotten about you!

It may seem like I’ve stopped playing, but I’m still here and not going anywhere! I’ve just been busy the past few days.

$54,000
+55,000
+56,000
———-
$165,000 going towards the rest of the 11.7 acres of land.

$57,000
+58,000
+59,000
———
$174,000

The entire amount of that will be donated to St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard, CA.

I don’t have time to go into details for now, so I may update later, but don’t count on it.

If you’d like to know more about The Prosperity Game, check out this site which explains it pretty well. Basically, you start off with $1000 of a virtual check and each day you get $1000 more ($2000 for day [...]]]> It’s June 1st and I said I’d be starting something new and this is it.

If you’d like to know more about The Prosperity Game, check out this site which explains it pretty well. Basically, you start off with $1000 of a virtual check and each day you get $1000 more ($2000 for day 2, $3000 on day 3, etc.). And you decide how you want to spend every cent of it, no saving, no rollovers.

Day 1 – $1000

This was a lot harder than I thought it would be to spend every penny of $1000. I originally was going to get a basic MacBook for $999.00, but if I’m gonna get a Mac, I might as well get a fully loaded one, so I’ll definitely be spending one of my future prosperity game checks on it.

Anyway, so $1000 for today… I was originally going to spend it on a folding electric bike, but after looking for one that was lightweight enough to even be convenient as a folding bike, I couldn’t find one that was in my budget, so my pick for today is just a non-electric folding bike.

My choice is the 2009 Dahon Curve SL Folding Bike.

I’ve always wanted a bike that I could just put into the trunk of my car and ride around whenever there was a good time to do so. This one looks pretty sweet to me. I love how it only weighs about 22 pounds, not like those 45+ pound foldable electrics I was looking at.

Here’s a video of the 2007 model of the Curve folding and unfolding. That’s quick!!

At $999.00 with free shipping, that means I have a dollar of my $1000 left to spend. With my remaining $1, I’d get “The Best Day Ever” by Spongebob Squarepants as Rock Band DLC for my Xbox 360.

Dragonforce’s Through the Fire and Flames made in Mario Paint Composer:

They started it last year and at first [...]]]> It’s that time of year again where Amazon lets customers vote in 6 different rounds for the product that they want to see at a huge discount. If the product that people vote for doesn’t get picked, then it’ll be offered at a “runner up” price.

They started it last year and at first it was a free for all, first come, first served kind of deal. Anybody could get in on the deal, even if it wasn’t the thing that they voted for. And that really killed their servers when everyone was trying to score a $99 Xbox 360. Then they switched it up to be slightly like this year’s promo where you were only eligible to buy whatever you voted for… still first come, first served. That still crashed their servers. So in the final rounds of the promo, they changed it to exactly how they’re doing it this year – you’re only eligible to buy whatever you voted for AND you have to be randomly selected by Amazon to get in at the special price.

After all was said and done, I didn’t end up getting in on anything except for their “thank you” deal which was a Swiss Army Knife at a discount price. I was lucky to get in on that.

This year, they’ve got a lot of great choices as far as the voting goes. I was totally torn between the PS3 and 360 in the first round, but seeing as how the Wii is in the lead and the runner up prices on the PS3 and 360 aren’t as good as the “winning” price for them, I’ll probably end up voting for the Wii even though I’ve already got one two.

I’m really not expecting to be picked for anything, but it’s always worth a try just to see if I’m actually lucky enough to get in on some amazing deals.

Check it out, if you haven’t already. Just visit Amazon.com’s home page and there should be a scrolling Flash animation in the top right corner about the Vote promo.

What ended up happening was that they “zeroed” my account, along with a whole bunch of people who played legitimately because we fit their criteria of “fraudulent activity” so they took away all of my points and I guess cancelled two of [...]]]> I made a post back in June about Microsoft’s Live Search Club.

What ended up happening was that they “zeroed” my account, along with a whole bunch of people who played legitimately because we fit their criteria of “fraudulent activity” so they took away all of my points and I guess cancelled two of the prizes I requested. I only ended up getting one of the two copies of Vista Ultimate that I ordered (this was before they had the one per household limit on their prizes) and never got the 360 controller I ordered either.

I played all of those damn games by hand while watching my favorite TV shows. It really didn’t take that long to acrue so many points with the help of websites like anagrammer.com and oneacross.com. Still, I get penalized and lumped in with all of the cheaters for being a fast typist. It really doesn’t take that long to type in a bunch of words when you have them all in front of you.

And it sucks to see other people who did cheat (used bots or whatnot) still receiving their prizes like Zunes and whatever else they ordered. It really seems random whether you get your prize or not, even if you did play the games legitimately (by legitimately, I mean by hand and not using any sort of automated methods).

Anyway, don’t waste your time with Live Search Club, they seem like they’ll try to find any reason not to pay out your hard earned prizes.

Just this month, the game was released as Freshly-Picked: Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland in Europe. I’m amazed [...]]]> Ah, Tingle, the character in the Legend of Zelda series that you either love or hate. Nintendo has given him his own game. It was released in Japan last year as Mogitate: Tingle no Bara Iro Rupee Land.

Just this month, the game was released as Freshly-Picked: Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland in Europe. I’m amazed that the game actually got released outside of Japan. I played the Japanese version and then played it all over again in English (to actually understand what’s going on since I can’t read Japanese).

I think anyone remotely interested in this game has probably already seen the “Duke” video of the construction worker fixing the bridge, if you haven’t, just search on YouTube for Tingle RPG and it’ll be one of those.

Here’s a brand new video of what happens when you manage to collect all of the rupee treasures in the game (video contains spoilers [reveals bad guy's name and Pinkle's true identity]):

WARNING, video may not be suitable for children… after all, the game is rated 12+ in Europe.

After seeing that scene, I think the chances of this game ever being released in North America are slim to none. Which is kind of a shame because the gameplay was truly unique.

Overall, I think the game was interesting. I just love all of these quirky types of games… haha. It might be annoying for some people with the whole negotiation of rupees in the game. If you get it wrong, your rupees will still be taken from you anyway, so for a lot of people, it’ll be a reset and start over type of game. But if you can get past that, it’s a really unique game and really explains a lot about Tingle… why he likes both rupees and fairies.

If you want to play it now (in Japanese), you can pick it up from Play-Asia. Use the form below to search for the [...]]]> Phantom Hourglass is out in Japan now. I really can’t wait for an English version of this game.

If you want to play it now (in Japanese), you can pick it up from Play-Asia. Use the form below to search for the game:

I just now [...]]]> I recently sold one of my import DS games on eBay. It was a game I preordered last year and it was released around the same time as the Wii launch date, so I ended up never opening it. I took a bit of a loss on it, but oh well.

I just now realized that the buyer who bought it has never ever left anybody any feedback at all for anything (even though he has 39+ feedback)! So it looks like yet another successful eBay sale where I won’t be getting feedback yet I know I deserve positive.

When it comes to feedback, it’s really more important that sellers get feedback than buyers (unless it’s negative for a buyer, so other sellers will be informed of a deadbeat bidder). That helps establish your selling credibility. So when buyers don’t leave me feedback, it makes me look like I haven’t been selling anything at all in the most recent months when I have.

Oh, and I have a few rules I go by for leaving feedback for other people. If I’m the buyer, I leave feedback for the seller as soon as I receive the item and have tested/inspected it. If I have any problems, I contact the seller to try to resolve them before leaving my feedback. Like one time, I ordered two camcorder batteries and only got one. Instead of leaving neutral/negative for the seller, I contacted them first, so that they could have a chance to still get positive feedback. Contact is the key to any good transaction. So another battery was sent to me.

I don’t expect sellers to leave any feedback for me until I’ve left one for them (as the buyer)… because, really, the buyer’s part of the transaction isn’t complete the moment you pay. It’s complete when you get your item and have had a chance to see if it’s as described.

When I’m the seller. I usually don’t leave feedback until after a buyer has left feedback for me. Luckily, I haven’t had any complaints from any of my buyers for anything I’ve sold (mostly my used stuff/games that I don’t want anymore). But I hold my feedback for them in case they need to contact me about anything after they get their item. If they just leave me a negative without even trying to contact me (which hasn’t happened at all, thankfully), I don’t think that’s fair when I would’ve tried to solve their problem. I haven’t left one neutral or negative feedback for anybody (buyer/seller) yet and I hope to keep it that way.

But I wish everybody would leave me some kind of feedback. It really doesn’t take long at all and I don’t know why people don’t do it sometimes.

I have an idea of how I can improve the feedback system. Not in the ways that eBay has been adding features too it, but my idea is much much better and will ensure that everybody leaves feedback and that there’s no such thing as retaliation. But I’ll keep my idea to myself for the day when I start up an auction site to compete against eBay.