I recently helped my partner start a new local business and in the process, I needed to order business cards. I wish I’d been lucky enough to enter a contest to win them, but that didn’t happen. It CAN HAPPEN FOR YOU however!

Six people will be chosen randomly by me to receive 500 premium business cards from Uprinting. All you have to do to win is click a share button on the Online Product Ideas infographic post. Just under the title of that post (not this one), are two buttons. One says Tweet and the other says Like. Click either of those, and then comment below to let me know you’ve done so. I’m not going to require proof of your tweet or your Facebook Like because I trust each of you to not cheat. I do need you to comment afterwards ON THIS POST, however, so that if you win, I can send your winning info to Uprinting so they can give you your prize.

The Prize

• 500 Premium Business Cards for Six (6) Winners
• 2 x 3.5”, 2 x 2” (square card) or 1.75 x 3.5” (slim card)
• Paper Type: 14 pt gloss cardstock, 14 pt matte cardstock or 13 pt recycled uncoated cardstock
• Color: Full Color Both Sides

Feel free to check out all of Uprinting’s business card options.

How To Win

1. Go to my Online Product Ideas infographic post and click on either the Tweet or Like social sharing buttons just below the title of that post. After you tweet about the post, or FB Like it, then…

2. Come back to this post and comment here, letting me know that you’ve clicked either of the buttons on the infographic post.

3. Six winners will be chosen randomly from everyone who enters. I have a handy little random choosing script that I use, so I’ll just place everyone’s entry into the script, click the Go button, and pick the winners.

When The Contest Ends

This will be a quick one! I don’t like long, drawn out contests, so this one will only last 12 hours. I’ll announce the winners here, in an update to the post, late tonight. Good luck!

Special Rules

Limited to US residents only, 18 years old and above (Sorry about the limitation to all you non-US people).

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Post tags: business cards, contest, giveaway
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Donna Fontenot’s Personalized Newspaper

Below is a screenshot of the upper part of the newspaper, but there’s TONS more awesome stuff in it.

This enables me to see interesting things from the people I’ve chosen to follow. Sure, Twitter allows me to see that, right? But Twitter streams flash by and I miss much of what floats down that stream. My personalized newspaper allows me to see what I missed, which is very cool. Even cooler is that it’s all organized in an incredibly smart way, and it includes thumbnails to help visualize what’s there.

This perfectly fits ME. It uses my own curated list to create the perfect personalized information for me. I’m blown away.

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Post tags: personalized newspaper, Twitter stream
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Kiesha Easley of WeBlogBetter.com, earned her degrees in English (I did too, but she got more degrees than I, that’s for sure). While degrees in English aren’t necessary for creating outstanding blogs, I have no doubt that Ms. Easley’s writing talents help make her blog such a great read. Want an example?

In one post, she discusses ways to use similes, metaphors and analogies to spice up your posts, and explains how using “unexpected” comparisons can really help readers engage with the ideas presented. This was from a series of posts called Blog Food Series. Along with standard posts, she has several other series of posts, all interconnected into a central theme, such as “Get Into The Cloud”, and “Guide To Guest Posting”. I haven’t had time to devour all of her content yet, but I’m working on it. I’ve definitely subscribed because I have a feeling I’ll be enjoying this blog for some time to come.

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Post tags: blogging, FBCLcontest, Kiesha Easley
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What Kinds Of Questions Can You Ask?

You can ask all sorts of questions, though I’d imagine “how-to” questions related to internet marketing, WordPress, blogging, SEO, etc. would be most answerable. And of course, the more specific, the better. Overly broad questions might end up needing an answer that starts with, “Well, it depends…” and that’s never a good answer.

What Kinds of Questions Should You Not Ask?

Well, as tempting as it may be to try to get me to answer things like “What is the meaning of life?”, it’d be nice if no one’s time gets wasted with silliness. This is for serious stuff. If you need to know how to add a feature to your site, for example, that would probably fall within the types of things that makes sense to ask me.

How Do You Ask Me A Question?

Just use my contact form to get in touch with me. From that point on, you and I can just email back and forth, as I’ll just reply to you via the email address you supply in the contact form. It might be a good idea to note in the contact form that this is a $5 question.

Other Thoughts

This is just an experiment, so I may adjust things as time goes on, or I may decide to stop the experiment completely. Obviously, if you ask me a question that would require 3 months of time to answer, I probably won’t find it worthwhile to answer it for $5, and I’ll just let you know that the question goes beyond the bounds of what I can do in this experiment. But if you think your question can probably be answered within a normal email type of response, then it’s probably within the scope of what I’m hoping to do here.

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Basically, Freelancer’s Union is a site geared towards giving some breaks to U.S. freelancers, including the ability to get group rates on insurance and retirement plans. In addition, the organization is involved in political action to try to bring fairness to the tax issues that freelancers face, (we generally pay more taxes than traditional employees do).

Other benefits include discounts on products and services, seminars, webinars, live events, a job board, and a community forum.

It’s free to join so if you are a freelancer, check it out.

I have no idea if this same type of organization exists in other countries, but if you’re a freelancer living outside the U.S., I’d recommend searching around for one. There could be some benefits waiting for you.

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Post tags: Freelancer, Freelancer's Union, Sara Horowitz
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© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Christmas
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I like this site, not only because it’s visually appealing to me, but because the information it contains is broad and varied, but still on point. And what is that point? Well, I’ll let Jonathan’s own words explain that:

LightEcho.com is the creation of a long time philosopher, a seasoned economist and an experienced internet engineer. It has been designed to provide insight, practical advice, and a new perspective on the emerging internet and technology that inhabit our everyday lives. By imparting ideas that are both attainable and enlightening, the internet can be understood on a level other than what is offered through mass media.

I haven’t fully explored every post in LightEcho’s engaging repertoire, but of of the ones I’ve read, I’m hooked. I bet you will be too.

If you’ve won a Dazzlin Badge of Excellence Award, you can display the awards badge on your site by pasting the following code into your page. Just highlight it, copy it, and paste it.

<a href="http://www.dazzlindonna.com/blog/">
<img src="http://www.dazzlindonna.com/images/dazzlinbadge.gif" alt="Dazzlin Badge of Excellence">
</a>

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Post tags: economist and an experienced internet engineer, HTML, mass media
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UPDATE: Due to so many complaints, I’m no longer recommending ThinkHost. However, lucky for us all, my past and still present favorite hosting company, HostGator, has gone green, so I can continue recommending it while knowing there’s an extra goodness in its greeness! So, ignore the rest of this and just know that I love HostGator.

A few days ago, a friend of mine had web hosting issues (and boy, oh boy, over the years, I’ve had plenty of those!). Because she’s an enlightened sort of gal, she decided to investigate using green hosting services. Since she brought it to my mind, I couldn’t help but go out and start doing a little investigating of my own.

There are a few nice choices in green web hosting, but the one I ended up choosing as the best “all ’round” choice for me or most people I know would be ThinkHost. Reasons I chose them as my green web host of choice:

Their services are powered by 100% renewable energy (solar/wind)
Plants a tree for every client
Good plan pricing with all the right plan features
Fast setup
Multiple payment methods available
Host unlimited number of sites for no extra charge
Lots of space and bandwidth offered
Been around for a long time
Sponsors many non-profit organizations and 10% of their revenue value is put back into community projects
Backed by a site I know and trust (tamingthebeast.net)
100% uptime guarantee – and they actually give you 1 day of hosting free for each 1 hour of service interruption
Backup generators in case of power outages

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve often recommended HostGator and I still do. I love that hosting company. But if you really want to move to an earth-friendly hosting company, then ThinkHost is who I’d recommend for you. If you decide to try them, I’ve even got a coupon code you can use. Just enter the following code on the secure package signup form to get $20 off any package you choose : THINKHOST20

Just wanted to pass along another hosting recommendation, in addition to the one I usually recommend. If you are interested in using a green hosting company, ThinkHost is the one to use.

*

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: For Us All, Good, green hosting services, green web host, green web hosting, hostgator, renewable energy, ThinkHost, web hosting
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Some very important people got together to try to give us all a better option, and they just might be able to pull it off. The people behind Revolution Money are Ted Leonsis (Vice-chairman of AOL and owner of Washington Capitals), Steve Case (co-founder of AOL), David Goldman (former vice-chairman of J.P. Morgan), Russell E. Hogg (former President and CEO of Mastercard), David Pottruck (Chairman, Eos Airlines and Former CEO of Charles Schwab), Frank Raines (Former Chairman & CEO of Fannie Mae), Larry Summers (Former Secretary of Treasury and Former President of Harvard University), Jason Hogg (Founder, President and CEO of Revolution Money) and Patrick Graf (Co-Founder and CTO of Revolution Money). That’s an impressive array of people.

The good thing is that Revolution Money is administered by an actual bank (First Bank & Trust in Brookings, South Dakota), and is FDIC-insured, along with your Revolution Money Exchange Account. In addition, unlike PayPal, you can send and receive money to and from other Revolution Money Exchange members with no service charges at all.

The only way that Revolution Money can replace PayPal, however, is for it to get lots of people to sign up. So, to help achieve that, from now until April 15th, everyone who signs up (for free) will automatically get $25 placed into their account. It’s true and it’s real. I tried it. I signed up, and within minutes, $25 was ready and waiting for me.

If you want to be able to use a more secure payment system than PayPal, and you want no charges for doing so, AND YOU WANT $25, all you have to do is click on the button below and go sign up. You will have to give them both your social security number and your bank’s routing and account number, so that your Revolution Money account can be attached to your bank account (just like PayPal does). But don’t worry, it isn’t a scam, and it is safe.

I have a feeling this is going to revolutionize the online payment model.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: actual bank, AOL, bank, bank account, Brookings, CEO, Chairman, Chairman & CEO, Charles Schwab, Co-Founder, Co-Founder and CTO, David Goldman, David Pottruck, Eos Airlines, Fannie Mae, FDIC, First Bank & Trust, Founder, Frank Raines, Harvard University, J.P. Morgan, Jason Hogg, Larry Summers, Mastercard, online payment model, owner, Patrick Graf, payment network, payment system, PayPal, President, President and CEO, revolution money, Revolution Money Exchange, Russell E. Hogg, Secretary of Treasury, Secretary of Treasury and Former President, South Dakota, Steve Case, Ted Leonsis, Vice-chairman, Washington Capitals
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How do I put advertising code in the sidebar in a php file?

in this post.

I’ve emailed Eric and am waiting to hear back from him so I know where to ship everything.

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest, and special thanks to the 26 Week Internet Marketing Plan people for creating it in the first place.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: advertising code, Eric P. Martin, Internet Marketing Plan, Internet Marketing Plan people, php
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