OCIA.net has teamed up with one of our sponsors, CoolIT Systems to bring everyone another great contest! This month, we will be giving one lucky winner a prize package featuring three of CoolIT’s best-selling accessories as well as $50.00 in COLD HARD CASH!

USB Beverage Chiller

RAM Fan

PCI Cooling Booster

This contest is all about expanding the OCIA.net Forum by recruiting new members. Simply ask your friends and family to join the OCIA.net Forum and post a reply to the Contest Thread telling everyone who recruited them!

This is the perfect type of contest where you could use your blog or website and leverage your traffic to help you win! One forum member is already doing this! If he wins, he plans to take the prizes back to his forum and hold another contest - great idea!

I look forward to seeing some of my blogging buddies over in the forum real soon. Good luck everyone!

Fellow blogger and tech site owner Bob Buskirk was the very first person to receive an OCIA.net t-shirt. Well actually, I received the first production sample but they sent me a size that was too small, so I sent it over to Bob. Bob talked to his girlfriend Ashley and she was nice enough to pose for some pictures.

Thanks again to Bob and Ashley for the pics. Don’t forget, I am still running my t-shirt promotion! If you purchase a shirt, take a picture of yourself wearing it and post it on your blog, I will give you a FREE link back and also send you $5 via Paypal to help cover the expenses (shirts are only $12.99 each)! So, you get a cool t-shirt and a free link back all for just $7.99 !

I have been trying to get the #1 result on Google for several months now, and just noticed yesterday that I am FINALLY #1! My name isn’t all that unique, so it took me longer than it would most to reach this spot. Either way, I’m there now, so it’s time to celebrate!

Fellow blogger Derek Semmler tipped me off on a new website earlier today called Sphinn. Sphinn is the latest in a slew of Digg-like websites which allow members to submit news articles which are then voted on by other members. Articles that receive a lot of votes, or Sphinns, are deemed “Hot” and are sent to the front page for all visitors to see. The result of your efforts? Traffic, of course!

While Sphinn is still relatively new and won’t bring you the kind of traffic that Digg will, it does have one big thing going for it: targeted traffic. If you are a blogger, SEO expert, affiliate marketer, etc., you will no doubt find many useful articles at Sphinn. The reverse is also true: articles that you submit are more likely to be accepted with open arms.

As we all know, Digg users are, well, a “special” group of folks

Did you get in on today’s DealDotCom.com Offer? If not, too bad, because the product is completely sold out!

Today’s deal was for WordPress Affiliate Pro, a great WordPress tool that lets you turn any word into an affiliate link on your WP blog.

Keep a keen eye on tomorrow’s Deal Of The Day. New deals are posted at midnight and remain live until they are sold out.

If you are not a member of DealDotCom.com yet, I would encourage you to go ahead and register. These guys offer incredible deals on a daily basis and also provide one of the best affiliate marketing programs on the net. Click here to head over and sign up now!

DealDotCom.com opened its virtual doors today by offering the very first product for sale! The product, EasyMemberPro, is billed as an excellent way to start up your very own membership based website without having to write all of the PHP / HTML code - sounds very useful. The product comes with unlimited licenses, which will allow you to use this software as many times as you like.

DealDotCom.com is offering EasyMemberPro at a full 50% discount! The product originally sells for $297 via their website, but is up for grabs at only $148.50 - not bad at all!

If EasyMemberPro isn’t for you, have no fear, as their will be a brand new product available for purchase tomorrow at an incredibly low price.

If you are not a member of DealDotCom.com yet, I would encourage you to go ahead and register. These guys offer incredible deals on a daily basis and also provide one of the best affiliate marketing programs on the net. Click here to head over and sign up now!

When I started writing product reviews seven years ago, I used my online screen name in the by-line. Looking back, I probably couldn’t have picked a worse name if I tried. My screen name is “playafly187″, which is based on a local Memphis rapper named Playa Fly. I was big into rap music back then (and still am to a certain degree), hence the name selection. I added 187 to the end, which is the police code for homicide. Great name choice, eh? I’m in no way a “player”, I can’t “fly” and last I checked, I have never killed anyone!

I used this screen name exclusively for several years, and only started using my real name in the by-line within the past year.

If you want to be taken seriously as a blogger (or a writer in general), it is imperative that you use your real name. Using your real name gives you instant credibility and shows that you are proud of your work. Many screen names that I have seen (mine included) tend to give a negative impression about you and the type of person you really are.

It’s a miracle that I was ever able to get any sponsors to donate review items for my site when using my screen name in e-mails. I have no doubt that I could have secured a ton more sponsors had I only used my real name when initializing contact with a potential sponsor.

Keep this in mind the next time you make a blog post or publish any other written material online.

BlogRush is a great new program that I just learned about that will greatly help drive traffic to your blog… absolutely free!

So, how does it work? Well, I could spend about an hour or more writing out exactly how it all works… or you could just watch the BlogRush video below which describes everything you need to know.

Their video is put together very well, and if it doesn’t sell you on the program, then, well, you must already get more than enough traffic to your blog

Click here to join BlogRush today!

I usually don’t sign up for these affiliate programs (actually, this is my first ever), but a buddy of mine gave me the heads-up about this brand new program (so new that it hasn’t even launched yet!) called DealDotCom.com. The program sounded so enticing that I decided to give it a whirl, and here’s why.

DealDotCom.com is THE new place online to find any and all internet marketing products. Looking to get your business off the ground and reach a large audience in a hurry? This is for you. Do you have internet marketing products (e-books, SEO guides, etc.) that you would like to sell to this same audience? Keep reading.

DealDotCom.com is different from every other site in that it offers its members deep discounts on the products it sells. They even take things one step further and only offer one product at a time. What, only ONE product at a time?!

“What, our item of the day isn’t good enough for you? That’s right, we only sell one item per day. That means you better get your grubby little hands on it before it sells out. How many are left? We don’t tell you that either because that would spoil all the fun for you, and more importantly, for us. If you don’t like or want the product of the day, check back tomorrow for something that might appeal to your fancy schmancy tastes.”

Talk about serious targeting for your products! Think of eBay, but with only a single auction targeted to your specific audience. It doesn’t get any better than that.

But, you don’t sell any products, you say? No worries! This is where the affiliate program comes in.

DealDotCom.com has one of the best affiliate programs in the business.

“Whenever you refer someone to DealDotCom via your handy-dandy affiliate link, you get paid 35% of DealDotCom’s profit for every item that they buy. If someone you referred to DealDotCom refers someone else, you get paid 15% of DealDotCom’s profit every time they buy something for the rest of your life. This is a big commitment, so we suggest you take it very seriously.”

This has the potential to earn you some very serious, free cash if you can manage to sign up a few of your friends. Your friends tell their friends, etc. and you’re off to the races!

Sign up for DealDotCom.com today! It is free to join, and you will be getting the jump on everyone else. The main site doesn’t go live until the 18th, which gives you some precious time to help spread the word about DealDotCom.com and obtain some affiliates of your own.

Good luck; this is going to be big!

Nearly everywhere you turn, girls are more successful at what they do online, despite the fact that guys outnumber girls by a large margin. Rubbish, you say? Let me prove it.

There are countless examples of this online, in nearly every segment of the web, but stick with me as I take a look at a few that you might be more familiar with.

Let’s say I am a girl… a very attractive girl, and I have a Myspace page. I post a lot of “revealing” type pictures of myself on my profile and my photo albums. It wouldn’t be uncommon of me to get 50-100 new friend requests a day. After a while, I would have built up a friends list of several thousand people. Great, I have a ton of “friends”… so what?

Having a huge friends list gives you direct access to each and every one of these people… that type of advertising is priceless! I could set up a 3rd party website (related to your niche audience), throw some ads on it, then make a bulletin post on Myspace, asking all of my friends to go check out the site. If your site is useful, word will spread and you’re off to the races. A perfect example of this is 17-year-old Ashely Qualls, who started a Myspace Graphics website, threw some ads up on it and is currently bringing in $70,000 per month. Yes, it’s really that easy.

This type of “marketing” isn’t limited to Myspace… or even to girls! Another perfect example is a story that I read over at John Chow’s blog about someone trying to make money from Facebook. The “person” in question claims to be a 19 year old girl who got caught drunk by her parents. The story goes on to say that her dad is going to kick her out… BUT WAIT!! She struck up a deal with her parents, that if she could create a Facebook group and get 1 million other teens to join and admit they have drank under age, she would be allowed to stay.

Sounds like just another cheesy Facebook group, right? Wrong! Here’s the catch: an Ebay auction went live yesterday for a chance to advertise your site/business/company on the group’s “Contact Me” section… genius! I’m about 99% sure this whole story is a total hoax, with intentions of simply making a lot of money by selling this “ad spot” on the Facebook group. As of writing, the current bid is up to $50.34. It wouldn’t surprise me to see this sell for several thousand dollars. Not bad for making a quick Facebook group, throwing together a sappy story and adding a picture of an attractive girl. (UPDATE: It looks like Facebook may have shut down this group!)

We can take this same strategy and apply it to another online social scene, lifecasting. What is lifecasting? This term is very easily defined as broadcasting your daily life via the web in real time, using a webcam and a computer (laptops are preferred, so you can “go mobile”). Sites such as justin.tv and ustream.tv allow members to broadcast live. Both sites are free to join but you must be ‘accepted’ to justin.tv, whereas anyone can join ustream.tv and start broadcasting right away. I encourage you to check out both of those sites… for a day, for a week, whatever. What you will find is the same thing I found: girls dominate. Sure, there may be more guys broadcasting, but that is not important. Look at the “current viewers” - odds are, girls will have more viewers than guys at any given time.

So, how can you earn money from lifecasting? Well, you could take the Myspace approach; set up an outside website with advertising, then simply drive traffic to it. Include links to your site(s) on your lifecast homepage. Or, you can do what many others are already doing: simply ask for money! Yes, as crazy as it sounds, asking for donations via lifecasts actually works. Don’t believe me? Ashley recently had a viewer donate $500 to help her “go mobile” and her sister Amber had a user donate $250. This is FREE MONEY folks… it doesn’t get any easier than that. Would someone donate that kind of money to me, a below-average looking guy? HA!

The same can even be done with blogging. Blogs in general tend to do better with females behind the keyboard… granted they follow the same set of criteria that a guy would use to drive traffic (content, interaction with readers, etc.). Once you have a large reader base, you can throw some ads on your site, register for Review Me, sell some private ad spots, etc. and once again, let the money roll in. There is huge money to be had in blogging!

Even subtle attempts can carry you a long way. Take MyBlogLog… this popular blogging social networking tool allows you to see who has recently visited your blog by showing a small avatar, so you can put a face with your reader. Many people also use this to drive traffic to their own blogs. I have seen time and time again where a blogger (usually male) will use an avatar of an attractive girl, in hopes of luring other bloggers to their site. Does it work? You bet it does. Score for free traffic!

Ok, so girls have a better chance of “success” online, but why? Well, that’s really simple. Most guys online (and when I say guys online, I mean people who spend more time online than they do in “real world” social settings) have nothing better to do. Perhaps they are social outcasts, you know, the kind who couldn’t get a date if their life depended on it. That is why they turn to the internet. On the web, you can be anyone, say anything or do anything… stuff that you may not have the guts to do in “real life”.

And naturally, being a guy, they are attracted to girls. Online guys like the attention that they may get from online girls. They feel a connection with these web personalities, and face it, if a girl has never given you the time of day before… well, you’re going to be drawn in to this. If the online girl (or guy pretending to be a girl) is aware of this, they can play into this role and further lure the guy in. Hook, line and sinker!

Bottom line: sex sells… always has, always will. Do you think it’s wrong or unfair of girls that use this to their advantage? What about guys who set up fake profiles, pretending to be girls, with the hopes of luring in unsuspecting guys and at the end of the day, make a quick buck?