CRASH went my computer after hitting the subscribe link on ReviewMe.com

by jessicadoyle on November 30, 2006 · 12 comments

I have chosen to write a paid post on my blog. The reason this post has been written is because I felt inspired to write a story about something that actually happened…

Beware of possible onslaught and creative aftermath of clicking the orange button.Unintended happenings seem to invade my computer at peak times of usage; that is, personal usage. I like to use my computer. I like to have multiple programs open all at once. Two nights ago while on reviewME reading a little more about this fair site, I clicked the RSS icon within my personal dashboard they provide for you. Rather than seeing a standard XML page or feedburner page my eyes met the standard Firefox download popup window. I chose to open with ___ but it didn’t give me an option of programs to choose from in the dropdown menu.

A couple of seconds later everything in usage froze. That all to familiar turning wheel of digital time-keeping began spinning. I moved it around the screen over Firefox. I thought ok, big file, please, change back to my pointer soon. I clicked F9 to choose another program I had open to work in. It didn’t work. I moved down to the dashboard and noticed the DreamWeaver program was opening. WTF. This XML file was opening DreamWeaver. NO. I don’t keep dreamweaver in my dashboard so I knew. I knew. I knew. I tried to force quit. All frozen. Then my laptop decided to begin the F9 process of shrinking all open working windows from all open programs. It shrunk them and they froze, then dissapeared. During the build, yes I say build for the screen flashed bright blue, then a dark grey blue shade from my desktop picture filled the screen. Little light blue boxes began appearing. One. Two, three… I recognized them. They were my working windows. I hadn’t seen the F9 process take so long before. Dayum.

This is the third snap. My screen stayed this way until I held the laptop's ignition down for 3 seconds. Poof.I waited, got impatient and clicked a light blue box. The box imploded into smaller boxes then began rebuilding itself pixel by pixel. I ran to grab the camera. Ha hahha. ha. Becoming obsessed with this reviewME.com XML.RSS.FEED instigator and pissed at Firefox for feeling it needed to launch such a blasted acronymous file instantaniously opening software. I snapped three pictures.

I sat down, looked forward to the screen and prayed to the digital god named Dorrah that I had, indeed, hopefully saved what I was working on. I had, after the shut-down and restart.

Thank you – Dorrah!

This is where the CRASH story began…

  • The initial reviewME Post I read, was David Krug’s positive introduction of reviewME.com. He spoke of reviewME Roy giving away $25,000 to Bloggers. UPDATE – I just checked Roy’s blog. The 25k give-away took less than 48 hours to give away on November 09, 2006. On the 13th reviewME announced another $100,000 to hand to bloggers who review them. I did not know that the initial 25 grand had been given away. As of now, at the time of this posting, there have been no further announcement on the reviewME Blog that this $100,000 has been exhausted. :) :):) I will receive $30 for this post.
  • In my email inbox a few hours later an email from Patrick Gavin of Text Link Ads appeared. It was a pre-approval for posting a review for reviewME. To be honest I thought this was pretty cool.
  • The next day I read DarrenBarefoot’s reviewME post. Informative and humorous. He’ll win $125 for his post. He says:

    Interestingly, my adblocking Firefox extension actually b0rked the site’s home page, as you can see in this screen capture. I assume this is because the left hand ‘Advertisers’ image is inside a div id=”advertisers” tag. Ah, the modern foibles of web design.

  • Dr. Tony Hung writes of having to possibly use the “rel = Nofollow” tag in his second reviewME post, Using ReviewMe to Boost Your Google Juice? Matt Cutts Says “Think Again”. Ok, so I ask you Tony what is and how do I implement this “rel = Nofollow” tag and what exactly, does this mean in human non-programmatic english words.
  • The last and fourth (well fifth because I just read Tony’s second post), is a post written by playwright Andrew Eglinton.

    Your ‘worth’ (i.e. how much money you can make for writing a review) is calculated on a number of indexes including your RSS Feed, your Alexa rank and Technorati rank, so anyone in the Technorati 100 has the potential to make a few hundred bucks on one review. Once your blog has been accepted, you’ll find a straightforward user interface divided between the ‘bloggers’ and the ‘advertisers’.

    • The interface on reviewME was strait-forward but the RSS was not so simple. ;)

    I don’t believe a paid post is such a bad thing. It’s not a good thing either. It just is. I haven’t posted a paid post on my blog until this one. I will not post more unless the topic inspires me to write or create with. ReviewME launched this give away on 09/11/06. It is 30/11/06 today. When inspiration happens as I said in the opening paragraph; I will create.

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    • http://blogosquare.blog.mu Hans

      I also had an account with ReviewMe.com. As long as I’ve got nothing to place like big bloated ads pics, I’m happy with this new service. Kinda cool, isn’t it? You’re placed within the reach of advertisers for a review-your taste, your likes and dislikes of products and services. I wish there were more things like that which would allow us to have money in a *decent* way without torturing our great looking blog.

      *wow* kinda an amusing freeze you had with them…..and lucky you could take the pics…they’re amazing…..blogging’s so cool

    • http://andybeard.eu Andy Beard

      To use rel=”nofollow” you just include it within the link

      I am not sure how code would display on your blog, so I will use square [] brackets instead of angle brackets

      [a href="URL" rel="nofollow"]Link text[/a]

      It should be noted that Google frequently mention that you should use rel=nofollow for links that you don’t want to give a “vote” for, such as spam sites.

      Matt Cutts suggests that they can detect paid posts, but in many ways the financial relationship isn’t affecting what you write about a site. There can be some who doubt this, but it all depends on your relationship and trust with your readership.

      If you review a site, it is relevant to your audience, and you like the service being offered, I think there are very good reasons to use a followable link, even for paid posts.

      If you don’t have a good opinion, but it is neutral, it is a 50/50 choice.

      If the site is totally unrelated, you shouldn’t have reviewed it

      If the site is junk, use nofollow or don’t write about it. To hell with whether you still get paid for the review or not.

      Most blogs by default use rel=”nofollow” for comments and trackbacks. Mine doesn’t because I want to encourage people to comment and join in my “community” For wordpress blogs there are plugins such as dofollow to remove the nofollow tag.

    • http://jessicadoyle.ca Jessica Doyle

      Hans -… was a pretty interesting freeze. :) I understand the whole money thing.

      Andy – thank you for stopping by to expalin rel-nofollow. But I still no-follow, and am a little perplexed at what has happened over the past 24 hours. My Google PageRank dropped from PR5 to PR1. The only thing I can think of is that I wrote this post. :( This makes me sad that this has happened. I won’t be adjusting any code in the rel-nofollow area. Never did and will leave it, as is, on my site.

      I really need to listen to crashes and the like. They are omens or forshadowings of things to come.

      If google is reading this – I am honestly not trying to cheat my PR. I am an artist creating online who is learning basic programming to better enable myself at art creation and the sharing of.

    • http://andybeard.eu Andy Beard

      There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with your pagerank on the front page.

      There is nothing wrong with using nofollow for links you don’t want to attribute pagerank.

      This blog actually has better SEO than 95% of blogs because you don’t have a sidebar full of pagerank leaks.

      There are some things you could do to improve the pagerank weighting of your content. This isn’t manipulative, just a little smarter.

      Make your navigation links at the top of each page nofollow, other than Archives.
      # Home
      # About
      # Archives
      # Links

      Instead of using “home” use JessicaDoyle, or maybe a primary keyword so for instance I use “Andy Beard – Niche Marketing” for my home link from internal pages.

      So now the only global link from your site goes to your archive page.

      In your archive page, you should then include links to about & links

      You would also expand the archive page to have links to every one of your previous posts.
      This would effectively distribute your site PR evenly between all your pages.

      The biggest leaks I see on most blogs are blogrolls and social bookmarking buttons.

      Now on my blog I have to do things slightly different, because I have followable links for comments and trackbacks. Lots of leaks. So what I do is massively increase the number of internal links on each page
      Whilst this might not seem ideal, it does spread the pagerank around a lot to my older content, thus the comment links from people posting will actually have a lot more benefit for them than if I wasn’t SEO aware.

    • http://amifamousnow.com franky

      Jessica, your PR still is 5 on your home page. ;-)
      And honestly, who cares about a PR on a personal blog? I want regulars, and not people trying out all different queries with famous to find me and go again because there is no pu$$y at my site, or the jerking off that brought them to my blog is not what they had hoped to find. Oh wait a sec, I once called that smart SEO (were are categories, now tags). :D

    • http://jessicadoyle.ca Jessica Doyle

      Andy – thank you for your honest input and opinion. I have read your suggestions a few times. Will read them again for reading the how-to-do and then the implementing of the how-to-do can get confusing at times. I will consider your suggestions honestly. :) It’s always nice to learn of how other bloggers do things to achieve what they want.

    • http://jessicadoyle.ca Jessica Doyle

      Franky ah? I do take page rank into consideration. I have met many people through search engine referrals alone who remain silent, that is, they do not comment publicly on this site. They do however email me questions and ask for advice not unlike I do sometimes. I value both my silent readers and commenters equally.

      And if I can answer a readers questions I do so to the best of my ability via email, a post or a comment. I’m not an expert. I just tell them my experience.

      As far as SEO most people happen here because they are looking for art, local stories, writing and comfort perhaps from the disease of addiction and mental health issues or are looking for help to find treatment. It can get pretty lonely when no one understands.

      As far as pu$$y and jerking off well, to be honest, that happens at any site on the internet, unless it is private, who mentions sex or the like within their content. Maybe when they end up here, after they have finished their personal thang they’ll maybe come back and do some reading.

      After all I do have an erotica category ;)

    • http://amifamousnow.com franky

      He!
      Pu$$y and jerking off are two tags at my blog and they generate most SE traffic, but I was aware of that when I implemented those. I also have many years of SEO behind me and actually do care about SEO at my blog, but only minimally.
      I wouldn’t be happy if my PR dropped to say 1, but I really don’t bother about doing my best to improve it from 5 to 6, which after all isn’t that hard.

      If you care a little about SEO, grab yourself Cutline, and above all read the documentation, turn of the rich visual editor in WP and use the differernt title tags that Chris Pearson has integrated in it.
      The theme surely has a learning curve if you like SEO, but therefore the optimization base is rock solid and Chris has implemented lots of great features such as pull quotes.
      I think Cutline is not only a great theme for people blogging about marketing, but options such as the many already integrated title tags and pull quotes can surely bring a little bonus for artistic writers as well. ;-)

      Above all, the way Cutline is build visually there are many options to personalize it as well and make look like any random theme, just keep the base of the theme.

    • http://jessicadoyle.ca Jessica Doyle

      franky – hi, I headed over to check out cutline. It has been mentioned to me to have a look at, at other times. It seems to be a great theme. I will be staying with Tarski right now. I wish I could meld tarski, blogtxt and cutline together. :) someday…

      SEO is faily new to me. I had honestly not given it any thought until recently when I began looking at my stats and what people were coming here for. Needless to say I won’t be changing my writing style to suit others searches. Although I have considered answering some of the more common questions people type in a search box and they end up here… with only a poem or vague resemblance to the question they really wanted answered.

      Most common question I get – How many meters make a mile and also the search is hot for female hysteria here on jessicadoyle.ca LOL.

      I never actually answered how many meters make a mile in that post. And the post entitled Female Hysteria – aids that every woman appreciates is a pretty good read.

    • http://makeitgreat.typepad.com Phil Gerbyshak

      Quite a story you shared here. Glad you got paid a bit for your pain. That would have definitely freak me out!

    • http://jessicadoyle.ca Jessica Doyle

      Phil – yeah, it was kind of odd that it all happened. Maybe my computer was in need of a restart befor ehand. Who knows… I’m glad though it did indeed trun on again.

      Thanks for stopping by.

      Cheers!

    • http://range.wordpress.com range

      Well, I tried this, didn’t really follow through. I don’t know really, I think that the money is in associations and sponsors, though I don’t plan on doing this anytime soon.

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