You will only see these results if you are signed in to your Google+ account. I thinks it’s super cool, and I am sure that many people are going to simply love it and appreciate it.

I mean what’s better than results from people you know and follow?

Watch the Search plus Your World Video

I think that…

Search now is better? (do you like it?)

At MyBlogGuest we have supported various guest blogging contests which encouraged guest authors to submit articles to one specific blog and compete for its popularity in social media (FamousBloggers’ own recent best affiliate product blogging contest is a great example).

Our brand new official contest is a bit different: in it *publishers* take part instead of the writers. Here’s what I mean:

• A blog owner uses our Articles Gallery to grab unique articles for his/her blog;
• Then the blog owner publishes the guest post and shares the link in our official thread inside the forum;
• (Optional but essential for the win) The blog owner helps spread the word: shares the post in social media and gets additional traffic and exposure (which benefits the blog in the first place!)
• In mid February we pick the most popular guest post and the most active user and award him/her with $1000!

Publishers don’t need to do anything extra besides publishing free content! No need to link to sponsors, no need to disclose the are taking part in the contest (unless they want to) – this makes this contest the easiest one you have ever seen!

*Publishers get free content, free exposure and free money (if they win of course) with absolutely no additional responsibilities attached!*

To qualify:

• The blogger needs to be a registered user of MyBlogGuest.com
• The blog needs to be of Google PR 2 (at least).

The contest runs through January, 1 to February, 15 (all the guest posts have to be published within these dates).

Here’s a quick video on how the Articles Gallery works.

Here’s also our official contest press release.

Good luck!

So, let’s get into the point and make this as short as possible, we are about the deliver big cash prizes, and I am sure that no one wants to wait any longer

The Internet Marketing Blog Contest Winners

Here are the winners and prizes:

1. CurationSoft Review: Creating Content Has Never Been Easier, by DiTesco ($1000)
2. Market Samurai Review: Stand On Top Of EVERYTHING When It Comes To SEO, by Jane Sheeba ($500)
3. Should we use Social Media for marketing our Products?, by Sandipan Mukherjee ($250)
4. Take Your Internet Marketing Business to the Next Level in 2012, by Danielle McGaw ($150)
5. How I Got on Ryan Deiss’ Leaderboard AND Won an IPad with a Tiny Email List, by Ana Hoffman ($100)

You can see the blog contest info post here:

Contest Info →

Also we will keep the blog contest results up on our contest page for future reference:

Blog Contests →

Thanks to our Partners

Big thanks to our partners who made the work easier and provided great support:

• Technology partner → BloggersNetwork.net
• Media partner → MyBlogGuest.com

Special Thanks to Our Sponsors

I would love to thank our sponsors who made this contest possible!

• → Search Engine Marketing Company (brickmarketing.com)
• → Best life insurance (lifeinsurancefinder.com)
• → WebHosting Reviews (webhostingdeals.org)
• Make money from → deal of the day offers offers with Deal Zippy
• Fansbridge.com  → How to market on Facebook
• Team Lane → Tri Cities Wa Homes
• AIDY → Movie Reviews
• Resume Writing Services
• Author+ Premium WordPress Plugin → Use coupon code FAMOUS20 for 20% off!

Tools we’ve used to Manage the Blog Contest

Thanks to the CompResult plugin, we could monitor the blog contest progress and bring results together so quick and easy.

If you would like to be informed when we launch the CompResult plugin, just visit the plugin site and leave your email.

Prizes Delivery

All participants should actually contact me right away, don’t forget to include a valid PayPal email id to receive your cash prize.

Thank you all, and Happy New Year!

Here is our two giveaways

• Engagement From Scratch: Two FREE Hard Copies Giveaway
• Wibiya Bar: Two Free Pro Plans

Thanks a lot for and Danny Iny the author of Engagement From Scratch, and manye thanks to Wibiya bar for this amazing giveaway.

Our Winners

Here are our 4 winners:

Engagement From Scratch

• ShelleyD
• Usman

Wibiya bar

• Carole
• Kimberly Gauthier

Congratulations, we will be contacting you soon to get your contact info.

There are quite good giveaways coming, so stay tuned everyone!

The goal of this post is to spot the light on this situation as FamousBloggers.net has been and will remain a place to share our voices through the blogosphere, so nothing really personal against any one who is involved, but I see that this matter worth the discussion, and it won’t pass quietly!

I also share this as a BlogEngage member, in fact I turned to be a business membership holder, this means all my articles goes directly to BE via the RSS once it gets published on the blog, no red traffic lights!

However, being a premium account holder doesn’t mean you have a super power, or you won’t be banned, anyone can be banned if they vote for their friends!  So, please behave and say NO to your friends.

Why BlogEngage delete members’s accounts

What I understand from Brain’s post on how to engage on BlogEngage is that he wants to point members to the right way to engage in the community! That’s super cool, but I see some confusion in the post, mainly about the “right way to engage at BlogEngage” and “relationships”.

The post is clearly pointing to members who vote up for their friend’s submission and not engaging enough with the community!

I agree that this is not good practice, and for the same reason a popular site like Sphinn.com has removed the whole voting system and give the power only to its editorial team to decide which submission should pop on the front page.

Also, this remind me with a very interesting post by Rohn Jay Miller, in that post he asked people to delete their profile from Klout forever! He thinks that Klout dos’t worth it, and probably he is right, I mean who the hell you are to measure social influence and put together some standards. Well, in short… It’s all about Money!

So here are some thoughts, and to be honest, I would suggest removing the voting system from BlogEngage, it just doesn’t work!

There is no right way to engage!

There is no right way to engage, there is only a “successful way to engage“, and “successful way” doesn’t mean “right way”

Every person has her/his own ways to engage, so it’s not cool to force them towards the BlogEngage point of view while still having holes in the system!

Yes, BlogEngage is a great community, but it has a few holes like any other system, these holes got even wider after the auto submission premium memberships has been launched.

I just think that everyone should take it easy when adding  a premium service to a free membership site that is already has members. It’s not about the plan on how to do it, but it’s about how to actually keep it up!

I must point to a big difference between the “right way to engage at BlogEngage” and the “right way to engage”!

The right way to engage at BlogEngage could be the way Brian explained in his post.

But, the right way to engage “in general” in my opinion is away far away from that, it’s not about social bookmarking, it’s not a bout reading an article as well as sharing that article!

In the Back Scenes of Engagement!

We all do s**t, a little bit here and there to get things going, so I am not the perfect member of any community, really!

In fact I don’t care that much whither a friend/follower share my articles or not, I mean this is not enough reason to have a great relationship together or call it engagement, really! Not because she/he is tweeting my stuff to their 129372 followers!

Relationship is way more complicated than sharing stuff, it’s actually about “doing stuff”, even though you member perfect model for engaging at BlogEngage, this could be far away from the ideal model!

I know David for quite good time, thanks to social bookmarking sites like BlogEngage to introduce us to each other, our engagement and relationship is not about a Vote, Facebook like or a Tweet, we do stuff together! Good stuff! Yes, we do what is more than social media sharing! I won’t forget the support David is giving to the FamousBloggers.net blog.

I want this to be clear, no body knows what really happens in the back scenes of engagement! And, many people just don’t know how to engage for real!

Don’t apply your rule to the past!

Setting new rules is fine, but applying the new rules to the past is NOT OK!

I’ve done tons of changes to the FamousBloggers.net guest blogging module and rules, which I think helped in pushing the site up, and by feedback of the community, FB is a quick successful guest blogging site. However, I have big holes in the system, it’s really hard to make it perfect. Many contributes just don’t follow the rules, I send several emails to them, I even join them on chat sometimes before cutting them off!

One of the rules is to remove the author credits from the Bio and the content if they disable or changed their profile picture, I require them to use a real personal picture. This is not for me, but this is for the blog readers, I want everyone to be real, I want everyone to blog without a stupid mask, and I don’t welcome link builders who pretend to be bloggers!

I still remember my poor social bookmarking site that I’ve created couple of years ago, the Making Money Online Social Network, many people used to call the MMO network, this site was getting its first steps toward popularity.

I admit it, I failed! I couldn’t maintain the site for technical issues since it’s a Drupal based social bookmarking site that no one has contributed to the Drigg module I am using for a long time, 2007 to be specific. I thought many times to just sell it and forget about it, maybe someone else will make a good use of it or turn it to a profitable business, but I was always concerned about the old submissions that was made by its members.

I just couldn’t make a decision to delete the whole thing and break all people’s links. So I preferred to just keep it this way for now, till something new comes up!

However, even if I decided to delete it and start over, I will make sure to inform all members, that’s what I think is right before doing a big move. I remember when Alex planned to sell Kolakube.com without informing anyone of its members, it was a sort of tragedy, but fortunately things ended well, and the site has not been sold.

At least you have to send a few several warnings before you touch an account!

Final Thoughts

When a website or a community decides to go pro and charge people for submissions, or have a type of premium membership, they need to be more careful, and think twice before making decisions.

Probably BlogEngage should take its voting system away, it doesn’t play well with the paid memberships!

Let all the “paid” automatic submission pop right away on the front page, please! (why do we have to wait for votes?)

This is the second month since I started my BlogEngage business membership, I hardly see my submission on the front page (probably because I don’t ask for votes), I update this blog with more than one post on daily bases, and the most funny thing is that I don’t blog here alone, there are plenty of contributors who are members of BE writes here on FB, thy don’t even bother to vote or share their own posts!

This is a business, it’s not a game, it’s also not about building a community, people have business to do! They submit entries to social bookmarking sites for the seek of business!

So at least, send a warning before making big decisions that could hurt someone’s business.

Actually, don’t take a decision by yourself! It should be taken by the name of the community!

I like BlogEngage, and I like to be there, but if I can not make a difference in the community, then I don’t want to be there, I don’t want to be there just for being there!

So, don’t just go away, tell me something!

“Our promoted products can help small and medium-sized businesses build their audience on Twitter and better engage with the people they want to reach. As with all of our advertising efforts, we’re starting small, testing carefully and making improvements as we learn what works. We will slowly roll this capability out to more advertisers in the coming weeks and months.” (Source: AdAge)

The platform resembles Facebook’s self-serving platform and Google AdWords, with the end objective to enable advertisers set up their campaigns, independently on having direct contact
with Twitter team.

As reported by Mashable:

“This is an important step in continuing to grow Twitter’s business,” said Twitter rep Matt Graves via email. “Our Promoted Products can help small and medium-sized businesses build their audience on Twitter and better engage with the people they want to reach. As with all of our advertising efforts, we’re starting small, testing carefully and making improvements on as we learn what works. We will slowly roll this capability out to more advertisers in the coming weeks and months.”

So, how profitable is Twitter when it comes to their global ad revenue?

eMarketer estimates that by 2013, 88% of Twitter’s revenue will come from US advertisers, and they could reach $400 millions by the end of the year.

“Since their debut in April 2010, Twitter’s Promoted Products have proven successful in the US,” said eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson. “Marketers have shown solid engagement rates with Twitter advertising—in some cases better than those on Facebook—despite Twitter’s relatively smaller audience.”

How does the Twitter Ad Platform Work?

Sponsors use credit cards to pay for Promoted Tweets and Promoted Products campaigns and bid on the marketplace based on their allocated budget.

With Promoted Tweets, sponsors pay each time someone clicks on, replies to, favorites or retweets their Promoted Tweet.

When it comes to Promoted Products campaigns, advertisers pay when somebody followers their Twitter account.

Other features:

• Unlimited ad campaigns
• Keyword targeting by location (country and state) or group of users (e.g., brand’s followers)

There is no official information on the minimum bid pricing or campaign commitment.

What you think about the new Twitter Ad Platform?

Would you advertise your business or market products on Twitter?

YouTube New Look

Google says:

Ready to get started? Your new YouTube is already shipped and waiting for you at YouTube.com, and like every new toy, we included an (instruction manual) (and video) to help.

The only thing is the instruction manual page is simply do NOT exists, and the link is broken! that page can not be found! (source: The YouTube new look )

Anyways, at least we can watch the video:

What I Like and Hate about Google

What I like about Google is they always unveiled an experimental designs and ask users about their opinions. Based on users feedback, they tweak, enhance, improve their overall designs! (but they never change it or take off the ugly parts of it)..

There is always something wrong!

While Google seems to be listening to its users, nothing really change! (or at least this is how I feel about it)! Most of the times, they are just getting feedback, but nothing really happen!

I understand that part of this because you can not satisfy everyone, but is Google satisfying the majority of its users?

YouTube New Look: Like it or Dislike it?

Many people really hate the Gmail new look, but they can not do anything about it, but what about the YouTube new look?

YouTube decides your new destination of discovering new videos and channels!

Have you discovered the new features yet?

Are you liking it?

Finally, Headway 3.0 is coming to the light tomorrow, the 25th of November 2011, if you don’t have the developer option of Headway Framework, then be sure to upgrade now, why? Because the developer option’s price will increase once Headway 3.0 goes out.

What to expect from Headway 3.0

Watch this video that demonstrates how Headway 3.0 looks like:

You know, I like WordPress Themes Frameworks because it’s flexibility, it’s what I use for work, I need it to develop my client’s projects.

This is why I own the most three popular frameworks in the WP themes market, Thesis, Genesis and Headway, and looking forward to own more great stuff once it comes out! If you develop WordPress websites for your clients, then for sure you know what I mean.

Secure your copy of Headway now!

How Headway 3.0 grid system works

Here is another video that shows how easy is it to use the new grid system to create layouts, you are going to love this!

It’s only a few hours and this deal will end, Headway price will increase, so hurry up, make your mind now and buy it!

Secure your copy of Headway now!

Probably you know that the best time to buy stuff for business is in the Black Friday and Cyber Money deals, during these days many companies release great stuff and give sweet discounts, that’s why it’s highly recommended to buy before these deals ends.

Enjoy!

I remember the blogging deals from the last year, it was super awesome and I bought a few awesome stuff for my blogs. It’s the best days to actually buy blog themes, plugins and other tools for your business blog.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals for Bloggers

We have these offers and discounts so far:

• 25% off the StudioPress for existing customers (use discount code “THANKS“ when you checkout)
• 30% off the ThirstyAffiliates affiliate link management plugin (use code “IAMFAMOUS“)
• 20$ off the Income Blogging Membership course
• And a BIG 50% off the BlogSkin from ThesisAwesome.com (use code “266E“

Make sure to visit the Bloggers Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals page for more awesome stuff and savings!

Do you have a special deal for Bloggers?

Let me know, and I will add it to the Bloggers Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals page that I am promoting.

I am going to promote these offers like crazy!

I know some of you will be pissed off, bored, or mad at me

So, take is easy, and enjoy the Black Friday and Cyber Monday Deals

Feel free to share the awesome stuff you’ve got for your business blog during the sales.

To your success!

Discover, buy and share music – 24/7, from your computer or mobile device. It is Google’s motto. Google Music is an online song streaming service and digital music store with up to 13 million tracks, available to the US public for the moment.

Google Music Signup Process

Browse @ music.google.com with your Google account (e.g. Gmail, YouTube, etc) and jump in. You will need to enter your credit card details for free track download or song purchase.

Google Music Features and Advantages

• Integrates with Android Market to offer personalized recommendations based on users collection. No sync, all music files are online. Automatic file storing. Offline playback
• option.
• Add 20,000 free songs to your library with Music manager. They support more song
• format choices than iTunes or Amazon which only supports MP3s and AAC files
• 320Kbps high quality songs/MP3s
• With Instant Mix, users can create their own playlists
• Google+ integration (share your playlists with friends on the network)
• Artists can create their own “hub” pages (think YouTube for songs!); indie talents will be able to take advantage of the increasing exposure, get their name out and build their tribes

Google already closed deals with major labels and studios, including Universal, Sony and EMI.

Rolling Stones, Coldplay and other popular artists like Shakira and Busta Rhymes plan to offer live concerts, new albums and fresh interviews exclusively for the Android platform – through Google Music.

Google Music Cons

• It requires you have an Android phone running Android version 2.2 Froyo or higher.
• Users say that deleted tunes still persist.
• There is no subscription service available like for example Rhapsody, who offers streaming for a monthly fee.
• Users need to upload songs themselves, which takes time if their library is sizable.

The Question is…

What do you think about Google Music?