Because I don’t Have enough iPods

Home > News > Because I don’t Have enough iPods

Because I don’t Have enough iPods

March 2nd, 2007

I’m a self-professed Apple Whore, but with only 1 ipod, I don’t feel that I can proudly stake that claim until I get one more. So when Mark Shead of Productive Strategies announced that he’s going to be giving away one of those Brand New iPod Shuffles, I thought I’d take 15 minutes out of my day and enter his contest.

As some of you may have noticed, Mark has pretty much taken John Chow’s Link Baiting Idea to a different level (not the next, just different) by giving out a prize instead of the ever so valuable backlink. I won’t be surprised if you see a lot of new blogs start to use this method of marketing (you might even see it here if I can get some funds) to gain a boost in traffic and possibly feed subscriber.

First Glance
My first impression of Productive Strategies wasn’t that great as I’m not a big fan of the color scheme or the “Read More” option on each post. The red bars that border different sections of the template make me naturally think “stop” and I don’t think that’s a word that any blogger ever wants any of his readers thinking. I know the Read More option can increase page views and directly affect Mark’s Alexa ranking, but still . . I don’t think it’s worth sacrificing your long term goals of increasing page views, if that is in fact his goal. Another thing that I noticed is that the MetaTitle of the site is Productive Strategies, but the domain name of the site is Productivity501. As a result, I went to Technorati to do more research and I naturally typed in “productivestrategies.com.” This is nit-picking, but if Mark can do a better job of branding his site, he should see a nice bump up in Return Visitors.

Content
Mark started using the blog in 2005 to share his ideas on time management and efficient productivity. The titles of his posts are the greatest, so if he wants to continue with his “Read More” options, I would suggest putting more time into creating Teaser Titles can stir curiousity.

Monetization
As for monetizing his site, I’m in no position to say what he’s doing right or wrong, but if I was to compare it to John Chow’s site, I would say that Mark could do a much better job by diversifying his ad revenue sources. With a Page Ranking of 5 and an Alexa Ranking under 500k, Productivity501.com could sign up with Text Link Ads, IntelliTXT and most likely qualify for FeedBurners Advertiser Network. Considering Mark just dropped at least 80 bucks for this promotion and 125 bucks for John Chow to review the site, I really hope Mark has a way to make back his money.

Hopefully Mark can take something away from this review and even if I don’t win the iPod, this was a good exercise for me to take a review another blog. Good Luck Mark and Keep up the great work!