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Fancy giving your blog a nice make-over? For free? Yes, you got it right, there’s no typo erorr. Now you stand a chance to win a free re-design of your blog by reviewing The Thinking Blog which has great graphic design for its blog header as well as very unique and sexy 3D buttons for RSS, Technorati and Del.cio.us . Gosh, I really like those 3D buttons!!

Besides being the run-of-the-mill “review-me-for-link-backs” campagin that is omnipresent in the blogosphere, Ilker Yoldas added value to her review exchange by leveraging on her creative design expertise by offering a free full blog design (worth $2000) for the best review and a free favicon design (worth $20) for the second best review. For the uninitiated who are clueless as to what a Favicon is, click here to read Ilker’s definition of Favicon, why every bloggers need one, and how to create one by yourself. Those reviews which are not selected as first or second will earn a backlink from this PR4 blog. There is no last place, so everyone who post a review is a winner!

I am relatively new to the blogging scence, but even a newbie like myself knows how important a well designed blog is to attract and retain readers. As in meeting somebody for the first time, the first impression is always very important, and the rest depends on your substance. Substance, or quality posts which are diversify in nature, are what The Thinking Blog has plenty to share with its readers.

Ilker created and offered a free re-design to John Chow dot com but her nice gesture was ignored by the dot com mogul. I would give an arm for a free makeover of my blog, and not being an A-list blogger, I’ve to write this review to earn a chance to be selected to win a free re-design. But some big shot A-list blogger actually ignored her free offerings. That is so Evil.

Quality content aside, there is a shortcoming in the organization and style of the blog post that got me confuse. Take for example in her blog post “What do you think? Review Contest“,Ilker was blogging about her contest rules, showing the re-design she created for FreshBlogger and her own blog. That was all well and good, until she veered off track and started mentioning about John Chow, about Wii contest, about promotional pens. The point I wish to make is that Ilker has a habit of going off track giving info or blogging about topics which are unrelated and even irrelevant to the title of the post.

Another example of too much info that are not focus on the post title can be found in another post “Free Design contest and lessons to learn“. These are my personal observations and I’m making all these comments in good faith, giving my 2 cents worth feedback.

I’ve enjoyed reading The Thinking Blog and had so much fun doing this review of the blog. However, one thing which puzzles me is, since Ilker is so well verse in graphic design and makes free favicon for people, why doesn’t this blog have a favicon of its own? In this aspect, had Ilker just talked the talk, but not walked the walk???

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