Betshopboy.net

Today is a special day, one that comes by once every four years. It’s the leap day in a leap year and something special happened to me. I received a surprise in my mail box today and here it is:

I got a mail from Google Adsense support. To people in United States, receiving mail from Google may be a routine but for someone outside the U.S. like me in the far east, receiving it was indeed something special.

In addition, I discovered Betshopboy.net is now a PageRank 4 blog! What a timely discovery. During the last PR update where many A-list blogs got bitch slapped, this blog was only 3 months old and was either penalized (for unknown reason) or simply too young to be awarded any rank, as my PR then was N/A.

Today, checking with PR Checker, it shows a PR4!

A serial entrepreneur is at large and his name is Chris Walker, who used his Internet Business blog - Business Blogger – as his mouthpiece to share his 2 passions, business and marketing, with his readers.

To promote the launch of his new business directory website, aptly named Business+Directory, Chris is running a massive blog contest giving away $500 Cash and a second prize of a BFG NVIDIA graphics card that comes with a HDTV adapter and HDCP capability for high definition video. Those awesome prizes are just too good to be missed.

In its February promotion, Business+Directory will offer free links submission and free reviews for the entire month. There is a small catch tied to this contest though, and for offering such awesome prizes, I think it is a reasonable condition. The competition requires a minimum of 50 entrants to ensure that the $500 is paid out and this requirement was easily exceeded at about halfway mark till its closing date. This goes to show that using blog contest with great prizes is very effective to gain publicity and exposure for a newly launched site.

To enter the contest, just follow 3 easy rules in order to be qualified for the prizes. A lucky winner will be chosen by randomizer software for the Grand Prize of $500 Cash paid via PayPal. The runner up, also chosen via randomizer, will take home a brand new BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT OC 512MB PCIe with ThermoIntelligence Graphics Card (shipped via USPS).

This contest runs till the end of February and winners will be announced in early March. Good luck everyone!

We won! We won! We won the bid!!

Singapore was picked over Moscow to host the first ever Summer Youth Olympic Games in 2010!

This is all very exciting and we are going to welcome the world to our small but vibrant city, a city of possibilities!

Full story here.

It has been a while since I entered in a contest on this blog and I recently came across this not-to-be-miss contest with a tantalizing grand prize of an Archos 504 portable media player with 40GB of memory to store all your favorite videos.

This great contest is hosted by Domprofesor’s blog who professed to be a marketing and monetization artist who help its readers make money online.

Besides the grand prize of an Archos media player, there’s also a full site review and a blogroll link to be won too. There are various ways to earn entries and the more points you have the more chances you get at the prizes. Winners will be randomly drawn. Contest will be ending on February 29 and winners will be announced on March 2.

Time always slip us by when we are having fun and Betshopboy.net will be 6 months in the making come next Sunday. Six months of blogging isn’t anything to crow about especially since I haven’t won any major blogging award, nor have I achieved world wide recognition or become a mover or shaker in the blogosphere. After six months of blogging, I’m still me - just me.

This week, I’m going to pay tribute to a few of my favorite blogs which have reached the one year mark or achieved other significant milestone which they’ve set out to achieve.

• My buddy over at Brown Thoughts just celebrated the blog’s first anniversary on 7 Feb. Happy Birthday Brown Thoughts, congrats Baron! Brown Thoughts is a tech blog and you can find news, resources, tips and tricks, games and pretty much anything related to technology and the Internet. Many of my Monday blues were overcame with the help of the weekly Time Waster post found on the blog. If you are new to Brown Thoughts and was wondering what I was talking about, head over this instance (even better, subscribe to the RSS feed) and discover a digital world of fun, informative news, and a friendly geeky community!

• Another favorite blog of mine which will turn one this week is MeAndMyDrum. Happy Birthday MAMD and congrats to Mark! In this blog, you can find topics ranging from blogging tips, software reviews, discussion on current events and many more. Besides MAMD, Mark also writes on a number of other popular blogs which cemented his online credibility and popularity. To celebrate MAMD first anniversary, Mark is running a Birthday contest where a lucky dude stand to win 1000 EntreCard credits and a review of their blog on MAMD. That is a indeed a valuable prize!

• Last but not least, I want to give my heartiest congrats to Monika over at The Writer Manifesto who has achieved the ultimate dream many of us blogger aspire to be. In a short time of 7 months, Monika has reached her target of earning a full time monthly income as a freelance writer and pro-blogger! Through sheer hard work, gumption and her talent for writing, she managed to achieve Pro-Blogger status way ahead of her targeted date, how cool is that? Unsurprising, to say the least. Read about the trials and jubilations in her amazing journey to achieving Pro-Blogger status through freelance writing.

The above 3 amazingly talented bloggers are good role models for all of us, they have set high standards for themselves, and achieved success in their own field. Their high blog rankings and considerable readership are a confirmation of such totally deserved accolades.