I’m trying to find anyone who has actually gotten anything free from a site like this:

For this particular offer, it appears that if I refer 5 people to this site, and each of them completes an offer or a combination of offers that meet the requirements to earn credits, then I get a free iPod Nano.

I looked through the offers and if this is in fact correct, if I refer 5 people and they each sign up for a 30 day free trial of AOL…they receive 10 free downloads from iTunes, credit toward their own "free" iPod and I would get an iPod Nano.

It sounds too good to be true…everyone who has 5 friends could get a free iPod?  If you have ever received anything from this type of offer, or if you’ve had a bad experience, will you please let me know? 

Bueller….Bueller….anyone….anyone?

HostGator

I know that many people use the free web site/blog hosting services that are available. Although that is great for small personal sites/blogs, if you are trying to get a regular following and/or expect to eventually get a lot of traffic on your blog, then paid professional hosting is the way to go. It really is not an expensive endeavor to use a professional web host, in fact if you have friends with blogs you can even split the cost of hosting.

I use HostGator.com, and get Unlimited Domain Hosting Only $9.95 a Month. The great thing is that I can use my server space for as many web sites/blogs as I have room for…and the space alottment from HostGator is very generous! 

I am currently hosting my blog and the blog of a friend, and haven’t even begun to come close to using the limits for my $9.95 per month plan. What’s even better is that with HostGator hosting they provide an application called "Fantastico" which allows you to install Wordpress and other cool blogs and/or applications simply by clicking a button.

Of course to use a paid hosting service you will need your own domain name, but again that will only help you when publicizing your web site or blog. An expensive domain seller is GoDaddy.com, but there are several others out there as well.

Once you see all of the extras available with Fantastico (blogs, photo galleries. FAQ, Help Desks, etc…) how quickly the servers deliver your content, how reliable their servers are (99.9% guaranteed uptime, can your free hosting deliver that?) and how blazing fast their customer support is if you have any questions, you’ll be encouraging every blogger you know to take the next step and use a professional hosting service.

iPowerWeb

For another option, check out iPowerWeb, here’s a special they’re running now:  Introducing $7.95 Hosting, Free Setup and $75 Marketing Rebate

With iPowerWeb, they provide a lot of marketing including $30 in free Google AdWords, you can host up to six different domain names and if you pay for a year of hosting in advance you get a free domain name…quite a good deal! Although I don’t host my blog with iPowerWeb, I have used them for clients and have never run into any problems at all with their service.

HostGator Reseller Program

The main reason I went with HostGator is because they offered unlimited domains with each package and they offer a great reseller program as well. Their reseller packages start at $24 per month, and allow unlimited domains with it as well.  If you are a reseller, I highly recommend this…it’s a hard offer to beat!

I’m testing the Performancing plug-in for Firefox. It allows me to quickly post to my blog right from my browser.  I really like it!  I think the  only thing I miss is the ability to be able to quickly input a link to something on Amazon.com, which I don’t do with every post anyway.

I think this plug-in could lead to some random stuff being posted, but who’s to say that is bad?

I recently read about BlogMad and thought I’d check into it to see exactly what it was. Last night I signed up and began exploring.

(Note: It is absolutely free to join BlogMad. I did include my referral id in the links in this article, since referrals are one way this network grows.  If you would like to learn more but not use my referral link, click here)

The general premise of BlogMad is a blogging community which helps promote blogs via the payment of "credits". You can earn credits by surfing other blogs within the BlogMad network or by playing games. You also earn credits by referring other bloggers to BlogMad. These credits are then used to "pay" to have visitors sent to your blog.

When you log into BlogMad and begin surfing a bar displays along the bottom of the screen. This bar has a countdown of 20 seconds, the minimum amount of time you can spend on a blog and still receive your credit for visiting it. Once the timer has finished counting down, you then have to click on a number from within a list of numbers that matches a number randomly generated once the counter reaches zero. Once you click on the correct number you are awarded one credit.

I like the general idea, and the whole operation is still considered to be in the beta phase of development, so I hope it will only improve.

The things I liked about BlogMad:

• Finding blogs that I may not have found by just browsing the net
• Being able to select my interest categories for blogs I’d like to see. (This is definitely something that could use improvement though, since I often came across blogs that were mis-categorized)
• The ability to easily earn credits
• The option to pay for banners to advertise my blog
• The ability to block sites from my blog viewing rotation, although the method needs improvment.

The things I think could use some improvement:

• I’d like the ability to block a blog from within the bar that displays while browsing. Right now the blocking process is very time-consuming and you have to do it from within the control panel.
• I’d like the categories to be less broad, more descriptive.

Overall, I’m having a great time surfing blogs from all over the world. It’s a nice bonus to earn credits that allow me to share my blog with others.

If you have a blog, and especially if you are trying to get more traffic to your blog, I highly recommend checking out BlogMad!