Power Maxx Blog

Hey everyone! As you might know, I recently launched the next evolution in social networking, OnePoke.com.  We are currently in the public beta phase, and are working on the project daily to add more new features and sites to the lineup before the full public launch at the end of February.

We are currently in the process of completing the Myspace, Hi5, Orkut and Linked In feeds to add to the social networking section of the site.  We will also be including a centralized status updates system for the public launch date.

So far we’ve got over 40 users signed up and testing the site which is great, but the more the better, so if you haven’t already, sign up and help us make the site better through your comments and critiques!

Our first official writeup outside of this blog goes up tomorrow on the Linkers Blog, and we’re very excited that the blog owner, Donny, gave us the opportunity for some extra publicity off of his site.  We won’t forget this by any means.  I will post a link to the article itself tomorrow as well!!

We’ve got a lot more exciting additions coming, so stay tuned for more great things from OnePoke.com.

So the time has come, and the referral contest is over! Now to announce the winners! Here is the screen shot from my google analytics for the blog - click on it to view the full sized results:

There was a 3 way tie for 3rd, so the winner was determined by using the highest % of new visitors referred.

First place $100: Fasblog.com

Second place $50: Domainmarvelous.com

Third place $25: Averagegal.com

Fourth place - Blog Review: Imjustsharing.com

Fifth place - Blog Review: Jwrdmedia.com

So for those that won some cash, please contact me to claim your prizes!!  The blog reviews don’t need to be claimed, and I will be putting them up one next week, and one the week after.

Thanks to everyone for participating - I really hoped for better results, but hey what can you do!!

Next months contest will be another blog commenting contest - this was a great success in my first month, so we’re going to give it another go here in February.  In the mean time don’t forget to check out OnePoke.com, and sign up if you haven’t already done so.  Find out why it is the future of social networking.

So for months, I’ve been reading about twitter, toying with the idea of joining, reading how great it is, and whatever.

One day, I forget who wrote it, but they said that it is a great marketing tool - so I did some more research. Someone else on my blog mentioned that I should register the OnePoke twitter account before someone else did. This made sense, so with those two factors in mind, I came to the conclusion that I needed to join twitter.

With that said, you can follow me at http://twitter.com/OnePoke. I will certainly follow back each and every person that follows me, as it seems to be the popular thing to do!!

I will be using the twitter account to post various updates regarding OnePoke.com and what not.

I would also like to add, that tonight will make the official public beta launch of OnePoke.com. I will be posting an official article tomorrow with the details of how you can access the site in the beta stage.

Yesterday was supposed to be the launch date, but we didn’t quite finish the email portion, as it was giving us some trouble. On top of the other features that I have previously mentioned, there are a couple of surprise additions that I managed to include yesterday, that I think anyone in the blogosphere will really appreciate!

I will also reveal those bonus items tomorrow!! ‘Till then, follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/OnePoke so that I can follow you back!! I’m still getting the hang of the whole system - but I promise, I will follow you back!! Feel free to msg me if I haven’t done so!

So the time has come again for my weekly update on OnePoke.com!!  I’ve got some great news, we’re on the brink of opening it up for a public beta!! The only thing left to do before we open it up for public testing is to setup the email account access in the database, which should be done later today.

Other than that, we’ve got all of the loading effects etc done, all the parts of the site are done, including account setup pages - but we do still need to finish the remainder of the 4 social networking sites that we’re going to launch with.

Those will be finished and added during the beta testing stage though.  We’re beta launching with only facebook support in terms of social networking sites.  There are still a couple of glitches we need to iron out, but that’s the point of the beta right??

I hope to be able to open it up officially for public beta either today or tomorrow, so I’ll keep you guys posted as to that! 

I categorized that under “make money online” only because I don’t have a category called how to NOT make money online!  Do you guys ever receive those emails that say “Hope to do business with you” in the title?

They’re always some sort of spam - I’ve never received something like this that WASN’T spam in all honesty!! I ask myself, who actually responds to these or goes to the links that they provide?  Do you?? I know I don’t.

If anything, I think this type of email reduces the credibility of a company or website, especially if it is written in poor english.  As soon as I see that the email is trash, I just hit delete.

This is a bit of a rambling, as I get at least 10 of these bloody emails a day.  Sometimes I get excited thinking I’m going to be developing a new business connection, only to be disappointed yet again.

This post is dedicated to you, “Hope to do business with you” man.  I, on the contrary, do NOT hope to do business with you!!

So I’m curious - do you guys receive these types of emails? If not, what kind of stuff manages to sneak through YOUR spam filter???

Next in the highly anticipated “How to Sell on Ebay” series, comes an article on pricing your items.

After you’ve setup an account, picked a product, and figured out the feedback system - I bet you wanna make some money!!

Before you jump to conclusions, and think you can just start posting your listings with a small markup, think again. Pricing an item is much more difficult than you think, as you have to keep in mind a LARGE number of things.

eBay Fees

The first and foremost of all the things to keep in mind, are the fees that eBay charges you to sell on their site. You might think, pfft, it can’t be that much to sell on eBay can it? Well just ask yourself where the millions of dollars that the company makes per year come from. That’s right - you.

Fees vary around the board, with a listing fee, and a final value fee. I’ve taken the liberty of copying the auction listing fees chart here for you. There are other classes of listings whose fees are much higher, such as fixed price, but here’s the basics for you.
Click here to read more…

Not much to say here since the last update - referrals are not as big as I would expect them to be, and I still will be going with a commentating contest for the month of February.  I will keep the leaderboard hush hush this time around, so as to give everyone more incentive to keep the referrals coming!!

Short post today, but I’m burnt out from working on OnePoke.com hehehe!

More to come tomorrow!

Hey everyone - it’s time for my weekly OnePoke.com update!!

Good news and bad news.  Bad news, is that it’s still not done.  Good news is that it’s ALMOST done!!

Since I’ve managed to learn the processes behind building the functionality of the site, I have been able to put in a good amount of time in terms of coding support for the various sites.

Definitely not easy, but clearly worthwhile in the end.  The dating support is almost fully complete, with Plenty of Fish, Lava Life, OK Cupid, and Casual Kiss being done.  One more after that will likely be either eHarmony, or Match.com.

My partner has been working to streamline the behind the scenes code in terms of logging in, databasing, user accounts etc.  Our target is tentatively to be done sometime between next Sunday and the end of January to start taking beta testers.

I’ll tell you right now, that I no longer use the social networking sites themselves to access my account.  I simply use OnePoke, despite the fact that it is still in an alpha stage of development.  Once email support is fully integrated, being online will be so much simpler!!

People from both the blog community, as well as people that I’ve told in the real world are asking me when this is going to be done!! I am very happy about the amount of excitement that the concept is generating.  We’re almost in the home stretch, and I assure you all it will be worth the wait!

A good marketing plan is at the heart of any successful business. It is not necessarily easy to develop, but a good marketing plan can take a company from zero to hero in a time frame you never thought possible.

Ever heard of the iFart application for the iPhone by Joel Comm or whatever his name is?? A fart noise application didn’t become popular because no one heard about it. I read about it on various blogs, and god knows what other sites I didn’t see it on. Without this exposure, iFart could have been nothing more than a wet squeaky, as opposed to the post-Chicken Wings and Beer fart that it has become.

So with that said, I’m curious to hear what you guys use as marketing techniques. With my soon to be released social networking portal, OnePoke.com, I have been working hard to come up with a clever marketing plan that will become more intense as time goes on, starting from something as simple as posting under the name on blogs, to something as advanced as vehicle sponsorships and billboard ads.
Click here to read more…

This is a topic that is sometimes over looked in the blogosphere. While we are so worried about GETTING subscribers, we might sometimes forget about LOSING subscribers. If you think about it, a subscriber not lost is one that you don’t have to re-gain. If you’re not losing readers, you’re already ahead of the game.

So then the simple question arises what could make ME unsubscribe someone’s blog? Some of these can possibly be considered common knowledge, but I think this is still a point worth re-iterating.

Lack of Content

An oldie but a goodie. If you can’t post a LOT, at least be consistent. Nothing new here.

BOOOOORING

If your reader is going to fall asleep while reading your posts, he might accidentally hit the un-subscribe button. Or even on purpose!! There’s nothing wrong with writing about what you’re up to, but you best make sure that it is something worth telling people.

If you just returned from an epic car chase trying to evade the mafia who had a price on your head, I would strongly advise you post about it. (And hire a bodyguard)

If however, you just finished watching the grass grow - keep it to yourself.
Click here to read more…