Power Maxx Blog

As we get closer and closer to full public launch, the time is approaching for OnePoke.com to start taking on advertisers. I am giving you, my loyal blog readers, first dibs on the advertising spots for the first three months the site is up and running.

Here is the way the advertising will work. The cost for three months will be $30, or $10 per month. Our goal is to have enough traffic at the end of that three month period, that we would raise the monthly fee up to $20 per month.

Here’s where it gets interesting. What happens if we don’t reach our traffic goal, or what happens if traffic explodes?? You might ask yourself, will I get ripped off, or will I get charged more for the extra traffic?

The answer to that question is: ABSOLUTELY NOT!
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The time has come for another update on the progress of OnePoke.com. So far, beta is going very well - we have a total of 120 members signed up, and very few problems have been reported thus far.

We are in the process of implementing the central status updates system, so that you can update your status across all, or just a selection of your social networks with just the click of a button.

This will become increasingly useful as we add support for more and more sites.

We are still working on adding MySpace, and Linked In - those will be done within the next two weeks.

The site re-design is also progressing well, and will also be done within the next two weeks.

If you haven’t already signed up, be sure to do so!  We will be holding a signup contest after it is officially launched, and I’m going to give you, my loyal readers, a heads up as to what it will be about.

Basically, the first 100 people to refer 100 friends will win $100 each!  It will be a fairly simple process, although there will be a few rules, including the fact that both you and your friends must be active users, as well as adding at least 1 of the supported social networks to their accounts.

There will also be consolation prizes once the first 100 are awarded their winnings, so all is not lost if you’re not one of the first 100 to refer 100.

The first step is that you have to be a member yourself, so what are you waiting for! SIGN UP!!!

We are very excited about the response the site has received so far - and we love to hear your comments and critiques to help make OnePoke.com the best it can be!

Hey everyone!! Just wanted to give you all a progress update as to the beta testing stage of OnePoke.com!

So far we have a grand total of 94 users signed up!! This is much better than we expected during the beta stage by far.  Twitter has been a great source of traffic for OnePoke, and if you’re not already following me on Twitter, you can do so here: http://twitter.com/OnePoke.

We have added our OnePoke forums, with various categories from an Offtopic section, to various car and entertainment related forums, and a few love and dating forums as well.  There’s something for everyone!!

We have just recently added a second layer of encryption to the database, to make it extra secure - all of your information is now twice as safe as before, and we take security very seriously at OnePoke.com.

Support for Hi5.com has also been added to the social networks section, and the Twitter.com feed has also been upgraded, and now includes @replies, and displays your inbox.

The other feeds have also been refined - nothing that is obviously visible, just mainly streamlining code to prevent possible errors from occurring.  We are currently working on support for both Myspace.com, as well as Orkut.com.  After that comes Linkedin.com, and then our centralized status updates system!

Our web guy has finally had a chance to start working on the site, and we will have an all new design up by the end of the Beta stage, fresh for public launch!

If you haven’t already signed up, please do so at www.onepoke.com - even if you would prefer to wait until the beta stage is complete, you can simply sign up and we will email you with more information as soon as it is available.  ‘Till next time, happy blogging!

So today, I decided to do my first “Question of the Day” on Twitter!! As I was browsing peoples feeds, and figuring out the ins and outs of Twitter, I noticed that there were quite a few ladies on the site!

Some of them I’d see and go to myself “How YOU doin ;)” lol - and it got me thinking. For all the various uses of twitter, I wonder if anyone has ever scored a DATE from twitter!!

You figure, with thousands, or likely HUNDREDS of thousands of members, someone must have asked someone else out. Heck, I was even tempted to try my luck - after all - what is there to lose lol!!!

So I posed the question to my followers, and here is what they came back with. I am also curious to hear what you guys have to say about the topic! Please let me know!!

Although I didn’t receive a huge number of responses, I am very happy as it is my first question of the day, and I am still building my follower base!

Abigiggles1 I personally haven’t but I did instigate a date for a friend via twitter. about 6 hours ago

1. danyell76 @OnePoke since joining Twitter on Monday I have not gone out with anyone I have met on here lol 9 minutes ago from mobile web

2. TheFuckingQueen @OnePoke propositioned - ALL THE TIME, gotten a date - never about 2 hours ago from web in reply to OnePoke

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Here’s a story/video for the animal lovers out there. It’s a video of a solider returning home from a tour of duty in Iraq, and the greeting that his two dogs give him! Bound to brighten up anyones day - Threedogblog - I think you’ll particularly enjoy this one!!!

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2008/10/via-rich-miller.html

If you’ve read my other “How to Sell on Ebay” articles, you’ll know that there’s a LOT more to selling on Ebay than just taking pictures of knick knacks you have lying around and waiting for the auction to end after you’ve listed. One of the thing’s I’ve mentioned before is that buyers these days are very hard to please, especially around the Christmas season.

The problem is, buyers expect the item to get to them the next day, regardless of what method they paid for, how far you are from them, or how long you’ve clearly stated that it will take to arrive. It’s a pain in the butt, but theres nothing you can do about that. Or is there??

One way to try to get around this problem of impatient buyers, is to simply SHIP FAST! In a perfect world, we would all be able to make daily trips to the post office. Since that isn’t the case, set yourself a schedule and try to stick to it. A good rule to follow is to visit the post office AT LEAST twice a week.

I personally visit the post office every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This ensures that there is never more than 1-2 business days delay from the time that the buyer pays, to the time that it is on the way to your customer. This is especially useful if you are shipping items via a particularly slow or economical method. It’s going to take a while to get there anyways, so you might as well get it out the door asap. Then when the customer asks you when it was shipped, you can reassure them that you did your best to get it shipped as quickly as humanly possible.
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Recently, I’ve been very involved in the development of OnePoke.com, which has led me to decrease my posting frequency to one a day, as well as decrease my overall posting on other blogs as well.

I used to be the top commentator on both John Chow’s and Shoemoney’s blogs, and I definitely noticed the traffic that I picked up from those sites.  Since I have stopped being the top poster on said sites, I have noticed a direct drop in my blog traffic!!

When I logged into my google analytics, I was actually shocked to see that my traffic was about 2/3 of what it was prior to my decline in activity!  I couldn’t believe it.

This truly proves the old saying in the blogosphere that posting on other peoples blogs really WILL drive traffic to yours.  Truly amazing.  I know that I will certainly begin increasing my posting frequency on these other blogs once the time allows for it, as who knows what traffic I might have been missing out on.

So for all of you other bloggers, that AREN’T swamped with work like I am, I STRONGLY advise that you maintain your posting frequency on your favourite blogs, ESPECIALLY if they are high traffic ones.  This is really a free traffic source, and all it takes is for a person to subscribe here and there for you to gain a strong, long term reader base, as well as a continually increasing amount of traffic.

I’m sure that as soon as I start posting again, my traffic will climb up to the previous levels.  That IS how it works right?  In the mean time, it was a very eye opening experience.

DON’T FORGET TO CHECK OUT MY $200 BLOG COMMENTING CONTEST AT THE FOLLOWING LINK!!

Alright guys, this is a two for one post today!! First, I am announcing Februaries contest - the format will again be a posting contest, just like the first one was. I found much greater reader participation, which is what I really want to have on this blog.

Prize structure will vary a bit from previous contests, and there is more up for grabs!!!

First prize: $100 cash
Second prize: $50 cash
Third prize: $25 cash
Fourth prize: PNY 4gb USB Drive
Fifth prize: Blog review
Sixth prize: Blog review

Contest will end Feb 27th at 11:59 PM Eastern time, at which point I will be taking a screenshot of the top commentators, and any comments thereafter will not be included in this months contest.

Rules are simple, only relevant comments will count, any irrelevant comments will be deleted!
Click here to read more…

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.

The moment has finally arrived!! OnePoke.com Beta is finally up and running!! You can access the site at either www.OnePoke.com or www.OnePoke.com/beta.

We decided to make it a public beta just to get a bigger input in terms of likes, don’t likes and glitches. If you would like to report anything that you do/don’t like, feel free to either post here, or access the help section in the OnePoke.com header.

There you can either use the contact form to email us, or access the OnePoke.com forum to make a thread about it.

I’m eagerly awaiting your comments, criticisms and ideas! So get on there and let me know what you think!