Blog, I

Recently I was asked to review some wine clubs from Gold Medal Wine Club of California. It’s been a few years since I’ve had the chance of sampling any wine, so this came as an enjoyable anticipated treat. This product review is an accounting of what I experienced, from start to finish…mailbox to presentation in front of family and friends.

The package arrived through normal United States Postal Service.
Protective packaging included a reinforced cardboard box for shipping, and styrofoam placeholders that kept the neck and base ends of the bottles about 2.5 inches from the box ends for impact protection.

Clearance between the bottles and interior sides of the box was nominal enough that further use of ‘packing peanuts’ wasn’t necessary. The box included a gift card for presentation as well as a newsletter from the company.

The bottles; pictured here; were of earlier vintage than I’d have expected, which was pleasing. I’ve heard of friends getting bottles of wine through similiar clubs that were only two years old. The bottle of Merlot sent was a 2004 vintage, while the Cabernet Sauvignon was a 2003…the latter being my favorite with beef.

Examination of the bottles led me to the discovery that these bottles may have been handled entirely by hand. No blemishes were found whatsoever in their application, but the Cabernet Sauvignon bottle’s upper label was affixed at an offset of 1 degree. Had a machine labeled them it would have been aligned correctly. This only adds more personality and character to the gift, and shouldn’t be considered negatively.

The Cabernet Sauvignon was paired with a beef dish. With the wine’s age falling past the needed time for it to be drinkable, it did really well in standing up to it’s expectation. The Merlot was paired with Chicken Cordon Bleu just last night…again a nice flavor and means to enjoy the meal more.

The last thing I wanted to look at was the price, since that’s a big deciding factor for anyone in both gift giving and personal purchasing of wine. These wines coming from a Camino California were part of a $32.00 gift set. Considering that they’re a nice quality gift complete with their own packaging; needing only a personal wrapping touch on the exterior of your liking; the price is fair. The added gift card and newsletter reinforce this more if you take a look at their content…they’re a personal touch of the company and don’t give the feeling of the company trying to push sales.

This year I won’t be giving any of these gift sets out unfortunately, since it’d be poor friendship to send a half bottle to friends. On the other hand, Gold Medal Wine Club of California has just been added to my PDA as a contact for considering hard to match gifts with friends hard to shop for.

Cheers guys! Nice product, great taste for someone with good taste!

Online casino bluebook is another recent requester of my services to take a look at their site. It’s another ‘information broker’ site offering information about one online casino as opposed to another.

Their ‘Casino Blog’ link; located on the left sidebar; points to an installation page for Serendipity, with nothing having been done yet.

Translation: It’s not been ‘branded’ and is a security hole waiting to be exploited by anyone mischevious enough to do so. I personally went one page deep then backed out…I’m not going there. Hopefully the site owner reads this and addresses the matter..quick.

I also noted that Online casino bluebook has an ‘About’ page as well as a ‘Disclaimer’ page, something that I see regularly not handled with and sometimes left in the dark by many people creating these ‘information brokering’ sites.

Overall, it’s got potential…if…the owner addresses a few things:

1. Hire a content writer for handling regular content weekly.
2. Develop a thorough ‘Disclaimer’ page. Consider possibly a technical writer for this task.
3. Either develop the links to secondary pages or subsections of the site; such as the ‘Casino Blog’…or delete them. Don’t leave holes openly that can be exploited.

Cheers, and best!

This site review has been requested by the people behind top usa online casinos. The following specific guidelines were provided to fulfill expectations of this.

1. Please review site (Site Review)
2. Comments
3. Observations
4. Design

Site Review:

Top USA Online Casinos is an information brokerage site whose ‘tagline’ states:

Reviews of Online Casinos that Accept US Players

The front page reflects to the reader that the information provided is from accumulative data retrieved from the experiences of professional gamblers. There are a total of ten sites that are featured as their ‘Top 10 List’, and what appears to be links to review information, the specific site, and in some cases a download link to an unknown executable file associated with it’s respective site.

Observations:

The first thing most people check for is reliability, background, and something about who’re their getting their information from. The ‘About’ page accessed from the same link from their top banner is a blank white page.

All download links work, but without seeing a page explaining what it was there’s no way it would get in my computer.

The review links all go to respective pages for the intended casino’s information. What’s confusing to a visitor; like me; is why this site is hosting software to download when a person can get it from the casino site itself.

Design

The design is what I’d expect to see from any content management system (CMS). Narrow page so the eye doesn’t get lost in the sidebars, and the visitor stays on task. The CSS stylesheet however is the work of N33, a known regular ‘deviantArt’ist. I’m not sure how one of his CSS stylesheets got matched up to this site.

Comments:

The site needs to be deleted and started over, in my opinion. It’s a good effort if one person tried to do all this, but making a site takes skill developed over time. If a person has to do it alone, they should use Wordpress…best choice a number of ‘do it yourselfers’ use on great URLs!

• Don’t include third party downloads, let people get them from the source…it opens up too many problems. It’ll build trust if you do, before someone has a problem and blames it on the site.
• Reviews need to be in ‘American English’, since that’s the target audience. Get a writer who does that, and it will build returning visitor trust.
• Identify who the professional gamblers are who provided the review information, or delete the statements of their involvement. It’ll build trust if you do.
• With a URL as good as this, it needs to be built up. Increase content and consider creating a forum for new and old gamblers to network at, as well as installing a free online Java chatroom.

Great URL, great potential, just keep away offering third party downloads…let Bodog and the rest handle their own software.

Ashop Commerce’s asking me to take another look at what’s going on over there, who am I to argue?

For those not following along, Ashop Commerce is a ’shopping cart’ service you use to create your own online store. Some people call this ecommerce software, unlike us old school gits.

That’s all good, but here’s the kicker. Two months ago I was asked to review them, and found a good product. Last month I related I identified that they were directly involved with Smorty, a service used by many monetized blogs worldwide.

The rest I can’t say within the confines of this post unfortunately. To find out if I hacked into their system or not, you’ll just have to wait and buy the book.

When asked to review a site, I generally make sure to keep in the neutral opportunity realm of things, out of both fairness to my newbie readers as well as my own reputation’s sake. I can say this much…Smorty hasn’t ever done me wrong…they’ve paid ahead of time, kept their end of the bargains, and never given me grief.

If they trust Ashop to deliver to me what I’ve been getting, then Ashop’s good enough for me.

Try Ashop, when you’re wanting to take your online business to the next level…

…cause it’s your bottom dollar on the line, kids.

During the last month I was asked to review Ashop Commerce; a site offering shopping cart software; that’s a good alternative for new site owners making the transition from hosted blogs to owning their own domain. This is some followup to that, being there’s been additional information that’s come to my attention.

You’d be surprised the things you can learn

For those not having read my prior entry over at “Homeless Family’s Blog”, here’s the highlights:

• Traffic stats of store/cart visitors
• SEO optimized background
• Store owner can assign different level access types to employees for security reasons.
• Order status capability for customers.
• Store account plan can be up or down graded, so you don’t get stuck with too much power if it’s not needed.
• NO FIXED TERM CONTRACT! See above statement. Cool. You pay once a setup fee, and a monthly store fee for your account. No transaction fees, no hidden costs. Cancel anytime providing only 30 days notice.
• Sell tangible items as well as software, ebooks, etc.

The best fact however isn’t what a site promises you though, it’s what you know of them doing business with sites you trust…like Smorty.com!

In an evil twist of fate; which I won’t go into detail here; I’ve learned firsthand that Smorty.com relies on using Ashop Commerce as a trusted partner in their site delivery. I’ve been dealing with Smorty.com for about a month now, had no problems, and reasonable turnaround on payouts. The fact that Smorty.com uses Ashop Commerce to deliver; not only to advertisers, but bloggers as well; their business is about the best selling argument I can make.

If you’re serious about doing business online, don’t want to reinvent the wheel, and would like to take advantage of a free trial, check out Ashop.com.

• Smorty did…and look at them!

Just don’t tell ‘em I told you, k?

On August 11th, I did a review of Smorty.com, a service connecting advertisers with bloggers to get direct opinions from bloggers. This is a follow up on that, in that Smorty has again offered me the chance to give my opinion of them again.

This time around; which is actually only 19 days later; I’ve had the chance of going through the entire ‘offer/blog/pay’ cycle from start to finish. I also keep track of my assignments using a spreadsheet, sorting on payments, due dates, and anything that can show me a problem or place to improve running my business.

Tasking
Smorty’s screen shows the tasks available to choose. Pick one, and work it until you submit it for review. Unlike other systems, you can’t start another task until the one being worked is sent to be verified. This is a good protective element for new bloggers to the system, to keep them ‘on task’ and completing assignments.

Verification
‘Pending Verification’ can take a few days sometimes, depending on their work load.

Paying Bloggers
Smorty’s VERY quick reacting to paying a blogger. Once approved, my posts have been paid within 4-7 days. All good in this section!

Those are the high points. Now for the low points…

Length of posts: this information is located in the ‘Rules’ section. The rules section is NOT accessable from the User Interface once signed in and taking tasks. It IS accessable from the front portal, but a User has to sign out completely to get to it. Newbies can’t think of it all the time, so they need to get that info on the interior so newbies being proactive can thrive, causing Smorty less problems.

Smorty’s scoring system: You get a score between 500 to 1000 when you join, based on stats of your blog. I started noticing mine dropping on the 23rd, and started keeping track daily. No explaination why, so it makes me wonder if it’s a script on the server side keeping tabs or a bona fide human. Either way, I like to redirect myself. Smorty could let me know what my problem is…or if it’s not my problem and a script thing with them. Again, this can throw newbies discouraging them and causing opportunities to be sought elsewhere.

Overall rating I give Smorty: again, 8 out of 10, same as last. Not enough posts to live off of definitely, but they are as solid from start to finish…offer to cash…in your account. Personally, I’m keeping a close eye for the day that they go ‘full tilt’ and get flooded with business. Either way, Smorty’s a good addition to my online work and worth keeping.

I’d recommend it to any of my readers, novice and pro alike interested in how to get paid for blogging.