I have recently entered into a group writing project at Daily Blog Tips. I submitted my article on 10 Forums to Make You a Better Blogger. My article is in the Technology and Internet Category.  I am not sure that this is the most appropriate category for my article, but I hope people like it.

In addition to my article (a little cocky I know), I highly recommend reading the following articles.

1. How to Increase Your Blog Subscriber Number – TechnicalItch provide a really useful tip for encouraging people to subscribe to your blog.
2. Tips for Gaining Page Views and Returning Visitors Using Series Posts – Bluejar.com gives an awesome tip for increasing repeat visitors and RSS subscribers. By writing a series if you hook people into your topic with your first post, they will want to come back to you blog to read the next posts in your series.
3. 10 Ways to Show Reader Appreciation – Reader Appreciation Project has written a great article for how to show your readers that you appreciate them. Well, let me implement one of them here. If any of you would like to write an article here on Newest on the Net, please leave a comment below. I would love to show off your work here.
4. 5 Tips to Increase Comments – Ad Tracker writes a nice list of tips for increasing comments.  I really need help in this arena.  You are all so quiet.
5. 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Blog Posts – While nothing in this list is profound, that is the point of this post.  These are some tried and true ways to improve your blog posts.  Every blog post would be much better if the writer followed these blogging tips.
6. 18 Ways For Writing Better Pay-Per-Click Ads – Derek Beau provides some great tips here for improving your PPC adds.
7. How I Improved My AdSense CTR by 51% Using Auction Ads – The Newspaper Blog has an ingenious idea for getting viewers to notice your AdSense Ads.  I will be adding AdSense to this blog shortly.
8. Simple SEO Tips to Improve Your Blog’s Search Rankings – Here are some simple tips for SEO optimizing your blog.  These are so simple and we should all implement these for our blogs.
9. Top 10 Tips For Driving Traffic AWAY From Your Website – These are some great tips for what to avoid doing.  Nice angle Binary Moon!!
10. 5 Tips to Being Interesting – This is a great article for all aspects of your life.  I must admit to you all that I have a habit of talking about myself too much.

Are you using Sphinn? If you are a blogger, Internet marketer, technology enthusiast or person seeking to make money online there is no better place to find the best articles on the net about these topics. Sphinn is like Digg except it focuses specifically on these niche interests. This is the future of social news sites and social tagging sites.

Sites like Digg and Netscape (now Propeller) are great, but you are interested in only a very small percentage of the topics. That is why a social tagging site like Sphinn is so great. Because Sphinn focuses on a narrow niche, it acts as a hub for bloggers and Internet marketers. We are starting to experience an explosion of social tagging sites cloned off of Digg. For those trying to compete with Digg head-to-head good luck. However, there is a great opportunity for the social tagging sites that focus on a specific niches.

Guide to Using Sphinn:

Topics: Sphinn has three preset tabs to display the current Hot Topics, the newest topics (What’s New), and the most popular stories of all times (Greatest Hits). This is a great way to navigate through the stories being posted on Sphinn.

Categories: As mentioned above, Sphinn focuses on a limited number of categories. Each of the eight Categories is broken down into subcategories. The categories are as follows:

1. Google which is comprised of Google SEO, Google AdWords, Google AdSense, Google Searching, and Google Other
2. Yahoo which is comprised of Yahoo SEO, Yahoo Paid Search, Yahoo Publisher Network, Yahoo Searching and Yahoo Other
3. Microsoft which is comprised of Microsoft SEO, Microsoft adCenter, Microsoft Searching and Microsoft Other
4. Search Marketing which is comprised of SEM, SEO, Paid Search, Link Building, SEM Industry, In House SEM, and Other Search Marketing
5. Social Media which is comprised of News Sites, Bookmarking, Networking, Blogging, and Other Social Media
6. Online Marketing which is comprised of Web Analytics, Contextual Ads, Affiliate Marketing, Display Advertising, Usability, Domaining, and Other Online Marketing
7. Searching which is comprised of Ask.com, AOL, Local & Maps, Mobile Search, Video Search, Tips & Tools, and Other Searching
8. Other which is comprised of Sphinn Zone (information and articles related to Sphinn), Jobs Wanted, Jobs Offered, and Water Cooler
   

Sphinn Live: One a my favorite features of Sphinn is the Sphinn Live tab. Sphinn Live show you the posts that are being Sphunn and commented on in real-time. This is a cool way to see which article are up and coming.

Sphinn Feeds: I love the Sphinn Feeds features. Sphinn allows you to subscribe to various feeds so that you can see the posts in your RSS feeder. If you are a blogger like me who is always looking for topics to blog about, Sphinn Feeds is a great way for me to quickly browse stories being written by other bloggers. Sphinn has the following feeds:

1. Hot Topics Feed – This feed is for all of the topics that make it to the Hot Topics section
2. New Topics Feed – This feed is for all topics as they are posted
3. Comment Feed – This feed allows you to subscribe to all of the comments that are being left on topics

In addition to these feeds, Sphinn has promised additional feeds in the future to all you to subscribe to your friends’ feeds and feeds based on specific topics.

How to Use Sphinn:

1. Sphinn Others’ Articles – Become and active member of the community. When you find an article that you like, tell your fellow sphinners that it is a good article by Sphinning it.
2. Submit Articles – Have you read a great article that you think other Sphinners would like to read, then submit it. These sites are only as good as the information being submitted.
3. Comment – Start a dialogue about a story. This is a feature under utilized on Sphinn.

Here are some other great guides on Sphinn:

• Sphinn – The Social News Site that Every Search Marketer Should be Using
• Sphinn – Our Social Site for Search and Internet Marketing Professionals
• Fool-Proof Sphinn-Bait Tactics To Reach the Front Page
• Sphinn – In Depth Traffic Analysis and Advice
• Sphinn – The Internet Marketer’s Digg
• Sphinn It
• Why I Prefer Sphinn Over Digg
• Can You Get a Lot of Traffic From Sphinn?
• How to Find the Hottest Breaking Stories on Sphinn

Mint is a new personal finance web app that is touted as being better and easier than Quicken. Mint just won the Techcrunch 40 competition and is now one of the hotest new web applications on the Internet.

Some of the cool things that you can do with Mint are:

• Easy setup with over 3,500 participating financial institutions
• Organize of all of your financial accounts in one place
• Quickly view balances in checking, savings and credit card accounts
• Balances are automatically kept up to date
• Generate reports on how you are spending your money, e.g. groceries, entertainment, cars, gas, insurance
• Know when banks are offering high interest rate savings accounts and low interest rate credit card promotions (this is how Mint makes money)
• Provide recommendations for saving money based upon your spending habits
• Provide bill reminders

Scobelizer has an interview with Aaron Patzer, the founder and CEO of Mint. I highly recommend that you check this video out.

Some other reviews of Mint can be found here:

• Techcrunch
• The Consumerist
• FrostFireBuzz.com
• CubicGarden.com
• Life Clever
• Mashable
• Somewhat Frank

As was reported several weeks ago, Netscape decided to close its Digg clone at Netscape.com.  Well, it is back, but this time at Propeller.com.

You would think that Netscape would redirect the netscape.com url to Propeller, but it doesn’t.  You have to use the url propeller.com.  Be careful not to type in propellor.

Many people were critical of the Netscape site, but I am glad that it has been reborn.  I feel like one of the few who really liked Netscape.

As I am sure that you have all seen, a new widget was released last week called Blogrush. The Blogrush widget displays links to 5 blog articles. This service has been touted by many bloggers as a great way to attract traffic to your blog. I say HOGWASH!!! Ok, I hear you saying, “But Fred, ShoeMoney, Darren Rowse, Yaro Starak, Sarah Lewis, and John Chow have all stated that Blogrush will be a great way to drive traffic to their blogs!!!” Well, they are right, it will help them. But, it will not help 99% of bloggers.

Now don’t stop reading.  I know what you are thinking, “Why would you say that Fred?” Well, the inequality is due to Blogrush’s ten-tiered affiliate system. The more people a blog signs up to Blogrush, the number of times that blog’s posts will be displayed on the Blogrush widget goes up exponentially. Bloggers with more traffic will get a disproportional amount of traffic to their site because they will get more people to sign up for Blogrush through their site. Therefore, if you sign up one person to use blogrush on a blog, your posts will be displayed 1 time. However, if a higher traffic blog signs up 10 people, their posts will be displayed 100 times. Therefor the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

How can you prevent this?

While I hate to say this, the only way to prevent this is to not sign up for Blogrush through other people’s blogs. Just go directly to Blogrush and sign up directly with them.

In addition to bringing up the inherent unfairness in Blogrush’s affiliate system, I also predict that know one using the Blogrush widget will experience a large traffic increase.  I really doubt that people will click on the links displayed by the widget. When the widget becomes ubiquitous,blog readers will learn to overlook it like so many other diversions on blogs these days.

What do you think? Do you think that Blogrush’s tiered affiliate system is fair? Am I misreading it? Do you think readers of your blog will use the Blogrush widget?