I’m pretty set in my ways but I took the time to check out some nomorerack reviews and a lot of people, like me, enjoy the idea but haven’t signed on yet. I know I’m always hesitant to sign up for another website because I have so many accounts on the Internet already and I already receive soo many emails. If I had heard of the website before Chritmas, I probably would have signed up and kept my eye on some of the high-end items. We know how I’ve been wanting an iPod Touch for just about forever (and I have yet to win one in any giveaway).

Have you signed up for No More Rack Yet?

You see, Rafflecopter sounds good and it looks pretty good, too. The problem is, it relies on your browser cookies. If you enter a giveaway and return to the site, you will see the entries you’ve already completed but if you clear your private data, it will appear as though you’ve never entered. The script does not offer a way to check your entry status. It’s not so efficient to navigate through pages of comments but at least you can, to see if you’ve entered before.

Secondly, the script takes a while to load. For whatever reason, it takes longer now than when bloggers first started using it. This slows down my giveaway process significantly, when I’m browsing multiple sites.

Next, bloggers keep requiring us to comment as a form of mandatory entry but this is completely unnecessary. I just don’t understand this. Rafflecopter exists so you can clean up your comments from giveaway spam. I’ll admit, I’m also a bit lazy and I hate scrolling down to comment, reloading the page, scrolling back up and waiting for Rafflecopter to load again.

But it’s not all bad. A lot of bloggers are allowing us to enter by just typing name and email addresses. Plus, you don’t need to add your email address to the comment itself, which is a generally unsafe and totally freaking annoying thing to do.  Being able to post to Twitter or like a page on Facebook is super easy with Rafflecopter.

Multiple websites participating in the same giveaway can post the same Rafflecopter code — which is great as long as you don’t clear your cache. However, multiple mandatory entries can span several lines on the form and it can be difficult to tell when you’ve completed all the entries. It would be nice if Rafflecopter allowed you to put multiple Facebook “Likes,” for example, in one box. At least, I assume they don’t because no one does.

Rafflecopter is an interesting idea but is still imperfect enough to be frustrating to all sorts of users.

1. A gift card can go toward my necessities, like food, clothing or household goods.
2. A $10 gift card is always more useful than a $10 item than I don’t need but a $10 gift card is infinitely more useful than a $100 item for which I have no use.
3. Gift cards give me a choice in what I win so I can be really excited.
4. Some gift cards can be used online so I don’t even have to leave my house or I can still shop from stores that aren’t in the area.

But gift cards have perks if you’re holding the giveaway, too!

1. Gift cards appeal to more people (see my #2 above).
2. Gift cards blur the geographical lines. Sure, I may be in Wisconsin but if I giveaway a gift card to a company that has a website and ships worldwide, I’ve just expanded my giveaway (and potential readership).
3. Gift cards are cheap to send. Throw ‘em in an envelope, or even better, click “Send.” Anyone who has had to mail off their own prizes understands the frustration about this one.

Do you also love gift card giveaways?

This whole thing is a shame cause I’d like to like the USPS. They offer some great services and even products on their website and I know that Canadian residents can find similar steals and deals if they visit http://www.canadapost.ca/shopper/. Aside from shipping supplies and materials, the Canada Post website includes a comparison shopper page that allows Canadian residents to compare etailers that cater specifically for them. Of course, as an American, I don’t usually find it difficult to have stuff mailed to me.

I do like working with companies that will ship giveaway prizes to more than just the USA, though. And companies that will ship them at all. I think I’ll be writing a policy page in the upcoming weeks and only working with companies that will take care of shipping because it’s just such a hassle for me to try to do it (plus, it’s not always cost effective for me).

Still, in a world of electronic mail, it’s interesting how much I still depend on the post office.

That is exactly why the majority of the reviews on this blog were simply things I had purchased. Not too long ago, another blogger asked me for contact information for a handful of brands but I’d purchased all of the items, except one, by myself. That concept seems pretty foreign to some, especially when it’s so easy to find PR folks and send pitches and get people to send you free stuff in exchange for a blog post. If you expect that every post you write is going to be about something that you didn’t have to pay for, you’re going to start focusing on your blog as a business, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, you reviews can quickly start to suffer because of it.

Or maybe your reviews already suck. Not sure if this is true for you? Read on.

Your “review” is actually just a reposting of the press release.

A good review reiterates important information but claims and hype are easy to find–online, on TV, in print and even from company representatives themselves. Your blog should tell us something more because you’ve used the product unless, wait..

You didn’t use the product

You cannot post a review unless you’ve seen, touched, smelled and maybe even licked a product. Maybe you didn’t get to keep it but you can’t post a review if the closest you’ve gotten the item was the freakin’ press release. Remember how I said that the review should tell us something more? (Look up!) That something more isn’t how you think the product would work if you actually used it.

You didn’t spend enough time with the product or service.

Actually, a lot of reviewers are on me with this one, I think. Heads up if you’re a representative. A thorough review is impossible if you can only use the product once. So stop sending us single bags of tea! And reviewers? Stop accepting single bags of tea. Let your contact know that it’s not acceptable, not good business practice and just plain silly. What do they expect?! With that said, some products have a learning curve and sometimes you need to read the manual and if you don’t have time for that, you shouldn’t be writing a review in the first place.

Your post contains more pictures than text.

I know I don’t tend to use many pictures and I rarely take pictures of my review products because, in my opinion, that’s the point of review–to paint a picture with words. I like to see pictures when reading reviews, especially if the concept is difficult to understand from words alone, if a product is elaborate, if you want to show size, if the product looks nothing like it’s described and the list goes on. Nevertheless, your review probably shouldn’t contain a picture of every step of the way or every minuscule detail. We get the picture, literally. I recognize that this is based on a personal preferences but it has a good basis: we all know that Blogger-hosted blogs and review blogs meet in the place on a Venn diagram that is known as “the slowest loading part of the Internet bar none.”

Your review is overly optimistic.

I like to rip apart products. I want you to know every possible complaint a person could have, no matter how trivial. I’m that sort of person. You don’t have to be but if you love every product you ever review, I’m not going to view you as a trusted resource.

You didn’t post your review.

I have a policy. I refuse to work with companies who can’t tolerate a negative review. At the end of the day, it is publicity for them, but I cannot stress enough that the purpose of this blog is to help other consumers. Therefore, I won’t even think of working with a company that requires approval before I post or who bars me from posting a negative review at all. You know what? Not every product is awesome. I’m sorry. It’s true.

I consider companies and bloggers who avoid the negative to be unethical. Seriously. If I knew these people in real life, I’d literally slap them on the hands the way a mother does to scold a small child. Especially those who voluntarily withhold negative reviews. What are you thinking?! A negative review is just as important as a positive one and a company that can take one in strive or, better yet, create something better based on criticisms is exactly the kind of company I want to work with and promote.

Bloggers, I strongly encourage you to reconsider working with companies who would ask this of you (Even better, give those companies a schooling!) and recognize that you’re under no obligation to love every product (in fact, I don’t encourage this behavior as explained above). Not only that but you’re actually hurting the consumer and wasting any time you spent using a product or writing up a review, when you don’t post it.

1. 35% – Direct Traffic (Links, bookmarks, emails, etc)
2. 1.09% – Google Searches (All countries, all search types)
3. .19% – StumbleUpon
4. .12% – Yahoo Searches
5. .10% – Bing
6. .05% – Online Sweepstakes
7. .04% – ContestGirl
8. .03% – FeedBurner
9. .02% – The Divine Miss Mommy (thanks!); Twitter; Free Blog Giveaways

I’m not surprised that direct referrers dominate the list because you guys are great at Tweeting about my giveaways. Nor am I surprised to see that Google is leading the way after that. However, the division between direct referrers and search clicks is an astounding 33%! In addition, I combined all the Google search sites and types but Webalizer lists them separately. There were, like, 10!

I’m really excited to see StumbleUpon on this list because I’ve decided to give it a second chance and even if one person recommends my site, it has the potential to reach thousands of other users. I know quite a few bloggers who rely heavily on StumbleUpon for traffic and many who will tell you that it’s their main source for traffic so I expect to see it rise in the rankings and eclipse Google searches. I’m not as sure about direct traffic but who knows?

That Yahoo and Bing made the list amuses me to no end. Had I made this a “top ten” list, you would see AOL, too! Who still uses those search engines? I make a point to submit my site to giveaways listing, whenever I post a new one, and several of those have made the list but they really don’t provide as much traffic as I expected. I’ll still use them, of course but I’m surprised those sites don’t carry more authority in general. They may be too “nichey” compared to StumbleUpon. Not everyone is specifically looking for giveaways.

It’s no surprise that FeedBurner sends me visitors but I’d never guess that another blog would show up in the list. The owner, Stacie, is part of a few giveaway groups, if I recall correctly. I don’t know if folks are following me from a comment or a link somewhere on here site but all my sites seem to see traffic from at least one semi-random blog. Interesting, eh?

If you’ve read this far, feel free to let me know where you’ve come from in the comments.

It seems like just yesterday I was hovering right above 2-million and now? I’m going to be dipping below 1-million. That’s right, I’ve chopped my rank right in half–fruit ninja style. The interesting thing is that this is most definitely not a gradual change. No, it was a stand-still that erupted into a volcano of growth. You know how I know? Alexa says my visitors are up nearly 300% in the last 3-months and my rank has nearly doubled in the past month so it’s pretty easy to point a finger at the main factors (giveaways, social media plugin) and, in the back of my head, I’m thinking “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”

Nevertheless, I’m still super happy with my little experiment.

I am still getting “hits” from people hot linking my images. For those of you you may not know, hot linking (or direct linking) is the act of displaying images that reside on other’s websites or servers. So, let’s say you wanted to link me and copied the URL of the button on the sidebar, without uploading it to your server. When you craft your blog, forum post, or email and click the toolbar or type the code to insert an image, using the copied URL, you’re using my resources.

Resources that I pay for. And when those resources run out? I either pay more or my site shuts down. The good news is, I’m no stranger to lifting images from the Internet. I kind of have to do it to get product promos for my reviews. I don’t care that you’re doing it; I just don’t like how you’re doing it.

So, take the time to upload the photo any place else! Photobucket, your forum, Blogger, your server, whatever. If you’re here because you were stealing my bandwidth and now your images are broken, shame on you! If you, like myself, want to avoid hot linking, you can implement an .htaccess file on your server. This handy hotlink protection generator practically does the work for you.

Rocco’s Modern Life is one of the greatest shows to have ever been shown on Nickelodeon. I truly loved watching this show all the time in 5th grade. I remember watching this show all the time with my younger sisters. We would always gather around the television on weekends and watch this show for hours. There was nothing we would rather do than watch this hilarious show.

This show is one of the greatest to watch. I love watching past episodes of this on my satellite television from www.expertsatellite.com. There is truly nothing greater than watching this show. I love seeing the episodes and how Rocco simply dealt with his crazy life in the show. There were the most hilarious episodes of this show, featuring the sarcastic character of Rocco. I think it is funny that the writers of this show created such a sarcastic show for kids. This show was truly one of the most sarcastic programs on television, and at the time, I had no idea what the humor even meant. When I watch the episodes now, I laugh so hard because I understand a lot of the subtle humor in the program. It is truly hilarious to see how much one knew when one was younger, compared to older years where one knows a lot more. It is such a great program to watch now.