I am really sorry to announce that Pimp My Blog will no longer be alive on Balkhis. I still haven’t got around to finishing Simon’s blog. I will get it done as soon as I can. There are several reasons why I have decided to kill this contest.

One thing was that people were fake subscribing. Which obviously means that my subscriber count was really high, but I would rather have loyal readers rather than readers that just subscribe towards the end of each month.

Second I was getting complaints about no more free designs. If you guys didn’t notice, I haven’t released a single free theme for a long time. I cannot make more than one free design during a month because of my busy schedule.

Third reason is that as the New Year is starting, there are some projects that I want to launch and Pimp My Blog will be taking my time away from that. So all to all Pimp My Blog is no more.

But you might be wondering what will be substituting that. I mean it might not be as good, but I will try to release more free themes. But the better reward is that I will be launching a Premium Theme Service. So I will be giving away one to three themes away each month to Balkhis users.

So do you want to know what else is planned for next year? You will see in my next post.

Yesterday, I received a card in my mail. It was from my recent client that Uzzz Productions just finished working with. The card was just wishing us Happy Holidays. First of all Thank you Stephanie and Peter from New Heights Coaching.

Now I thought of it and this was a really smart technique. I know personally handing out gift cards via mail can be a bit expensive for smaller companies, but I think the mailing list is not too hard. I haven’t incorporated a news letter yet in Balkhis, but I will make sure that I make a Happy Holiday post soon for you guys.

So getting back to the point how you can market yourself or your new products during holiday season. First thing first, if you have a great product that you are selling. Put some Holiday Discount for your users. Now I know one of my good friend Jeff Behrendt from Aviva Directory sent out an email to Aviva Directory users. With a 20% off coupon. I think that is a really smart decision.

This way you are getting your product sold for a little less, but at the end of a day you have a loyal user, the one who will come back.

Another thing I notice that could be done with this christmas letters is branding your new products. Lets say you developed a tool. That you want to launch. What would be a better time to launch then right now? I mean you can send out a news letter to your readers, and let them know about this new product a long with holiday greetings. Perhaps if it is a premium tool, might let them have first month free. I think holiday seasons are unbeatable.

A major thing that you should never forget is Affiliate Marketing. Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Years coming soon people buy tons of gifts. Now wouldn’t you be very nice if you suggest some nice gifts to your readers. It should start with a greeting and wishing them happy holidays then you can suggest some gifts that they can give to their family and friends. That is when affiliate marketing comes in. If that product have affiliate option available, then why not embed your link. You might be making some good cash by being nice. Good Cash, Loyal Readers… What else can you possibly want.

A lot of things are not available via normal affiliate programs, so I suggest you guys use Amazon Affiliates to take the most advantage.

Above are a few ways that you can market yourself and your products during holiday season. So are you smart enough to do it? If you have any other suggestions feel free to put them down here. If I like them I will include it in the post.

As the year of 2008 is coming to an end. I set this post goal in my mind. That I want to feature top 50 best looking blog designs of 2008. I needed a lot of help in doing this, so I contacted a lot of few people. I reached out to you guys through the recommendation post. I also searched through Top CSS Galleries which I will list below:

Css Drive
Best Web Gallery
CSS Beauty
CSS Elite

Now I know that a lot of you guys started to nominate your own blogs, and I did approve some but a lot of them were rejected. I do not have time to personally email each individual to tell them why their blog was not worthy. Therefore the criteria’s are below:

- Creativity
- Clean Designs
- User Friendly
- Layout Structure
- Organization

Note: Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Having that said, I think that there are a lot of blogs out there that are worthy. I might have not looked at them, or in my eyes they weren’t good enough. This list is in no such order, so the first design does not mean that it is the best one. I am sorry for the all the great designs that are out there in the web that I probably didn’t even reach to. But if you think you have a great design, please submit to the galleries that I have mentioned above.

Free Lance Switch

Recommended by Chris Garrett

N. Design Studio

Recommended by Ryan Lineker

Css Tricks

Recommended by Alex Frasier

Oat.org

Recommended by Tamar Weinberg

Veerle’s Blog

Recommended by Neil Patel

Web Worker Daily

Recommended by Neil Patel

Thou Shall Blog

Smashing Magazine

Function

PSDTuts

Recommended by Simon

These are just a few. The rest of these are in full post, so please read that.

Finally as I got back to Gainesville, Last night I updated Balkhis to wordpress 2.7, the latest version. Wordpress 2.7 is named Coltrane in honor of American Jazz Sexophonist John Coltrane. Coltrane was released on December 11, 2008 far after the planned date which was November 2008. I’d rather have it late then having to update few times after but one bug is still there. The plugin WP-Affiliate is not working with Wordpress 2.7. Which was the reason why I downgraded on the first place.

Until I find another alternative for that plugin, I will stay with 2.6.5. There are too many referral links on balkhis that is helping me generate all the revenue from these posts. I can’t afford to lose that because of one update. If you are not using this plugin, then you should definitely use Wordpress 2.7. My other sites are upgraded to WP 2.7.

Wordpress blog has posted this video that features everything:

Everything that I mentioned in my review is added into this version and some.

I will suggest that you guys check out 20+ Great Wordpress 2.7 Compatible Plugins.

If you guys know alternative to WP-Affiliate please let me know. You can Download Wordpress 2.7 here.

This is an exciting release because of the new look, and I will try to get updated as soon as I can once I figure out the solution to my plugin problem.

Every blogger has a similar goal: to interest someone. Whatever niche we chose, no matter how often we post, we try to find a way to interest those people out there in cyber space. After a while, when your blog is out of its infancy, the shiny extior of the blog has worn off. Your blog is no longer a hot commidty if the novelty of whatever you are writing about wears off within a couple of months. So the question is, how do we keep things interesting?

• Don’t lose your passion
  If you lose the passion that started your blog, then your blog will lose whatever excitement it has. Niches are so sucessful because people are interested in what is within that niche. If you lose interest, how is your audience supposed to follow what your writing? You need to have passion in order to keep your readers focused on your blog.
• Channel your passion
  I love what I do. I love being a student, I love writing. I have the passion, but if I were just to ramble, you would be lost. The key is to take the passion that you have and channel it into something productive. Don’t rush a post, put time into it to sculpt your vision. Make the ideas you see in your mind take shape to something beautiful. Your post is your art. You want it meusem worthy, not just worthy to hang on the refridgerator.
• Make something new
  People read newspapers for news. People read journals for reasearch. Why are people reading your blog? Regardless of the purpose you see your blog as having, coming out with a unique idea, perspective, or bit of news makes you stand out. Why do some small-time bloggers spend their money to go to blogging conferences? Not every blogger has a list of sponsers or the disposible income to attend conferences on a whim. So when you do spend the money to go somewhere or do something, why not blog about it? Lets say you have a blog about flowers and you go to an exotic flower show. When people search for information about this show, don’t you want your posts to show up? Put new information, new ideas, new thoughts into the world and you will stay interesting.
• Think about your reader
  Everyone says you should know your reader. Know what they like and dislike so that you know what you have to do to appeal to them. You have passion, and so do they. Appeal to them in any way you know how. If your readers are a particular group (i.e. stay at home moms interested in all natural cooking) then put yourself in thier place and think about what they would like to see and read.
• Have fun with this
  Finally, have fun with what you are writing. For a lucky few, blogging is thier job. For many of us it is our hobby turned second job. Realize this and have fun with what you do. Love what you do, enjoy it, and see your blog as a way to enrich your life.