I Review You

My Mobile Adventures won this free review from our contest. Stay tuned for the next one!

The first time I got on Tink’s site was via Entrecard. I thought it was awkward. A really wide banner with a small and simple logo picture, posts in huge font sizes and all this general idea of “big simplicity”. And then I saw its title. That explains the…

Design

MMA is a blog optimized to be seen on cellphones (mobile anyone?), so there you go: big fonts, not too complex imagery to be loaded, primary colors. It all makes sense if you forget you may be browsing the site on a PC/Mac. (if you still want to read the blog on a big screen, reduce the font size twice, it will be a perfect fit)

The primary colors of the design are great for these small screens on smartphones. It’s easy to suffer from low contrast while browsing on them, so it’s a great call.

Content

My Mobile Adventures is a travel blog, a tourist journal. Tink claims the posts place are most oftenly SW Florida, Orlando and New York. Sometimes, something outside of those boundaries does pop up. Like ranting from texting on a non-smartphone, Tink, be sure you’re not the only one that hates that.

Small tips on blog tools also helps keeping the freshness of her blog: talking about RSS or about a Photobucket feature make a good break from the usual pictures and travel updates. Also, I’m a big fan of people that bring some good tips about something that they don’t talk about usually. It helps to spread the word out of the niche.

Her repertoire of photos is just great. The shore pictures deserve a honor mention.

What else deserves a mention is the destruction caused by MMA on our contest. Competing against 10 bloggers, Tink got 68% of the votes. Yeah, 68%. That’s what I call a major victory.

Congratulations, Tink!

A bit of blogging, some blogging tools and a lot of irony. That’s Blog Badly.

Can you take another blog with tips on… blogs? I think I can’t. I can’t stay reading the same old stories about SEO, WP plug-ins, yadda yadda yadda. Please, go read Blog Badly. Don’t overlook the site just because it has too much on sight. That’s a plus, in matter of fact.

Content

You may read the same old blogs, but why not read one that gives you something to laugh at? Or even something to curse too. Max isn’t the kind of guy that stands in front of a PC acting like a PC. He doesn’t give you cold stats, cold news, cold stories. Do you want to know about why blogging sucks? Well, reason #3 is “It’s Too Hard To Make Money - Today’s Earnings: $0.00194“. And what about “All The Good Domain Names Are Already Taken - I guess m-a-king-mon-e-y-onl-in-e.com would work…“? You could also take the list on what you have to do to completely loose your blogging creativity and give it a try. I gave it. And I lost my creativity.

Design

I guess some people would say that the design is a bit too crowded. In matter of fact, it gives you enough. Blog Badly has a lot of widgets on the sidebar, that fits perfectly the overall visual aspect. BB posts are usually small or mid-sized, so you can scroll down the pages and you’ll still read the posts in their entirety. With a double sidebar, the widgets don’t take much of the page vertically, so, when reading older posts, you’ll only get a white sidebar. So, rest! You may ask “but will I have to scroll down to get a clean page?”. The answer is: believe me, you WILL scroll down. The content rocks.

Contest

Funny enough, as our first review, Blog Badly is also running a contest on ads. The prize is a free 125×125 ad slot in the upper part of the blog for a full week. You can (and MUST) check the rules of the contest going here: Blog Badly’s Free Weekly 125×125 Ad Space Contest Thingamajig Extravaganza.

One of the greatest things about Living on Adsense is how Chris Whiteley approaches the internet money world. Chris is not a big fish like Darren or Chow, he is one of us, trying to make a living out of the internet. His insights on different tactics and programs are realistic, “realistic” like in “I’m trying this out right now”. After the infamous episode of his blogging powers being taken away (betrayed), Chris is back for action and wanting more. Being forced to want more, actually.

Content

“Why should I read the blog of someone who hasn’t succeeded yet?”, you may ask. Sometimes we get too fascinated with the big numbers and can easily get carried away on those distant dreams, forgetting how tough the beginning can be. Struggling his way, reading Living on Adsense can give you some of that strength you need to keep going. Thanks Nike for “Just do it”, it’s important to think like that sometimes.

Design

LoA is well designed and has cool features, such as open statistics and the Top Commentators plug-in. Having stats available is a nice way to let us know how he’s doing and how it relates to his final income.

Contest

Chris is also running a contest on Living on Adsense and the prize is a free 125×125 ad slot on the site for a month. You can try it out, get to know the rules.