Preseason 30 Day Challenge Notes Part 5

The Ongoing saga of Social Bookmarks Registration

This is a very long exercise that needed a bit of stamina. Now done 🙂 I feel good 🙂

A few notes for anyone – hope they are useful – although the toughest of the exercises it was one that was worth spending the time over.

I now have a big spreadsheet of them (the ones that work) with urls, usernames, passwords and notes in on what kind of material to submit to them.

 

StumbleUpon

I did forego the toolbar inclusion earlier for this, thinking to myself that was the last thing I needed, if I download any more toolbars I will never get to see the Internet through the peephole that is left in the browser. When I went back of course I couldn’t find the Submit link 🙂 So I succumbed and loaded it – and resolved to stick with it and learn to switch toolbars on and off when I needed. This is a great idea for anyone who loves creating toolbars – What you need is a ‘toolbar toolbar’ – Just one toolbar that with one click of one of the buttons any of the others get loaded until the button gets clicked again 🙂

 

Propeller

This one cost me a lot of time!!! Strange it wouldn’t accept my regular email address , so I tried my old hotmail account and then changed it to my regular one when I could get into my profile. Going back in it failed again – it told me I was trying to login in from an unknown location. I tried setting up another account with the hotmail email address, didn’t work, a gmail one – nope. Tried all sorts of things like clearing cookies, after restart, after a coffee, after another one, jumping through a hoop!!!. Then I tired it (originally a typo for ‘tried it’, but Hey) in Internet Explorer, the original login was fine – very strange. I would have left it but my PageRank, Alexa and Compete gauges looked very colourful 🙂

 

PlugIM – Seems to be having some database problems on the registration process.

 

BuddyMarks – registered fine but kept losing the bookmark info every time I submitted.

 

Sphinn – must remember to go back in and fill in all the profile info. There was A LOT!

 

MyVMarks – was closed for business

 

Wirefan – had database issues

 

Ximmy – wasn’t working

 

Swik – couldn’t register at all???

 

Links Marker – under maintenance

 

Erollover was just a retirement calculator???

 

BlinkList – It said there was no domain on the main page. Noticed the register link below on Google search and went in through the side door?

 

NetVous – are currently cleaning out their links to remove all the unrequested and unwanted links that have corrupted their database. So registration is disabled.

 

BackFlip – another going through a major disaster recovery with their database too.

 

Connectedly – site was down

 

Symbaloo – a strange idea, but interesting, it wants to become your desktop.

 

YuppMarks – the slowest site of all when I tried – Are they running Microsoft 🙂 – Sorry for that

 

Ka-BOOM It! – well their web site sort of went – ‘Ka-Boom!!!!’ I can see by the SQL errors we have another database problem.

 

Database Professionals and admins – Raise your Rates!!! 🙂

 

A few of these are complex system, for example Digg, SlashDot, Technorati etc – It is worth putting in the time to get used to how they work and look around first. I think these will take a while to understand.

 

So to put all this link love to the test I thought I would try a recent blog entry of mine. A meaningless one in one sense, but actually a very true story.

 

Tis a sad day indeed, when fluffy bunny ones go to seed

Has this ever happened to you – please let me know 🙂

 

By going back through each site with a URL I thought would be quite useful. It enabled me to set up any profile stuff test that all the passwords and links were stored correctly and ready for when I needed to use them in haste.

 

I noticed that SocialMarker seemed to be having problems with StumbeUpon and Twitter. That made me think I needed to make sure periodically that I have a fresh, completely up to date list of ALL available social bookmarking places. Something I will check on later too.

 

Also many of the sites were focused on certain types of news or subjects that for many I did put the article through with, it wasn’t really what they wanted. I hope (actually assume) that they tell you during the 30 Day Challenge to be wary of this and get to know the sites and what is popular on them as you go along.

 

Another thing with this task – because of the number of links, passwords, sites etc that you are trying to get through it is very easy to get lost. It is worth persevering, don’t stop, many times I looked back at the screens and forgot what I was doing, which site I was on, what I was supposed to be doing at that very moment, my name etc etc.

 

Oh and I kept forgetting to check my mail for the emails too – should have done that first. Plus that none of them get caught in your spam filters – I had to dig a few out of my Junk Folder.

 

Finally, I will definitely be careful what kind of bookmarks I put where. I did put the link mentioned above on Sphinn and had it removed quietly. Sphinn is all about SEO and this didn’t really have anything to do with it so they pulled it. Luckily they haven’t pulled me out, but I will be more careful in future. IndianPad temporarily blocked my entry as it looked like spam but allowed it through after 🙂

 

Tasks for later include:-

• Some About Me text for a few of the sites
• Some Avatar and Photo pictures
• Keep my Social Bookmarks list as up to date as possible

That’s it – I may have been a bit detailed in places but I have now finished the 30 Day Challenge Pre-season modules. I feel just that has been worth it. Not only was there the discipline of working through a boring list and making sure I completed it, there was the realisation that I really needed to be super-organised, to keep track of the many micro tasks going on at any time. Finally, I think documentation is a key factor, take the time to note down in the right place, bookmark in the right folder, every detail that you may need later quickly.

Oh – and the exercise gained me about 60 visitors to the page so far – not bad considering the ‘zero’ I was expecting.

Now – What’s next 🙂