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June 18th, 2007 by Spud Oregon
You may know Darin as the guy who ordered a review from John Chow to promote his Nintendo Wii contest. A bold and brilliant, albeit expensive, move to promote his blog, bringing in umpteen reviews and contest entries. He also gained over a hundred subscribers to his blog, patiently waiting for the result of the contest.
Darin has been in internet marketing for nearly 10 years, and the company he works for lets him control a $4 million advertising budget each year, so you would expect him to be good at what he does. His blog, Search Engine Marketing, is his way of sharing his knowledge and helping educate people in online marketing. So, even without that Wii contest, it’s still worth subscribing.
Perhaps the most notable of Darin’s articles is his series on PayPerClick Management. So far, he has written about organizing your PPC campaign, researching your keywords, writing your ad, working with your data to expand your keyword list, Google’s Quality Score, and most recently, how to get one up on your competition by advertising with Yahoo and MSN instead of just Google. If you’re into PPC, then you should take the time to read through Darin’s guide.
My biggest gripe with Darin’s Search Engine Marketing blog is that from time to time he writes absolutely tiny posts! I’m talking about single sentence “articles” which make me wonder why I bothered clicking through to his site. Here are some extreme examples which I hope will remind everyone that if you’re going to write something, at least actually write something!
Happy Fathers Day
To all the fathers out there … Just wanted to wish you all a Happy Fathers Day!
Wordpress 2.2. Upgrade
So I decided to dive in and do it … my WordPress 2.2 Upgrade is complete … and it went like a breeze!
Top Commentators
Ok … so I had a tough time getting the Top Commentators plugin to work correctly since I updated this Theme … however I got it running now … so start commenting away and see your name show up on column … I like link love … it’s a beautiful thing …
I’m probably being too harsh on Darin. These mini posts are really few and far between, and just browsing through his archives will show you that there is plenty of useful material to be found.
Strangely, one of my favorite articles on Darin’s site was actually written by somebody else! David Berkowitz wrote 10 Tips for Baby Name Optimization, a fun article on getting your child’s name ranking well for the future. This is something that particularly interests me since I’m going to become a dad next month. Actually, I’ve already got my son ranking 2nd in Google for his first name alone, and he’s not even born yet! Still, I guess not too many people are called Rikuto!
Going back to the Wii contest, there’s no doubt that it was a huge factor in drawing visitors to his blog, but this is where things get interesting. The contest started on May 10th, with the winner due to be drawn on June 11th. Sure enough, on the 11th, Darin posted a reminder that there was only one hour left to enter the contest. However, when I last checked on June 18th, a full week after the winner was to be announced, there was still nothing! Could Darin be keeping the Wii to himself?
I’m sure he’ll make an announcement pretty soon, but if not, watch out for my “win a trip to the moon” contest! I’ll be accepting entries until June 30th, and will announce the winner a few decades after. 
Rice: 
Posted on June 18th, 2007 in Blogging for Money.
Comments: 5
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It seems like he heard your call spud. A winner has already been announced.
We knew he had to pick a winner eventually. Congratulations to IdiotBrain!
I haven’t go and check out the blog yet, is he any good? Did you follow his blog before he order the review with johnchow? Just curious to know how effective is it to order a post from johnchow.
I have Darin’s feed on my iGoogle page and check out his blog whenever I see a post that looks interesting. Why don’t you subscribe for a while? If you don’t like what you read, then just delete the feed.
I confess I wasn’t a reader before John Chow’s review, but whether the review was really effective or not, you’ll have to ask Darin that.
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