My poetry blog Wanderer Thoughts has won the December 2008 Best Poetry Blog category and I am now up against four other blogs for best blog of 2008 on BlogNetAwards.com.  I am really hoping to rally a win it would be wonderful recognition for my poetry and my hobby if I can take best blog of the year.
So I am calling on all my fans, readers and Entrecard droppers to take a moment of your time and vote for Wanderer Thoughts Poetry Blog as best blog of 2008.  Compare the other blogs and if you think mine is worth your vote, take the time to vote.

So click on the image above and vote for Wanderer Thoughts on BlogNetAwards, and take the time to let me know on twitter my ID is @dragonblogger, or leave me a comment to let me know you voted.  I appreciate all of your time and support for my work.
To vote find the site admin and login or register on the bottom right of the website, it looks like this:

Then click on how many stars you think my blog is worth.  Thanks in advance for your support.

-Dragon Blogger

I am trying very heavily to win Best Poetry Blog in November 2008 on BlogNetAwards.com, to help encourage people to click on my link and vote and comment.  To vote you must register at bottom right on BlogNetAwards, and then just click on the # of stars you think the website is worth.  IE, 10 stars if you think the site rocks.

I am asking for 2 minutes of your time to vote for my Wanderer Thoughts blog, or any of my blogs on BlogNetAwards, you can visit http://www.blognetawards.com and just search for “germino” and you will see all 4 of my blog sites listed.

Wanderer Thoughts is my poetry blog and the one I am heavily gunning for.

Anyone who votes and comments for me, I will reward you with 500 Entrecredits just for voting, just contact me via Twitter @dragonblogger, and I will transfer your 500 Entrecredits for your vote.

Click on the image below to go to BlogNetAwards and Vote For me:

Thanks in advance my readers

-Dragon Blogger

In trying to branch out my Poetry Blog more, I decided to post a new original poem here on DragonBlogger, and encourage my readers to visit my Wanderer Thoughts Poetry Blog, if you enjoy my poems then vote for me for Best Poetry Blog on BlogNetAwards.

Cuddle Against The Cold

A chilling wind whips past our faces
Noses frozen and lips drying out
I wrap my embrace around you
With the warmth of an electric blanket

Our eyes meet and our lips part
No icy stare between these faces
Our gazes warm the soul
This is the look of love

So we continue to walk and our fight
Against the cold and dark frigid night
Only to reach the door to our dwelling
Where I can feel our love still swelling

We get inside and the door slams shut
We cuddle against the cold bodies heaving
Clothes unravel and pile on the floor
As to what happens next I can tell you no more

-Poem by Dragon Blogger

I wanted to be able to have 20,000 links on the web as recorded by Link Popularity Check (LPC) by December 31st 2008, and am now at 18,351 links for this blog.  This is just 500 links behind my mentor Damien Riley’s Postcards From The Funny Farm blog.  Aronil is still shooting way ahead with 22000+ links and her blog is just beautiful, I can see why it is getting so popular.

I decided to add my friend Jenn’s blogs BeforeIAmFamous and DragonFly Poems into the LPC and see how they stack up, BeforeIamFamous almost has 15,000 links, while DragonFly Poems has 3900.  My poetry blog Wanderer Thoughts has 7,851 links and my personal blog Justin Germino has just over 3,100.

Someone told me that the blogger who runs Dooce.com makes a ton of money with their blog, so I added them to LPC and behold dooce.com has over 2 million links on the web, just for comparison the famous celebrity blogger Perez Hilton has over 3.3 million links on LPC.  So I realize that if my blog can eventually reach the million link level I can start really earning some revenue.

My goal is to grow from 20000 links this year to 100,000 by the end of 2009, if I can gain 20,000 links in my blogs first 4 months I think I can grow that to 100,000 by the end of 2009.

Here is the latest image from LPC, click for larger view:

So I entered a poetry contest a while back where I wrote a caption to a picture of the Golden Gate bridge on the “My City By the Bay” blog.  I won the contest which awards meOn A San Francisco High CD by Sony Holland and a $10 check.  I am very pleased, you can check out this great blog and my winning poem on My City By The Bay.

This is my 3rd poem to win a contest in the last few years and I am always thrilled when others like my poetry as I enjoy creating them as much as hearing peoples feedback on them.

-Dragon Blogger

I have decided to take part in Ya’Sou Magazine, where I am have taken a position as “resident blogger” I also will be featuring my poetry from Wanderer Thoughts and publishing blogging articles to this online magazine.
I first learned of this magazine from Joanne Olivieri who runs the web site A Poets View which is a great poetry and literature blog. She puts together the Ya’Sou magazine quarterly and publishes content from both regular and upcoming poets.

The Ya’Sou Ezine has great featured poems by many people this issue and I encourage everyone who likes reading poetry to visit the site and browse some of the art that people have created.

You can also read bio’s, the submission guidelines and about the authors

Thank you Joanne for letting me be part of this great online magazine.

-Dragon Blogger

Wanderer Thoughts is listed on BlogNet Awards under Best Poetry Blog category.  If you like my poetry blog and enjoy reading my poems, vote for Wanderer Thoughts now.

BlogNet Awards is a pretty cool laid out blog site and I find it quite useful for browsing blog categories and reading about other blogs.

Vote for Wanderer Thoughts as Best Poetry Blog now.

-Dragon Blogger

Man, I just don’t understand Google PageRank, it makes no sense.

My Rock Along Productions blog turns out has a PR of 4:
http://www.rockalongproductions.com has Google PageRank 4 out of 10

Yet my This Blog, my Poetry Blog Wanderer Thoughts and my personal blog Justin Germino have PR of 0.

What doesn’t make sense is Dragon Blogger has over 300 unique visits per day, over 8500+ external links on Google WebMasterTools, yet Rock Along Productions has barely 200 external links, less than 50 unique visits per day.

This only confirms that Google Penalizes you for doing paid posts (Rock Along Productions is a company blog and I don’t do paid advertising on it).  But I don’t do paid advertising on the poetry blog either, so not sure why that is so low (maybe too new of a blog).

Also linking to other blogs hurts your blog PR, as the “SEO Juice” from a previous post, you leak your PR to other blogs reducing your own by creating too many links out.  Again, I am trying to figure out how to get around the vicious double edged sword.

Does anyone actually qualify for the like $60.00 or $100.00 paid opps on PayPerPost and do the post and still retain a PR of 5 or higher for most of these post requirements?

Just some stuff I am thinking about.

-Dragon Blogger

My fellow Entrecard users, forgive if I haven’t dropped you back since Friday. The problems with Entrecard have made reciprocating drops almost impossible.  Every time I click on Drops Inbox, I get a 500 error in Entrecard, I can’t barely even check my account dashboard.

When I visit any of my fellow’s sites, the Entrecard logo never loads the “Drop” button, so there is nothing to click on.  Ah well, I figured my site would take a huge hit with Entrecard being down for almost 2 days, but my site actually didn’t take too bad of a traffic hit.

My site did drop from about 300+ unique visits per day to about 50 per day.  This shows that at least a good portion of my users come to my site for more than just Entrecard drops and this makes me very proud.  I also want to tell users that I did have the option to do a Social Spark Opportunity yesterday, but I chose not to do it.  I just couldn’t believe in the product and it wasn’t worth promoting something I don’t believe in just for $6.50.  I value what people think of my blog too much to put an ad for some shoddy product that I just can’t sell without feeling like I am selling something hokey.

Spending the weekend with my kids, so not blogging my 4 times per day as usual.  I will pick that up again tomorrow.

Thanks to all my readers for visiting and I encourage you to do a Social Spark opp (See my post prior to this one) if you are bored this weekend, it is something to do.

Also, I need another volunteer for my Poetry Contest on Wanderer Thoughts it isn’t going to be much of a contest with only 2 submissions,  I mine as well just give away the Entrecredits at this point.

-Dragon Blogger

Wanderer Thoughts kicks off its first Poetry Competition with a prize of 1,000 Entrecredits to the winner.  This contest is based on writing a poem based on a subject or theme provided by the site’s owner.  This week’s theme is “ICE”.

If you love writing poetry, why not give your hand at writing a simple poem based on this weeks theme and submit it to Wanderer Thoughts.  You could win 1,000 Entrecredits just like that.

-Dragon Blogger

As a bonus, Wanderer Thoughts is giving 250 EC’s to anyone who hosts this contest logo on their site.