Good afternoon TNF readers!

Another week in the books here at theNetFool.com, and I got to tell you it was rough to keep up. This week, I was out of electricity at my house probably 4 out of 7 days, including last night (which is why this post is a tad late), which significantly strained my production. However, I was able to keep pace in posting every day of the week, so no harm done. ;)

The winners of The Net Fool’s Outrageous Blog Contest have been announced and emailed their prize information. If you haven’t received contact information, please feel free to contact me about that and I’ll get them to penny up. But enough talk, let’s get you some great articles from the week ending June 07, 2008.

We had some pretty interesting posts this week, and I would actually rate this week above average in post quality. The WP Theme Designer released a new “Blue Block Theme” which is entirely free and very nice. Other than that, a lot of great posts about growing your traffic with deep linking, mailing lists and mobile phone optimization.

Stock Market
Oh No! It’s panic time on Wall Street. Just when you thought oil was safely falling back to its normal levels, things exploded in our face this week on top of a worse-than-expected unemployment report to close out the week Friday with one of the worst drop-offs in quite some time. But The Net Fool isn’t scared. As revealed yesterday, I am using this opportunity to get a discounted buying point on some otherwise great stocks.

My portfolio actually outperformed the benchmark because of my largest holding being Yamana Gold (NYSE: AUY), a gold stock that is correlated to the rise in oil. I’m actually considering buying a solar company now that people are counting them out of the race. I feel like its a good alternative energy play if I can’t find a properly valued wind energy play, which I would actually prefer. Regardless, I am going to be looking at power/energy stocks (namely oil, natural gas, solar, wind or infrastructure/energy efficient technology) because I think they hold the most potential.

Blogosphere
I feel like the most recent trend has been a return to quality work, and away from sponsored reviews. There is still a maddening amount of blog contests floating around in the mix. Something which I have already voiced my concern toward. Other than that, I am still planning out my stock market blog. I would have loved to have it out by now, but unfortunately my web designers simply aren’t working with me… no communication. I really don’t understand this, as I am a paying customer. They should logically be coming to me, right? :razz:

John Cow v. Garry Conn is raging on. I really think that both of their projects are great to learn from, as I feel that they know what they are doing. With John Cow declaring victory based on the statistics thus far, Garry Conn is quietly building up his debt consolidation blog with the hope of sneaking under the radar. I feel like John Cow will indeed win, but anything could happen and it’s great to track both of their websites’ progress.

TNF Updates and News
This week, I am going to try and round out the “Creating A Blog” series and get a fresh idea out for you to make some money online. I am going to have to try very hard to keep this blog updated, as I am in the thick of things going to sales school this week to get licensed to sell life & health insurance. Now that’s something you don’t hear from most “make money online” bloggers. ;)

Getting back on track, my Alexa statistics have absolutely soared as of late… and I am seeing steady improvement in traffic with unique visits holding constant over 200 daily. I am hoping on seeing a nice bounce in RSS subscriber numbers through exposure, and will hopefully be increasing this through advertising campaigns on various blogs in my niche area. Stay tuned for more updates!

-The Net Fool

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