Have you every just wanted to take a break? Maybe have a Second Life? You can! Many of you may have already heard of the metaverse being built by Linden Labs. Second Life may have been a social outlet years ago, but its quickly growing to be a medium for all things artistic, including the art of making money. Big names like IBM and CNN have stepped into the virtual world lugging their brands along behind them. What if your blog brand was to find its way into the virtual world?

First Chance at a Second Life
I’ve explored Second Life in the past. However, I haven’t logged on since they were around 100 thousand users. The numbers today are closer to half a million users. And why not? To begin using Second Life, you only need to be 18 years old and have a computer with an internet connection.

Marketing your blog in Second Life is not something that would be a breeze. It would require lots of communication just like any other social networking site.

To know what it would take to market your blog in Second Life, I conducted an interview with a well known Second Lifer - Kabalyero. He runs a blog that offers news and information on Second Life.

Can you describe to my readers, who may not be familiar with Second Life, what it is?

At first, I also didn’t understand what Second Life really is and different people have different definition of what it is. What I am sure about is that, Second Life is not a game. It’s a world of its own. A virtual world where you shape your own existence. A place to learn, build and meet different personalities. A place where you can become what you are not in real life. Real Life businesses like IBM, Sony & BMG and others use Second Life as a new medium to promote and market themselves. The possibilities are many and what you make out of it is really up to you.

Do you actively promote your blog inside the virtual world?

Unfortunately, NO! I do my marketing on the web through Second Life related blogs, websites, forums and social networks.

Do you see a chance for bloggers or affiliates to make money in Second Life?

Yes! Actually, I make some money in Second Life through affiliates and referral programs. I blog about opportunities that comes along then earn from people who sign up.

Have you seen active campaigns in the virtual world for websites and the like?

CNN actively promotes their in-world media bureau in Second Life. Evian water uses their virtual water dispenser to direct Second Life residents to their website. At my place, residents who visit can touch or click some of the displays which opens in a web browser.

What’s the best way to get started in Second Life? Does it take money, friends, experience, a good computer?

Just sign-up and have an open mind about what it is. Newbies tend to get frustrated easy. I know I did! It’s not a game and will take some learning. Spend some time in the Orientation and Help Islands and don’t hesitate to ask for help. There are Helpers or Mentors around the newbie islands to help newbies. You don’t have to pay anything to enjoy Second Life but a good computer with a decent connection is recommended. You see, in Second Life, the world is downloaded into your computer.

Anything else you liked to share about promoting a site, blog, or service in Second Life?

You can definitely gain some following by promoting through Second Life but like with everything else you’ll have to do some work. I suggest that you join various business groups and network with the many personalities within Second Life. Honestly, I haven’t done many of that since I’m always caught up with my real life responsibilities.

Thanks to Kabalyero for his insightful answers. Everyone should go read his blog to get a better perspective on what Second Life is all about.

Conclusion
From what I know of Second Life, you can pay a small monthly fee to own land in the world. You then buy the plot and use the tools of the world to create a house, shop, artistic spire to the gods, or whatever you like. Then, like Kabalyero, you script into the experience your own blog. This can be a boom for many bloggers, introducing the right service or blog through the Second Life experience may net several hundred RSS subscribers. It may even result in sales.

Whatever the case, it appears like it would be a fun experience, and I’m sure it would be one worth having.

Mrs. Boom had an interview this afternoon. She’s looking to change jobs. I took her to her interview and waited patiently for her return.

In the meantime, I ate lunch and read a magazine. You know what popped out at me from my Men’s Health magazine? No, not the scantily clad women or the brutish men — the perfume pages! You know those fragrance samples that come inside popular magazines. For years I have associated magazine reading with the light scenting of CK or the robustness of Bvlgari. After reading an article, I realized I was awash in nostalgia brought on by simply holding and smelling a magazine.

Reloading Your Blog Magazine
I have heard the arguments that we are not bloggers anymore, but web publishers. I know some blogs carry themselves as magazines rather than weblogs. One of my favorite new sites, Trend Spike, has a magazine feel to it. I wonder, can we create the same nostalgic, yet subtle presence that a perfume page brings to a magazine on a blog.

What’s that Smell?
What is a perfume page? For those who don’t know, a perfume page is a full page ad for some cologne, as was the case for my Men’s Health magazine. The page is unique because in the flap along the side they have sprayed, gelled, or otherwise deposited the scent of the fragrance. That flap can be like opening the long forgotten Tupperware dish in the far recesses of the refrigerator, the smell hits you like a ton of rotten eggs. But even if you don’t open the flap, the fragrance saturates the pages and give a light smell to your reading.

Your Blog’s Smell
I’m still waiting for the scratch and sniff webpages. Until that time, we’ll have to create our own olfactory stimulation. Our pages may not give off the scent of fresh flowers but we can harness the power of nostalgia that perfume pages create for magazines.

A fragrance sampler gives users something new with each magazine, and it’s usually pleasing.  It may peak a reader’s interest enough to seek out the fragrance in a department store. So the secondary effect of the ad was actually the aroma saturated magazine pages. The primary goals was to move product.

How can this help bloggers? We sell ourselves with each post. Our blog is our product. We move ourselves.

If we emulate the fragrance sample pages, we need a secondary nostalgic reaction for visitors to our blog.

Creating Nostalgia
We cannot supplant ourselves into the past experiences of our readers. We can however relate to them. We can connect and forge a bond that creates the subtle fragrance sample page experience. Here are a few things that will give your readers a sense of having been there before, and associate that feeling with a positive memory.

1. Use a memorable theme that compliments your niche.
   The right theme can bring back memories from a previous visit. Hopefully, they encountered fantastic content on that earlier visit and remember it. The positive memory may be enough to encourage them to subscribe to your RSS feed.
2. Create a Persona
   A persona, like Regis, Oprah, Dominick Dunne. You get the idea. These TV figures have distinctions about them that keep people watching. While their schtick might not be your fancy, a quality persona can endear readers to your blog.
3. Use Memorable Graphics
   Our graphics become our face on the Internet. If we use cheesy, overused images, then that’s the image we’re portraying -literally. Use quality, memorable graphics and readers will remember them just as they remember a certain smell. With the right picture, it will detail what type of content exists on the site.

Conclusion
The moment wasn’t long. The smell from that magazine wafted up from the pages, triggering memories. This was marketing, I thought. An institutionalized marketing ploy. It’s been around forever. Why not use it on our blogs? Can you think of ways blogs have used perfume pages throughout the years?

Have you seen the experimental set creator from Google? You can see the very application on the Google Labs webpage. The sets application ostensibly takes three words from the user and finishes the set of items. I have been toying with the application, trying to find a practical use for it. At first I thought, it would make for a great keyword finder, but there are already plenty of those out there. Google Sets would have to do more than that to tickle my fuse.

What Does Google Sets Do?
We write in sets quite often, or at least I do. When I’m drilling home a point about why I blog, I may mention five to ten items that relate to the activity. This litany creates a set. Sets can be beneficial when targeting keywords in SERPs, building ad campaigns around products or services, or emphasizing statistics.

We often times find sets in statistical form. We have a set of numbers that correlate to site traffic. The words that help us interpret those numbers also come as a set, like bounce rate, visitors, pageviews, sources, referrals, and traffic. So what does this all mean?

We live in a world of sets. Affiliate marketers work on narrowing their sets of keywords so they get the most boom for their buck. Bloggers in general speak of sets quite often. When we write, we can look to tools like Google sets to complete the holes in our own lists.

Practical Use
I don’t think the Google Sets application will be as exciting as Obama at a Clinton rally. However, it can be useful.

Our own writing may contain sets at one point or another, and the Google Sets application may be just the thing we need to springboard that set to completion. I know I have struggled to think of just one or two more items.

The next time I’m struggling to think of the completion to hamburger, fries, and coke I won’t have to run to McDonald’s to figure out cheese and heart attack.

Have you heard of the TNX.net site? The text link advertising site may be just the thing your blog needs. Are you looking to boost back-links, drive traffic to your site, or become a publisher with the chance to make money? The TNX.net site offers web publishers and advertisers a unique service that I’ll take the time to discuss in this Powder Keg Review.

How Does TNX.net Work?
Most everyone should be familiar with text link advertising. The TNX.net text link advertising system works on a simple scale for upcoming blogs to gain momentum and earn credits. For instance, a publisher can join the TNX community for free, and then begin displaying the text link ads on their site. This earns the publisher credit, which they can use to purchase text links on other sites or withdraw for some cold hard cash.

Are you looking to monetize your site? TNX can help you make money by buying back the credits you’ve earned on your site. The payout scale works like this: 1000 TNX credits equal $0.74. Five dollars is the minimum payout. This seems like a great opportunity for sites with quality traffic to earn some extra money.

The TNX System
The TNX site greets users with an easy to sign up process and a pleasing design. Once you login to the member’s area, you can instantly find the areas dedicated to publishers or advertisers. As a blogger, you may wish to check out both to know how everything works. We are a curious lot. Publishers and advertisers can register for free at the TNX.net site.

How Flexible Is the System?
I signed up for the program, and it literally took me two minutes. No big deal. I thought it would be a long registration process, but it wasn’t at all. I was happy about that. The price for text links can’t be beat either. The system enables advertisers to target specific keywords on a large volume of sites in a matter of minutes. For those with a specific online service, the advertising a specific keyword across many blogs may be just the marketing boost needed.

Advantages for Publishers
As we mentioned previously, the system allows web publishers to integrate the text link advertising system throughout a site. This means specific keywords on your posts could be bought by someone and used to link to their site. The editorial process at TNX ensures keywords are relevant to your site, and don’t conflict with their terms of service.

Once a publisher logs into the system, they will be greeted with various options, including getting the code to have the links working on your site. Your site’s host must support PHP and Perl, which most hosts do.

After the webmaster has placed the code in the site’s template, he or she can return to the TNX dashboard to activate the site. This can only be done after the site’s code is in place.

A site with the code in place should begin seeing credits rather quickly. This all depends on your own site’s traffic. Once you accrue enough credits you can sell them to other members or back to TNX.

Advantages for Advertisers
The TNX system enables advertisers to quickly and easily setup keyword campaigns within thousands of sites. This means your non-reciprocal links will be widespread on the internet in a matter of minutes. The system can be used to target specific keywords, helping you reach the frontpage or number one position for a keyword if used properly. The folks at TNX have put together a free tool to help links look natural to Google.

TNX makes no guarantee on how well the keywords will boost search rankings, but it should be known that this practice should not hurt your site’s search results.

TNX’s Ad wizard makes creating ad campaigns simple and intuitive. You choose the site’s performance criteria related to: website categories, geo-location, number of Yahoo Backlinks (YB) and Google Page Rank. After choosing a category and rankings of the site, you then create the link to be displayed. The link does have a keyword, but it also contains a lead-in and lead-out. This means the keyword is surrounded by text. I presume this method makes the link more viable and less conspicuous to search engines.

All in all the process doesn’t take more than five minutes. You can be up and running in less than fifteen minutes with a well constructed keyword campaign.

Conclusion

I think the TNX link site definitely has a lot to offer advertisers and publishers alike. It will be exploding on the internet in the coming months. I’m sure we all will be hearing the name TNX.net over the next few years.

If you’re still questioning whether to sign up or not, you can always take advantage of the 5,000 free link promotion going on now. I’m sure that would help any blog explode across the internet. For blog owners, you can introduce others to the TNX.net site to make some extra cash. Simply join their affiliate program today.

In case you didn’t catch on, traffic is the theme for this weekly implosion. I had great success early in the week with the 100 Why Not Motivators for Bloggers post. Did you check that out? I’ll give a quick rundown of the results.

The post has been viewed 605 times in only one week. That’s great! The site saw 417 unique visitors the day it went live. Mainly because it was stumbled. I received quite a few good comments on that post.

I’m averaging over 150 uniques a day, but the numbers have been decreasing. You know what the answer to slowing traffic? More great content! I have some explosive posts in mind, and they’ll be rolling out next week.

Weekly Podcast?

I’m thinking of doing my own podcast. I’m not a radio personality by any means, but I think it would be fun. I’m considering explosive commentary as we speak. I’m not quite sure though. I would like to hear from my readers. Is this something you would enjoy? I’m not talking for 60 minutes or anything — just maybe a rant or two going anywhere from five to ten minutes. I’m still considering it. Let me know in the comments if you want to hear my booming voice.

Happenings this week

I did suspend the weekly contests, so there are no winners to announce. However, everyone has a chance to win a $100. Have you left a comment? It’s that simple to enter.

I also had another installment of the Powder Keg Review series. I’m excited about this series. I think it has the possibility of becoming the most popular feature of my site. I’ll be sure to do another one real soon. I’ve actually been in the process of writing the next installment, and it should be finished for Monday or Tuesday of this coming week.

Upcoming Explosions

I have a guest post that should be published this coming week on a neighboring blog. More about that when it’s revealed. I also have been developing the Boom Shelter that you see at the top of the screen. I hope to create and develop the page over this coming week. It will house the more static elements of this site. I’m still considering what all to do there. Keep checking it out for updates.

I’ll also be working on more inspiring blog posts. I want to write more about marketing your blog as well.

So let me know what you think in the comments: should I do a podcast?