Well, I came across another blog that is asking for reviews. This time, there is an added incentive to giving a review. Aside from the usual linkback (yes it is included) there is an opportunity to get paid for doing the review. As outlined in the promotion’s rules, one lucky person is going to get $50 for doing a review. To add to the incentive is that (based on the author’s expectations) the odds of winning are likely to be quite good. The promotion will run until August 1, 2007 or until 30 reviews have been received, whichever comes last.

The blog in question here is “The Cranking Widgets Blog” where the information is being cranked out. I like the layout and look of this site, it is simple, functional, and yet looks quite professional. There seem to be a good selection of articles about a variety of topics and is a site that I could easily get lost in and spend a significant amount of time reading. The author also does a good job of letting his readers know who he is as well (something I need to work on).

I do have some criticisms of this blog as well. For one thing, the domain name is crankingwidgets.com, but if you were to type in this or www.crankingwidgets.com into a web browser, you will be sent to a page that uses a META Refresh to send you to blog.crankingwidgets.com. This could be better accomplished using a 301 redirect in the .htaccess file. It would add to the professionalism of the site and also be a bit more user friendly.

Another criticism is that it seems almost every post on the site makes reference to a book titled “Getting Things Done” and it almost feels like a sales pitch after awhile. I do not know if the author of the site has an affiliate deal with the author or distributor of the book or if he just feels that strongly about the book, but it gets to be a bit much.

My only other criticism of the site is in regards to this promotion. It seems that the author of the blog does not have his sites set very high, hoping for a minimum of 30 reviews. With a contest where you are giving away cash, I can’t see how it would be much difficulty to get 30 people to review the site. This is even truer for a site such as Cranking Widgets because he has nearly 2,000 RSS subscribers. That figures out to only 3 out of 200 people (that already read his blog) needing to take him up on the offer not including anyone who has not signed up for the feed or just comes across the site like I did.