I only have one month left of bachelorhood. I’ll be a married man 30 days from now. It’s pretty exciting!

All the wedding plans are done. The tuxes have been ordered, the invitations were sent out and the RSVPs have been coming in. We’re almost to the point of “let’s get this thing over with already.” I’m not really getting nervous, at least not yet anyways. I’ve been with my fiancee for almost 4 years now, so there’s really no surprises. We know what we’re getting with each other

The only hiccup we’ve had so far is the hotel room we booked for the wedding night lost our reservation. I called them yesterday to confirm we had a reservation and the lady was like “ummm, we don’t have you in the computer.” I had booked the room over the phone like 3 months ago, so I didn’t have an email confirmation. I was pretty pissed because I specifically remember booking the room and giving those fools my credit card. I checked my credit card statement and noticed they never charged me, so I didn’t mind rebooking the room… but this time I did it online so I’d have proof. We got an awesome hotel room with a view of the St. Johns River and since it’s a wedding night stay we get free breakfast in bed!

I’m definitely ready to be a married man. Being engaged for a year is such a long time. If you’re a new reader to this blog, check out the honeymoon post. We’re very excited about the week long stay in paradise.

There often comes a time when webmasters can not handle the workload they’ve brought upon themselves. Webmasters and businesses are then forced to call upon a company to do some of the work for you. Today I wanted to profile a company out of London, England called Datadial that offers a variety of services from SEO to hosting.

Datadial has been around since 1998 and has a team of designers, developers, online marketers, technicians and programmers have helped businesses of all sizes to succeed online. One of their specializations is Email Marketing. Their services allow you to send bulk emails to all those lists you’ve created. So many bloggers and webmasters collect emails but never do anything with them. Datadial will let you create, send and track customized emails to your lists.

Maybe you have an e-commerce site and your sales have been declining? Some webmasters may not have time to do what’s needed to get sales back up. A company like Datadial can do all the Internet Marketing for you. They’ll take a look at your current sale stats and then create budgets and plans to help boost sales.

One area of online business that I have sought outside help on many times in the past is Search Engine Optimisation. To me, it’s very boring and time consuming. I’d much rather pay someone to do the work for me, and make sure it’s done right. SEO has huge benefits. It will get you high rankings in search engines which in turn brings in free traffic! You can’t beat that.

My buddy Matt Coddington just finished writing an ebook called Small Sites, Big Money. It’s a 31 page ebook based off one of his most popular posts on Net Business Blog about how to build a niche mini site. Matt no longer owns Net Business Blog, but he’s taken the ideas from that single post and compounded on them exponentially to build a great book.

The ebook is not free, but here’s a sampling of what you can get for only $40. And don’t tell me $40 is a lot… I know you’ve probably spent double that buying high promise ebooks on DigitalPoint.

Small Sites, Big Money is broken down into 7 ‘chapters’.

• Introduction
• Finding & Researching a Niche
• Monetization
• Website Development
• Search Engine Optimization
• Conclusion
• Additional Resources

The Finding & Researching chapter of the ebook is the most expansive. Matt gives you step by step ways to determine what niche is right for you and how to evaluate competition. He doesn’t just say “pick something you enjoy.” Matt will show you how to use online tools and research methods to find an undervalued niche with a long lifespan.

Another section I enjoyed in this ebook is the Monetization chapter. Matt shows you ways to monetize your niche mini site that you haven’t thought of before. It’s not about just slapping Adsense and Commission Junction ads on it. There are deeper ways to monetize a niche mini site that bring in way more revenue then the popular ad networks you know. But I’m not going to tell you what they are, if you want to find out you’ll have the buy the book.

All-in-all, Small Sites, Big Money is a great ebook for someone trying to break into the ‘make money online’ business, as well as someone trying to switch things up. I know I’ve gotten into a rut before, where you just get bored of making the same old websites. Niche mini sites are something totally different. You can tell Matt put a lot of time and effort into writing this book. And I promise you won’t be disappointed.

The 2008 Bloggers NCAA TOURNEY Pick’em Contest is here. It is open to anyone with a blog. This contest isn’t going to make you a millionaire. It’s mostly for fun and something to bring our blogging community together.

This pick’em contest is going to be run on Yahoo Sports, so you have to have a Yahoo account to sign up. If you don’t have one, then make one… it takes 1 minute.

Rules:

• Only bloggers. It can be any type of blog. If you own a random fashion blog, thats fine… If you sign up and you don’t have a blog you will be booted.
• Your bracket name must be either your domain, name, or blog title. It must distinguish you from the rest of the pack.
• You must complete your bracket by Thursday March 20, before the first game.
• Anyone who signs up must acknowledge the winner in a blog post. The blog post must have a link back to the winner’s blog. You can simply say ‘Congrats to David Lithman for winning the Bloggers NCAA Tournament Pick’em Contest’.
• If you do not acknowledge the winner in your blog somewhere you will be ostracized from the community.
• I am the commish and control the league.

Prizes:

• A free link back from every blogger who signs up in the tournament. This could be a lot of free links if we get everyone to signup.
• 1 month of advertising on my blog in the 728×90 or 125×125 banner spot.
• More Prizes to Come. If you would like to donate something, let me know!

Sign up information:

1. Go to this page - http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/
2. Click join a group
3. Click join private group
4. Enter in Group ID #34835 and password bloggers
5. Create your bracket name. Remember the rules!!!
6. Fill out your bracket
7. Pray you win

For those of you who don’t follow Men’s Hoops, you really don’t need to if you want to have a chance to win. Anyone can win this. You can just pick your favorite mascot and have as good of a chance at winning as anyone.

I hope this really gets a lot of interest. I love doing this stuff. If you sign up, please spread the word. And sorry to discriminate, but this is for bloggers only!

Last year I hosted the 2007 Bloggers NCAA Tourney Pick’em Contest. Bryan Le was the winner, edging me out by a mere 4 points.

I wanted to give everyone a head’s up that I will be hosting the 2008 Bloggers NCAA Tourney Pick’Em Contest as well. On Monday, March 10th I will post all the details, including how to register and all the prizes we will have. We only had about 10 participants last year, so this year I’m definitely looking to expand it to 20 at least. The more the better though!

As usual, there will be no charge to participants and anyone can join. You don’t have to be a college basketball expert to participate and even win this thing. It’s probably 80% luck anyways.

If you want to donate a prize to the Contest, please email me or leave a comment. This contest should spread across many blogs, so if you want to donate some ad space or free links or services I would greatly appreciate it.

So stayed tuned! Be sure to check back Monday for all the details.

From time to time, I’m looking for some free hosting accounts. I like to test websites on them to make sure everything’s ok before I move the sites to one of my dedicateds. You don’t ever want to clog up your dedicated servers with a ton of small websites that you may not keep. So I’m glad my buddy just launched a new Free Web Host.

It’s not just free web hosting for test sites, they offer a complete package that will support some pretty big sites. Check out what you get with your free account:

• 5 GB Web Space
• 20 GB Bandwith
• MySQL Databases
• CPanel
• 1 Domain Access
• No Setup Fees
• No Adds
• 24/7 Free Support

It’s hard to find all of that on a $25/month vps plan, let alone a free web host. One of the best things about My5GB Free Hosting is that they don’t put ads all over your webpages. The catch with so many free hosts is that they litter your webpage with pop-ups and annoying ads. My5GB doesn’t do that. You won’t ever see them put an ad on your website.

My5GB.com also offers several different means of support, including: Live chat with our support department, E-mail support, Ticket system, and a Support Forum. I’ve talked to their support in a live chat a couple of times just to test them out and they’ve always been helpful and committed.

Check out what other bloggers are saying out My5GB:

“Never knew the grass from free web hosts was that green! My cows gave the most wonderful milk ever! Hooray for the My5GB Team!” - John Cow

“My5GB.com hosting exceeded my expectations. Their service, and reliability proves they are the best free hosting choice, hands down. Hats off to the My5GB.com Team!” - Nate Whitehill

For anyone looking to get started in an internet business, I recommend checking My5GB out. You don’t need to spend a ton of money on hosting when you’re just getting started. Get some free hosting and you won’t be disappointed. If you still have questions about what My5GB has to offer, they have a complete FAQs page that will answer all your questions.