You may also be able to trade clothing, electronics, tools and much more soon with other members of SwitchPlanet. The best part is that it’s 100% free to use!

SwitchPlanet is a social media trading site where members can switch their old DVDs, CDs, Games and Books with other members for free…sending members have to pay for shipping but they pay nothing when they request/receive something.

Social features such as friends, groups and forums are available.

The SP Network also supports various charities via our SwitchFunds program.

SP is basically a great place to get the media/entertainment you enjoy at the cost of shipping.

You offer your stuff that you do not need anymore and send it to members of Switchplanet. This earns you Switchbucs which can be used to order the stuff that you are interested in from other members. The only expense that you have is the shipping costs to ship the stuff to the member who request it.

Creating an account is free and easy. Within a few minutes you will be able to list your items as well as set up your trading preferences.

Start trading your unused stuff at SwitchPlanet today!

This is a paid review ordered through ReviewMe.

It can also recover files moved to Recycle Bin after it has been emptied and if some program does not use Recycle Bin when deleting files, Handy Recovery can restore such files too.

Handy Recovery supports all Windows file systems for hard and floppy drives. It can also recover compressed and encrypted files on NTFS drives.

Features

The key features of Handy Recovery software include

• FAT12/16/32, NTFS and NTFS 5 + EFS file systems support
• In-depth disk scanning for certain file types
• Option to create disk images for deferred recovery
• Shows probability of successful recovery for each file
• Recovers files from deleted and formatted partitions
• File filtering by name, mask, date and size
• Recovers files deleted without Recycle Bin
• Restores the structure of deleted folders
• Explorer-style disk content browser showing deleted files
• One-click filter button to show only the deleted files

Handy Recovery works on many Windows versions like 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 and even Vista operating system.

The bad part is that Handy Recovery is not freeware. It is priced at $39 for a single user license. You can download a 30-day trial version from here. Please note that the evaluation version can recover only 1 file per day.

If you prefer freewares you can try the FreeUndelete Recovery Software which I wrote about last year.

This is a paid review ordered through ReviewMe. If you would like your site or product reviewed here at a lower price, contact me.

Kevin has linked this blog a couple of times on BloggingTips.com, but I started noticing his blog only after he wrote that I was inflating my Alexa Ranking. I was actually just experimenting

Anyways…when I first visited BloggingTips.com, the first thing that caught my eye was his professionally designed mascot, a modified version of my favorite superhero (superman) with lots of money behind him and a laptop. The face of the character resembles Kevin.

Overall the mascot suggests to me that Kevin is very good in making lots of money from the internet. Now we can’t really confirm that until he reveals his earnings

On my first visit, BloggingTips.com had a different design. I think it was a 3 column theme with content in the middle and 2 sidebar on each side. The sidebars were colored back and did not match the overall theme. Kevin has got his blog a much better design now after many bloggers suggested it to him.

Here are some things that I liked and did not like about BloggingTips.com:

What I liked

• Domain name: The domain name bloggingtips.com is easy to remember
• Header: The header along with the mascot looks great and will mostly capture the attention of first time visitors to the blog.
• Tag line: I really liked the tag line of the blog- “Take your blog to the next level!”
• Featured Authors: Kevin has a few guest bloggers to help him keep his blog updated and he features some of them on the sidebar.
• Free Blog Themes: Kevin has offered a few WordPress themes for free
• Blogging FAQ: BloggingTips.com has a page that has the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about blogging which new bloggers will surely find useful (I found the page having some weird characters all over that makes it hard to read).
• Money makers: Kevin has listed 14 ad programs on his blog’s sidebar that can help make money online. The list can be useful to his readers looking for more ways to make money and helpful to him as he has used his affiliate links.
• Competition: Kevin holds competitions at times on his blog and features the latest one on the sidebar under heading ‘Latest Competition’ which is an excellent idea. Competitions can help make your blog active and get more readers to your blog.

What I did not like

• Not having a link to the About page in the main menu: Before doing a review of BloggingTips.com, I wanted to know more about the author but I could not find a link to an about page on the main menu and almost thought that the blog did not have an about page until I looked a bit lower on the sidebar. Also it would be good if Kevin linked his Blogging FAQ and Free blog themes pages on his main menu too.
• Having Feedcount displayed early: When I last checked, BloggingTips.com had only 214 RSS readers, so it might be a good idea if Kevin did not display the Feedburner Feedcount atleast until his blog has 500 RSS readers. Showing that a blog has low number of readers can prevent some visitors from subscribing to its feed. I know some may disagree with me here, but this is what I believe.
• Having forum on a new blog: BloggingTips.com is only about 4 months old and has a forum already? The forum can be handy to continue the discussion from the blog or for its readers to start discussions on topics they like, but I doubt the forum will be active until the blog has good number of loyal readers.
• AdSense: Kevin has placed 2 AdSense ad units and 1 link unit on his blog. The link unit is placed near the footer where I don’t think it will get much clicks at all and won’t be making much money as link units need 2 clicks to get publishers money. Also I think its best that blogs purely about blogging should get rid of AdSense entirely as AdSense may not perform well for them. I remember Darren Rowse once told me that he was thinking of removing AdSense completely from Problogger.net (he has removed the link unit so far). Blogs purely about blogging may be able to earn more if they offer advertisers with relevant products or sites a fixed banner on the sidebar (125×125), text links and maybe even a rotating top banner (468×60) just like Daniel from Daily Blog Tips has done.
• More tag: Kevin does not use more tags and hence his posts can be read entirely from the homepage. Using more tags helps you to increase your blog’s pageviews and prevent content duplication.
• Archives: Kevin has displayed his monthly archives on his blog’s sidebar. This alone is enough to let visitors know that the blog is a new one, so it might be a good idea to remove it from the sidebar atleast. Also using the CrazyEgg service I have found that visitors mostly do not click the monthly archive links which is why I removed it from this blogs sidebar. All it did was clutter my sidebar.
• MyBlogLog Widget: While readers may like seeing their avatars on blogs they visit, the MyBlogLog widget can increase the page load time which is why I removed it from this blog.

Final Thoughts

BloggingTips.com is a daily updated blog with lots of good quality content. I was not able to read most of the older posts of the blog as it has been down for several hours. Anyways I enjoyed reading the recent posts from the blog’s full feed and I am sure it will help you take your blog to the next level with its wonderful tips.

These are some of my favorite recent posts on BloggingTips.com

• Bad Blog Design – Not adding a comment link at the bottom of each post
• Hosting : The Basics of Hosting a Blog
• Hosting : What you should look for in a hosting company
• How to convert guests to readers?
• Blogging when you don’t have internet access

Want your site or product reviewed here? Contact me.

WP Bankroll is a wordpress plugin that will transform your current or new blog into a paid or free blogging site. You can use this to get free content from your readers, use to write paid reviews on websites, or just generally sell blog posts written by you or the sponsor.

Installation of the plugin is easy, you just have to upload the plugin folder, activate the plugin and insert one line of code into your sidebar. After installation, WordPress BankRoll Plugin puts up a ‘Buy A Blog Post’ link on your sidebar which advertisers can use to order a review from you. Clicking the link opens up a submission form where advertisers can choose who writes the post – you or them.

Advertisers can also select the category, title and tags (requires a tag plugin to work) for the post. They can also choose to feature the post on your sidebar for an additional fee.

After filling up all the post details, they will be asked to make the payment through PayPal. Once the payment has been made, the submitted post is marked as paid and you can write the post or publish it (if they have written the post).

The plugin’s Admin option page is where you should enter your PayPal ID and set how much you want to charge for a post, the minimum words needed and the maximum links allowed.

The option page also allows you to enable tags, set the number of featured posts to list, your disclosure phrase as well as posting guidelines for your advertiser. You can even choose to disallow paid posts in certain categories of your blog.

The plugin also offers a manage page where you can manage all the reviews you get through your blog and see which all advertisers have paid, if they asked to feature the post, cost of paid post, title, date and status (published/draft) of the post.

Demo

• Frontend Demo
• Admin Options Page
• Admin Manage Page

WordPress BankRoll is available in three versions – Free version, Single License ($19.99) and Unlimited License ($49.99).

The free version includes all the features of the paid versions but it requires a link back to their site. With the free version you also get full support on their support forums and get free upgrades to the plugin when they are released.

The single license gives you the rights to use the plugin on only one site and the unlimited license gives you the rights to use the plugin on every site that you own. The two paid licenses do not require a linkback.

Plugin Features

• Powerful backend for integration with Paypal. Uses IPN to track payments.
• Offer blogger written posts, sponsor written posts, or allow free posts.
• Options to set max links per post, minimum word count, and cost.
• Ability to allow submission with Tags along with the post. Requires a Tag plugin to work.
• Allow featured posts. Featured posts cost extra and will receive a link to their post on the sidebar. Option to select how many to randomly display in your sidebar and an option to set the price.
• Admin option to set posting guidelines, a disclosure phrase at the end of each post, and the ability to select which of your blogs categories are open to submission.
• Extremely easy installation. Upload plugin folder, activate plugin, and insert one line of code into your sidebar.

WordPress BankRoll Plugin is a great plugin for WordPress that can help you get all the money for doing a review, but it is hard for advertisers to find you unless your blog is very popular.

This is a paid review that was ordered through ReviewMe

Being a smart phone and loaded with software it makes it unique among all the N series.

It can be described as phone which gives you 5 Mega Pixel camera, DVD Quality Footage, browsing and GPS mapping. It can be called as complete phone with just one glitch , though its a twin slider the design is not a ground breaking one.

Features of Nokia N95

• Integrated GPS System.
• 5 Mega pixel Camera.
• HSDPA technology gives you a download speed of 3.6 Megabits per second.
• 3.5 G technology
• Video Recording Nearly DVD quality.
• 2.6 inch Horizontal wide screen for watching videos and Maps.
• Supports MP3, WMA, RealAudio, SP-MIDI, AAC+, eAAC+, MIDI, AMR, M4A, True Tones formats
• USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0 support
• Hardware accelerated PowerVR 3D graphics which makes graphics go high.
• 160 MB memory inbuilt and microSD memory Slot.

Dimension:

• 99 x 53 x 21 mm
• Weight 120 g
• Volume 90 cc

Now that you know most of the features, lets see the dark and bright side of the N95 model.

The Positives of Nokia N95

• Excellent Screen Size which allows clear views and positive for videos. In The age of “on Demand” Internet this can be a boost.
• Amazing Sound Clarity which takes up signals in elevators also.
• DVD quality video recording.
• Being a 5 Mega Pixel Camera gives yo the best of imaging in mobile phones. The phone comes with lifeblog software , which is in all NSeries, which allows you to upload photos to flickr
• Listening Music is a different experience with N95. The Sound quality is stable and rich. It doesn’t sound loud as other phones.
• Wi-Fi is given a huge support on N95. Thus allowing to connect to any hot spot. Even Voice Over Ip Support rocks.

The Negatives of Nokia N95

• The phone is little heavy in terms of software. The applications are reported to hang more often.
• Inbuilt memory is too less according to me. It should have come with much higher memory support keeping in mind the applications that run on it.
• The Battery along with this phone doesn’t even last a day. Thats a big down for this super smart phone.
• The design is not that attractive, Its more like a box design though its a 2 slider phone.

This phone is good but then it’s not for everybody. You might have to think before buying it specially because of the battery aspect. Whats your experience with Nokia N95, share with me

Also check out the Nokia N95 review on my Hardware Review blog.

We install so many software, most of the time we don’t know what it’s doing in the background. Many applications are resource eaters. They run faster but then they don’t let other applications run the same way. What do you then, un-install it right? But your system will still run slow.

If we take a closer look, its more important to understand how Operating systems and applications run. Every installation does something, when an application runs it creates temporary files but they don’t remove it most of the time. Your system gets older and your file ages. Even after uninstall, applications don’t remove everything. Thus you system will remain slow.

So what you do? Reinstall the whole operating system? But think again, what if something can fix those old files, remove temporary files, fix your registry and make your PC fast again.

I give you System Mechanic’s review and how to keep your system running smooth days after days.

What is System Mechanic?

It’s a software which can optimize your system to make it run smooth. It can fix your registry and remove dead links. It can even delete unnecessary files so you won’t lose valuable hard disk space. System Mechanic can fix PC problems, boost performance, eliminate crashes, defend against spyware, viruses, and hacker threats, and much more.

Features

• One button click analysis to get to know all current problems of your system.
• Tells you about security and performance of your system.
• List out the problems and tells you how much time it will take to fix it.
• Undo for every step you have done so you can roll back in case of any problem.
• Both manual and auto options for different options. So if you are sure what it does you can just ask it do every time for you.
• Repair hard drive errors that cause computer crashes and lock-ups
• Recover Deleted data.
• One click to complete PC optimization.
• Quick links to increase performance, enhance protection, free drive space and others.

Here are some images which are self explanatory

Advantage and Disadvantage

Positives

• Easy User interface.
• Really works, It does optimize system performance.
• Undo of everything is a good feature.
• Quick links are very powerful.
• Online support is also available.
• IntelliStatus give you things like system and memory details in one shot.

Negatives

• It’s a resource eater. So if you are running this application in ram less then 256 MB, it might slow down the system.
• Though its simple to use but there are lot of things which can be configures if you want to. But if you are not sure leave the default configuration and use the software as it is.

System Requirements

• PC running Microsoft Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP, or Vista
• CD or DVD drive (for CD installation)
• 256 MB of RAM
• 60 MB of available hard disk space
• Internet Explorer 6.0 or later
• Internet connection required

I would give 4 out of 5 to this Vista compatible software.

If your system is really performing slow, try out this software. There is a 30 days trial version available free. Download System Mechanic here.

Still got any doubts? Feel free to ask.

This post has been submitted by Ashish Mohta from Technospot.net. You can subscribe to his RSS feed here.

CCleaner also has a built-in Registry cleaner which helps to check and fix problems in your registry.

Other tools CCleaner provides are an Uninstall manager that lets you easily uninstall any program from your PC and a Startup manager that lets you easily remove programs that are set to run when your computer starts.

Cleans the following:

• Internet Explorer: Temporary files, URL history, cookies, Autocomplete form history, index.dat.
• Firefox: Temporary files, URL history, cookies, download history.
• Windows: Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files and Log files.
• Registry
• Advanced cleaner to remove unused and old entries, including File Extensions, ActiveX Controls, ClassIDs, ProgIDs, Uninstallers, Shared DLLs, Fonts, Help Files, Application Paths, Icons, Invalid Shortcuts and more… also comes with a comprehensive backup feature.
• Third-party applications: Removes temp files and recent file lists (MRUs) from many apps including Opera, Media Player, eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, MS Office, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip and many more…

CCleaner is 100% free and does not contain any Spyware, Adware or Viruses.

What I do not like about CCleaner is it’s interface, but the best part of this software is that it is small, fast and free! And CCleaner is also Vista compatible, unlike TuneUp Utilities 2007 which has still not released a Vista compatible version.

Want your software to be reviewed? Contact me

AGLOCO, short for a global community, allows you to make money by running a small toolbar, the ‘Viewbar, on your browser while you surf the web.

The Viewbar is currently in limited beta testing and is not yet available for download. In a couple of weeks, the viewbar will be put for download.

The Viewbar is what enables AGLOCO to collect the money you are earning while browsing the Internet. The Viewbar keeps track of your online interests and preferences, and uses that information to deliver advertising based on the web pages you are visiting.

The moment you learn that the Viewbar keeps track of your online interests, you may doubt that it contains spyware. This is what their site says to assure you that the AGLOCO Viewbar has absolutely no spyware.

The Viewbar™ is the opposite of spyware. Spyware sneaks onto your computer without your knowledge or permission, it steals your private information, and it’s nearly impossible to remove. Unlike spyware, the Viewbar™ is completely permission based, it keeps your information private, and you can always turn it off with a single click.

Features of the Viewbar include:

• Search (every time you use the Viewbar to do a search, AGLOCO earns money from the search engine providers and they pay you)
• Contextual ads (the Viewbar displays Ads that are targeted based upon the websites you’re visiting. When you click on an Ad and make a purchase, AGLOCO receives a referral fee, which they pass on to their members.)
• Anti-fraud and other software utilities (lets AGLOCO get you money from software companies)

Screenshot of AGLOCO Viewbar

You can run the Viewbar upto 5 hours per month. Once the five hours are over, you can turn the Viewbar off until next month. However you will make money when people you have referred and the people they referred (down to 4 levels) surf.

Until the Viewbar is released, you can refer other people to join your community and earn more that way. You can refer people through email, instant messengers and websites.

If you have a blog, you can make a post on AGLOCO and ask your readers to sign up using your referral link. You can also try putting up an AGLOCO banner on your site. The more people you refer, the more money you make.

If you are interested in trying out AGLOCO, do consider signing up using my referral link.

Advertisers will find Text Link Ads useful as these are static links without a nofollow and will therefore help them improve their search engine rankings and get them some traffic.

Text Link Ads makes it easy for Advertisers to choose which sites to advertise on by displaying all their publishers by category and ordering them by Alexa ranking and monthly price. Once you select the sites you want to advertise on, just tick the ‘Buy’ checkbox and click ‘Add to cart’.

As a new Advertiser on Text Link Ads you are eligible for $100 in FREE Links.

Publishers will find Text Link Ads useful as unlike other Ads they are just text links and won’t be irritating for their visitors. As a publisher you can choose how many ads you would like to display, and whether they will appear on a single page or sitewide. Be careful on what you choose because this will affect on how much each link on your site will cost. The more Ads you choose to appear, the lesser will be the price per link.

You can choose where to place the links on your site, but remember that certain places can get you more money. You can use the Text Link Ads calculator to see how much a link is worth on your site depending on where you put it and whether you chose to offer a single page or a site wide link. The left side of your page can earn you the most and the link worth decreases as you move to the right side.

Also Text Link Ads are sold at a flat price for a 30 day period. The price won’t fluctuate with your traffic nor will it depend on how many people click or view the Text Links but is based on factors like Alexa Rank and Google PageRank. So your site will have a higher link price if you have good Alexa Rank and Google PageRank.

I recommend everyone to try out Text Link Ads (aff) as it can be a good source of income depending on your sites ranking. New sites may not get accepted into TLA (my friend faced this problem), in that case you will have to improve your rankings.

Text Link Ads has an affiliate program that will pay you $25 for any referred visitor that is accepted into their publisher program and installs the advertising script on their site for seven days. If you refer an advertiser who purchases an advertisement, the referral will appear in your affiliate account within 24 hours. If you decide to sign up as a publisher, use this link.

If you wish to sign up as an advertiser or wish to buy a link on my blog, you can do so here. A text link ad on this blog costs $160 a month, but this link will give you $100 in FREE Links.

My Experience

In the beginning I was not that satisfied with Text Link Ads as they set my monthly price to $25 but later as my Alexa Rank and Page Rank improved, the link price got set to $160. But as Text Link Ads take 50% of the link price as their fee, I earn just $80.

In February, only 1 advertiser had bought a link on my site for $160, the rest 6 Advertisers bought links before the monthly price had increased. So my February earnings for Text Link Ads was only $91.89 + $25 (referral).

I expected a better earning for this month, but I noticed that this month too old advertisers were buying links on my site for the old price ($25). It would be nice if there was a way to cancel an Advertiser or raise the link price if they wanted to continue advertising.

Another thing I have noticed is that sometimes the advertisers who buy links seem to be a little off topic to what I blog about. For example: Champs Elysees Hotels.

Apart from these problems, Text Link Ads can be a good way to make money online and I recommend you to join it if you have not done so far and is interested in making money from your site.

Try out Text Link Ads and let me know how it works out for you. If you are already using it, I would love to hear how well it’s working for you.

Also read on how to make money online with Text Link Ads

Here’s how ProBlogger and TechCrunch has made use of Feedvertising-

TechCruch has elected not to include advertising, instead they added a simple text item at the end of their feed content that promotes their Crunch Network sites.

ProBlogger at present has decided to include his own personal ads to his sites and products like the job boards, six figure blogging, and the digital photography site.

You can also use this free service for such purposes or to link your archives and top posts in your RSS feeds. It’s totally up to you.

You are allowed to select upto 6 Ad slots and decide how many slots are for Text Link Ads to sell in their marketplace and how many for your private use. Ads are rotated and a single Ad is placed below each blog post.

Currently Feedvertising supports only WordPress blogs but they will be adding more platforms soon.

The best part is that your RSS subscribers won’t get irritated by these advertisements as they are just plain text link Ads. You can even change the default ‘Advertisement’ text that appears before your Ad to anything like ‘Sponsor’, ‘Sponsored By’ , ‘Thanks to our Sponsor’, etc.

Feedvertising is based on a flat rate pricing, i.e not CPM or CPC. You sell a text ad in your feed for a month in the same way as other Text Link Ads.

So in short Feedvertising can help-

• Publishers monetize their RSS feeds
• Advertisers promote their sites to a targeted group of readers
• Readers from seeing irritating image advertisements

For more information on how the product works, see the video tutorial they have created here.

I recommend all bloggers who wish to earn from their blogs to try out the free Feedvertising.

So anybody interested in advertising on my Feed?