No Visitors on Your Blog? Get Tons of Traffic Today!
 

Win Free Blog Hosting for Life with Sabahan.com

written by John Chow on July 10th, 2007

I have to admit it, bloggers are getting a lot better at promoting their contests. They know that a contest doesn’t do them much good if no one knows about it and what better way to get people talking about your contest than by ordering a ReviewMe review from John Chow dot Com? Well, that is exactly what Sabahan.com did.

Win a Free Domain & Free Hosting for Your Wordpress Blog

free-hosting-contest.gifSabahan.com is holding a contest targeted towards bloggers. The winners will get free domain names and free WordPress blog hosting for life. That’s right, for life!

To participate in the contest, write a review of Sabahan.com and post it to your blog. For every five entries Sabahan.com received, one winner will be selected at random to win a free domain name. Once they have five domain name winners, those winners will go into drawing for a free WordPress blog hosting for life. The draw will be repeated for every five new domain name winners. Those are actually pretty good odds when you calculate it out.

Your review must be at least 200 words long and link to the Sabahan.com home page, the contest page and at least one other post. When linking to the other post, you should use the post title as the anchor text. That’s actually a really smart way of doing it. I doubt Google will try to slap Sabahan.com the way they tried to slapped me (which doesn’t seem to be working since my traffic is as high as ever).

Who is Sabahan.com

Sabahan.com is a blog about computers, the Internet, blogging, marketing and interesting stuff. The blog is the work of Gaman (no last name) who has been working part time on the Internet since 1997 and went full time in 1999. Gaman started Sabahan.com last January to give out tips and help bloggers make money online. Some of Garman’s moneymaking posts include:

Sabahan.com is updated multiple times per day and offers a full feed RSS.

Recommendations for Improvement

Sabahan.com needs to improve his about page. The page tells more about the state of Malaysia than it does about its author. It would be nice if we knew Gaman’s full name. This helps to build trust and brand the blogger. The about page should tell the blogger’s story and not give a geography lesson.

Garman doesn’t show the full blog post on the front page. Instead, only the first 100 words or so are displayed and readers must click a read more link to read the rest of the entry. I don’t think Sabahan.com does enough post per day to justify doing this. When you do click the read more link, you’re greeted with 300×250 Google ads taking up the left side of the post. This is really distracting and I wish he would move it to the right. In my tests, there isn’t a big difference in click rate between having the Google ad on the left vs. having it on the right.

Other than the distracting 300×250 Google ad, Sabahan.com has done a good job placing the other advertisements on the blog. He displays his link sponsors near the top and I would be interested to find out how the Google AdLink is doing for him. I also really like his integration of the Google search box into the blog.

Overall, I like Sabahan.com enough to add it to my feed reader. I guess this post also enters me into his win a free blog hosting for life contest. If I do win, I’ll donate it to a needy blogger.

Tweet This Tweet This Post!
English flagItalian flagKorean flagChinese (Simplified) flagChinese (Traditional) flagPortuguese flagGerman flagFrench flagSpanish flagJapanese flagArabic flagRussian flagGreek flagDutch flagBulgarian flagCzech flagCroatian flagDanish flagFinnish flagHindi flagPolish flagRomanian flagSwedish flagNorwegian flagCatalan flagFilipino flagHebrew flagIndonesian flagLatvian flagLithuanian flagSerbian flagSlovak flagSlovenian flagUkrainian flagVietnamese flag
By N2H
  1. Is there any difference in having the adblock in the left or right side of a post? I’ve often wondered that.

  2. Combining JohnChow review with a blog review contest. That surely will generate alot of traffic :wink: :twisted:

  3. This is a pretty cool contest, and the odds are really, really good. Most of the time it is 1 our of 100, well at least the one’s I am in, and this one is 1 out of 5, that is awesome.

  4. Is this Sabahan from Sabah, Malaysia? If yes, I am proud of him.

  5. wow sound interesting.
    i’ll join the contest

  6. This was a really good idea. I might be doing this myself in the near future :-)

  7. John, you mentioned that you’d recommend him to move the google ads to the right. but then you had this sentence immediately after that:

    “In my tests, there isn’t a big difference in click rate between having the Google ad on the left vs. having it on the right.”

    should it be “there is a big difference…” instead?

  8. I am a feed subscriber to Sabahan.Com and he is good. That’s why I check his site daily for new stuff to read about. In fact, I learnt much from him. I did a review for the contest but did not win the round of 5 :oops:

  9. I read Sabahan.Com daily through feed subscription and must say that he is good. Learnt much from him. I even wrote the review but did not make it in the round of 5 :oops:

  10. A free-hosting contest, you say? Count me in! :D

  11. ben

    i adore him since i know he did the digitalborneo.com which makes him one of the most popular tech prenure in malaysia :)

    gaman ko jugala yang mantaps!

  12. ben

    i wish i have to budget to get you to review my site :)

  13. Unfortunately I have reseler hosting plan so I can have as many domains as I want.

  14. After my recent experiences with MidPhase i’m in for a bit of free hosting. :grin:

  15. Nice cowpetition. Nearly as cool as ours :twisted:

  16. I’m a greenie at all this and I’ve been trying to absorb some of the stuff here, fast as I can. But it’s mind-boggling. And it really takes time.

    John is amazing! Are you actually able to have a life?

  17. What does he mean by “life”. My life, his life, his website’s life?

    “The free hosting will remain as long as I am able to retain my dedicated server – meaning as long as I am in business :)

    Apparently it’s the crappier of the three.

  18. Anything free sounds good to me, well almost anything.

  19. This site is interesting but not remarkable to me. Anyway I am gonna write my review. A free hosting for life is a free hosting for life! :) )

  20. So what happens to the winner and their prize when this Gaman fella decides to sell his site or stop blogging completely?

  21. Awww…I proposed to John but my trackback didn’t get through. :razz: Oops, maybe I forget to pay my monthly fees.

  22. moneyblogger

    why are there so many ads? every other button on this website is an advertisement or a paypal quicklink to pay john chow money.

  23. hi,

    john i want to be a successfull blogger like u,

    I am beginer in blogging, so i think u r a king of this world of blogs,

    I definitely will be getting ur guidense. can u look at my site and plz tell me your suggesions..

    1. http://onlinemoneymaking4u.blogspot.com
    2. http://inspiration-for-success.blogspot.com

    waitong eagerly for ur reply…

    regards

  24. Yet another contest idea. I love the contests that offer non physical items such as hosting, free domain reg, etc…

  25. This paid review needed a paid proofreader. :lol:

  26. wow…you actually gotten this news too…cool….he is currently in the last phrase already…this contest will end fast

  27. Thanks for the good news! I love contest and free stuffs. :grin:

  28. I love your contests John. I’m running a couple of my own as well. Win Free Coffee
    and
    Win A Casio Pocket Television

    Simple and easy to enter. Not big prizes but I’m just starting out.

  29. Hey…Gaman is my favourite money making tip blog! :mrgreen:

    (Aramai Tih!)

  30. This is also nice linkbait I guess many people are blogging about this now and he paid just one review.

  31. This contest is from malaysia……

    Malaysia Boleh

  32. Gaman is the man. Our man and he’s good as good as others out here… probably better.
    Aramaitii tokou sa avi avi, gaman. :)

  33. ben

    saya setuju papajoneh ko jugala..si gaman memang mantaps..nada lagi..yang paling mantap di sabah addididi gaman araimittttttttttttII

    :) si edwin bilang ko power!

  34. CS

    :twisted: Impress with this person from Sabah. Well done my friend. I’ve visited his site and my personal comment is very informative. :twisted:

  35. Wow , it seems that the owner of Sabahan.com is a real fan of yours , he inspired a couple of times from your articles. Anyway , good review John.

    dumis ,
    digitpedia.com

  36. Zul

    Malaysia is a country not a state… lol…

Trackbacks

  1. Make$ Money$ - Truth, no scam » Blog Archive » Fuyoh, Sabahan.com paid John Chow USD400 for a ReviewMe! - July 10, 2007 at 1:51 am
  2. Welcome to Readers from JohnChow.com! « Sabahan.com - July 10, 2007 at 4:29 am
  3. Is It Worth Spending $400 to Have Your Blog Reviewed At JohnChow.com? Here’s My Experience « Sabahan.com - July 23, 2007 at 5:01 am