I saw this auction for a StumbleUpon account come across my Web Auctions Daily feed yesterday and felt the need to comment.

The StumbleUpon account in question allegedly has 100,000 stumbles and 300 fans and is about a year and a half old. With an account like that you could quite easily drive massive amounts of traffic to any site you would stumble.

I’m not sure of the ethics of this kind of deal but, if that auction (now closed, and quite possibly bogus to begin with) is any indication, there seems to be quite a lot of interest in an account with those kinds of stats.

A Dangerous Weapon

I think I’ve made it clear in the past that I’m not really impressed with StumbleUpon traffic but having your very own power user account at SU would certainly be beneficial.

Everything you stumbled would turn into a traffic machine for at least a short amount of time. You could probably sell stumbles to the highest bidder with that much power. Maybe that’s why the seller on the auction had a “buy it now” of $10,000.

What Would You Do?

Now $10,000 for a user account at an otherwise free service is a bit extreme for most people. But here’s my question to you. If you had a chance to buy an existing StumbleUpon account (or Digg, Design Float, whatever) that had some leverage with the system would you do it?

I’m a little short on time today so this week’s edition of Wednesday Links is going to be a little brief.

Why You Shouldn’t Pay Any SEO You Can Afford at MicroISV on a Shoestring

MicroISV on a Shoestring is one of my favorite software developer blogs although, as of late, it’s been more about using SEO tactics to promote a website and product. His latest post called “Why You Shouldn’t Pay Any SEO You Can Afford” is worth a read. It’s a bit on the long side though so set aside some time to take it all in.

Coda Developer Videos from Panic

I’m big on using Coda for all of my web development and there are a lot of tips and tricks available at Panic’s new Coda Developer site. These videos are worth checking out even if you don’t own a copy of Coda right now. They might just push you over the edge.

The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry at Wired

This article at Wired is probably one of the best looks at the behind-the-scenes events that helped shape the new Apple iPhone. It’s interesting to see how Steve Jobs’ vision came to be.

CSS Gradient Text Effect at Web Designer Wall

Everyone loves a good CSS tutorial, right? Check out this awesome walkthrough for adding a gradient effect to your web site’s text using CSS and a simple PNG image.

Since I’ve been doing more and more guest posts as of late I’ve been formulating questions in my mind about freelance writing. I thought it would be good to interview a well-established freelance writer to get some of answers to those questions. Chris Bibey was kind enough to take some time out of his day to lend me a hand and tell us a bit about his freelance writing career.

You had a pretty successful freelance writing career before you launched your blog, correct? Do you feel like your blog has helped your career? If so, in what way?

Yes, that is correct. Before I started my blog, I was already working as a freelance writer for a couple of years. With that being said, my blog helped me in two ways:

1. It allowed me to share my knowledge with others; which I take a lot of pride in.
2. My blog has brought in a few new clients which is always a good thing. While I do not actively pursue clients via my blog, I do receive inquiries from time to time.

What have been the downsides to maintaining the blog?

The main downside of maintaining my blog is the time that it takes. Although I only post once per day, I spend a lot of time making sure that the information is accurate and useful.

Would you recommend other writers that are starting their freelance careers, or even those who are firmly established, start their own blogs?

Yes, I would. I think that a blog is a great way to connect with other writers, as well as bring in some extra work if they so desire. It is not easy to update a freelance writing blog everyday of the week, but it is a lot of fun nonetheless.

What niches do you think are the hottest for freelance writers to get into
at the moment?

This is a tough question becausethere is work to be had across hundreds of niches. Personally, I focus on the topics that are of the most interest to me; not what is hot at the moment. My best advice for an aspiring freelance writer would be to focus on three topics that excite them; even if the markets are saturated. When you are passionate about your writing, you have a much better chance of success!

Are you seeing an increase in the number of job requests from web developers, affiliate marketers or other blog owners as of late?

As each month goes by, it seems as if I receive more requests for my writing services, partnerships, etc. I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that my name is making its way around the blogosphere a bit more.

What are your thoughts on pay rates for those types of jobs? It seems that any rate you can offer can be beaten soundly by non-English speaking workers offering their services on job boards online. Does that increase in competition and, presumably, quality bother you?

You are 100 percent correct. There are a lot of non-English writers who will work for less than one cent per word. Obviously, it can be difficult to compete with them because of the descrepancy in price. By offering higher quality work, I can attract high level clients that are willing to pay the industry standard or more.

I do find it bothersome that so many poor quality writers are taking money from clients. The only way to put an end to it is for clients to stop shopping for content based on price, and instead focus on quality.

I know you’ve mentioned branching out your focus to other things besides freelance writing. How are those efforts coming along?

They are coming along quite nicely. At this time, I am working on several other projects including a freelance writing course, as well as a blog network that is growing by the month. For me, expanding my focus allows for increased income as well as a break from the freelance writing world.

Since I’m all about web development and WordPress lately let’s end on that. You’ve had a bad experience with a WordPress designer… Do you have any brief advice for anyone looking to hire a designer to rework their blog theme?

Sure do! When I hired a designer a few months back for a new theme, I made one major mistake: I did not ask for enough samples. I received maybe one, and figured that would be enough. Anybody who is going to hire a designer should get a solid feel for what they have accomplished in the past. One quality sample is not enough!

I want to thank Chris again for taking the time to answer my questions. His blog on freelance writing can be found at chrisblogging.com.

This week’s WordPress plugin, RSS Footer by Joost de Valk, has become very popular recently. I normally try to focus on lesser known plugins but as I’m pushing out more posts on this blog the problem of people scraping my content is becoming more prevalent. That’s where RSS Footer comes into play.

With RSS Footer you can turn the tables on the scrapers and add text and links to your posts that only appear on the RSS feed. Now when your feed gets scraped and the content is posted on an auto-blog you can get an instant backlink to your site. Pretty clever.

Small Potato, of WPDesigner fame, launched a brand new WordPress themes club this week that is either sheer brilliance or total lunacy.

This isn’t going to be your ordinary theme subscription service. This club will offer its members at least 12 brand new WordPress themes every year for the annual price of… $5.

You read that right. Members get at least 12 WordPress themes for $5. One of the best WordPress designers on the scene is going to offer everyone crazy value through this themes club.

The Deal of the Year?

Small Potato could have probably released a new premium theme once a month (read my interview with him about premium themes) and made a financial killing. So why not?

Here’s a quote from his press pack:

A large part of the $5 idea is making money off of users that would never pay for a theme in the first place by providing high quality at a low price and then invest that money in creating even better, top notch themes that were never available to the average blogger at a price like $5.

The Doors Are Already Open

The first theme released to the club is called Gossip. If you’d like to learn more about the WPDesigner Themes Club then visit the announcement page, check out the press PDF or, quite frankly, just go straight to the order page and give up the $5 for 12 themes in one year.

I wish Small Potato the best of luck with his new venture.

It’s apparently “Guest Post Thursday” for me as two more articles I’ve written were published this afternoon.

The first is another post over at Blog About Your Blog. This one is about getting search engine traffic to your blog by writing about tech support issues.

My other post is a synopsis of internationalized domains over at the Xavier Media Blog. The ability to register a domain name with international characters is an interesting new addition to the TLD game. It opens up some security/phishing concerns for me though.

I’m not sure how many more of these I’ll be doing but I’ve done a few through the Entrecard shop so far. Other than those that were “paid for,” if I have a post idea that I don’t think fits in with the slightly ambiguous theme of this blog I’ll send it somewhere else to be posted.

UPDATE: My post at Blog About Your Blog was just mentioned on Search Engine Journal but they incorrectly credit this site as belonging to Matt from BAYB which isn’t the case. No big deal but I wanted to clear that up in case there was confusion.

The second annual MacHeist event is coming to a close today in four hours. At the time of this writing, nearly $1,960,000 has been made (over $450,000 of which will be going to charity) through over 40,000 sales of this year’s software bundle. For only $49, everyone who got in on the offer had the chance to buy 14 great Mac applications that had a combined retail value of $499.

A mega-deal like that is just too sick nasty ill for anyone to turn down.

During last year’s MacHeist I managed to stand firm and resist the temptation to financially take advantage of the Mac developers involved. Afterall, I know in my heart what their products are worth and it certainly wasn’t what their split of my small fee would have amounted to. It felt like I had won the battle against economic tyranny.

But this year I lost the war…

I completely caved this year and bought the bundle. It’s not that I’m a cheapskate. If anything I’m the antithesis of a cheapskate. It was just impossible to resist some of the applications MacHeist had this year.

This whole MacHeist thing is practically criminal. I still feel dirty and it’s been over 24 hours since I bought the bundle. Let’s look at the top four applications really quick. Just selling a combination of any two of these applications for $49 would have made MacHeist the steal of the year.

Vector Designer (Retail: $69.95) is a lightweight vector graphics program. It’s kind of like a cost-effective Adobe Illustrator. It also just won a “Best of Show” Award at Macworld.

Snapz Pro X (Retail: $69.00) would have come in handy this summer when we were tossing around the idea of making screencasts for Fore Score.

Pixelmator (Retail: $59.00) is another product that kind of competes with an Adobe program. This time it’s Photoshop. Pixelmator was the one program on the list that I was actually anticipating buying at full price very soon. I’m tired of Photoshop running like hot garbage on my Macbook.

CSSEdit (Retail: $29.95) probably needs no introduction for any web developers out there. I’m actually embarrassed to admit that I didn’t own this already.

That’s just the first four programs on the list. There are ten more Mac applications that you get to go along with those. For instance, TaskPaper is something I can’t wait to try and integrate into my daily work routine. Again, all 14 of these programs only cost me $49.

What’s the big problem?

I have a hunch that the 14 developers aren’t getting an even cut of the nearly $1,500,000 made by this promotion. I know that last year’s developer share was not pretty but maybe this time around things are different. One can only hope.

The problem is that in the long run each of these developers will probably see negative results from their involvement in MacHeist. In the short term they’re gaining new customers, excellent exposure and they’re helping raise money for charity. I understand that. That’s great.

But what happens when these new MacHeist customers come calling for tech support? Each of these applications just received over 40,000 new potential support emails. Could you imagine that? How do you justify thoroughly handling any and all requests from MacHeist customers when, in the back of your head, you know they only each paid a few dollars for your product? Wouldn’t you feel ripped off and abused a bit?

I have a value I put on my time. And I’m sure these developers do as well. I just hope they didn’t miscalculate the price they’ll have to pay for being involved in this promotion.