The Thinking Blog ~ Knowledge Grows When Shared

First off, thank you all for taking the time to review my blog. Each post means so much to me because unlike messages left on MyBlogLog community, these posts really give us an idea of what is good, bad or needs improvement. Although I was planning on considering to write an entry for every 10 reviews, awarding one favicon and one re-design per batch, I decided to list only 5 at a time to avoid having some overlooked.

Jennifer's The Life of a School Bus Driver

Vikas' Technacular

T4TD - Thought 4 the Day

Peter's Necessary Skills

Mephala's Strange Machine

Yes! I've been generous and designed all 5 icons to these bloggers who were quick in writing a review for The Thinking Blog. Make sure you visit the sites and leave a comment on the reviews because I will be tracking them. If you wrote a review and you are not in the list above, don't worry - they will be published in the next entry of "What Do You Think?" However, I realized that some of these sites are still using a standard Blogger template which is not a good idea when there are lots of free templates available on the web. I have hand-picked a few sites that display some of the really nice templates out there so make sure you check them out in the Guide to Blogging (more links to free templates in the comments sections). Also don't forget to track comments of that post because I keep adding more as I find well designed templates.

Now, for the winner of the re-design is... *drumroll*


Congratulations Ray Dotson, your review won a free blog re-design and a matching favicon! Now Ray hasn't fully installed the whole design yet but he was so kind to mention my name in the footer of his template. The reason I picked Freshblogger's review is because not only he followed the rules of linking to at least two posts on this blog, but he shared his personal experience on how they made him "think" and better yet how the posts were useful to him. Overall, I think it was a very professional review and showed me that we need more "How To" posts on this blog.

Honorable mentions. I would like to acknowledge a couple of bloggers who reviewed my blog but didn't want to enter the contest because they just wanted to provide some feedback or introduce my blog to their readers. Special thanks to Mark Khoo and Bryan's Rants.

Why you should review my blog. For all the others who didn't review The Thinking Blog yet, it's never too late! The contest is going on until I run out of creative juice to design (won't happen in the next 2000 years) or until you run out of creative juice to critique my blog. As I mentioned before, every outgoing link from my blog counts as 2 links according to Technorati (one from my old address plus one from the new domain name) giving your blog a huge boost in ranking not to mention traffic that will flow over to your blog from the exposure. Let me recap the deal. In exchange for a review you will get:

• Two linkbacks from highly ranked URLs (priceless I tell you)
• Best review gets a free full blog re-design (worth $2000)
• Second best review gets a free favicon design (worth $20)

If you want to review this blog, link to the blog’s home page with the anchor text “graphic design” and link to this post showing the rules. Here is a bad example but you get the idea of what I want:

The Thinking Blog has a great graphic design and by reviewing it you can enter the contest to win a free re-design for your blog!

You could also mention any other posts as part of your review. Don't forget to email me when the post goes live. While you're at it, please do me a favor - join our community and favorite this blog.

Graphics design at its best. You have seen the re-design I made for Freshblogger. Have you seen what my blog looked like before I re-designed it? Here it is:



I also offered a free re-design to John Chow's make money online blog but he ignores me because I'm not an A-list blogger. This is what he doesn't take up for FREE:


Maybe he doesn't take this nice offer because then he needs to write post about it. Long ago I made him a free favicon and he implemented it without a single mention. I guess when people are paying you $300 to write a post, you kind of become spoilt and give your sponsors the priority.

Available for freelancing. Speaking of money, you can also hire me to do freelance graphic design works. For those of you who are not technically inclined, I can design a fabulous icon (compliant with multiple browsers) for just 20 bucks. I can work from the look and feel of your blog, or any images you provide. Let me know by email if you are interested. For example, very recently Google Tutor contacted me for a favicon design and he is 100% satisfied. Ask him if you don't believe me.

I'm all ears. If you have any tips, suggestions or criticism but don't want to post a review on your blog - feel free to drop me a line in my inbox as well. I'm always open to feedback. Finally, one last thing. Don't be disappointed if you didn't win a free re-design this time. You can write a better review for consideration in the next batch. If all else fails, you know where to find me for affordable graphic design.

Have fun and good luck!