It’s usually the last place you visit when you are on a web site or blog, but still… lots of people see your footer. For web site, it’s usually just a few links, contact info and a copyright symbol. For blogs, it’s become a whole new playing field. With fancy custom designs and easy widgets and plugin installs, what you can do with your footer is limitless. SpyreStudios put together a list of “48 Excellent Examples of Blog Post Footer Designs“. Below I will highly a few that I found most impressive.

The UpSell
Once your site visitors are at your footer, there’s a good chance they are going to either click something, or leave your web site / blog…. so why not try and sell them something! Something I’ve seen a lot more of recently, is blogs posting what theme they are using on their blog, then offering others to buy that same theme. Usually, blogs doing this will receive a commission on all referred sign ups. A great example of this can be seen on Chris Brogan and CopyBlogger’s blogs.

Example Footers: Chris Brogan, CopyBlogger

Keep Them Reading Your Site
Another great resource for your blog footer, is to keep the reader interested and let them know about key points or areas of your blog that they may have missed.

Example Footers: UX Booth, Mashable, Search Engine Land

Having Fun with Your Blog Footer
Not all footers need to be an upsell, or a source for driving visitors to different areas of your site. It’s always nice to see blogs get creative and come up with their own designs and layouts for rss, bookmark buttons and subscription forms. I took a liking to the blog designs below.

Example Footers: Spoon Graphics, CSS-Tricks

These are just a few samples, but I know I’ve seen some other great blog footer designs in the past, and just can’t remember the site names. Be sure to take a look at the full list, and leave any other cool blog footer designs in the comments section.

Paypal can provide a different service for different people. For affiliates, it’s mostly about receiving money… while for merchants and advertisers, it might just be for sending payments out. Either way, how you manage your payments and money sitting in Paypal is important.

As a paypal user you have a lot of options for sending payments. The top three methods for sending payment are “paypal funds“, “bank account” and “credit card“. This post will serve as a reminder, and hopefully influence others to change over to sending out payments using a credit card, instead of spending money that’s already sitting in a paypal account. Here’s why.

Where’s the Benefits?:
If you have $1,000 in funds (balance) sitting in your Paypal account, and you just received a bill from someone for $300, it’s way to easy to have Paypal just make the payment from your balance. Instead, I recommend you withdraw the money in your Paypal account (by check, or to your bank account) and use a credit card instead to make all payments. By using a credit card, you will then earn points for all purchases, and even cash back with some cards. My Plum card from American Express gives back 2% on all purchases. If I was to send out $100,000 in payments through Paypal, using funds sitting in my account, I would lose out on $2,000 in rewards/cash back. Two percent might not sound like a lot, but over the course of a year, this can add up.

Security Issues:
It seems like everyone has their own Paypal horror story at some point. Whether it is that horrid eBay seller who never shipped your item, or you simple can’t withdrawl your funds from Paypal. If you send out payments using a credit card (AMEX is the best for this), you then have another layer of protection on your outgoing payments. Should any problems arise, not only do you have Paypal to contact, but if they can’t resolve your problem, in most cases your credit card company will cover you for the loss.

If you’ve been using Paypal for a while now, this may already be common sense for you. If you are receiving small payments from here and there… then quickly spending/sending out that money through your Paypal funds… you can be losing out on some nice rewards and cash back options.

Just a quick recommendation for those of you who aren’t currently doing this.

It’s time for another big contest promotion at the Zac Johnson blog. This time around, any one can be a winner. The only requirement, is that you have a twitter account. Just follow the simple direction below, and new winners will randomly be selected over the next five weeks. All contest and prize information is listed below. Follow up posts will be made every Friday, with updates on winners and the next set of prizes.

HOW TO ENTER:
1) Follow me on Twitter.

2) Then twitter, “I just entered to win a ton of prizes from ZacJohnson.com! You can too, just follow @moneyreign and retweet http://xr.com/zacblog”

OVER 50+ PRIZES UP FOR GRABS:
All of the prizes provided for this contest promotion, are active sponsors on this blog. In addition to being blog sponsors, I’ve had great success with all of them over the years, and highly recommend you join them if you aren’t already. Rewards and sponsors are listed below.

Rextopia: $100 CASH
- While they are not one of the most well known affiliate networks out there, Rextopia is definitely making money for affiliates. I’ve personally known the founder for many years, and still use Rextopia to make money. Rextopia also has a decent amount of offers that aren’t found on many other networks.

Hydra Network: $100 Best Buy Gift Card
- I’ve always enjoyed the large selection of offers available through Hydra Network. While offering a lot of high quality offers, they also have a massive amount of zip, email or short field offers. Hydra has been a top network for many successful affiliate marketers.

MarketLeverage: Flip Mino HD Camera
- Always in the mix and ready to get their hands in any affiliate related promotion, MarketLeverage is quickly growing as one of the top recognized affiliate networks in the game. Not only does MarketLeverage have a great selection of offers to choose from, but they are also a great team with work with and talk to about anything.

Motive Interactive: 16G iPod Touch
- After a successful promotion last month, Motive Interactive is back for more. Motive just recently improved their affiliate network and is now helping affiliates earn more than ever. I highly recommend joining their network and looking over their much improved ajax run network and offers.

NeverBlue: Blue-Ray Player
- One of the most successful and cherished affiliate networks around, is NeverBlue. Based in Canada, Neverblue caters to all affiliates and their needs. Just through this blog alone, referred affiliates to NeverBlue have earned over $400,000!

PPC Coach: 3 Free 1 Month Memberships
- Pay per click marketing has never be easier to learn with PPC Coach. Unlike other programs where you signup and are left on your own to learn. PPC Coach walks you through everything, and includes access to members only videos and active forum.

PepperJam: $100 into their PJN Account
- PepperJam Network is rapidly becoming one of the largest networks around. If you are already an affiliate, of theirs, you will notice they have exclusive advertisers that can’t be found on other networks. (You must be signed up with PepperJam Network to win this prize.)

Gary Vaynerchuk: 20 Signed Copies of Gary’s New Wine Book
- Gary V is taking the web and television by storm. Not only was he the speaker at the latest Affiliate Summit West, but you may have seen him on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Ellen, Fox News and more. Gary was cool enough to send 20 signed copies of his latest “101 Wines” book my way.

Joel Comm: 5 Signed Copies of Twitter Power
- Whatever Joel Comm touches, turns to gold. His latest book, “TwitterPower”, just went live last week and I have five signed copies that will be given away.

ZJ Blog: MoneyReign T-Shirt & Stickers Pack
- Five winners will be selected each week to receive a MoneyReign.com tshirt, along with ZacJohnson.com pens, stickers and more. I’m also rewarding a $100 prize to bloggers that link back to the contest post (details at bottom.)

CONTEST DRAWING DATES:

Week 1: Winners Announced Feb 27
- Rextopia $100 Cash
- 5 MoneyReign T-Shirt Packs
- 1 PPC Coach Membership
- 1 Signed Joel Comm “Twitter Power”
- 4 Signed Gary V “101 Wines” Book

Week 2: Winners Announced March 6
- MarketLeverage Mino HD Camera
- 5 MoneyReign T-Shirt Packs
- 1 PPC Coach Membership
- 1 Signed Joel Comm “Twitter Power”
- 4 Signed Gary V “101 Wines” Book

Week 3: Winners Announced March 13
- PepperJam $100 Deposit into Account
- 5 MoneyReign T-Shirt Packs
- 1 PPC Coach Membership
- 1 Signed Joel Comm “Twitter Power”
- 4 Signed Gary V “101 Wines” Book

Week 4: Winners Announced March 20
- Motive Interactive 16G iPod Touch
- Hydra Network $100 Best Buy Gift Card
- PepperJam $100 Deposit into Account
- 5 MoneyReign T-Shirt Packs
- 1 Signed Joel Comm “Twitter Power”
- 4 Signed Gary V “101 Wines” Book

Week 5: Winners Announced March 27
- NeverBlue Blue-Ray Player
- 5 MoneyReign T-Shirt Packs
- 1 Signed Joel Comm “Twitter Power”
- 4 Signed Gary V “101 Wines” Book
- $100 Cash Blogger Contest

Bloggers Can Win Too! – $100 Cash
Lastly, blog about this contest and link back to this post and you could win $100 cash. One blogger will randomly be selected from the permalinks listed on this blog post, on March 27th and listed in the week 5 winners. $100 prize will be rewarded through paypal.

Thanks for Entering and Good Luck!

What may seem like an April Fool’s Day joke, is anything but… Google and Virgin have teamed up to create Virgle, which is planned to be the first human settlement on Mars. Two new videos from both Larry, Sergey (co-founders of Google) and Richard Branson (founder of Virgin), were added to YouTube yesterday. In each video, the founders talked about their plans and goals for project Virgle. To make things even more exciting, they would like everyone interested (in living on Mars), to submit a short 30 second video on why they should be selected as one of the first inhabitant on Mars.

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I can’t imagine the extremely long process they have setup to manage and go through all of the video submissions. However, they will have plenty of time, considering they don’t expect to be on Mars anytime within the next 15-20 years. If you aren’t already familiar with Richard Branson and Virgin, they are already in the process of sending people into space and trying to make it as cheap as possible. The future is very bright for these two companies and they have the money and funding to make it happen.

[youtube SDSR_lB8bdo nolink]

So, what do you think? April Fool’s Day Joke? A simple 30 second video that could be worth millions? Visit the Project Virgle web site and fill out their application form and see if you have what it takes to be one of the few Virgle pioneers to inhabit Mars with Sergey, Larry and Richard?

As bloggers and internet marketers we can really appreciate the comments and feedback left by others when we write a new post or article. CollegeHumor recently created a series of videos which are based on “commentators” and their onslaught of comment postings, which really provide no value to anyone. Whether it’s the a “first!” or “last” comment, comment spam from a bot or simply a talking banner ad… CollegeHumor did a great job at pointing out all of those comments, CAPTCHAs, spammers and gratuitous comments we love to hate. Congrats to CollegeHumor for another great viral video campaign, which currently has over 2000 Diggs.

All three of CollegeHumors.com’s Internet Commentator Videos are shown below. Some videos contain adult language, but are still funny nonetheless.

Internet Commenter Funeral

Commenter Business Meeting

Commenter Business Meeting 2

Come on… you know you want to leave one of those annoying comments!