In 1953 when he inherited control of two Australian newspapers. Murdoch expanded to Britain in the 1960s, the U.S. in the ’70s, and Asia in the 1990s. In Britain Murdoch owns the biggest tabloid, the Sun, and in the U.S. the New York Post.

“Murdoch appears to be at the height of his powers. He views Dow Jones, along with the recent launch of the Fox Business Network, as steps in the creation of a globe-spanning financial news powerhouse,” notes Tim Arango, a journalist for FORTUNE.

Arango asks, “Can he do it? The breadth of his ambition could be his Achilles heel - the more dominant News Corp. becomes, the more opposition it tends to provoke. Still, Murdoch has proved time and again that counting him out is a high-risk strategy.”

Murdoch was awarded the 2nd most powerful CEO by FORTUNE in 2007 for his position as chairman of News Corp. — the world’s third largest media conglomerate, with a value of $68 billion, and one of the few mega-corporations controlled by a single individual.

Eric Pooley describes Murdoch as living “like an old-fashioned tycoon too, hopscotching the planet on his 737 and recharging on his yacht off St. Tropez. Recent stop: London, where he got thrown from a horse (but didn’t break anything — too busy).” Building a giant media company does have it’s perks, you know?

A huge thanks goes to everyone who participated. Be sure to come back for our other prizes.

I’ve been banned from Digg. I used to love Digg, but I’ve done something to Digg it didn’t like. I’m now an “invalid user.” Digg you’ve dugg your own grave; you’re no longer run by users, but robotic editors. And It’s editing content and denying the existence of an editor that killed you. It’s also the ease of dirty digging, like hurting your competition’s website that kill you.

Many of you have heard of the Digg Auto bury, it’s the editorial-robot killing hundreds of great stories every month. It’s the robot that kills most of forevergeek.com, johnchow.com, copyblogger.com’s stories — and now it killed my user name.

But don’t ask digg about autobury, it still believes “Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content.”

Yet, Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg, explains the autobury feature of digg, “When a single URL hits a threshold of reports, our standard procedure is to block that URL from submission.” If automatically blocking a URL from digg isn’t editing content, what is?

Stefan Juhl researched the idea of internal edited and found the “last referrer before the [bury] was crawl3.digg.internal.” It’s an internal autobury indeed.

“Mostly, landing on the Digg front page a couple times a month resulted only in a server-shaking stampede of worthless traffic. But mixed in with the basement-dwelling little boys who momentarily refrained from Playstationing with their Wiis long enough to tell me I sucked, I picked up new subscribers,” said Brian Clark from Copyblogger.com.

And now you can get even more subscribers and visitors by digging your competitor’s graves. It’s extremely easy to kill your competing site on digg, just follow these steps to get his or her domain on autobury. It’s called “dirty digging.”

How to Digg Your Competitors Grave

1. Submit and Title Posts for Your Competition. And make the title standout, something like “Check this Post Out on Domain.com” or “This Was ReAlly Cool.”

2. Create a Free Email Account Using The Domain Name. Go to Yahoo or Hotmail and create an email (yourcompetition@hotmail.com). Now have the domain’s RSS feed and digg every new post, again using spam titles. Keep submitting only the domain’s posts until you get the domain banned.

3. Keep Creating New Accounts. Go to the library one day and create 15 or more new email accounts and digg accounts. Then submit posts only from your competitors domain.

4. Now Bury Each Post. Use an account that hasn’t submitted the stories and bury each one. And if you want a ban even faster, get 15 or more of your friends on digg to bury the stories.

5. Contact the Power Users. Again using a fake email, contact some power-users and ask them if they’re interested in getting paid to digg a list of stories. Be sure to list each post from your competitor’s site.

Along with how easy it is to use digg to do your dirty work, digg and all social media have reverted the trend back to individual blogs — where the blogger has complete control and can’t be banned. It’s this trend back to blogging that came from digg’s hypocrisy that killed it. Saying the users control the content seen on digg, then creating an autobury is hypocrisy.

As Lee Odden, a fellow blogger at toprankblog.com, explains, “The issue for me is when people try to submit a story they want to share with the digg community and get an error message ‘This domain name is banned from submissions’ it sends an inaccurate message. My complaint is not about being off of digg, its about someone else making that decision arbitrarily and digg support acting very much like DMOZ. And we all know where DMOZ ended up.”

Who was born on March 11th? To celebrate this birthday, for this very successful person, Business Leaps is giving away 200 Entrecard Credits. Contest ends on March 11th 8:00 AM.

Hint: The Birthday person is extremely successful in our related field.

See if you be the first to guess and win the Contest! First person to guess in the comments below wins. Limited to one guess per person. Comments won’t be approved until March 11th.

Also, checkout our other Entrecard Contest, we’re giving away 500 Entrecard Credits.

Each genuine comment is an entry, so each comment greatly increases your chances of winning.

Contest ends in Seven (7) days — March 3rd, 2008. And at the end of the contest the winner will be picked randomly.

Enjoy!

However there are a few that begin to offer incredible value to for bloggers and on-line entrepreneurs. One such tool is Entrecard. It’s the better version of a traffic exchange program. As Patric Altoft, on BlogStorm, says it’s “the widget that actually sends traffic.”

The Entrecard network uses credits, which can be sent to anyone on the network using the user’s email address. A credit comes from either dropping a card or receiving a card. Earning credits from dropping card encourages the users to visit blogs within the Entrecard network (real traffic). Second, allowing other blogs to advertise on your blog’s Entrecard widget earns credits.

Although several probloggers like John Chow and Darren Rowse are using Entrecard, Dave at eXtra seems to think the service is on its way out.“Entrecard is another widget fad that is spreading across the blogosphere right now.”

“Once the buzz wears out, [Entrecard’s owner] will sell the site, pocket a decent deal of money, and leave most people with another useless widget on their blogs.”

Yet other bloggers disagree saying Entrecard has increased traffic to their blog and being part of the network encourages repeat visitors. If its the visitors you might be looking for from Entrecard, here’s a few tips for success.

1) Advertise on Only the Best Blogs

There are two levels of thought for advertising on the ‘best’ sites. The first idea is advertising on the new or cheap sites. Generally the cost of having your ad on a new blog is 2 credits. With this low amount used, you can afford advertising on hundreds of blogs. Check the “Most Recent Tab” as much as possible and find relevant sites for your ad. Every time there’s a new blog, advertise on it.

The second idea of the ‘best’ blogs means blogs with the widget ‘above the fold.’ This means advertise on blogs where your ad will be seen. But this means finding sites with the widget above the fold and checking back to see if the widget has moved.

2) Put the Widget on All of Your Blogs

Most bloggers have multiple blogs, get an Entrecard for each of your blogs to see which blog it works best on. However, Entrecard does have a quality control in-place, so check to see if each blog meets the requirements for Entrecard. Second, as of now, Entrecard requires an email address for each Entrecard, so you’ll have to have multiple emails.

3) Drop and Network

You earn a credit from visiting a blog and dropping your Entrecard; however, most users drop and run. This drop-and-run refers to users bouncing to a blog, dropping a card, and visiting the next blog solely to earn more credits.

Instead visit the blogs in the Entrecard network and contribute to her blog by commenting, adding her blog to your blogroll, and writing about her posts. It’s the blogger who network — they’re the successful bloggers.

4) Move the Widget Higher

By having the widget be one of the first things visitors see, you can command more credits from other bloggers wanting to advertise on your blog. Second, this makes other Entrecard Users more likely to visit your site more often. Yes, that includes the drop-and-run visitors.

5) Be Patient

When you do create an account, you’ll be asked to approve adverts for other bloggers. Wait for the credit cost to move higher, which means you’ll earn more credits from others advertising on your site.

Finally, Entrecard isn’t the super pill for your blog; it’s just one more tool for networking and driving traffic to your site. At the end of the day, it’s the blogs that give tremendous value to the readers and advertisers that profit the most, so focus o giving tremendous value.

Viral Marketing Terminology

Matthew Peters over at PandemicBlog gave a excellent article separating the vocabulary of Social Media marketing. Filled with sharp graphics, this post will explain the words behind the buzz marketing.

Link Building? Try Facebook

Facebook isn’t for fun, social connections. Now facebook can build links to your blog, or website. Now, introducing the Facebook Backlinks App.

Promoting Affiliate Products

Derek Gehl, a frequent writer for Entrepreneur Magazine, points to focus as the success-factor when running an affiliate business. Here he attempts to answer a question a reader submitted, how do I write copy to attract visitors and buyers? His advice includes focus, focus, and yes of course, focus.

“Focus on your individual product pages, not on your main homepage, focus on one specific problem that each of those individual products solves, and focus your pay-per-click and search marketing efforts so that every ad and article you write addresses that one specific problem and takes visitors straight to the landing page for the product that solves that problem.”

Turning Browsers Into Buyers: How to improve conversion rates.

With only 3% of on-line customers buying, according to a survey by Shop.org, a division of the National Retail Federation, converting all traffic can boost profit tremendously. Dan Briody, does two case studies on how companies are improving conversion ratios.

Stamps.com, based on Broidy’s case study, found success by, explaining what they did, move the logo closer to viewers’ eyes, clarify the offer, make action calls clear, and find the perfect image.

While, Jigsaw Health saw success by keeping viewers on the page, thinking small (shorter headlines), simplifying the buying process, removing clutter, and creating urgency.

Keyword Sniping - Finding And Choosing Profitable Niches

Keyword sniping precludes an extremely focused effort on a single keyword, says Curt. Then goes on to give her readers some creative keyword exercises to find profitable keywords — to snip. Then an exercise to evaluate competition and advertisements, from her view, “most people really struggle to come up with new ideas for keywords.”

Measuring the Success of Your Blog

In a new column at Dosh Dosh, he gives a simple answer saying, success happens “when you meet or exceed the goals you have set for your blog.” But, his favorite measure of success is income — pure cash. In his mind, “Income by itself denotes ability” suggesting that it takes ability to build traffic and ability to convert that traffic.

Time for Reality

Darren Rowse, the creator of Problogger, gives his thoughts about the reality of earning an income through blogging. After a Wall Street Journal article revealed his earnings, Rowse tells the real story. Rowse looks at the work behind creating an extremely profitable blog, noting that a blog “takes a concerted long term effort,” a blog “takes luck,” and a blog “takes a lot of work.”

While Some Marketing Advice Flies off the Cliff

The Brilliant Way To Find A Niche Market! was a guest post on Carl Ocab by Franck Silvestre, but it wasn’t by any standards brilliant grammar or advice. His famous-Mr-Ed advice included, “Find a hungry market of people who are going whatever your promote” because apparently people who are going whatever your promote are called “desperate buyers.”

This report does not consider large commercially owned websites such as inc.com or entrepreneur.com. Although Inc. and Entrepreneur magazine indeed cover topics for starting an online business, these magazines have hundreds of other topics not relevant to starting or running an on-line business, thus their numbers would’ve distorted the report. (See the Breakdown of the Market)

Despite its saturation, the publishing market for on-line marketers had tremendous growth in 2007. From our estimates, 1,240.19% increase in overall visitors was seen in this market. By tracking the visitors, we can be relatively certain that this growth represents an overall increase in information demand within the on-line business market. It seems more people are becoming increasingly interested in starting or growing an on-line business.

As consumer’s taste demand evermore specialized information, eager entrepreneurs create multiple brands focused on publishing for on-line business owners. This trend, from early 2004 to now, has resulted in an increasingly fragmented market. With this fragmentation, it’s becoming ever more difficult to estimate the exact size of the whole market and the individual market shares.

With the cost of entry and the ever-lower sunk costs, the publishing market for on-line entrepreneurs will, most likely, continue to grow and become increasingly fragmented, unless the current publishers create exclusive arrangements with revenue sources. If exclusive agreements were made this would significantly increase the barriers to entry, thus discouraging competition entering the market.

However, as one firm begins to gain market share, customers will face strong incentives to switch to the leading firm, creating an upward cycle of growth — perhaps giving the leading firm market dominance. If this trend were seen, the cost of entry would be an expensive battle against an established brand.

From the Experts

John Chow attributes his success to his wife, while Darren Rowse, Courtney Tuttle, Joel Comm, and Carlo Cab did not return media requests.

With a link to a picture of his largest Google Adsense check, Jeremy Schoemaker e-mails, “Many people talk about making money online but few quantify it.”

Adam Doolittle contributed to this report.

1. Problogger

With 153,283 visitors, Darren Rowse comes in first. Rowse suggests bloggers stop worrying about Page Rank and focus on building a better blog.

“You see - Google [is] in the business of helping their users find great, authoritative and credible content on any given topic and I’m increasingly becoming convinced that the more you spend time building sites that have that content the more highly you’ll be ranked in Google,” as Rowse suggests.

Good advice, however, the explosive growth was more likely due to the controversy surrounding the Page Rank slap in late 2007. As Google hand edited many blogs selling text links, Problogger.net was penalized. And although, Rowse stopped selling text links in 2005, Problogger was still penalized.

After this embarrassing mistake, Google then hand edited Problogger.net back to its original Page Rank — thus resulting in hundreds of links, from Google’s mistake, for Problogger.net, including some in traditional publishers like newspapers and select magazines.

2. John Chow

With 136,937 visitors, John Chow secures second. And what a year John Chow has enjoyed on the way to second place. In 2007, Chow was banned from Digg (later unbanned, but still auto-buried), hand edited by Google and Technorati, and featured as a hot community for the entire year. His year was so bright he “had to wear shades.”

Much like Darren Rowse, John Chow enjoyed the huge traffic boosts from the controversy behind both the Google slap and Digg ban. However, John Chow also grabbed second from the traffic of his transparent blog coverage. His income review posts each month are among his most popular posts.

According to Chow, “The blog started 2007 with $3,440.66 in monthly income. Eleven months later, the figure had mushroomed to $27,240.83.”

3. Dosh Dosh

Comes in a close third with 133,080 visitors, Dosh Dosh, only slightly behind Chow with 3,000 less visitors than Chow. According to Dosh Dosh it’s the creative content behind his success. One of his successful content strategies was starting an advice column. His new column could explain the explosive growth Dosh Dosh enjoys.

According to him, “By setting up an advice column, you are inviting users to tell you what they want to hear, read and know. As a publisher, this feedback allows you to better organize your content development strategy and determine what to publish and how to improve your overall content focus.”

He also touches on the benefits of starting an advice column by writing: an advice column helps receive visitor feedback, rewards your readers, develops reader loyalty, and boosts monetization. Seeing the benefits for Dosh Dosh makes starting an advice column a worthwhile idea.

4. Courtney Tuttle

After only eleven months, 56,128 visitors is impressive. Really impressive. Tuttle’s first post was Feb. 12th, 2007. Going from zero readers and zero traffic to 1,476 readers and 56,128 monthly visitors is indeed impressive.

The clear voice and thorough details written-into each post might account for this impressive growth Courtney has seen. Among other strategies, Courtney attributes to the growth is the use of Technorati tags.

“If you want to increase your blog’s exposure, make sure you’re using Technorati Tags! Technorati is a blog search engine, so getting your blog in their listings can bring you some valuable visitors,” notes Courtney.

5. Income.com

John Reese, the notorious ‘Internet marketing guru’ places last. From June to September, Reese was set to grab first, but didn’t maintain the growth and crashed in November. The tremendous growth was due, in part, to the rough launch of BlogRush, the widget for ‘free traffic’ Reese created back in September.

Although the traffic is down for the year, Reese remains optimistic saying, ” As you probably noticed, buzz about BlogRush truly exploded across the Web — it seems like it was everywhere. There were tons of positive posts made about the service, but there were quite a few negative ones too. We definitely did a lot of things right with our public beta launch, and we did a lot of things wrong.”

“So always keep that in mind. No matter ‘where’ something is on any given day, you should be focused on gradually improving it.”

Follow the Trend

After reviewing the success of these top earners, the trend seems to be content. By focusing on the quality and quantity of your content, you can carve out a position within your market. And continually focusing on content can keep your brand at the top of its market.