I’ve decided to review a website to generate a bit more traffic to my blog. But first, let me give you a bit of background on how I found the site I’m about to review: I came across TylerCruz.com thanks to a suggestion by Google Reader (you know, “Top Recomendations” area on the top right), and after reading a couple of his posts, I decided to become a subscriber. I have found numerous quality sites thanks to Google’s recommendations in the past. Then I came across this post where he reviews blogs that review him, and decided to give a shot to reviewing his site for one in return (I could use criticism, constructive or otherwise). A full-blown review from Tyler costs $100, and that is something I might consider doing in the future.Ok, so lets get to the review already! Tyler is an internet entrepreneur and his site is about making money online and his journey to obtaining “internet wealth”. His other interests are playing poker and watching movies. Tyler blogs pretty much daily and he seems very open and honest regarding his income. For example, there’s a picture of him receiving a check for $23k, which he earned by brokering a domain. He also reports on the income generated on his blog, where he breaks it down by source. This is very good information to have, as an aspiring blogger, since I can see that, overall, blogs make more money selling private ads. This might not be the case with every single blog, but it is the case for Tyler, as shown in this December 07 report. His witting style is somewhat casual but very professional. I didn’t see any typos or grammatical errors, which reflects a good handle of the English language.

There’s also a competition going on between him and Gyutae Park to see who gets the most votes, in which the loser will have to pay $100 to 3 winning voters. The competion is now over, Gyutae won. This seems like a nice (and perhaps inexpensive) way of getting backlinks and generate internet buzz. He also held a NeverBlueAds-sponsored contest back in mid-December, where his main objective was to increase his RSS subscriber base.

I like the design and overall feel of his website, even though I am starting to think that illustrations, such as the one of (presumably) himself on the top left corner of his site, are starting to become somewhat cliche and corny. He employs two sidebars, with the content in the middle, making the site easy to ready and an overall pleaseant experience for the reader. A couple of minor things that I didn’t like are: his favicon (the little 16×16 pixel image that appears next the the address of the site in the browser’s address bar); it seems to be outdated and doesn’t go with the current design of the site. Also, the copyright notice on his footer still reads 2007. Again, these minor things that perhaps have been overlooked.

To summarize, I will continue reading Tyler’s blog, since its contents could perhaps help me become a better blogger and even monetize more effectively. As stated before, I might consider paying for a full-blown review, to get some well-needed criticism and to increase my readership.