Heavy As Hell Blog

Alright people, want a super simple way to get featured on the HAH blog? I don’t care if you are a fellow blogger, a musician, a publicist, music journalist, Rock/Metal photographer, or admin for a music website. I don’t care what part of the world you are in either. This offer is open to all of you. So listen up and spread the word!

Make a video asking people that go to your site to submit stuff to HAH. Again, this could be fans of your band, readers of your webzine, or whatever. Just explain very quickly why it is important that they submit links from your website to HAH. Then upload it to YouTube and embed it into your site’s news stream. Then submit that link to HAH. We will see that and feature it on this blog. Then we will promote the direct link to your site on every social network we can.

Get us to promote your site! Again, this is open to our friends worldwide. We only ask that the video is done in English. Nothing against those who speak other languages, this is just an English speaking site. Both our users and ourselves need to understand it.

The most entertaining videos will get ranked in a top ten list as well. This contest ends June 1st.

Mark Carras Contest, Heavy As Hell News free promotion, hard rock, heavy as hell, metal, rock

The Final Winners for Our March contest

Winners

This is the end…my only friend the end
So the contest here has ended. Why do I use the above quote from The Doors? Because I’m exhausted! This thing was a ton of fun, but damn am I tired! The final winners will now be announced. The only question is who will remain active? Will this site survive? Yes, this site will die if the users don’t support it. This is a 100% user driven website. Without you people we are gone. A site that is driven by content can keep putting out content no matter what. A user driven site doesn’t do a damn thing unless the users are there to keep it alive. So to say that you users are important to us is a massive understatement. We can’t stress this enough. We are only as valuable as you users want us to be. Without you we die. So we hope you have fallen in love with this site as much as we have.

First Prize Goes To…
First prize goes to cgt2099, so he can now collect $1000! Just download the legal form HERE, fill it out, and snail mail it back to us (do not email it). For legal reasons we have to have anyone who wins more than $600 to do this. Otherwise we get into trouble with the I.R.S.

Second Place Goes To…
Second place goes to rockergirl. CLICK HERE to go to the message center and send me your full name and address so I can send you your $500.

Third Place goes to…
Third place goes to symbolicdeath. Please CLICK HERE to go to the message center and send me your full name and address so I can send you your $250.

Close only counts in nuclear war
revoink came in fourth for this contest and ccortes came in fifth. Now there is no prize for 4th or 5th place, but I think it is important to give them some props for being such active users. Hell, as a way to say goodbye to this contest you two win a free cd. So CLICK HERE to go to the message center and send me your full name and address so I can send you your prize.

EVERYONE
Please do me a favor and send me a photo of you with your prize. You don’t have to, but it helps to show people winning.

We can’t send prizes to P.O. Boxes since someone will have to sign for the package. With amounts this large we need to be able to track that it was received by the correct person.

As this contest ends, this means that there are no more cash prizes. However, I still have cd’s to give away. In fact I think I will always have stuff to give away. So stay tuned for further announcements. Make sure and follow both My personal Twitter account as well as the official HAH Twitter account for more info.

Mark Carras Contest, Heavy As Hell News Contest, prize, winners

With all the anguish going on in the world today such as the economic downturn, the wars, terrorism, political bickering, we here at Heavy as Hell Light as Heaven decided it was time for some changes in hopes to sort of brighten the mood and make things less dreary.  So we decided to spruce up the site a bit and make things a bit lighter with the hope that the rest of the world might catch on and follow our lead.

So please, let us here at Heavy as Hell Light as Heaven know what you think.

(april fools)

Keith Wagner Heavy As Hell News af2010, heavyashell, lightasheaven

How to make a good headline

Axl Rose

I know that a great majority of the time our system will grab a perfectly good headline for you. However, sometimes the headline just says the word “More” or it is some incomplete sentence. YouTube videos are the worst for headlines. There is tons of great content on YouTube, but you will have to fix the headlines a lot if you want to make it informative for other users. Especially if you want the other users to check out the content you are linking to. When this happens please fill in the needed information. First off should be the band name. So if the band name is “Butt Munchers“, start out the headline with that. If it is a video for their song “You can all suck my sucker” the headline should be something like “Butt munchers video for the song You can all suck my sucker”. Now as far as I know I made up that band name and video, so don’t bother looking for it. The point is that it should start with the band name and then give the song title. Nice, simple, and short, but informative.

This site is about sharing content. People skim over headlines. So if you want people to check out the content you want to share, you have to keep that in mind. The description is pretty much the same but with more details. As with the headlines, most of the time the automated system will grab a perfectly good description. YouTube has some really lame and worthless descriptions though. I don’t mean to slam YouTube. They are not the only one. They are just the worst, so they make a good example. If it’s the video for a song you can grab some details about the song from Wikipedia, post the lyrics, or any number of things. Just read the description and if you don’t think it would drive you to click the article, replace it with something you think would. Simple as that.

The main point of this post is simple. Don’t just always accept the default headline and description. Use common sense and if you can think of a better headline or description please do. I hope this helps. If not feel free to ask questions. That is what a community is all about. Helping each other.

Mark Carras how to butt munchers, description, headlines, youtube

Winners For The Week Of March 29th 2010

The last full week of the campaign
So the last full week of the Heavy As Hell contest is at an end. This means that we are now kicking off the FINAL three days of the contest. Sure that is a really short week, but that just means there is no time for messing around. So if you haven’t won yet, I would start going nuts right away and not stop until the clock strikes April 1st . Before that though, let’s announce last weeks winners!

First Prize Goes To…
First prize goes to Northend, so he can now collect $1000! Just download the legal form HERE, fill it out, and snail mail it back to us (do not email it). For legal reasons we have to have anyone who wins more than $600 to do this. Otherwise we get into trouble with the I.R.S. Use the Heavy As Hell message system to ask what the address is. If you can’t figure that out you can email me. The email address is mark@HeavyAsHell.com.

Second Place Goes To…
Second place goes to bonehead. CLICK HERE to go to the message center and send me your full name and address so I can send you your $500. Or you can email me at mark@HeavyAsHell.com

Third Place goes to…
Third place goes to beccasbiz. Two things shock me about this. First I’m shocked it took her this long to win! With as active as she is on the site I’m blown away she didn’t win until now. The other thing that shocks me is that she didn’t get first place! I have always thought she was one of the most active. Anyways, please CLICK HERE to go to the message center and send me your full name and address so I can send you your $250. Or you can email me at mark@HeavyAsHell.com

Close only counts in nuclear war
XTRMDave came in fourth for this contest and babynarwal came in fifth. Now since 4th and 5th place doesn’t win anything, these people are still in the running for our three day week (Remember this contest is for March only). Can they pull ahead? Only time will tell. Remember that you can’t win twice. So there are a ton of active users who are not eligible for this final three days. I can’t win either. Neither can my wife VaporRub. So don’t give up if you are at the bottom of the chart. You might still be in the running!

EVERYONE
Please do me a favor and send me a photo of you with your prize. You don’t have to, but it helps to show people winning.

We can’t send prizes to P.O. Boxes since someone will have to sign for the package. With amounts this large we need to be able to track that it was received by the correct person.

As this contest ends, this means that a new contest has been launched. If you have won already this month you can’t win a cash prize again (follow HAH on Twitter to win cd’s). So if you haven’t won yet, your chances are even greater. Bring it on! Who will take my money next?

CLICK HERE to get started trying to win this week!

Mark Carras Contest, Heavy As Hell News cash, Contest, winners

Take The Next Step

Yes, this is open to music sites worlwide! Because we DO love our international users too!

So HeavyAsHell is a great way to promote your site. Sure some of you have fallen in love with posting links. We thank you for that. But what about making sure those links get voted to the front? How can you make sure that your content has a better chance at getting attention here? Well what about using our API? Let me make a deal with you all. The first 5 websites to implement the HAH API into their site in a way that features submissions of that site gets a full write up on this blog. Talk about special treatment!

As soon as you have it ready, send us a message to our Twitter account at http://twitter.com/HeavyAsHell

So maybe have a sidebar where all the HAH submissions of your site are listed? Maybe create a submit/vote button that shows how many votes the story has on HAH? Then your readers can click and vote them to the front without trying to get them to come to HAH and hunt down submissions on your site. So why worry about doing more than getting to the front? Once you get to the front, that’s it right? Not at all! Look at our sidebar. Notice the list of the hottest submissions? So say a submission had it’s time on the front and has since been buried, but yet keeps getting votes every few minutes. Well, then it is buried no more! It gets listed at the top of our front page stories on every page that chart is listed. It is a way to make sure that the submissions from your website stay on the front of the site!

Now I know how hard it is to convince some of you people that something is a good idea. Fine. That wacko Mark is having delusions of grandeur again. Take advantage of my delusions while you still can! The first five websites to use our API on their site will get a write up feature on our blog, get promoted by my personal Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, Blogger, Google Buzz, Linked In, Tumblr, Friend Feed, & Jaiku. I will also promote that write up on the RockMyMonkey.com website, MySpace, & Twitter. Now of course it will also be promoted on the official HAH blog, Twitter account, and Facebook page as well.

So fine. You don’t believe that using our API will help drive traffic to your site. Fine. So do this so that I will promote your website through every place I can for a day. I can also guarantee that some of the more hardcore users of HeavyAsHell will push your site even further by doing re-tweets, hitting the share button, and a few other methods of helping to make sure it is worth your time to give this API a try.

On top of all of this, how about this challenge? Whatever music website has the best implementation of the HAH API by Tuesday morning March 30th 2010 will get an auto-refresh on the front of RockMyMonkey.com! Yes, you understand that correctly. I am willing to sacrifice the traffic of my other site for you people. That’s how much I believe in this. When I get up Tuesday morning I will pick the winner. From 12:01 am (pacific) Friday April 2nd 2010 until Monday at 12:01 am Pacific 2010 the RockMyMonkey front page will auto-forward to that site. Deal?

The truth though is that you will find that using the HeavyAsHell API will help drive more traffic to your site. Call my bluff. I dare ya!

Mark Carras Heavy As Hell News api, challenge, heavyashell, webmasters

Updated List Of Press We Have Received

link trade

We don’t do actual link trade pages here at Heavy As Hell. That’s so 90’s. We do however brag about the press we have got. In all seriousness, why maintain an actual link trade page when the main point of the site is links? Since any site can submit a link to the main part of the site, there is no reason for a link trade page. We will however list the press we get. Sure these are links to those websites, but that is not the purpose of this. It is to let everyone know who the friends of Heavy As Hell are.

So this is the press we have received so far. So please thank them by submitting a few links from their sites. Make sure and vote up links to these sites too. For this site to survive we need to make sure our friends are treated well. This is a community after all. Right?

Although I will not ever update this post, I will make a new post every week or so to add new press to this list. Don’t ask to be added. Just help us spread the word about HAH like these people have. Thanks.

Most Recent Press

http://www.loudside.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25505

http://www.hotzoneonline.com/archives/3917

http://kikaxemusic.com/news/hard-rock-and-metal/413-socialize-your-heavy-music-news-and-win-with-heavyashellcom

http://www.examiner.com/x-3323-Hard-Rock-Examiner~y2010m3d24-HeavyAsHellcom–social-media-for-rockers

http://www.truthinshredding.com/2010/03/news-us-citizens-heavy-as-hell-10000.html

http://wearehunted.com/like/socialize_your_heavy_music_news_and_win_with_heavyashellcom/8376479/

Archived Press

http://www.metalmusicpromotions.com/main/?p=980

http://mickieszoo.blogspot.com/2010/03/heavyashellcom-relanches.html

http://www.networkordie.com/?p=318

http://mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=127707#top

http://www.rockmymonkey.com/news/article/2010/03/HeavyAsHellcom_1000000_Giveaway_Launched

http://www.music-news.com/ShowNews.asp?nItemID=32748

http://social-blend.com/2010/03/01/heavy-as-social-blend

http://www.imperiumi.net/index.php?act=news&id=11309

http://www.webcasterssyndicate.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=78:-heavyashellcom-to-launch-&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=50

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2010/03/15/social-media-heavy-metal-match-heaven

Mark Carras Heavy As Hell News Friends, links, press, track me

Heavy As Hell community, please post this in as many places as possible as soon as possible. Feel free to post a link in the comments to where it was posted. Thanks.

For Immediate Release:
Thursday March 25th 2010

Nuclear Blast America Gets Heavy As Hell

Thursday March 25th is Nuclear Blast America Day on Heavy As Hell! What does that mean? Well, it means that because Nuclear Blast America is a sponsor of the month long campaign to giveaway over ten thousand dollars in cash and prizes (mostly cash) at HeavyAsHell.com, the site is going to be giving away physical copies of several of the latest and greatest releases from this fine label.

• Avantasia - Lost In Space
• Immolation - Majesty And Decay
• Annotations Of An Autopsy - II: The Reign of Darkness
• Mnemic - Sons Of The System
• Arsis - Starve For The Devil
• Scar Symmetry - Dark Matter Dimensions
• Ex-Deo - Romulus
• Epica - Design Your Universe
• Threat Signal - Vigilance - Claimed

The rules of this contest are simple. Send out the message below on Twitter. HeavyAsHell admins will be tracking this and will contact the first 9 people to send the message below through their Twitter account.

The first 9 people to ‘Tweet’ “Today is Nuclear Blast Day at #heavyashell Go to http://www.heavyashell.com/blog/tag/free/ for details on how to win free music!” gets a free cd from Nuclear Blast America from the list above! It has to be those exact words. Change anything and you get nothing! Once they are gone, the contest is over. It is first come first serve. So don’t you dare hesitate!

Sorry, but this contest is also only for the US. Otherwise shipping costs will kill us. I hope you all understand.

So everyone send a Twitter message RIGHT NOW that says “Today is Nuclear Blast Day at #heavyashell Go to http://www.heavyashell.com/blog/tag/free/ for details on how to win free music!”

http://www.heavyashell.com/blog/tag/free/

http://www.heavyashell.com

http://www.nuclearblastusa.com/

###

In case you are wondering, these Twitter contests can be won more than once. This is unlike the contest we have going for tons of cash. If you have won cash, you can still win cd’s. If you have won cd’s, you can still win more cd’s. In fact it saves us in postage to send more than one at a time. So let’s kick this thing into gear already. Cool?

Mark Carras Contest, Heavy As Hell News Annotations Of An Autopsy, Arsis, Avantasia, Contest, Epica, Ex-Deo, free, Immolation, Mnemic, nba, Nuclear Blast, Nuclear Blast America, Scar Symmetry, Threat Signal

We Are A Force To Be Reckoned With
So another week of the Heavy As Hell contest is at an end. This means that we are now kicking off the FINAL full week of the contest. Sure we have that tiny week, but this is now the last week of the contest. Things could go a little insane so I recommend anyone who wants to win, to go into the upcoming section and vote like crazy to get started. Before that though, let’s announce last weeks winners!

First Prize Goes To…
First prize goes to Warpt_666, so he can now collect $1000! Just download the legal form HERE, fill it out, and snail mail it back to us (do not email it). For legal reasons we have to have anyone who wins more than $600 to do this. Otherwise we get into trouble with the I.R.S. Use the Heavy As Hell message system to ask what the address is.

Second Place Goes To…
Second place goes to someone we only know of as leenga. All I know is they have been very active on this site this week. Thanks leenga! CLICK HERE to go to the message center and send me your full name and address so I can send you your $500. You earned it! I hope you still stick around.

Third Place goes to…
Third place goes to illninoese, who did not submit a single thing! All they did was vote for the most part. They made one comment on one submission. So go into the upcoming section and vote like crazy! That is what gains sins faster than anything else in this contest. There is a fix being worked on for future contests, so take advantage of this while you can! I don’t have a clue who illninoese is, so please CLICK HERE to go to the message center and send me your full name and address so I can send you your $250.

Close only counts in nuclear war
XTRMDave came in fourth for this contest and BeccasBiz came in fifth. Now since 4th and 5th place doesn’t win anything, these people are still in the running for this week. Can they pull ahead? Only time will tell. Both of them are users who we know will be part of the site long after this contest no matter if they win or not. So I figured I would showcase their profiles.

EVERYONE
Please do me a favor and send me a photo of you with your prize. You don’t have to, but it helps to show people winning.

We can’t send prizes to P.O. Boxes since someone will have to sign for the package. With amounts this large we need to be able to track that it was received by the correct person.

As this contest ends, this means that a new contest has been launched. If you have won already this month you can’t win a cash prize again (follow HAH on Twitter to win cd’s). So if you haven’t won yet, your chances are even greater. Bring it on! Who will take my money next?

CLICK HERE to get started trying to win this week!

Mark Carras Contest, Heavy As Hell News cash, Contest, winners

A short lesson in HAH categories

So I just added a ton of new categories to the main section of the site. So I started paying more attention to how those categories where being used. I think some of you misunderstand them. Most of what is submitted on HAH will be some music style or the other. The reason for that is simple. This is a music site, so most will be links directly connected to some band, cd, or song. But what about an article about the RIAA being douchebags? It’s not a band, cd, or song, so it isn’t a musical style. You would not put that kind of article in a music style category. It is about the music industry instead.

I can’t think of a reason an article would fit in a musical style and the industry news category. Except in that extremely rare case that I can’t think of right now, no submission should be in both a musical style and industry news. It has to be one or the other.

Why is it important? Well, this site is not just about winning cool stuff, pushing your band, webzine, blog, label, etc. It is for people finding information. We want people to be able to find the information you people work so hard to hunt down and submit. This site is a tool for researching things about the music we love. Think of it as Google News for heavy music. So if we put stuff in the correct categories it will be a better resource.

This post should be taken as nothing more than a very casual guide to making this site a better resource for all. We don’t do power trips here. I need you people as much (or more) than you need me. So the users as a whole are the ruling class as far as I am concerned. So keep kicking ass! I’m just the guide here to serve you. Thanks for letting me do that.

Mark Carras how to categories, how to, tutorial