Journal - Audiobook Jukebox

Hey kids, I wanted to share something kind of exciting that happened last week. Or maybe it first started a couple of weeks ago, I’m not sure. Anyway, I received a comment on one of my audiobook reviews over at Audiobook Heaven from someone I didn’t know, which hardly ever happens. In the comment, there was a link to a website called Audiobook Jukebox. Now, usually when someone posts a link in a comment to your blog, it is spammers who are just trying to get traffic to their site, and usually those sites are not the type that respectable internet surfers like to visit. I always promptly delete those from my blog, and even though this one didn’t seem as bad as others I have seen, I deleted it anyway because I just don’t like having other people’s links there.

Well, about a week later, I got an email from that same person, and the email said about the same thing the comment said so I decided to check it out. Oh, I should mention that my email address is visible in my Blogger profile to anyone who cares to go looking for it, so there was nothing underhanded at work there. I visited Audiobook Jukebox, and it seemed perfectly legitimate to me so I asked this person for more information.

Audiobook Jukebox is a fairly new blog, started about three months ago, I think. The person who contacted me is one of the founders of the site, and their basic goal is to create a central gathering place for audiobook enthusiasts. People who write audiobook reviews, like myself, can put links on Audiobook Jukebox that lead back to the reviews on our own sites. In other words, the reviews stay on my site, but Audiobook Jukebox will have links to them that people can click on. It’s kind of a win/win situation. People who like to read audiobook reviews can find a great wealth of them at Audiobook Jukebox, maybe even multiple reviews of the same audiobook, and those of us who write the reviews can get greater exposure, thereby increasing traffic to our reviews. Since I began putting my links there, my hits have gone from about 10 per day, to around 40 per day, which makes me very happy.

So that’s been pretty exciting. I just posted my 100th audiobook review, and I have links to 70 of them on Audiobook Jukebox so far.

This story may get even better! I got another email from this person on Friday, asking if I would be interested in another opportunity that she has to offer. I won’t reveal any details yet, I want to check it out first, but it sounds pretty cool.

This has been a nice little ray of sunshine for me, when things have been looking rather dark (no pun intended). This is kind of interesting, actually, because I was sort of talking to God Friday evening, and I said something like, “God, I’m trying to do what you want, but you gotta give me something to work with here.” It’s not usually a good idea to be demanding things from God, but in my own defense, I was really doingmore pleading than demanding. Anyway, it was only a few minutes after that when I checked my email and found out about this new opportunity, the one I’m not revealing yet. I sure hope this is coming from God, and not somewhere else, but I asked God to slam the door on it if it’s not from Him, so we’ll see what happens.

More on this later.

Acts 20:24 I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the good news of God's grace. NIV