Blogging

This guest post is part of a two part series written by Kelly Phillips Erb, a tax attorney who blogs for b5media at taxgirl.com. You can find out more about Kelly here. For more information about tax and blogging, check out her handy list of prior articles on the subject including Problogger articles! “Should I incorporate to save taxes?” I get this question a lot over at taxgirl.com – and most of the time, it comes from bloggers and freelancers. It’s understandable. We hear all of the time how corporate tax rates are ridiculously low and individual taxpayers pay at…

Today Community Strategist Connie Bensen shares some tips on taking your blog to a community. Every blogger wants more readers. I’ve always appreciated how Problogger regularly features ideas for improving your blog & writing techniques. As people happen upon your blog they may decide to join your community of readers. But what if you could take your blog to a community? Choose the new Community Let’s step back & take a few minutes & think about your niche(s) & focus area. At this point there are two directions. Do you want to bring in more readers in your…

In a guest post Neil Matthews of ClickQualityConsultant.com writes about how we can monitor the quality of paid visits from a StumbleUpon advertising campaigns. Darren advocates using paid advertising from StumbleUpon in his post Run a StumbleUpon Advertising campaign for your blog, as a way to build your blog’s audience. In this post I would like to expand on this and talk about how to monitor the click quality of your paid Stumbles to see if this type advertising is the correct fit for your blog. What do I mean by click quality? I mean that the clicks are bringing a return on the…

Amazon have launched a new handy Video Widget that will interest many bloggers wanting to combine the use of video and the Amazon Affiliate program. The widget allows you to make a video and then upload it to Amazon to be hosted where you can add little pop-up product links and pictures that appear throughout the video. You can choose which products appear and then time the product appearances to the moment in the video that you mention the product you’re talking about. This video widget will be most effective when you’re reviewing products and I think could convert well.

At 5pm Pacific time today (10am Melbourne time) I’m being interviewed by Wayne Hurlbert (his blog) on Blog Talk Radio. If you’re around and have the time it should be a fun interview. I’m told there will be downloadable recording of it in the coming days also and I’ll post the link to it as I get it. PS: Wayne has been kind enough to do a review of the ProBlogger book. Share This

We decided to go with Joslyn for the name of our new baby! Here is me and my new daughter: My older daughter Juliet (who just turned 2 last week) wanted to listen to Joslyn’s heart: Juliet says mom and baby are doing great.

Love it or hate it the TAC show is getting a ton of buzz throughout the affiliate industry. Tomorrow I am going to go down to the set and ask anyone from the show any question you want to ask them ON VIDEO so fire away. Just please format your question like this: Shoemoney: What are you so handsome? It will be easier for me to keep track of who you are asking. EDIT: post closed pending answers

So getting closer to naming our new baby. So much in a name. We have limited ourselves to female J names and there are not many options. We want to have a name that is nice and cute for a little girl but at the same time we do not want to cripple her later in life with a name that will leave her never being taken seriously professionally. Its almost like picking a domain name. Often times early its attractive to pick a name that is catchy and cute but later as the site grows it can come back to haunt you. For instance when I started NextPimp (pimp out your nextel phone) I had no idea it would…

Episode 2 we have the first scoreboard report and then we broke into individual challenges. Being this wa a individual challenge and not a team challenge I went back to my office to work on my own company but was available during the day to my team via phone if needed. When I left the producers told me that the day was going to “drama day” and they were going to try get the losing team (John Chow’s Team) really upset with me. I told them to go for it. Then I start getting calls from people saying that I threatened a advertiser or something… What happen was when I woke…

For the 4th of July holiday weekend, the contestants of the Top Affiliate Challenge went to a baseball game and fireworks display. This is the first time I’ve ever been to a baseball game. I now know why I have never been to one before. It’s the most boring thing you can do. Then again, maybe that is the point. Many people like to sit around with a beer in one hand and a beer in the other hand and be bored. The fireworks display was held at the same place as the baseball game and was a much better show. The display lasted a good 30 minutes and they didn’t hold back at all.

This post was guest blogged by Alex Shalman (RSS). Many of you have been wondering how getting a girlfriend applies to making money on line. Some of you even consider that girlfriends are counter-productive and useless (you’ve probably never had one). While it’s true that some girlfriends can be the opposite of helpful when it comes to making money online, others are quite helpful. My girlfriend edits some of my work, and has written a couple of articles for me in the past. I’d say that was helpful. Maybe she’s even writing this article? Fat chance. The truth about…

A huge congrats goes out to Shoemoney and his wife for delivering their new baby girl. There was a little scare midway through the delivery but all went well in the end. Everyone at the Shoemoney family is doing fine. The Top Affiliate Challenge may portray Shoe and I as hated enemies but we really are good friends and I wish nothing but the very best for Shoe and his family. My Team XY7.COM sends Shoemoney and his team our best wishes. However, this will not stop us from kicking their asses in the Top Affiliate Challenge! This Post Was Brought To You By Put Your Website to Work - Monetize…

The first episode of the Top Affiliate Challenge went live yesterday but no one was able to watch it. The producers said they were on a high bandwidth Amazon.com line that was sure to handle the traffic. Well, it doesn’t matter how big your bandwidth is. Unless you’re Google or Microsoft, you’re not going to be able to stream an 800MB file. Anyone logging onto to the TAC site to watch the show was greeted by a waiting to buffer notice. The producers added more servers but it didn’t help much. Instead of airing episode two today, they decided to leave episode one up for…

Alright kids, you’ve asked for it. Your Uncle Bob has been paying close attention to the 69 comments that were donated by you in his previous post, and has picked his choice of topic - how to get your name or blog mentioned on the national airwaves, a suggestion by That Sneaker Wearing Entrepreneurial Cartoonist Internet Guy (hope thats not your real name by the way!) Here’s the comment: One of the best examples of getting a boost through the media is probably John himself. I’m sure that those of you who have been reading John’s miscellaneous ramblings for a while now…

Congratulations! Real estate consultant and coach Judith Lindenau is today's semifinalist in the RealTown/Inman Connect Blog Contest for her post, Water Boy: Off Stage. Judith's blog offers a refreshing and informative, behind-the-scenes look at REALTOR association management. Meritorious Mention: Watch out for That Appraisal in Today's Market, Buyers by Jeff Dowler NOTE: Semifinalists and Bloggers who win Meritorious Mention will receive autographed copies of The Real Estate Technology Guide by Saul Klein, John Reilly, and Mike Barnett. If you see a worthy RealTown Entry this week, nominate…

Today's semifinalist in the RealTown/Inman Connect Blog Contest is a new real estate blogger, Monica McNamara, (shown at right) and the winning entry is her FIRST blog entry, What Would I Want If I Was A Buyer? Meritorious Mention: 8 Mistakes Sellers Often Make by Phil Kretchmar What Happened with the Land Auction by Lisa Delzompo A Historical Perspective by Joshua Keen NOTE: Semifinalists and Bloggers who win Meritorious Mention will receive autographed copies of The Real Estate Technology Guide by Saul Klein, John Reilly, and Mike Barnett. If you see a worthy RealTown Entry this week,…

Congratulations! The RealTown/Inman Connect Blog Contest is underway and the first semifinalist in the contest is the following blog entry: How to Set Up Your SmartPhone to Get E-Mail in Seconds by Dick Betts (shown at right). Dick is also the organizer and moderator of the RealTown Group, Outsmart Your SmartPhone. The judges were impressed with two additional posts yesterday and they have awarded them Meritorious Mention: Video Edging Out Virtual Tours for NextGen Buyers by Scott Lau Off Stage - Association Travel Policy by Judith Lindenau NOTE: Semifinalists and Bloggers who win Meritorious…

A RealTown Blogger will win a Full Conference Registration to the Inman Real Estate Connect Conference in San Francisco, July 22 - July 25, 2008, one of the most highly touted real estate events of the year. Write a winning blog post on a RealTown Blog within the next week for a chance to attend ths event! There is no limit on subject matter or length of post. Entries will be judged on the merits of creativity, inspiration, and construct. Judges from the Publishing Team at RealTown will select a semifinalist winner each day next week, Tuesday through Friday. The winning entry and Grand Prize…

Webinar Handout Podcast (Audio Only) Yesterday's Webinar with Blanche Evans (Realty Times) and Hilary Marsh (Realtor.org) offers valuable information about online publishing rules, including copyright considerations and new Blogging Guidelines being developed by the National Assn. of REALTORS. One of the most interesting issues in the guidelines is the position that the NAR legal eagles are taking about comments. They are insisting that the NAR blogmasters moderate their comments: "If you have a blog, accept comments. Develop a comment policy outlining the types of comments you WON'T publish:…

As some of you knew, I am on vacation right now. Finding internet connectivity in this part of France has proven tough, but I have managed to locate a shaded, quiet corner with reasonable coffee and a free WIFI connection I should have brought business cards, it’s amazing the conversations you can strike up just by displaying the Apple symbol around an internet hotspot! (If you want free blogging advice, this is the time to catch me, but you will have to do it in person, heh) Unfortunately I didn’t get chance to complete my survey results before I left so they will have to wait…

Why people blog was one of the blogging survey questions I most wanted to get numbers on. We blog for many reasons, and I was fully aware “Why We Blog” might well be different from, say Darren’s readership. Turns out way different to how I imagined. It seems I have very few “make money online” readers. We are split pretty much between “for pleasure” and “for business”. Why People Blog Detail Why do you blog? Count For pleasure 414 To promote my own business 299 I make money from my blog 60 For my employer 40 I get paid to blog 34 So Why Do…

In this part of the Global Blogging Survey I asked some personal information about yourself. The aim was to get an idea of the sorts of people who blog, and to see if the “young male geek” stereotype was true. More Bloggers Are Male Than Female To be honest I was expecting the male/female balance to be more even. Many of my clients, twitter and blogging contacts are female, and I see more female bloggers now than I ever have. While I did expect males to be higher, I never anticipated it would still be to this degree. Gender Count Male 560 Female 303 Rather Not Say 46 Most Bloggers…

Blogging survey results, as promised! Even though we didn’t quite get to the magic 1,000 mark once junk entries were taken into account, I am going to start rolling out my survey results. Hopefully I will be able to get through them before my vacation so I can incorporate any feedback required to make them useful. Todays result is how long people have been blogging and there were 911 useful entries once I had trimmed out junk and made each entry numeric. When people gave me a range, such as 2002-2003, I took the earliest year. Year Started Blogging Result How Many Years Blogging Table…

There are two things you need to know about me. One is I am quite good at getting people unstuck with their online marketing or blogging problems. It’s one of the ways I make a living. The other is I am no different from any other and need a kick in the butt once in a while myself. For me my problem is “analysis paralysis“. Recently Tom and Sheila from Centell had me do a behavior questionnaire. When they analyzed me they pretty much came to the same conclusion. If you know what holds you back, you are able to come up with solutions to combat it. My solution? I surround…

It’s July 4th in the Unites States, and you know what that means—hot dogs, fireworks, sunburns… and one or two people might drink a bit. But let’s not forget what else this day signifies. That’s right… The Fourth of July is the day President Bill Pullman declared the world’s independence day from those pesky alien invaders from outer space, thereby rallying the troops and horrifying international film critics. Apparently, a guy named John Quincy Adams said something similar with regard to Great Britain a bit further back. Sorry chaps, no hard feelings I hope. But since the…

There’s been a debate ever since blogging became mainstream about how long blog posts should be. Many bloggers may read one or two discussions on it, and try to conform to that – never revisiting the issue again for as long as they blog. This can be a mistake. For a definitive answer, the following are three things to consider when you’re trying to decide how long your blog posts should be. 1. TONE: Bloggers usually blog for a while before they think about an intangibles like setting a tone for their blog. However, if you’re serious about making money from blogging, then you are going…

Emily’s OnceWed site offers a free listing service for (mostly) women to search/buy used wedding gowns or sell gowns to make back a little coin. Sounds like a smart deal for everyone in these tough economic times. Since the service is currently complimentary, she’s looking for sufficient traffic to attract and generate ad revenue. She sees this site as a jumping off point to other wedding/bridal industry online media. Product Summary: Free, no commission buy/sell used wedding dress listing service Promotion Medium: In-house email list; PPC to come Total Budget: $500/month Creative…

In the world of selling, you can use testimonials – among other techniques – to take advantage of the principle of “Social Proof.” According to this principle, all of us look to others to help us decide how to act. The more people doing it, the more correct it seems. I illustrated this idea recently in part 1 of this series, Testimonials and Teenagers Whizzing in the Bushes: The Power of Social Proof. Few people, however, make an effort to collect testimonials and keep them on file. So let’s look at a simple system I’ve developed to gather testimonials from your customers.

As promised, I’ve done a review of The Ultimate Desktop Copy Coach from Clayton Makepeace. The course just became publicly available about 30 minutes ago, and there are lots of extra bonuses thrown in for those who move fast (including one from me). The short answer is… it’s a great A-to-Z copywriting course taught in an accessible style. At over 1,000 pages of comprehensive copywriting knowledge, it’s likely the only course in copywriting you’ll ever need. Click here for my review.

It is my last day on the northern part of Brazil, and it is raining cats and dogs…. The positive side is that tomorrow I will be back working on my Linux machine with the 22′ monitor. The laptop gets the job done while traveling, but I sure miss my desktop. Anyway, below you will find the most popular articles of the past month; check them out if you missed any. The Pros and Cons of Working from Home on the Internet: Almost two years passed since I quit my job inside a multinational company to work from home on the Internet. For me it was pretty a straight forward move. One year…

Happy 4th of July for the U.S. readers. Below you will find another bundle with 9 questions answered. You can leave new questions on this post. Remember that ALL questions will be answered, so if you sent one but its not here, just hold tight (patience is a virtue…). 1. Todd Andrews asks: Know of any good ways to automate article submissions for early link building? There is one semi-automatic article submission tool that will probably speed up the process to you, thought you will still need to press “submit” for each directory. In order to download it you just need to sign…

As you know the intent of this series is to cover all tactics and techniques to generate traffic to a website, so we will touch both free and paid methods. Today I want to talk about a paid one, the so called targeted traffic deals. The Concept: Do a quick search on Google for “buy traffic” or “targeted traffic” and you will see an immense number of sponsored results. Those are basically websites that sell targeted traffic (or so they claim, but read on). The amount of traffic and cost vary. Here are some examples that I gathered: “250,000 real visitors for…

Rajasekharan N. asked me the following question a couple of weeks ago: Do you think it is better to have a shared or fixed IP address? I confess that I didn’t know the answer right out of my head, so I went to research a bit. What I knew was that a shared IP is what you get most of the times when you sign for a shared hosting plan, and that usually you can get a static (also called fixed or dedicated) IP for a domain adding a couple of bucks to the monthly deal. Under a shared IP address structure all the sites inside a server will have the same IP, say 212.90.80.130. Once a browser…

Show time! All the competitors have until the July 31 (midnight) to prove their blogging skills and to improve their RSS subscriber base. As you can see on this page you will be able to follow the evolution of the feed count of each competitor, day by day. I will post a link here to all the future Blogging Idol posts as well, including to the weekly roundups with a description of the strategy used by each competitor, so you can just bookmark this and come here to check for updates. Update: For all the competitors, please send your weekly mail every Saturday or Sunday, to daniel AT…

On occasion TopRank will get calls from prospective clients that ask about hiring multiple SEO agencies in an effort to get the “best of both worlds” in terms of best practices and performance through competition. On the surface, I suppose I could see how someone might think this might make sense but in practice, it really doesn’t. The “two is better than one” philosophy might work when it comes to getting a second opinion from a doctor or a mechanic but with SEO, the last thing a company needs is two agencies stepping on each other to make on-page optimization…

Companies that take their search engine visibility for granted or that ride the technical SEO loophole/manipulation train often get a hard smack back to reality when their online sales disappear. Orders start to slip or fall off the map altogether and the IT team red alert phone rings off the hook with calls from the business owner, “What the hell happened to our rankings???” You can imagine Google being brought up in a browser and searches for “search engine optimization firms” and similar queries are place to find a SEO consultant to “quick fix the…

Today on this fine Friday ladies and gentlemen, we have a BIGLIST SEO blogs update for you slanting a bit toward agencies but not without some flavor from Germany and the Jungle. Read on: AdCenter Community -  This is Microsoft’s official support blog for AdCenter advertisers. Mediadonis - Germany based Marcus Tandler writes about his search engine industry and often hilarious personal experiences - mostly in English but sometimes in German. MediaVision Blog - This is an agency blog with numerous contributors writing about online marketing and search engine industry news, observations…

With so many “Web 2.0″ technologies coming in to play with web design and online application development, the effect on the search engines’ ability to find, crawl and index content becomes an issue. As such, this session moderated by Kevin Ryan included deep dive advice from Chris “Silver” Smith, Lead Strategist from Netconcepts and Ambles Kwok, a Senior Engineering Manager from Yahoo Canada. Chris Silver Smith was first up and gave examples of Web 2.0 technologies including the idea of folksonomy and tagging by showing a tag cloud from Delicious. It’s an…

If you’ve been in the search marketing industry for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly encountered a wide variety of conflicting or outdated advice. Since “how to” information in so many other industries is often presented as an absolute, many people look for the same kinds of static and perpetual rules with search engine optimization. The problem comes from not discerning SEO myth and speculation from fact which can be a very costly mistake. Moderated by Matt Van Wagner, this session (SEO Don’ts, Myths and Scams) included some of the most experienced SEO…

If you're part of the micro-blogging set, you may be interested in checking out TweetDeck. This is a desktop application that manages your Twitter tweets for you. I learned about it last night (amazing how many US people were tweeting on 4th of July evening -- I wonder what that says about us). TweetDeck is in beta; it's simple and fast to download to your desktop. You then install it and enter your Twitter username and pass so it can access your account. The interface is better than Twirl in my opinion. Your Twitter time line and replies are in columns so you get an at-a-glance view of…

"I'm not so sure my clients read blogs or use the Internet," said one of our clients who is a  consultant to high level executives. To which we had to pull out some recent research that proves otherwise. According to an online study from Forbes.com and Gartner, the Internet continues to be the most influential and important source of business information for C-Level executives around the world, at 67%. Instead of morning coffee and the newspaper, CEOs prefer the 'Net. This information was brought to our attention by colleague Newt Barret of Content Marketing Today, and quotes a…

"When you write comments on other people's blogs, is it okay to include a link to your own blog? If not, what's an acceptable way to give your blog URL?" Cheryl in Santa Clara asked in our Law of Action 2.0 program. Recently several people have commented on this blog leaving their blog addresses and referring to their own posts on their own blogs. I had to go in and edit them in cases where I felt they were using the comments section primarily to market their own stuff. I had a hard time deciding and each comment needs to be discerned on the basis of the intention. Look at it this way: if you…

Questions from clients make great blog posts. Here are eight reasons why: It gives you instant content for your blog posts It gives you an opportunity to showcase your knowledge and expertise You demonstrate exactly how you work with your clients Other readers identify with your clients' problems and see how your solution might work for them They gain a better understanding of how you might be able to help them They start to know you better and begin to trust you as a go-to resource They begin to feel comfortable enough to ask you a question themselves They are that much closer to hiring you…

In a recent poll of 1096 bloggers over at Problogger.net, 316 reported they posted 1-10 times during the month of May. Grrrr....*%&#...?!!! Did you hear that? Yes, that was the sound of The Blog Squad groaning and rolling their eyes to the Heavens with a look of disgust and discouragement! People, wake up! It won't work unless you work it! You need to post more frequently if you want to master the fine art of coming up in searches! There are many who are posting 11-20/month (195) and 21-30/mo. (164). Overall, there are 321 bloggers posting more than once a day. And 100 of the readers…

It’s been a long time since John Reese had his million dollar day with Traffic Secrets 1.0. Now he’s ramping up for Traffic Secrets 2.0 and he’s doing it by giving out spectacular free content. Be sure to check out his brand new video here to see the beginning of a masterful marketing campaign and killer free training by John. Don’t freak out in the first few frames and click off. This is one BADASS video! John Reese Traffic Secrets Video 1 Tags: free marketing training, john reese, marketing videos, traffic secrets, traffic secrets 2.0ShareThis

Great results to report with Video Utility Poster! #1 Google result for “copywriting videos” today. For a post that took me 10 minutes to create with Video Utility Poster. Watch this quick video to see for yourself. Then go download VUP! noneShareThis

I was just reading through the forum at Social Marketing Central and saw a link from Andy Beard on a really cool Firefox add on called Social Media for Firefox by the 97th Floor guys. Included is one hell of an education on the add on download page. I recommend you read every word. I don’t just like it because it’s what I teach about building social authority on the big sites. Well, yeah, I did like seeing someone else “getting it” and building true traffic and fans through submitting and getting content to the front pages. (content that is not their own - huge key…

There’s a new social news site just for internet marketing news. It’s called SiteMarketer (click the widget below to go to site) and is the creation of John Reel from GoTryThis fame. What I like is that you can post all kinds of things to the site and not be banned. Like “Launches.” This is especially helpful for getting the word out about Web2Submitter 2.0 and Video Utility Poster which are both coming out this week. Seems that people are being fairly responsible in their posting. I see some spam, but not what I would have imagined. With the community able to vote…

Here are some great SEO tips on video I found with Video Utility Poster. SEO Tips - Keywords in the domain vs Keywords in page names Wil Reynolds speaks at the Affiliate Summit about the important of including keywords in the domains or in the page names. Part 12 of 15. SEO Tips - Save Time Using Firefox Plugins SEER Interactive’s Wil Reynolds shares tips on how to save time using Firefox plugins, including SEOBook’s SEO for Firefox and Greasemonkey. Part 13 of 15. Matt Cutts 3 step process to building up a really good site Matt Cutts 3 step process to building up a really good…

Problem! You want to use Creative Commons images with your students but can’t access Flickr because its blocked at your school. What options does this leave you? Especially if it needs to be student-safe. Unfortunately this scenario is faced by many educators as highlighted by tilgunas comment on Finding and Adding Creative Commons Images To Your Blog Posts. I’m thinking we need to be creative in these situations to also consider image generators, comic generators and photo editing tools for creating images. So can you please share student-safe tools that educators could use,…

Finding the perfect image to enhance your blog post can be frustrating and time consuming however there are tools that can make this task faster. This post explains how to find and add creative commons Flickr images to blog posts. Make sure you also refer to Copyright and Using Images in Blog Posts for an introduction to implications of copyright when using images and how to attribute (acknowledge) the original source of an image. Locating Creative Commons Flickr Images Flickr is a commonly used image source because the quantity and quality of creative commons images hosted on Flickr…

Adding an image to your blog post can make a big difference on how easy the post is on the eyes. Good use of images grab reader’s attention. I really wanted to include use of images in my Here’s My First Five Tips For Writing Better Blog Posts — What Are Yours? post but it really requires a series of posts. So this post will focus on copyright and using images plus how to attribute (acknowledge) the original source of an image. The next post will cover how to find images and add to posts. Copyright and Images Locating images can be frustrating and time consuming because you…

Are you confused about the point of a blog page? Or perhaps you’ve been trying to separate topics or classes on your blog using pages but are struggling to get it to work how you would like. Deciding when to use blog posts vs pages can be puzzling. With numerous questions on pages in the Edublogs forum Dr Mike suggested I write a post to explain the difference between a Page and a Post plus share ideas for separating topics or classes on a blog to help address some of the confusion. Posts properties Blog posts appear in reverse chronological order so that the most recent post is the…

When you’ve never blogged it can be hard to visualise how to use blogs with students. I like to stress that the most important aspect of blogging, and where the most learning happens, is in the conversations. So I’m hoping you will write a comment on this post or write your own post (which links to this post) so we can show educators new to blogging: How these conversations work Plus provide tips and links to resources that will help them work out how to get started blogging with their students So can you please share with us: Why you blog? How does it benefit you or your work? How…

You may have seen this symbol  next to links on various pages of the Web. It denotes that the link (which is usually placed before the symbol) is an external link. If you’ve ever wanted to differentiate internal links from external links on your blog, there is a fairly simple way of doing it, and all it requires is a few lines of text added to your stylesheet. In this post, we’ll show you how to do it. Why differentiate between internal and external links? Today, most people scan, they don’t read the full text of a blog. By representing your external links visually,…

Hello World If you’ve ever needed the “Hello World” program in other languages, try this. It has 366 coding languages and 58 human ones. Move over TinyURL, here comes TinyPaste TinyPaste takes in long strings of text and converts them to short URLs. Mark walks you through what it does and how to use it. Screenshots included. 30+ Must have Updated Firefox 3 extensions Now that you’ve updated to Firefox 3, check out these updated exensions; you may find something you don’t know about. Undelete My Files If you’ve ever deleted a file and realized just a second…

Last month, Go Daddy decided to try and hit us for $180 to reregister two domains that we had let lapse for several weeks. Cybersquatting at its best if you ask me, considering the usual price for registering a dot com domain at Go Daddy is $9.99. According to the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, cybersquatting, on a basic level, is using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit. From the ACPA report to congress ( PDF): Registration by another person as a domain name for the purposes of profiting from the sale or transfer of the domain name The moral of this story; pay on…

Last week I covered Structure 08 for Read Write Web: Working the Clouds: Report from Structure 08 “In a recent report, Gartner predicted that early adopters will forgo capital expenditures, and instead purchase 40% of IT infrastructure as a service by 2011. Alistair Croll, senior analyst at Bitcurrent, and MC for the first Structure 08 conference in San Francisco, sees things differently. According to Croll it will be a lot sooner.” Salesforce.com: Lessons from the Trenches: “According to Harris, in the consumer world, everyone must think not only on one level, but on…

We have had a lot of positive feedback for our “ Redirecting a WordPress.com Blog” document, and a common issue is redirection not working due to the permalinks of the new blog not being set to the style used by WordPress.com. This was first raised by Eric P and he helped out by writing his own execllent post on redirecting a WordPress.com blog - thanks Eric. With our PDF document on moving a WordPress.com blog to your own self hosted blog proving popular, we have updated it to include a section on setting the permalinks of your new blog, so that all the necessary information is…

Before you convert your Blogger blog with classic template to use the New Blogger XML template, it will be good to copy the classic template template into a Notepad file and save it, say, in a folder named backup template followed by the name of the blog if you have more than one blog. Note that this classic backup template cannot be used directly as a backup for a New Blogger XML template. What

Amanda of Bloggerbuster has made what she calls the Super Custom Blogger template. She called it Super Custom because she has made it one of her most customizable template where many things including fonts, colors, etc., can be changed from the Dashboard. You can see a demonstration blog using this Super Custom Blogger template at Guide to Denmark. Although it is highly customizable, I did not

Please refer to Symptoms of problems. Trouble shooting tips. Instruction to reset widgets and Page Elements if your blog is missing comments link, author signature, etc. even though settings are set to enable comments, etc. Please provide feedback as to whether that trouble shooting tips work. Symptoms of problems. Trouble shooting tips. Instruction to reset widgets and Page Elements.

1000 apologies to bloggers who left comments still not getting responses. Peter Chen sitting for examination on June 14. Will work on comments on and after June 14.

Hi all, sorry for the delay in approving your comments and responding to them. I am back from medical leave. Nothing serious, just warded for observation because of low blood sodium level. It was a long stay - almost 2 weeks. But it was a much needed rest. Now I have some 121 comments to go through in 3 blogs and more in blogs using different Blogger account: For those whose comments are in

London Wiki Wednesday, the London chapter of an initiative originally started by Ross Mayfield's SocialText, is restarting in August and WordFrame are sponsoring the event. These events run in many cities around the world, and the common thread is wiki users, practitioners and evangelists getting together to talk about how wiki technology can help both private and public organizations. I organized this regular monthly London meetup throughout 20...

I had a nice picture from Australia yesterday. Des Walsh, our Australian partner sent it to me. The picture is from the Gold Coast beach near Brisbane. Well, you will see that the picture does not have the magnificent and beautiful beaches and scenery of Australia but something completely else – it has some schematics and drawings of how the new WordFrame v2.0 Enterprise Platform is built and works. Photo: courtesy of Suzie Cheel, Des' better ...

Last week I spent Sunday through to Tuesday in Plovdiv, helping George Athannassov, Boz Zashev and the team meet and talk to some of our new partners. I spent time getting to know Eric Anderson of Parnassus Group, the developers of WebCommunityForum.com, BlogBusinessSummit.com and a number of other communities. I was finding out about the kind of social media consultancy that they do, and some of Eric and founder Steve Broback's history running ...

The last two weeks we, at ITBrix / WordFrame, had the privilege of having representatives of 4 partner companies visiting our Plovdiv office. The visits had been planned in the previous months and although Des Walsh from Australia and George Dearing from Texas could not make it for personal reasons, we had a lot done. Social Media Today could not send anybody this month but they are sending Mark Lazen to Plovdiv next month. Here are the particip...

I'm just finishing off a few very productive days in Plovdiv, at the WordFrame development centre, where we've been negotiating and planning with two new prospective partners. Later today I'll be heading to Milan, and driving to Varese to speak at the International Forum on Enterprise 2.0. The conference is being organized by my friend Emanuele Quintarrelli, one of Europe's best known bloggers on the enterprise 2.0 topic, and his company ...

Faith Records has launched India’s first online ad supported single music release titled ‘Ek Kaagaz‘ (means one paper in Hindi), which is the result of an online collaboration between San Francisco-based Devika and Delhi-based Pralay Bakshi, with music arrangement by SaazMantra. The music is featured on the Faith Records site and since it an online-only track, online advertising is the only source of revenue for the track (I spot a tall Adsense skyscraper there). That also means you cannot buy it as a CD in stores. Devika released her debut solo album “Devika” in…

Google has added 2 new video unit sizes in 728×90 and 160×600 formats to their already large range of ad formats. Video ads are emerging as a successful advertising concept, particularly with faster broadband internet services and the desire of netizens to see more interactive audiovisual media. If you are thinking these video units will be bizarrely elongated, it is notable that these two new formats will feature five video thumbnails - when a user clicks on one of the thumbnails, a full sized video unit will appear, along with accompanying Adsense ads like this - How to use the…

Guest article by Manpreet Singh from Cyber Spirits who shares his list of 5 free softwares you can’t afford to miss. 1. Mobile Me Mobile Me is a new Apple Software which allows your data to be updated once and used anywhere. MobileMe stores all your email, contacts etc. as a cloud and pushes them down to your iPhone, iPod, Mac, and PC. Once you update anything in your iphone (or any mobile phone) Mobile Me will automatically update all your devices. [Update: This software costs $99/yr as of date, but the guest author has commented below that a free evaluation version is out soon]. 2.

Want to send your name on a mission to the moon?  NASA invites people of all ages to join the lunar exploration journey with an opportunity to send their names to the moon aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. Fortunately for you, the deadline of June 27, 2008 has been extended to July 25 by popular demand. Submit your information, print a certificate and have your name entered into a database, which will be placed on a microchip that be integrated onto the spacecraft. LRO is scheduled to launch later this year and will map the lunar surface to help locate safe landing…

Millions of users downloaded Firefox 3 on Download day in an  attempt to create a  Guinness World Record for the “largest number of software downloads in 24 hours”…. and they did it! Guinness World Records has officially confirmed that they achieved the record for the “largest number of software downloads in 24 hours.” from 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, as 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3! Now Firefox claims to have over 180 million users in more than 230 countries, and as the FireFox download counter continues to tick away at 580 million…

Holy cow!

Steve Jobs has left the stage at WWDC ‘08, and the new Apple homepage is up. The Aussie Apple Store now has the 3G iPhone promoted but only for sale at Vodafone and Optus. So where’s Telstra and Three??

This is a great idea! I don’t want to get into all the technical reasons for it, but for a host of reasons, I think it’s a great idea for Google to host the most popular script libraries like script.aculo.us, Prototype, jQuery and Dojo. The only other one I really want to see there is Appcelerator. Hmm… I wonder if Jeff Haynie agrees?

Well, I’m not sure if it’s going to kill it completely, but think about this… Ingredients 3G/HSDPA mobile phone broadband A mobile/cell phone with a 2+ megapixel camera Installed software and an account with qik.com or similar An eye for something interesting to shoot Recipe Bring ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Mix and set aside for just a few years (to let every the technology and adoption rates reach, say, every second person with a mobile phone). Take small fistfuls of mixture at a time, shaping each into a mobile phone Distribute around the Western world,…

I’m sorry, but as much as I want Disqus (and have installed it for testing) it’s just not ready for Wordpress… not until it can import existing WP comments. I’m rather surprised they don’t have that sussed yet. Disappointed, even.

What started out as a normal Fourth of July holiday celebration quickly turned to tragedy for Britney Spears. The queen of multi-tasking was apparently trying to light off fireworks while carrying her kid in one arm. Things quickly got out of control when the cigarette she was smoking fell out of her mouth and landed in the pile of fireworks being held by her two year old son. Britney quickly dropped her child and grabbed the pile of fireworks which started to go off in her hand. The child was unharmed but Britney suffered second degree burns and partial loss of her left pinky…

When you join the Weekly Buzz here at BuzzMyBlog.com, you are doing a lot more than just entering another contest. You are becoming part of a community and opening yourself to meeting other bloggers who are a lot like you. No one exemplifies this better than the winner of this week's special give away. Congratulations to Forest Parks of TheRandomForest.com for being selected as this week's Weekly Buzz winner and the recipient of the special prize of a One Month Free Ad Spot here at BuzzMyBlog.com! Forest was one of the first people to sign up for the Weekly Buzz way back in…

I made an amazing discovery regarding Google AdSense that I will share with you in this post. Not only will I share with you what I learned (which you may or may not already know), but I will also explain how to modify your theme template to take advantage of this lucrative information. Facts About AdSense According to the Google AdSense Terms & Conditions, you are allowed to place up to three ad units and three link units on a single page. If you have added the AdSense code to your theme template, you don't even have to worry about this. The code will automatically…

Time is almost up for our friend Wisdom Begins in Wonder in the BuzzMyBlog.com sidebar. I am happy to announce that the winner of next week's Weekly Buzz will get a free one month 125x125 ad spot on BuzzMyBlog.com, like the ones shown to the right. You can find out more about the Weekly Buzz and sign up here. If you have already signed up, you are in the running to win. But remember, you can get extra chances to win by using those referral links I sent you.  Good luck everyone.  Jeff      

Time for another edition of Q&A Tuesdays where I answer a question of yours and you (hopefully) answer a question of mine. Today's topic has to do with Affiliate Marketing on niche blogs. Your Turn Grizzly Adam of EpicRiding.com writes and asks: What do you think is the best way to monetize an existing blog, within an already small niche? My response to Grizzly is: Hi Grizzly. I would be very surprised if you couldn't find an affiliate program in your niche that will allow you to make money recommending products you like. Try doing a Google search for "<my niche>…

It seems that most marketers agree that keyword targeting is a great way to get the right message in front of the correct targeted audience.   Unfortunately sometimes keywords can be their own worst enemy.   Like the classic example of airline ads showing up on news sites that have a breaking story about a plane crash. My favourites include: - A Crime blog with a keyword targeted ad on “how to be a true GUN Pro” - Philippine travel blog with ads for landing Filipino wives - A blog about the perils of having cancer with a Bikini girl screen saver ad   The…

Yup, Google makes billions of dollars off search advertising and there stock price is pretty solid, so why do I think search marketing/advertising is on its way out?  And to clarify, this is for advertising on the search engine itself, not through the millions of publisher sites. Well, super savvy early adopters don’t use search engines to find great sites and products.   When was the last time that you went to a search engine and looked for a great site or a specific product?  If you answer is, “all the time”, then you don’t fall into the super early adopters…

While I’m doubtful that I will have a part II until there is a seriously updated version, I thought I’d leave it open anyway. So, anyone who has read my previous rants on why I hate Google AdSense part I, and part II might be more than a little surprised that I’m writing this post. Is there anything really to Love about AdSense? Sure… Anybody is welcome. Yes, if you are super small have almost no traffic you can still get in. It’s like a nightclub that has no bouncers, no age restriction and no dress code. Anyone can get in. No discrimination. All international…

1. Don’t hijack the page. Full page takeovers are even more obnoxious and intrusive than pop-ups. At least most pop-ups can be blocked. Never force someone to view an ad. Everyone should have the choice to view or ignore any advertisement, anywhere 2. Don’t use sound. Banners should for the most part not make noise of any kind. Unless perhaps it is a movie trailer ‘AND’ the user has initiated the action. This means that they have either rolled over it and/or clicked on it. If not, don’t play sound. EVER. If you site using flash embedded with sound, remove it.

Before you start: Make sure the URL you choose contains keywords relevant to the topic of your blog. Use the title tag correctly. It should contain the blog name and a very concise description using target keywords. Use your ‘about us’ section correctly. It should contain a power summary of what your blog is and what it covers, also containing second level target keywords. Know thy competition. Check out a similar blog in your space that ranks higher in the searches than your blog does for your target keywords. View their style, format, meta tags, title tag, category list, blog roll etc.

Out of all of the blogs I read concerning tips for blogging, I've found at least one tip that is consistent among all of the others, and that is 'abiding by a post schedule'. The tip usually goes a little something like this: Create a posting schedule and abide by it so your readers get a sense of consistency and they are not left wondering what's next. In this day in age, is a posting schedule really necessary? Sure, a posting schedule would let readers know when to expect something to be posted on the blog. But, with the advent of RSS, readers can be notified when you update your blog with…

Controversy is a tactic bloggers use to generate a buzz about their blog. Think of it like getting into a fight with your sibling or best friend, but within the blogosphere, everyone can read how you approached the situation. You could generate controversy aimed towards an important or noticeable topic, but you could also create controversy with another blogger. I would prefer the former option, but that is completely up to you. Regardless, it should be used sparingly (unless your blog is focused on this type of material). There are both good and bad points to using controversy, but it is up…

So what the heck IS social media? If you don't know the answer to that question, this SlideShare presentation will do a good job answering it for you. This presentation was created by Marta Kagan, a self acclaimed social media evangelist + online marketing pro. Special thanks to her for uploading this to SlideShare and allowing people to pass it along. I've gone through most of the presentation myself and although I already had a good idea as to what Social Media was all about, this presentation gives you a ton of numbers to think about and it just makes sense. Let me know what you learned…

Automattic’s Akismet has been long known as the king of spam detection. It has been ported to multiple content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, MovableType, phpBB, Joomla, b2evolution, Geeklog, and many more. It is, hands down, one of the most popular solutions to handle all this spam, but now there is something else ready to take on the likes of Akismet. It, perhaps, might even be more effective than Akismet. Defensio, a comment spam detection system which claims 99.77% accuracy, is really striving to become serious competition to Akismet. Not only that, but the development team…

My favorite publication in Lexington is back on the air. You can see all the features at the Smiley Pete TV YouTube Channel. I thought I'd share this feature on the documentary, "Two Million Minutes."I share Tom Martin's appreciation for the irony in the fact that the day Two Million Minutes was screened in Lexington, the city council voted down a proposal from the mayor to create a public-private partnership that established a scholarship program for local kids who want to study Science, Technology, Engineering or Math in college. When one considers this on top of the state legislature's…

For those of you who only get news from American sources who think "foreign news" is whatever Amy Winehouse is doing right now, Zimbabwe is a country of about 12 million people in Southern Africa. It's known for its rich mineral deposits, beautiful places like Victoria Falls, its high poverty and HIV rates, and its ruthless leader, Robert Mugabe. On March 29 the country held general elections and most impartial observers concluded that the opposition party, led by Morgan Tsvangirai, won a clear majority. The "official" results, released by Mugabe, declared that no party won a majority and a…

Big Kudos to Kim Woodbridge for taking the Green Twitter idea she had to the next level, taking the opml file she created and the twitter RSS feed I built and pushing each through a cloud generator and comparing the two clouds:There is quite a difference between the clouds. The cloud for Green Blog feeds is primarily about environmental issues wheareas the cloud for Green Twitter feeds contains tags for a variety of topics. The second cloud, however, gives insight into the personalities of the tweeters interested in the environment.Seriously, you should check it out. I touched on this a few…

Yeah, this is another link post 'cause I'm busy. But that means I have a job and a life. So there.Lucky Charms: God's Cereal by Mom101Make the Future: 30 Second Forecasts by Institute for the FutureSeeing the African Challenge in a Single Graph by WorldchangingThe Global Voices Advocacy Summit at Cover It LiveThe Nonconformist's Guide to Personal Finance at Get Rich Slowly

Control Your Content Part 1 Controlling how your posts display throughout your site is easily done with a choice of 2 template tags and a bit of additional code. Full posts are displayed by using the_content() and excerpts are displayed by using the_excerpt(). the_content() and more This tag will display a full post unless you use the more tag. The more tag is set whilst writing the post. You can click a button on your post area’s toolbar or, if you’re not using the richtext editor then you can also type it in. The more tag looks like: <!--more--> Note, there are no spaces…

Use CSS to Style Link Types. Ever wanted to style your links to represent the type of content it links too without having to add a class to each link? Well I’m here again to save the day with a no brainier solution. This is quick and simple so I’ll get right too it. Say you want to have all links to PDF’s have a PDF icon next to it, letting users know they are about to have their browser stall for a few seconds as the file loads. Well all you need to do is add the following to your CSS. a[href$=".pdf"] { background: url(pdf.png) no-repeat right top; padding-right:…

3 Things To Check Before Submitting Your Post To StumbleUpon Image Source: ktheory I have been writing about social media for the past two months nearly and you can read them by viewing my profile. Now I’m covering posts on stumbleupon and this is the second article on stumbleupon. As a blogger, you write good content in your blogs and expect a huge traffic to visit your blog and read the posts. You can get many people to visit your blog if you use social sites like stumbleupon etc. If you write an extremely good post and hit the front page of social sites, you can expect a huge traffic to…

Stay Connected While On The Road The biggest issue I always have while traveling is to make sure I can run my business with minimum interruptions. I’ve had some real annoying incidences when I thought I was going to be alright before I left home and got proven wrong when I finally arrived at the destination. You would think in today’s day and age it would be way easier to stay connected through the Internet when we are on the road, but reality shows a different scenario (at least here in Australia). I think when it comes to the Internet, the U.S. has by far the most advanced…

Why you should take the time to submit great guest posts BloggingTips has for a long time been a place where guest bloggers are can submit posts. I have certainly raised the bar in the last 6-9 months for how good posts need to be to published here but there is no denying the overall standard of posts being submitted has dropped considerably in the last few months. In two days I leave the wet and cold shores of Great Britain to sun myself in Bulgaria for two weeks. I will of course have my laptop with me and will be checking emails every day but I may not have time to write posts so I was…

Last weekend I ventured out of “West County” sans husband and children! and headed down to the Atomic Cowboy looking forward to the great atmosphere and company that awaited me. I just love how “our” area is set up with couches and low tables which makes it feel rather homey and intimate. It was a small group this time, which was actually kind of nice. There was camera talk between Raquita and Stef’s (Cupcake Project) husband, and lots of Twitter talk with Todd Jordon which led to a discussion of the pros and cons of Plurk, with Farrell listening in and still not…

St. Louis Bloggers Guild meetings are held on the second Saturday of every month. . . so our next meeting is right around the corner! Next Saturday, July 12, we will be meeting at the Benton Park Cafe at 1p.m. They generously host our meetings and provide us with a discount on food and drinks, so come hungry and thirsty (or just in need of caffeine)! We will be discussing Guild business, further planning for the Interactive Festival (about which exciting news is soon to come!) and registering new Guild members. Non-members who are interested in joining the Guild are welcome and encouraged to…

It is time once again for a little gathering of the ducks! We typically have a good time together and are really looking forward to meeting alot of our new members in person! So come on out and have a great time Date: June 28th Time: 6 pm til we get put out Where: Atomic Cowboy 4140 Manchester Ave St Louis, MO 63110 It does bear mentioning that Atomic Cowboy does offer our group half price drinks and have increased security with a set of off duty police officers. *Also if babysitters are needed we can have sitters arranged at a near by members home for a fee (teenagers aren’t prone to…

We got your suggestions - thanks for participating! We picked the best from the bunch (or in some cases, the ones currently not in use or similar to something else in the local media) and are ready for voting. Here are your choices: Epicenter Interplay iSaintLouis STL:interact STL:interactive Voting is now closed!

It’s been awhile since we last welcomed and introduced our newest Guild members, so we’d like to take a moment and do that again.  Mental Detritus: John’s blog is a “place for [him] to talk about whatever happens to be floating through [his] mind,” and what floats through his mind is politics.  [Ed. note: John (aka husband of Jaelithe) is an intrumental force behind the Guild; my apologies for just now introducing him to you all.] Random Acts of Momness: GoMommy is a “30-something mother of two very active boys, married to an equally active, somestimes…

This week’s blog challenge is to blog about your computer setup as it was “then” in the early days of your computer life, and how it is now, in your modern technology life. What computer tools are you dependent upon for your blog that surround you on your desk? Do you podcast? What do you use? Video? Video streaming? What did you start with in the early days of podcasting and video, and now, what do you use for multimedia creation? Over the years, my desk’s setup has changed, moving from huge desktop computers to smaller laptops, handheld computers, cell phones, and -…

I spent the past few days in Las Vegas for the Layered Tech LTPact 2008 Conference, an event sponsored by Layered Tech, the second largest web hosting and reseller in the world, among WordPress luminaries and experts and a lot of server geeks and serious online business folks. I got a chance to spend time with Elie Khoury and Jad Younan, co-founders of Woopra, the web analytics program that was the talk of WordCamp Dallas. They arrived from Lebanon only two days before landing in Vegas and were still jet-lagged and culture-shocked from what they had seen so far in the United States - not your…

One of my long time favorite authors, Peter McWilliams, has most of his books online for free. These include: LIFE 101: Everything We Wished We Had Learned About Life in School-But Didn’t DO IT! Let’s Get Off Our Buts How to Survive the Loss of a Love You Can’t Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought LOVE 101: To Love Oneself Is The Beginning of a Lifelong Romance The LIFE 101 Quote Book How to Heal Depression Ain’t Nobody’s Business if You Do: The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in Our Free Country Life 101, Do It!, and How to Survive the Loss of a Love changed…

Bloggers should now be familiar with the blog comment spam ruse of “X wrote an interesting post” to lure us into thinking this is a legitimate trackback, and now comes “I read a similar article also named…” to lure us into thinking this comment is legitimate. As Tony Hung illustrated, the comment spammers use a technique that injects blog titles into comments. Since the spamming program can only handle a few variables, the comment spam phrasing is redundant, though the spammers are getting creative. Examples include: I read similar article also named <Post…

When Liz Strauss stood before WordCamp Dallas and said she had 60,317 comments on her blog, the audience was staggered. Even Matt Mullenweg was impressed. Everyone was impressed and wanted to know her secret. Now you can get the secret behind online community building from Liz Strauss. After several years of research and writing, Liz just announced her new ebook, The Secret to Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog — The Insider’s Guide to the Conversation That’s Changing How Business Works. Based upon the lessons she learned turning her own blog, Successful and Outstanding Bloggers,…

This site is all about my different roles in life. Witness how I juggle my work with family life. It’s all about being a mother, a wife, an entrepreneur (work-from-home), a daughter, a friend. It’s all about how I dash myself around with my da

This is a working with wood blog. I will not have any personal photos like on my other woodworking blog. This will be a more serious blog with tips and tricks I have learned a long the way . I will be selling scroll and intarsia patterns very soon.

My personal blog. It is an outlet for my random observations of everyday life.

I rant, therefore I write! And you can expect more of my verbal diarrhoea in the Marissa written form.

the blog deals with the Clifinar SEO Contest and its aspects, SEO tips, web marketing guidelines and reports on the Clifinar contest.

A Little Background A few years ago, I read with interest the obituary of Bob Hope, one of the 20th Century’s legendary American entertainers.  It was in the obituary section of The New York Times newspaper and you can read online here.   Bob Hope’s obituary was well written, reflecting a tremendous amount of research, covering his life and contributions spanning over seven decades.  It discussed his work during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, entertaining American troops overseas, his career as vaudeville, theater and film, among his other detailed…

I thought I would put up a domain I own for sale.  If anyone is interested in BloggerForums.com, please let me know.  If you always wanted to start a forum site for bloggers, here’s your chance!  You can’t get any more specific than BloggerForums.com.  The domain has been continuously registered since 1999. The asking price is [please email me]. ShareThis Download Special Reports:How To Create Your Own Stripe Ad For Your Blog Or WebsiteThe Killer Four Column Layout Strategy © admin for I Help You Blog, 2008. | Permalink | One comment

Stripe ads are a neat way to extend screen real estate to create additional advertising room. They are extremely popular with high traffic websites and are extremely visible to the website visitor since they are the first thing the visitor sees on the site. A stripe ad is a strip of highlighted ad adspace right below the browser’s navigation. Sites that have stripe ads include www.cellphonenew