Blogging

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  ProBlogger Blog Tips

• Six Ways To Make More Money As An Affiliate

  Darren Rowse

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:15 am

  By Johnny B. Truant I’m going to go out on a limb and say that affiliate marketing is the easiest way to make money online. You don’t have to create a product or develop a service, you don’t need huge amounts of focused traffic the way you do with AdSense, (I started using AdSense a year ago and just recently passed the $100 minimum payout), and you don’t need to do a ton of advertising or SEO to make it work. All you really need is an audience to whom you can refer products and services. Of course, the above statement is true in the same way it’s true that you…

• The Paint By Numbers Guide To Artful Blogging

  Darren Rowse

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:15 am

  A Guest Post by Greg Hayes from Live Fit Blog. Do you subscribe to the idea that blogging is an art form? I do. Britannica Online defines art as “The use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others.” If you’re a blogger, then by definition, you most certainly engage in the following activities during the creation of content: Creative Writing Web Page Design (Aesthetics) Idea Development (Novelty) Social Media (Shared Experiences) When we start our blog, we read the A-list bloggers, and they repeat the…

• 14 Types of Stories You Can Tell On Your Blog

  Darren Rowse

  4 Nov 2009 | 6:18 am

  Yesterday we explored WHY stories can be such a powerful communication tool on your blog. Today we’ll look at 14 types of stories that you might like to try on your blog. 14 Types of stories can you tell on your blog Personal Discovery Stories – tell how you discovered a lesson. These stories show your readers how similar you are to them and also might give some practical advice on how they might learn from your experience. Stories as Analogies and Illustrations – tell a story that on the surface has nothing to do with your topic but which illustrates a principle that is relevant.

• Why Stories are an Effective Communication Tool for Your Blog

  Darren Rowse

  3 Nov 2009 | 6:18 am

  As I write this it is the first Tuesday morning of a new month and I’m sitting in a local coffee shop going through my ‘start of the month routine‘. It involves a large lattè (everything else hinges on this) and some delving into my blogs metrics to see how they’ve been performing. While I do keep track of the traffic stats of my blogs each day I like to set aside an hour or two at the start of each month to go a little deeper and do some more analysis of trends on my blogs – I find that when I do this I notice things that I can build on to continue momentum on…

• Thesis Theme for WordPress Upgrades to Version 1.6

  Darren Rowse

  2 Nov 2009 | 6:16 am

  One of my favorite WordPress themes – Thesis – has in the last week released an update with some pretty cool features. My strategy with blog design is like this. I generally aim towards a completely customized blog design that will give my blog a distinct look and brand – but before I work towards that I almost always start with a more affordable option because I like to test to see whether the blog is going to work or not. As a result I’ve always been on the look out for great themes and when Chris Pearson and Brian Clark started DIYthemes and released the Thesis…

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  ShoeMoney

• Difference Between – Free Shirt Friday – UPDATE

  Jeremy Schoemaker

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:00 am

  Apologies to differencebetween.net. I was at ad:tech all week and had this one scheduled. Links have been fixed. Difference Between is a very unique site that focuses on just what the name says, the difference between two things, usually two that are often confused with each other. The have articles in many categories including business (difference between GNP and GDP), Health (vegan vs. vegetarian diets), Internet (http vs. https), and language (difference between sympathy and empathy) also Science, Nature, Technology. This seems like a site that I would bookmark and check on every once in a…

• Can We Talk For A Minute

  Jeremy Schoemaker

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:50 pm

  I been meaning to do a post like this for a while but just did a video. Here at Ad:Tech and next week at Pubcon thought I would make a brief vid: This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog Can We Talk For A Minute

• SEOBOOK Interview

  Jeremy Schoemaker

  3 Nov 2009 | 8:58 am

  Check out the lengthy interview I did with Aaron Wall here This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog SEOBOOK Interview

• Last day for ShoeMoneyX Signups!

  Jeremy Schoemaker

  3 Nov 2009 | 3:29 am

  After today the shoemoneyx.com program will be shutdown forever. But no worries we are working on something new that will be out first quarter of next year that is much more hands on and indepth. (notice the early bird signup on right hand side of the blog). So enroll in the free 12 week internet marketing training course today! This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog Last day for ShoeMoneyX Signups!

• Before You Pay For That Webmasterworld Pubcon Pass….

  Jeremy Schoemaker

  2 Nov 2009 | 11:18 am

  Before you buy a pass to Pubcon to hear the same old company pitches you have already heard a million times from the same speakers check out DK’s line up of events (AKA 2nd annual Pubcon hijack). These events is actually where all of the “experts” will be at. AND in these settings you can actually “talk” to them instead of listening to their company stump pitch. Just check out all the people on DK’s attendees page and you tell me who are you trying to network with? Who are you trying to learn from? These mini events are the key. The events range from MMA…

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  Copyblogger

• The Oscar the Grouch Guide to Building a More Remarkable Blog

  Sonia Simone

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:33 am

  This week marked the 40th anniversary of the breakthrough TV program Sesame Street. I’ve written before about some of the many lessons you can learn from this cultural icon, but today I’m going to zero in something new. You might have an Elmo blog, a Cookie Monster blog, or a Big Bird blog. (How you define those is up to you.) But some of the smartest and most successful bloggers out there bear more in common with the show’s least-likeable character: Oscar the Grouch. Oscar was an important character from the show’s beginning, and on the surface he doesn’t seem to quite fit in.

• Here’s Something to Think (and Talk) About

  Brian Clark

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:55 am

  I’m flying to New York City today for the Audience Conference, so I thought I’d share a quotation about the relationship between writers (or any content creator) and the people they hope to connect with. When talented people write badly it’s generally for one of two reasons: Either they’re blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove or they’re driven by an emotion they must express. When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They’re moved by a desire to touch the audience. ~Robert McKee Let’s discuss. What do McKee’s words mean to you? About the…

• Get Off Your Computer and Become a Better Blogger

  James Chartrand

  4 Nov 2009 | 6:45 am

  Bloggers spend a lot of time on their computers. They’re posting, reading, commenting on other blogs, sending Tweets, checking half a dozen social networking sites, and generally being web-geeky. They find something interesting or random, and then clue in other people to that interesting or random thing. This is how blog posts gain steam on Digg or go viral. This is how we find out about new YouTube videos. This is how we communicate now. Except we don’t. We were people before we were bloggers Think about the blogs that you like the most. Like, to pick a totally random example,…

• The Quentin Tarantino Guide to Creating Killer Content

  Sean Platt

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:58 am

  In a recent Copyblogger post discussing how the king of content is being slowly usurped by the Crown Prince of Context, author Larry Brooks referenced the remarkable opening scene of Quentin Tarantino’s new movie Inglourious Basterds. There are few writers like Tarantino, and though his verbal carpet bombs and kinetic escalation of violence aren’t for everyone, there is no doubt that the dude follows his muse. Those who love him will eagerly wait in lines wrapped around the block to show their support. In short, Tarantino sells it every time. And by it, I mean an ironclad belief in…

• How to Get Lucky With Content Marketing

  Traci Feit Love

  2 Nov 2009 | 7:36 am

  Do you feel like you’re fighting for every page view your blog receives? Do you wonder why you’re struggling to find readers when other bloggers seem to just hit “publish” and the world comes running? It may be tempting to throw up your hands and say, “those other guys have all the luck,” but it won’t get you anywhere. The truth is, those “lucky” people are doing something you’re not doing. (Or they’re doing what you are doing, but better.) If you want to get lucky, you’re going to have to give up the “poor…

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  John Chow

• The Email of the Week

  John Chow

  6 Nov 2009 | 6:08 pm

  I get many emails everyday. Most are pretty tame and boring. However, once in a while, a real gem will land in my inbox. I’m calling this Email from Dan Waggoner the Email of the week but I think it has a good shot at being the email of the year. Hi John, I am writing you to ask for a favor. I just wrote my first eBook titled “A Peasant’s Guide To Internet Marketing” 10 Powerful Steps for the New Business Website Owner. I was wondering if you would be willing to read it and maybe write a short endorsement if you like it. I want to put a few very strong endorsements on…

• 24 Untapped Traffic Sources

  John Chow

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:00 am

  Kim Roach, affiliate marketer and blogger at Buzz Blogger has released a new eBook call 24 Untapped Traffic Sources. As you might guest, the eBook is about 24 ways to get tons of traffic to your site. On the Net, traffic equals money. The more traffic you have, the more money you can make. 24 Untapped Traffic Sources will help you get more traffic. The cool thing about 24 Untapped Traffic Sources is nearly all the methods for getting the traffic are free. The eBook is free as well. That’s right, Kim is giving the eBook away for free instead of charging for it. Free is always a good…

• Leapfish Unveils Real-Time Social Search Engine That Captures The “Living Web”

  John Chow

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:06 pm

  Leapfish has just unveiled a new multi-media and real-time search, communication, and sharing platform that gives consumers a very convenient, fun, and personalized way to experience and share the traditional and real-time Web, which Leapfish call the “Living Web.” The new LeapFish search allows users to do the two things they do most often when online: search and share. The new search platform combines the ability to search and share real-time and traditional content in any media format in a single interface across a range of different sites (Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc). The new…

• How To Start a Money Making Membership Site – Part 5

  Deep Arora

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am

  Marketing Your FTM Site As an Internet Marketer, there is one simple truth that I am sure you already know – no matter how expertly written your copy is, how attractive your graphics are and how incredibly valuable your content is, none of this matters if you aren’t putting it in front of the right eyeballs. This section, then, seeks to address this very issue. By the time you are done reading it, you will know all there is it to know about driving targeted traffic to your site and getting your first few subscribers. And, better still, we are going to break with tradition here and start…

• The Arbitrager – Sex, Drugs and Lazy Internet Millionaires

  John Chow

  4 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am

  Over the years, I had the fortune of meeting and becoming friends with some very big super affiliates. Guys like Zac Johnson and Jonathan Volk are pretty well known because they maintain very popular blogs. Then there is my friend Aymen. Chances are, you’ve never heard of him. This is because Aymen is of those super affiliates who likes to maintain a low profile. And when you’re making over $100,000 a DAY, I can’t really blame him. Aymen doesn’t take pictures, doesn’t do interviews and I’m not allowed to tell you if Aymen is his first or last name. I first…

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  Blog Directory, Blogs on Blogged

• Director Tapped For 'The Orphanage' Remake

  Screen Rant It’s being reported that a director has been found for New Line’s English-language remake of The Orphanage, in the form of Larry Fessenden. Guillermo del Toro (who produced the original Spanish version) is producing and has co-written the...

• Too Old to Have a Baby?

  Burning The Scale Advances in science have made it much easier to get pregnant now in your 50s, and in some cases, 60s. The case of Maria del Carmen Bousada of Spain, who had twin boys at age 66 and then died...

• myFICO 25% Off Coupon

  My Money Blog Here’s a newly released coupon for 25% off real FICO scores at myFico.com. Use the promotional code FICOHELP25 to get 25% off, the best discount currently available: You enter the promo code...

• Oldest Living Man in Montana

  A Dozen Steps Walter Breuning is being touted as the new “oldest living man” at age 112. He lives in a nursing home in Montana and says he’s grateful for his good health. The previous man to hold the title,...

• 'Banned' Sprite ad unleashes a load of buzz

  Adfreak It’s a fact of the advertising industry that roughly 99% of those “banned” ads you see on the Web were never banned at all — or even intended to be aired. It seems that has to be the case...

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  Blog Design, Optimization & Usability - TopRank Marketing

• Getting Flash (SWF Files) Into Wordpress

  Thomas

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:52 am

  One of the most popular posts on BloggerDesign is how to get Flash (swf) into a WordPress post. The previous post is about three years old so I thought I’d write up a follow-up post, as embedding Flash is much easier now as it’s all built into WordPress. With the newer versions of WordPress there is a button to embed media. Embed Button Once clicked, all you have to do is enter in the Flash (swf) file URL, set the dimensions, hit ‘Insert’, and WordPress will do the rest. Embed Window It’s that easy. No plugins, no confusing code, just provide WordPress with the…

• How To Keep Your Blog Running Smoothly When Traffic Spikes

  Thomas

  22 Oct 2009 | 8:03 am

  A bloggers dream is to get noticed. That could be in the form of a post getting re-tweeted hundreds of times, hitting the homepage of Digg, shared a lot on Facebook, getting noticed by the media, or one of the many other ways a blog can get traffic. However, a flood of traffic can quickly cripple a blog and turn that dream into a nightmare. The good news here is that the WP Super Cache plug-in can help minimize issues caused by too much traffic. The WP Super Cache plug-in creates a static HTML file of each post and serves that file up to users. This static HTML file loads faster and is a lot…

• 10 Lesser Known WordPress Features

  Thomas

  12 Oct 2009 | 2:42 pm

  Whether you are new to WordPress, or have been using it a long time, there are always features that are available in the software that people either forget about or don’t know exist. So I thought I’d write up 10 lesser known WordPress features. 1. More options in the WYSIWYG editor. When writing your blog post in WordPress, there is a toolbar with items such as bold, italic, and lists. At the of that toolbar is a box with little squares on it. Click it to reveal another toolbar with options to underline, change the font colors, embed meida, undo, and more. Quite a few handy…

• 31 Reasons Why WordPress Works As A CMS

  Thomas

  2 Oct 2009 | 3:09 pm

  There are a lot of people who think that WordPress is just blogging software, but it’s much more than that. It can be a website’s entire content management system (CMS). Here are 31 reasons why WordPress works as a CMS. Simple to install. There is a WordPress plugin to add almost any functionality you want. Can setup multiple users with multiple levels of control on the site. It’s SEO friendly. Easy to theme. Easy to customize design and add widgets. One piece of software can run both the website and blog. Comes with pages and posts to separate the blog from the website.

• View Google Analytics In WordPress’ Dashboard

  Thomas

  17 Sep 2009 | 7:54 am

  Google Analytics is a full-featured analytics suite that is free to all to use. The data it captures lets blog owners know referrers to their site, keywords, popular posts, unique visitors and so much more. With the Google Analyticator plug-in, you can view a summary of the blogs Google Analytics, for the past 30 days, right on the dashboard for quick and easy access. Here’s how to setup Google Analytics on WordPress’ dashboard. 1. Sign up for a free Google Analytics account. If you already have a Gmail, or other Google account, then just sign-in. http://www.google.com/analytics/…

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  Business Blogging - How to Build A Better Blog

• Business Bloggers Twitter List in Development

  Denise Wakeman, The Blog Squad

  4 Nov 2009 | 3:02 pm

  If you're on Twitter, then you probably know that the introduction of lists is keeping everyone quite busy creating their ultimate lists of tweeple in every category under the sun. I'm no exception. (See my post on Biz Tips Blog about Twitter lists.)I've started a list of business bloggers and I need your help.First, check out my list of business bloggers. Follow the list if you would like to stay apprised of new additions.Next, let me know who I should add to the list. Post their name and twitter ID in the comments below and I'll add them to the list. [TIP: Please submit URL for the twitter…

• Visibility via Video: How to Extend Your Reach Online

  Denise Wakeman, The Blog Squad

  29 Oct 2009 | 8:00 am

  If you've been following me for awhile, you know I return to the topic of online video from time to time. Why? Because it is an amazingly powerful online marketing tool. When I was at BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2009, at least 90% of the attendees had video cameras and videos were being shot in every hallway, at dinners, at parties and everywhere in between.  YouTube is the 4th most visited site on the Web and it's the second largest search engine. 20 hours of video are being uploaded to YouTube every minute (saw that stat somewhere today). The reason video is so popular is because it…

• Have you posted on your business blog today?

  Denise Wakeman, The Blog Squad

  27 Oct 2009 | 9:41 am

  I read a blog post today by one of my favorite people, Rich Brooks, about why businesses need to make time to blog. It made me think I might need to remind you WHY you need to be blogging for your business (and post often!).You know my primary message is that your business blog is and should be your hub or home base for your online activity.  The reasons why could create many blog posts so I'm going to just make a few points: A well-optimized business blog will: Create Massive visibility Reverse the client chase - help you reach a new audience Engage customers Get feedback Hone your unique…

• 5 Critical Tactics for Business Blog Success (audio replay)

  Denise Wakeman, The Blog Squad

  25 Oct 2009 | 8:00 am

  I was recently interviewed by Travis Greenlee for his Business Mastery Club about what's required for business blog success. I negotiated permission to share the program; I've posted the audio replay so you can benefit from it to...

• Technorati's State of the Blogosphere Wrap Up

  Denise Wakeman, The Blog Squad

  24 Oct 2009 | 9:28 am

  If you're publishing a blog (a social marketing tool) and using other online marketing and social marketing tools for your business, I strongly recommend you read the entire State of the Blogosphere 2009 report. You'll get insights into trends and how professionals and self-employeds are using the Web to build credibility, establish thought leadership, make money and grow their businesses. Here are quick links you can jump to for each section:State of The Blogosphere IntroductionDay 1: Who Are the Bloggers?Day 2: The What and Why of BloggingDay 3: The How of BloggingDay 4: Blogging Revenues,…

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  Chris Garrett on New Media

• Brilliant Free Stuff from Friends

  Chris Garrett

  30 Oct 2009 | 9:07 pm

  Auckland, New Zealand I’m sat taking some time out from our travels down under to let you know about a couple of great giveaways. Yes, I am on my travels again. This time touring the other side of the planet. We are down in Auckland, New Zealand right now, after a quick stop in Singapore and just before we head to Sydney, and then Melbourne Australia. Ordinarily I wouldn’t be updating my blog with a vacation update but this news is too good. How good? My friend Sean is giving away an entire audio course. Not only is he giving it away, it’s a course that he is currently…

• Gary Vaynerchuck Interview

  Chris Garrett

  13 Oct 2009 | 5:00 am

  Gary crushing it at Web 2.0 Expo NY Today I am happy (and more than a little relieved) to be able to share with you this quick and informal interview I grabbed last week with Gary Vay.Ner.Chuk. Gary has quickly become a fixture on the convention scene, TV celebrity and a media darling because of his larger than life energy and positive personality, and also his expertise in personal branding, social media and business. Right now he is in the process of the launch his brilliant new book, “Crush It“. I was fortunate to grab 30 technical gremlin frustrated minutes where I got to ask…

• Join Me For a Live Chat

  Chris Garrett

  12 Oct 2009 | 2:17 am

  Ask me social media and blogging questions and see me answer live As part of the launch of Social Media Examiner I will be doing a live video chat along with Mike Stelzner. It’s free and easy to join in, and should be good fun! 10:00 New York time 15:00 London time Check out the full details here. Also, while you are there, check out my first article for the site … “How to Create Headlines that Go Viral With Social Media“ Related Posts:Social Media Marketing Survey Results - Free PDFHow to Really Use Social Media Marketing as a Tool For BusinessI Want Your Social Media…

• Get My New Business-Blogging Book with $10 Off

  Chris Garrett

  8 Oct 2009 | 6:50 am

  Business Blogging Made Simple A real-world guide to creating, writing and promoting a successful blog Inside my new e-book “Business Blogging – 50 Steps to Building Traffic and Sales,” you’ll discover: Why your business needs a blog (yesterday!) The biggest pitfalls of blogging — and how to avoid them How to build a following of faithful blog subscribers Proven tips for converting your blog traffic into sales Order now and get instant access … Save $10 – offer ends 14th Today! (Offer extended) I am really proud of this new book, I think the Wordtracker folks have done a…

• Climb Inside Gary Vaynerchuk’s Brain and Crush It

  Chris Garrett

  1 Oct 2009 | 3:03 am

  Got personal branding or social media questions? How would you like to get answers from one of the biggest new media rockstars on the planet? Gary Vaynerchuk is one of my favorite people in social media and he is in crazy demand right now due to his massively successful business projects, his new book (Crush It), and the arrival of his child. I am pinching myself right now because he has given me a slot in his super-busy schedule. Frankly I am also a little cautious – I do not want to mess up this chance to get some GaryVee wisdom on record. This is where you come in! As well as giving…

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  Blog World Expo

• 5 Things Your Spouse Won’t Understand About Blogging

  Thinking of getting into blogging? I hope you have a good support group at home. It's especially helpful if your spouse is someone who "gets" blogging and social media. If not, be prepared for lots of questions. 5 Things Your Spouse Won't Understand About Blogging 1. Why you spend so much time ...

• BlogWorld ‘09: How Does Your Light Shine?

  [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtoP4a6ABDU[/youtube] Thanks and good karma sent out to the following for providing the images for this slideshow: Lara Kulpa Keith Burtis Ben Sparks Denise Wakeman Reem Abeidoh

• Sponsored Conversations: Selling Out or Another Way to Make Money Blogging?

  When I first began blogging five or six years ago, there were plenty of arguments over whether or not bloggers should use ads on their blogs. Those who did were considered sell outs. Then the "make money online craze" hit and everyone was posting ads on their blogs and all ...

• BlogWorld ‘09 One Week Later: Thoughts from Around the Blogosphere

  [caption id="attachment_1521" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Dinner on opening day: Lara Kulpa, Darren Rowse, Angie Shwartz and I "][/caption] One week after the BlogWorld and New Media Expo, life returns to normal. We're rested. We're over the "BlogWorld flu." We've hugged our kids, snuggled with our spouses, and did massive loads of laundry. ...

• An Open Letter To All From Blogs With Balls and HHR Media

  To the illustrious attendees of Blogs With Balls 2.0: We at HHR Media felt that by Tuesday, your BwB 2.0 hangover and double-vision would be mostly gone, and those of you (of which there were a few) who missed plane flights as a result of your excessive "conventioneering" shall we say, ...

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  Daily Blog Tips

• How To Get Google Sitelinks

  Daniel Scocco

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:00 am

  This post is part of the Friday Q&A section. Just use the contact form if you want to submit a question. Kang Yudiono asks: I am very happy because my blog got Google Sitelinks. For your information, the blog is 5 months old and written in Indonesian laguage. My question: what is the benefits of sitelinks for a blog? First things first, what are the Google sitelinks? They are those links that appear below the first result when you search for the name of a website or blog. Google implemented the sitelinks to help users find the information or section inside a particular website more…

• Behind the Scenes of the Lolcats Empire

  Daniel Scocco

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:24 am

  You probably already visited or heard about I Can Has Cheezburger? right? It is the blog that pioneered the concept of adding funny captions to pictures of cats (called lolcats). What you might not know is the business empire that such blog created. The blog was launched early in 2007, and late that year it was already so popular that a group of investors, led by Ben Huh, acquired it for around $2 million. After that Ben acquired and launch a bunch of other blogs, all of them with the same humorous approach and style. How big is the network today? According to a TechCrunch article, all the…

• 101 Ways to Promote a New Blog

  Guest Author

  3 Nov 2009 | 7:49 pm

  This is a guest post by David Turnbull. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here. Promoting a new blog can be quite daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. As you might expect, breaking down blog promotion into small, actionable tasks eliminates the mental road block you’ve probably experienced when trying to wrap you head around how to get people’s attention. You don’t have to do everything in this list, and some items will have a greater effect then others, but every tactic will at least drive some traffic, and any traffic is better than no…

• Exploit Scanner WordPress Plugin

  Daniel Scocco

  3 Nov 2009 | 8:49 am

  Last week I was reading the official WordPress blog and I came across an interesting plugin: WordPress Exploit Scanner. It basically scans your database entries and site files looking for suspicious lines of codes. On top of that it also looks for suspicious plugins, posts, pages, users and WordPress settings. Here is a screenshot: It is worth to run this plugin once in a while, and especially if you believe that a malicious user might have compromised your installation recently or in the past. Original Post: Exploit Scanner WordPress Plugin

• 6 Mistakes to Avoid on Email Subject Lines

  Daniel Scocco

  2 Nov 2009 | 8:55 am

  If you are a blogger, website owner or online worker, you probably need to contact people via email all the time. On some occasions you will also be the one starting the conversation and looking for a reply. For example, you might want to offer a guest article for a particular blog, or you might want to propose a business partnership to someone. Unless you craft your email messages smartly, though, there are good chances that the other person won’t even read them. Spam filters are the first obstacle, but even if your message goes though the other person might just delete it. The subject…

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  Online Marketing Blog

• 5 Tips for Effective Email Copywriting

  Michelle Bowles

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:34 am

  The quality of email content is one of the core factors in determining whether an email marketing campaign succeeds or fails. But successful email copywriting is an art — rather than a science — making it different from most other forms of business writing. To start out on the right path, consider these 5 tips for effective email copywriting: 1. Focus on the subject line. The subject line may be the shortest piece of content to write, but it’s one your campaign’s most critical elements. The challenge is to create excitement for a special offer, provide enough information…

• Reader Poll Winner: SEO Dojo for Best Paid Subscription SEM Community

  Lee Odden

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:53 am

  TopRank has been publishing the BIGLIST of SEM blogs since Jan 2007. We’ve created other BIGLISTs of resources as well including the BIGLIST of 100+ Search Marketing Resources posted in October.  The categories for that list of SEM resources includes books, conferences, newsletters, blogs, forums and many more. We decided it would be interesting to see which resources from that list our readers felt were the best. In the past 3 plus years TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has run over 50 polls: Everything from Best Social Media Podcast to best Keyword Research Tool to Best City for…

• How to Save Money on Social SEO Consulting

  Lee Odden

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:45 am

  Social Media Marketing is getting a lot of attention in the media on and offline, causing many business marketers to wonder how to adjust budgets and resources to participate. Others that have allocated funds to Social Media and SEO programs without proper implementation, timelines or measurement may question their return on investment. While businesses decide to push or pull budgets, companies that are focused on winning market share and driving revenue are soundly and consistently investing in a mix of digital tactics involving search, email, online PR and of course, social media.  Adding…

• Pubcon Las Vegas 2009: Are You Ready?

  Lee Odden

  2 Nov 2009 | 8:41 am

  Another year in the Search Marketing world, another WebmasterWorld Pubcon in Las Vegas.  Pubcon was one of the first search marketing conferences I attended and where I first met a number of highly talented SEOs in person. TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has been liveblogging the Pubcon conference since 2005 and includes a mix of content ranging from interviews with Pubcon owner Brett Tabke to Google’s Adam Lasnik. Also videos (Neil Patel giving interesting tips), photos (see the 2006 Yahoo Party in the Playboy Suite and many, many posts from the sessions offering strategy…

• TopRank’s SEO Halloween Costume Contest

  Dana Larson

  30 Oct 2009 | 10:42 am

  The TopRank team loves to have fun – for holidays, on team outings, at conferences, etc. Because tomorrow is Halloween, a few members of the TopRank team decided to dress up for a costume contest. And it’s up to you to decide the winner! Winning includes at least $50 worth of coffee, so be sure to share this post and get your friends to vote too. We have a winner – Congrats goes to Dana Larson: Winner! Dana as Minnesota Strawberry Shortcake Safari Thomas Bad Angel Julie Michelle the Football Star Monkey Audrey and Veterinary Nurse Amie Mike as Zombie Soupy Sales Sue After…

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  The Friday Traffic Report

• Smartphone Wars, Google Friend Connect, Gwave, Dashboard, Opting out of Google, and more!

  Jack Humphrey

  6 Nov 2009 | 12:05 pm

  Smartphone Wars, Google Friend Connect, Gwave, Dashboard, Opting out of Google, and more! is a post from: Blog Marketing Tips by Blog Marketing Expert Jack Humphrey Smartphone Wars, Google Friend Connect, Gwave, Dashboard, Opting out of Google, and more! is a post from: Blog Marketing Tips by Blog Marketing Expert Jack Humphrey iPhone step aside!  My pocket is reserved for my Verizon Droid, coming in tomorrow via FedEx.  Today we talk about smart phones, how we use them to keep our businesses [...]

• Still think Twitter is just a fad?

  Jack Humphrey

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:01 am

  Still think Twitter is just a fad? is a post from: Blog Marketing Tips by Blog Marketing Expert Jack Humphrey Still think Twitter is just a fad? is a post from: Blog Marketing Tips by Blog Marketing Expert Jack Humphrey Image by VitiligoCover via Flickr It is tempting to blow off new social media applications as fads.  When you’ve been “hurt” by the promise of a new, hot social site only to watch it crash and burn [...]

• How Do Price Wars Affect Affiliates?

  Anissa Wardell

  2 Nov 2009 | 2:35 am

  How Do Price Wars Affect Affiliates? is a post from: Blog Marketing Tips by Blog Marketing Expert Jack Humphrey What do Price Wars, Retail Stores & Online Marketers have in common? Alot more than you think! We are all looking to make a few dollars, but who is willing to really sweeten the deal for their customers?

• Twitter Lists: How to create an RSS feed from your Twitter list pages

  Jack Humphrey

  1 Nov 2009 | 10:38 am

  Twitter Lists: How to create an RSS feed from your Twitter list pages is a post from: Blog Marketing Tips by Blog Marketing Expert Jack Humphrey Twitter Lists: How to create an RSS feed from your Twitter list pages is a post from: Blog Marketing Tips by Blog Marketing Expert Jack Humphrey I just stumbled on a really cool, much needed tool to convert your Twitter Lists pages to RSS. Why is that cool?  Because I wanted to send my local bloggers [...]

• Gwave, DROID, Twitter Lists, Status.net and much more on today’s FTR Radio!

  Jack Humphrey

  30 Oct 2009 | 11:48 am

  Gwave, DROID, Twitter Lists, Status.net and much more on today’s FTR Radio! is a post from: Blog Marketing Tips by Blog Marketing Expert Jack Humphrey Gwave, DROID, Twitter Lists, Status.net and much more on today’s FTR Radio! is a post from: Blog Marketing Tips by Blog Marketing Expert Jack Humphrey Today I learned I could fit more into 35 minutes if myself and Jim simply talked faster!  If you can hang with this show to the end, your head will be [...]

• 
  Winning the Web

• 6 Crucial Steps to Prepare Yourself for the Twitter Facebook Real-Time Search Integration

  Gyutae Park

  29 Oct 2009 | 12:27 pm

  Real-time search is all the rage these days and it looks like it will only get bigger. Just last week, Microsoft Bing announced that it will be integrating both Facebook and Twitter status updates into its search results. Minutes later, Google followed suit and announced that it too will be adding Twitter updates (but not Facebook) into its SERPs. Even Yahoo is trying to get in the real-time search game. The exact details on implementation aren’t yet clear, but it’s likely that real-time Twitter and/or Facebook updates will be added to the regular search results –…

• SEM Rush Review – SEO Competitive Research at Your Fingertips

  Gyutae Park

  23 Oct 2009 | 4:06 pm

  Competitive research is a huge part of SEO. After all, in order to improve your sites’ rankings in Google, you need to step over your competitors. The more data you have and the more you know about other sites in your industry, the better off you’ll be. A few weeks back, I reviewed SEO Spyglass, a great competitive link building tool that provides you with key insights and metrics on your competitors’ link sources. Definitely check that one out if you haven’t already. In the same vein, today I want to go over another useful tool for SEO – SEMRush. SEMRush is a keyword…

• My Experience At ThinkThank 2009, the Hottest Internet Marketing Event of the Year

  Gyutae Park

  3 Oct 2009 | 6:03 pm

  Earlier this month, I had the amazing opportunity to go to ThinkTank, DK’s Internet marketing networking event on the beaches of San Diego (not to be confused with the ShareASale ThinkTank version). The invitation-only “conference” normally costs $3,000 to attend, but thanks to a contest organized by Andy Liu over at Inspired Startup, I pretty much had an all-expense paid trip there. Thanks again Andy! To participate in Andy’s Startup Challenge contest, all you had to do was write a blog post describing your biggest challenge as a start up. I wrote about finding…

• SEO Spyglass Review – Ultimate Competitive Link Building Tool, Now Showing 1,000+ Links

  Gyutae Park

  1 Oct 2009 | 12:33 pm

  Anyone with a basic understanding of how SEO works knows that obtaining high quality links from other related sites plays a huge factor in increasing search engine rankings. Common link building strategies range from submitting to directories and guest posting on blogs to creating widgets and promoting link bait type articles on social media. But where do you start looking for potential link targets? How do you know which links will yield the greatest results for your SEO efforts? A great starting point for building links to your site is to analyze the competition and look at where other…

• How to Develop an SEO Link Building Strategy That Delivers the Goods (Link Value)

  Gyutae Park

  24 Sep 2009 | 4:00 am

  Links are king when it comes to SEO. Search engines view links as votes for a site and the higher the quantity and quality of links your site has, the better your chances of ranking for related keywords in the search results (Google, Yahoo, Bing). If you know anything about SEO, you’re probably sitting there saying, “no duh”. The problem is that not all links count for SEO purposes, and if they do, it’s always in varying degrees. Just because you see blue underlined text in your browser doesn’t mean that Google will pass over the SEO link value to the site being…

• 
  The Edublogger

• Tips For Measuring Post Success: Part 1 Bookmarking

  Sue Waters

  15 Oct 2009 | 5:35 am

  Analyzing blog metrics always gives me a headache! But as a blogger it’s important to know ‘Is the content you’re providing is fulfilling your readers needs?” Metrics provide you with insights into how your readers are interacting with your content and the type of content that interests them. Trouble is there’s numerous metrics you can use,  each provides different insight and its meaning depends on what you’re trying to achieve from your posts. So lets start by seeing how I use one metric, reader bookmarking, to analyze post performance. My next post will…

• Managing Students on Blogs…What Role Do You Assign Students?

  Sue Waters

  12 Oct 2009 | 6:35 am

  I’ve been asked a lot lately about ‘roles of users’ and what role should you assign student users on blogs. Unfortunately there isn’t a simple answer because it’s a balance between: How much responsibility you’re comfortable with assigning your students School and District guidelines Providing them with an environment that’s motivating So I’ve decided to explain the different user roles and I’m hoping others explain how they choose what roles they assign students. Roles of Users The five roles for users you can give students on class blogs…

• Announcing The Winners Of The “Share your tips–and win BIG!” Competition!

  Sue Waters

  7 Oct 2009 | 6:35 pm

  It’s time to announce the winners of “Share your tips–and win BIG!” and a big thanks to everyone who entered. Here’s the winners with a brief summary of why they won: Gail Desler has extensive experience in both student blogging and supporting others educators in the use of blogs with their students.  She submitted three posts for the competition that all are ‘must read’ posts packed full of advice on blogging with students which is why I’ve decided all three posts are winning posts: Five Tips for Teachers New to Blogging Five Tips for Helping…

• Want traditional news media to tell the true story about social networking? Here’s Your Chance!

  Sue Waters

  24 Sep 2009 | 6:15 pm

  I’ve been approached to do an interview by Ingrid Maack who is writing an article about the use of social networking websites within early childhood environments. Ingrid’s a journalist at Rattler Magazine (published by Armedia). We don’t often get the chance to get our message across to educators and parents using traditional news media. But why limit to my thoughts when collectively responses from our global community are more powerful! So here’s your opportunity!  Teachers, Students, Everyone! Please share your thoughts on any or all of the following questions: How…

• I’m Up A Creek Without A Paddle…Can You Assist?

  Sue Waters

  23 Sep 2009 | 5:52 am

  Sorry! I really tried to come up with an idea for this post but I’m totally stuck! Every blogger knows that feeling.  Especially new bloggers. Can you help us out by sharing your secrets? Where do you get your ideas for blog posts from? What are your thoughts on how often a blogger should write posts?  And why? What are your tips for maintaining a consistent blogging routine? What works well for you? What other advice would you give to new bloggers? Image by Caveman 92223 — On the Road Again! licensed under Creative Commons ShareAlike. If you are enjoying reading this blog, please…

• 
  BlogWell

• Who is Worthy of Digg’s Pixels?

  Lid

  12 Oct 2009 | 1:44 pm

  Last week, Digg announced it is working on performance initiatives: “Today, we’re also making some changes to reduce page payloads and minimize HTTP requests with subtle UI changes. By removing the 16px user icon from stories on the home page and other story lists, we’re reducing HTTP requests to Digg for a warm cache load by around 75%.” I’ve asked a few developers [not associated with Digg] about this new initiative.  Each had much the same response: Seems like a no brainer; surely Digg’s developers can work out a way to speed things up and leave the icons…

• The History of Microsoft

  Lid

  5 Feb 2009 | 2:40 pm

  Today, Microsoft’s Channel 9 begins a new video series called The History of Microsoft. In this first episode Bill Gates talks about the ‘aha’ moment.

• Photoshopped or Not?

  Lid

  8 Jan 2009 | 5:52 pm

  Came across this great pic of Australia over on Strange Maps – nature or art?  The accidental cartography post is quite accurate when it points out the irony of the drought stricken land. So what do you think?  Real or not?  There are some interesting comments on the urban legend site, Snopes.

• The History of the Internet

  Lid

  7 Jan 2009 | 9:17 am

  A seven minute video that walks you through the history of the Internet.  Including the groups that made up its foundation: ARPANET, RAND, NPL, CYCLADES. History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

• Silicon Valley Tech Events: November 10, 2008

  Lid

  9 Nov 2008 | 5:00 am

  These are events planned for the Silicon Valley area for the week beginning November 10; please let me know if you’d like to include an event. Monday November 10 VoiceCon San Francisco 2008 Host: TechWeb Dates: November 10 – 13 Place: San Francisco, Moscone North Cost: Exhibits only $100 – $2495 Tuesday November 11 ISPCon Host: Jupiter Events Dates: November 11 – 13 Place: San Jose Cost: $50 – $695 Webcast: Open Source at Microsoft: Opportunity or Threat? Host: Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University Time: 12.30 p.m. Place: Web Cost: Free Wednesday…

• 
  WordFrame Blog

• Launching New Talk Show on BlogTalkRadio

  29 Oct 2009 | 4:58 am

  “Des Walsh & Friends” show to launch on BlogTalkRadio I’ve been thinking for a while now about having another go at starting my own show on BlogTalkRadio and when I checked my account there yesterday I was a bit startled to realize that the last effort was a couple of years ago. In the meantime I have endeavoured with my China-based colleague, Lonnie Hodge, to put out a regular show about China, China Conversations, but our efforts on that...

• Believing Popular Myths About Twitter Could Cost You Money

  26 Oct 2009 | 10:48 pm

  Why smart business owners cut through the noise and get the Twitter business case I’ve been thinking about the comment I heard yesterday morning from an otherwise quite smart presenter on morning television, to the effect that everyone who goes on Twitter gets addicted to it and that’s why she is not on it. I didn’t get the exact words – let’s face it, who hangs on every word from breakfast television? But I suspect that that presenter’s views...

• Joining China Global Speakers

  25 Oct 2009 | 7:35 pm

  In the past couple of years, since having the privilege of moderating a panel on blogging at ad:tech Beijing, I have been actively engaged in developing my business interests and connections with China, in association especially with my colleague Lonnie B. Hodge, and with that seeking to deepen and broaden my understanding of the complex world of modern China. This month I have had the distinct honour of being invited to join China Global Speak....

• Will EuroCloud provide some clarity and direction?

  20 Oct 2009 | 1:47 am

  One of my recent "quotes of the week" was Lord Puttnam's excellent:“Technology can only serve as a bridge, never as a destination.” In recent weeks there has been plenty of activity around the Cloud Computing bridge  with way too much emphasis on jargon and technicalities.  The Intellect SaaS Group has started and is just about to publish a white paper to address that issue.  BASDA has formed a Cloud SIG.  Last week's Cloud p...

• SunGard kick aaS campaign

  15 Oct 2009 | 11:58 am

  I have to admit I think my friends at SunGard have put together a kick aaS Cloud Computing ad campaign:

• 
  Quick Online Tips

• Local Search Advertising: New Dimension For Small Businesses

  QuickOnlineTips

  4 Nov 2009 | 9:15 am

  Guest Post by Donny Gamble A couple of years ago, local search advertising was defined as online search advertising which is made through mapping websites, local internet yellow pages, local search engines, and classified ads websites. The purpose of conducting a local online search is to rely on information collected from online sources to execute an offline transaction. This type of search is extremely important for small entrepreneurs and small businesses. This is simply because it is almost free as it only requires a small budget to make a successful advertising campaign. The small…

• 3 Different Types of Keyword Research

  QuickOnlineTips

  3 Nov 2009 | 8:26 am

  Guest article by Pradeep. All bloggers and web marketers know thatkeyword researchis important for success of the blog or website. However many people new to internet marketing (even some veterans) make the mistake of assuming that process of keyword research is the same for all websites. In this article I shall explain the different types of keyword research that can be used, the tools that may be utilized for the purpose, advantages and disadvntages of each method and how to select a method for your own website. I shall be explaining the concepts using examples from the second hand goods…

• Google HiStory Video

  QuickOnlineTips

  1 Nov 2009 | 12:15 pm

  Have you seen this Google Story video which quickly tracks the Google history over the last 11 years from Stanford to Mountain View and around the world, featuring different products, starting with BackRub (Search) up to Google Wave, StreetView and Chrome. Looking for more details on Google History? Read the key milestones in Google’s development and how Google started in a garage and reached the browser of every web user. You can also view the Google Timeline for an interactive version of Google company history. Must Read Related Articles Google Browser Sync for Bookmarks, History,…

• Blogger Alert: Official US Daylight Saving Time Change

  QuickOnlineTips

  1 Nov 2009 | 9:24 am

  US Daylight Savings Time changed today! Official Time changed across New York to San Francisco, and bloggers need to be aware and modify the time they send out their blog articles … the clock rolls back an hour for daylight savings at 2 a.m. Image by Samantha Daylight Savings Time Change So what is Daylight Savings time? Daylight Saving Time (or summertime) helps get more light out of the day by advancing clocks by one hour during the summer. Well the Daylight saving time in most of the United States ends at 2 a.m., local time, on Sunday, November 1  (every year on first Sunday in…

• 5 Out-of-the-Box Keyword List Strategies That Work

  QuickOnlineTips

  19 Oct 2009 | 4:33 am

  Guest Article by Edward Khoo There are dozens of keyword selection “strategies.” All you have to do is Google keyword strategies to get 50,100,000 search results the day of this writing. That is over 50 million hits on a very narrow, industry-specific subject, but it makes a good point. Anybody – everybody – working in the web space, from site owners to W3 marketing gurus, has a theory about keyword selection. The diversity of opinions offers up another point: there is no one way to select the perfect set of keywords. The fact is, keyword optimization is more art than…

• 
  Alister Cameron // Blogologist

• Copenhagen: a conspiracy of lies and silence! Stop being a mushroom on this issue!

  Alister Cameron

  30 Oct 2009 | 1:16 am

  Regarding the imminent Copenhagen treaty signing, Janet Albrechtsen writes in the Australian: Ask yourself this: why has our government failed to explain the possible text of a treaty it wants Australia to sign? There has been no address from any Rudd minister to explain the draft treaty. No 3000-word essay from the thoughtful PM. No speech in parliament. No interview. No press release. Nothing. But wait, it’s not only the PM who is silent… the media has been stunningly muzzled! Janet again: And what explains the media’s failure to report and analyse the only source document…

• Why are Kyle and Jackie O still on Twitter’s Suggested User List?

  Alister Cameron

  10 Aug 2009 | 5:36 am

  2Day FM is the flagship station of Australian radio network Austereo, and among its star attractions are morning presenters Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O. Well, they used to be star attractions, except they were pulled off the air “indefinitely” after an on-air stunt went badly wrong on the morning of Wednesday 29th July. In an even-more-vulgar-and-crass-than-typical show, Kyle and Jackie O strapped a 14 year old girl to a lie detector — in the presence of her willing mother — and began firing a barrage of very personal questions at the clearly very uncomfortable child.

• Why Alex King’s Carrington WP theme is great.

  Alister Cameron

  8 Jun 2009 | 6:32 am

  I was stunned today to discover that a lot of people just don’t “get” the Carrington theme by Alex King and the team at Crowd Favorite. To me it’s a no-brainer why it’s so damn good, and why I’m basing a part of the functionality of my upcoming Vanilla theme on it. So being a faster talker than a typer, I shot a fast and crappy video explaining my passion. Comments welcome below or here.  

• Democratizing the Twitter “suggested users” list. Vote now!

  Alister Cameron

  30 Mar 2009 | 6:17 pm

  Seen this before? It’s the suggested users list that Twitter installed a few weeks back. A brand new Twitter users sees it at the conclusion of their signup process. @biz explained a few days ago how they go about selecting people for the list, and it’s still a whole lot less than clear and transparent: We’ve explained that the Suggested Users list is a bit like your local book store’s staff picks but there’s a little more to it than that. Our Chief Scientist developed a program that scans active Twitter accounts for a bunch of key ingredients such as how much of…

• Twitter: get as many followers as you can, as fast as you can!

  Alister Cameron

  18 Mar 2009 | 6:06 am

  Today Twitter is all abuzz about Tweepme.com. There are a lot of people signing up for the service and they’re each sending out an automated tweet announcing the fact. And there are a lot of fellow Twitter users up in arms about the “wrongness” of the Tweepme.com service. I am very please the Tweepme.com service has come along, because — aside from anything it may or may not achieve for those who have signed up in the hope of gaining lots of followers for no effort — it has caused the Twitter community to throw around (again) the question of what Twitter is…

• 
  Write to Done

• One is a Lonely Number – Why You Need a Writing Mentor

  Mary Jaksch

  5 Nov 2009 | 1:53 pm

  A guest post by Jules Clancy from stonesoup This writing business can be a lonely endeavour. We’ve all been there. Self imprisoned in our lonely garrets – or more likely behind our laptops. Reaching out to the world with our writing but feeling helpless and alone. Fear not fellow writers. There is hope. I’ve recently discovered a wonderful way to overcome the fear and feel connected with the rest of the world. Let me introduce you to the benefits of finding yourself a writing mentor. Benefits of a writing mentor 1. Confidence boost To give your confidence a well deserved…

• How to Revise Your Titles for Maximum Results

  Mary Jaksch

  2 Nov 2009 | 6:32 pm

  By Sean Platt of Ghostwriter Dad No one has championed the use of killer headlines more than Brian Clark. His advice on what makes for a compelling headline is gospel to many in this latest wave to crash across the copywriting shore. It’s impossible to argue – magnetic headlines invariably lead to more clicks, more conversions, and more clients clamoring for your content. But what about when your words have turned to whisper, and your old posts have been left to whither upon the WordPress vine? When you first craft a piece of killer content, you want as many eyes on it as possible.

• How to Create an Article of 1,000+ Words in 90 Minutes or Less

  Mary Jaksch

  27 Oct 2009 | 4:09 pm

  A guest post by Patrick Stöckmann of Unwrap Your Mind It’s a dreaded situation for all beginner (and even seasoned) bloggers. You want to write a post, and are sitting in front of a blank page. Suddenly your mind looks just the same – blank. Your inspiration just stopped, and you feel at a loss. We’ve all been there. The good news is that there are some surefire ways of writing quality content in record time. I want to share with you my techniques for writing a 1,000+ words article in 90 minutes or less. To show you that I actually do what I preach, I’ve written the…

• How to Write a Novel in 30 Days

  Leo Babauta

  22 Oct 2009 | 7:54 pm

  Get your pencils sharpened for November. By Leo Babauta I’ve decided to take the plunge and join NaNoWriMo in November (for the 2nd time), attempting to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. Join me! I successfully completed NaNoWriMo in 2006, and it was an incredible time. It was a lot of fun, and joining with the efforts of tens of thousands of fellow writers is an experience like no other. Just a few reasons to do NaNoWriMo: 1. It gives you the motivation to finally write that novel. 2. It teaches you some good habits — getting writing done every day. 3. You learn a lot…

• The Tarot as a Tool for Writing Your Novel

  Mary Jaksch

  20 Oct 2009 | 5:50 am

  Note from the Editor: November sees the beginning of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. Anyone can join the thirty days of literary abandon. WTD will run posts to inspire and encourage you on the way. By Marelisa Fábrega of Abundance Blog National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) begins in just a few days, on November 1st, and thousands of would-be authors are registering with high hopes of crossing the finish line on November 30th, novel firmly in hand. The objective of writing at least 50,000 words in 30 days doesn’t seem so daunting, until the sobering thought hits that you have…

• 
  Steven-Sanders dot com

• The 5 Biggest Uses Of Google Wave

  Steven-Sanders

  13 Oct 2009 | 9:36 am

  I was lucky enough to get an invitation to Google Wave from a friend of mine, and in the last couple of days, I’ve been exploring the features it contains. While I’m not extremely impressed with it yet, I can foresee some big uses for Google Wave coming about. 1. Forum Integration With Google Wave’s ability to imbed Waves into existing websites and allow for comments within each embedded wave, this could be a very awesome change for forums. Currently, in order to reply to a thread in a forum, you have to register for that forum, type your reply then wait for the page to…

• What Twitter Can Do For Your Business

  Steven-Sanders

  12 Oct 2009 | 10:57 am

  Twitter, while not new anymore, is a very powerful tool for individuals as well as businesses, and we are all still learning the capabilites of Twitter on an almost daily basis. The majority of regular Twitter users seem to be bloggers who have started using it because other bloggers have as well, but there is a growing usage of Twitter from businesses trying to reach their target market to create more sales and a better customer relationship. This is very important, especially with our economy the way it is.  So as a business, whether your blog is your business, or you have a more…

• IzeaFest 2009 Live From Orlando

  Steven-Sanders

  2 Oct 2009 | 7:37 am

  I’m sitting here in the middle of the room in Orlando’s Sea World Ports of Call conference room listening to all the great speakers of IzeaFest. If you couldn’t make it, don’t worry, you can join in on the conference too.  Here’s the live stream from IzeaFest: Free Webcam Chat at Ustream This live stream is only available between October 2, 2009 and October 3, 2009. This Post Brought To You By:

• Twitter Is A Sports Bar

  Steven-Sanders

  10 Sep 2009 | 8:30 pm

  I talk to a lot of people, both individuals and companies who still don’t really understand Twitter and how it’s supposed to be used.  And simply telling them that it’s for conversation rather than blasting your stuff out to everybody who can read doesn’t seem to ever work in getting my point across. So I’ve come up with a real world analogy to better understand how Twitter can only work if used correctly… through real conversation. 3 Major Uses Of Twitter There are 3 ways you can use twitter.  Each producing a much different outcome than the other.  But…

• Wordpress App For Blackberry – Blogging On The Go

  Steven-Sanders

  4 Sep 2009 | 11:30 am

  I’ll be leaving for school for the military next weekend and the only thing I could think about was how I won’t be able to write blog posts for the following two weeks that I’d be gone.  I was even asking for guest posters, but after no one seemed interested in guest posting, I started trying to find another way. I guess I could always write 2 weeks worth of articles and schedule them, but I’d rather spend the time with my family before I leave. Then I found it… a way to keep my blog updated while I’m gone, using my cell phone. About Wordpress Blackberry…

• 
  Delicious/tag/blogging tips

• The Oscar the Grouch Guide to Building a More Remarkable Blog | Copyblogger

  Favshortie519

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:48 pm

• 10 Simple Steps To Increase Blog Traffic Via StumbleUpon

  livecheap

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:39 pm

• How to Blog Almost Every Day

  bluejazzjames

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:15 pm

• How to Get Found : The World :: American Express OPEN Forum

  bluejazzjames

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:14 pm

• Blog Headers: 20 Great Examples and Best Practices

  h.elizabeth

  6 Nov 2009 | 2:41 pm

• 
  Performancing

• Will Amazon Affiliate Twitter posting tool increase spam?

  Andy Merrett

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:15 am

  Amazon has introduced a new feature for its Affiliate members, making it easy to post a link to any product on the site to Twitter. It’s another step in making it easy to promote Amazon’s products, after the introduction of cut-and-paste widgets and “link to this page” for bloggers and website owners. Yet Twitter is already flooded with spam and promotional messages, and Amazon has just made it a whole lot easier for casual spammers to flood the service with affiliate links. Additionally, because the links are effectively cloaked (a side effect of having a limited…

• Would You Consider a Dedicated Twitter Device?

  J Angelo Racoma

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:33 pm

  Since I’ve started appreciating Twitter for both personal discussions and promoting my blogs and online content, I’ve been exploring ways to access the service conveniently, even while on-the-go. For this purpose, I’ve settled with a Symbian Series 60 application called Gravity. The application is a fully-featured Twitter client that supports practically anything that a desktop-based client can, such as retweets, direct messages, searches, TwitPics, and even multiple accounts. I’m satisfied with the application, but I only have one gripe, which is connectivity. At home…

• Who is Posterous good for?

  Andy Merrett

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:55 am

  Posterous has caused quite a stir in the blogging world, because it all but removes even the moderate level of complexity that other blogging platforms tend to put in the way of simply publishing. The service has even managed, somehow, to alter my view a little on using free, non-self-hosted blogging platforms, though I’d still say it’s not for everyone. The fact is, most people can benefit from having a platform that’s easy to post multimedia content to on the fly and integrating with social networks even if they are au fait with the likes of WordPress, TypePad and Movable…

• How to Be Wildly Successful in Blogging

  Dee Barizo

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:02 pm

  There are many things that go into being successful in the problogging arena. Things like putting in the time and effort, determination, hard work, writing chops, and marketing savvy have been brought up by many people. But I think the most important thing doesn’t get talked about a lot. For the most successful bloggers, their biggest trait seems to be the ability to consistently produce conceptually new content over the long term. Check out the top bloggers in your niche and you’ll probably find that they’ve been around for a while. It’s rare to find a top blog…

• Facebook is not killing blogging…

  Andy Merrett

  3 Nov 2009 | 6:44 am

  After yesterday’s post on social media being key to blog marketing, there’s a certain irony in reading an article which suggest that Facebook is killing blogging. Of course, this is just one opinion amidst many, and the “x is killing y” argument is eternal, but it’s an interesting point of view. What seems to be happening is that people maintaining personal blogs are blogging directly less, but sharing more via Twitter and Facebook. After all, although personal blogs can build up a large following, many are most avidly read by closer friends — the sort of…

• 
  It's Not a Lecture

• I've never been good at multi-tasking anyway

  David

  3 Nov 2009 | 2:02 am

  Those who know me best call me "concrete sequential," which is a nice way of saying I can't walk and chew gum at the same time. So when Emily McKhann at The Motherhood asked me to help spread the word about their new campaign to prevent texting while driving, I figured I was a natural fit.Emily and Cooper Munroe have started Mom Sends the Msg, an online campaign aimed at reducing distracted driving. The campaign includes a pledge you can sign (via the comments) and downloadable signs you can print out and put in your rear window.Emily and Cooper don't do anything halfway, and when they do…

• I have an idea for C-SPAN

  David

  30 Oct 2009 | 9:26 am

  Someone probably already thought of this idea, probably more than one person, but it seems cool to me anyway and it's easily accomplished, thanks to groups like Open Secrets.What if, when a member of Congress is speaking on the floor of the Senate or House and it's being broadcast on C-SPAN, a list comes up that gives specific information about who gave that person the most money in campaign contributions? One of the great things about consumers of information in 2009 is thanks to social media tools they've become much more adept at processing multiple bits of information at once. It's not…

• Female Role Models III

  David

  27 Oct 2009 | 9:43 am

  Well, I haven't seen anyone unleash the "b-word" but I have seen a couple of high-profile guys do some pretty craptacular things to younger women in the workplace. So thank you, David Letterman and Steve Phillips for having affairs with younger women in the office - and then disparaging those women or treating them like a punch line once they call you on it. Say what you will about the "other women" in these stories - none of this would have happened if Letterman and Phillips had the self-control to keep it in their pants.In response to their pathetic public and private behavior where the…

• Earth & Industry: The Politics of Copenhagen

  David

  27 Oct 2009 | 9:39 am

  I contributed a quick "what to watch for" piece for my pals at Earth and Industry about the UN meeting in Copenhagen in December. Go read it if you're feeling generous.

• Speech Clouds: Obama vs. Obama on Climate Change

  David

  26 Oct 2009 | 3:58 am

  President Obama gave a speech at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Friday "challenging Americans to lead the global economy in clean energy." Once again, thanks to the magic of Wordle, I pushed it through their cloud generator and got this:And then I thought it would be cool to compare it to the President's speech to the UN a while back:It's interesting to me how the themes shift when the audience is different. Seems "climate" wasn't mentioned in Cambridge at all, and "jobs" didn't seem to get much mention at the UN.

• 
  Blogging Tips

• Parkinson’s Law

  Patti Stafford

  6 Nov 2009 | 10:00 am

  Written by Patti Stafford from Patti StaffordI didn’t plan to write about Time Management today, but I do want to discuss something that struck my interest today. I often have too many topics that I want to cover (which in itself, is a form of writer’s block). As I was researching, trying to narrow it down, I ran across something I found interesting. So, I’ve scratched my topic list and decided to go with this spontaneous post. The tips I’ve just ran across follow the subject of writer’s block—how ironic. Most of the tips are pretty generic: Find a quiet spot…

• Two Cool Strategies and a Joke

  Larry Brooks

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:00 am

  Written by Larry Brooks from Story Fix Sometimes we bloggers take ourselves oh-so-seriously.  The work we do is serious, our intentions are serious, and there are stakes.  Both for us and for our readers.  That said, it’s good to share a laugh once in a while among writers.  And, I have to add, with our readers, too. But first, you need to tolerate two tips I’ve just stumbled upon.  As in, literally stumbled.  Two approaches in my recent experience that yielded unexpected, and unintended, results. Those, too, are worth sharing. How To Get Others To Proofread For You, and Pay You for…

• How to Write a Review

  Jonathan Bailey

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:17 pm

  Written by Jonathan Bailey from Plagiarism TodayReviews are one of the most difficult kinds of posts bloggers commonly write. Where most can tell a story, offer instructions or even voice an opinion pretty well, writing a review that is complete, useful and reasonably short is extremely difficult. Too often blog reviews come across as biased or simply mean or seem to have no real purpose. Writing a review of a product, service or event is not as simple as saying what you think, one has to be complete, thorough and honest, both about themselves and their opinions. Fortunately, there is a…

• Blogging For Revenue Share – Pros And Cons

  Sharon Hurley Hall

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:00 am

  Written by Sharon Hurley Hall from Get Paid To Write OnlineA couple of years ago, on another blog, I wrote: “I am a professional blogger and writer, so pay me in cash.” The statement summed up my feelings about the ad revenue share blogging model. However, sites based on this model continue to spring up and many of them are popular with the people who use them, so I thought I’d try to look at the issue again. Advantages of blogging for ad revenue Many of these sites make it easy for you to get your blog up and running, providing ready made templates. All you have to do is…

• Even Writers Make Sacrifices

  Patti Stafford

  4 Nov 2009 | 12:15 pm

  Written by Patti Stafford from Patti StaffordYou’ve decided this writing gig is for you, whether its novels, short stories, web content or blogs, there will still be sacrifices. Maybe you’re even lucky enough to work from home, in the lap of luxury, and no time clock to punch—there will still be sacrifices. Everything we want in life requires a sacrifice or two—this is nothing new. Every article you’ve read about being successful and making things happen has told you you’ll need to make some sacrifices. I’m not going to tell you that. What I’m going to…

• 
  Blogging Blogs On Blog Catalog

• simple blog

  6 Nov 2009 | 8:07 am

  Personal branding, internet marketing, security hacking, free download, movie, musis, free software

• Unqualified Opinion

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:08 am

  My thoughts, in all their randomness and variety.

• Bad Credit

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:03 am

  Credit problems affect more than 30 million Americans. Here are ten questions about bad credit with answers that may surprise you.

• Bloggin' Along

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:38 am

  I am a mother who adores devoting every moment and ounce of my life to my beloved Ava. She's my everything and the greatest joy in my life. I have also been fortunate to fall into the field of TV commercial production 11 years ago, followed by openin

• written and secured

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:19 am

  This blogs holds fond memories, silly daydreams, useless rantings, the fedelities of a young lady trying to live day by day with a smile, & making sure others live that way too. The true me will be revealed as you unravel my entries/memories :)

• 
  Blogging Pro

• WPWorldMap.net: Mapping Out WordPress Users From All Over the Globe

  Karlo Licudine

  6 Nov 2009 | 11:27 am

  We all know that there are millions of Wordpress users all over the globe. Wouldn’t it be nice to see where they are located? With WPWorldMap.net, now you can! WPWorldMap.net is a new website created by Oliver Schloebe of WPSeek.com that lets Wordpress users mark their location onto a map for others to see. Each marked location reveals user profiles complete with personal information, a link to their blogs, and also their Twitter accounts. Powered by Google Maps, the site is relatively easy to use. To map yourself all you need to do is to place a pin marker on your location and then…

• Wordpress Launches Plugin Compatibility Beta

  Karlo Licudine

  4 Nov 2009 | 8:48 pm

  Before, there was no way of finding out whether your plugins would still be compatible if you would upgrade your Wordpress other than crossing your fingers and trying it out for yourself. If no problems were encountered then, hooray, lucky you. If problems did arise then you have no choice but to revert back to the previous version and hope that the plugin developers would make haste in making their plugin compatible. This is the main reason why most people are afraid to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress. Thank God Wordpress is always on the lookout for better ways of making things…

• Why Its Good to Test Your Blog on Different Browsers

  Regnard Raquedan

  4 Nov 2009 | 6:44 pm

  From the web design perspective, the relationship most bloggers have with their blog’s design is quite limited. More often than not, bloggingfolk use web design templates designed and developed by another person so the determination of the blog’s look and feel aspect becomes more like a shopping task. But once the template has been selected, one big assumption oftentimes  arises: This template works in all browsers. Blog templates are never 100% working, especially with some broken browsers (*cough*IE6*cough*) still out there. It’s good practice to test the browser yourself…

• How Concerned Should Bloggers Be About SEO?

  Regnard Raquedan

  28 Oct 2009 | 8:11 am

  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was such a buzzword in the early 2000’s because most web folks noticed a change in behavior in the internet users. What’s that behavior? People used search engines as their primary starting point in their web usage. By now, tips are all over the web on how to make your blog search engine optimized and how to get to the top SERP (search engine result page) for keywords related to your niche. But while it is generally accepted to be aware and avail of the basic SEO techniques, most bloggers are concerned that they are not concerned about SEO enough.

• WordPress Users Still Await podPress’ Return

  Karlo Licudine

  25 Oct 2009 | 2:56 pm

  Any of you remember podPress? Yes, I’m talking about the popular podcasting plugin developed by Dan Kuykendall of MightySeek which halted development back in 2007. PodPress was supposed to have resumed development back in August but two months has already passed and no news about its progress has been revealed at all. Supporters of the plugin have been trying to contact the author for confirmation but to no avail. Rumors are circulating that podPress might not continue its development but some argue that this is not possible as there are already sponsors backing it. Whatever the reason…

• 
  Technofriends

• Securely Erase Data From Your Computer Using Darik’s Boot And Nuke

  admin

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:36 am

  If you are ever in the need to delete all the data from your laptop or computer forever, Darik’s Boot and Nuke (”DBAN”) is a free utility you can bet your money on. DBAN is capable of completely deleting the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction. Using DBAN is simple, you simply need to create a CD with the program, switch on/ restart / reboot  the laptop or computer you wish to delete data from ( essentially boot the computer using the DVD / USB / CD)- and then wait quite a few hours (…

• Print your own iPhone and iPod Skins with iaPeel

  admin

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:31 pm

  Well, now using iaPeel you can easily print your own cool skins for the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. iaPeel allows you to print whatever photo or design you wish as skin for your Apple device. With iaPeel for $21, you get a design software alongwith 5 skins which can be put into your inkjet printer. The glossy synthetic skin material sticks to your player and leaves no residue, allowing you to change designs anytime you choose. Getting started with printing your own skins is a three-step process: 1. Create your own custom design, using the design software part of the kit. 2. Print the design…

• Google Chrome Updates to 3.0.195.32 (Fixes Security and Stability bugs)

  admin

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:11 pm

  Google Chrome has released an update to its stable release. The latest release versioned 3.0.195.32 fixes several security and stability bugs. While Google Chrome upgrades to the latest stable release automatically ( in the background, if you have internet connection), you can upgrade manually by navigating to Settings (icon) –> About Google Chrome  and click on Check for Updates. Once the updates have been downloaded, you will have to restart the browser for the changes to be applied. Following are the stability issues fixed in the latest release Resolved a history issue that…

• Mozilla releases Firefox 3.5.5 ( Fixes Several Stability Issues)

  admin

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:54 pm

  Mozilla has released a new version of the stable Firefox 3.5.x series in the form of Firefox 3.5.5. The release essentially fixes several stability issues. You can download the latest release from here. For those of you who are already on Firefox 3.5.4 or some other version, from the menu bar, hit Help –> Check for Updates to download and upgrade to the latest stable release. For those of you interested, you can check the complete list of fixes applied in the latest release here. You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/vaibhav1981 Do stay tuned to Technofriends for more,…

• XBox 360 for $200 with Free $100 Gift Card ( At Walmart this weekend)

  admin

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:43 am

  Walmart, the big daddy of retail is starting the pre-Black Friday over the weekend. The deals include a Microsoft XBox 360 for $199. The XBox 360 will come with a free $100 gift card which can be used for future purchases. The other deals available through Walmart pre-Black Friday are 1.) $298 HP Notebook Computer – 3GB memory, 160GB hard drive, Windows 7 Premium. 2.) Sharp 1080p HDTVs – 42″ for $498, 46″ for $698 (120 Hz), 52″ for $898 (120 Hz) 3.) Panasonic 46″ 1080p plasma HDTV for $788. 4.) $148 Sony Blu-ray player (model #BDP-S360). 5.) $29 Magnavox Upconvert…

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  ConverStations

• Where Have all the Raspberry Jobs Gone?

  Mike Sansone

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:37 am

  I (and you) know a lot of people looking for work.  Or going free agent.  Or both. They are filling out applications. Sending resumes. Talking with their monster every day. Indeed!  Good luck. Times have changed.  That's probably why you're looking. Change with them. Get a visual CV Put up some video - maybe a video "pre-interview" and send it along with the other "stuff" Get your own domain name Create some content on a blog, on slideshare, on twitter -- wherever Be findable.  Just do it. Sometimes the unexpected gets noticed -- even remembered.  Or you can stay stuck in LODBAU (Land…

• Two Weeks of Trash Talking

  Mike Sansone

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:43 am

  Two weeks. Not one.  Not six.  Two. Two weeks of practice (aka rehearsal) before we launch your blog.  That's both a minimum and a desired maximum. Until you write your first blog post, you are perfect. But then, perfect makes practice, hmm? The goal of the two weeks is to get familiar with the blog tools and software. And the only way you're going to get used to the tool is to use it.   When we first set up your account (WordPress, Typepad, whatever...), we make sure to option OUT of allowing search engines to index your site during practice.  At launch, we opt IN for search engine…

• Quotes n Notes: Capabilities

  Mike Sansone

  26 Oct 2009 | 9:57 am

  "If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astonish ourselves." - Thomas EdisonI am amazed at how many of us simply stumble upon our own success. I often hear "Fake it 'til You Make it" or Do it Like You Believe it, Until you Believe it." Especially in the Midwest (what's up with that?)Here's an idea - STOP HEDGING YOUR BETS.  Just go out and do it. Fail? Fall Down?  Fine. Get back up and get 'er done.  Just ask David Armano's Value of Visual Thinking deck (see slide # 57). We can go one of two ways: Learn how to skate by falling on our backside a few times. …

• Storyboarding My Presentation for Highlight Midwest

  Mike Sansone

  22 Oct 2009 | 10:54 am

  I've shared how important I think storyboarding is to both your presentatiions and your blogging. Here is a few images this morning as I prepared my presentation for tomorrow's Highlight Midwest event (I'm on at 10:45 prompt!)  The storyboard acts as your compass for both you and your audience. (Click to enlarge the images below) Start with a scratch pad and 16-20 squares (top left).  Fill out each square with either a short sentence or napkin-drawing for the image I'll need. Work with image sites and power point to place images in the presentation Drop in Text Boxes where appropriate…

• Highlight Midwest: Build a Global Voice to Reach a Local Audience

  Mike Sansone

  21 Oct 2009 | 1:50 pm

  I'll be among a cavalcade of techpreneurs presenting at Highlight Midwest this Friday at Des Moines Social Club. The borders of Iowa won't keep our voices within -- after all, our borders are water not walls: Speak to the Back of the Church: Build a Global Voice to Reach a Local AudienceFocusing on your target geographical audience is important in building your business, but ignoring the global audience can be perilous to our findability. This session examines why your global voice is important, why it's easier to go global than local, and how to do so. Lots of speakers with a short time…

• 
  Court's Internet Marketing School

• 5 Internet Marketing Strategies That Don’t Work

  19 Oct 2009 | 1:10 pm

  1. Image Search –> Anything that produces income. This strategy works great if you want to boost your ego, because it can be extremely effective for getting traffic. However, if you care about marketing or making money, image-search does almost nothing for you. I challenge anyone to take a stream of image searchers and to try to get them to act. Getting them to click ads is extremely difficult and getting them to make a purchase is even more difficult. 2. Personal Blogging –> Adsense. The bottom line is that people don’t really care about us. They are self interested.

• How To Make Money On The Internet In 2010

  12 Oct 2009 | 8:45 pm

  2009 has been by far my best year ever for making money on the internet. Despite the recession, my online businesses have grown amazingly well and that’s the beauty of running a business that gives you a limitless upside. When your business is online, you can create profit from all over the world – what a beautiful thing. I noticed today that one of my sites has had visitors from 176 different countries in 2009. How crazy is that? It’s obviously a lot easier to produce a lot of money when the world is your marketplace. Making money online is one of the most exciting things…

• Tatto Media - Smart Behavioral Advertising Network

  2 Oct 2009 | 12:15 pm

  When you’re involved with affiliate marketing, it’s always wise to have access to multiple affiliate networks. I have actually been looking for a few new ones lately, so the timing was perfect when Tatto Media (you can sign up here) contacted me about their network. I delete most of the emails I get about this sort of thing, because most of the networks that are out trying to contact people are small and have issues. This network really stood out and I decided to check them out. Things That Stand Out About Tatto Media They allow you to insert your own tracking pixels into their…

• The Keyword Academy Pro…where you’ll finally get the method, the support, and the tools you need to build a sustainable low-maintenance income online.

  25 Sep 2009 | 8:23 am

  It’s time to free yourself from the fog created by free information overload. When you join The Keyword Academy Pro you’ll see (probably for the very first time) a clear path to the stable, low maintenance internet income you’ve wanted. A full 30 day trial of the program runs you just $1…and if we can make a good impression during the month you have to get to know us, continuing your membership costs just $33 per month. There are three big reasons you should become one of over 1,000 active subscribers to TKA Pro: 1. The Method After you register we’ll start you…

• Make Money With 100 Blog Posts Final Stats and Recap

  22 Sep 2009 | 2:57 pm

  On July 27th, I started a very interesting experiment. I decided to find 100 keywords that weren’t super competitive, write blog posts about them on one of my blogs, and track the results. I believed that if I chose the right keywords, I could create a lot of extra income. The experiment produced great results: During the first week, the experiment produced $371.98. During the second week, the experiment produced $678.62. During the third week, the experiment produced $780.40. During the last 9 days, the experiment produced $848.59. That means that the grand total of the 30 days was…

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  Bloggers Blog: Blogging the Blogsphere

• On Twitter Lists and Twitter Influence

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:40 am

  We have compiled a list here of the 200+ most listed Twitter accounts. Listorious has launched a list here of the most followed lists on Twitter. Twitterholic has a list here of the most followed Twitter accounts. All three of these help measure how much influence a Twitter account has but none of them alone provide an accurate measure of a Twitterer's reach or influence. Trying to measure how much reach or influence a given Twitter account has is an increasingly complex issue. You would need to factor in followers as well as the number of lists someone is on. In addition, specific lists will…

• Celebrity Twitter Accounts Among Most Listed Twitter Accounts

  2 Nov 2009 | 10:05 am

  There are some blog posts discussing the most listed Twitter accounts here and here that claim Mashable is the second most listed Twitter account. It hasn't been #2 for several days. Here is the correct ranking of the top most listed accounts. Barack Obama: 11,007 Taylor Swift: 9,507 CNN Breaking: 8,777 The Ellen Show: 8,057 Shit My Dad Says: 7,954 Lady Gaga: 7,695 Mashable: 7,665 Demi Lovato: 7,477 Ashton Kutcher: 7,176 John Mayer: 7,150 Britney Spears: 7,068 Katy Perry: 6,835 Selena Gomez: 6,573 Google: 6,124 Stephen Fry, 6,118 Oprah: 5,715 Twitter: 5,650 The New York Times: 5,210 The…

• Barack Obama, Taylor Swift Are Most Listed Twitterers

  29 Oct 2009 | 11:20 am

  President Barack Obama and Taylor Swift appear to be the most listed people or organizations on Twitter as of this writing. This could easily change as there are still many people who do not yet have Twitter lists enabled. Here is a short list of the most listed Twitterers as of right now, noonish on Thursday, October 29th. @BarackObama: 3,571 @taylorswift13: 3,178 @cnnbrk: 2,922 @mashable: 2,654 @TheEllenShow: 2,649 @johncmayer: 2,486 @ladygaga: 2,470 @aplusk: 2,441 @ddlovato: 2,246 katyperry: 2,196 @google: 2,143 @stephenfry: 2,128 @twitter: 2,039 @selenagomez: 1,987 @TheOnion: 1,866…

• The Onion Covers Parents Facebook Stalking Their College-Aged Kids

  24 Oct 2009 | 1:00 pm

  The Onion has a pretty hilarious video about how parents can use Facebook and Twitter to keep tabs on their children. The helicopter parent in this video is quite obsessed with monitoring her son's Facebook and Twitter activity. Like any good Onion story there is some truth to it. Permalink | Recent Headlines | Plurk | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

• Oh Lord. It's the 5 Billionth Tweet

  19 Oct 2009 | 9:24 pm

  This tweet by Robin Sloan is apparently the 5 billionth tweet on Twitter. The number at the end of the tweet's URL is 5000000000, which likely means it is tweet number 5 billion if Twitter hasn't been skipping around. The Social blogs that Robin Sloan has nicknamed the tweet, "The Pentagigatweet." Corrected to show billionth not millionth! Thanks Glen Green Posted in Twitter Permalink | Recent Headlines | Plurk | Twitter | WWFeeds.com

• 
  Weblog Tools Collection

• Watch Out For The Gumblar Botnet

  Jeff Chandler

  6 Nov 2009 | 7:18 am

  According to the blog Unmask Parasites, there is a new version of the Gumblar botnet making the rounds on PHP based websites. Back in May of this year, this malicious botnet was responsible for infecting a large number of websites in a short period of time. This time around however, the Gumblar botnet has buggy code which is leading to a number of infected WordPress sites breaking. WordPress is a complex web application that comprises more than 200 .php files. When you open any page, WordPress loads index.php which, in turn, loads many other .php files using the require() function. WordPress…

• The Best-Of Series: Download Managers

  James Dimick

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:38 am

  We continue our Best-Of Series today with download managers. Or, plugins for WordPress that will allow you to provide various files to your website visitors for download. Over the years I’ve gone through many. Everyone will have a different preference but, here is a list of my top plugins for managing downloads with WordPress… Drain Hole I’ve been using Drain Hole on my personal site to serve up my files for a couple years now. So far it is the best download manager plugin I’ve been able to find. It does everything it advertises and does it well. I’ve not yet had…

• WordPress 2.9 Revamps Hello World

  Jeff Chandler

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:47 pm

  During the WordPress development chat today, one of the topics of discussion centered around the suggestion of changing the Hello World post that is seen with every new install of WordPress to something that contained useful WordPress specific information such as links to the release mailing list, the codex and other helpful material. I’d like to break down how this change came about to show how easy it is to contribute to the WordPress project without writing a line of code. It first started out as a discussion on the WordPress Hackers mailing list concerning the addition of email…

• WordPress Plugin Releases for 11/05

  Perurry

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:54 am

  New Plugins Local Time Using JavaScript, Local Time automatically transforms all dates and times on your blog into the visitor’s timezone. Fytch Comments Fytch is a fully featured plugin that provides comment publishing to http://fytch.com It allows to assign a Fytch topic to each post so that wordpress comments are co-published under the appropriate topic on http://fytch.com. It not only allows to publish comments to http://fytch.com but to Twitter and FriendFeed as well. vlam-a-post vlam-a-post automatically creates a vl.am URL for every post you publish and keeps track of the number of…

• WordPress 2.8 Visual Cheat Sheet

  Jeff Chandler

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:26 pm

  Antonio Lupetti of Woorkup.com has created and released an awesome visual cheat sheet for WordPress 2.8. The cheat sheet contains a practical reference guide to 2.8 with references to WP Template Tags as well as sample code. Definitely worthy of being added to your resources bin. Check out the live demo before you download the guide.

• 
  Wordful

• Who Are the Outliers of Modern Publishing?

  Charles

  4 Nov 2009 | 11:34 am

  Having just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, I was struck with the immediate question: who will be the next outliers of the now-turbulent publishing industry? Who will do for the publishing world what Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Bill Joy did for the computer world?To put this question in context, I refer to Gladwell’s theory. He claims the most successful people in the world don’t just get there by magic fate or raw talent, but rather by an inexplicable blend of opportunity, luck, hard work and timing. (By the way, Outliers is an excellent read.)While I…

• 7 Steps to Blog Post Perfection

  Charles

  28 Oct 2009 | 6:07 pm

  I want you all to know I suffered at the ruthless hands of time and atrophy to bring you this.We’re talking countless hours spent thinking, writing, scribbling, procrastinating, rewriting, deleting, groaning and starting over—all for a blog post.Nowadays it’s better. I developed an easy 7-step system that helps me power through my blog writing. I now get it done not just in record time, but with much better efficiency and competence.So here you go: Get an idea. Ideas are plentiful, and the best way to capture them is to write them down. Fill your notebook with all the ideas…

• How 1 Year of Blogging Changed My Life

  Charles

  21 Oct 2009 | 6:14 pm

  Wordful.com is now officially 1 year (and a few weeks) old, so let me sum it up: blogging is awesome. It has changed my life, but not quite in the way you’d expect.Blogging For Dollars: Not So EasyFor starters, I haven’t made one dollar from blogging. This is considered a major failure by many but not to me. More on that in a minute.The main reason I haven’t made money from blogging is because I find myself at odds with the “make money online” mindset. Many (but not all) marketers in this so-called niche are not actually trying to help you make money,…

• Deep Lessons Learned In Korea, Part 2

  Charles

  16 Oct 2009 | 7:37 pm

  I’m back home now after a rather jolting week in Korea. While the the full impact of the visit hasn’t yet settled in, I have some meaningful impressions worth sharing.Family Will Be FamilyIf my previous post was any indication of anxiety and speculation, this post reflects pragmatism and sobriety. In other words, meeting long-lost family in another part of the world for the first time is not that big a deal.I sat down for an hour and a half with two of my cousins Ko, Se-Shil and Ko, Seon-Gyu at the hotel lobby cafe, and we got to know each other a bit. They were attentive and…

• Deep Lessons Learned In Korea

  Charles

  9 Oct 2009 | 6:51 pm

  This isn’t your average Wordful post.In fact, I’m writing this from a hotel room in Seoul, South Korea, which is quite a change in pace from the warm family life I lead in Hawai‘i.The reason I’m here now is to take a few days to myself to discover the country of my mother and the ancestors from her side of the family.Unfortunately, though, the odds of success are against me: I don’t speak Korean and my relatives are–how shall I say–very distant. I’ve never met them or spoken to them until about 3 months ago to make arrangements for this visit.In…

• 
  Pearsonified

• Have You Seen What Thesis 1.6 Can Do?

  Chris Pearson

  29 Oct 2009 | 7:38 am

  Thesis is my software project, and if you haven’t seen it yet, I’d love to show you what it can do! The latest version has been met with tons of enthusiasm, and people have been saying some really awesome things about it. Check out this video I made, and I think you’ll understand why

• Money or Efficiency? Know Where to Place Your Focus

  Chris Pearson

  23 Oct 2009 | 11:06 am

  Somehow, society has been perverted to the point that we think crap can be turned to gold, so long as it makes money. Worse, the venture capital and corporate acquisition culture that has soiled the tech space since the ’90s has brainwashed us all into thinking that in the end, the payoff justifies the means. That’s all bullshit, people. There is no substitute for efficiency and sustainability, and nature proves this time and time again. For some reason, humanity continually repeats its mistakes of the past by ignoring the rules of nature, but in the end, the truth is still the…

• What Does Your Authority Index Say About You?

  Chris Pearson

  21 Oct 2009 | 6:28 pm

  Left untouched, nature operates in a maximally efficient state. This means that in the long run, nature is always going to favor the most efficient path. In other words, efficiency wins. Everything you do can (and should!) be viewed as an extension of nature. Whether you’re hacking your way around a golf course, running a business, or trying to figure out who to follow on Twitter, you’ll get the best results if you always strive to operate efficiently. You see, nature has done us an incredible favor by literally showing us the blueprint for success. You want to win? Be efficient.

• Interview with Loren Feldman from South By Southwest 2009

  Chris Pearson

  2 Apr 2009 | 7:42 pm

  At this year’s SXSW, I did a quick little interview with my buddy Loren Feldman of 1938media. Despite the fact that I was massively hungover (note the sexy, drooping eyelids), I still managed to make a few good points about Thesis, the philosophy behind solid WordPress themes, and “social media,” which is the hottest, most unnecessary buzz phrase of the moment. Check out the interview here!

• How to Become a Celebrity

  Chris Pearson

  19 Feb 2009 | 5:39 am

  After spending nine months in Hollywood, I’ve learned that pretty much all of the fame-seeking prima donnas out here need a clue. Fortunately, that’s where I come in. Enjoy, and Max—earmuffs!1 Want more Pearsonified? Follow me on Twitter! 1 That’s an Old School reference, didn’t ya know? ↩

• 
  WordPress Development Blog

• Bug Hunt in Progress!

  Jane Wells

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:50 pm

  Just in case anyone forgot, the first of the November bug hunts for version 2.9 is now in progress, and will last another day. If you’ve got a dev environment set up, please consider pitching in to run some tests and help get us closer to the 2.9 milestone release.

• Upcoming WordCamps

  Jane Wells

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:42 pm

  There are six WordCamps coming up before the end of the year, and since I like to make sure people know about it when there’s a WordCamp near them, here’s the list, with some personal commentary thrown in. If you just want the list without my asides, check out the full schedule at WordCamp.org. WordCamp Phoenix is first up, on November 13. I’d planned on attending this one myself before they changed the date (it was originally scheduled for the 7th), but will sadly have to miss it as it conflicts with WordCamp NYC. If you, like me, can’t make it to Phoenix, be sure to…

• Upcoming Bug Hunts!

  Jane Wells

  31 Oct 2009 | 2:28 pm

  As we near completion of the 2.9 milestone, it’s that time of dev cycle again, when we ask all you community developers who’ve been putting off contributing to core to dust off your dev environments and help us get closer to being release-ready. How? Bug hunts! Yes, that time-honored tradition (in the time of WordPress, anyway) of everyone pitching in to test patches and report the results, working on solutions to major bugs, and helping to clear out Trac has come around again, and we’re scheduling not one, but two bug hunts over the next couple of weeks to ensure that…

• Plugin Compatibility Beta

  Mark Jaquith

  28 Oct 2009 | 5:11 am

  The number one reason people give us for not upgrading to the latest version of WordPress is fear that their plugins won’t be compatible. As part of our continuing efforts to make WordPress core, plugin, and theme upgrades as painless as possible, Michael Adams developed and launched a beta of a new “Compatibility” feature in the plugin directory, powered by your votes. When viewing a plugin in the directory, select a WordPress version and a plugin version from the drop-downs. If there has been feedback about this WordPress / plugin version combination, we’ll show you…

• WordPress 2.8.5: Hardening Release

  Peter Westwood

  20 Oct 2009 | 4:30 pm

  As you know over the past couple of months we have been working on the new features for WordPress 2.9. We have also been working on trying to make WordPress as secure as possible and during this process we have identified a number of security hardening changes that we thought were worth back-porting to the 2.8 branch so as to get these improvements out there and make all your sites as secure as possible. The headline changes in this release are: A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen. Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was…

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  Dosh Dosh

• How to Achieve Your Goals by Changing the Way You Surf the Web

  Maki

  5 Nov 2009 | 8:38 am

  Everyone has their favorite way of using the internet. Many of us search to find what we want, click in to a specific website, read what’s available and click out. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because it’s efficient. We learn to tune out things we don’t need and go straight for what’s essential. This goal-oriented way of surfing the web is largely based on short-term results. For example, finding facts to write a blog post, doing a comparison before making a purchase and reading a news site to find out what’s happening right now. If you do all…

• An Essential Marketing Principle: Give Before You Try to Get

  Maki

  18 May 2009 | 12:31 pm

  Experts have talked about this before. How many times have you read about the importance of ‘adding value’ for your audience? How many times have you read about ‘building trust’ with your readers/prospects?  Many, many times. You know it well. Every marketing guru has spoken about this topic. I’m sick of hearing it. But it STILL bears repeating. Because some people still don’t get it. What’s the underlying principle for successful online marketing, selling or networking? The art of giving before you try to get. Before you get something from…

• Twitter Marketing: Why You Don’t Need to Mass Follow Users

  Maki

  22 Apr 2009 | 10:34 am

  A few days ago Twitter announced on their status blog that all Twitter users are only allowed to follow a maximum of 1000 people a day. This rule was designed to cut down on ‘follow spam’, the act of following many Twitter users in order to get them to follow you back or click on your links. When combined with the already existing limit based on follow ratios, this means that it will be more difficult for marketers or self-promoters to rapidly increase their Twitter follower count by following many people. The old days of following thousands of users a day to…

• Ad Swaps: A Smart and Easy Way to Get Free Traffic

  Maki

  15 Apr 2009 | 4:48 pm

  After yesterday’s post on marketing without search engines, I decided to follow up with a strategy you can use to get quality free traffic. One of the easiest ways to get visitors to your web site is to spend money. Nothing is more effortless then paying for traffic. But if you can’t afford it or don’t want to pay, there’s an equally simple but free way to get traffic: ad swaps. An advertisement swap or ad swap is simply an arrangement where you agree to put up someone else’s ad on your site or email newsletter in exchange for them doing the same. The goal of an…

• Marketing Your Website Without Search Engines

  Maki

  14 Apr 2009 | 12:09 pm

  I’m not old enough to remember what the internet was like without search engines. Apparently, there were lists of web-servers: they were manually updated and publicized in news updates like this. And then the search engines came crawling, indexing and sorting out pages. As the web expanded with more users and businesses putting up websites, search engines became an essential way to immediately find information. There’s a common saying: build your site for visitors, not for search engines. A famous Google webmaster guideline asks the question: “Does this help my users?

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  Group Writing Projects

• Blog Action Day 2009: Climate Change

  Jacob Share

  14 Oct 2009 | 7:30 am

  Blog Action Day is about bloggers trying to raise awareness by everyone blogging about the same theme for a given day. It’s one massive group writing project and this year’s theme is Climate Change. Theme Climate Change Official quote: “Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. Blog Action Day 2009 will be the largest-ever social change event on the web. One day. One issue. Thousands of voices.”…

• Minimalist Sailing Group Writing Project

  Jacob Share

  9 Oct 2009 | 5:00 am

  Tillerman wants to hear about how you would drill down sailing to its bare essentials. Theme Minimalist Sailing In Tillerman’s words: “What are the fundamentals of sailing that we enjoy? Such simple things.. wind, water… and some machine that propels us using those elements. Why make it more complicated and fussy than it needs to be? Let’s get back to basics. Less is more.” Rules Write a new post on topic. Link to the announcement post on the Proper Course blog. To submit your entry, email tillermeister [at] gmail [dot] com with your permalink url and post title.

• What I Learned From Limits Group Writing Project

  Jacob Share

  8 Oct 2009 | 5:00 am

  The latest Middle Zone Musings group writing project is about the limits we’ve all experienced to frustration at one time or another. Theme Limits In Robert’s words: “You really want to get where you’re going, or accomplish that thing you’ve set your heart (or possibly even your future financial fortune) on, or whatever it is you’re aiming for – and then some danged fool has gone and shackled you with some kind of limitation or two! Augh! Drat! Grrr!” The Usual WILF Rules Write a new post on topic or submit one from your blog archives. Link to the announcement post on…

• $1000+ Industrial Design Group Writing Project

  Jacob Share

  29 Sep 2009 | 6:00 am

  After last week’s call for sponsorship, Raph Goldsworthy has now launched his industrial and product design group writing project to celebrate the first birthday of his blog Design Droplets. Theme Industrial design or product design In Raph’s words: “By “relating to the subject of industrial design or product design” I mean an informative article that contributes in someway to the profession. Maybe it gives advice, is a tutorial on how to do something, a list of resources or even just some general tips… Even if you are not an Industrial Designer/Product Designer or…

• Call for Sponsorship for Industrial Design Group Writing Project

  Jacob Share

  21 Sep 2009 | 12:00 am

  Raph, the creator of Design Droplets, has put out a call for sponsorship for his upcoming group writing project in October 2009. Patterned after Jacob Cass’s first massive design group writing project, Raph’s gwp will be both a group writing project and contest. Raph is now looking for sponsors for the prize draw. As a big design fan and someone who would naturally want to encourage more group writing projects, Group Writing Projects and I will be sponsoring Raph’s gwp with free advertising slots here on Group Writing Projects. If you would also like to sponsor Raph’s…

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  About.com Web Logs

• Thanksgiving Clip Art to Decorate Your Blog

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:17 pm

  For U.S. bloggers, the next big holiday coming in November is Thanksgiving. That means it's a great time to dress up your blog with some Thanksgiving clip art! I collected links to a bunch of clip art from the About.com Web Clip Art Guide, Bobbie Peachey. Have fun exploring and dressing up your blog! Thanksgiving Titles Thanksgiving Dividers And if you're looking for free photos to use on your blog, check out the sources listed here. Thanksgiving Clip Art to Decorate Your Blog originally appeared on About.com Web Logs on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 07:17:58.Permalink | Comment | Email…

• 74 Blogging Jobs Listed in About.com Web Logs Forum

  1 Nov 2009 | 12:00 am

  74 blogging jobs have been listed in the About.com Web Logs forum in the Blogging Jobs folder. There is a huge variety of blogging jobs on this list, including fashion bloggers, finance bloggers, tech bloggers, social media bloggers, and more! Check out the list and see if your next paid blogging job is waiting for you! Many blog owners require that bloggers include images with their posts. Check out the articles listed below for info about finding and publishing images online legally and ethically: Top 5 Sites to Find Free Images to Use on Your Blog Review of PicApp as a Free Image Source…

• Do You Sell Merchandise on Your Blog?

  30 Oct 2009 | 7:00 pm

  Did you know you can make money blogging with merchandise or mini malls? There are a number of third-party sites that allow you to easily sell products through your blog such as CafePress, Printfection, Zazzle and Chitika (read more about merchandise and mini malls here). Take the poll below and tell us if you use merchandise or mini malls to make money from your blog, and then leave a comment and share what has worked well for you! Do You Sell Merchandise on Your Blog? originally appeared on About.com Web Logs on Saturday, October 31st, 2009 at 02:00:04.Permalink | Comment | Email this

• Best Offline Blog Editors for Mac and PC Users

  28 Oct 2009 | 6:01 am

  Do you use an offline blog editor to update your blog such as Windows Live Writer or BlogDesk? Offline blog editors are handy tools that allow you to update your blog from your PC or Mac desktop rather than through the Internet. They offer a number of advantages and many bloggers couldn't live without their offline blog editors of choice (follow the link to learn more about the benefits of offline blog editors). But how do you know which offline blog editor to choose? They each provide different nuances, and it can be challenging to narrow down the best one for you. Since many are free, you…

• Blogger Wants to Hear from You

  26 Oct 2009 | 1:09 pm

  Blogger just celebrated its tenth year in business and continues to be one of the most popular blogging applications available. The team behind Blogger is looking toward the future and asking the user community to help them move forward by providing three words to describe Blogger now and the three words you'd like to be able to use to describe Blogger in the future. Sounds like a great way to find the gaps and learn about users' needs and desires in a fun way. You can get the details in this post on the Blogger Buzz blog and submit your descriptive words to Blogger using this form. Have fun…

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  Blog For Profit

• Headway 1.5 Preview - The Future is Now!

  Grant Griffiths

  3 Nov 2009 | 9:00 am

  We have been hard at work finishing up all the new features for the soon to be released Headway 1.5 The plan is to have it out to the public in a matter of days. In the mean time, you can view the video below to get an idea of what is coming to the WordPress blogging world. You can also visit Danny Brown’s great blog and read his review of the new features of Headway 1.5 - Why Headway1.5 is the Future of WordPress Theme Design. Exclusive for subscribers! Download Blogging Tips To Help You Blog Copyright © 2009 Blog For Profit. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you…

• 7 Top Content Tips for Bloggers – Part 4: Challenge Yourself!

  Grant Griffiths

  3 Nov 2009 | 5:09 am

  Contributed by: Roger C. Parker I’d like to show you how - - by challenging yourself - - you can create the content you need for weekly blog posts as well as the content you need for your other marketing content and new product development. Necessity, the mother of invention Like so many other important inventions, the following story is based on necessity. Back in May, I was in a difficult place. In April, my wife experienced a sudden heart attack and subsequent bypass surgery. The whole experience took its toll, and I was finding it difficult to get back on my 5-day a week blogging…

• 31 Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt - Final summary and thoughts

  Grant Griffiths

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:31 am

  We are done for now and I want to thank you all again for getting involved with 31-Days to Kick Your Blog in the Butt. Since I know many if not all of you are busy and may have missed a post or two, I wanted to give you all of the post in one handy place. You can find a link to all of them below. Links to all of the previous post in series Just because you can doesn’t mean you should Be a proactive blogger, not a stick in the mud Find the conversations in your niche or target market Listen to the conversations in your niche or target market Engage in the conversations taking place…

• Remember Your Blog is About What You’re Doing Offline

  Grant Griffiths

  31 Oct 2009 | 9:00 am

  Guest post from: Dawud Miracle Blogging is about many things. And one thing that certainly about is connecting with other people and building relationships. It doesn’t matter whether you’re blogging for business, for hobby, for personal interests, a passionate topic or to make money — it’s likely your blogging because you want to communicate your thoughts, ideas, and believes with other people. So we can say that the essence of blogging is a conversation. And just like in our daily life with friends, relatives, and acquaintances when we engage in conversations they…

• Daily Blogging and Social Networking - You Have to Have a Plan (Day 31-31)

  Grant Griffiths

  31 Oct 2009 | 3:00 am

  As a wrap up to our 31-Days to Kick Your Bog in the Butt and as promised, I thought I would give you a look at my normal day of blogging. What you need to keep in mind is the fact my business is blogging, G2WebMedia and Headway Themes. So unlike some or most of you, I spend my entire day online doing what I do. And, as long as I have my MacBook Pro and I have access to good wifi, I can work from anywhere. For those of you who blog as a way to market and promote your business, you can take what I do and compress it down to fit your day. However, what and how I do my day can certainly work for…

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  Blogsessive

• 10 new WordPress plugins you might want to test

  Alex, Blogsessive

  4 Nov 2009 | 5:00 am

  Looking for really affordable premium WordPress themes?The wonderful community of WordPress developers constantly provides us with interesting new themes and plugins. I have scanned the most recent WordPress plugin releases and came up with a list of 10 plugins definitely worth taking a look at. Keep in might that these are new releases and so, their stability and status should be considered as BETA. You might want to test them on a backup server before going live. The descriptions listed here are those submitted by the plugins’ authors and do not necessarily express my views. 1. WP…

• Corporate Blogging Guide (7): Blog Performance Tracking Tools

  Alex, Blogsessive

  3 Nov 2009 | 2:20 pm

  Blogsessive recommends WP WebHost for quality WordPress blog hosting!A blog’s success is measured through both its number of active readers or of RSS subscribers and its performance in traffic: number of page views, of unique visitors, popularity, page rank and many others. There are a few methods to obtain the needed statistics to track and measure such indicators. 1. Access and traffic statistics Google, the most powerful and popular search engine in the world, provides bloggers with traffic statistics though its free Google Analytics service. By choosing a free Google Analytics…

• Halloween Special: Don’t be afraid to blog!

  Alex, Blogsessive

  31 Oct 2009 | 7:03 am

  Have you read "How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer" yet?Happy Halloween folks! As you might have noticed, Blogsessive has changed its “clothes” on this special occasion. Don’t worry, the nerd will be back tomorrow, when Dracula “leaves the building”. Now, since this is a special occasion, the topic for today’s article has been inspired by a comment I received on part 6 of the Corporate Blogging Guide: I think we all start our blogs worried people might not like us and when they do, we don’t want to change for fear of losing readers. I’ll take…

• Corporate Blogging Guide (6): Blogging Tips to Get You Started

  Alex, Blogsessive

  30 Oct 2009 | 7:32 am

  With the StudioPress WordPress themes you can really take your blog to a higher level!Regardless of the blog type you choose, be it personal or corporate, the following pieces of advice are meant to guide your steps in your future blogging activity. These are the most important blog tips you’ll need to follow when starting a new blogging adventure! 1. Look for ideas at any time and in any place A conversation in the subway, a debate or piece of news heard on the car radio, anything can turn into a new topic for your blog. Keep your mind open and tune your hearing, combine them with good…

• Corporate Blogging Guide (5): Blog Editors & Editorial Policy

  Alex, Blogsessive

  28 Oct 2009 | 1:37 pm

  Have you read "How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer" yet?Depending on the type of corporate blog you’re targeting, you can then put together an editorial team. To make sure you correctly appoint those in charge of content generation and blog management, you need to consider the following criteria: 1. Criteria to help build the editorial team The future bloggers needs to be/have: Experts in the filed they are going to cover; A good communicator, able to manage potential communication crises arising from dialogues and feedback generated by the blog; Concise, clear and explicit when…

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  Webmaster-Source

• Learning CSS Sprites

  Matt

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:41 am

  What exactly is a sprite? It’s a CSS technique that can make your website load faster. Instead of having a dozen images that are included on every page of the site (one for your logo, one for an RSS button, a few fore social media links, etc.) you combine them all into one big image. You can then use CSS to display just the portion you need in any given spot. How does this improve loading times? The major bottleneck in the loading of a web page today isn’t download speeds so much as concurrent downloads. A web browser will only download two files at once from a web server. After…

• Smashing Magazine Redesigns and Launches a Network

  Matt

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:30 am

  Smashing Magazine has redesigned again, further evolving their visual style rather than throwing away the old completely, but still bringing some new and interesting features into play. It’s still as ad-heavy as before, but that can be expected. At a glance, the navigational header present in the previous incarnation is bigger and more pronounced, and the search box has been moved there to be more prominent. The classic “We smash you with the information that will make your life easier. Really,” line has  been removed from under the logo. I’m not sure if there is any…

• Does “Pay What You Want” Work?

  Matt

  4 Nov 2009 | 3:56 am

  The collective internet mind vividly remembers the “Radiohead Experiment,” when the musical group Radiohead decided to put their new album on the internet for download, but with an odd twist. They let you value their product and pay the amount you desired. You could give them a hundred dollars or three cents. I always though it was an interesting idea, and one that could really work in some cases. Independent game developer 2D Boy is one of those cases… 2D Boy makes World of Goo, an interesting and fun physics game that retails for $20. It’s also one of the…

• Version Control with Git

  Matt

  3 Nov 2009 | 3:17 am

  There’s an interesting tutorial up on Net.Tuts+ that caught my attention: Easy Version Control with Git. Git seems like a powerful tool, and one I’d definitely like to look into in the future. It seems like it can do a bit more than SVN, as WhyGitIsBetterThanX.com happily points out, and may even be easier once you get used to it. Git is a open-source code managemen tool; it was created by Linus Torvalds when he was building the Linux kernel. Because of those roots, it needed to be really fast; that it is, and easy to get the hang of as well. Git allows you to work on your code…

• WordPress.org Crowdsources Plugin Compatibility

  Matt

  2 Nov 2009 | 3:26 am

  Does that plugin work with the latest version of WordPress? It’s hard to be sure until you install it. After all, a plugin may work perfectly fine across over several versions of WordPress, but the author might have been too busy (or indifferent) to update the “Compatible up to” field and commit a change to the repository. Now that doesn’t matter so much. A new feature (currently in beta) has been added to the plugin repository. There’s now a “Compatibility” box with a dropdown selection box. Pick your WP version, and it will show aggregated data from…

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  Blogging Without A Blog

• Large Gender Gap Evident In Blogosphere

  Barbara Swafford

  3 Nov 2009 | 11:06 pm

  Bloggers come from all walks of life. In fact, many people enjoy blogging as it is nondiscriminatory. It doesn’t matter if you’re a man or woman, rich or poor, old or young, educated or not; the door to blogging is open. However, it appears more men walk through the door to blogging than women. Today’s Lesson Technorati recently released their “State of the Blogosphere 2009″ findings. From a questionnaire to which 2900 bloggers responded, Technorati compiled an extremely comprehensive report which includes (but in not limited to) the following information with…

• How Branding Works In Blogosphere

  Barbara Swafford

  31 Oct 2009 | 2:42 pm

  In November of 2008 I wrote a post titled Are Domain Names Over Rated which included a fun “test” where the readers were asked to match the blog name, the name of the author and their avatar (or gravatar -globally recognized avatar). It was an experiment to find out if it is our name, our avatar or the name of our blog which helps to brand us in blogosphere. From the comments received on the post, it appears our avatars may hold the most weight. I’ve also read for proper online branding, we should use the same photo or avatar on all sites we frequent, such as blogs, Twitter,…

• Would You Wait 17,520 Hours?

  Barbara Swafford

  27 Oct 2009 | 1:31 pm

  Many of us have read we can have some kind of success with blogging. Maybe it will be a book deal. Maybe it’s the fact money can be made with a blog. For some, just being able to share their knowledge is enough For others, success is measured differently. Some won’t quit until they see their name “in lights”, whereas others wait until their blog propels them into a business and/or leads to financial freedom. But, what happens when what we read can happen, isn’t happening? How long do we wait? Today’s Lesson Before I started blogging, I analyzed what the…

• Seize The Opportunity – A Pro Speaks

  Barbara Swafford

  24 Oct 2009 | 1:51 am

  In his post titled, A New Way To Find Work That You Love Tom Volkar of Delightful Work states, We agree that to be authentic means to be genuine, open, unpretentious, honest and forthright. We also agree that authenticity is good for us. But we tend to disagree on how to get there, especially when it comes to our life’s work. With blogging, many of us hope our efforts will lead to some sort of business, book deal or profession which will align with our true calling , however like Tom said, “We tend to disagree how to get there”. For this reason, I’ve asked Tom to join…

• Words For Sale

  Barbara Swafford

  20 Oct 2009 | 10:50 pm

  One thing about blogs and what’s written in them, is they are free. Blogs are free to read and full of free ideas. In fact, some feel because the content is on the web, it’s free to steal. And us bloggers, because we love this hobby so much, gladly publish our words online with no thought of their value. We assume, if we blog, we must do it for free. Today’s Lesson Things, however, may be changing. Darren Rowse of Problogger recently started a new site which has a registration fee. For $1.95 a month you can read blogging information and participate in a forum which is only…

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  HowToMakeMyBlog.com

• 6 ways to create link magnets with every blog post

  Marko Saric

  3 Nov 2009 | 4:02 pm

  There is nothing easier than having a blog these days. Everyone and their dog is blogging. But that doesn’t mean that every blog is worth reading. As a matter of fact, most blogs suck and they suck for a reason. Most blogs are “me too!” blogs. By reading this blog you already proved that you don’t belong to the “me too!” crowd. Creating link-worthy blog content Creating link-worthy content should be your main concern because everything else will follow. Referring traffic, traffic from organic search and, in the end, direct traffic directly depend on how…

• My review of WordPress 2 iPhone App for mobile blogging

  Marko Saric

  29 Oct 2009 | 5:02 pm

  WordPress 2 iPhone app has just been released. I had a quick look and I like it. It is a perfect iPhone application for mobile blogging. It is very simple to log in to your WordPress blogs (both .com and .org). Blog URL, username and password are all the things you need. WordPress iPhone app now features a very easy to use navigation on the bottom of the screen with “Comments”, “Posts” and “Pages” . This  navigation allows you to easily switch between these areas. WordPress 2 iPhone comments area Comments area lets you review comments, approve, unapprove,…

• Link internally to increase blog page views, improve usability and Google rankings

  Marko Saric

  25 Oct 2009 | 4:02 pm

  Linking to your internal blog posts is one of the most important aspects of building a successful blog. TechThinker commented on my blog traffic post: I love the way you interlink all your blog posts. Your posts always remind me of the importance of doing Internal links. Why are blog internal links important? First of all it is a great service for your readers to introduce them to an article that has more detailed information about a topic you mention. It increases your page views, improves the user-experience of your visitors and introduces them to some of your older blog posts. Blog…

• Blog traffic – From 0 to 200.000 visitors, 8 blogging lessons learned

  Marko Saric

  18 Oct 2009 | 5:02 pm

  I started my how to make a blog on October 25th so this week my blog turns one year. As I have recently achieved the 200,000 visitors landmark, I thought this was a good time to put down some of the things I have learned from the first year that I would recommend bloggers to think of when launching a new project and building blog traffic. Commenting on bigger blogs can bring you initial traffic My first visitor other than myself was someone clicking over from a comment I had left at ProBlogger. In those first days all my visitors came from comments I left on ShoeMoney, DailyBlogtips,…

• FOWA Gary Vaynerchuk And Facebook Developer Garage Interviews

  Marko Saric

  11 Oct 2009 | 4:02 pm

  Continuing from the offline blogging events blog post, I have gone to several more events in recent weeks. I am lucky to live in London, as many web 2.0 related events take place here regularly. Future Of Web Apps (FOWA) took place earlier this month and Filip Matous, a great video editor I met on one of the blogging events, was kind enough to put together some video interviews and let me publish them here. Facebook and FOWA video interviews First video is from the FOWA edition of the Facebook Developers Garage. The video features interviews with David Nattriss of http://natts.com and Joshua…

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  Rowell Dionicio

• I Am In Backup Hell

  rowelld

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:08 pm

  I’ve had a motherload of technical issues over the course of a whole week. Many of which have resulted in failed hardware or Microsoft technology hickups. No one is never happy when unrelated, problematic events occur one right after the other and one never gets the right amount of sleep until the dragon has been slayed and blood is spilled. One aspect of of Microsoft that seems to be a cloud of WTF is distributed file system. Why in the world would Microsoft not upgrade you from the previous FRS to DFS when you’ve clearly selected DFS in the Windows R2 upgrade. No clue. Just the…

• Why I Removed TweetBoard and Used Twitter Widgets Instead

  rowelld

  26 Oct 2009 | 10:53 pm

  The Tweetboard idea from 140ware was an interesting way to display your tweets on your website. For a while I’ve used it on The Network Technician but I felt like it was lagging somewhere. Tweetboard had a nice pull out interface from a tab that displayed on the left side of the screen but it didn’t do it in a smooth way. Once the whole tweetboard was open in had an ugly color that didn’t blend nicely with my site. I had no clue if that was customizable. Also it just displayed all my tweets. Of course you had to log in with your account to make Twitter updates but I had a…

• Time for Windows 7

  rowelld

  13 Oct 2009 | 10:31 pm

  I’ve decided to give Windows 7 a try. After my horrific experience with Vista I went to Ubuntu but at work we are a Windows environment. Many of our useful features do not work at all in a Linux environment. Instead of keeping Ubuntu as my dedicated OS I will be moving it to a VM environment. Let’s see how this works out for me! Share and Enjoy:

• How to Remove “Powered By Machform” From Email and Contact Form

  rowelld

  23 Sep 2009 | 7:38 am

  The Machform contact form from Appnitro is one of the best forms for Wordpress, in my opinion. It’s relatively inexpensive and for the features, flexibility, and ease of use it’s certainly worth paying for. One of the reasons why I purchased the Machform from Appnitro is for it’s anti-spam capabilities and features that the contact form submitter sees. Unfortunately, for a purchased plugin to Wordpress, they add their own link love to the footer of your contact form and to any response emails sent to anyone submitting a contact form. It’s unacceptable if you want to…

• There Should Be A Club..

  rowelld

  18 Sep 2009 | 7:30 am

  Kanye West has created a storm with his stupid act at the MTV VMA’s. I tried looking for the video on YouTube but it’s just plastered with idiotic people video blogging about what happened. The real video is very hard to find on YouTube but at least MTV has it up on their site. MTV Shows That specific moment caused a frenzy all over the web such as Kanye Interrupting President Obama. That last part when Obama says, “That’s not true.”, is pretty funny! But Obama agrees with everyone else that Kanye West is just a jackass. Obama is just a regular person and I agree…

• 
  David Risley dot com

• How To Write For Blog Readers Just RIDDLED With ADD

  David

  5 Nov 2009 | 4:33 am

  Many beginning bloggers just get it wrong. They “brain dump” into Wordpress and the post is barely readable. I wanted to share some advice with you today to help you write a better blog post. Headline is Important The headline is your hook in the sea. You need that hook to be attractive enough to lure the reader in and make them bite (click). So, make the headline catchy. A few quick guidelines: Focus on “YOU”. And here, I mean the reader. What benefit are they going to get by reading your post? Make your headline make some kind of intriguing promise to the reader that just makes them…

• Twitter Meets Multi-Level Marketing = Tweetglide [Review]

  David

  3 Nov 2009 | 6:03 am

  Tweetglide. The new Tweetdeck killer. Or so they would have you believe… Last week, I got an email from Mike Filsaime. Now, Mike is a well-known internet marketer. I follow the world of internet marketing. After all, I’m, too, a marketer. What was surprising about this email from Mike was that he was talking about his new Twitter app – Tweetglide. This spiked my curiosity because “Mike Filsaime” and “Twitter app” just don’t go together in my mind. Tweetglide is developed on Adobe AIR, just like Tweetdeck. The website is impressive. So, I was both surprised and impressed to see…

• An Observation About Your Personal Power

  David

  2 Nov 2009 | 1:56 pm

  I got an email from a reader. I’m going to leave names out of it and I’m not even going to quote the whole thing. But, it really brought something to mind for me. I am a big believer in the idea that the only person capable of improving or messing up your life is you. Nobody else. You get what you expect to get. This email I got was unfortunate. I don’t want to quote the whole thing (out of respect), but I want to point out a few things in the email. This blog stuff is way over my head, I don’t have anything to talk about that anyone would be interesting in listening to. If you…

• The Secret To Huge Volumes of Content For Any Blogger

  David

  30 Oct 2009 | 6:09 am

  A common theme I hear from new bloggers is the time demands of creating so much content. Then, people like me will tell you how important it is to do videos, too, and your reaction might be… Are you Frickin’ kidding me? You don’t have to be the superman of writing to be a good blogger. You just need to learn how to leverage your time effectively. Leverage is getting the absolute most bang for your buck. Or, in this case, your time. Can you make one piece of content fit many purposes? Sure you can. Be Everywhere You don’t want your blog to be a little island, all alone…

• 9 Simple Tips For Personal Branding

  David

  28 Oct 2009 | 7:00 am

  “Personal branding” is a bit of a buzzword these days. Many claim to be experts on it even though the subject isn’t really that complicated at all. It is simply the art of creating a recognizable brand around yourself. The goals are: Be recognized whenever the brand is seen. Have that brand represent certain ideas in the minds of the viewer. Here are 9 quick tips to help you build up your personal brand. Decide between using your name or a made-up name. If you build a brand around your name, then do so for the purpose of raising your reputation. On the flip side, any brand built around…

• 
  Twingly Blog

• Top list of Channels

  Anton

  20 Oct 2009 | 2:05 am

  As we’ve been talking about before, you really want to find more Channels than the ones you know! We’re very happy that you want to spend more time with Channels, not less, so we decided to fix this right away. As a result of your feedback, ideas and our great developers – here’s our new top list of Channels Today it’s really simple, just a top list with a ranking based on the number of subscribers. In the future we will make this more useful by adding more aspects to it (example: “Channels with most interactions today, this week or month”). And yes,…

• New Blogstream Partners!

  Anton

  15 Oct 2009 | 2:11 am

  We’ve been so busy working with Channels lately that we haven’t blogged about our new Blogstream partners. So, here they are! Företagande The Swedish site foretagande.se for entrepreneurs started to use Twingly on their front page last week. We really like entrepreneurship, so we think this is brilliant! Kyrkans Tidning The Swedish Church have their own newspaper and since a couple of weeks ago they are using Twingly on their site. So when you’re blogging about religion or things related to the Swedish Church, you will get a link back from their site if you linking to them.

• Find more Channels

  Anton

  5 Oct 2009 | 3:17 am

  Wow. What a great launch last week. Thanks everyone, we’re amazed by all the feedback and usage of the service. We love feedback and thanks to @jocke we’ve been starting to use Getsatisfaction.com again, so please feel free to talk with us there or simply use our feedback form. Also, we do of course have a Twinglyfied Channel where we wanna interact with you! The most common question is “how do we find more channels?” and yes, it’s kinda hard. In the future there will be a catalogue and search for Channels but for now, the only way to find them is by testing…

• Twingly Channels Is Live And The World Will Never Be The Same Again

  Martin

  1 Oct 2009 | 12:40 am

• Apply to create a Twingly Channel!

  Anton

  28 Sep 2009 | 9:58 am

  Pic: Cookie Monster Twingly Channels closer to launch than ever and on Thursday October 1st we’ll finally release the Twingly Channels Private Beta! Last week we invited our registered users at Twingly.com to apply to create a Twingly Channel for their interest or favorite topic. It’s a understatement that we were amazed by all the great ideas and cool people  all over the world that wanted to create a channel.. Thanks, users! You rock our world! Our users had the opportunity first, now anybody can have a  go at it! Apply to create a Twingly Channel at…

• 
  Blog Design Studio

• Blogging the road to business success – Interview with Steve Kaufmann

  mayank

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:57 am

  Maintaining a marketing blog is a smart, cheap and one of the best ways to promote your business that can have a longer lifetime and give you greater exposure to your customers and potential customers than traditional media like newspapers. By running a marketing blog you can create greater exposure for your company’s products and services using the advantages of the world wide web to maintain the awareness and visibility about what you do, to publish a steady stream of news about your business development and develop relationship and trust with your clients. Steve Kaufmann is a Canadian…

• Boost Your Blog’s Speed!

  Igor

  2 Nov 2009 | 10:17 am

  So you want to create a high-traffic site? It’s so cool to have all those plugins too. But will WordPress be sufficient for your high-traffic site? Will it survive tons of heavy traffic every day? Well the answer can be yes as long as you take care of few things. Here are some tips on how to speed up your WordPress site. Before you go ahead with this blog post, you should go ahead and read the following post as well – Unclutter your blog. Stay up to date with the latest WordPress version and plugins Staying up to date with the latest version of WordPress is really a must do. Make sure…

• Your blog design as your first impression in the virtual world

  Igor

  26 Oct 2009 | 7:22 am

  Does your blog design really matters after all or is it just a luxury toy for the ultra-rich bloggers? Well, it plays approximately the same role in representing your blog to the world as looks do for women. A pretty woman will definitely be “right” at the moment she appears in front of the people. Later on, she may turn out to be stupid, boring, or even malicious, but she has won the first battle anyway. The same goes for your blog. You may have the best of the content however if you don’t have a good blog design, you’ll still lose a lot of readers just because the…

• Coding the WordPress Loop explained

  Igor

  19 Oct 2009 | 10:32 pm

  The Loop is used by WordPress to display each of your posts. It’s the most important set of PHP codes. Basically, it’s what displays the content you see on your homepage, your single posts, pages, archives, search results, etc. Any HTML or PHP code placed in the Loop will be repeated on each post. The Loop should be placed inside index.php and in any other Templates used to display post information. Parts of the loop The loop has three parts: <?php if (have_posts()) : ?> <?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?> Part 1) Here stands the content that you want to be displayed…

• 10 Unusual, Unorthodox and Unconventional but BEAUTIFUL WordPress Themes

  Igor

  14 Oct 2009 | 12:23 pm

  I know we are all used to the standard 2-column or 3-column WordPress themes, but why not try something a little bit different for a change, something a little unusual, unorthodox and unconventional but still beautiful. Well, here is a compilation of 10 unusual WordPress blog designs that are more distinctive from the standard themes. Here are the themes listed: 1. Facebook Lover This is my favorite one and have attracted my attention immediately, the reason is obvious, it’s Facebook style, the social-networking site that is now more popular than porn. 2. Mental Disorder I have had hard…

• 
  Mike's Life - Life Can Get Better!

• Did Apple screw up with the iPhone?

  Mike

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:21 am

  When the iPhone launched I wanted one, in fact I lusted after one. I’d been a Blackberry user for some time, and the iPhone looked so much cooler. The problem was it was launched with an exclusive contract with a different airtime provider than the one I had moved to with a great deal of complication – we have 14 phones on a contract. I checked my contract, and realized I would have to wait a year or so to change back, to avoid paying some big penalties. I was bitterly disappointed. Then Blackberry launched the Storm. OK it wasn’t an iPhone, but it would keep me going until the day came…

• 11 Things to do after installing Wordpress

  Firas

  4 Nov 2009 | 8:40 am

  I would like to begin by thanking Mike for giving me the chance to join the Mike's Life team as a Staff Writer. I hope that the information which I am going to share is beneficial and useful for you. Installing Wordpress is not a mission impossible, on the contrary; it is a one-click process. By installing Wordpress you're not yet done with setting up your blog, you still have an important journey ahead; tweaking and modifying your blog. 1- Activate Akismet You should directly activate the Akismet plugin, which is a plugin that comes with Wordpress by default and it prevents spam comments…

• So Twitter doesn't work for businesses?

  Mike

  2 Nov 2009 | 12:52 pm

  I was talking to a pal of mine earlier today who is now a VERY senior guy at a VERY big company. I asked him what Social Media tools he was using and he was quite enthusiastic about their blog. I checked the blog while we were talking. Nine posts in the last month, eight about products and one about a prize the company had won – they looked like press releases, and I told my friend so. I gave him a bit of a hard time and explained some ways he could get much more from the blog, by giving more. Then I asked him about Twitter: “Ah, we tried that, it doesn’t work.” “What do you mean,…

• How many posts a week should I do?

  Mike

  2 Nov 2009 | 2:33 am

  “I’m really not making any progress with my blog, traffic is hardly growing, I’m only getting a couple of subscribers a week, I need to change something. I’m looking at the niche and maybe the branding:” I hear this all the time! And the first thing I do is check how much posting activity there is on the blog. Guess what? They’re often hardly posting! Time and time again, I come across struggling bloggers who are doing so many things well, but they are letting themselves down by simply not posting enough or regularly enough. Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net This all came to mind when…

• Mike's Life POW 31st October 2009

  Mike

  31 Oct 2009 | 1:14 am

  I need your help! Every week I put the really good posts I’ve enjoyed into a folder. When it gets to POW day, I then enjoy re reading them and whittling them down to my six or so favorites. Today I had a problem. There were only two posts in the folder! It seems to have been a poor weak on the blogs I read. So I need your help please. Remember how we all had a chance to resurrect our own “old but good” posts here earlier this week? Now it’s payback time! Would you help me by choosing a post from another blog that you really enjoyed? Write a short comment about it and leave us a link.

• 
  Better Blog Tips and the New Media by BLOGBloke

• Stop H1N1 Swine Flu In It’s Tracks

  A Public Service Announcement: One of the ways you can stop the spread of H1N1 influenza, seasonal flu and other diseases is to wash your hands often with soap and water or alcohol-based hand sanitizers. This video demonstrates the proper way to wash your hands, along with helpful tips and hints ...

• Happy Halloween 2009 Blokesters!

  I hope you enjoy this evening as adorable little goblins with smiling faces come a-knockin' on your door for sweets and treats. Make sure your child is street-safe and with the flu season upon us don't forget to be sanitary and keep your hands clean. Tell your kids to not eat ...

• 7 Steps to Writing Better Blog Posts

  If you aspire to have one of the top blogs in your niche then you need to pay attention to your blog posts. Watch this video and discover 7 blogging tips that are simple to implement. It does a decent job of summarizing what I have been saying all these ...

• What Should A Blogging Bloke Write About .. Eh?

  Since my last blog post I've been feeling a little better and I'm mulling over what BLOGBloke should be writing about. You might have noticed that I broadened the niche of this blog from "blog tips" to include social media tips and news. Although I would argue the niche is ...

• Can’t Blog? So What’s a Blogger To Do?

  We've all heard of the blogging mantra to write often and regularly. It has become a blogging maxim, a common law so to speak for serious bloggers who want to create a thriving blog community and rank well with the SERPs (search engine results page). So in consideration of this ...

• 
  tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog

• Twitter list word cloud

  Rick Klau

  5 Nov 2009 | 12:09 pm

  I've been enjoying Twitter Lists in the last week... for those that don't know, Lists gives others the ability to "curate" Twitter IDs into groups. You can see which lists I've been added to by clicking here. It struck me that this is the first time I've had such a view into how others categorize me. I took the words others used to describe me, and then went to Wordle to generate a word cloud based on those words. (I'll bet someone builds a service to generate these word clouds automatically within a week.) Gets it about right, actually.

• What Would Augsburg Do?

  Rick Klau

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:47 am

  A couple weeks ago I attended the fall board meeting for Augsburg Fortress. Augsburg is a publisher affiliated with the ELCA, which is the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States. My connection to Augsburg is a result of a speech I gave to a group of leaders in the ELCA several years ago, and has been a remarkable experience for the last two years. It’s remarkable for several reasons: it’s my first experience sitting on a board, so that alone makes it a worthwhile effort. But what makes it so rewarding – and so challenging – is the difficulty of being part of a traditional…

• BlogWorld Expo recap

  Rick Klau

  19 Oct 2009 | 5:13 pm

  I was in Las Vegas last week to attend BlogWorld Expo, and had a terrific time. Events like these are as much about the conversations in the hallways (and, if you're a speaker, the speaker ready room), and this year's BWE was no exception. My presentation on Friday was about where blogs fit in at a time that everyone's attention seems to be on Twitter; I shared some stats about Blogger that many in the audience hadn't heard before. Louis Gray did a terrific job summarizing my presentation (makes me feel bad, all I did during his was heckle him), and I was quite interested in the Q&A.

• My favorite Google Apps

  Rick Klau

  29 Sep 2009 | 8:30 am

  Inspired by Louis Gray's post about his favorite Google apps (who was inspired by none other than Google CEO Eric Schmidt), I thought I'd capture some of my favorite Google apps - especially those which are lesser-known. (To the many friends who I'll no doubt annoy by not including their products: note that I said some of my favorites. And I'm omitting a couple obvious ones: I live in Gmail, Reader, and Calendar... those deserve their own posts about how I rely on them seemingly every hour of the day. Not today.) Last week, I was invited to give a presentation to a group of execs from the…

• Free books on your iPhone

  Rick Klau

  25 Sep 2009 | 8:31 am

  In last week's post about the books I've been reading on my iPhone, I neglected to point out that there are a ton of free books you can "buy" from Amazon. The Kindle app is a free app in the App Store, so go ahead and put it on your phone if you haven't already. Now go visit this page (better, if you use iGoogle, My Yahoo, Google Reader or another feed reader, subscribe to the feed). This is the current best sellers page for the Kindle, and not surprisingly, books that are free tend to sell pretty well. When you see one that intrigues you, click to buy and it'll be on your iPhone in minutes.

• 
  Newsome.Org

• Sporting Clays, Volume 3

  31 Oct 2009 | 7:32 pm

  After shooting Volume 1 and Volume 2 from a behind the shooter, stationary camera, I shot this round with a gun mounted camera.  It works OK with high, arching shots where there is a lot of blue sky to provide contrast.  It works less well on low, fast shots, where bushes or trees are in the background.  I also learned on editing that I need to start shooting only after I have loaded and am ready to shoot.  This video is pretty sloppy, but it taught me what I need to know for future videos. It would also be really, really helpful to have a remote control for my JVC GC-FM1A…

• Presbyterian School's Main Street Choir

  31 Oct 2009 | 3:05 pm

  Cassidy's school choir performed two songs at an open house earlier this week for prospective parents.  They sang "Woke Up This Morning" and "Lullaby of Broadway."  They did great and I am so proud of her. Cassidy is on the left end of the first row.

• Google Reader: Putting Scoble in Time Out

  29 Oct 2009 | 7:49 pm

  I like Robert Scoble.  I really do.  But, like my 8-year old, if I don't watch him like a hawk he gets distracted and starts doing all kinds of crazy shit.  Like pooping all over Google Reader, which is really a stand-in for RSS readers in general.  I know he doesn't really mean it.  It's like the time my 8-year old announced that she was giving up Skittles.  It was a radical thought.  There was logic to it.  Shoot, it made me proud. But it wasn't real. Two days later she was back in the grip of her Skittles addiction, insisting that no right-thinking…

• About this Google Music Thing

  28 Oct 2009 | 11:21 pm

  As we all now know, I have totally capitulated to Google.  And I love me some music.  So I was interested when I read that my new master was going to release a music search thingy.  Until I read more about it.  Then it made me sad.  Not as sad as the lack of folders in Evernote makes me.  But sad. Partnering up with MySpace?  Are you kidding me.  Now that Geocites is gone, MySpace rules supreme as the most butt-ugly collection of bad web design on the internet.  Lala?  What about Tinky Winky and Po?  Pandora has been a favorite of mine…

• Two Sentence Movie Reviews: Halloween Edition

  27 Oct 2009 | 6:33 pm

  Three really good films.  5-point scale.  Links to Netflix   Kill, Baby, Kill (4): This 1966 Mario Bava gem is a creepy, semi-gothic ghost story, that proves Italians did horror as well as westerns.  It made me an instant Fabienne Dali fan. Black Sunday (4): Another excellent Bava film (1960), with the great Barbara Steele in a double role as a witch and her look-alike descendant.  One of my favorite vintage horror films, with perhaps the most interesting commentary track I've ever watched. Drag Me to Hell (4; unrated version): A new to DVD, supernatural scare-fest…

• 
  Disqus

• Disqus Comments: Translated in over 40 languages

  2 Nov 2009 | 10:49 am

  Each and every language on Disqus Comments has been generously translated by our lovely commenter community. Today we’ve added a new tool to make it easier when updating and adding new languages to Disqus. You can find the application here: http://disqus.com/translate You may apply to review a current translation or add new language, simply pick the language and hit the apply button. Currently we need some help with a couple translations: Arabic, Chinese (simplified), German, and a couple others. If you happen to know a friend fluent in any of these languages with a generous personality,…

• Disqus Comments: Improved Importing and Widgets

  30 Oct 2009 | 12:05 pm

  We’ve made a couple improvements over in the tools section, the first being Improved Importing. In the past some publishers experienced trouble when importing large files and that isn’t a problem anymore. Our imports are now handled completely by our servers making things much more reliable and speedy. We also fixed the Widgets (which can be found just above imports in the picture under code) to match the preset avatars and pull their available gravatars for commenter’s. -Giannii

• Disqus Comments: Moderating comments from your Post

  19 Oct 2009 | 3:50 pm

  On your posts you can read, reply, and moderate all of your comments. This is a short guide explaining each part of that moderation process. Each of the numbered items below are numerically depicted in the picture above. The commenters email address. The commenters IP address Edit any undesirable content instantly. Removes comments from your post. Mark comments as spam and remove it from your post. Block users globally from your site. You will be presented with two options, and I recommend doing both for malicious commenters. Email Address IP Address You can return to the full Disqus moderate…

• Disqus Comments: Closing comments on Wordpress and some bug fixes

  9 Oct 2009 | 5:37 pm

  Today we’ve released a couple updates and bug fixes for our Wordpress Plugin. You can download the updated plugin here. Added support for closing comments on post/pages from within the Wordpress Admin. Fixed the RSS Feed problem that caused validation issues with some feeds. Fixed a minor bug with exporting comments from certain Wordpress configurations. Fixed a rare bug with logging into Disqus through our plugin. Fixed the displaying of certain track backs. -Giannii

• Disqus Comments: Set a default avatar for your site

  5 Oct 2009 | 12:54 pm

  We’ve added a new option for publishers. You can now change the Default Avatar on your site. You can now put your own personal stamp on comments left by people without an avatar. Often times, commenters may not have had a chance to set their own picture with their profiles. Or, if you allow guest comments on your site, many of your comments will be attached to Disqus’ own default ugly face. Now, you can use your own ugly face, logo, or whatever you wish. You can change this option by heading over to your Settings page under Customize and Appearance. Simply upload a new image, crop it,…

• 
  Ruhani Rabin - Tech, Life and Interestingness

• Lazy Blogger’s guide to Super Charge WordPress with 100+ Plugins

  Ruhani Rabin

  30 Oct 2009 | 12:42 pm

  Ask yourself a question, “Are you a Lazy Blogger?”. Even if you are not, these plugins will bring you to next evolution for your WordPress blog which will change the way you do blogging.“Why do you need these plugins?”. Because, WordPress is the best and the most expandable blogging platform in the world, the plugin architecture simply gives you the power to add engaging features, improve communication and build a strong relation between you and your blog readers. Savvy? No?Blogging is about writing great content and if your spend all your sweet time modifying your…

• Best Windows Freeware – Servers

  Ruhani Rabin

  27 Oct 2009 | 12:13 pm

  This is part 13 of 14 in the series Best Windows FreewareServers Apache Tomcat – Apache Tomcat is the servlet container that is used in the official Reference Implementation for the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages (jsp) technologies. Apache Web Server – Web Server, the best one around. Apache2Triad – Installs a developer preconfigured environment with Apache, PHP, mySQL with control panel/PHPMyAdmin, xMail, ftp, and a Apache Web based Control Panel, etc. Power packed with new cool things like Python/Pearl mods, ASP support, SSL and so much more. Highly recommended. EasyPHP…

• Best Windows Freeware – System and Desktop Utilities

  Ruhani Rabin

  27 Oct 2009 | 12:12 pm

  This is part 12 of 14 in the series Best Windows FreewareSystem and Desktop Utilities nLite – Build your own custom Windows disk. Comodo – Firewall, Anti-virus, anti-spam, malware utilities. Ewido – Blocks spyware/adware and trojans. Eyeline – Professional Video Surveillance Software with multiple camera support. Filseclab – Internet personal firewall GPG4Win – File, email encryption and other encryption utilites, like a file shredder. Hitman Lite – Hitman Pro is a freeware tool that combines a number of powerful anti-spyware programs in one…

• Best Windows Freeware – Portable Applications Suite

  Ruhani Rabin

  27 Oct 2009 | 12:09 pm

  This is part 11 of 14 in the series Best Windows FreewarePortable Applications Suites PortableApps – Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer via USB Flash device, iPod, or portable hard disk, and it works like a start menu. Includes Firefox, Open Office, VideoLan, to name a few.Lupo PenSuite – Lupo PenSuite mashes up a familiar looking menu with a huge offering of applications. Taking a note from the LiberKey school of portable suite production, Lupo PenSuite throws…

• Best Windows Freeware – Programming

  Ruhani Rabin

  27 Oct 2009 | 12:07 pm

  This is part 10 of 14 in the series Best Windows FreewareProgramming Frhed – Hex editor. ActiveGrid Studio – ActiveGrid Studio enables developers to rapidly build enterprise-level Web 2.0 applications with a minimum of training, time, and effort. Supports Java, PHP, Python. Database supports is the best I’ve seen in an open IDE. Has built in Python and Java environments plus a built in running Apache web server. Highly recommended. Aptana – Development environment geared towards web development, Ajax style! Autocomplete and assistance for HTML, CSS, Java Script.

• 
  TwistedSifter

• The Friday Shirk Report - November 6, 2009 | Volume 30

  Twisted Sifter

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:58 am

  Welcome to the Friday Shirk Report where you will find 20 images, 10 articles and 5 videos from the previous week of sifting. Enjoy! 20 IMAGES +3 bonus - The thing about belts - RIP Grandpa you will be missed. You had some great quotes - The Wackest pants ever - One of the better break-up notes I’ve seen - [...]

• How to Lose $1.93 Million in 7 Hands of Poker

  Twisted Sifter

  5 Nov 2009 | 5:58 am

  In celebration of the long-awaited final table showdown to determine the 2009 World Series of Poker - Main Event champion, I decided to compile a collection of monster poker pots witnessed on television or online. The seven hands below are from high-stakes cash games (Texas Hold em) between the top professionals in poker. When I [...]

• Hump Day Headlines - November 4, 2009

  Twisted Sifter

  4 Nov 2009 | 5:58 am

  Every Wednesday you will find links and top-line summaries to current events around the globe. Berkshire Bets on U.S. With a Railroad Purchase [New York Times] - Berkshire Hathaway, the investment vehicle of Warren E. Buffett, said on Tuesday that it planned to buy the 77.4% of Burlington Northern Santa Fe it did not already own for [...]

• Yamakoya: The Japanese Bookshelf Cabin

  Twisted Sifter

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:58 am

  The gold prize winner in this year’s JCD (Japanese Commercial Environment Designers Association) design awards for ‘communication design in the commercial environment’, Ben Nagaoka’s Yamakoya is a great example of creating space within a space. Yamakoya, which means ‘wood-log cabin’ in Japanese, is a structure designed specifically for private research focusing on local [...]

• The Largest Cruise Ship in the World is Five Times the Size of the Titanic

  Twisted Sifter

  2 Nov 2009 | 4:58 am

  Five times larger than the Titanic, Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas is the world’s largest passenger vessel ever built. Oasis left her shipyard in Finland on Friday (Oct. 30, 2009) and is set to arrive at her home, Port Everglades, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on November 20th. With her Maiden voyage set for December [...]

• 
  The 42nd Estate

• Emergent Group at Boston Young Entrepreneurs

  Adam Pieniazek

  30 Oct 2009 | 9:40 am

  We’re big fans of the City of Boston run group Boston Young Entreprenuers, having received excellent advice and met tons of awesome people via BYE. The featured company for November’s meeting has been announced and it’s Emergent Energy Group. Emergent is all about finding the best alternative energy sources for landowners, developers, businesses, municipalities and academic institutions. They began as a wind power consulting firm and have since expanded to solar energy and other sustainable resources. Emergent was recently named one of the Top 25 Young Entreprenuers of 2009…

• Five Free Tools to Check if Your Site is Up

  Adam Pieniazek

  26 Oct 2009 | 5:32 am

  So, you’ve designed and developed a great site that visitors find extremely useful and that search engines love to crawl. You no have no worries, right? Wrong! A great site that is search engine friendly and more importantly useful to your visitors serves no purpose if the server struggles and doesn’t keep the site up consistently and reliably. Monitoring your sites for uptime is a crucial aspect of running a successful web-site. If you’re not already keeping track of your site’s uptime, here’s five free tools to check if your site is up and running. Down for…

• SEO Presentation from City of Boston Marketing Workshops

  Adam Pieniazek

  24 Oct 2009 | 5:45 am

  So far, the Marketing workshops organized by the BRA and the City of Boston have been a great success. The crowd yesterday was awesome, involved and asked lots of questions. If you were at either of the events this week and have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below or send us an e-mail. Below are the slides from my SEO presentation at the Marketing workshops organized by the City of Boston. I’m planning on recording audio to go along with the slides this weekend and will update this post when it’s up. There’s two options below for viewing the…

• Justin Wright Survives Self-Employement

  Adam Pieniazek

  22 Oct 2009 | 2:15 pm

  Member of The 42nd Estate, Justin Wright, today celebrates one year of self-employement. Head over to his blog and join in the celebration. He uses the occasion to drop ten self employment lessons he’s learned over the past twelve months that’ll come in handy whether you’re just starting out on your own or have been at it for a while. Here’s two of my favorite lessons from Justin: 5. Money Isn’t Everything However, working for myself quickly made me realize how unimportant money is. Yes we need it to survive, but that’s it. Other than food/water, clothes, and a…

• Wordpress 2.8.5 Released & Exploit Scanner Recommended

  Adam Pieniazek

  20 Oct 2009 | 8:11 pm

  Wordpress 2.8.5 has just been released. The main additions are security tweaks, which makes the update a must download. The updates in this release include: A fix for the Trackback Denial-of-Service attack that is currently being seen. Removal of areas within the code where php code in variables was evaluated. Switched the file upload functionality to be whitelisted for all users including Admins. Retiring of the two importers of Tag data from old plugins. The Wordpress crew is also recommending users download the Wordpress Exploit Scanner plugin to search for any exploits that might be…

• 
  FresheVenture.com

• New OIOpublisher Ad Manager Coupon for November 2009!

  Keller Hawthorne

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:45 am

  This coupon came just in time as this month I plan to wrap up my “Selling Advertising Space” article series. In part three (How Do I Manage and Sell Ad Space and What Type Should I Offer?), we analyzed available ad managers on the market, watched a 40 minute video[...]

• Selling Advertising Space Part 4: Choosing Payment Options, Deciding On Subscription Lengths and Offering Refunds

  Keller Hawthorne

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:34 pm

  Welcome to part 4 of this article series! In part one (Is Your Website Ready to Sell Ad Sponsorships?), you discovered why you would want to sell ad space, whether it’s too soon to make an income from ad sponsorships and whether or not ads would conflict with the purpose of[...]

• The Top 10 Most Common Editing Mistakes Bloggers Make

  Chandra Clarke

  2 Nov 2009 | 2:08 pm

  Please help me welcome my guest blogger this week, Chandra Clarke. Want to be a FresheVenture.com guest blogger? Apply here. I’ve always said that one of the greatest things about the web is that you can publish instantly. I’ve also always said that one of the worst things about the[...]

• How Did Google’s October 2009 PageRank Update Affect You?

  Keller Hawthorne

  30 Oct 2009 | 3:56 pm

  We’ve all been chompin’ at the bit for this latest update, huh? Wondering if you’re going to lose or gain PageRank can leave you in suspense – you never know exactly what Google’s going to do. But, you should have an idea of what to expect based on the effort[...]

• Membership Site Mastermind CLOSES TODAY - Last Chance to Join In 2009!

  Keller Hawthorne

  30 Oct 2009 | 11:46 am

  That’s right - today is the LAST DAY to join Membership Site Mastermind in 2009! If you’ve ever considered launching a membership site to sell your valuable information, Yaro Starak is the right guru to listen to. Membership Site Mastermind takes you step by step through the learning process of planning,[...]

• 
  Micheal Savoie Welcomes You

• Twitter Updates for 2009-11-06

  Micheal Savoie

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:14 pm

  Preview the secret behind the secret: http://su.pr/A3bFna # Product In A Weekend – Twitter Updates for 2009-11-04 http://aweber.com/b/1Qli2 # #PIAW Published: Twitter Updates for 2009-11-05 http://ping.fm/unAAv # Product In A Weekend – Twitter Updates for 2009-11-05 http://aweber.com/b/1Peq2 # Stellar ladies @susanpreston @k0zm0zs0ul @beckiann @yvonnelyon @melodyinflorida @tracy_roberts @nicoledean @Dana_willhoit #followfriday # 7 reason On How To Succeed at Affiliate for Success http://bit.ly/3gXbF9 # Make Money Online with Bulletproof Business Blueprint | One Way ……

• Twitter Updates for 2009-11-05

  Micheal Savoie

  5 Nov 2009 | 3:14 pm

  Preview the secret behind the secret: http://su.pr/A3bFna # #PIAW Published: Twitter Updates for 2009-11-04 http://ping.fm/3bdZF # Twitter Backgrounds can make your profile look pretty sharp – http://ping.fm/npNag – save if you order now! # How to Become a ‘guru’ Instead and Advanced Tips for Making … http://bit.ly/Fbh37 # Twitter Updates for 2009-11-04 | Product In A Weekend http://bit.ly/3TfJSW # wwwTwitwallcom Twitwall http://bit.ly/4Vutf # I still can't believe how useful http://postlater.net is for my social networking. Worth every penny! # Just…

• Twitter Updates for 2009-11-04

  Micheal Savoie

  4 Nov 2009 | 3:14 pm

  Preview the secret behind the secret: http://su.pr/A3bFna # When are masterminds dangerous? http://FARmethod.com When you have a nearsighted one! # just saying… I HATE technology (when it works half assed) # Affiliate Marketing Tips – 3 Ultimate Ways to Create Constant Flow … http://bit.ly/wGc5X # 3 Steps To Affiliate Programs Success http://bit.ly/1R3g9M # #PIAW Published: Twitter Updates for 2009-11-03 http://ping.fm/cXAKA # Product In A Weekend – Twitter Updates for 2009-11-02 http://aweber.com/b/VXcI # Product In A Weekend – Twitter Updates for 2009-11-02…

• Twitter Updates for 2009-11-03

  Micheal Savoie

  3 Nov 2009 | 3:14 pm

  Preview the secret behind the secret: http://su.pr/A3bFna # I subscribed to askimexperts's channel on YouTube http://bit.ly/sY3jN # #PIAW Published: Twitter Updates for 2009-11-02 http://ping.fm/PmlRK # #PIAW Published: Twitter Updates for 2009-11-02 http://ping.fm/vDwKm # Social Network Search App | Freelance Tools http://bit.ly/4yBlOy # ClickBank Tips – Ten Tips to Become a Successful ClickBank … http://bit.ly/LHzLS # News :Legitimate Online Business Ideas | beautiful bollywood … http://bit.ly/44TdPs # Tony Robbins is in talks with GVO – get onboard before he…

• Twitter Updates for 2009-11-02

  Micheal Savoie

  2 Nov 2009 | 3:14 pm

  Preview the secret behind the secret: http://su.pr/A3bFna # Easy Desktop Traffic has a payment plan! http://su.pr/9qAIsP You can explode your traffic with this software! # #HappyBirthday @YvonneLyon – May you have many more! # Product In A Weekend – Twitter Updates for 2009-10-29 http://aweber.com/b/fHbY # #PIAW Published: Twitter Updates for 2009-11-01 http://ping.fm/bcYh0 # Product Creation – Part One http://bit.ly/BUytF # Hosting Directory #1 – How to Build and Configure Your Own Radio … http://bit.ly/iHVXU # Product In A Weekend – Twitter Updates for…

• 
  iWebU

• Web Secret #74: StopBADware

  iWebU

  4 Nov 2009 | 5:07 am

  "Bad, bad, bad, bad software, you make me feel so mad..." With a nod to the 1985 Gloria Estefan hit - there is nothing that makes me angrier than downloading a program and being subjected to "BADware". What is BADware?BADware is software that fundamentally disregards a user’s choice regarding how his or her computer will be used. Common examples of badware include free screensavers that surreptitiously generate advertisements, malicious web browser toolbars that take your browser to different pages than the ones you expect, or keylogger programs that can transmit your personal data to…

• Web Secret #73: Social Media Is Not a Fad

  iWebU

  28 Oct 2009 | 5:48 am

  I am always trying to succinctly explain to Baby Boomer non believers why social media is relevant to them. And then I Stumbled Upon Erik Qualman's brilliantly executed video "Statistics Show Social Media Is Bigger Than You Think" which deftly answers the question "Is Social Media a Fad or the biggest shift since the Industrial Revolution?" using statistics.I have pared down Qualman's 37 stats to just 10 of the most compelling:1. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:Radio (38 Years)TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years) iPod (3 Years)Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 monthsiPhone…

• Web Secret #72: Backblaze

  iWebU

  21 Oct 2009 | 5:24 am

  Anytime a website can simultaneously entertain me, provide a useful service, and save me money, I am compelled to pay attention.Recently, I randomly landed on Backblaze.com, one of dozens of sites that offers online data backup. When Backblaze opens, the first thing that happens is that you are treated to a lifelike 5 second video of a young woman dousing a laptop with gasoline and then setting fire to it. That was so rewarding, I had to watch it a couple times before further exploring the site.Essentially, Backblaze offers:Online unlimited backup for only $5/month per computer for 50 years…

• Web Secret #71: Online Snark Attacks

  iWebU

  14 Oct 2009 | 5:04 am

  When I present on the use of social media for professional purposes, many participants seethe over the lack of accountability on the web. They ask:"Where is the law?" "Where are the guidelines?" "Where are the codes of ethics?"The quick answer is, (for the most part), nowhere - yet. Professional associations are in the beginning stages of crafting codes of ethics and practice guidelines that cover social media. MANY corporations don't even have a social media policy for their employees. And the law...well that's lagging about a decade (in my estimation) behind practice. The analogy would be…

• Web Secret #70 - Tiny Flash Drives

  iWebU

  7 Oct 2009 | 7:11 am

  Recently my friend Alex, the software genius, came over to dinner (and to fix one of our 8 computers - thank you Alex), took out his wallet, and slid out...What the heck is that?! It was the size and color of two pieces of grape chiclets (only MUCH thinner). In fact it was a brand new, penny thin, one inch long Verbatim TUFF 'N' TINY 8 GB USB Drive.Fellow gadget freaks, this thing is absolutely amazing. The TINY is one of the most compact, durable USB flash drives available. It is resistant to dust, water and static discharges, and compatible with all USB ports. The TINY comes with a key ring…

• 
  DollarShower.com

• Factors that determine your Blogging Success

  Ajith Prasad

  6 Nov 2009 | 9:50 am

  This might sound like grandma topic because you have heard it time and again from various sources. However, I am going compile the ingredients to your blogging success once more here – this time as a bullet list because that’s what I do whenever I am ill (been on leave for the whole week and hence not much online activities) I am grouping the key success factors under four categories – viz blogger, blog and reader related parameters plus external entities. I request you to add other factors as one or two word comments (for a change) here: Blogger related #1 Passion #2 Creativity…

• DoFollow Blogs List – (soft) launch

  Ajith Prasad

  3 Nov 2009 | 3:51 am

  In the past two years or so, I have been accumulating a list of dofollow blogs mainly with the link building interest in mind. However, due to pressure from my regular job and also from blogging, I wasn’t getting enough time to update this document on a regular basis nor use it effectively for commenting. Hence I thought of moving this list to a database based web application and the result is my new little project – The DoFollow Blogs List. In a nutshell this Do Follow list is a directory of blogs that follow. However, in the long term, I want to make it slightly different and more…

• Free backlinks via Product Offers or Services

  Ajith Prasad

  30 Oct 2009 | 4:31 am

  Link building is a never ending process as your site’s search competency has to be continuously maintained throughout its lifetime. While SEO experts are digging into more and more innovative (but expensive) ways to optimize websites for search visibility, there are quite a few cleaner and rather inexpensive ways by which you can build 1000s of backlinks to your website. Here in this post I am talking about the free services and products that you can offer in exchange of quality oneway backlinks to your website or blog. Some of these options provide one time benefits where as others can…

• Make Money from Referrals: How to sell more?

  Ajith Prasad

  25 Oct 2009 | 11:22 am

  The month of October has been exceptionally good for me in terms of blog earnings – thanks to the special offers on OIO Publisher, HostGator and Thesis Theme. Overall, it was a perfect month from other income channels as well which included Google AdSense, private ad sales and paid reviews. I even received a check from AdBrite in the form of referral income after a long gap. Since majority of my blog income comes from referrals, I thought of writing this post on how a blogger can promote certain products via various conventional as well as innovative advertisement channels in order to…

• Technorati’s New Ranking System

  Ajith Prasad

  22 Oct 2009 | 10:45 am

  Earlier this month Technorati changed the algorithm for calculating the rank and authority of its aggregated blogs. Technorati rank was always considered to be one of the yardsticks to assess a blog’s authority but the older system had a lot of drawbacks. This time, it looks like, they have got their act together. If you haven’t checked your technorati authority or rank recently, I suggest that you do it now. This blog’s new Technorati authority is 414 and the rank is 16154. Let me explain what these numbers mean to us. Technorati authority and rank Unlike the older algorithm, the new…

• 
  Technotip.ORG

• New “labs” feature for webmasters rescue – Google Webmaster tools

  Satish

  25 Oct 2009 | 5:03 am

  Google Webmaster tools has introduced new labs feature – Labs is a testing ground for experimental features that aren’t quite ready for primetime. They may change, break or disappear at any time. With the introduction of labs in Google webmaster tools, they have brought up 2 useful things: 1. Fetch as Googlebot 2. Malware details Fetch as Googlebot:The Fetch As Googlebot tool lets you see a page as Googlebot sees it. This is particularly interesting tool. We can analyze poor performance in search engines and we can take certain steps to improve.The cause for the poor performance…

• Promote Your Business/Blog/Service on Orkut: FREE!

  Satish

  2 Oct 2009 | 2:32 pm

  After status update, suggested friends, chat, SMS, widgets etc features, here comes one more important and most awaited feature orkut ‘promote’: a free tool to help you spread the news to all your orkut friends…and beyond! Now marketers, bloggers can invest their time in tweaking the ad copy to impress Orkut users, to drive traffic, leads and sales. When you first create a promotion, only your friends will be able to see it. Once they click on “promote it!”, their friends can see it.. and so on. To see the number of clicks, views, Promotions, Trashes, goto…

• AdSense for Mobile Content — for New high-end devices!

  Satish

  1 Oct 2009 | 11:09 am

  According to Google AdSense program policies publishers are allowed to place only one ad unit on any mobile webpage. Google added a new feature, according to which, you can choose to show adsense ads only to high-end devices(like iPhone)or to “All phones”. By default ads are set to show only on iPhone and other high-end devices. If you like to show ads for all devices, then you have to choose “All phones” option from the drop down menu. As always, we can show: “Text Only Ads”, “Image Only Ads”, or “Text and Image Ads(default)”.

• First Look at ProBlogger.com[munity]

  Satish

  1 Oct 2009 | 6:56 am

  Its been so long, Darren acquired ProBlogger.com and we have been expecting some thing very useful from him. Finally he has decided to start with a paid forum. I am sure, he will have plans to expand it, in the future. Many people may think that paid forum is not the way to go, considering some other good quality forums already available for free. But Darren, is paying for the moderation and he also want to make sure that, the forum is difficult place for spammers! If spammers want to create multiple accounts, then they obviously need to invest 1.95$ each month, per account So far my…

• Interview with Chris Brogan

  Satish

  28 Sep 2009 | 3:13 am

  Chrish Brogan’s blog is ranked by Technorati as one of the top 100 blogs in the world. Advertising Age’s Power 150 ranks him in the top 15. He has been blogging since 1998. He is also co-founder of PodCamp and part of many other online projects. He works with large and mid-sized companies to improve online business communications like marketing and PR through the use of social software, community platforms, and other emerging web and mobile technologies. Chris is co-author of the book Trust Agents, with Julien Smith, which was recently released. If you run a company/organization, then…

• 
  TheAnand

• Applications of Social Media

  Anand

  5 Nov 2009 | 2:02 am

  If you are still skeptic of Social Media, you need to do something about it! I am sold on the idea that Social Media is mainstream and there are probably a hundred reasons why I think so starting from Micheal Jackson and backwards. This video from YouTube tells you more about why Social Media is important. Social Media ia used by many in many different ways. Some use it for promoting their products, others use it to listen to their customers while others give away tips on using their products on the social media platforms. Here are a few ways I think you can use Social Media. 1. Listen…

• 5 SEO Friendly WordPress Themes

  Anand

  2 Nov 2009 | 6:30 pm

  I wonder why it never struck me to complie a list of SEO friendly wordpress themes on my blog as I am constantly searching for them myself! I usually have a select of 10-20 themes which I use on most of my niche websites mostly because I have heavily modified them myself or find them to be perfectly coded for Search Engines. This is my list of 10 Search engine friendly wordpress themes. 1. Green Park 2 - 2. PlainTxt - 3. A Dream to Host - 4. Dateless Sniper 1.0 5. Free web 2.0 Theme 5 SEO Friendly WordPress Themes Anand Subramanian, co-founder of ayruz web holdings is an Internet Marketing…

• Enhance your Vocabulary with WordZo

  Anand

  1 Nov 2009 | 1:30 am

  The first flagship product of ayuz – WordZo is now alive and kicking! If you are the type of person who can find bugs, use a alpha application and help contribute to the future of WordZo, do signup for a invite key! This month we plan to send out about 100 invite keys to select users. What exactly is WordZo? It was conceived by Kenney Jacob which aids in helping users to enhance their vocabulary. WordZo lets you find out meanings of words as you read it and it remembers the words you learnt and has a nifty way of making sure you learnt it well. At ayruz, this is one of the first…

• Quick Question: What do you want to see on TheAnand?

  Anand

  18 Oct 2009 | 12:27 am

  I have been a lazy blogger for most part of this year for some reason. While initially it was due to work and getting the basics up at ayruz, these days its more like a loss of purpose in blogging life. The traffic to this blog has been fairly stable at 40,000 pageviews a month and revenue from adsense being a little over 5$ a day making it the dream no-maintenance blog in my network. But at TheAnand, I do want to blog! Just that I am lost at about what to blog. As the traffic is stable, I cannot guess which type of posts interest you the regular readers of this blog. So, Quick Question! What…

• Bing and 301 Redirects – Moved Permanently Problems

  Anand

  30 Sep 2009 | 2:01 am

  Recently I was helping my friends at CSharks, the Indian Game Developers about their sites indexing issues in Bing. Initially I thought it was a flash site based indexing issues which Google had sometime back. Then we found out that BingBot has recently visited the homepage of the site, but failed to see through the redirect they had setup. Though I knew redirects was tricky, it never occurred it could confuse the BingBot too! To me, it looks like BingBot gets stuck at the page which throws a redirect error and cannot figure out a way to index the new page. But it seems it is an issue with…

• 
  Affiliate Blog Online

• 30 Great Twitter Tutorials and Useful Tips from Around the Web

  Paula

  6 Nov 2009 | 5:05 pm

  Twitter has definitely become the place to be for anyone wanting to create a presence on the web. So with this in mind, we have put together 30 links to great Twitter tutorials, useful tips, hints and tools from around the web. There are so many sites now that provide excellent information and advice for using Twitter effectively [...]

• How to Add BIG Social Bookmarking Icons to Your Wordpress Sidebar

  Paula

  4 Nov 2009 | 6:27 am

  You may have noticed on our sidebar that we have included some large social networking icons – one for Twitter, one for Facebook and one for our RSS feed. We had seen this done on quite a few blogs but always thought it was just part of their Wordpress theme. It was only when I [...]

• How to Monetize Your Blog with Advertising

  Paula

  2 Nov 2009 | 12:03 am

  For some reason, we have always been a bit reluctant to add advertisements to our blogs…and when I say ‘advertisements’ I mean the square 125×125 ads that you normally see in the sidebar of most blogs.  But since we have just recently signed up with Yaro Starak’s Blog Mastermind and as he recommends it, we thought it [...]

• Twitters LIST Feature – Is this the beginning of the end?

  Paula

  30 Oct 2009 | 3:55 am

  Today as I logged into Twitter I noticed an announcement at the very top of the screen introducing Twitters new LIST function. So I promptly clicked on the ‘Create New List’ option and proceeded to create my very first List. It wasn’t difficult and within about a minute or so I had a list of [...]

• We’ve Added the Comment Luv Plugin to Our Blog

  Paula

  27 Oct 2009 | 1:08 am

  Just recently, Wanda and I have been discussing our blogs and which ones we want to work on. We have over 20 blogs/websites and even with the two of us, it is way too many to work on at the one time. So we decided to concentrate on just a couple over the next few [...]

• 
  Maxxelli Blog

• Wuhan: Thanksgiving Party

  admin

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:39 pm

  Thanksgiving Party November 26th Blue Sky Café, Wuhan Contact Name en: Toure Name ch: 杜瑞 Address en: North-West Lake street No. 3-85, Wanhao International Building Adress ch: 西北湖街，万豪国际 3－85 号 Phone number: 027-85805777 Opening hours: 10:00A.M.-02:00A.M. Website: www.bluesky-café.com Related posts:Wuhan: Beaujolais PartyWuhan concert: PussWuhan restaurant: Blue skyChonqging: 3rd Annual Halloween PartyWuhan International Schools: Wuhan Yangtze International School

• Wuhan: Beaujolais Party

  admin

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:38 pm

  Beaujolais Party @ Blue Sky café, Wuhan Contact Name en: Toure Name ch: 杜瑞 Address en: North-West Lake street No. 3-85, Wanhao International Building Adress ch: 西北湖街，万豪国际 3－85 号 Phone number: 027-85805777 Opening hours: 10:00A.M.-02:00A.M. Website: www.bluesky-café.com Related posts:Wuhan: Thanksgiving PartyChonqging: 3rd Annual Halloween PartyChengdu Presents HR Summer Party 2009: Photos and VideosWuhan International Schools: Wuhan Yangtze International SchoolWuhan concert: Puss

• Wuhan concert: Puss

  admin

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:35 pm

  Beaujolais nouveau and French band PUSS @ Blue Sky bar, Wuhan 18th of November Organised with “Alliance Française” Contact Name en: Toure Name ch: 杜瑞 Address en: North-West Lake street No. 3-85, Wanhao International Building Adress ch: 西北湖街，万豪国际 3－85 号 Phone number: 027-85805777 Opening hours: 10:00A.M.-02:00A.M. Website: www.bluesky-café.com Contact Name en: Toure Name ch: 杜瑞 Address en: North-West Lake street No. 3-85, Wanhao International Building Adress ch: 西北湖街，万豪国际 3－85 号 Phone number: 027-85805777 Opening hours:…

• Chengdu Train Schedule

  elodie

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:07 pm

  Schedule for the train from Chengdu to… Chongqing, Dazhou, Wuhan, Suzhou/Wuxi, Hangzhou. Chengdu-Chongqing Useful words : Chengdu train station : 成都火车站 Chongqing North train station : 重庆火车北站 Direct (or 1 stop only) : Chengdu to Chongqing Train trips Chengdu (Departure Time) Suining (Transfer Station) Chongqing (Arrival Time) D5102/1 08:00 8:57 / 9:05 10:10 D5104/3 10:48 12:47 D5106/5 11:32 13:31 D5108/7 13:30 15:29 D5110/9 15:56 17:55 D5112/1 16:48 18:56 D5114/3 19:54 21:53 Chongqing to Chengdu Train trips Chongqing (Departure Time) Suining (Transfer Station)…

• Wuhan: Wine&Dine

  admin

  5 Nov 2009 | 11:06 pm

  A great evening Wine & Dine at the Shangri-La Wuhan in conjunction with the opening ceremony and tasting of this years’ first Beaujolais Village Nouveau. On Thursday November 19th, our team of experienced Chefs will cook up a fantastic East/West fusion menu with global wines paired to match. The evening shall begin with a cocktail and canapes, then the openings ceremony and tasting of the first Beaujolais Village Nouveau of the season, followed by a delicious multi-course dinner with a selection of different wines and cheese to finish. Coffee & tea with home made petit fours…

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  Internet Marketing Industry

• 10 Ways to Increase Pageviews

  Ruben Ricart

  20 Oct 2009 | 3:45 pm

  With Google Adsense or Yahoo Publisher, having people click onto more pages helps your revenue immensely, but how do you get them to read more than one page when they visit your website? Here are a few tips. 1. Create pages within the blog that contain reference material you refer to often in your posts. These static pages will also get crawled and indexed by the search engines and as you write posts about your topics you can refer people to these static pages as reference...

• 13 Steps to Success in Blogging

  Ruben Ricart

  19 Oct 2009 | 6:48 am

  Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.

• 50 Benefits of Joint Ventures Marketing

  Ruben Ricart

  12 Oct 2009 | 8:21 am

  When most people think of Joint Venture Marketing, what comes to mind is usually basic information that's not particularly interesting or beneficial. But there's a lot more to Joint Venture Marketing than just the basics.

• 
  Pajama Professional

• Excellent Domain Registration Service

  Sara Ch.

  5 Nov 2009 | 6:57 am

  I own upwards of 30 domains. I have switched domain registrars several times over the years, but have finally settled on 1&1 Domain Name Registration. I’m not going to make this a long post, but I just wanted to share this great service with you. Since I already have a hosting account, I don’t host with 1&1, but their domain registration service is fast, inexpensive and they offer free private registration. This is relatively rare for a domain registrar. Generally registrars take advantage of any extra fees they can charge. It is also extremely easy to complete a DNS…

• Trust your Money with Netspend

  Sara Ch.

  2 Nov 2009 | 9:29 am

  I have written about Netspend before but after trusting them with my money for almost two years now I want to give you an update. I still love this service. This won’t be a long article, but I’m going to outline my five favorite things about using Netspend. Number Five: Referrals Each time you refer a new user to Netspend, you get $5 in your account and so do they. It’s not much, but a fun little promotional touch – especially for those who still don’t quite trust their money on the internet. Number Four: Choice of Fee Plans No, you don’t have to pay money…

• Wasps create Caterpillar Zombies

  Sara Ch.

  13 Oct 2009 | 6:45 am

  I’ve been hanging out with my favorite 13-year-old this weekend and it seems that much of our conversation has centered around zombies. We recently saw Zombieland (awesome!) and tonight we watched Day of the Dead (awesome -r!). Then he told me that his friend told him about zombie caterpillars that were being created by wasps. We were both skeptical, but Google quickly gave us this: Pretty creepy, huh? I know it really has nothing to do with internet marketing, but I thought that perhaps I could put a spin on it to make it fit. Then I decided that it didn’t matter if the video was…

• 27 Excellent Google Analytics Articles

  Sara Ch.

  31 Aug 2009 | 7:04 am

  photo credit: jontintinjordan It’s not as if I didn’t know that Google Analytics was a super-powerful service. However, up to this point, I’ve really only used the surface features. As I’m not an expert myself, I knew I couldn’t write an in-depth article myself so I decided to do a bunch of research. Instead of consolidating what I learned in one article that just touches a few bases, I have instead linked to some of the best articles I have read during my research. The following list includes 27 excellent articles (and a few videos) about Google Analytics. I…

• Happy Birthday, Keri!

  Sara Ch.

  27 Aug 2009 | 7:00 am

  Keri, Happy birthday to my bestest friend ever! I know we will be belatedly celebrating your birthday once your life is a bit less exciting, so I’ll wait on your gifts. However, I figured the least I could do was dedicate today’s blog post to you. I love you very much and I hope you have the best birthday ever! Haiku Quartet for Keri You are my bestie. Can’t remember life before I could call on you. Ready with a smile, You mean the world to many And make life more fun. You have a full life, But you still find time for me. Can’t thank you enough. I hope you get all The…

• 
  BlogrPro

• How to create a Comment Subscription Manager in your WordPress blog?

  Karthikeyan

  6 Nov 2009 | 3:32 am

  Do you love this blog’s comment subscription manager? My blogger friend Klaus love it and asked me about the steps to create as like as for his WordPress blog too. Here is the detailed procedure on creating a Comment Subscription Manager in your WordPress blog. Requirements You need A WordPress blog Subscribe To Comments plugin for WordPress. How to Install and activate the Subscribe To Comments plugin in your WordPress blog. Go to Settings -> Subscribe To Comments in your WordPress Dashboard. Set the value for “From” name for notifications column. Example:…

• What’s new in BlogrPro?

  Karthikeyan

  3 Nov 2009 | 1:34 am

  Well. I am glad to see you back after a 10 days break. During these 10 days, I got some great response for this blog and that shows in our Page Rank too. Yes! BlogrPro got a PR 3 from PR 0 which is one of the good news to share with you. But I am really surprised as my twitter profile got a PR 4. Alexa rank of this blog too goes well and there are some more achievements which I will share with you when appropriate time comes. I am going to announce the contest winner in this week and I wish all the participants for a good luck. Meanwhile, I really have disappointed you all by not releasing…

• How to get back your articles if you lose them?

  Karthikeyan

  24 Oct 2009 | 1:07 am

  Last week, one of blogger friend pinged me and told that he is facing some problems with his WordPress self hosted blog. We have tried to recover his blog and came to know that his blog is under the attack of some hackers. Meanwhile, the problem actually started in his WordPress MySQL database. Yes! He lost the data and hence he don’t have any of his blog posts. I have advised him to move to a good hosting provider for security reasons and he did that. But what about those deleted posts/articles? Of course, we have the solution. Loss The loss of those articles will lead his blog to a…

• Exclusive Interview with Andy Bailey – The man behind CommentLuv

  Karthikeyan

  20 Oct 2009 | 6:55 am

  No one will say that I don’t know CommentLuv – A WordPress plugin, if they know about WordPress. CommentLuv is one of the most popular WordPress plugin and is used in more than 150,000+ blogs right now. The man behind the development of CommentLuv is Andy Bailey and here he shares his experiences with us in an exclusive interview. Interview Tell about yourself.- I’m a hobby coder, I write plugins and applications to pass the time that ‘normal’ people use for watching tv, going to the pub or playing sports (because I don’t watch tv, drink alcohol or play…

• BlogrPro Gets a Design Makeover

  Karthikeyan

  17 Oct 2009 | 9:07 am

  That’s for you only. Yes, the new BlogrPro theme has finally arrived. We already have mentioned that we will start releasing our sLight WordPress theme to you all and it will be released within 5 days. I recently had a chat with my blogger friends and they just told that BlogrPro is looking very fast and very simple. I am very much disappointed with the fact that the theme is very simple. Yes, I love designing sites with much elegance and icons. Hence, I took 2 days time to launch the new theme perfectly on Diwali celebrations. But as I told you earlier, I will never compromise with the…

• 
  JaypeeOnline // Blogging News & Reviews

• WordPress Warriors Worldwide

  Jaypee Habaradas

  4 Nov 2009 | 6:34 pm

  Wouldn’t it be cool to find out how many WordPress fans, users, bloggers, developers or core developers come from your area or country? With WordPress World Map, you can do just that. WordPress World Map is a Google Maps powered map with a draggable window that lets WordPress users pin their location. To sign up, you can either use the site’s own registration form or you can choose to sign in using Twitter (you’ll need to allow the site/app access to Twitter). If you sign up/in with Twitter you can follow other users using a Twitter follow icon. Aside from displaying the…

• HowTo: Fix Vicrypt Error

  Jaypee Habaradas

  4 Nov 2009 | 10:04 am

  Symantec, the largest maker of security software is reporting about a new type of trojan horse named Trojan.Ramvicrype. This trojan uses the RC4 algorithm to encrypt files on infected computers and renders them unusable. The Trojan.Ramvicrype, like most other trojans are usually transmitted from porn and warez sites. A sure sign that your computer is infected by this trojan is the presence of files that have .vicrypt extensions. Once your computer is infected, Trojan.Ramvicrype will search for files under My Documents, Desktop and Application Data\Identities and renames them with a .vicrypt…

• Weekend Roundup #59

  Jaypee Habaradas

  1 Nov 2009 | 7:01 pm

  How’s everyone doing today? How was your weekend and how did you celebrate Halloween? Did you guys go out trick or treating? Hehe My weekend was pretty good and I got to spend time with my family and friends. I also got to play several games of basketball early this morning so I feel good. I was also busy checking and validating entries for my Thanksgiving Giveaway. If you haven’t joined or haven’t read about it yet, I encourage you to do so. There are so many cool prizes at stake and who knows, you just might be one of the winners. Anyways, here’s this weeks edition…

• $1,500 Thanksgiving Giveaway

  Jaypee Habaradas

  30 Oct 2009 | 2:40 pm

  A couple more days and its gonna be November and here in the US, we’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving (every 3rd Thursday of November). Thanksgiving is one of my most favorite holidays and I always look forward to it because its one of the times in the year where I get to spend time with family and friends and at the same time eat good food. Thanksgiving is the time to give thanks and express gratitude so in celebration of this special occassion, I’m giving away $1,500 worth of cash, premium WordPress themes and web hosting. This is my way of expressing my gratitude for all the…

• WordPress 2.9 Batch Plugin Upgrade

  Jaypee Habaradas

  30 Oct 2009 | 1:39 pm

  Last week, I blogged about the coming WordPress 2.9 features that included post thumbnails, trash status, basic image editing, comment metadata, etc. I found out yesterday from WP Engineer that there’s another feature that will be added to WordPress 2.9 which is batch plugin upgrades. The next version of WordPress will give the users the option and ability to upgrade/update all of your plugins that have available updates at all the same time. Here’s a screenshot of the batch plugin upgrade. Batch Plugin Update Beta This new feature will make it easier for blog owners to maintain…

• 
  JD Affiliate Marketing Ezine

• FTC Disclosure: Are you a blog owner?

  Jorge_D

  1 Nov 2009 | 2:16 pm

  Hi readers, I just added the required FTC Disclosure to my blog…you can read it here Remember that your blog must have a disclosure before December 2009…So, the question is … have you added your own disclosure to your blog? Here is a blog with a lot of information about this subject…click here Talk soon, Share and Enjoy: Tweet This Post 

• Xmas profits avalanche

  Jorge_D

  31 Oct 2009 | 9:18 am

  Hi Readers, Did you see my last post about the $360 Billion Xmas shopping frenzy heading our way? And why I dropped everything to get a slice of the cake? The commotion is all about this: = = >> http://www.optinwizard.net/ChristmasMoney.html HOLY SMOKE! The response from that last email was astonishing with well over half the places taken and no respite. Remember people are buying Christmas gifts online NOW. They have their mastercards and visa’s in their hand and the pressure on them to BUY and have the whole gift process “over with” is immense. In short this is a…

• Americans to spend $360 billion – Christmas Gifts

  Jorge_D

  27 Oct 2009 | 8:01 pm

  Hi readers, Do you want to know why I just DROPPED EVERYTHING for this Xmas package? = = >>http://www.optinwizard.net/ChristmasMoney.html Over $360 Billion is about to be spent on Christmas. A once a year opportunity for your wallet to get fat. - You’ll be tapping into the $360 billion spent online THIS Xmas (wanna piece?) - You’ll be on the payroll of hungry deadline-conscious buyers - You’ll ride the wave of this insane, guaranteed buying frenzy - The earlier you get started the more you’ll make = = >> http://www.optinwizard.net/ChristmasMoney.html…

• So Many Affiliate Programs! Which One Do I Choose?

  Jorge_D

  25 Oct 2009 | 5:37 pm

  Hi readers, Let’s pick an affiliate program ok? Please read… Ask questions first before you join an affiliate program. Do a little research about the choices of program that you intend to join into. Get some answers because they will be the deciding point of what you will be achieving later on. Will it cost you anything to join? Most affiliate programs being offered today are absolutely free of charge. So why settle for those that charge you some dollars before joining. When do they issue the commission checks? Every program is different. Some issue their checks once a month,…

• 7 dumb Mistakes We Affiliate Marketers Make

  Jorge_D

  18 Oct 2009 | 2:31 pm

  Hi readers, Do you make these mistakes? Post comment below after your read this post… Affiliate marketers are also human beings. They are also liable to committing some stupid mistakes once in a while… Here are the 7 most stupidly common mistakes that affiliate marketers make. Together with these mistakes are the lessons learned. 1. Instead of meeting people face to face, they spend way too much time on the computer. Networking online is great. However, it can never take the place of meeting face-to-face or having a conversation over the phone. Sending emails are easy, but you should…

• 
  Anton Amoto

• Retweet this! A How To Tricks on Installing a TweetMeme Button to your Blog

  Anton Amoto

  1 Nov 2009 | 1:22 pm

  I have installed the TweetMeme button for my blog recently. This Wordpress Plugin will let your visitors to easily re-tweet your web pages, blog, and article pages. In this post, I’ll show you how to install a re-tweet button in just few minutes. Begin visiting the plugin selection here. There you can find selection for Web Button, Email, RSS Button, and Wordpress Plugin button. Click on Plugin, then you will be redirected to Plugins page where it will give you choices of what platform you are using. In my case, of course I used Wordpress. You can now download from the Wordpress Plugin…

• Who Says You Can’t Make Money Online?

  Anton Amoto

  24 Oct 2009 | 6:14 pm

  One of the most common questions that people ask me about is How Do I Make Money Online? Then I answered, just simply visit my site and select a post to read of your choice. That’s it, you did know now how do I make money online. However, I’m pretty sure that my answer was not enough especially to all internet beginners who want to know deeply about doing business online. So here we go, I would like to give you a brief summary of how do I get started to earn some cash online. Plan Your Business. In any aspect of our lives everything should be planned so that we should all know where we…

• How to Make Money Online with Affiliate Programs

  Dave Cooper

  20 Oct 2009 | 5:35 am

  Making money with affiliate programs isn’t rocket science. You don’t need a marketing degree or a college degree to do it. In fact, affiliate programs are an excellent way to make money online and it can be easy to do if you go in knowing some key points. First, to make money with an affiliate program, you need to understand how they work. An affiliate program works by signing up people to represent certain products or services and then paying those people a commission to sell the company’s product or service. This is a great way for companies to expand their sales force and…

• Make Money Blogging Using These Nine Powerful Strategies

  Hong Brandon

  20 Oct 2009 | 4:18 am

  The question “How to make money blogging” sits high on every blogger’s mind. In fact I received many questions on “How to make money blogging” when I conducted my first webcast to answer my subscribers’ most pressing questions on Blogs and Rss. You can make money Blogging in a number of ways, and in this article I share with you up to nine strategies in which you can make money blogging. 1. Make Money Blogging by Selling Advertising Space Before the advent of Blogs, we have e-zines and selling advertising space on ezines was a popular way to earn extra…

• How to Become a Smart Blogger?

  Anton Amoto

  19 Oct 2009 | 5:31 am

  I’ve just read the 27 Blogging Secrets of Chris Brogan and I like the plugin and widget that he used. In this post, I’d like you to know more about the extended functions of Zemanta for your blogging platform. Image by Peter ?uhalev via Flickr Zemanta is a tool that looks over your shoulder while you blog and gives you tips and advice, suggests related content and pictures and makes sure your posts get promoted as they deserve to be. It allows you to blogging made easy. It allows you to: Link, Embed, Remix like a Pro Easily Design the Post They Care also of Copyright Zemanta is an…

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  Blogger Templates by Deluxe Templates

• Techified

  Klodian

  6 Nov 2009 | 4:55 am

  Techified is a new tech Blogger template, designed first in wordpress by cheon.info, I converted in Blogger this template.Features: 3 columns, right sidebars, tech, professional, top menu, simple, search box.

• Cinderella and Carriage

  Klodian

  2 Nov 2009 | 5:29 am

  Cinderella and Carriage is an artistic Blogger template, suggested to girly blogs. Designed by ezwpthemes.com, and converted in Blogger by me.Features: 2 columns, right sidebar, vectors, grunge, femine, RSS icons, search box.

• Motion Style

  Klodian

  1 Nov 2009 | 11:15 am

  Motion Style is a professional Blogger template, designed by my friend Newwpthemes.com, I converted this template for Blogger.Features: 2 columns, left sidebar, minimal, dark, tech, top menu, search box, twitter.

• Movie Theater

  Klodian

  1 Nov 2009 | 1:49 am

  Movie Theater is an neat Blogger template for movie, cinema related blogs. Designed in wordpress by ezwpthemes.com, I did this template for Blogger.Features: 2 columns, right sidebar, movie, cinema, vectors, top menu, RSS feed, search box.

• Interior View

  Klodian

  31 Oct 2009 | 4:59 am

  Interior View is a Blogger template for family related blogs, designed in worpdress by talented ezwpthemes.com, I converted this template for Blogger.Features: 2 columns, right sidebar, artistic, vectors, colors, room, family, personal.

• 
  Nuwomb Creative

• Photography Business Card Series: 23 Photography Business Cards You Should Check Out

  Scott Webb

  5 Nov 2009 | 7:10 pm

  Whether you run a photography business or a simple photoblog website, it’s important to have a card to give out to people. We’ve all had People often stop to talk us while out shooting, or people atleast show interest in what you’re out doing. This is when it helps to have something on you to pass on to them. In a sense, it’s saying that you are there for a reason and you’re not trying to cause trouble. I often dream of getting into abandoned buildings and if someone, say a security guard, were to find you doing your work, they might be more understanding if you…

• Put Your Wallet Away – Free Photography For Your Blog

  Scott Webb

  29 Oct 2009 | 4:54 pm

  One of the simplest ways to improve your blog is with the the use of photography.  Adding relevant images to the content can seriously interest readers.  I’ve used a free photo of a wallet from Bigstockphoto to grab attention. The wallet is a concept in the sense that it can be put away because I’ll show you where to go if you want to find free images to use in blog posts. Flickr Search Everyone, well hopefully everyone, knows about Flickr and using images with the Creative Commons Licensing.  Using the advanced search option, you can specifically ask to only be shown…

• How Well are You Connected to Photography?

  Scott Webb

  28 Oct 2009 | 7:37 pm

  Most of the time we discuss making a connection with our subjects or clients. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking recently about the term connection. Making a connection with subjects and clients is truly important for our photography, but what else connects you to photography? Owning a camera, digital or film, connects you to photography in one small but important way.  It’s just a small part to in the grand scheme of the photography industry. Moreover, the greater the connection, the greater the influence on your images.   It all catches up and allows you to grow.  It’s…

• Hot Wordpress Themes Released Recently For Photography

  Scott Webb

  22 Oct 2009 | 11:20 pm

  If you’re a photographer, or involved in any type of creative field, you need to be online. You need to be building your online presence. You may run into people in the future that might not even do business with you if you do not have a web presence.  Lucky for you, and me, there have been some fucking amazing wordpress themes to have come out in the last few months.  These themes are pretty new, fresh and will seriously show off you photography portfolio, illustrations, logo/design work, or even just a personal photoblog.  If you’re building a photography business, I’d…

• Two Essential Attributes for Any Photography Business Startup

  Scott Webb

  19 Oct 2009 | 6:34 pm

  Patience is Building Brand Equity We tend to desire instant gratification.  This is when it gets tough for everyone as things are not happening quick enough.  If you’re anything like me, you probably looked at other photographers, or online successes and feel as if they were instantly popular and successful.  In reality, they’ve been working hard for years and hustled while you were sleeping to get to where they are now. Think of patience as building your brand equity. Everything you do is building your personal brand from the ground up. This patience, is about the long term…

• 
  The SEO Company | F.M.S

• In The Pursuit Of “Perfectionism”!

  You may remember I recently wrote an article, writing email marketing messages that suck. Well, this article got the attention of Marketing Profs and was kindly picked up and featured on their site;... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• This Is Like Google Analytics On Steroids!

  Today I want to share with you one of my favourite web analytic packages, Clicky Web Analytics. There are two types of people that this web analytics package is especially useful for, newbies and... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• More Important Than TweetGlide! Even Better Than Twitter’s Micro Blog!

  You are probably wondering what could possibly be 'more important than TweetGlide,' the so called TweetDeck killer by Mike Filsaime? Twitter, everybody loves Twitter, so what on Earth could be 'even... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Create A New Audio Product Every Single Month In Just A Few Clicks!

  [caption id="attachment_1985" align="alignleft" width="270" caption="Monthly Products"][/caption] Everyone knows that one of the best ways to make money online is to have your very own digital... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• Who Wants To Know My Secret Voodoo Blogging Methods?

  I have a confession to make, my secret voodoo blogging methods aren't going to send you unstoppable floods of traffic and make you rich, but they will give you a better blog. If you are looking for a... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 
  Blogussion

• Wired Weekend #2: The Best Blogging Tips From Around the Web

  Alex

  5 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  Another Friday calls for our second installment of our awesome Wired Weekend series where we bring you our favorite blogging tips from around the web. The thing that makes this series so great (besides how useful these links are) is that we select articles from our community and feature them in the post. We collect our favorite articles from your web/blogging blog and post them here. All you need to do is participate in our community throughout the week for us to notice your blog, and if we like your stuff – consider it added to our Wired Weekend series. Notable Mentions of Blogussion…

• How to Setup a “Favorite Posts” Section to Bring Old Posts Back to Life

  Alex

  4 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  One very well received new feature of our new design here was the “Favorites” section that I setup in our sidebar. Basically, it is a part of our blog where we selected our favorite articles that were no longer in plain view for our readers and made them more easily accessible. Before I redesigned Blogussion, I wrote a little about this idea of creating a favorite post section in my article with tips on how to drive traffic to old posts. Some people really liked the idea, and I loved the idea myself – so I implemented it here. I really think this is just an amazing way to…

• The Best User is the Biggest Winner

  Seth

  4 Nov 2009 | 4:45 am

  Blog owners get a lot from having an active community.  For some bloggers they pay the bills from the purchases and clicks of their readers.  So of course blog owners try to build a blog with an active community they can build trust on. What might be surprising is the users who are the most active can often gain more from their efforts then the blog owners. An Example To explain this I am going to use Blogussion’s User of the Week from our last newsletter, Rob Rammuny.  Now if you did not get our newsletter you are really missing out because we share some very valuable tips. Last…

• How Bloggers can Prepare for the Future of Journalism

  Everett Bogue

  2 Nov 2009 | 9:00 pm

  Everett Bogue writes about the developing media world at The Future of Journalism. Follow him on Twitter. Want to write for us too? The media world is changing, in this month alone writers and readers everywhere watched helplessly as magazine giant Conde Nast folded four magazines (including the food favorite Gourmet) in one week and laid off over 500 people. The New York Times announced this month that they’d have to cut back 100 newsroom jobs. It’s becoming readily apparent that aspiring journalists aren’t going to be able to take the tried and true road to journalistic…

• Five Points to a Successful Blogging Event

  Seth

  2 Nov 2009 | 4:08 am

  Today, Arie Rich of KMPBLOG.com teaches us how to successfully plan and carry out a blogging event. You can catch Arie on Twitter at @ArieRich. Want to write for us too? Read here for more details. Blog promotion can be very tedious and time-consuming at times, and the worst is getting discouraged because of lack of results. Before I begin, I would like to thank Seth for the opportunity to write this guest post, and for his informative post on Blog Promotion: 169 Ways to Build Traffic Like a Ninja. Earlier this summer I thought of a way not only to increase traffic, but to also network with…

• 
  LinkMoney dot org

• I Want to Increase My Alexa Ranking

  admin

  30 Oct 2009 | 11:01 am

  Alexa is owned by Amazon and they use a rating system that estimates all website traffic.  When a site is brand spanking new it starts out with an Alexa rank of several million.  In this ranking system the smaller the number that your website receives is better. Your site will not start to show up in the Alexa charts until your site is in the top 100,000.  To tell the truth I never worried much about it and I never have worried much about the Google Page Rank score either.  In GPR your site is rated as a number from 0 to 9, or possibly 10 not sure about that. Now lately I have had two…

• Is Google Sniper The Real Deal?

  admin

  25 Oct 2009 | 4:55 am

  I asked myself the obvious, “Is Google Sniper the real deal”?  If you are in the Internet Marketing business and trying to find the best ways to make some money online then you have no doubt tried many different systems.  Some work really well, some are just plain old duds. So with full disclosure: There are affiliate advertisements for this product on this website. But in this case I am going to give you my own impressions and opinion of this product, Google Sniper.  I am not being paid by George Brown or any other person or company to tell you this.  I will however earn a commission…

• Do You Flog for Links?

  admin

  5 Oct 2009 | 12:14 pm

  Here’s the way I see it. We all Blog, right? Well do you Flog for links? You’ve heard it all before, write good content and other authority sites will link to you. Bull shit! In your dreams they will. The following procedures are of course nothing that I would do but you might like to know about the possibility of Flogging. Some Bloggers set up multiple Blogs in every niche market that they intend to Blog in. Then after you have written several good posts on your primary niche marketing Blog, you can then start posting articles in the secondary Blogs, or as I like to call them Flogs, and…

• Rich Hill Interviewed on 3rd Party Blogging and Blogging Make Money

  admin

  17 Sep 2009 | 8:22 am

  I had the honor of being asked to do an audio interview about my experience with Internet marketing and Blogging by fellow BlogSuccess member, Beat Schindler. So we did it last night over the telephone and Skype and Beat put the file up on his Blog this morning.  Beat is quite the interviewer and he drew out history and background and some personal information that you might find of interest. I also gave some good tips on how to get started Blogging and gave some of the Blogging Make Money ideas that have worked for me, and was also allowed to talk about my favorite business venture, 3rd…

• The Power of Using Twitter Advanced Search

  admin

  15 Sep 2009 | 3:59 am

  sub title: ” Kill the Competition on Twitter! “ Twitter will no doubt be using search in their master money plan.  You should too!  Here at Linkmoney our following and follower base has been growing immensely using this and other methods. I have been using a method to use Twitter Search to narrow down some excellent tweeple to follow with a little used method that Twitter gives you for free! Note when you log in to Twitter you will see a great big search box, which is why I say that they will be monetizing soon with search ads.  The method that you will want to use is not with…

• 
  LionSlinger.com

• The counsel of death

  Let me share some thoughts that will make you reconsider your view of death. I guess you may find this awkward yet I believe we must confront this fact of life early on—NOT when we are old and “ready.” Death is the most feared reality of our existence; BUT it is ...

• Illusions we hold dear

  So, you think you’re grown up and circumspect enough to fall for childish illusions? Think again. If children have fairly tales to which they conjure a make-believe world, we grownups have ours; but there’s a big difference, we generate a reality from it. The more we advance in age the ...

• Self mastery: the feared path

  While many perceive this aspect about oneself unimportant, a lot have suffered due to their lack of understanding about the inner workings of their true self. We are the definitions of our past and everything that we perceived are but its repetition. Stubbornly, we refuse to give up our old ...

• Pitfalls of instant gratification

  Gratification (delayed or instant) is one of the most important determinants of our lot in life. For most of us, instant gratification is the preferred choice. We might as well have our share of the cake than to wait in anticipation. Consequently, this seemingly simple I-want-it-now attitude has influenced some ...

• Crippling habits people embrace

  Majority of people living in this world have been thriving in sordid conditions; and I have always been puzzled by this strange phenomenon. Having superior brain and the authority over all things I can’t seem to understand why few are making a dignified existence in this life. Was it ignorance, ...