Analyze and Enhance Your Facebook Experience with Wisdom

If you’re still active on your Facebook account and looking for a great way to stay on top of things with your friends, you’ll love Wisdom. Just like the name implies, the app gives you in-depth “wisdom” about yourself and your friends. It’s kind of like an analytics tool for your Facebook account because you get to see statistics and insights that you won’t find anywhere else. Also it lets you sort through all of the junk (like game notifications, videos, images, etc) and get to what is really important – the actual things that your friends are saying via status updates.

So if you want to know more about what your friends are saying and what they’re interested in, try out Wisdom!

The feed is where you can see all status updates at a glance and then filter them by popularity and type (based on what they’re referring to). This way you can see what kind of mood people are in, who’s in love, what’s going on with the health of your friends, who’s traveling, and more! You can also see the date posted, number of comments, and number of likes. Each status will have a corresponding icon such as a star (as pictured above), smiley face, heart, briefcase, etc – based on the topic.

Unfortunately, I was unable to really experience the rest of the app since it takes 24 hours to complete the reports needed for these areas. However, I can give a general idea of what each section is for.

Image Source: http://wisdom.com/what-is-wisdom/

This section gives you a great overview of who you’re friends with on Facebook. Wisdom gives you a list of all of your friends along with their last status updates. This gives you a chance to quickly see what each of your friends is up to. You can also filter this section by age, gender, relationship status, and location. Lastly, each friend will have a rating based on their Facebook activity, popularity, communication, influence, and cheer.

If you’re interested in what others are saying to your friends, then you’ll love this section. You can basically see everything that your friends are chatting about with others from a single location (it’s almost like spying). “That is, everything except repetitive ‘happy birthday’ posts.”

Image Source: http://wisdom.com/what-is-wisdom/

Wisdom uses your friends’ “likes” to show you the most popular and trending interests across sports, entertainment, and nightlife. So you can see things like what artists your friends like the most, the best places to hangout, the most popular movies among your friends, etc.

Here you’ll be able to see the most popular check-in locations and the top cities and hometowns among your friends. You’ll also get demographic information for each place listed.

Image Source: http://wisdom.com/what-is-wisdom/

As expected, you can see all of the events that your friends are attending and see how many others will be there too. Wisdom will also recommend events to you based on the number of friends attending.

Finally, we have the about me section will will, of course, show you information about yourself and track your communications across Facebook.

Wisdom is currently available via Facebook.com as well as an iOS app available for both the iPhone/iPod Touch and the iPad. The only downside is that you have to wait 24 hours to see any other section besides the news feed. From the description and screenshots on the Wisdom website, it definitely looks promising; so let’s hope that those sections do not disappoint once they are available.

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An Interesting Way Of Losing Subscribers

In order to find the latest and great themes and plugins for my blog WordPress Mods, I spend a lot of time reading announcements from theme and plugin developers.

Whilst reading a review of a plugin today I saw a comment from someone promoting their own website called WP Power Plugins. Whenever I find a new plugin developers website I check out all of their plugins to see if any are worth testing and reviewing on my blog. Unfortunately, the blog owner made it difficult to do so.

For some reason the blog owner has placed a box that requests a vote via Facebook or Twitter before you can proceed. It doesn’t work like the newsletter pop ups you see on many blogs, which can be closed easily by clicking away from the ad. Instead, the blog owner has stopped everyone from viewing their website unless they register a vote via Facebook or Twitter.

This has to be one of the stupidest thing I have ever see a blog owner do. It’s obtrusive, counter productive and will drive away existing and potential subscribers. All bloggers strive for more subscribers and social media votes however there is a right way and wrong way of doing things. We need to encourage visitors to subscribe to your blog or Facebook page; we shouldn’t force them.

Remember, don’t take your readers for granted. Even the most loyal readers will unsubscribe and stop visiting your blog if you start frustrating them by forcing them to increase social media votes.

Have you come across any other techniques like this from a blogger?

Kevin

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Bring New Readers To Your Blog By Comment Posting in Early Days

The adage of “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t always hold up online. Though great content is a necessity for any blog that wants to succeed, it simply isn’t enough by itself.

However, getting new readers to your site can feel like an exercise in frustration. To get a lot of targeted visitors, you need to have a good search engine presence. To get that, you need to have a lot of inbound links. That, in turn, requires a lot of people come by your site and like it enough to link to it.

This can make starting a blog feel hopeless, as if there is no way to get it off the ground.

But there is one technique that is often-overlooked, blog commenting, as it can be a simple, powerful way to attract targeted readers to your site and slowly build up your link presence. This, in the long run, can help you drive organic traffic to your site and cause your readership to start snowballing.

Best of all, it’s very simple to do and only requires a few minutes out of your day to make it work.

Use Twitter blog search tools to find people who are talking about topics related to your blog. Though the content doesn’t have to be “new” to be worth commenting on, new posts are usually better to target as comments on such posts are more likely to be read, both by the site’s owner and by its readers.

A good topic is one where anyone who is interested in reading that post will likely enjoy your site as well. Either something related to your topic or something you have different information on usually works best.

What isn’t very important is the traffic of the site. Though higher traffic is better, it might actually work against you, causing your comment to get lost. Sometimes a well-timed comment on a smaller site is much better than a lone comment in a swarm on a larger one.

Once you post a comment, keep track of it. If people are interested in what you have to say and begin to reply to your comment, engage with them and keep the conversation going. The only thing better than one good comment is several more good comments.

Best of all, the people you meet this way often become your first fans and a foundation that you can build the rest of your site’s traffic on.

In the end, when you first start out a site, especially if you don’t have a popular platform to launch it from, you will need to work hard for your first view visitors, often times working for hours just to get a small handful of people to come by.

However, all of that clawing to move the hit counter pays off in the long run as you develop a loyal reader base that eventually helps spread the word for you and helps you build search engine trust.

Posting blog comments is a great way to get to that point.

This guest post is written by Lior Levin, a marketing consultant for a psd to html service company which provides psd to html formatting conversions.  Lior also consults for the international MA in political science department at the Tel Aviv University.

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Google might have place in a Yahoo takeover bid, Syria cracking down with US technology

Worried about monopolies? Here’s one of the bigger ones in the making that you might want to mull over a bit. A recent report in the Wall Street Journal is saying that Google might have a part to play in an emerging takeover bid for Yahoo.

Still, it’s important to keep in mind that sources were not named although the report is pretty specific about the facts that at least two companies have talked with Google about getting some assistance in buying the beleaguered Yahoo. This all comes on the heels of reports that Yahoo will in fact sell that have also driven the stock prices up. All the usual signs that something is lurking on the horizon with the company.

Here’s some more news about repression and how it all works in spite of the fact that the Internet is changing the way dictators inevitably lose their power and die. New reports are saying that Syria is using American software to censor the Internet. At the center of the storm is California’s Blue Coat Systems since at least some of their technology is being used to crack down on the dissidents in Syria that have been protesting against President Bashar al-Assad for months now. The American company is denying any allegations they sold to the Syrians willingly, but there are experts from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in London that are saying many firms don’t always ask the right questions to avoid persecution for selling to places like Syria.

In other news, The Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs is saying that broadcasters that want to get information into countries that restrict access to the Internet need to tailor their approaches to each individual location. The recent study suggests that just having a wider all inclusive web isn’t necessarily the answer since each repressive regime often has a different way of suppressing information. The study looked at two years of BBC information and how it was censored by the Chinese and Iranian authorities.

We all need to keep an eye on the big names in censorship like the ones mentioned above and even the more sly wolves in sheep’s clothing like the Russian Interior Minister who has proposed a limit on the Internet. Dmitry Medvedev says he only wants to find ways to preserve the Russian culture and protect it from illegal activities like child porn, but there are fears that supporters of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are looking for more strict control like the one that the Chinese impose. Does anyone remember the Cold War? It seems likely that an ex-KGB officer who happens to be in charge is pining for the good old days.

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Bad Content Finding Its Way Into Mobile Apps and RIM Owes Big

There’s always a good side to things and a bad side and that includes the ever-expanding world of mobile apps. A recent news article in the Washington Post talks about inappropriate content finding its way into mobile apps that are geared towards children. Violent and suggestive content are the culprits here and parents are complaining they don’t have any real way to monitor what their kids are exposed to.

The Federal Communications Commission keeps an eye on more traditional forms of media but as far as mobile apps are concerned, developers are still in charge of giving themselves ratings. More fodder for those who say it’s the parent’s responsibility to stay on top of what their children see and do.

As you might expect, recent reports are saying that RIM could owe tons of cash to right the fallout from their recent outages. The recent numbers are $100 million US in lost revenues and there’s more to it than that, none of which is good for the Canadian company that was the biggest hope that country had since the Avro Arrow.

Making the problem worse for RIM is the fact that wireless carriers worldwide have promised to compensate their users for the downtime. The whole mess couldn’t have come at a worse time for the beleaguered company and worst case scenarios for the estimated 70 million users worldwide put refunds to 35 million as the number bantered.

The whole Blackberry mess has some interesting spinoffs when it comes to how people deal with even the temporary loss of this kind of technology. Consider a recent article from a New Jersey professional who writes that people should know someone they can call in their office to check emails on their computer there when the BlackBerry network goes down. The article goes on to point out the obvious fact that you can send a text, but I think something even more relevant is being missed here.

Maybe the whole idea of having a Blackberry is overkill and being constantly hooked up to emails 24/7 from a device that you carry around with you is a case of too much technology. I mean, how many people can really do anything about even the most urgent email until they get back to the office anyway? I’m not talking out of school here because I have one and I find myself constantly looking for the little red light that tells me I’ve got mail like one of Pavlov’s dogs. I have to admit too, I did get a little nervous when my emails weren’t getting through regularly but I’ve still got to wonder if we all don’t need some kind of safe zone away from all of these things once in a while.

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Get Product Recommendations and Help Other Shoppers on Get.com

Have you ever needed a new product, but didn’t know where to start looking; maybe you knew the type of product you needed, but didn’t know which exact one/type to choose? It always helps when you can get recommendations from others who are more knowledgeable about that specific category of products. That’s where Get.com comes in handy.

“Get.com is a Q&A platform that helps you get product recommendations quickly from thousands of people.” It’s as simple as that. First you connect your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts. Next you setup your profile. Lastly you can ask your questions or help others who have asked questions.

From the home page you can see recent questions from all categories. You can also navigate to other categories (via the header links), ask your own question, click to view the leaderboard, view the top helpers, and see recent visitors to the site. This is the best place to find questions that you can jump into and give your input.

You’ll also notice that there are often a few odd-ball questions mixed into the bunch.

The main purpose of Get.com is to get product recommendations and help others who need suggestions. Sometimes you’ll find questions that are looking for a straightforward answer, while others may ask you to suggest your own product.

In the screenshot below you’ll see that some users have suggested headphones that the user might like. Other users can then go in and vote for one of the suggestions or add their own to the mix.

There are also ways to share and follow questions that interest you. Additionally, you can see related questions along with your personally history (recently viewed questions) in the sidebar.

Asking your own question is quite simple as well. First click on the yellow “Ask Question” link in the top header of the site. You can then type in your questions along with additional details (if needed), budget, and topic (electronics, automotive, photography, makeup & beauty, parenting).

Lastly, you can choose whether or not you’d like to get product suggestions (like pictured above).

Finally, there is the settings area. Here you can ad a picture, choose a display name (full name or first name and last initial), add a mini bio and about info, add your website, and customize your email notifications.

Unfortunately, you can’t actually change your display name. For instance, I signed up using Facebook and now it is using my full name as my display name. Personally, I’d rather use a screen name or at least a name that most people know me by, not my legal full name.

Do you feel there is a need for a service like Get.com? It is something that you plan to use yourself?

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Profiting with Content

Content helps drive traffic, boosts credibility and authority, and helps you build a community of followers. It can also help you increase your search engine ranking, and should provide valuable information for readers.

Content can also have an impact on your cash flow if done properly. Here are some simple ways you can profit with content.

1. Write reviews.

You can use content to generate affiliate commissions by writing good reviews on the products you’re promoting as an affiliate. Many people search online for quality reviews before they purchase a product. It helps them make an informed decision about the quality of the product and if it will be useful to them.

When people are reading reviews, they are already in a buying mode. They simply need compelling information to help them complete the sale. If you write a detailed review, from your personal perspective, they are more likely to purchase the product. Include your affiliate link so they can click through to buy the product.

There are several things to keep in mind when writing reviews. First of all, always be honest in your assessment of the product. Describe who the product is for, who it will benefit and also cover who it may not benefit. Also remember to mention anything negative about the product, things you didn’t like. Many people think that giving some negative points will hurt their review, but in truth it makes your review stronger. It shows you are being honest. The things you didn’t like may not even apply to the prospective buyer.

2. List Building.

Use email marketing as another avenue of making money. Give out a free report, an incentive for people to join your list. Make sure it is directly related to your content and the things you share and promote. This gives you another way to reach them and another way to promote affiliate products or your own products.

Never bombard your list with useless promotions or daily promotions. Only send out important content that you think they may find useful and valuable. However, you still need to be consistent with contacting your list. You can send out weekly tips or articles that you write specifically for your list. You do not need to attempt a sale in every email, but you do need to stay in touch with them. Show them you care and over deliver with valuable content.

When you do this, they are more likely to buy from you when you promote quality products.

3. Sell Ad Space

You can sell ad space on your blog or even in your newsletter. If you have a large list of followers, some advertisers will pay you so that they can reach your audience every week.

Make sure the ads are relevant to your list and your content. If you don’t have advertisers you can start with a Google ad and remove those as other sites start purchasing those ad slots.

4. Use Article Directories.

If you have your own product or service, you can use articles posted at directories to drive traffic to your sales page. Use the article as pre-sell material so when the prospect clicks the call to action in your bio, they are already wanting more information. This can increase your conversations from those click throughs.

5. Establish Authority with eBooks.

Ebooks are a great way to establish authority in your niche. If you’re extremely knowledgeable in a certain area, you can write an ebook for people to purchase.

You can sell your ebook from your own website, through Clickbank or you can even have it published on Kindle. This allows you to reach more people in your field.

Sales from ebooks not only boosts your income, but it can also increase traffic to your site which can give you future income,  more prospects to reach out to and help you profit with content.

There are many ways to use content as a means to increase sales. Implementing just a few of them can increase your popularity, your bottom line and establish your credibility. Try some of these methods, give them time to work and see if they don’t increase your income.

Another great thing about content is it can work for you for many years. You do the work once and it keeps working for you.

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Create a Professional Profile and Get Endorsements with Path.to

Path.to is a place where you can create a professional personal profile and get endorsements based on your skills. You can also endorse others when you have “first-hand knowledge of their ability to perform the skill.” Path.to has an endorsement algorithm that they use to identify who is the most skilled in each industry and you can view those people on the Leaderboard.

If you’re just looking for people to connect with, you can search within the directory. When viewing someone’s professional profile, you can add them as a contact or request an endorsement from them. Not only is this great for proving your skills, but it could be instrumental in landing a job or freelance work.

To get started, you can sign in with either your Facebook or Google account. Whichever account you choose to sign up with, that will be the profile used to import employment and education data from. However, if you want to import from another account (Facebook, Google, LinkedIn) once signed in you can do so.

Once inside your account, there are only 3 steps needed to get started: upload a photo, customize your profile, and add your skills. Since some of this will be filled in from your imported profile, you’ll just need to double check it and correct anything that may be wrong.

Your about me info consists of your name, title, biography, location, industry, and photo. You can then add up to 5 “endorseable skills that define you as a professional.” These are what others will be ranking you on.

Underneath your skills you can connect your social networking accounts: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ plus your own website and email. You can choose whether or not to display these on your profile. Underneath that is your work experience. For each position you can enter the company, title, skills uses, state date, and end date. Lastly there is your education, where you can list your school, degree, start date, and finish date.

Your profile can be customized using a premade theme or you can choose a theme and then customize it further.

Finally there is the dashboard, which is where you can see recent activity, today’s stats, and tips and tricks. Under the stats you’ll see a link to view your full analytics. If you would like to go a step further, you can even set up Google Analytics and enter the UA code in your Path.to settings for improved stats and analytics.

If you would like to see the final result of a Path.to profile, feel free to check out my profile.

What do you think of Path.to? Do you find it useful? Do you think it’s worth signing up for to get endorsements or is it easier to stick to something like LinkedIn recommendations?

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Are You Utilizing a Content Strategy?

Many bloggers just seem to go through their daily writing and posting routine by winging it. They don’t achieve the success they see other bloggers attaining. What’s the secret? What are other bloggers doing differently? It’s possible that successful bloggers are simply using a content strategy in their marketing efforts. They give each piece of content a purpose and use it to its maximum ability.

In simple terms, they plan their content and their strategy.

What Is a Content Strategy?

It’s merely a plan to create, organize, market and maximize content. You can use one to plan a week in advance, a month, a quarter or even a year if you’d like.
A plan makes creating content much easier. Instead of fighting the daily, “What do I write?” syndrome, you already have a list of topics to pull from and a strategy to make that content work for you.

Later, when you decide to outsource some of the writing, a content strategy makes it easier to let your writer know what you want from them and when it’s due.

Things you should ask yourself when creating your content strategy.

What types of content do you need to create?

Before you can work on content, you need to know what types of content you’ll be using. Will you write blog posts, articles, information products, or reports?
Do your readers respond better to list type posts? Do they like checklists? What kind of content do you get the most response from?
Knowing what your readers like will help you plan your content.

Where do you plan to publish each piece of content?

How much content will be for your blog or website? Will you use any of it for guest posting, newsletters or article directories? If it’s an information product, do you need extra content to promote it? Where will you post the extra content?

Does your content have a goal or a purpose?

If you want your content to be more effective, it needs to be given a goal or purpose. In a sense, content is a lot like people. It works better if it has a goal.
Decide the purpose of your content. Is it to drive traffic, establish your credibility, promote products, or build your list?

You need to know these things before publishing your content. Giving each piece of content its own purpose will help it to work better for you. It will also keep on working for that purpose over and over.

How can you maximize your content?

Maximizing content can be a difficult step if you’re not sure what it is or how to do it. You want every thing you write to work as hard for you as it can. To do this you simply repurpose some of your content. Do a few minor rewrites and post it in another location.

You can use repurposed content as another blog post later on, in your newsletter or save it in a folder for a future information product. Once you’ve gathered several of your best content pieces together, turn it into an ebook that you can sell or give away.

Do you have a marketing plan for your content?

Marketing your content is getting the word out about it. You can use social networks to post links to content. You can use article directories to get attention and point to more content on your blog or website. You can write guest posts and link to content on your own site.
This is where your content planning and strategy really comes in handy. If you have it all planned and written out, you can visually see where you need to cross promote your content so it gets more exposure.

When will you write your content?

Once you’ve decided what content you’ll write and how you’ll use it, you need to start scheduling when the writing will get done.
Will you write all of the content yourself or outsource some of the writing?
If you plan to write it yourself, you need to create a schedule that you can stick to easily. If you write best in the mornings, schedule writing during that time. If you’re a night owl, use that time to write.
Try not to schedule too much writing in one day. This can get overwhelming. However, for something short like blog posts, there’s no reason you can’t write 2 or 3 per day, if your time allows.
When creating your writing schedule, try to space it out so it’s manageable but keeps you with fresh content being posted to your blog.

When will you publish?

You may need to use two calendars for these schedules. One to determine when you’ll do the actual writing and another to determine when you’ll post the content. Of if you use a dayplanner with lots of room to write on each day, you can use one color of ink to write your writing schedule and another color to write your publishing schedule. Whatever works best for you.
You’ll also want to decide if you will upload several posts at once into your blog and schedule them to publish at later times. It can be a big timer saver to set up several posts at once and schedule them.

If you’re writing some content for article directories or as guest blog posts, you’ll also need to set up publishing times for that content.

Once you start planning out your content and get the hang of it, it will become an easy process. A major benefit to creating a content strategy is knowing there’s always a steady stream of work and content. It can also be a great way to avoid writers block and not knowing what you’ll write from day to day.

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7 Tips for Making Your Web Store Stand Out During the Holidays

The holiday season is probably the best time of year for you to really cash in on your web store.  But, making the most of the holiday shopping rush takes some careful consideration and planning on your part.  If you want to really make this holiday season special for your business, then read over these seven tips for making your web store stand out during the holidays:

The holiday season always proves to be a very stressful time when it comes to getting gifts to their recipients on time – not to mention the added cost of shipping when purchasing from online stores as opposed to local retailers.  Advertising free shipping is a great way to bring holiday customers in and inspire them to choose from what you have to offer.

Your SEO should be tweaked for the holiday seasons.  After all, holiday shoppers generally conduct searches using holiday keywords.  Therefore, it pays (literally) to add some keyword-rich, holiday-themed content to your web store, as well as update your titles and tags to reflect the holiday theme.

Create a holiday newsletter and send it out to your email contacts list in order to attract holiday shoppers to your site.

Make it super-easy for shoppers to find a suitable gift (and hang on to shoppers who can’t make up their minds)by offering gift cards.  Gift cards are also a great way to gain new customers (as some recipients of your gift cards might never have heard of your store before).

Give your website a holiday makeover.  If you can’t afford the time or money to deck the whole site out, then at least give your home page some holiday flair.

Be sure to add a special menu for holiday items.  Also, take note of what you feel are best-selling holiday items and feature them on your home page for easy customer access.

Shopping for the holidays is hectic.  There is a lot to buy – and a lot of people to buy for.  Make it easy on your customers by laying it all out on line in a way that is easy to find and understand.  Include shipping dates, return/exchange policies and refund information in plain sight on your home page.

There is a lot to do to prepare your web store for the holiday season, but it is well worth it.   The existence of your website won’t matter if you don’t make sure people know about it. Make the most of your online presence by following these tips and watch the holiday cash roll in.

About the Author: Donna Collins loves doing her holiday shopping online and is always looking for the most user-friendly web stores around. This year she’ll be shopping for Samsung phones, tablets, and other tech devices for her teenage sons!

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Personally Deliver Recommended Links to Your Friends with Handpick

Handpick is a simple tool with a huge benefit: it lets you personally handpick links from the Web and deliver them to your friends via a daily digest. If you’re someone who is often sharing links with specific friends individually, you’ll love the convenience of using Handpick. It stops you from bombarding your friends with numerous emails of recommended links service, plus it lets you email all of your friends at once.

Let’s see just how Handpick works.

Of course you’ll need a way to actually “handpick” links on the Web, so you’ll need to install the bookmarklet or Chrome extension.

You can also add a Handpick bookmark to your iPhone or iPad. Just visit this page on your device and follow the directions so that you can “handpick” links on your mobile device.

The second step is to create a group of people to “handpick” for. These should be all people that will like the types of links you’ll be sharing; therefore they should have a common interest. You’ll be able to create as many groups as you want. Each group will show up as a check-box when sharing and you’ll be able to choose which groups you want to share to.

All that is needed to create a group is a name and time that you want the group members to receive their daily email digest.

Next you’ll need to add members to your group. As mentioned above, those members will receive a daily email digest of all of the links that you handpick for the day. Members are added by manually entering their name and email one-by-one. Just keep adding members until you’ve got everyone that you want to share with in that specific group. Since Handpick is in early beta, I’m sure that this method of adding members will change since it would surely be so much easier to import your email contacts or choose friends from Facebook or Twitter.

You can also manage your group and change the name, delivery time, and email subject for the daily digest. Additionally, you can choose to turn on/off delivery via BCC. If you turn it on, all members of the group will be able to see the email address of each group member. This is a very bad idea if the members do not know each other. However, if you’re all friends then this shouldn’t be an issue since you’ll more than likely have each others email addresses and probably correspond with each other frequently.

There is also a feature called “Contributable” which you can also turn on/off. With this on, you will allow all members in the group to handpick content for that specific group. So if they have a Handpick account, your group will show up in their accounts as well so that they can also send links to it.

All that’s left is to browse the Web and “handpick” links. When you find something you want to share, click the bookmarklet or browser icon in Chrome and you’ll get a small window with sharing options.

You can change the title and enter a description. Don’t forget to choose the group that you want to share to! Finally click on “share” and you’re all done.

As you can see, it has never bee easier to share links with specific friends. I not only love the concept of Handpick, but I love how easy it is to set up and share to people that I usually have to email individually. I do, however, hope to see an improvement in the design of the site and also in the way that you add members to the group.

Handpick is currently in private beta, so you will need an invite to try it out.

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Logo Design Process Case Study – How to Create a Logo

A few weeks back I wrote about having a logo designed through LogoNerds, and how happy I was with their service. Compared to other design services out there, they are much cheaper, faster and professional than what I have experienced elsewhere. With that said, I went back to them again to have a few more logos created for my sites.

I thought it would be a fun idea to break down the logo creation process of my latest design. I’m working on a new pet food coupons and review web site that I needed a dog and cat related logo for. I filled out their design information form with a bunch of ideas, and here are the first set of logos I received from LogoNerds.

After you’ve filled out your initial design information for LogoNerds, you will have to wait a couple of days for their first set of concepts. I always go with their $47 “Professional Business Logo” package since it comes with 6 different draft designs (and print ready images). The most exciting part of the logo design process is when you get those first drafts and have an idea where your logo is headed.

Depending on the web site or job, sometimes I will just select one of their first drafts and go with that logo. This time around I knew I wanted something really great for the site, so I worked with LogoNerds to create the perfect logo. After looking at all of the logos for a couple days, and asking friends and family which logo they liked best, and why, I decided to go with CONCEPT 1 (top left). I thought it was simple enough to get the point across, but also fun and brandable at the same time.

I told LogoNerds that I would like to see if they could play around with the bone structure in the background and if they could create a new variation of the dog and cat faces. You can see their revision update below.

The new bone looked much better, and I liked the new cat and dog face even more. From there I gave the LogoNerds team a few ideas on how what colors to add into the logo. Their color update is shown below.

The logo is looking pretty good now, and could be considered finished, but I still wasn’t loving the “PetFoodia.com” text beneath the logo. I then requested the team try and create something nice that would go along with the logo.

The next set of finished logos with a new font design can be seen below.

While some of the font designs looks nice, none of them blew me away. I like the concept on the bottom left logo, but it just didn’t look right. Once again, I went back to the LogoNerds team to request another text revision set, this time with “more simple” text concepts. Within a couple days I had another set, which you can see below.

I was much happier with this set of designs. They were much less advanced and colorful as the previous set, but I wanted something simple and to the point. I decided on the bottom left logo with, and to remove the tagline from the logo.

After the thorough design and revision process, I was extremely happy with the end result. You can see the final logo below.

LogoNerds would complete the order and send over a final design zip with a variation of different sizes, colors and file types.

After looking over the whole process, and how many times I asked LogoNerds for a revision, it’s quite amazing the service they can offer for only $47.

I’ve already purchased four different logos from LogoNerds over the past couple of months, it’s just way to cost effective and easy to end up with a quality logo. I’ve used other services and design contest sites in the past, but most of them will cost you in the $99 to $199 range, and may drag on for weeks. Through a partnership with BloggingTips and LogoNerds, we are able to offer you an extra $10 off on the $47 “Professional Logo Package”, which brings the total to only $37. Use coupon code B10OFF to save $10 off your $47 purchase, that’s over 20% off!

- Order your custom logo from LogoNerds

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Advantages of Affiliate Marketing

There are a lot of people, especially bloggers, making good money from affiliate marketing. If you don’t have time to create your own products or maybe you’re not sure what type of product you should create, you can supplement your income by promoting other people’s stuff.

Chances are you use a lot of products, take a lot of online courses, or even use plugins on your blog. Most of the things you use to build your own business can be offered under an affiliate program. It just makes good sense that you should earn a little bit of money from sharing these “must haves” with your readers.

One of the easiest ways to promote products is by writing reviews and posting them to your blog. At the end of the review, simply add your affiliate link so the reader can purchase the product.

Here are some benefits to using affiliate marketing.

* Little to No Risk.  Since you’re not technically responsible for the products you promote, this is a very low risk business. Plus, you’re not losing time and money by creating your own products. However, it is good business sense to only promote products that you use personally and that you like. You do have that much responsibility to your followers.

* Small Start-Up Costs.  You probably already have your website set up and paying for a hosting plan. Other than that, and the money you’ve already spent purchasing products, you really have no other cost involved. Affiliate marketing is a great way to earn back the money you’ve invested in quality products.

* No copywriting experience necessary. Writing sales copy can suck, especially if that isn’t your strong point. However, your job really isn’t to sale the product, per se, but to share it. Sharing honest information is a better way to make sales than using sales copy in a blog post. Your blog posts should never seem salesy or look like a product ad.

If you do need some copy material, many affiliate programs already have some sales aids in place. You can simply do a few tweaks and use it. Some even offer graphics you can place in your sidebar.

* Passive income. This may be one of the best benefits of all, passive income. Once you’ve written a review it will be online for a long time. It can continue to draw traffic when people search for specific product reviews. Plus, you can also keep linking to your reviews from other content on your website.

You may even want to set up static pages for your reviews. This makes them very search engine friendly and easier for people to find when they’re at your website. Which ever way you choose to do product reviews, it can keep adding to your income month after month.

* Flexibility. Affiliate marketing is extremely flexible. You decide how much time you want to work on affiliate promotions or how many days per week. It can be done in only a few minutes per day leaving the rest of your work time for your own product creation or for building up your own site.
Income from affiliate marketing is not limited. The more time you put in, the more money you can make. This is especially true if your readers have learned to trust you and your recommendations.
Affiliate marketing can be part time or you can even turn it into a full time job if you’d like. It’s not only flexible, but the possibilities are endless.

Another great benefit of affiliate marketing is that you can fit it into just about any niche or topic you’re interested in. There are affiliate programs in almost every niche out there. No matter what your topic of choice is, whether it’s health, fitness, blogging, marketing, SEO, social media—I’m sure you can find products to promote.

Not all topics are profitable, but if you only share products that you use yourself to grow your own business, this can still earn you some nice affiliate commissions.

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In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic

A caustic expose of the deeply state of our colleges-America's most expensive Ponzi scheme.

What drives a former English major with a creative writing degree, several unpublished novels, three kids, and a straining marriage to take a job as a night teacher at a second-rate college? An unaffordable mortgage.

As his house starts falling apart in every imaginable way, Professor X grabs first one, then two jobs teaching English 101 and 102-composition and literature-at a small private college and a local community college. He finds himself on the front lines of America's academic crisis. It's quite an education.

This is the story of what he learns about his struggling pupils, about the college system-a business more bent on its own financial targets than the wellbeing of its students-about the classics he rediscovers, and about himself. Funny, wry, self-deprecating, and a provocative indictment of our failing schools, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower is both a brilliant academic satire and a poignant account of one teacher's seismic frustration-and unlikely salvation-as his real estate woes catapult him into a subprime crisis of an altogether more human nature.

Price: $25.95

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Complete Bengali with Two Audio CDs: A Teach Yourself Guide (Teach Yourself Language)

It's easy to teach yourself Bengali!

Complete Bengali: A Teach Yourself Guide provides you with a clear and comprehensive approach to Bengali, so you can progress quickly from the basics to understanding, speaking, and writing Bengali with confidence.

Within each of the 24 thematic chapters, important language structures are introduced through life-like dialogues. You'll learn grammar in a gradual manner so you won't be overwhelmed by this tricky subject. Exercises accompany the texts and reinforce learning in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This program also features current cultural information boxes that reflect recent changes in society. The accompanying audio CDs contain all dialogues that appear in the course book, recorded by native speakers.

Features:

One and five-minute introductions to key principles to get you started

Lots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience

Tests in the book and online to keep track of your progress

Extra online articles at www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of the basics of the language

Price: $46.00

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Complete Arabic with Two Audio CDs: A Teach Yourself Guide (Teach Yourself Language)

It's easy to teach yourself Arabic!

Complete Arabic provides you with a clear and comprehensive approach to Arabic, so you can progress quickly from the basics to understanding, speaking, and writing Arabic with confidence.

Within each of the 25 thematic chapters, important language structures are introduced through life-like dialogues.You'll learn grammar in a gradual manner so you won't be overwhelmed by this tricky subject. Exercises accompany the texts and reinforce learning in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. This program also features current cultural information boxes that reflect recent changes in society.

The accompanying audio CDs include audio exercises--performed by native speakers--that reinforce communicative skills.

Price: $29.95

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The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging

back cover looks bent other then that book is readable in good condition.

Price: $15.00

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New Creative Teaching Press Summary Inference Grade 3-4 Language Power Practice Best Selling

The design of this product is very exquisite and beautiful.

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Get More Out of Google+

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AppId is over the quota

This guest post is by Matthew Weber of T3kd.com.

When I first started blogging in early 2010, I was relatively new to social media. I had been a member of Facebook since 2004, but I was not using it to promote myself or my content: I was using to stalk old girlfriends. When I finally joined Twitter in 2009, I was unsure what the purpose of it was. Sure, I used Twitter. I followed some feeds, some interesting famous people, and I had a few followers—most of them very special bots.

But once I started blogging in January 2010, I came to the realization that I was using Twitter in completely the wrong way if I wanted people to actually engage with me, and through me, my content.

Image copyright ra2 studio - Fotolia.com

I realized that I couldn’t just tweet out something and expect people to see it. In order for people to see my content, they would have to have a connection with me, and they would need to remember me.

I tried different ways of doing this. I tweeted more, and I started to retweet others’ content. But this was still not enough. In the end I realized that the only way for other people to have a personal stake in “Matt”, would be to have them feel like we had a relationship beyond just me spewing a lot of content at them on Twitter. I realized that if I wanted the true Twitter experience, I would have to jump in and participate and engage with other people.

I found that once I stopped treating it as a place just for sharing, and started participating and conversing with other people, not only was Twitter much more entertaining, but also the people with whom I interacted started paying more attention to my content.

Amazingly, I’m currently making the same mistake with Google+. I seem to use it only as my own personal soapbox. I spew content, and no one pays attention. I know this problem all too well, seeing as I’ve made these mistakes before.

From everything I have heard, read, and been told, Google+ is an amazing place in which to get people to talk and interact with content. I have not seen this. Originally I just thought that this was because Google+ was no good. Then I thought that it might be because Google+ is so new, and there might not be a big enough audience for my content.

Then I realized that, as usual, this wasn’t the fault of Google+. It was, of course, operator error. I wasn’t using it properly.

In order for people to interact and consume your content, you have to give them a reason to do so.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Matt, isn’t interesting and original content enough?” No, no it’s not. I know that original and interesting content is very important. But that is not what social media is all about. Your content is not even really in play when it comes to social media.

On social media sites people are not interacting with your content, at least not yet. They are interacting with you. When I share a link on Google+, people will interact with it if they have a reason to.

The biggest reason I can give them to click on that link is to make them think that they are a part of my story. If they think that there is a social relationship between us, then they are much more likely to think that my content is important. Originality and interest only come into play once they click that link.

So how do you become interactive on Google+—or any other social media site? You have to talk to people. I know that sounds almost stupidly simple, but it’s true. When they share something, strike up a conversation with them about it. Ask them questions, and share something related. There are innumerable ways to do it, but in the end it comes down to being social.

Once you have the interactivity down with one person, you will find that they are much more likely to reciprocate that interactivity back towards you and your content.

It is this statement that I have to remember. This is exactly where I was at the beginning with Twitter, and I again need to make sure that I squeeze Google+ for all it’s worth. Google+ represents a unique opportunity not only for me to spread my content out through interactivity, but also for me to gain useful connections to others. Even more than Twitter, Google+ gives me the opportunity to garner great conversations surrounding my content. I need to start using it properly, before I miss the opportunity.

When thinking about social media, we have to remember that it is not about us. We can’t be selfish, we have to be social. Being social, whether it is on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook, means to have a two-way interaction between people. A relationship that is only one way will not last long, if it takes off at all.

Just like your personal, real-life relationships, in order to flourish, an online relationship must be cultivated and fed with communication and good times. That interactivity will make it so the people you share your content with will remember you and be interested in the things you share. So go forth and be social, my friends!

Matt is the Founder of Blogs Media Network, a collection of blog sites covering assorted content. His main site, T3kd.com, is a site dedicated to covering technology news, and providing tech analysis. You can circle him on Google+ here.

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65 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

This guest post is by Satrap of BlogStash.com.

What is the best way to drive traffic to my site? What’s the fastest way to generate traffic to my site? What’s…?

We all want to know the best way to drive the greatest amount of traffic to our sites. However, the truth is that there is no best or fastest way to drive traffic! What works for me might not work for you, and vice versa. Just because I manage to get 500 visitors a day from an article I submitted to article directories doesn’t mean you can get that much traffic doing the same thing.

Of course, there are some traffic generation methods that produce better results than others. But again, it all depends on you and your situation. Let’s take article marketing as an example. Article marketing is one of the oldest and best ways to generate traffic. But the success of your article marketing campaign depends on many different things, like the number of articles you write, the number of article directories you submit to, the quality of your articles, how many articles a day you submit, and more.

My advice would be to pick a few methods from the 65 I’ve listed below, and start implementing them. Test them for yourself. Depending on your skills, you might find a method that would work wonders for you.

Don’t just follow what everybody else says. I’m not saying, “Don’t listen to experienced people who are successful in generating traffic to their site.” By all means, listen to them and do take their advice—but experiment to find out for yourself which traffic generation methods work best for you and your situation.

With that said, here are 65 simple and (mostly) free ways to generate traffic to your site.

Turn your articles and blog posts into PDFs using free PDF converters like OpenOffice. Then submit your PDFs to document sharing sites like Scribd and DocStoc.Write truly informative and useful articles related to your niche, and publish them on WikiPedia.Hold a contest and give prizes to your readers. Use social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to let people know about the contest. A good contest with good prizes will attract a lot of people.Build a wiki page for your blog. To ensure your page doesn’t get deleted, create an article that is educational, informational, and not self-promoting.Write list posts like the one you are reading. Readers love posts like “10 ways to make money” or “6 ways to drive traffic to your blog”. List posts are amongst the most popular kinds of posts, and people tend to share list posts with others more often than other posts.Make flyers with a catchy title and a description of your blog, and post them on bulletin boards in the entrance to supermarkets and other community buildings.Post frequently, but don’t sacrifice quantity for quality. Both search engines and visitors like to see fresh, quality content. The more content you have, the more chances you have for ranking for variety of keywords, which will mean more organic traffic for your blog.Make a lens (or more) using Squidoo and in it, place a few links back to your blog.Submit your blog to directories relevant to your niche, like InsLink.com (an SEO/webmaster directory).Make it easy for non-technical readers to link to your blog or share your links with other people by making a “How to link to us” page. Here, give readers easy instructions on how to link to your blog with your keywords as anchor text.Submit your blog to search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. Or simply use AdMe.com to submit your site to over 25 search engines for free.Use sites like Odiogo to turn your blog into a podcast, then submit your podcast to podcast websites.Answer questions related to your niche on YahooAnswers and other Q & A sites. Include a link to your blog in the resource box.Submit your blog to social bookmarking sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.Write and submit articles to article directories like EzineArticles and ArticleDashboard.Turn your articles to videos using free video creation services like Animoto, and submit them to video directories such as YouTube and DailyMotion.Build a Facebook fan page for your blog.Make use of plugins like Tell-a-Friend to let your readers quickly share your posts with their friends and family vie email.Use Hi5 to build a page for your blog and create a community around it.Don’t clutter your blog with too many pictures, ads, and so on. Keep it clean and easy to navigate. This will help both search engines and visitors to navigate around your blog easily and quickly.Join BlogEngage to submit your blog and create a community around it.Ping your blog posts using free ping services such as Pingler and Pingoat.Create a hub about your blog on HubPages.Register with few good niche-related forums and use your signature to place links pointing to your blog. Participate in discussions and contribute as much as you can.Make it easy for your readers to share your posts by installing social bookmarking plugins like SocialMarker and Digg Buttons.Readers like to read other people’s comments, especially those who responded to their comments. So, take advantage of that by using a plug-in like Comment Notifier to automatically let your readers know of new comments posted on your blog.Make your blog more search engine friendly by using SEO plug-ins such as Platinum SEO Pack.Target long-tail keywords with low competition and try to rank for them. Such keywords are easier to rank for in search engines and give you much more targeted traffic.Make a MySpace page for your blog.Make business cards with your blog info on them, hand them to friends and family, and ask them to pass them on. Mall parking lots are good place to pass your cards around. In some states you can even put your business card on windshields. You can get up to 250 free business cards using sites like VistaPrint (although you do have to pay $5 shipping).Submit your blog to the free directories like DMOZ (hard to get into, but well worth the effort!).Write a good press release, or hire a professional to do it for you (you can get a pretty decent press release written for you for $5 on Fiverr.com), and submit them to free press release distribution sites like PR.com.Write creative and attention-grabbing ads about your blog, and publish them on free classified ads sites such as CraigsList and UsFreeAds.Controversial posts attract visitors. Write a controversial post. Be creative and bold, but be careful not to cross the boundaries.Ask an expert or a trusted, well-known person in your niche for an interview. Then post the entire interview on your blog, either as a text post or as a video.Leave quality comments on blogs that are related to your niche. Make sure your comments add value to the blog. Don’t just spam-comment and hope for the best. It never works, and your links will get deleted. Worst of all, you might get blacklisted from the site. If you leave a useful comment, people will be more likely to visit your blog.Use free banner-making tools like BannerFans to make an interesting banner for your blog. Then find other bloggers in your niche and exchange banners with them.Exchange links with other blogs in your niche. Don’t go overboard with this technique, or exchange links with each and every blog you find—be selective and make sure the context for your link is appropriate. Most people use their main keyword as the anchor text for their link, that’s good for SEO. But, if you want to get more traffic from those links, instead use attention-grabbing text as your anchor text. Don’t use “Make Money Online” for your link text—people are used to seeing those links all over the web. Instead use something like “10 ways to make $10 in 10 minutes.”If you find interesting posts on other blogs, write a post about them and link to them. The other bloggers will notice and might do the same for you.Find good blogs in your niche that accept guest posts. You can either search manually or make it easy for yourself by registering for free with MyBlogGuest, which matches guest bloggers with blogs that accept guest posts. Write and submit your best articles to get the maximum exposure. Don’t just submit the article and leave. Make sure you follow up and respond to comments and questions that readers of those blogs ask.Submit your site to review sites that write reviews on other websites and blogs, like CoolSiteOfTheDay.Submit your blog to BlogCatalog.People love free stuff, so give out freebies that are related to your niche. If you are in “online money making” niche, a free ebook that teaches people who to make money on Twitter might make an appropriate freebie.Write a page on 43things.com about your blog and what you want to do with it.Use your keywords in the title of your posts. Having your keyword in the title makes it easier for you to rank for that keyword, thus bringing you more organic traffic.Use your blog’s name as your username on forums, social networking sites, and other places like YahooAnswers. People are curious by nature, so they may check out your blog out of curiosity and if you have good compelling content, they may become your loyal readers.Make a bumper sticker with your blog address on it, and place it on your car’s bumper. You can even ask your friends and family to do the same for you!Make a Twitter profile for your blog and tweet each and every post you publish on your blog.Register with EntreCard and start dropping your card on other blogs. You will be amazed how much traffic you can get from EntreCard.Register with ComLUV.com and download their plugin.Then use the Global CommentLuv Search to find blogs related to your niche and comment on them. It will return up to ten (recent) posts that will be sent back when you comment on a CommentLuv enabled site. Most are dofollow blogs, and you will get dofollow links back to your most recent posts. This is good for link building and getting some traffic.Make a free ebook with a link back to your site in it, and submit it to free ebook sites like GetFreeEbooks.com.Buy .info domains with long-tail keywords in them and use a redirect to send the traffic they receive to your main site.Rent a mailing list and send high-quality content with a link back to your site to all the subscribers. Take care with this technique so that you’re not blacklisted as a spammer, though. Find a reputable list broker—or, if in doubt, why not start your own?Post a classified ad on eBayClassified with a link to your site.When you eat out, leave a good tip along with a business card with your site info on it.Create a short report with resell rights and and include your links in the report. Give it to people for free: those people can sell the report to others as their own, so long as they don’t remove your links. The results of this technique will surprise you.Come up with a really crazy but buzz-worthy post and submit it to NowPublic.com (Previously known as Truemors). If it’s good enough, it might just go viral!Go to YouTube, find popular videos related to your niche and start commenting on those videos with a link back to your blog. Youtube videos get thousands of views, and since most people are sociable creatures, they will read the comments no matter how far down the list your comment is.Create a page (personal or business) at LookUpPage.com. You can add as many links to your blog as you like. Write a short “about” post about yourself or your blog, and make sure to link to your Twitter and other social networking sites as well. After creating the page, bookmark it using SocialMarker and ping it with Pingler (or any other tools you like).Register with Visible.me for free, and add links and information about your blog. Its a great way to build your brand and get a few backlinks from a high-PR (6) dofollow site.Submit your RSS feed to RSS aggregators. Here, I don’t mean just your blog’s RSS feed: grab the RSS url of every site you have a link on (example: if you submit articles to ezine.com, you will have your own “author RSS” URL), and go to RssMix.com. It will let you make a custom RSS feed. Take that and submit it to RSS directories and aggregators. This will put your RSS feed on steroids—and will give you many more backlinks.Make a few (yard) signs with your blog’s URL and a good title related to your niche, and place them on highway exit ramps, at busy intersections, and so on. Make sure you abide by the laws in your own state or country if you try this approach.Put an ad in your local newspaper. If you live in a small town, it may not be very expensive to have an ad on your local newspaper—or on TV or radio, for that matter.Order some T-shirts with your blog URL and title printed on them and give them away. People will check out your URL!This is just for fun, so enjoy it! Make a big and I mean big sandal (or flip flop) with your blog’s URL engraved on the bottom, go to a busy beach, and start walking all over the sand! Leave your mark for others to see.

These methods will keep you busy for a while. But perhaps the most important tip I can give you is to be patient. Getting traffic to a blog takes time and a lot of work. You cannot expect to have hundreds of visitors after a few weeks, or months of starting your blog. But, if you are a dedicated person who’s willing to put enough time and effort into it, you can’t help but attract more visitors to your blog over time.

Which of these ideas do you like? What has or hasn’t worked for you? Share your experiences with us in the comments.

Satrap writes at BlogStash.com about different work from home opportunities. Visit BlogStash to learn real ways to make money online.

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How to Appease the Blogging Gods

This guest post is by Sriram Reddy of BloggingTipster.com.

In ancient Greece, there used to be numerous gods for almost everything, from music to war. To appease the gods so they could a better life, the Greeks used to pray, pour wine on the ground, build statues, hold festivities, and make sacrifices, among other rituals.

Just as the Greeks had gods for each aspect of life, there was also “Bloggareus,” the god of blogging (mythic, created by yours truly). And boy, was he a tough cookie!

The high respect that Bloggareus commanded in ancient blogging lore was unparalleled. Even now, after all these years, worship and offerings are the least he expects in return for his prized favors. Many bloggers have felt his wrath whenever they have neglected him.

So, how do we god-fearing bloggers appease our beloved Bloggareus so he can shower traffic, ad clicks, and riches on us?

We bloggers will have to offer a post to him every day—or at least (at the very least!) once a week—to escape his fury. Bloggareus, with an insatiable appetite for blog posts, will in return grant us with more visitors, and make them take notice of us.He will only be pacified with the highest quality of content, and will settle for nothing less. Write with passion. Keep your posts fresh, useful, accurate, readable and at times inspirational. He is quick to spot fruitless content, and if he does, you will have to face the repercussions. Symptoms of his displeasure are generally a decrease in page clicks and reputation. A quick secret: he holds a special regard for list posts, as they are easier to scan and read, so offer him as many as you can.Bloggareus holds a soft spot for the readers and visitors. He looks upon them almost like demigods. If he finds out that the content is not engaging the readers, or if readers are leaving dissatisfied and without posting comments, expect his backlash to be unforgiving. Even more so since he is fondly looked down upon by Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, and Zeus will do everything within his power to bring down sinful bloggers, sometimes even send down thunderbolts.Choose the title of your post very carefully before you offer it to Bloggareus. Write a title that delivers a promise of the content to the readers, and ensure your content backs it up. Try to keep the title short, crisp, and sometimes witty. That’s the way he likes them.Include as many links as you can in your posts to earn Bloggareus’s cherished brownie points. Add links to other posts within your blog, as well as links to external sites. Remember, the more relevant information you provide to the readers, the merrier your post will be.Bloggareus looks favorably on those bloggers who promote their posts well through social media, blog commenting, discussion forums, and newsletters.Also, don’t forget to appease ProBloggereus, the demigod of blogging inspiration, as well as other demigods (established bloggers) once in a while with guest posts. They will shower you with loads of traffic, and the odd backlink, of course.

Only the hardworking, truth-speaking, selfless bloggers will be able to stand the tests Bloggareus puts forth. These are the essential qualities of a virtuous blogger. I hope my post has spurred enough devotion in my fellow bloggers, and this post leads their deeds to immortality!

Sriram writes lock stock and barrel about sharpening blogging skills at www.BloggingTipster.com. He would love to have you following him on Twitter.

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4 Essentials to Consider Before Starting Your Next Blog

This guest post is by Nivin of SecretMarketingPlaybook.com.

So, you’ve decided to start a blog?

By now I’m sure you would’ve noticed that every man, woman, and their dogs seems to have their very own blog.That leaves you with the unenviable task of answering the ultimate question for any blogger:

Why should your audience care?

How well you answer the question will be a strong determinant on how successful your blog turns out. And to help you do that, consider these four points carefully.

The first thing you need to understand about a blog is that it’s a continuous conversation about a certain topic. People visit your blog because they have a need your blog satisfies. So, before contemplating starting a blog, you need to clarify what purpose your blog is filling. What needs is it meeting?

One of the best ways to do this is via a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Now, it’s highly unlikely you will be completely unique from everyone out there, but finding a different angle will help define your blog further in the eyes of your audience.

For example, although Copyblogger.com and problogger.net both cater to pretty much the same niche, they have slight differences. ProBlogger focuses specifically on blogging, while Copyblogger targets content creation and effective copywriting. It’s the same niche (online business), but the slight variation is enough for the audience to make the distinction.

The most difficult part about creating content consistently is not knowing who you’re writing for. So, before you begin your blog, you need to be specific about the type of audience you want your blog to attract. The more specific you can be, the better.

As I’m writing this post, I imagine the main reader is a 29-year old male named Bob, married with one child who is starting out in online marketing with limited tech experience because he wants more freedom from his job to spend time with his child. Now, I am sure that not all of my readers will fit the description, but having such a clear example enables me to better understand the motivations of my demographic.

His motivations are:

He has a job, he’d like to leave—I help him believe it’s possible to leave and make a living online, because it is.He’s new to online marketing, with limited tech experience—I go easy on the tech jargon and spend more time explaining the more technical content.He wants freedom—I show him that by implementing simple (not necessarily easy) steps consistently, he will be able to achieve that freedom.

If you are starting out, I can guarantee you there is almost always someone who’s doing it better than you right now. The key is to learn from those who have gone before you. Look at their blogs, see what they write and how they add value to their visitors. Learn how they engage with their audience.

I am not implying that you should copy what they do, but spend some time understanding how they’re practicing their craft. I strongly recommend you take that extra step and introduce yourself. I have personally done that myself, and was actually quite surprised to see the amount of responses I received from the big players. Your worst-case scenario is that no one responds and you end up exactly where you are right now—no loss, really. So, go ahead: reach out, and surprise yourself.

Your blog is only as good as your content, and the more quality content you have, the better. But in order to have quality content you are going to need to consistently publish new, cutting-edge information for your industry, so you’re going to need to come up with a blogging schedule. I’ve found the best way to blog is to break up your post into three main categories:

Cutting-edge: This usually involves commenting about recent/cutting-edge developments in your industry(i.e. news, product launches, new fads). These posts have a diminishing impact on your readers over time.Evergreens: These are self-contained posts, which focus more on principles and concepts that tend to stay true over a longer period of time (this post is an evergreen post).Series: These posts usually involve topics which are so dense that a single post will not be enough to provide the reader with adequate information (i.e. Starting Your Pet Business from Scratch, or a Weight Loss After Child Birth series).

Now, I hope this post hasn’t scared you off from trying to create a new blog. All I’m trying to do here is help you get more clarity on how you should start your blogging adventure. I hope this advice will help you minimize the bumps along the way—and, more importantly, to help get your message out to a very grateful audience.

Nivin is the owner SecretMarketingPlaybook.com and is currently giving away his latest ebook – “7 Critical Things To Outsource To Make Money Online”. Get Your Copy Here.

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10 Surefire Ways to Overcome Blogging Procrastination

This guest post is by Marelisa F?brega of the Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online.

If you keep telling yourself that you’re going to start blogging on a regular basis, and that intention has failed to materialize, it’s highly probable that procrastination is the culprit. My favorite definition of procrastination is the one provided by Timothy Pychyl, Ph.D., creator of the popular web site procrastination.ca, so I quote it often. Here it is:

“Procrastination is the needless, often irrational, voluntary delay of an intended task.”

That is, you intend to write a blog post, but you go off and start doing something else which is not as important to you, and which doesn’t need to get done right away. Below you’ll find ten surefire ways to overcome blogging procrastination, so that you can achieve your goal of blogging on a regular basis.

If you keep telling yourself that you’re not blogging on a regular basis because you simply don’t have the time to do so, ask yourself if blogging is a priority for you. If it’s not, then you should seriously consider giving up your blog. After all, your time is being occupied by other things that are more important to you than blogging.

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On the other hand, if blogging is a priority for you, then you need to make time for it. The way in which you make time for blogging is by giving it a time slot in your schedule. There’s a huge difference between the following two statements: I will write a blog post this week.I will sit down to write a blog post on Tuesday, at 10:00 a.m.

The first statement is a vague intention, while the second statement is a strong commitment. Which of the two do you think is more likely to render the result of a published post on your blog?

When you have powerful reasons for doing something, you’re much more likely to overcome inertia and procrastination, and get moving. Ask yourself: “Why is it important to me to update my blog on a regular basis?”

Do you want your blog to become the definitive source for quality information in your niche?Do you blog in order to attract potential clients to your business?Do you blog to help others achieve a particular goal, such as to lose weight or get their finances in order?Do you blog in order to create an additional source of income so that you can save up to travel around the world?

Hang up your list in plain sight. Then, when you’re thinking of turning on the television instead of working on a blog post, look at your list. Allow your reasons “why” to fuel your motivation, so that you get to work on your blog post instead of giving in to the lure of the couch and the TV set.

As Piers Steel, Ph.D. explains in his book, The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things off and Start Getting Stuff Done, the more valuable a task is, the less likely you are to procrastinate on it. A task’s value is determined by two different factors:

The first factor is how much you enjoy performing the task itself.The second factor is the external reward that you expect to receive if you perform the task.

When you blog about a topic that you’re interested in, it’s very likely that you’ll enjoy the process of writing. That is, writing blog posts will become a rewarding activity in and of itself. This makes blogging a valuable task, so you’ll be much more likely to engage in it.

As I explained in the previous point, the bigger the reward that you expect to receive for performing a particular task, the more valuable that task is, and the more likely it is that you’ll do it. Therefore, you need to ask yourself how you can make the task of blogging more rewarding.

The reward that most bloggers seek is to have their posts read by a large audience. So set up a strategy to make it more likely that others will read what you write. Here are some examples:

Optimize your posts for the search engines so that what you write is more likely to be found by your target audience.Tweet your posts and share them on other social media, such as Facebook and Google+.Each time that you publish a blog post, visit from five to ten popular blogs and leave comments which add value to the conversation so that others are likely to click back to your blog.

When asked what was the most frightening thing he had ever encountered, novelist Ernest Hemingway said, “A blank sheet of paper.” A lot of people share this same fear, and they procrastinate on getting to work on a new blog post in order to avoid the prospect of staring at a blank screen, without knowing what to write about.

You can lessen this fear if you keep a list of possible blog topics that you can choose from. And that’s where your notebook comes in. Write down any potential blogging topics that pop into your head as you go about your day. Ideas can be triggered by anything:

a question a client asks youa comment your two-year old makes as she trying to get out of eating her vegetablesa slogan you read on a billboardan article you read on another blog during a coffee break.

Inspiration is fleeting, so make sure that you carry an idea capture tool with you at all times. Then, when it’s time to work on a blog post, you have a well of ideas to choose from.

The bigger a task seems, the more likely it is that you’ll look for ways to avoid it. The way in which you make a big task look less threatening is by breaking it down into tiny bite-size pieces, or subtasks. It’s even better if you can assign a specific amount of time to each subtask. Here’s an example:

Spend 40 minutes researching an article on the relationship between humor and creativity.Spend 15 minutes creating an outline for the blog post.Spend 25 minutes developing the first idea.Spend 25 minutes developing the second idea.Spend 25 minutes developing the third idea.Spend 25 minutes writing the introduction, the conclusion, and a catchy title.Spend 15 minutes editing the blog post.Spend 15 minutes formatting the blog post and adding an image.

If a task lacks structure, we’re more likely to procrastinate on it. When we know exactly what to do next, we’re less likely to procrastinate. Therefore, it’s a great idea to create a checklist of everything that you need to do in order to get a blog post published. Then, when it’s time to work on a blog post, you can just work your way down the checklist.

Stop telling yourself that you can’t write a blog post unless you have a large chunk of time available. If you only have periods of about 20 minutes scattered throughout your week, put that time to good use. Make holes in the task of writing a blog post by working on it during small pockets of time, on a consistent basis. Soon, by writing a little here and there, you’ll have a published blog post.

One way to make sure that you sit down to write your blog post at the scheduled time is to create a ritual that signals to your brain that it’s blogging time. Your ritual can be anything: light a candle, put on classical music, say a little prayer, or get yourself a cup of tea—whatever helps. Your lizard brain is much more likely to cooperate if you train it to recognize a certain series of actions as a firm command that it’s time to get to work.

We’re much more likely to keep promises that we make to others than we are to keep promises that we make to ourselves. Use that fact to your advantage and bolster your willpower by relying on others to hold you accountable. Here are two ways to create accountability:

Put an “About” widget on your blog’s sidebar and make a commitment to your readers about how often you’ll be posting on your blog.Join a group of other bloggers and agree to hold each other accountable.

The good news is that there are many ways to overcome blogging procrastination. Get started by applying these ten surefire ways to overcome blogging procrastination presented above. How do you overcome blogging procrastination? Please share in the comments below.

Marelisa F?brega blogs about creativity, productivity, and getting the most out of life over at Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online. She’s the author of the ebooks “How to Live Your Best Life – The Essential Guide for Creating and Achieving Your Life List”, and “Make It Happen! A Workbook for Overcoming Procrastination and Getting the Right Things Done”.

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