Archive

28. September 2007:

When Did You Last Take A Time Out

I'm going totally off topic now. I'm also quoting someone else's words of wisdom, just because it's all well and good to be hustling that extra Adsense income, that next affiliate sale, that "next big thing" but a little perspective never goes amiss. So, forgive the down home tone of this philosophy break, but do think on it if you will........

"I turned on the evening news
Saw an old man being interviewed
Turning a hundred and two today
Asked him what's the secret to life
He looked up from his old pipe
Laughed and said "All I can say is."

Don't blink
Just like that you're six years old and you take a nap and you
Wake up and you're twenty-five and your high school sweetheart becomes your wife
Don't blink
You just might miss your babies growing like mine did
Turning into moms and dads next thing you know your better half
Of fifty years is there in bed
And you're praying God takes you instead
Trust me friend a hundred years goes faster than you think
So don't blink

I was glued to my tv when it looked like he looked at me and said
"Best start putting first things first."
Cause when your hourglass runs out of sand
You can't flip it over start again
Take every breath God gives you for what it's worth

Don't Blink
Just like that you're six years old and you take a nap and you
Wake up and you're twenty-five and your high school sweetheart becomes your wife
Don't blink
You just might miss your babies growing like mine did
Turning into moms and dads next thing you know your better half
Of fifty years is there in bed
And you're praying God takes you instead
Trust me friend a hundred years goes faster than you think
So don't blink

I've been tryin' to slow it down
I've been tryin' to take it in
In this here today gone tomorrow world we're livin' in

Don't blink

No, don't blink, life goes faster than you think"

 

Country fans will know this, but for those that don't follow country music but like these words, they are taken from Kenny Chesney's latest single "Don't Blink" from the album Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates

(Lyrics are copyrighted and are reproduced here only for educational purposes) 



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27. September 2007:

How Can I Improve My Blog - Another Meme

I'm sure that for many of us, this is the $64,000 question, but it often takes someone like Dane Morgan to set you thinking about just what you see as weaknesses in your own little online bubble. Dane's Blog Improvement Zone Meme was zapped over to me by Vlad The Affiliate, and, Lucia of BigBucksBlogger fame being slow to read through so many blogs it took me a while to realize I had been "tagged", for which I hope they will both forgive me.

My first thought on seeing this meme, and the accomplished bloggers participating in it was one of "GULP", how can I write something that is going to compare to these luminaries ;-) However, not being one to shy away from a challenge, I thought it was only right and fair to add to the discussion with my own humble 2 cents.

1) Like Vlad I am constantly trying to improve my tech/geek knowledge, along with my limited design abilities. I am one of those bloggers who constantly suffers pangs of envy when I see just how good some blogs look and feel in comparison with my own (at least through my own eyes) and would like be far more competent in that area alone and not so reliant on the generosity and skills of others. It is something that is constantly in the back of my mind when I publish.

2) I need to learn more about the people who read my blog, and exactly why they bother to subscribe or visit me on a regular basis. I think this would certainly help me to focus a lot more on what I actually write about. I am ever mindful that I should not try to blog about matters outside my  experience. It is always tempting, when you read blogs written by people with far more experience, to try and emulate them. This is, I believe, a mistake. I think what I need to remember is, that although I may not be an expert in some areas, my knowledge on certain topics is reasonably strong, and it is those aspects I need to concentrate on. What may seem basic to me, doesn't necessarily make it so, and to share some things, whilst it may not be ground breaking news, might well be extremely useful to a lot of bloggers. I would like to think that bloggers outside of the "blogging  about blogging", marketing etc. fields  would find my level of information helpful and understandable.

With this in mind I will be running quite a few more polls in future in the hope that I can find out more about my readership. I really want to keep those established folks reading, but  I realize that a lot of my posts are not of much interest/use to them. Then again maybe, hopefully, it serves as a reminder of what newer bloggers and less technical folks might be reading up on. If it serves as a bridge to higher things and even greater knowledge that has to be a good thing doesn't it?  

3) One thing I am guilty of is "ranting". This is fine on certain types of blog, but I think I need to curtail it a little on TCH Blog. At the same time, I sometimes feel a little more humor would be a good thing? 

4) I definitely want to improve my off site optimization, and have been working on spreading myself out a lot more through commenting and social blogging networks and one or two forums. The benefits of this are well documented and in my experience have done far more to increase my traffic than any other single tactic. It has also helped my subsriptions and is slowly impacting on comment activity too. I definitely need more comments!!

5) Although I feel that focus is important, the nature of my blog is informational and I do think that sometimes a little human interest can be beneficial. I'm thinking of ways to incorporate a little more of a human face to my blog but it's a tricky one. Perhaps another poll would be a good idea to guage reaction. It's something I am considering.

OK, that's my lot for now. I'd like to invite my chosen five bloggers to let us have their thoughts on this Blog Improvement meme, not because I think they are in need of improvements I hasten to add, and maybe I've aimed a little high with some, but they are all bloggers I have come to respect and enjoy reading:-

Jayne, who among several others runs the excellent About Blogging blog to which I recently subscribed.

Linda, the owner of the 5Star Affiliate Marketing Blog and probably the definitive place for affiliate news.

Rob Watts author of the admirable Yak Yak SEO blog which has become a firm favorite that I only recently discovered

Stephen Cronin of the young but growing quickly More Than Scratch The Surface which I have read since its inception

Chris Lodge at Blog Op because it's another recent discovery for me and talks a lot about Blog Improvement so deserves to be tagged :-)

There could be countless others, but I'm restricted to just five! Thanks again go to Vlad and Lucia for including me in the meme, and remember to take out a subscription if you find any of these blogs as informative and well written as I have.

TCH 



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26. September 2007:

Promoting Bumpzee Communities

It was following a post by Thumblounge over at UK Bloggers Guide that I thought it would be a nice idea to try more to promote Bumpzee and in particular the NoNoFollow community. This is something that any blogger or Bumpzee community member can easily implement on their blog, if of course you can spare the real estate.

For now I am sticking with the NoNoFollow community in my sidebar for the simple reason that I want to promote bloggers who are part of that movement. It does mean that a wide variety of headlines will be displayed, not necessarily relevant to my topics of choice, but, as DoFollow is for everyone I'm not too worried about the eclectic mix. Sometimes, marketing and blogging is not very exciting, so why not throw a few alternative links out there for readers.

Anyone who would like to syndicate the headline feeds from a Bumpzee Community can do so pretty easily. If you are a Wordpress user there are several RSS plugins you can choose from, but for ease of use my recommendation would be to use a widget. You can give yourself far more control over RSS Widgets with the excellent KB Advanced RSS Widget if you don't already have it. This will allow you a lot more control over what you pull from your feeds of choice.

So, if you'd like to spread the word about your chosen Bumpzee communities, it's as easy as that. Go spread some blogging love :-)

TCH

Hosting Directory and Reviews



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25. September 2007:

NielsenNet Ratings Expand Horizons To Germany

 

With so many survey companies operating online in 2007 and without doubt some dubious players who have come and gone, it's good to know that NielsenNet are now operating in the USA, UK, Spain, Italy and now, Germany too.

This type of program is certainly not for everyone and for those unfamiliar with NielsenNet Ratings they are the one of the worlds leading market research companies online, and gather data on consumer behavior and feedback on a huge range of products. People who agree to participate in their program can earn rewards which take the form of cash and prizes and discounts. If you are looking for a market research company yourself they offer a wide range of services for businesses large and small, or if you are an affiliate marketer, you might also be interested in their affiliate program which I have been a member of for some time.

To join the panel a user just needs to complete the member profile page by providing some basic information about themselves and the other members of their household. Once the member profile has been created you need to download the Nielsen//NetRatings Internet Panel Software. The download takes only a few minutes. The panel software allows NielsenNet to gain an overall understanding of Internet usage and behavior and deliver periodic surveys relevant to you.

Although some people will not be happy about sharing data with a research company, it is really no different to running a host of other toolbars, including Google's, which collect information about surfing habits. The software is unobtrusive and does offer participants some tangible benefits in return. No-one should try and convince  you that survey participation will make you rich, but it can deliver tangible rewards for participation and NielsenNet Ratings is one of the best known and reliable services of its type. If you are a consumer who likes your opinions to be heard, and already complete surveys at home, you may want to consider joining the ranks of consumers already providing consumer data and reaping the benefits.

Join the Nielsen//NetRatings Research Panel and you be one of 1,500 instant winners just for joining.

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25. September 2007:

Bumpzee Plagiarism - Unbelievable!

UPDATE

After posting this in a fit of pique, I felt that maybe I was being a little harsh. However, I return to Bumpzee and see that another community member, Stoneman, has responded directly to the poster confirming that the offender had also posted the exact cut and paste of my words to another social blogging network. So, now this person is not only stealing other people's words, but is a spammer too. I therefore stand by the rant below because, let's  face it, reposting the words you cut and paste right back into the community you cut them from is extraordinarily dim. Using the wording (which  I've pasted below) as an introduction to himself on BlogCatalog in other members' public messages is equally stupid, as it is refers quite specifically to Bumpzee.

There have been TV programs dedicated to "dumbest criminals" perhaps we should institute something for dumbest spammers.

(My original message to my visitors as recorded at my profile on Bumpzee) 

 

(MY ORIGINAL RANT)

I think I've seen it all now. Some people really are quite unbelievable when it comes to originality, or more correctly, the complete lack of it.

Today I had a friend request from a Bumpzee user, and we all like to get those I'm sure. When I land on the member's profile page, my eye is caught by an entry in this individual's public messages, and, believe it or not, it's a word for word copy of a message I posted on my own public messages, thanking visitors and friends for their participation and interest.

Now, not only is this dumb, because you are bound to be rumbled, but it also says a lot about a person's sincerity and honesty when they can't even say thank you in their own words. I'm not going to name the person because I'm sure they know who they are, but rest assured, that's no way to network, make friends, build trust or develop an audience. I've seen some dumb attempts in my time, but you sir, are right up there with the 24 carat stupid. Needless to say, I haven't added you to my network, and suggest you take your sorry self back to sqare one and learn something about netiquette and life in general. (/RANT) 

TCH 



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24. September 2007:

Protect Email Addresses On Your Site

Although I've been blogging for several years, I'm not technically expert by any stretch of the imagination.  Fortunately for people like me, there are a lot of helpful bloggers out there who willingly share their knowledge with others. As a blogger you will constantly discover things that you could be doing better, whether it's design, SEO, monetization or a whole host of other things. Yes, there is always something new to learn, to try to come to terms with and blogs are often the best way to discover new things.

I was going to post about this subject recently, but, being lazy, when I discovered someone else had done it already, I considered it the ideal opportunity to give his article and his blog a nice plug instead.

Because I don't use Wordpress for this blog, it's often not as easy to find simple solutions for some problems as it can be in the huge Wordpress community. I do run a variety of plugins, one of which is called AntiSpamMail, (the author's website has gone AWOL so no link) and is designed to protect email addresses on this site from email harvesting robots. It allows email addresses to be visible and clickable by human visitors but fools the bots by scrambling them. Because of this plugin I've never needed to look for any other way to protect my own or my visitors' information but this is probably not the case for many.

So, if you would like to take better care of email addresses posted on your site I recommend a visit to the recent excellent post Prevent Spam Bots From Email Address Harvesting at Webgyver's blog. Not only will this give you details of a range of options available to you, but, if the technical side of maintaining a blog is not your forte, it's a recommended subscription - a place where you can learn a great deal. For more on beating spam and anti spam tools you can find some of the more popular solutions here.

TCH

Gathering Information On Web Hosting



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24. September 2007:

CoComment Update

A very quick update further to my earlier post about CoComment, the owners have confirmed that a demo version 2 is on the way. Bugs are still causing problems for many users, so, hopefully, the new release will result in a fix for them. Since I started using the service I have found it very useful  both for tracking conversations in which I have taken part, and for discovering other interesting threads.



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22. September 2007:

Are Browsers Misrepresenting Your Blog

You might be surprised to find that a great deal of it is not being shown to a number of your visitors, particularly if you market affiliate programs, display third party advertising, and rely too much on javascript.

I was reading Seven Easy Steps To Speed Up Your Site at Raiber Christian.com and thought it would be a good idea to fix some of the minor issues I knew I had on some pages, before it got too out of control. I was also keen to check out some things mentioned by Josh Spaulding on how to avoid leaking pagerank.

I was over at a local business today, using their computer alongside my own. They are still running that old dinosaur IE6 as a browser and it was, in fact, this very computer that made me realize one of my sites had horrible display issues in the IE6 world. That was eventually traced and fixed and now I am a regular over at browsershots.org when I make changes to my sites! What I noticed today however, was a far more worrisome matter. I should say that I am no expert in coding, programming or anything technical and I'm sure that if anyone with expertise were to analyze some of my web pages they would have a fit of apoplexy at the errors and non compliance with standards they would surely find. However, from the mouth of an amateur, here are a few things you may want to think about for your own pages.

This all relates to security settings which will vary enormously from one computer or network to another and from browser to browser. Below is a partial screenshot of my main page over at The Cayman Host as seen in Firefox or IE6/7.

You will see in the third column across, a run of banner ads for half a dozen hosting companies (top three only visible). These do not appear on the machine mentioned - only one banner appears (I use the Wordpress plugin Got Banners to rotate these banners each time a refresh occurs, giving  equal exposure to each web host). Worse still, a great deal of my affiliate banners, in particular the CJ ones, simply do not show at all. I can fix this by uploading these to my server, but as a lot of them change regularly to reflect offers or discounts and the like, this is not an ideal solution. I then discover that all links to CJ's domain appear to be blocked, so even hosting images on my server and using PHP redirects for the links, which I already do on most, has no effect whatsoever beyond ensuring the creatives are displayed, leading to a dead end. 

Javascript ads were being blocked (not uncommon) and there were several chunks of text missing. This is not great, but at least it doesn't  make the site look broken, it's just missing  the javascript content. Bidvertiser was just one example, and was fixed by reverting to HTML. However, trying to use a common tracking service for the links resulted in nothing but a glaring "The Page Cannot Be Displayed" screen. I have no idea why the security settings would be doing this and my only way around the problem is probably going to be using alternative redirect methods, probably PHP, for those affiliate links. This means a fair bit of work and inconvenience. I did see that there was a Mcafee site monitor product running which at one point threw up a warning that Bidvertiser sent "spammy emails". Personally I think that kind of tactic is very poor form, based, it would seem, purely on individual opinion. 

Amazon associate links were fine so presumably they are not deemed a threat to anybody's sanity or wallet, at least not according to whatever security settings were operational at the time I was surfing...hmmm.

I accept that the site relies heavily on affiliate programs, but it annoys me that people can mess with my design in this way. I would say that the owner of this machine is probably not your average internet user, and it is a business machine rather than a personal computer. However, a lot of users with very little technical knowledge could easily be using software or settings that mess with a page's overall look and feel. I imagine them arriving on my page, seeing "broken" links and missing images and immediately leaving, thinking that it is a poorly maintained, out of date neighborhood and that's pretty disheartening.

It makes you wonder just how many people who click on a link because they are intrested in a product or service just end up on a blank page. Those visitors will be lost to you, probably for good. It's a depressing thought, that having earned the traffic and the visitor, you can lose them so easily to issues almost completely out of your control.

If you think your site(s) might be suffering similar problems, maybe it's time to check them out and correct what you can, even if it's almost impossible to know who is viewing what anymore. All you can do is try not to use too much javascript, make sure that most of your image files are hosted on your own server and use good quality redirects on affiliate links. That's not news to the more experienced, but it hopefully helps if a lot of this is unfamiliar to you.

Additional advice from better qualified readers is, as always, more than welcome.

TCH

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22. September 2007:

Google Page Rank Rumours Abound

For a long time I've been of the opinion that Google's Page Rank had turned around and bitten them. It's not that it was a bad idea per se, just that it was surely obvious that people would find ways to subvert it. After the "NoFollow" attribute was introduced, the signs were there that Google was fighting a rear guard action in an attempt to recover some sort of credibility for the system.

Rumours are now rife that page rank, at least in its present form, will soon be no more.  Over at CashQuests they have gone as far as publishing  their opinion that Page Rank Is Already Dead. Linkbait or genuine concerns?

Whatever the truth, I think the long silence on updated page rank speaks volumes. If it really is the death knell for the familiar old "friend" of SEO'ers and webmasters everywhere, it will be interesting to see how Google move forward. I think whatever they do is certainly long overdue, and hopefully whatever moves may or may not be afoot will be positive and beneficial for searchers and webmasters. I think a lot of people are waiting with baited breath..........

TCH

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21. September 2007:

AdBlocker Controversy Rages On

Not long ago I was participating in a few discussions about Adblocker and its growing use. I've since read several more posts around the blogosphere giving a broad range of opinions from both the anti-ad-everything crusaders and the defenders of a blogger's rights to advertise. Both sides have some convincing viewpoints if you discount the extremist fools who always lumber into such conversations.

By way of an update I've linked to all the relevant threads at the foot of this post. Having read all the arguments, comparisons with other visual media and the like, I still remain unimpressed with adblocking philosophy, and have to think that the backlash is really due to intrusive and annoying advertisements that irritate viewers so much. Perhaps if advertising restraint had been exercised a little more in the past, there would be less bad feeling. For bloggers who advertise, and from my point of view as a reader, I'm happy to see your ads and have often been led to some interesting places through them. Having said that, I really don't like fly-ins, audio barrages, pop-ups (particularly those forcing clicks) but that's why browsers have pop up blockers. That for me, will be the extent of selective exclusion of ads. If you are relying on that type of thing, you should probably rethink your options.

Do you  have an opinion this? Rant away....... 

 

AdBlocking Further Reading 

Reader Appreciation Project - Ad Blocking From A Reader's Perspective

Blog Herald - If Your Blog Doesn't Have Ads Are You Evil?

Stop Stealing My Content

Mark Evans - The Evilness of Eating Your Cake and Having it Too

AdBlock Plus - What Would Jesus Do? 

TCH

Plenty Of Hosting Ads and Reviews & A Contest 



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20. September 2007:

Why Am I Reading YOUR Feed?

RSS subscriptions. Bloggers clamour for numbers and either proudly display their subscriber numbers, keep them a secret, or display them with a virgin like self conscious cringe and apologize for their puny status. This social blogging stigma is evidenced by posts like the one over at Internet Marketing Sucks where the author discusses Faking Your Feed Count.

It's funny really because RSS subscription numbers are only a very vague estimate of the truth, and yet, we set so much store by them. The reasons for that are another story and that's not what I'm about today.

I was reading a post yesterday over at TechTraction entitled Make Your RSS Feed Easy To Find which echoes the same things I have written about here in the past. RSS is still a mystery to many and you need to be mindful of this if you wish to grow your readership.

The drawback of RSS feeds is that for a publisher they are very impersonal and knowing that your feed stats are probably not really accurate means that you remain disonnected to a certain degree. An obvious indicator of growing subscribers is commenting by regular visitors, but again, there are plenty of people who lurk and never participate even though they may be reading and enjoying your blog on a regular basis.

To illustrate the blogs I read via RSS at the moment, I've given you a few screenshots. Is your blog in there? Am I one of your flesh and blood readers? Did you already know that or is it a pleasant/scary surprise? Undecided

There is every chance you've never heard from me on your blog, then again I may have contributed, visited frequently. I'm in the habit of adding blogs that I intend to read more than once into my reader - some stay and some don't because I can only read so much! Why not see if I'm one of your subscribers - if I am, leave me a comment and say howdy, if I'm not, tell me what I'm missing out on - go on, I'm giving you the green light to shamelessly plug your blog. And remember, others may see your name up there in lights and want to subscribe, so make it easier by adding your comment for them to click through on. In alphabetical order, here we go.............

 

Go to  the full post to see more.................. 

 

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19. September 2007:

Advertisers and Bloggers-Black and White-Right and Wrong

Because this is a longish post I've split it, just click on the link to read the full monty. I have what I think is an interesting tale to tell and I'd really like to hear your opinions. Names have been changed to protect the guilty/innocent. If you're sitting comfortably, then I'll begin.........

Our hero in this tale is a blogger, just like you and I, or at least similar. Our blogging friend decides to try and earn revenue from his blog, and researches the numerous ways to start bringing in some money. With time, his diligent quest for knowledge and his hard work do pay off and soon he begins to see some results. As the blog gains in popularity he finds himself able to steadily increase his rates for things like advertising. The Blogger is honest about his revenue generating and tells his audience all about in in his clear 'disclosure policy'.

Enter Advertiser A, who is actually a representative of a conglomerate of advertisers, a middle man or ad broker if you prefer. They tell our Blogger that they would like to help him make more money and are very interested in advertising on his blog. The blogger receives this news happily, and agrees with Advertiser A that he will certainly consider working with them. He assumes they have read his blog and are thus well aware of his advertising and editorial policies, which, although voluntary, he believes in quite strongly. He presumes that any offer they make him will have been carefully considered and matched to their projected results based on his blog's status and position in the grand scheme of things.

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18. September 2007:

Cayman Islands Wiki at GoToCayman

I apologize in advance to regular readers for this short post but all will become clear.

Because of my domain name I find more and more people arriving on my blog looking for information on the Cayman Islands - Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac. I have also had emails asking me about everything from work permits and immigration law to vacations and real estate. (It's true I swear).

So, in the spirit of helpfulness and if you landed here hoping for this kind of information - firstly, it's great to see you :-) but I would think you will find far more useful help at our excellent little Wiki at GoToCayman.com which is a guide of all things useful on the islands. There is a Cayman category in my sidebar, if you're interested in my occasional island related posts but they are few and far between.

I hope you will find the link useful whether you are a tourist, resident or potential resident of Cayman. Have a great day!

TCH    



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17. September 2007:

Blogs To Put In Your Sights This Week

This is another of those general roundup posts where all kinds of information that's been rattling around in my head finally finds expression on these pages. With so much to read, digest, comment upon etc. it's almost impossible to dedicate a full post to some of it, so, here is a general melting pot of things I wanted to blog about over the past few days. Read on, maybe you're getting some link love you weren't expecting!

First off, some of you may notice I've changed both my Avatar and my Favicon. Couple of reasons for this but it was a post on Bumpzee by Mona Weathers at Iwebis.com that finally got me to do something about it. I'd been using the crest of the Cayman Islands as a picture on various social blogging sites, but now, like it or not you're getting something a little more personal.

I've also added this blog to BlogCatalog where I've been a member since June 2006 but never used it. Another of those jobs I kept meaning to get around to and never did, but it's finally done and I've even added a widget to these pages.

After mentioning the slowly increasing number of internet users discovering how to block advertising, BigBucksBlogger Lucia has been keeping herself very busy, looking at ways to try and ensure that your ads are seen. That's a story worth following. TDavid over at Things That Make You Go Hmm has a very interesting interview with one of his readers who regularly uses the AdBlocker plugin and brings another perspective to the subject. 

Talking of Lucia we both took the plunge and joined CoComment a week or so ago. Since then, I've been struggling with a few minor bugs but overall it's a good tool and is certainly going to help build more links. Dane Morgan, who runs two great sites including Blog Strokes has jumped on board too and I'm still hoping more savvy bloggers will join in conversation with us.

Mention of Dane (who recently helped him out with NoNoFollow) leads me to Vlad who you may know as VladTheAffiliate. Vlad has an excellent blog on affiliate marketing, and this is just a little bit of fun. He is trying to outrank Vlad The Impaler for first place on Wikipedia's search for the term Vlad. Well, now we've given him another little hand up, why not help him out yourself? He's even gone to the trouble of giving you the HTML for his anchor text link!

With so many blogs rapidly filling my RSS Reader I'm almost tempted to keep one of the RSS Contest prizes to myself. I thought everybody was ready to rant about their web hosting company at the slightest provocation, but responses have been very slow so far. Why not stop by, tell us about your host and give yourself a shot at winning a FeedGost license? Jayne over at AboutBlogging has set the ball rolling and deserves a mention not only for that, but for standing by the principles she talks about in her latest post entitled Be A Community Builder. Be warned though, the design of her blog is likely to make you suffer 'design envy', well, it did me anyway.

There are so many others I could mention and I know that as soon as I hit 'publish' I'll remember something I really wanted to include but didn't. I apologize to those I've forgotten who don't even know that I've forgotten them, and will be almost sure to mention you the next time I make one of these rambling type posts. 

For those who haven't taken advantage of the free download of the Downtime Witness software, I recently found a free online monitoring service at HostTracker which you may prefer. Judging by the number of blogs that are often offline, it might be an idea to keep a closer eye on, and a record of, your hosting company's performance.  

Now that the new avatar has been unleashed on an unsuspecting world, I will try to put up a long overdue "About" page sometime, as it seems a lot of you like to see a little more of the bloggers behind the screens. In the meantime, enjoy some of these great blogs if you're not already a reader.

TCH - The Cayman Host Online Store  



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16. September 2007:

If Andy Beard Says It's Cool...

 

......then DealDotCom must be worth looking into right? OK, that was a shameless piece of name dropping for which I hope he'll forgive me, particularly as I'm now one of his DealDotCom Queen Bees :-)

The program is set to launch on September 18 and offers a two tier affiliate program. I think a lot of savvy marketers will jump on board simply because once an affiliate signs up, they become "yours" for life. Any sales you make whether a week from now or five years from now, will ensure you a commission - no 30 day cookies here.

I don't plan to give this a huge talking up, just head over to the site if you're interested and read what they have to say - hopefully you'll want to join before everyone else does. It won't cost you anything to become an affiliate and could see you making some good commissions in the years ahead, particularly if you're able to get in nice and early.



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15. September 2007:

Win A FeedGhost Pro License

Yes, we are running a contest and giving away three Pro user licenses courtesy of Stu Smith at FeedGhost which I reviewed a couple of posts previously. For full details visit the page at our hosting site below.

Enter To Win A 12 Month FeedGhost Pro RSS Reader License

Thank you for your support and good luck :-) 



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13. September 2007:

Great Free Software For Bloggers

The Best Things In Life Are Free - Good Free Software Is One Example

During the course of my blogging and activity online I often find myself in the position of needing something to help me complete a task or enhance my output. This is usually how I discover the best free tools when I need them most and I'm sure this is true of many bloggers and internet users.

So, I thought today I would mention a few of the most useful tools and sites I've run across in my time online. These are only the tip of the iceberg, but I'd like to encourage everyone to drop by and share their own favorites too, so if you've found something invaluable and free that has helped  you with your blogging, why not share with everyone? Remember, you'll get some link love too

Working with colors online can be a pain, particularly when editing items within your blog to ensure that they blend in nicely with your design. With today's high resolution monitors, color pickers can be almost impossible to use but help is at hand. For a reference list of web colors try HTML Color Names which gives a quick shortcut to many of the popular hex values and color names.

If you need more I highly recommend the free ColorPic software from Iconico.com that will allow you to quickly and easily copy any existing colors on your display and generate the hex and RGB values. You can save colors and use a great range of editing options and it works in most major browsers and other programs like Photoshop.

If you're a webmaster or blogger the next free tool is an excellent way to monitor your sites downtime and your hosting provider's true performance. Downtime Witness is completely free and is available at our main website. The software will alert you whenever the URL or IP addresses you specify go offline and will also send you a notification when those sites recover. Most monitoring software with the features of Downtime Witness cost money, but as one of my readers, you get the software and activation key free gratis and for nothing :-)

Another useful blogging tool is a good screenshot program and although I've tried a number of them over the years, including the Firefox add ons, the best free program I have ever used, and still use, is the MW Snap Screen Capture utility by Mirek Wojtowicz. His website looks a bit dated but his little freeware application is anything but. For the times when a good screen capture or image is just too much, or where you need to cut down on load times for a page of images, you're going to want a thumbnail generator. There are plenty available but my program of choice has to be Easy Thumbnails from www.fookes.com. Again, the website is basic, but their software delivers the goods just fine.

I've written elsewhere about a few other free tools I've used for some time now but they deserve another mention so I'm throwing in the incredible RoboForm for password security and ease of organization, Arelis and IBP the superb free SEO suite of tools and the AutoMapIt Automatic Sitemap Service which are all extremely useful and worth more than their free price tags. 

For RSS feeds you might like to check out a free submission tool from Allscoop RSS Submit Pro which although not as thorough as some other RSS submission software is excellent for a free program.

I think that's enough to keep you all busy for a while, I'll publish some more links at another time, but enjoy these free programs and if you would like to recommend a free program of your own that you think I should know about, please leave a comment and share your little gems.

TCH

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11. September 2007:

New RSS Feed Reader From FeedGhost

It was only recently that Bloglines launched its Beta reader and I've just recently discovered another very impressive offering from FeedGhost. If you are an avid feed reader this latest entry into an already busy arena, caught my eye with its fresh looking design which is demonstrated quite clearly at their screenshots page.

Although at pains to distinguish itself from Outlook and anxious not to be considered a clone, they do claim an Outlook style for reading feeds, or a "river of news" layout. You also have the facility to tag posts for easier retrieval and searching and you can also search for articles by keyword. If you read a lot of RSS feeds, this is something you really get to appreciate over time, but also something which FeedGhost in its free incarnation won't really help you with.

FeedGhost are offering two versions of their reader, FeedGhost Lite and Pro As you would expect, the Pro version is not free but can be had for just $20 a year which is hardly going to break the bank for most. At the moment you can try the Pro edition for seven days before making a decision to buy. After the seven day trial you will need to register but you can still opt to stick with the Lite version. If you do you will only be able to store 20 feeds, but if that's enough for you, you can use it forever. The Pro version carries no  limitations on feed numbers. Apparently Windows Vista users are particularly happy with the way the program looks - I can't confirm that as an XP user.  

I've not yet seen a need to pay for an RSS Feed reader myself but I'm sure some people will try this and be happy to part with the small fee after the trial period. Organizing and reading RSS feeds is an area where users have a lot of choices already, but it's good to see alternatives and particularly those that offer visual enhancements to improve their display for users. If you're current reader is not so easy on the eye, maybe this will brighten up your RSS experience a little.

TCH

Marketing/Hosting/Autoresponders/VOIP Conference



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10. September 2007:

Need An Incentive To Join Kontrib?

I wrote about Kontrib a while back if you're not sure what it's all about. They have brought me a reasonable amount of traffic on occasion but if you still feel that one more social news site is one too many for you, maybe their latest incentive might persuade you to check them out.

Kontrib are running a short promotion to celebrate their upcoming six month anniversary, Kontrib.com will be giving away one free Amazon.com $50 dollar gift certificate each week for the next eight weeks. To be eligible for the weekly drawing, you must be a registered user of Kontrib.com (and abide by the Terms of Service of course). The more you use Kontrib.com, the better your chances will be in winning the Amazon.com gift certificate.

TCH

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10. September 2007:

AdGridwork & Review Back For Bloggers

A few days ago I received a message from a fellow Bumpzee member promoting a couple of services that may be of interest to some readers. The first of these is an ad-swap effort called AdGridwork. The concept is your basic ad exchange where in return for showing third party ads on your blog or website, yours is shown on other sites on the network.

I haven't signed up for the service myself for the simple reason that I don't have a suitable space to display the ads. However, having had a quick look around the site, it looks OK and for anyone looking to participate in some kind of free ad exchange program it could be of interest and you might want to add it to your shortlist. I think the biggest objection that some have to this kind of system is the worry about the kinds of ads that will end up displayed on your site and in the past, many have become a hotbed for less than attractive get rich quick and similar programs. Below is a sample of how ads are displayed on your site.

If you have no advertising budget to speak of, the big advantage is that programs like this are free and can help you to get your ads out onto a high number of sites. Once again though, you don't really know the type/quality of the places your ads will appear. The only way to see how effective the program might be for you is to give it a try and, ultimately, you don't really have anything to lose. If you haven't yet had much success in selling space on your blog and have some real estate doing nothing you may already used  or considered using an ad swap program.

There are plenty of other programs offering a similar service and whether this one will prove to have any particular advantages over their competition is impossible to say.

What may be of more interest to some bloggers is their other service which is called Review Back. As the name suggests this is a service that allows bloggers to exhange reviews of each others sites and for bloggers looking to generate a little buzz as well as some link love from other blogs, it could be attractive. It's really reciprocal linking taken a step further, and, let's face it, blogrolls have become less and less useful in this respect. A review of your blog is probably far more likely to persuade readers to click through than a link in someone else's blogroll.

Whilst I can see the potential of this idea, it has its pitfalls too. At the moment the site has just under 1000 blogs listed in their membership and you can easily browse these from their main page. What I noticed when doing so was that a lot of the blogs were not particularly high quality and rank. Maybe that's to be expected as the site is still in its infancy. However, the potential for well established quality blogs is probably questionable because of it. I can't see there would be much incentive for someone who has already established their presence and a good audience, to review much lesser known bloggers. Those less well known blogs however are likely to be very keen on getting a review on the higher ranked sites and this inequality is always going to be difficult to manage.

I haven't tried the program, and I'm not sure how you would ensure the quality of writing that might be employed to review your blog. My guess is though that it would be a simple case of visiting the potential reviewer's site and making a judgement basedon what you see. To be fair, the program provides a decent amount of statistical information too, such as alexa and Google Rank for the member blogs, so in conjunction with your own judgement it shouldn't be too difficult to find potential Review Back partnerships.

Despite these minor criticisms though, all due credit to the owners for coming up with the service. I'm sure that the membership will continue to grow and that it will benefit a lot of bloggers who want to take part in cross promotion of this nature, and for bringing another free promotion idea to fruition, Review Back and its owners should be applauded.

TCH



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09. September 2007:

Giving Up On SmartFTP

For the past year or so I've been a happy user of SmartFTP for uploading and managing files on my servers. The interface was neat and familiar, and it was a good  tool to manage my domains with. For a free FTP program you would have to go some way to beat it.

Then, over the past week or so, I started having problems. The latest version, 2.5, suddenly began loading very slowly, until it was taking several minutes to initialize at all. A couple of days ago, it quit on me altogether.

I tried everything, starting with an uninstall and a fresh install from a new download. This was unsuccessful so I uninstalled again, ran a system wash with Windows Washer, followed by a full registry clean and error fix via Registry Mechanic. Installed again and got as far as the splash screen whereupon the program froze.

I headed to the forums and checked out the threads for possible fixes and thought I'd found the answer. I uninstalled again, but this time I went into the Registry and edited it manually, making sure I cleaned out every single reference to the program that the uninstall had left behind - my Registry Mechanic was not doing a thorough enough job. I re-install and the program starts. 'Great' I think and try to navigate to my local files - you guessed it, it freezes, so although I'd managed to connect to a remote server, I couldn't upload anything at all and no amount of rebooting or anything else made any difference.

I've finally given up. I don't have time to chase around forums looking for bug fixes on free software and if I was using the licensed version I guess I would have had to pursue it a lot further, but I'm disappointed because it was just one of those programs that was like an old friend and was, until now, very dependable. I'm not suggesting it's a bad program, I'm sure the problem could be resolved, but it just doesn't seem worth it when I can download and use something else that works. I need access to FTP every day.

I've installed FileZilla's FTP client and it's fine, if a little different to what I've been used to but I guess I'll get famliar with it in time. If anyone has any suggestions as to an even better free alternative I'm all ears.

With this and various other computer related hassles during the past two days I've not posted a couple of things I was lining up for this weekend. I hate losing time to technical trip wires and booby traps that always seem to come along in groups!

TCH

Hosting/Domains/Marketing/Tech Toys 



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07. September 2007:

Join Us At CoComment

 

I've been prompted to write this post following the lead of Lucia over at BigBucksBlogger in an attempt to  help spread the word about CoComment. Lucia has already written a fairly in depth intro of the way CoComment works which is worth a read and why I've skipped over a lot of the information.

If you want to just dive straight in you can head directly to the sign up page for CoComment.

Not only will CoComment keep you up to date with all the blog conversations you are involved in, but it very cleverly helps you to gain links and stimulate commenting on your blog too. You have to like the sound of that.

The CoComment system takes the form of a Firefox plugin which you can install in seconds. If you decide to join in with CoComment, just leave me a comment here once you have installed the extension and I'll take it from there by adding you as a friend which should hopefully benefit us both. Alternatively, you can send a friend request via my page at CoComment.

As a DoFollow blogger, remember that comments you leave here are followed from the get go, but please also remember that they are strictly moderated to avoid abuse. Whether you are part of the DoFollow movement or not, CoComment should prove to be a useful addition in your quest to increase commenting on your blog. If you would like to know more about DoFollow, pay a visit to our community at Bumpzee and help spread the word :-)

TCH

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05. September 2007:

More Thoughts On Sponsored Blogging

Sponsored blogging has always been a hot topic for discussion and this week I came across a couple of interesting blog posts that set me thinking.

The first of these was over at Josh Spaulding's Make Money Blog and related to a Review Me post at John Chow's blog. The ensuing discussion is an interesting one because as ever it produced some strong reaction and opinion.

If you have read any of my previous ramblings about sponsored blog posts you have probably realized that whilst I'm a supporter and am in favor of the principle, I also have some reservations. If you read the aforementioned post, you will see that the crux of the argument is whether the blogger should have accepted payment in light of what he subsequently published.

The reason I raise it here is because I think it highlights one of the biggest problems surrounding sponsored blogging - self control on the part of bloggers. It is widely accepted, I think, that people tend towards animosity against blogs that are filled with nothing but sponsored content. Whether or not this is justified is neither here nor there, it just seems to be so.

I don't write many sponsored posts, but of course my blog is monetized, and I will happily write them if I feel they are relevant and that I can do the purchaser justice. This is where restraint has to be exercised. As an example, I've been asked in the past to write about things like Caribbean Cruises on this blog - understandable because I live on Grand Cayman and on the face of it, it's a relevant topic, but anyone who lands on these pages know that it's really anything but. Sure, I'm intelligent enough to cobble together a few paragraphs extolling the pleasures of our beautiful region and our islands in particular, but I don't think that's what my readers come here for, even though I do throw in the occasional local bits and pieces for variety.

I've stated before that bloggers need to consider more long term goals over a quick buck, but of course the higher the offer, the harder they become to refuse - human nature right? Well, maybe, but the next post that caught my eye was Andy Beard's article promoting free keyword and SEO tools, where he clearly states that he turned down a $130 fee but wrote about the topic anyway. Sure, Andy could just be attempting to demonstrate that he is a halo wearing and benign blogger, but anyone who reads his blog will know that he is one of the few high profile and successful guys who is also a genuinely nice bloke with no need to resort to such tactics. Credibility leads to far more reader loyalty.

Just to ward off the cry that he can afford to turn down advertising of this sort, it doesn't matter if it's ten or four hundred dollars, there is a reason he is in the position to turn it down in the first place and aspiring bloggers, myself included, do well to remember that.

The point I'm trying to make is that when you compare the attitudes of these two blogging 'names' the differences are plain to see. Long term, one does himself and his reputation far more good than the other, who's actions have been called into question. Worlds apart.

If you believe that no publicity is bad publicity, I suppose these views are irrelevant, but I think the lesson is clear.

We all love getting paid to blog and do something we enjoy, but there is a need to balance the greenbacks with a coherent and cohesive blog, that won't portray you, the author as being all about the money, which will, like it or not, turn a great number of people off.



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04. September 2007:

More Internet Users Blocking Advertising

My post about Firefox extensions had barely left my keyboard when I see a very interesting item over at the 5Star Blog today, relating to Adblock Plus, the Firefox plugin that I mentioned at the tail end of my article.  For anyone who has never seen it in action, it is capable of stripping out virtually any kind of advertising, not just PPC, and can be configured to banish practically any content the user decides upon. (refer also to this post at EZ-Online Money about the same subject which I came across subsequent to writing this one)

It's interesting because, as I had already said, the extension is becoming far more widely known, and I saw two other posts recently praising it to the heavens. This latest article provides you with figures and they are pretty impressive/depressing, depending on your point of view.

To my mind, anyone trying to make money online through whatever kinds of advertising they may publish has every right to do so - it costs money to run a blog and even if you are only trying to break even, advertising is usually a big part of your potential income.

As the article points out, it's not yet time to roll over and die whether you are an advertiser or a publisher. Just as the prevalence of cookie murdering anti spyware programs have made their impact on affiliate marketing, this will probably have a longterm  detrimental effect on advertising revenue too, but, although the numbers sound big, they still represent only a small perentage of internet users at present. It's not yet time to panic, although I'm sure the big players will begin to feel the effects before anyone else.

How do you feel though? Do you use AdBlocker and if so why? Are you a PPC publisher and how do you think this will impact the advertising on your site in future? Are you, God forbid, a blogger who publishes ads but blocks everyone else's and if so why, what are your justifications for  doing so?

I see such fervent, almost fanatical rantings on many blogs, railing against advertising and commercialism and it never fails to astonish me. These are the people who want everything for nothing and can never be made to see reason. They don't seem to appreciate that advertising is a livelihood for many, and in the blogging world, something that  keeps a lot of bloggers afloat each month. What is the mindset of these people who see advertising on the web as some kind of insidious poisoning of 'their internet'? They certainly love to gloat about their ad free browsing to anyone who will listen and thus the word is spread. So. who is the cancer here? I think some people should certainly re-examine their stance.   

Sure, if you don't wish to advertise on your sites, nobody is trying to say you should, but I'm sure a lot of Adblocker users frequent blogs who need that advertising and rely on it. If you can afford to do without additional income to support your connection and hosting costs, good for you, but remember that some are not so fortunate. Why do they feel they should get the benefit of a blog that they enjoy and yet strip away any and all of that blogger's hard won advertising. It seems an extreme way of dealing with a very very minor irritant. Perhaps these evangelists should look carefully at their desire to banish advertising, biting the hand that feeds, and possibly spelling the end for some of the places they like to visit online.

TCH

Hosting, Domains, Affiliates, Forums and Gadgets



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02. September 2007:

Are You A Firefox Toolbar Junkie?

With so many Firefox add ons available today, it is easy to go overboard with the number of toolbars running on your browser. I've reached the point where I can no longer happily exist with the full compliment of Firefox toolbars running all of the time and have to selectively turn them off when not in use. As the shot below shows, (click the thumbnail for a full size image) they would take up around half of the screen area were I to leave them constantly visible.

Desktop Thumbnails 

You will probably see some toolbars you recognize and maybe some that you don't, so just what are these add ons that I am so loathe to part with altogether?

The del.icio.us toolbar is rarely in use because as you can see, the icon already resides at the very top of my browser and makes bookmarking a simple click away, but it can be useful for quick access to things I've recently bookmarked myself.

Immediately below the address bar in the live bookmarks area you will see a collection of social bookmarking tabs that run the width of the browser and allow access to many more via the >> symbol and a drop down menu at the far right hand side of the field. Despite the prevalence of easy social bookmarking plugins that exist on a lot of sites, these are still very useful for quick social bookmarking duties.

Following the Del.icio.us toolbar comes Submit 'Em Now which I have to admit has fallen by the wayside in recent times and will probably be disabled before long. It's a useful add on for submitting to various blog directories but I find using RSS Submit is far easier and quicker.

Next you will see the essential Stumbleupon toolbar that I'm sure is familiar to most readers, and beneath that the Pay Per Post add on, which again, is surely well known by those involved in writing sponsored posts for PPP.

The next two toolbars are advertising related. Instant Buzz and Free Traffic Bar both show ads as you go about your business on the web, earning you ad credits of your own which are then shown on the desktops of other users who have the toolbars installed. Both are pretty unobtrusive, and, if you can write a good line of ad copy, do produce some traffic that you otherwise wouldn't probably have had. Useful, without being as fantastic as some will claim, but they can bring traffic to affiliate sites and the like, without any real effort on your part. FTB also includes some useful search features too.

Next up is the Compete toolbar which provides plenty of useful statistical information about the sites you visit including things like traffic history, available deals and coupon codes and what they call a trust certificate.

In prime position is the toolbar I couldn't live without. If you're still not using Roboform to secure your passwords and login information you really should give it a whirl. You will never have to forget another password and can therefore use very random password strings for all your sites, and only ever have to recall one master password. Roboform does all the rest and not only saves your memory, but greatly reduces the risk of someone else discovering your passwords.

Moving to the foot of the screen you will see the Commission Junction extension, a great little extra that enables you to check your account balance without the need to keep logging in to the site. Great for seeing how quickly the coffers are filling up.

We then see the ScribeFire icon, a useful external blog editor along the lines of Post2Blog and Qumana and to the right of that, the Veoh video plugin which gives access to streaming video and downloads from the Veoh network.

Next in line is the very useful Search Status add on (one feature I love is the ability to highlight nofollow links) and the Screen Grab and IE Tabs icons - the first a useful tool for screen captures and the latter enabling you to open an IE tab within Firefox for those times when it chokes on something (which it does do from time to time).

After a couple of statistical fields from Compete, in the far right hand corner is the Sparky Alexa toolbar which is unobtrusive and will eventually help to redress the previous IE bias in the calculation of Alexa rankings if enough Firefox users will use it.

There are other add ons in use, not immediately apparent from the screenshot - these include Simpy social bookmarking, another screen capture tool, Pearl Crescent Page Saver, and the Post2Blog Firefox add on.

So there you have it and I hope you will find one or two useful additions to your own browsers. Have I missed any good ones? Got any more recommendations?

I should point out that the Adblocker plugin which seems to grow in popularity will never find a home in my browser. As an advertiser myself it just seems hypocritical to install it. I'll never understand the fanatical anti-ad feelings of some people in any case, but, rest assured, when I visit your site, I will see it as you intend it to be seen.

TCH



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02. September 2007:

Room In Your Sidebar For Feedjit

I came across this new toy for bloggers whilst roaming around this Sunday and reading a wide variety of blogs.

I call it a toy because beyond being mildly interesting I'm not sure it brings with it any great benefits. However it's free and very simple to add to your pages with a quick javascript cut and paste. If you like the idea of a running record of where your visitors have come from and where they go running off to and showing it off for the world to see, then FEEDJIT might just be for you.

Yes, I've plonked it in the sidebar of this blog so that you can see what it does, but I'm not sure how long it will be staying. They claim over 3 million widget impressions in a week, so obviously a lot of bloggers have decided it's a good thing. As a Sunday timewaster, it was an interesting new discovery, but it will eat up a chunk of space that could maybe be better used - in making you some money perhaps :-)

Update. In actual fact, I've revised my opinion slightly - the information displayed is probably of some interest to many visitors, including as it does the pages where people came from, be it a search engine or other referring site and what posts they came to view. In effect it's a little like a popular posts type plugin and also credits other bloggers who have linked to you. Maybe I'll let it stay after all.....



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