Dec | 30 | 2009

Making Money Through Speaking/Consulting

Posted by Jimmy as Monetization I find it funny that people include “speaking gigs/engagements” and “consulting” as one of the ways to monetize your blog. I do understand that in some cases blogs help boost a person’s reputation in their field of expertise to the point that they get more invitations to speak in various engagements - and get paid for it. However, strictly speaking it does not fall under blog monetization since you didn’t really make money from blogging. In my opinion it does fall under online marketing though; with you, the blogger/speaker, as the product being “sold”. The truth though is that I do ...

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Dec | 24 | 2009

Search Rank Drop and False Alarms

Posted by Jimmy as SEO Features Happy Holidays! What are the chances of someone being concerned about their blog’s search ranking dropping on Christmas Eve? I have no idea but then again if I’m writing about it right now then there’s probably someone somewhere around the world doing SEO at this very minute. If you have experienced a sudden drop in ranking, both in page rank or actual placement in SERPs, then you know exactly how stressful it can be. However, if this happens to you there are things you can do to turn things around…unless you really are doing black hat and got caught big time. ...

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Dec | 21 | 2009

Resizing Images: Tips and Tools

Posted by Jimmy as Blogging Tools, Tips When adding images to your blog posts make sure that you have resized them to a size that is not only aesthetically appealing but also SEO friendly. Resizing images is not a hard task, however, when resizing images simply recalculating the ratio may not be a good idea especially if the new image size is a lot larger than the original one. The reason for this is that the image gets pixelized and you end up with a grainy image that just isn't nice to look at. If you want to resize images beyond changing the dimensions here are some ...

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Dec | 19 | 2009

Reeling People in and Keeping Them

Posted by Jimmy as Tips Early this month Darren Rowse of Problogger gave several (seven to be exact) suggestions on what to as your readers to get them to be more involved in your blog. I too find that asking questions can indeed be rewarding because it does encourage even the “lurkers” to come out and participate even if just once in a while. The good thing with getting people to participate is that once a person leaves a comment the chances of that person commenting again increases and you can also bet that they'll be checking your blog out more often to see ...

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Nov | 27 | 2009

Better Backup than Sorry

Posted by Jimmy as Blog Tutorials News I wonder if there’s any statistics on the number of bloggers that keep a backup of all their blog posts. I used to NOT keep backup copies. My reason for this is simple: I trusted Wordpress. Now I am not saying that Wordpress is not trustworthy but it is always better to be safe than sorry. I’m saying this from experience. About a year ago while we were undergoing a redesign, for whatever reason, some technical booboo happened and several of our latest blog posts disappeared without a trace. This happened in several different blogs. Luckily I have a habit of saving ...

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Nov | 26 | 2009

Opinionated Blogger = Successful Blogger?

Posted by Jimmy as Tips, Writing One of the most important things to realize if you want to be a successful blogger is that you need to have a mind of your own, know your take on things, and be willing to let the world know what it is you think. If you are a blogger that only keeps on rehashing other people’s opinions you’ll end up having a blog that feels more like a newsfeed than a blog. In that case what’s the use of that blog? Your readers might as well just subscribe to a news feed and get the facts there. After all ...

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Nov | 24 | 2009

Guest Blog Your Way to More Readers and Links

Posted by Jimmy as Community Building, Syndication, Tips I have done a few posts on guest blogging. Other bloggers here in blog-tutorials like Jaren and Guru have also posted about the same topic. However, the usual focus is on the benefits of having a guest blogger, with the most obvious being helping you out when you’re in a rut or need to take a vacation from your blog for some other reason. What I haven’t expounded on though is the benefits of blogging on other blogs. The most obvious advantage is of course added exposure. You get the benefit of being read by the other blogs’ regular readers without ...

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Oct | 31 | 2009

Finding Images for your Blog Posts

Posted by Jimmy as Images, Tips One problem that many bloggers encounter is trying to find an image to accompany their posts. Actually the problem isn’t really finding an appropriate image but an image that can be used legally without needing to get express permission from the owner/creator. This isn’t that big a problem for me here at Blog Tutorials since I very rarely use images to accompany posts. However, I can still sympathize with other bloggers who need to find images on a regular basis. Because of this I looked for ways to find images available for republishing in blogs. I then came upon Rhys’ recent ...

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Oct | 30 | 2009

Fight Comment Spam

Posted by Jimmy as Tips In my last post I gave three suggestions on how to fight blog and email spam. However, we know that spammers can get pretty creative, thus managing to escape anti-spam software. If you are moderating comments here are some tips on how to spot more intelligent spam. 1. Look at the alias/name used – If the name contains keywords then it’s spam. It may not be automated spam but still their real motive in commenting is to get link juice and not really to contribute something of value to the discussion. Generic names can also be a sign of spam ...

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Oct | 28 | 2009

Fight Blog and Email Spam

Posted by Jimmy as Tips Despite all the advancements in anti-spam technology spam continues to be a problem. This is not surprising since spammers also improve the techniques and technologies they use. As a blogger we need to know how to minimize the effects of spam. Here are some simple things you can do to lessen the spam you receive both in your blog comments and email. Use a separate email add for commenting on blogs – Unless you are sure that the blog you leave comments on obeys their “no spam” policy then it would be safer to use an email add other than your ...

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Is Your Blog W3C Compliant?

Last night I checked my personal blog’s code hoping I can proudly display the W3C Validated Button. Since I use Blogger and do not really do anything to clean up the code (beyond adding Alt-tags to the images I embed) I wasn’t surprised at all to find that my blog contained lots of errors – [...]
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Wordpress Plug-ins

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To find good Wordpress plug-ins all you need to do is search for “wordpress [...]
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I’m helping out my friends from the UA&P – IShareHappiness Blog Team.
Whenever you feel pessimistic, angry, troubled, frustrated, and depressed – what have you – you need someone to talk to. Someone who could help you be more optimistic and help make you feel that there is hope. Sometimes it’s hard to talk to someone [...]
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Review: Logical Media

Logical Media is one of the innovative services that pay for ad placement within blogs. Do you have a blog and are you seeking a way to make additional money from the blog? Are you seeking a way to offset other programs with the use of ads? Through the registration with Logical Media, the blogger [...]
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Search Rank Drop and False Alarms

Happy Holidays!
What are the chances of someone being concerned about their blog’s search ranking dropping on Christmas Eve? I have no idea but then again if I’m writing about it right now then there’s probably someone somewhere around the world doing SEO at this very minute.
If you have experienced a sudden drop in ranking, [...]
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