Written on August 28th, 2007 at 09:08 am by David Shawver

Chitika Launch Facebook Application

Affiliate Programs 9 comments

Chitika have developed a Facebook Application called iBought that allows facebook users to show off their latest purchases to friends on Facebook for their friends to then rate.

Probably of more interest to enternetusers readers is the $1 per download referral program that Chitika are willing to pay you for getting your friends to download iBought. $1 isn’t a lot - but if you have a few hundred friends it could be a worthwhile earner.

The first 10,000 downloads of the application get the referral fee - so if you’re going to do it you’ll need to do it fairly quickly as it could go viral pretty quickly.

Note: This post contains affiliate links

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Written on August 28th, 2007 at 09:08 am by David Shawver

The enternetusers Logo Design Process

enternetusers Site News 23 comments

enternetusers-Logo-DesignMike Rohde from MakaluMedia is the designer of enternetusers’s newly designed logo and today has posted about the process that he went through in coming up with it - from initial sketches to final design (and everything in between).

Between Mike’s write up of the process and Ben’s on the design of enternetusers you should get a pretty decent insight into the process that we went through.

I’d be interested to hear any more feedback on the logo (and the design) now that you’ve had a couple of weeks to sit with it.

We still have a few more tweaks to go with the design - but phase 1 is pretty much in place (we’re going to move the job board to the new design this week hopefully and will be adding a print version also). So if you have any more constructive feedback please feel free to give it in comments below.

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Written on August 28th, 2007 at 04:08 am by David Shawver

What is Your Blog’s Mission Statement?

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 35 comments

Today your task in the 31 Day Project is to articulate a ‘Mission Statement’ for your blog.

I won’t rehash all of my reasoning for having a Mission Statement and tips for writing one because I’ve previously written about Mission Statements as part of my previous series on Strategic Blogging (head back for a read as part of your task today).

However I will say that knowing why you’re blogging is really important because it will give you direction as well as a framework to review whether you’re being successful.

So what’s your blog’s Mission Statement? Why does your blog exist?



Feel free to share your answer in comments below.

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Written on August 28th, 2007 at 12:08 am by David Shawver

Famous in 31 Days - An Interview with John Gerard

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 18 comments

Famous-In-31-Days-1Over the last few days I’ve been following the quest of John Gerard who is video blogging his journey across the US at his site Famous in 31 Days.

As the name suggests, John’s goals are simple - to become famous…. in 31 days.

He’s traveling across America and aims to end his journey by being featured on Jay Leno’s show. Only problem is that Jay’s never heard of him and neither had too many others before he started his journey.

Having said that - John managed to get himself some media attention in the days leading up to the start of his journey and at least in his home town got a little of the fame he’s after - but now he’s in New York and the real challenge starts.

Why am I interested in John’s journey?

To be honest, at first I arrived at his site and left again in a few seconds. But about half an hour later I realized that while John’s methods are different - that his goal is actually pretty similar to that of many bloggers that I bump into - fame (or at least getting noticed in the clutter of this crazy space we interact in).

So I went back to his site for a second look and began to watch some of his videos. Of course I then became hooked. He’s pretty funny and the reactions that he gets out of people are too.

He also had videos that kind of resonated with me called ‘Oprah Moments’. In the first one he talks about the feeling he has when someone offers to help him by giving him a free meal and in the second one he talks about being an anonymous face trying to get noticed in New York (the feelings I suspect will be familiar to many bloggers).

What John’s doing fascinates me on numerous levels. I think his journey is one that will be entertaining, enlightening and worth watching - whether he becomes famous or not (he’s making a film about the process which I’d love to see someday).

So I decided to shoot John an email and ask him if he could do a quick interview (and hopefully to help him spread the word a little). John kindly agreed and here it is:

Interview with John Gerard:

Can you briefly tell us what you’re doing and why you’re doing it with the Famous in 31 Days project that you’re doing?

I’m conducting an unusual social experiment. I’m trying to see if it’s possible for a person to become famous in 31 days, for really doing very little. I’m doing this for several reasons:

1) If it is possible, I think it’s a fascinating social commentary.
2) I was unfulfilled at work and I asked myself ‘If I could do anything, what would I do?’ And this was it.
3) I’m really intrigued by fame. What it is. Why people crave it. And what it would feel like to experience it.
4) To unsuccessfully try and fill the giant gaping hole inside of me through mass approval.

How’s it going so far?
That depends on the moment you ask me. (I occasionally experience mood swings ;) I think it’s going pretty well. I need more exposure though. People seem to enjoy the story once they hear it. It’s just trying to share it with as many people as possible.

How are you using the Web to assist you in your goals?
My website is key! www.famousin31days.com. Everything drives to the site. Promotional T-shirts, Businesscards, Car Advertising… All of it drives to the site. The internet is a critical component in achieving success today. It is a must have. Also, blog sites like this one… And content sites like Dailymotion.com, Youtube, Myspace… etc.

What are you learning about the web and how to use it? I’m learning how valuable it is… And how there really is a special knack to utilizing it well.

A lot of enternetusers’s readers would like the publicity that you’re starting to get for their blogs - how are you getting it?
You have to do something unique and creative that will capture people’s imaginations. If it’s ordinary, you can’t stand out.

I noticed in one of your videos that you were having some strange feelings about people offering to give you things - how’s that going for you now?
I made a conscious decision to gratefully embrace every gift that someone offers. I met a really nice New York couple at The State Fair. They didn’t look rich, but the man opened his wallet and gave me his last nine dollars. I was overcome with his generosity. It’s still hard to accept and I’m trying to work through it.

Have you thought about using a blog with comments on your website to help you tell the story during the 31 days?
I’m so busy driving, producing videos, and trying to do media relations that I don’t have time to blog. I’m trying to vlog though, whenever an emotional moment presents itself.

Why did you go with the style of website that you’re using?
My kickass web designer, LeFrenchie.com designed it for me. I’ve definitely had a lot of input as to what feeling and flavor I want to create, and he’s made it happen. Not without a few speedbumps along the way though.

What have you learned so far in your journey?
That I need to overcome fear almost every step of the way and learn to trust deeply in the process of life. Often easier said than done!

Follow John’s Journey at Famous in 31 Days

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Written on August 27th, 2007 at 07:08 pm by David Shawver

72 More Blog Tips from the Blogging Community

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 15 comments

Building-A-Better-Blog-2It’s time for another set of Blog Tips from you the enternetusers Reader Community. Today there’s 72 great tips (bringing us to a total of 528… yes you’ve submitted over 500 blog tips with still a few days to go!

To be included in the last batch you need to get your tips in by the end of the month by following the steps outlined in the introduction to the 31 Day Project (please follow the rules carefully).

Here’s the latest batch of reader blog tips. Enjoy!

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Written on August 27th, 2007 at 04:08 pm by David Shawver

Bloglines Release New Beta Version

Blogging Tools and Services 6 comments

Today Bloglines have launched a new beta version of their feed reader for users to test.

It’s a fair departure from the classic view that many of us have become accustomed to with a lot of ajax driven features, a new start page (allowing you to drag and drop in your favorite few feeds to follow - pictured below), new views (including ‘quick view, three pane view and full view) as well as drag and drop feed management.

I’ve been playing around with it this afternoon and have found it to be quite slow but feature wise a step in the right direction for Bloglines. They say that there will be numerous other features released into the future - but even the improvements that they’ve made so far are pretty good.

Here’s the start page:

Bloglines-Startpage-1

While what I’ve seen so far isn’t enough to get me switching back from Google Reader I’m really happy to see the improvements and hope that this will give Google a little nudge along in their own Reader development.

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Written on August 27th, 2007 at 06:08 am by David Shawver

Do You Use American English, British English or do you Swing like the Canadians?

Reader Questions, Writing Content 124 comments

Spelling-AmericanHere’s a question that I get asked a lot - particularly by non US bloggers who find themselves writing primarily for US audiences:

“I am English so of course spell words such as ‘colour’ the English way. However, I also know that my largest audience is likely to come from America.

My question is this - would I be better off using English or American spelling on my site? My first instinct is to ‘be myself’ and use English spelling, but I was wondering if I would be better off from an SEO and audience point of view using American spelling.” Submitted by Pete

This is a problem that I face constantly in my own blogging. I find that no matter which I go with I tend to get ‘corrected’ by readers. If I use the Australian spelling I find US readers tell me that I’m wrong, but if I use the US spelling I get picked up by Aussies, the English and readers from other countries.

Colour is just one example:

In Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK it’s spelt ‘colour’. In the US it’s color and in Canada it’s both (they tend to swing quite a bit over there).

Another common one that I get picked up on are any words with ‘ise’ or ‘ize’ at the end. Recognise or Recognize? Analyse or Analyze?

Center or Centre, Gray or Grey, Catalogue or Catalog, Defence or Defense, Aluminum or Aluminium? The list goes on….

And of course the most confusing one:

  • it’s fulfil in ‘English’ and fulfill in ‘American’
  • but - fulfilling in ‘English’ and fulfiling in ‘American’
  • and to further confuse it - it’s fulfilment in ‘English’ and fulfillment in ‘American’

My spell checker doesn’t know what to do with this post!

What spelling do I use?

To be perfectly honest I don’t have a policy on it. If anything I probably take the Canadian route and swing back and forth (after-all I’m a cofounder of a Canadian company and pay income tax over there - so I figure I’m entitled to).

What spelling do you use?

I’d be interested to hear how different bloggers approach this and want to open it up as a reader question. Which spelling do you use? The spelling of your own country, your readers or some combination of both?

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Written on August 27th, 2007 at 12:08 am by David Shawver

Find a Sponsor for Your Blog

31 Days to Building a Better Blog, Advertising 27 comments

Building-A-Better-Blog-2Today’s task in the 31 Day Project will appeal more to those who are looking to make money from their blogs. If that’s not you - there are plenty of other daily tasks in previous days of the project that you might like to repeat. This task might also be easier for more established blogs than new ones - although it’s not impossible for a new blog to land a sponsor so give it a go!

Today your task is to go on a hunt for a sponsor for your blog.

You might not think that your blog is big enough to find sponsors (and you might be right) but even if you’re unsuccessful in finding one you will hopefully learn a thing or two about finding sponsors and might even start a relationship that could be fruitful at some point in the future.

Getting a sponsor for your blog (or selling an advertising spot directly without relying upon an ad network like AdSense) is a great thing for numerous reasons - not the least of which is that you cut out the middleman and don’t have to share the revenue with a company like Google!

It’s not always easy to land a sponsor - but it’s a skill that bloggers wanting to make money from their blogs should learn - even in the early days.

A few tips for finding a sponsor:

1. Before you go out and start asking companies to sponsor your blog read these two posts - Finding Advertisers for your Blog and 10 Ways to make your Blog more AttrActive to Advertisers. A big part of finding an advertiser is to get your blog in order first and to be prepared for what they might ask you.

2. If you have a smaller blog and haven’t had a sponsor before don’t aim for the stars straight away. It might be worth starting out by approaching smaller retailers, websites or companies in your niche and see if they’d be interested in some sort of partnership rather than aiming for the very biggest ones right up front. I did this a couple of months after starting my first digital camera blog and emailed 10 online digital camera sites to see if they’d be interested in advertising. 3 of the 10 bought small ads on my site (I think it was for something around $15-$25 a month). It wasn’t a lot of cash (and I didn’t have a lot of traffic to send to them) but I learned so much and made a little money in the process.

3. Target Potential Advertiser Carefully - before you start approaching potential sponsors think carefully about your blog and the topic that you write about and about who might want to reach your readers. Brainstorm a list of companies and websites that might fit the bill.

4. Wondering who to approach? Why not check out who is advertising on other websites and blogs in your niche. Quite often they’ll also be open to running a similar campaign with you.

5. If a sponsor isn’t sure whether to go with you or not - give them a discounted or free trial. I’ve done this a number of times and found it beneficial on three levels:

  • It gives the sponsor a taste of what your blog can offer
  • It can help get your readers used to the idea of advertising on your blog
  • I’ve found that having one advertiser (even if it’s a free one) can actually attract other advertisers (or at least make selling sponsorships easier)
  • You’ll learn a lot by getting the ad up, finding out how it converts and at a discounted rate you’ll even earn a few dollars

6. Find an Angle and Sell it - don’t just email a potential sponsor asking if they want to advertise with you - sell yourself. If your blog has a loyal community of core readers then sell this, if you get a lot of search engine traffic for certain keywords that the advertiser would want to have, sell it to them on this, if you have an audience who is researching to make purchases - this is a key selling point and if you’ve never had an advertiser before on your blog - turn this into a selling point. You need to give a potential sponsor or advertiser a reason to align their brand with yours.

7. If you can’t attract anyone - run a campaign of your own. Pick a part of your blog that you want to drive traffic to (perhaps a post, or a category, or a subscribe page) and develop a button or banner ads to drive traffic to it. I’m doing this here at the moment in the 468 x 60 banner position here at enternetusers at the moment (there’s a number of different campaigns running there including some internal ones). The beauty of this is that you can test your conversion rates on different positions. Run a heat map test and you’ll learn a lot.

8. If you do manage to sign up a sponsor give sponsors as much value as possible. Do everything you can to over deliver on the campaign. Announce the sponsorship on the blog with a post, mention it any other newsletters or lists that you have, position it high on the page, consider throwing in a bonus text link in another part of your blog etc. The more traffic you can deliver to your sponsor the more chance of getting them to renew.

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Written on August 26th, 2007 at 06:08 pm by David Shawver

MovableType 4 Review

Blogging Tools and Services 15 comments

Thinking of giving MovableType 4 a go? There have been plenty of reviews done of it but today Aaron Brazell put together a well balanced one with some of hi impressions at his Movable Type 4 Review.

Another review worth checking out is Mashable’s comparison of MT 4 and WP 2.2. Austin Heller also reviewed it.

I’m interested to hear from any readers who have given MT 4 a go - what are your first impressions now that it has been out a week or so?

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Written on August 26th, 2007 at 06:08 am by David Shawver

10 Blogs That I Read

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 36 comments

Earlier today I set the task for readers to link up to other blogs in their niche. I decided to do it too - but immediately hit a snag.

As I scanned through my feed reader i realized that I read hundreds of blogs about blogging (and related topics). Listing them all would be crazy (and take me hours to filter through) - however linking just a few risks offending those that I miss out. Hmmmm.

So I’ve decided to get a little random and pick 10 blogs from my ‘blogging’ folder in my feed reader - selected completely randomly. I used a random number generator to select numbers and then counted down to the blogs listed in that order. If the blog hadn’t updated for at least two weeks I skipped it and chose another one so as to produce a current list.

The list is actually one I’m pretty happy with - some names that I’m sure many of you will be familiar with, some ‘old timers’ and some new comers. Enjoy:

  • Stephan Spencer’s Scatterings - Blog Marketing and SEO
  • Brian Heys Writes - UK based blogger who admits he reads too many tech blogs - but I’m glad he does :-)
  • Rich Minx - another blogger from Downunder (and over east a bit - from New Zealand) - I even met her at the last New York enternetusers meetup
  • Andy Wibbels - blog training guru (and someone I’ve even produced a course with)
  • ChrisG - insightful and experienced pro blogger
  • 45n5 - Mark’s just announced that he’s ‘off to get married’ but his archives are full of posts and videos on blogging
  • Bloggrrl - a more recent addition to my feed reader. Michelle blogs with humor and insight.
  • SEOmoz blog - a daily read for me - I love their Friday whiteboard Videos
  • The Blog Herald - a classic blog about blogging
  • Daily Blog Tips - Daniel consistently writes quality tips about blogging

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