Internet Marketing the Simple Way

Archive for the ‘Tools For Blogging’ Category

I like to talk about this subject because I recently came across a book, The Story Factor by Annette Simmons.  It is one of many great books are worth mentioning.

Why is it so? It is because I found that having a story in a blog post very interesting when it connects to blog topic.  It communicates to your readers very well.  It has just the purpose you need.

It makes your readers remember the story well and does not need them to work harder to memorize it.  They can retell the story vividly.  They remember it longer because it made a mark to your brain.  It seems so real to them.  It is like the story teller was in their shoes and in the same time period.

You can use a story to make them take action, and persuade them to join your idea.  It can be a motivational tool that persuades them to make a donation for a good cause.  But the question is how a story does that.

It has a power that hooks them through getting inside of their brain.  Then it would connect with them in the level of humanity.  It expresses how they feel after reading story the first time.  If it is a great story, then it would grab their attention through a great bait.  What is a great bait you asked?

The great bait is a frame of view in such a way that it is like their story.  It is like the situation they are having.  And the story would bring the solution to problem or whatever it wants the reader like them to do.  It can be a lesson they want to follow and take action afterward.  Or it can make them pause to think wisely before making a wise decision or taking an action.  It brings the emotion on top of the feeling it may have.

You may say that it is a hypnotic method that the story teller employs.  It may be true because it is so powerful if the story contains the concrete picture.  Why you include a story in your blog, you wondered?

Education

First of all, your goal is to educate your readers.  A story does just that.  They can learn from the story.  They know when to apply what they learned to their real life situation.  The lesson is just another option they can have.

On top of that, a story can influence people to take action in its own way.  It can persuade your readers to buy your product.  This can happen after you show them the social proof, testimonial as your story.

Entertainment

Entertainment is another key you want them to stay and come back in the future  because they learn something from you while having fun at the same time.  It makes the blog more pleasant to read and interesting to find out while learning a new topic or tips.  A story can make them happy to make a conversation with you.


Last but not least, as a blogger you must learn how to create a great story to tell them or you just have a blog with no readership.

Remember a story can influence your readers in such way that you can not control the outcome.   Until then, use your story telling technique as much as you can in your blog and hopefully you would increase your readership quickly.

Buy this book, The Story Factor by Annette Simmons to learn more about the power of story telling.

Care for a comment?

I love to hear your comment or thoughts.  So please leave your comment below.

Since the WordPress (WP) is getting so popular recently due to many people are using WP to blog.  Not only one but many blogs, there are going to have a lot of manual work involved Plugins installation.  There is going to be a demand for this kind of plugin if there are more than one person owns more than one blog.

What is a plugin?

It is simple a short simple program what is designed to do what is supposed to do.

A way to install a number of plugins to a blog

Until you find a good software that can manage many plugins in one time, there is an old way to do it.  If you store the unzipped plugin folders (unzip them then open the file again to get to the main plugin folder) you can upload them all quickly by ftp to your wp-content/plugins folder. Then just activate them in your WP dashboard.  It doesn’t take more than 10 minutes.

On Market

There is a product on the market.  It is called WordPress Clone at Mass Automation Tools.  It copies your blog setting, 

plugins, and post to another blog.

New application for plugin installation

At the Warrior forum, there is a survey on an application that allowed you to create a customised version of WordPress that you can use for future installs, with certain items preconfigured.  Here is a sample that you can download it.

http://hotfile.com/dl/38650956/0e0a0d7/DemoWPInstall.zip.html

Here what it does: 

• Customises the blog title and tagline
• Customises the first post, first page, first comment
• Customises the links
• Customises the link and blog categories
• Adds and autoactivates a custom theme
• Autoactivates a common plugin

Note: It is in the testing mode.  It may not fully function yet.  Use it at your own risk!

What do you think?

I love to hear your thoughts. Please leave your comment below!

You may know that there are million and millions of blogs created everyday.  And a lot of them are using WordPress.  It is very popular because of its functionality and ease of use.  Here are what people say why they love to use WordPress.

• The software is FREE!
• It’s fast and easy to use.  You can build 2 simple sites that market ebooks in just one week
• Easy to learn with the right training
• Easy to update and manage
• It can be used to make not only blogs, but also great looking websites
• You can install it on your server and can work on your sites from anywhere in the world (not like Blogger)
• SEO friendly, the major search engines love it
• It makes working with RSS easy
• You can make great looking sites without knowing any code
• You can completely customize the look of your entire site in less than 5 minutes without losing your content.
• You can upload graphics without owning or learning how to use FTP software
• Building WordPress sites is faster than building sites with an HTML editor once you know how
• It can be automated content if you prefer
• There are amazing plugins ranging from secure contact forms to event calendars to photo albums and on and on.
• There are tons of great looking templates for WP which are easy to customize. One of my favorite free themes is the Mystique theme from digitalnature.
• it is so versatile.
• There are many developers that are working on cool applications
• It is improving all the time.

I believe that is a great value of using WordPress that attracts more people to join bandwagon.  The benefits to the consumers make the product worthwhile and appreciate more.  In conclusion, great value can provide benefits that people love to hear and appreciate.

What do you think?

I love to hear your thoughts.  Please leave your comment below!

Before getting into detail about this wonderful plug in.  This deep link engine plugin is related to the pingback.  And some are  confused between the pingback and the trackback.  So I would like to talk about the difference between the pingbacks and the the trackbacks a little bit.   You have pingbacks  when you link to another blog post right in your post; but trackbacks are created only if you put the trackbacks url of a post in the proper field.

what is WP deep-link-engine plugin?

Deep-link-engine plugin is imply a WP plugin that automatically, and systematically gets more links to every blog post you create. You can do it either manually, or automatically.

However, you would need to have WordPress hosted on your server, or hosting account because it was designed to work with stand-alone WordPress.org blogs.

How does it work?

For each blog post you create, the plugin will analyze the content of your post and determine 5-10 keywords; then go out and find relevant blogs related to those keywords. When it is done with finding blogs, you choose which blogs you would like to link to.  Then it lists those blogs under “related blog” heading section of your blog you just posted. It will list all the blogs you approved from the found list, like this: Post title on the remote blog @ blogname.  It means, yes, it creates two-way links. On your blog they are “dofollow” links and on the remote blog it depends on their settings.  On the remote blog the ping appears as post title | your-blog-name.  Actually the plugin creates PINGBACKS.

By linking to the other blogs, it is like we  send a “pingback” notifying their blog’s software that you referenced them on your website. That may lead to deep relevant links to all our blog posts. In the long run, this will make  your ranking power better for internal pages. The best part is easy to do.  Just select the related blogs and it is done.

Deep Link Engine for WordPress is really “push button” link building and it absolutely free.

Click the link to watch Deep link engine plugin Video : WordPress Plugin: Easy Link Building & Deep Link Engine.

Where can you get it?

Click the deep link engine plugin to download it.

Note: I found that it took longer time for the Windows Live writer to post.

What do you think?

I love to hear your thoughts.   Please leave your comment below!

Imagine you got a free hosted blog with WordPress or Blogger dot com.  You were so happy because you can get your blog up and run within minutes.  However, when you look at your blog url, you are not satisfied with it because of the extension such as http://kaffirleaves.wordpress.com.  Before you are getting into this disappointment as I did, I would like to discuss the pros and cons of having either hosted and self-hosted blog.

Hosted Blog Platforms

Pros:

Free: There are many places that you can sign up for a free blog as long as you have an email account such as Google email account.  There are many more websites that you can get a free blog.  Here are some of them: livejournal, Bravernet, Myownjournal, Bloglines, TypePad. There are a lot more out there.

Quick and easy: Most of them can be setup with a basic default template within minutes.  The setup is just a matter of filling a couple fields with your options and picking a template design.  Ideally, you do not need to know much about the technological behind blogging.

Simple to run: Once you are done with the setup, hosted blogs are very easy to run.  You will obviously need to learn some basics and that is all to it because these days most platforms are very user-friendly.  Posting the blog is just a matter of filling a few text boxes and clicking “Publish” button.

Update: You do not have to worry about it because when the blog format changes, it will upgrade automatically.  You do not have to upload any software.

SEO and Traffic: You do not need to do anything about it.  Many hosted blog platforms are already linked and attracted search engine attention and traffic.  For example, the hubpages is one of them.

Cons

Less features: You have a limited options that they allow you to have.  It can be a problem or may not a problem to you.  Most hosted service give you a fewer choices.

Basic design limitation: When it is free, you end up having a blog that is similar to one another.  The default templates are the same and get used all over the places.  And you do not have a control over your look and feel of your blog.

Ownership: You do not have the ownership of your blog.  Even though you own the content, but they can hijack your url at anytime they want.  You are at the mercy of the platform in terms of whether your blog is working or not.

Generic URL: With the hosted platforms, you do not get a professional blog url.  Anybody can tell whether you are a professional or not by looking at your url.

Moving challenge: If some day you want to transfer your blog to another platform, you face a problem with retaining your traffic and audience.

Self-hosted Blog Platforms

Pros

Control: You have full control over web design.  You do not have to stick with the basic template as well as the theme.  You can either pick your free download or paid themes that you prefer.  That is the great way to make your blog look fantastic.

Adaptability: This is a unique feature that self-hosted blog, such as WordPress, does provide more ability on top of the basic WordPress installation.

Free Platforms: You can use popular one for free even though you have to pay for the domain name and hosting fees.

URL: You have a professional look of your url, plus the brand and your domain is easy to remember.

Cons

Complicated setup: It depends on your technical ability, but at least you involve with arranging hosting, domain name, and blog installation.

There are some hosts that provide “one-click” WordPress installation.  One of them is Bluehost.

Cost: Even though using the blog platform is free, but you have to pay for cost of the having your own domain name and hosting fees.  Hosting fees could be monthly or yearly.  If you get a lot of traffic, then all of these costs can not be significant.

SEO and Traffic: You are on your own in terms of SEO and traffic.  You have to do a lot of work to generate traffic.  You need to submit your blog to major search engines and do what is necessary to get either free (organic) or paid traffic.  You need to do the advertisement for yourself.  Unless you have some money, then you can hire a webmaster to do this part.

What do you think?

I am glad you dropped by my blog and I love to hear your thoughts. So please leave your comment below.

Did you have trouble naming your domain after realized how important that is to have you self-hosted domain? It is not the hosted domain that you can have it for free, but you can not control it.  I know that you have been searching on the internet for the information on how to name your domain.  Welcome to the virtual real estate on the cyberspace where you can get a piece of the pie and enjoy whatever you do with your domain.

Without further ado, I am going to talk about how to choose a domain name.  Here are important points you need to consider when choosing your domain name before heading to register your domain with Godaddy or with other domain registrars.

1-Goals and objectives and future directions

Before you get a domain name, you should have a plan in mind.  You should know what your goals and objectives of having a domain are.  Do you want to have a domain to advertise your business or you want it for your interests or hobbies?  And what is your long term vision of your domain?  Is that going to be just a regular website or blog website (diary blog)?  Eventually, do you plan to sell it in the future?

2- Domain ending

Select the top level domain(TLD) as dot com (.com) unless you want to get a specific country of a particular legal or organization structure such as dot edu (.edu for education).  It depends on your objective of having the domain.  If you want a domain to redirect a specific url, then get a domain with dot info(.info).  It would serve your purpose well.  You can redirect the traffic to a specific url that you want to.  In term of the price, it is cheaper than the dot come one.

3-Hyphens

Avoid hyphens your domain name even though some people would say that would help search engine identify keyword more clearly.  Some would say that would be the same thing as without hyphens.

The reason you choose a domain name with hyphens is the availability because the name you intended to use was taken.  That may get into a problem when you want your audience to remember it.  That is the next factor that I talk about next.

4- Name length

The name of your domain should be short, simple, and memorable.  The purpose behind this is you want your audience to spell, say quickly, and remember your domain.  Remember that the longer the domain name, the easy it is to misspell it.

It does not mean you can not choose a lengthy domain name, but choose it wisely and as long as it is a good word of mouth.

5- SEO and traffic

Domain name has influence on search engines.  That is why you want your domain name related to keyword in your niche that you are going to do business in or a particular subject that you are an expert on.  Doing this way can bring some organic traffic (free traffic) when people guess at or remember a domain and type it in to the URL bar rather than search for it.

6- Intended audience

You must have in mind of what kind of audience you intend to appeal your business to.  Is that young people, internet marketing or cool groups of people?  This way you can gear the way you talk to your audience so that you can tone your voice through your writing properly.  Especially, you can use the jargons that they understand what you are talking about.

Remember that if it is a blog, it tends to be a two-way communication between you and your audience and you want your voice to be heard and the feedbacks.

7- Trademark infringement

Before you register your domain, do a research to make sure you don’t use a trademark name. Trademark research and information can be found at name protect (http://nameprotect.com) and trademark Association (http://www.inta.org).

Be warned that buying a domain containing a trademarked name could result in taking your domain down after a legal battle dispute. It is better to find out first if you violate someone else’s right or you got into domain name infringement.

What is the trademark ? It is name or symbol officially registered to a third party and the trademark owner is the only party that can legally make use of a trademarked name.

8-Branding

You can use your name as a domain name, but it is going to take a lot of work to brand your site.  People do not know your name.  You have a lot of marketing and advertising to do.  However, if you choose a keyword as you domain name, you may have more chance to get traffic and lesser work in advertisement because you did the keyword research and knew how many people are searching for that keyword.

Domain search

Here is a site where you can do a domain research about a domain that you intend to buy.  This site would let you know if the domain is available and also suggests domain names.  Here is the link: http://domain-search.domaintools.com (Note: The url is not exactly the same as the one on Youtube, but I found it very useful).

What do you think?

I am glad you dropped by my blog and I love to hear your thoughts.  So please leave your comments below.

What is Filezilla?

It is a freeware and open ftp program that you can download for personal use for free from FileZilla’s homepage at SourceForgeNet.  They have both client and server available.  You will need the client one if you want it for personal use.  The latest version is – FileZilla Client 3.3.2 (released 02-14-2010).

You need it to upload your files to server.

After downloading the Filezila, you need an FTP address of your site plus login name and password for it to connect to your server.  You do not need to fill out the port information because it is default port 21. All of it should be in the email you got from web hosting company such as Hostgator after registering the hosting account.  After you fill all of information, then click “Quickconnect” button.

To save time, you can setup “Site Manager” so that you do not need to enter your info every time you want to upload your file to server.  To do that you click “File” on your upper left corner, then select “my site” and go to “New” and fill out all information.  Next time you want to connect, just  click file then click connect.  It is quick and easy to setup.

Watch the YouTube video on how to download the Filezilla file and uploading your files.

Once you are successful log in, you can navigate to your home directory and see all of your files and folders you have in your computer and you can locate all of your directories, files, and folders under your server.  The left side portion is everything you have in your local computer, and on the right side is what you have in your server.

Two ways to upload your file

You can either drag and drop your file to where you want to upload it or you can right click the file you want to upload and click upload.

Disconnecting

After you’ve finished uploading stuff, select “File” on your upper left hand and click, “Exit” to disconnect from your Web server. Or simply click the cross sign at the upper right hand corner to close down FileZilla.

What do you think?

I am glad you dropped by and I love to hear your thoughts.  So please leave your comment below. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you had the problem with player the video?  It goes like this, it starts and stops for many times when you are watching a video that you are eager to find out its content.  You might feel the same way as I did.  I would bet you felt very frustrated because of the annoying incidents with the what happened to player you had on your computer.

In order to solve the annoying problem, use VLC media player, the the cross-platform open-source multimedia framework, player and server.  There is no more interruptions.

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player and multimedia framework capable of reading most audio and video formats (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, DivX, MPEG-1, mp3, DVDs, Audio CDs VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a media converter or a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on networks.  The nice feature that I like about this multi media is I can copy the link of a video from a website and use the VLC media player to play that video.  There is no interruption or what so ever.

Go to Videolan to down load and install it to your computer and enjoy the fantastic features that it offers.

To learn how to use VLC Media player, watch the Youtube video below.

In case you want to know if it is popular.  It has been downloaded more than 51 million of VLC 1.0.3.

What do you think?

I am glad you dropped by my blog and I would love to hear your thoughts about it.  So please leave your comment below.

Have you had the  problem with the image too big for your blog or too small?  Or have you had problem with uploading your file to server because it is taking too much space?  If you did, you may have to use the following tools–IrfanView and K Resize to solve your problem.   Watch the “Resizing Pictures with Kstudio” for more reasons why you need to resize pictures.  There are plenty of tools out there that can do the same job, but these two are available for free to down load.   IrfanView and K Resize are the two software that can customize your images.  They can shrink your photos to the thumb nail size so that you can post them to your blog or site.  Each one of them has a unique feature.  For example, when you use your digital camera to take picture, and you realize that the picture is too large to use on your site.  No problem. You can use the IrfanView to shrink the size of your picture down to 40Kb. On top of that, you can use IrfanView to create screen capture easily.  There are a lot more functions it provides.

How to resize an image in IrfanView

How to do screen captures in IrfanView

K Resize is another tool that you can shrink your image, not only a single one, but also in a batch folder in just a second.  First, you have to store your images in one folder, then move the whole folder to the K Resize folder.  Set the size of images you want.  The K Resize would shrink the whole batch of images and put them in a new folder. Download K Resize. Resize!, current version is 1.4.2.  This  freeware, it is available for Mac and PC

What do you think?

I am glad you dropped by my blog, love to hear your thoughts about it.  So please leave your comment below.

Picture is worth a thousand words.  Picture(image, photo) would add a beauty to your blog post and provides an attraction to your particular audience.  Without it, it is like you are missing something and it is not complete.  If you are talking about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you need to have some pictures on your site or blog because that is what Google loves  And you have to please it in order to have your blog index higher and gain more traffic.

I know that looking for nice and free pictures always been a big issue if you don’t know where to get those FREE pictures when you are building a website or merely creating Power Point presentation or writing a blog post,  then you will need to purchase them and some are real costly.  To eliminate that problem, I set up a list of sites where you can find free pictures.

Where you can FREE Pictures/Photos/Images

http://www.morguefile.com (my favorite Free Image website)

http://www.flickr.com/

http://www.sxc.hu/ – Highly Recommended!

http://www.freebieimages.com/ It is a plugin for WP

http://acobox.com/

http://amygdela.com/stock/

http://energy.star29.net/store/

http://geekphilosopher.com/MainPage/photos.htm

http://imagebase.davidniblack.com/

http://openphoto.net/

http://stock.diwiesign.com/

http://tofz.org/

http://visipix.dynalias.com/index_hidden.htm

http://woophy.com/

http://www.abstractinfluence.com/forums/gallery/album.php?album_id=2

http://www.burningwell.org/gallery2/main.php

http://co-photo.com/

http://www.cepolina.com/freephoto/

http://www.designpacks.com/Image_Catalog/

http://www.everystockphoto.com/

http://www.freedesignphoto.com/

http://www.freefoto.com/

http://www.freeimages.co.uk

http://www.freejpg.com.ar/

http://www.freephotosbank.com/

http://www.freepixels.com/

http://www.freerangestock.com/

http://www.free-stockphotos.com/

http://www.historicalstockphotos.com/

http://www.imageafter.com/

http://www.highresolutiontextures.com/

http://www.kavewall.com/

http://www.loremipsumblvd.com/

http://www.lostandtaken.com

http://www.morguefile.com/

http://www.nationsillustrated.com/

WWW.PhotoXpress.Com

http://www.photoeverywhere.com

http://www.photogen.com/

http://www.photorack.net/index.php

http://www.photorogue.com/

http://www.pixelperfectdigital.com/

http://www.public-domain-photos.com/

http://www.stockvault.net/

http://www.studio25.ro/index.php?option=com_ponygallery&Itemid=27&lang=en

http://www.studio7designs.com/stock-photography/

http://www.wallpaperstop.com

http://www.webphotomart.com/

http://www.unices.org/photo2/

Now you have a stock pile to sites where you can go to and get some FREE images.

What do you think?

I am glad you dropped by my blog.  I love to hear your thoughts about this post.  So please leave your comment below.