If you’re looking to open up an affiliate store with your website but don’t know where to get started with the coding, you may want to take a look at WP Shopping Pages. This premium plug-in makes it very easy to sell products on the Internet without having the actual products in hand.

Shopping with Amazon and eBay Affiliates

Using this WordPress plug-in, you can easily populate your website with all sorts of products available for sale through Amazon and eBay.

While there are certainly other solutions that simply provide you with a basic affiliate link or perhaps an ad banner, this powerful affiliate plug-in can actually provide you with free, rich content. It will look as if you created these pages from scratch, but the wizard walks you through the process in an easy-to-understand manner.

WP Shopping Pages allows you to tackle any range of keywords. If you want to sell golf equipment, you can do so. If you’d prefer to focus on digital cameras, you do can do that. Either way, WP Shopping Pages will add keyword optimized content to your site with the click of a button.

Control Panel for Options and Configuration

There are three main pages that are made available through the WordPress user dashboard after installation of WP Shopping Pages.

The main admin page displays all the shopping pages that you have created thus far, as well as the utility to create additional shopping pages. You can define the page title, keywords, page template, Amazon options, and eBay category.

It is on the options page that you define your Amazon and eBay affiliate IDs (you’ll need to sign up for their programs accordingly), as well as other information related to their use like search method, reviews template, and eBay auction caching.

Through the templates page, you can define the different page templates that you’ll be using with WP Shopping Pages. This template is then used for each of the products you feature through the pages that the plug-in generates.

Seeing WP Shopping Pages in Action

If you go to the main page for WP Shopping Pages, you’ll see that you can see some samples by clicking on the links near the top.

Here is an example of an affiliate page for an Asus notebook. As you can see, the template grabs a full title, description, specs, rating and list price, as well as a link to buy from Amazon.com and a product review. This is just one template option and you can modify it as you see fit for both Amazon and eBay.

WP Shopping Pages is regularly listed at $89, but it is currently available for introductory price of $69. This includes an unlimited personal license, instant delivery, and a 14-day money-back guarantee.

Link: WP Shopping Pages

* This was a Paid Review. If you are interested in having your site reviewed on Blogging Tips, please check out our Advertising Information Page.

Open an Affiliate Store with WP Shopping Pages


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

To give you more variety right out of the box, you may want to divert your attention over to the Templates Box. This online directory promises a good range of free and premium web templates for building a successsful web business.

Premium Templates of All Shapes and Sizes

As you make your way around the Templates Box library, you’ll find quite the variety of site templates for you to consider. These range both in type and style.

In addition to regular site templates, you’ll also find that Templates Box has full Flash sites available for sale as well. Further still, they have PowerPoint templates, Word templates, and even templates for logo design too.

For each of these, you are initially offered a small thumbnail. Clicking through to the template’s individual page, you are shown the source files available. For instance, most full site templates will sell with the PSD files, HTML files, CSS files, and font files. On the same page, you can see a full quality sample and some low resolution samples.

From Christmas to Military

It doesn’t really matter which niche you are trying to approach with your website, because it seems that Template Box has a template that suites your industry. Again, going to the left sidebar for the categories, you can look at everything from cars to computers, agriculture to religion.

Sampling the Swimming Site

While the primary image reminds me more of the Nirvana album cover than the pool, the swimming school template is fairly indicative of what you can expect from Templates Box. There is a clean navigation bar along the top of the page, an eye-catching image in the center, and three columns of content in the bottom.

You have one of two options should you want a template like this. For the swimming site template, you can access the premium template section of Templates Box for $39. Alternatively, you can purchase the exclusive rights to the template for $600, not including anyone who has already downloaded the template to date.

Why Advertise for the Competitor?

The site templates offered through Templates Box are reasonably well-designed and there is a good variety for you to consider. The exclusive rights price is a little rich, but that’s the price you pay for having something unique.

Where I disagree is with the placement of Google AdSense (and other advertising) on the site. From what I can gather, Templates Box operates primarily as an online store; why would you send your visitors elsewhere for a 10-cent click when you can capitalize on a $600 purchase? This would be like Coca-Cola running Pepsi ads on its site.

Link: TemplatesBox.com

* This was a Paid Review. If you are interested in having your site reviewed on Blogging Tips, please check out our Advertising Information Page.

Diving Deep into the Templates Box


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Browsing through the Library

Unlike some other sites that may only feature one or two premium themes, Wobzy has quite the large collection of premium WordPress themes for you to consider via the online store. These themes are broken down into one of three categories: business themes, magazine themes, and personal themes. Alternatively, you can browse through the page with all of their themes to find what you need.

From the Wobzy catalog, you can view the name of each theme, a small screenshot, and a brief description, as well as buttons to view demo sites and buy the corresponding themes with either a standard or developer license. Unfortunately, you cannot see the price from the catalog page and must venture into the pages for the individual themes to view their respective pricing schemes.

Make Money Blogging

The focus is geared more toward the professional blogging end of things, so you’ll find that many of the themes have been designed with ad networks in mind. To this end, the Wobzy blog may become a terrific resource for webmasters and online entrepreneurs.

One of the first posts, for instance, is how to position AdSense on your site to maximize profits. The post goes in depth about page position, ad size, ad colors, and more.

Regarding the themes themselves, they run the full gamut of design schemes as well. More creative types may be drawn to the Monsterville WordPress theme, whereas those looking to sell a specific item may prefer the aptly-named TheProduct premium theme.

Graphica Premium WordPress Theme

A fun theme that takes a more unique approach to interaction is Graphica. You get a simple cartoon-like background image, but the footer portion remains visible at all times. This way, readers always have access to your Twitter, Facebook, and RSS links.

The Graphica homepage, depicted above, gives a thumbnail approach to three featured posts, but you can opt for a more traditional reverse chronological layout for this blog theme too. Again, the footer stays in place and you have slots pre-designed to accommodate four 125×125 ads in the sidebar.

With very reasonable prices and a large variety of visually-appealing premium WordPress themes, the Wobzy.com online store should easily be on your radar if you’re on the hunt for a unique look.

Get Your Free Theme Now

To help you get started and to give you a taste of what to expect, you can sign up for the Wobzy newsletter and you’ll receive a $50 premium theme at no charge. You’ve got to love the price of free, right?

Link: Wobzy.com

* This was a Paid Review. If you are interested in having your site reviewed on Blogging Tips, please check out our Advertising Information Page.

Colorful Premium Themes from Wobzy


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

In the spring, it rains a lot but it usually doesn’t flood.
And in the winter, it snows, but we’re not snowed in.

That is, until the snows started about two weeks ago. The first night, it was kind of fun. It was a Friday night, so we all holed in with our beers, our movies and plenty of milk, bread and toilet paper to keep any families happy.

One foot of snow later, thousands of us were sitting in the dark. The rest of us didn’t have cable television that worked. We’re not hardy people here in Ohio, and we’ve got short attention spans. It doesn’t take long before we start getting bored — usually about a half hour after the lights go out, in fact. But that’s usually okay, because, again, we don’t have extreme weather patterns here. A weekend snow is plowed away by Monday, and life goes on as usual.Yeah, right.
It has not stopped snowing here in more than two weeks. The kids have only gone to school one day. I have two 100-pound Labs that normally love playing in the snow.
It’s up to their chests now. The thrill is gone.
Our parking lots have snow mountains in them. We actually had someone get in trouble with the law a couple of days ago for smacking someone with a snow shovel who had dared to take his dug-out on-street parking space.
And the fun goes on.
The latest Facebook rumor going on amongst my contacts and friends is that there is a mammoth snowstorm coming. The biggest snow in years! We’re getting 40 inches of snow in one night! Fifty inches! It won’t all melt until JULY, for heaven’s sake!
So being the kind of geeky computer blogging person I am, I decided that enough was enough of the rumors. I decided to go on an Internet search and find some of the more creative ways other people around the country are passing their snowbound days.
And now in addition to being bored, I’m impressed and intimidated by the sites and articles I’ve found. You folks have some great ways of passing your snowed-in days.
So here’s some funnies I’ve found so far:

http://www.snowpanic.com/ This blog’s owners say they’ve been tracking the  “Snowpocalypse” since 2009, and freely invite visitors to send in some of the best examples of panic and dismay brought about because of the ongoing snow falls. There’s photos of bread aisles where the bread’s all been sold, tales of neighborhood people threatening plow drivers with bodily harm, and many more all-too-funny examples of the ways these snow storms are causing panic in even the more seasoned weather watchers. Pretty funny stuff!

http://vondrook.com OK, I love a good zombie movie. So when I came across this very creative snow post, “In Preparation of Snowstorm, Citizens Go Out for Eggs, Cannibalism,” I naturally had to stop to enjoy it.  After all, how can you pass up an article that starts out “As a major winter storm was heading towards the east coast, citizens ventured to their nearest grocery stores in hopes of stocking up on foodstuffs, which typically turned into violent bloodshed and cannibalism … The lines were long, sure, but at least everyone was patient; that is, until, the Weather Service declared a ‘Winter Storm Watch.’ After that, it was every man, woman, and child for themselves.” Very funny stuff! And so descriptive of the lines I see at the local grocery store every time the forecasters get too excited.

And if you think you’re safe from ridicule, you’re not, as long as so many people have cell phones with cameras on them. Don’t believe me? Check out this slice of life photograph of snow panic at the grocery store.

What’s really great about all these blogs and bloggers? They’ve taken what the rest of us only sit around and complain about, and made something entertaining out of it.  Those blogs might not make their owners a lot of money, but they are entertaining, they get lots of traffic, and best of all, they’re good examples of what blogging is really all about — using the Internet to communicate the goings-on of the day.

Seen any good winter blogs lately? We’d love to hear about them!

Oh, God, It’s Snowing Again!


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

However, their newest product, Seesmic Look, hopes to change that.

Seesmic Look is a very different kind of Twitter client. It focuses on making Twitter as beautiful, simple and as non-intimidating as possible.

But while Seesmic may have succeeding in creating an application that is easier to use and read, power users are going to be frustrated with the tradeoffs required to make it work.

What it Does Well

There is no denying that Seesmic look is a beautiful application. Both its “Light” and “Dark” modes are very easy on the eyes and the app is extremely detailed. The animations look good and the entire interface is presented extremely well. All in all, Seesmic Look is easily one of the prettiest Twitter apps available, at least comparable to Blu.

It is also a reasonably powerful app too. It has all of the features you would expect including searches, lists, replies, direct messages and so forth. It also handles trends and has an interesting home screen where trending topics bubble in and out very slowly, in a way that is almost hypnotizing.

Also, since it is a native Windows application, optimized for Windows 7, thus does not use Adobe Air, it is relatively quick on top of everything and doesn’t seem to hog much in the way of resources.

But while Seesmic Look has beauty, speed and power on its side, it still isn’t exactly what I would call a great Twitter application as there are a few key flaws that keep holding it back.

Where It Falls

The biggest problem with Seesmic Look is that it is simply inefficient. If all you do is look at Twitter, specifically just one stream, it can be great. However, if you actually try to do anything with Seesmic Look, it becomes very clear that it wasn’t built to be an easy-access application.

For example, going from one of my search feeds to my direct messages requires three clicks with load times in between. While that may not seem like a great deal of effort, keep in mind that other Twitter apps, including Seesmic’s can keep both of these streams on the screen at the same time, just requiring me to look over a bit. Even one-column apps usually only need one or two clicks to get the job done and the Twitter site itself only needs one.

Power users of Twitter are going to be severely hampered by the way the program is laid out. The multi-column method of displaying tweets may be intimidating and ugly, but it is very efficient. Though Seesmic look is a fast application, it doesn’t feel fast to use.

To make matters even worse, the attempt to rethink the Twitter app resulted in some UI changes that can be a bit jarring for someone who is familiar with Tweetdeck or even Seesmic for Windows. For example, the location of the reply and DM icons to the right of the app (and the stream) seems out of place.

In short, you have to do a lot of relearning to use Seesmic Look and, even after you get the hang of it, you’ll find that it isn’t as efficient as other apps widely used.

Bottom Line

Seesmic Look is a beautiful, simple and elegant app that has a lot going for it. But like a lot of other beautiful, elegant things it simply is not practical.

The only real use I can see for Seesmic look is for absolute beginners who don’t want to be overwhelmed out of the gate. However, even then, the application’s layout may still confuse and create problems. Another good use might be to put it on a video wall at a conference or event (to “Look” at). For example, I could see a conference using it on their wall to display the hash tag feed for their event.

Beyond that, there seems to be a very limited niche for this product. With so many other great Twitter clients out there, including the three made by Seesmic, there doesn’t seem to be much use in downloading this one.

Still, other clients could learn a thing or two from it, at least in the looks department…

Seesmic Look: Miles of Style, Inches of Practicality


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Though downtime is inevitable for all hosts. Surges of traffic can cause a server to go down, hackers and malicious scripts can cause problems too. Your server may go down because of a change of settings, resulting in the server overloading. Whatever the reason, you will want to know when your blog goes offline. Which is why you should consider using a website monitoring service.

Monitoring services are designed to let you know when your website goes offline. One such service is BinaryCanary, a website monitoring service which lets you monitor 5 destinations or sites for free. They also offer premium packages which give you more monitors, update more frequently and send you a text when your blog goes down.

Available Plans

Every BinaryCanary plan comes with a host of features. The plan you should choose depends on your needs.

The 4 plans available are:

• Free Account: 5 Monitors, 15 minute checking frequency
• $5 per month: 10 Monitors, 1 minute checking frequency, 20 SMS included
• $10 per month: 30 Monitors, 1 minute checking frequency, 30 SMS included
• $20 per month: 100 Monitors, 1 minute checking frequency, 100 SMS included

The basic account gives you 5 monitors. This allows you to check a website on 5 different locations. So for example, you could check one that your blog is online at Seattle, Washington and London; this would use up 3 monitor credits. Alternatively, you could use 3 credits to check if 3 individual blogs are online at Washington.

The frequency determines how often they will check if your blog is online. With the free account your blog is checked every 15 minutes but all sites being monitored on premium plans are checked every minute. You will be notified of downtime via email however all premium plans also include a set number of text messages so you can be notified of downtime via your mobile phone.

Additional notification credits can be purchased at any time. Check out their plan comparison page for a more detailed look at the differences between each package.

Notification & Reporting

BinaryCanary offers a huge range of reporting options on every plan to make sure you know how your host is performing. You can be notified if your websites go down, if your email server goes down, your FTP server and much more.

You can be notified via email, SMS and via a phonecall where you will hear a recorded message telling you that your server is down.

You can also be notified if your blog has been hacked. This is a great feature which I haven’t seen on other website monitoring services. They simply check your site for unauthorised changes and then report it to you if it looks like you’ve been hacked.

Thousands of websites are hacked every year so it’s something be aware of. One of my old forums was hacked by a Turkish hacking group 3 or 4 years ago with my home page being replaced with an anti-American message. Obviously they didn’t take the time to read my about page as they would have quickly realised I’m Scottish haha.

BinaryCanary provides some handy reports too which show you the uptime of the site you are monitoring.

Overview

The more you develop your blog, the more important it is for it to remain online all the time. So a website monitoring service will let you know when your blog is down wherever you are.

I’m a big fan of services like BinaryCanary as they offer you a great service for free. So if you are looking for a website monitoring service, I recommend giving them a try. If you find the service useful, you can upgrade to a premium plan when necessary. If you don’t, you can simply try another service, so you have nothing to lose.

Link: BinaryCanary

* This was a Paid Review. If you are interested in having your site reviewed on Blogging Tips, please check out our Advertising Information Page.

BinaryCanary – Free Website Monitoring Service


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

My major problem with working with designers is that I rarely know what I’m looking for. I have a general idea of what I’d like but I don’t know what colours to use, what font to use or what kind of mascot to add to the logo. No doubt designers hate working with me because of this!

Thankfully there are websites which cater for those of us who don’t know the first thing about graphic design. One of the most popular is LogoMyWay, a community which boasts thousands of top quality designers and design companies.

The premise of LogoMyWay is simple. You post what kind of logo you want for you blog or website and give some details of what you would like to see. Dozens of top designers will then submit an entry and you simply need to choose the best one.

I am a huge fan of this concept. David Airey designed the Blogging Tips logo however in the last few years I have held a design contest when I wanted a logo designed for a new site. It really is the best service for someone like me to use as I’m never 100% sure what I’m looking for in a logo. With a contest I am able to see dozens of great logos which all differ in design, colour and theme.

The Design Process

The logo design process is very straight forward. First thing you need to do is give some basic details about your website and the logo you want and then decide how much the designer of the winning entry will win. I usually state what format I want the finished design to be in too (e.g. Photoshop, Illustrator etc).

You can create a contest between a minimum of $200 and a maximum of $1,000. There is also a 10% operation fee though this is taken off the designers winning prize money so it doesn’t effect you directly as such.

The more money you offer in your competition, the more entries you will receive and the higher the standard of entries. Some of the top designers obviously focus on higher paying competitions rather than ones which pay out $200, though you will be surprised at the quality you receive at $200 too. It really is a competitive marketplace.

Shortly after posting your competition you will receive design entries for your logo. It is then up to you to rate these entries and eliminate the ones you don’t like. You can also give feedback to all designers explaining why you do or don’t like a particular logo. The designers who get good ratings usually revise their logo entries with the suggestions you made and submit a second, third of even fourth logo.

This part of the process is very important. It’s silly to be lazy at this part and just pick a winner. You need to be proactive and rate all the entries and give designers feedback about the logos they entered. Doing so will help you get your perfect logo.

Finally, all you need to do is chose the logo which you like best. It really is straight forward and I’m sure you will be very pleased with the quality of submissions. Remember, once you have paid for your logo you will have complete rights to it and can do whatever you want for it.

The video below illustrates how the whole process works:

Standard of Entries

A design service is nothing without it’s designers. Thankfully, LogoMyWay has a lot of competitive designers who are eager to win your prize money. Most design contests have over a hundred logo entries (some have over 300), which offers you a staggering amount of variety of different logo designs to choose from.

The quality of entries are very high, a quick look at the showcase of first place winners confirms this.

The whole system is setup to encourage designers work to their full potential. Not only do they stand a chance of winning prize money, they also give their company a lot of exposure to people who are looking for design work.

LogoMyWay informs designers about the latest contests via Twitter though I have no doubt that most designers who are active there frequent the site daily.

Alternatives

It’s not possible to talk about LogoMyWay without talking about other design contest sites out there. There are many other design contest sites out there but the two most popular are 99Designs and Logo Tournament.

It’s difficult to compare the sites as they all have similar models. The minimum fee for a logo is $200 on LogoMyWay, $204 on 99Designs and $250 on Logo Tournament.

LogoMyWay has around 2,000 designers on it’s books, Logo Tournament has around 7,000 and 99Designs has over 50,000. I’m not sure how many designers on each site are active though it’s safe to say 99Designs is the most active. I’ve used them personally several times and have always been happy though you usually have to spend a bit more to encourage more designers.

The main difference with LogoMyWay is that a winner has to be declared. With other sites you are not required to choose a winner if you don’t want to.

As per their Frequently Asked Questions page:

If you don’t receive at least 40 entries. We will extend your contest for another 7 days. If you still do not get 40 entries after the extension you will get a full refund – no questions asked.

I can see two sides to this. As a website owner, I would like the option of not choosing an entry if no logos met my requirements. However, from a designers point of view, I understand why this is a very good rule as it stops time wasters and ensures that they are not spending their time making logos for people who aren’t going to pay up. This should encourage more designers to participate there because of it.

So I think extending the contest for 7 days and then giving a full refund if your contest doesn’t have 40 entries is pretty fair.

Overview

As I said at the start of this review, I’m a big fan of design contests as it allows you to see lots of different designs for a relatively low price.

For years I used designers directly and had mixed results. Some companies were great to work with but others provided work that was rushed and was clearly not up to their usual standard. However, by this point you have usually sent 50% of the total payment, which is pretty impossible to get back since they have already spent time working on a design. So you may have to make the decision of whether to lose the money you have sent or send another 50% for a logo you don’t want. This is the primary reason why I use design contests for logos.

It’s kind of difficult to choose between the popular design contest sites out there. If you are looking for a logo my advice to you is to check out the entries on a few sites to get an idea of the quality of work which is being submitted, the number of entries and the prize money being offered.

Though there is no doubt that you should consider LogoMyWay when you are getting your next logo designed.

Link: LogoMyWay

* This was a Paid Review. If you are interested in having your site reviewed on Blogging Tips, please check out our Advertising Information Page.

LogoMyWay – Design contests for those who want choice


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

If you’ve ever come back from a vacation or conference and been reluctant to open up your RSS reader due to the sheer number of unread items that certainly awaited, you are already familiar with “second inbox guilt”. It’s caused by having a second unread count, much like your email inbox, that you have to constantly churn and plow through every day.

The cure for this disease, however, may well be a fever.

Fever is a different kind of RSS reader, rather than burdening you with unread entries and making you rummage through hundreds or thousands of posts to find what you want to read, Fever tries to bring the important articles to the top, making them easy to find and easy to follow. Though it lets you maintain a list of “must follow” feeds, it also works to find and summarize the most important news before you even get there.

Though it is a new and potentially compelling idea for managing RSS feeds, it does have some pretty severe limitations, including a hefty price tag, that will likely keep it from being widely adopted or used. Still, it is worth taking a moment to see if it is right for you.

The Big Idea

What Fever does is in many ways similar to how Google tracks PageRank on the Web. It looks at your RSS feeds and tracks what sites/stories the entries are linking to. The more articles that link to a particular story, the “hotter” it becomes. If enough entries link to one page, it becomes a “hot” and gets pushed to the top of your feed reader’s front page. Best of all, every story that links to that item is displayed directly underneath, making it very easy to read everything that’s been said about it in your feed.

Fever does this by classifying your feeds into two types. The first is “Kindling”, which are your “must read” feed items. These are the feeds where you are interested in nearly every post and want to read them as if they were in a regular RSS reader. The second kind is “Sparks” which are active feeds that are more hit and miss, where much of the content isn’t of interest. Sparks feeds are not intended to be read, but rather, are simply used to increase the temperature on popular stories.

In Fever, temperature is always based on the human body, meaning 98.6 degrees F and 37 degrees C, so that when a story gets “hot” it runs a fever, pushing it well over than normal temp.

The result is that, if you subscribe to a lot of feeds or are gone for a long period of time, you don’t need to read through hundreds or thousands of articles to find what was important. Simply checking your “Hot” list, for which you can set the date range, will clue you in to the most important stories within a few minutes.

Other Benefits

In addition to its unique way of displaying RSS feeds, Fever also has a few other benefits to consider.

1. Clean Layout: Fever’s layout is clean, intuitive and AJAX powered. It automatically refreshes feeds at regular intervals and does a good job displaying a lot of information in a very uncluttered way.
2. iPhone/Mobile Version: Fever also has a very effective mobile version designed for the iPhone or similar phones. Works great for keeping up with news while on the go since it is tailored to doing quick checks of important stories.
3. Bookmarklet: Since Fever has multiple places to put a feed, it has a special bookmarklet that lets you add feeds to either your Kindling or your Sparks depending on where you need it.
4. Keyboard Shortcuts: As with Google Reader, Fever uses keyboard shortcuts to make navigation easier and faster.

However, despite all of this, Fever is not right for everyone. Though it comes with a large number of compelling features, it has a series of drawbacks and concerns that will probably prevent it from becoming a mainstream success.

Drawbacks and Limitations

The same as Fever is different in way that it reads feeds, it is also different in the way it is implemented. Rather than being a site that you go to and register for an account or an application that you install on your desktop, Fever is a server-installed application, similar to WordPress or Joomla. This means that, in order to use Fever, you have to have your own server with PHP and MYSQL available and know how to set up applications on it.

Also, similar to those applications, the set up of Fever is not as simple as desktop applications. It involves uploading a folder, setting permissions, creating a database and a new database user. Though not difficult to a veteran Web admin, it can be intimidating to a more casual user that only does such things rarely, if ever.

Another factor to consider is whether your server can easily handle the load of Fever. Though it seems to be pretty light and not use up a lot of memory on my server, it is easy to see how, especially with a ton of feeds, it could become a drag, slowing down your public site.

However, the worst barrier for many will be the price tag: $30. Though it’s not an extremely high amount to pay for an application, in an era where nearly every other RSS reader is free justifying the expense may be difficult to justify.

Bottom Line

In the end, Fever is a great RSS reader that is going to be severely limited by a heavy price tag and a limited number of users capable of installing it. If there were a place to create a Fever account and run it on their server, Fever would undoubtedly start winning over a larger audience. But currently it is limited to a niche audience of those with Web servers that are willing to spend the time and money to set it up on their server.

For better or worse, I am in that market and have been using Fever this past week and loving it. However, I can easily see that it is not for everyone nor is it for most.

Ironically though, my greatest complaint about fever has been the time it has taken me to set up and run. I’ve had to reorganize my feeds to maximize the temperature on relevant stories and keep the number of “must read” feeds to a minimum. I’ve also had to subscribe to many additional feeds in the “Spark” folder to help find important stories (strangely I wasn’t subscribed to enough feeds at first).

Still, I see those actions as an investment to help me spend less time reading feeds and still be more aware of the important stories in my field.

If you meet the qualifications for running Fever, which you probably do if you run your own WordPress install, it may well be worth giving it a shot. Otherwise, just wait and see if maybe, someday, they’ll consider setting up a hosted version of it you can register for.

Feed a Fever, Without Starving Your RSS Reader


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Blog Profitz is unlike many of the other affiliate marketing tools available which use WordPress. Whereas most affiliate scripts use a standard WordPress plugin or a bridge to integrate products from eBay and Amazon, Blog Profitz instead does it all for you online. That is, you don’t need to download a script and mess with settings, you just need to input your blog login information in the Blog Profitz dashboard.

It’s worth noting that Blog Profitz also works with WordPress.com blogs. This is a nice addition though I doubt many people will use it as you can only put advertisements on WordPress.com if you choose their VIP Hosting option. Also, if you have the cash to pay for an affiliate marketing tool like this, you will no doubt be able to afford to host your own blog.

Getting Started

The first thing you need to do is decide on whether you want to add products and content to an existing blog you own or to a fresh installation of WordPress. Personally, I would strongly recommend working with a brand new installation as you don’t want to be messing about with a live site i.e. what if you set it up incorrectly and accidently add thousands of products to your main blog!!

So my suggestion is to play around with it a little on a new domain or a test area of your site until you are familar with how it works (it won’t take you long).

There are basically 3 things you need to do add content to your blog :

1. Enter your affiliate information
2. Enter your blog information (login/password details etc)
3. Set up your posting rules. This is where you determine what products, articles and videos are pulled to your blog

The first time you enter this information might take a while, just because you don’t readily have the info there. However, once you know how to use the system, adding content to other blogs or creating new content will be a breeze.

I will walk you through the creation steps to give you a better idea of what is involved

Step 1 : Enter your affiliate information

The first thing you need to do is enter your affiliate information. In total there are 10 affiliate sites you can use : RegNow, Affiliate Bot, Amazon, Click2Sell, Commission Junction, Hotel Club, PayDotCom, OverStock, eBay and Clickbank. Additionally, this page also lists the RSS, YouTube and The Content Club plugins however you do not need to enter any details here.

The affiliate area is very quick and easy to update. However, I think there needs to be a little more help for users. As it stands just now, the page just asks for your affiliate ID but there is no detailed explanation of where you can find that ID on the corresponding site. It’s a minor gripe though I do believe that a small guide showing you where you can find your affiliate ID would help those unfamiliar with the affiliate site in question.

Blog Profitz was designed to make the creation process quick and easy. As they put it you should “Spend Your Time Marketing, Not Monetizing”. They have definately achieved this with the way they have set the affiliate area up.

All you need to do is enter your affiliate ID for affiliates you are using once. You can then integrate products with your affiliate code on all your blogs, whether you have 1 blog or 200. This will no doubt be an incredible time saver for people who are using the script on more than one blog however I think that it restricts the service greatly and makes it less flexible.

For example, it will hinder those who want to use the site to target different markets. eBay and Amazon both have dedicated affiliate programs for each region. So you could use Blog Profitz to integrate products from the Australian eBay and Amazon stores but if chose to do this you could not integrate products from the American, Canadian or British stores on your 2nd blog.

I do appreciate why Blog Profitz chose to set it up all like this as it will speed things up for most users. Though I’m sure there are a lot of people out there, like me, who would be keen on testing the waters in a few different markets. Hopefully this is something they address in the future

Step 2 : Enter your blog information

It only takes a minute to add your blog details. You just need to quickly enter :

• Title : The name of your blog
• Type : This is always set to “WordPress Blog”
• XML-RPC Url : This file is in the root of your WordPress blog. For example : http://www.yourblog.com/xmlprc.php
• Login : Your blog login username.
• Password : Your blog password.
• Title template : Determines the title of your product on your blog.
• Post template : Lets you change how the product is shown on your blog.

One thing to remember at this stage is to click the ‘Get Categories’ link whenever you add a new category to your blog. This updates your blog info and lets Blog Profitz know that you have updated the number of categories to choose from.

Step 3 : Set up your posting rules

In this step you need to determine what products and content you want to pull and what blog and category you want to upload them too. You can then determine how often the data is pulled : either every 1, 3, 5, 10, 15 or 30 days.

Setting up what products you want pulled to your blog is very easy. At first glance I thought it would take me a while to complete but many of the fields have already been filled with default values so you only need to change these if you want to pull a different number of products to your site.

The main thing you need to do here is specify the keyword of the products you want to extract and the maximum amount of products to pull. Blog Profitz then runs a cron once a day to extract the data to your blog.

Content Plugins

There are 3 ways to add content to your blog with Blog Profitz. You can pull data from an RSS feed, you can pull content from The Content Club and you can pull videos from YouTube.

As someone who regularly adds YouTube videos to his own blog, I like the option to pull videos from YouTube. However, I am not too keen on the other options.

With regards to The Content Club , I have no issue with the site at all, or the inclusion of it. However, just like any free article directory, the quality of the content is not great and the articles are not unique either.

I know a lot of people don’t mind adding low quality articles to their site but I would prefer to write unique articles for my sites. Short term it’s a pain in the butt but in the long term it should bring you in more targeted traffic to your site. Otherwise, your site could end up looking like every other splog out there.

And splogs brings me to my next point. One thing I was a little concerned about what the inclusion of the RSS Plugin. As you know, there are a lot of spammers out there ripping off content from blogs. It’s a problem which all bloggers face, including myself.

So I am always wary of scripts which make it easier for people to rip other bloggers content. I know that a RSS fetch script could be used ethically to pull data from someones own feed and I’m not suggesting that the developers of these scripts are entirely to blame either. However, the popularity of these scripts has definately contributing to the increase of content theft.

Of course, I know that many customers are looking to automate everything, which is why there is a demand for an RSS fetch tool in the first place.

Cost

Blog Profitz has went for a subscription model instead of charging a one off fee.

The following subscription options are available :

• Trial : Lets you try it out on one blog for $19 per month.
• Starter : Lets you target up to 5 blogs for $49 per month.
• Intermediate : Lets you target up to 15 blogs for $99 per month.
• Advanced : Lets you target up to 50 blogs for $149 per month.
• Master Blogger : Lets you target up to 100 blogs for $249 per month.

Is Blog Profitz worth it? Well, that depends on a lot of factors. Most of the eBay and Amazon store affiliate scripts available elsewhere on the net charge a one time fee, usually between $99 and $250. Some let you upload the script to an unlimited number of sites whilst others restrict usage to a certain number of domains.

I’m not sure if it’s fair to compare Blog Profitz to these scripts though. I have used a few eBay scripts and Blog Profitz was definately much easier to use. And because it is not a standalone script and is instead powered by WordPress, it gives you a huge amount of flexibility with regards to customizing your site and integrating other applications with it. It also works with 10 affiliate merchants rather than just 1.

Cost is subjective however I personally think the trial price of $19 per month is a cheap way of testing the script. You could try it out for a few months and if you don’t see any returns you could just stop your subscription and sell your site. Though if you do start to see some commissions rolling in you could start a few new sites. And that is where I believe Blog Profitz starts giving you much more bang for your buck. For example, if you choose the intermediate package the cost of each blog comes down from $19 to $6.60.

Even though the more expensive packages are much better value for money, I would still recommend getting the trial package first to see if you like the script. Then, if after a few days or a week or whatever, you can decide whether it’s worth developing a few sites using it.

Support

Customers get support via email, a discussion forum and from Video Tutorials .

In total there are 5 video tutorials. I was particularly impressed with them. They take you through each step of the setup process and go over in detail the parts you migh be unsure of.

The videos cover :

• BlogProfitz Overview
• Affiliate Programs
• Add Your Blogs
• Post your products
• Posting from RSS feeds, Youtube and ContentClub

Extras

In addition to the Affiliate Marketing PHD e-book which is being launched at the same time as Blog Profitz, members will also get 5 bonus e-books.

• Backlink Building for Newbies
• Google Video Marketing
• How to Write Blog Posts That SUCK Visitors In
• Hub.Blueprint_Master.v2
• Niche Marketing Rockstar

Unfortunately, all of these e-books are white label and their quality is not the greatest. A lot of the content is filler whilst the rest seems to be a plug for the authors site (but aren’t all e-books?).

Additionally, members get 3 wordpress themes to download though I was not impressed by the quality of the themes. After deleting the first post from my test blog area the design of all 3 themes was completely messed up, something which should have been tested in my opinion. You can see their 2nd theme design in action in the test blog I setup to review Blog Profitz.

Even though I wasn’t impressed with any of the bonuses on offer to members, it’s not something which I think potential customers should be concerned about. WordPress has a huge catalogue of free themes and plugins and you can download better e-books for free on just about any subject you can think of.

Overview

At one point a few years ago I owned about a dozen Amazon affiliate stores and to this day I still own 2 or 3 ebay auction sites. Compared to the scripts I have used in the past, using Blog Profitz is a breeze and is much easier to configure.

For me, the best feature of Blog Profitz is that it has not tried to do everything. Too many scripts try and be the perfect ‘all in one’ solution. Which means you spend a lot of your time trying to work out to change the design of the site or how you can integrate other plugins with it. But that’s not much of an issue with Blog Profitz as it is simply pulling data to your WordPress powered blog.

And using WordPress means that you have thousands of unique plugins and blog themes at your disposal, most of which are free. This offers the customer enormous flexiblity into how they use the script.

I’d love to see them offer members more options in the affiliate area. I touched upon the issues with only entering your affiliate information once though I’d also like to see them add more affiliate sites to their currest roster of 10. And even though I would rather write unique articles for my blog, I think a lot of members would like to see the inclusion and integration of more free article directories like Ezine Articles.

Although Blog Profitz is not perfect, it is a without doubt a great service and one which I’m sure affiliate marketers would be able to make money from. I recommend trying it out for a month if you are looking for an easy way to pull affiliate products to your site.

If you would like to know more about Blog Profitz, I recommend visiting their site. If there is anything that you would like to know about the script please let me know and I’ll do my best to answer it. Failing that, I’ll ask the owner Scott to drop by and respond

Link : Blog Profitz

* This was a Paid Review. If you are interested in having your site reviewed on Blogging Tips, please check out our Advertising Information Page.

Boost Your Online Income With Blog Profitz


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

It’s currently available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and most online bookstores for around $16.49.

Google Blogger For Dummies

There’s a good chance you will see Google Blogger For Dummies if you are browsing your local bookstore as it’s part of the ever expanding Dummies range of books.

Just like the last two books I read (ProBlogger and Blog Blazers), the front cover is printed in big bold colours but the content is in plain black and white. This isn’t a major issue though the numerous photographs and screenshots within the book would have looked a lot better had they been in colour.

In total there are 19 chapters, which are split between 6 parts :

• Part 1 : Introducing Google Blogger
  • Chapter 1 : Choosing Blogger as Your Blogging Software
  • Chapter 2 :Welcome to the Blogosphere
  • Chapter 3 : Blogging Basics and Buzzwords
• Part 2 : Using Google Blogger
  • Chapter 4 : Getting Started with Blogger
  • Chapter 5 : Setting Up Your Blog
  • Chapter 6 : Writing and Publishing Blog Posts
  • Chapter 7 : Enhancing Your Blog With Templates
  • Chapter 8 : Adding Features and Functionality with Elements and Gadgets
  • Chapter 9 : Managing Your Blog
• Part 3 : Making Money with Blogger
  • Chapter 10 : The Business of Blogging
  • Chapter 11 : Maximising Revenue with Google AdSense
• Part 4 : Growing Your Audience
  • Chapter 12 : The Power of Networking and Relationship Building
  • Chapter 13 : Boosting Your Search Engine Ranking
• Part 5 : Extending Your Blog
  • Chapter 14 : Growing or Downsizing Your Blog
  • Chapter 15 : Blogging from Different Media
  • Chapter 16 : Moving Beyond Blogger
• Part 6 : The Part of Tens
  • Chapter 17 : Ten Useful Social Networking and Social Bookmarking Sites
  • Chapter 18 : Ten Common Blogger Problems and Possible Solutions
  • Chapter 19 : Ten Places to Find Free Blogger Themes and Templates

The first half of the book (part I & II) concentrates solely on how to build your blog. It takes you through creating your blog, to picking a domain name to improving your design with templates and side widgets. As a self confessed Blogger Noob, I found this area of the site very useful.

Over the years I have worked with hundreds of different scripts but I still find it incredibly helpful when everything is broken down and explained with pictures. And thats exactly what this book does. Existing blogger users might find the first few chapters tedious because of this but I’m sure that they will learn a few things they didn’t know and at the very least, this book would be very useful for reference.

The second half of the book deals with making money with your blog, promoting it and expanding it. A lot of this section has been covered in other blogging books however everything is explained from the ‘Blogger View’. For example, Susan explains how to adsense to your Blogger template and in chapter 14 she shows you how you add additional authors to your blog.

Overview

Although Susan covers a lot of things about blogging which is covered in other blogging books (eg. making money, promotion etc), I don’t think it’s fair to compare ‘Google Blogger For Dummies’ to those books. For example, as far as making money and promoting your blog, Darren Rowses ProBlogger book is perhaps more complete. However, someone who is using the Blogger platform or intends to will definately get more from this book.

As I mentioned previously, I am not too familar with the Blogger platform and this is the first Blogger related book I have read. Though I believe that the majority of Blogger users, particularly newbies, will get a lot of this book.

All in all, ‘Google Blogger For Dummies’ is a well written and well constructed book which goes at a good pace and should help Blogger users with building, expanding and promoting their blog. Recommend

Google Blogger For Dummies


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Getting Started

After an incredibly quick sign up process, you are presented with the option of either contributing a post or reading others. Although BloggersBase seems to distinguish between readers and bloggers, I believe the majority of active members on the site will be both.

The first thing I did after signing up was update my profile, as any posts I submit will have a link to my user account. You are assigned a writer rank and a reader rank, both of which progress as you become more active on the site.

As a writer you start off as a Newbie. You can then progress to a Scribe, Penman, Composer, Essayist, Columnist, Author, Wordsmith and Scholar. As a reader your rank starts off as Subscriber. You then progress to an Appraiser, Commentator, Reviewer, Critic, Analyst, Trend-Setter, Sage and Oracle. Apparently, the higher the rank you achieve, the more influential your votes will be.

Once you have updated your profile and have had a look around the site, you will probably want to submit your first post. What sets BloggersBase apart from many other online article sites is the ability to embed photos and videos into your posts (including a Flikr import option). This really helps you bring posts to life and is something which I think will help BloggersBase establish itself quickly with bloggers.

You have the option of writing an excerpt (summary) of your post, which will be showed on the home page, but if no excerpt is entered the first few sentences of your post will be used. After that you have the option of adding tags to your post. This is something I would recommend as there is a tag cloud on the sidebar on most pages so entering the right tags should help your posts get more exposure.

There is a trackback option but unfortunately you have to enter the links manually. Not a major problem though it would have been good if this was done automatically.

In total there are 4 main categories which you can submit your post to :

• Entertainment
• Lifestyle
• Technology
• World Affairs

Each category has around 2 to 3 sub categories so finding a suitable category shouldn’t be too difficult (there is currently 10 categories in total). There are also 2 additional categories called Special Events and Partnerships, which will offer additional prizes from external websites.

Competitions

The Frequently Asked Questions section summarises how their competitions work but in my opinion it, overcomplicates it a little. Basically, at the moment they are offering a $50 prize ($40 to first place and $10 to second) in each of the 10 categories i.e. $500 in prizes every week. I can’t say for sure but from comments I have read on the site I get the impression that this may increase in the future.

Here is an exerpt from the FAQ (It illustrates what I mean about the explanation being overly complicated) :

The concept is simple – maintain quality by periodical competition between the bloggers in each blog (topic). Only a limited amount of bloggers can author the blog at any given time, and they should be the elite of all bloggers on BloggersBase. At the end of each Timeslot the best bloggers earn status points, get awarded promotional prizes and keep authoring the blog. The ones with the lowest score in the current Timeslot will no longer be allowed to directly publish posts to the main blog, but will be forced to compete to rejoin the elite authors of the blog in future Timeslots.

Bloggers who want to author the main blog should publish Nuggets (contenting posts) in the Goldmine of that blog. The blogger with the best Nugget will take his or her place among the authors of the main blog, during the Timeslot.

So who determines who the best bloggers are? The readers of course! Readers rate the posts, both in the main blog and in the contenders section.
At the end of each Timeslot, winners are declared, bloggers change roles from the Goldmine to the main blog and vice versa.

Readers are not similarly affected by the Timeslots and are constantly evaluated by our algorithms, estimating their knowledge in the specific topic as well as their influence. They earn points, which increases their influence in future ratings. This way BloggersBase keeps a very high quality standard for both bloggers and readers.

Timeslots can vary in length which will allow BloggersBase to shorten or extend competitions in the future, which is a good business model in my opinion i.e. as they grow they could increase prize funds and/or decrease the length of the competition.

Promote Your Blog

The prizes on offer are a nice bonus but I believe the main incentive for using BloggersBase is the option to promote yourself and your blog. Some have compared this kind of promotion to submitting a post to an article directory like EZine Articles. However, unlike submitting to an article directory, you are not giving authority to reproduce the article elsewhere on the web.

There is no 2 link limit either, something which many article directories impose. So you could include several links to your blog in your article if you really wanted (though I assume there is an unwritten fair use policy and it may stop fellow members voting for your post too).

Your articles do not have to be original. You are allowed to submit posts which have already been posted on your blog. Infact, they have an RSS feature which allows you to pull content from your feed. This kind of feature is open to abuse but I have been told that a tool which authenticates that the RSS belongs to the user is under development. In the meantime they are relying on members to report dishonest users who are posting other bloggers content as their own.

Reproducing content which has already been posted on your blog brings up the issue of duplicate content, something which could harm the traffic to your original article. If your blog is new then theres a good chance that any article published on BloggersBase will rank higher than the original article on your blog.

I don’t want to talk too much about duplicate content as it’s a subject I have spoken about many times in the past. Though I will say this : if you have an established blog then it’s probably best to submit original articles and not reproduce content from your blog. However, if your blog is still fairly new and you are trying to get it off the ground, you may get some value from reproducing your best posts on BloggersBase as you will gain some adiditonal links to your blog and will highlight your best content to a whole new audience.

Essentially, whether you should reproduce content from your blog on Bloggersbase is something you will need to weigh up the pros and cons for you and your blog and make a decision on.

Affiliate Program

BloggersBase also offers an affiliate program. They offer 100% of the earnings your referred users make up to 3 wins. As they explain :

Let’s say you have referred 2 users.
The first one wins first place twice in the Internet blog, and the second user wins second place 5 times in the Humor blog.
You will be awarded $40 times 2 for the first and $10 times 3 (the maximum) for the second, for a total of $110.

Currently there are only 4 banner sizes (120×240 pixels, 120×90 pixels, 234×60 pixels and 468×60 pixels) but hopefully there will be more added soon.

Currently In Beta

It’s worth pointing out that BloggersBase is still in a Beta phase. I have reviewed many ‘Beta Phase’ websites before and BloggersBase seems very close to completion. There are some small bugs though. For example, I clicked on the Add Image button whilst submitting a post to see what image uploading options there were and there was no button to exit so I had to refresh the page to go back to the initial screen.

On a positive note, there is a feedback button at the bottom right hand side of every page and from what I have read the owners seem have been responsive to the feedback so far. So these small bugs should be ironed out and hopefully we will see some new options added to the site soon too.

Overview

I wasn’t too sure what to make of BloggersBase when I first visited it but once I understood how everything worked I was quite impressed. I’m sure many people will use the site to read the articles though I think most bloggers will use the site :

• To promote themselves and their blog through blog posts.
• To take part in the competitions and be eligible for cash prizes.
• To make new friends, contacts and meet fellow bloggers.

If you are looking for a no cost method of promoting your blog, I recommend checking it out

Link : BloggersBase

* This was a Paid Review.

BloggersBase – A Community Blogging Magazine


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Thankfully, there are a lot of alternatives out there. One of which is NetKlix, an ad network which has been operating since 1999. Originally an affiliate ad network, NetKlix was relaunched as a PPC network in 2008 and has already built up a good reputation, particularly with bloggers (you have probably noticed NetKlix banners on many blogs in the last 6 months, including BloggingTips).

Publishers

Signing up with NetKlix is easy and should only take you a few minutes. After you have had your account verified you can login to see the user control panel. Here’s a preview of the publisher home page :

As you can see from the above screenshot, the main control area is pretty straight forward. From here you can setup new ad zones, change your profile details and you can quickly see how well your blog has performed in the last 7 days too.

NetKlix currently has 14 ad formats for publishers so you should be able to find one or two which fit your blogs design. Just like Adsense, you can also change the colors of the PPC boxes to suit the color scheme of your blog.

After choosing the size of your ad and the color, you need to decide what type of ads you want displayed on your blog. You do this by selecting 1 to 10 different channels which best suit your blog.

The payment method currently available to publishers is a direct payment to your bank account.

Advertisers

Creating an Advertiser account is very easy. All you need to do is :

• Create the advert
• Target the advert
• Create your account
• Activate your account

The whole process should take you less than 15 minutes. Creating an advert is very similar to Google Adwords however there is a little less options, which may suit many of you as it many believe that Adwords is overly complicated.

All you need to do is choose your headline text and description, enter the link url and decide the maxmimum CPC bid. After that you need to choose how you target the ad. It’s all very straight forward.

The good news is that advertisers currently get up to a $100 bonus for signing up. If you are looking to advertise your blog then I recommend taking advantage of this offer before it expires (It expires on 25th January but the offer may return).

Overview

If you are looking for a good PPC alternative then I recommend trying NetKlix out. Whether publishers make more money with Netklix than other PPC ad networks may depend on the niche of your blog though it’s worth trying out for a week or so and seeing how it compares to your current provider.

Those who are looking to do a PPC ad campaign should definately look into trying it out as, depending on how much you deposit, you could get an extra $100 added to your campaign fund.

If you would like to read some more opinions on NetKlix then I recommend reading the reviews on Azam, John Cow, WP Themes Plugin, Etienneteo and Winning The Web.

Link : NetKlix

* This was a Paid Review.

Netklix Pay Per Click Ad Network


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

YouBlogged is based on Drigg which is Digg clone software built around Drupal. You should immediately notice that stories can be voted either up or down while there are six-teen different categories to choose from when submitting a story. One thing that I noticed is that their bookmarklet is only available to be used on blogs. I find that to be an inconvenience as I would much rather have the option of adding the javascript to my browser so when I come across a cool blog post, I can submit it to YouBlogged without leaving the page.

All in all, I’m not sure how another Digg clone will do amongst the sea of them that already exist. We have Yahoo! Buzz, Digg itself, Sphinn, Mixx, etc. Although I have to admit, sites like Design-Float.com have been able to be at least somewhat successful by being the social gathering place for a specific niche. I think if YouBlogged can polish up the design of the site, make it easy as possible for users to submit stories no matter where they are or what they’re doing, and a core group of people get the site rolling by continuously submitting fresh stories, the site just might have a chance.

If you end up getting a blog post of yours submitted to YouBlogged, let me know how it works out with regards to traffic.

YouBlogged – Digg Clone Just For Bloggers


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Company Info:

Blogpulse is a service that automatically discovers trends within its covered base of blogs. BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the dynamic world of blogs. BlogPulse is operated by Nielsen Online and is part of Nielson BuzzMetrics. The service is also free.

Using BlogPulse:

For this review, I’ll be staying on or around the topic of WordPress since a major version was recently released. Using Blogpulse, I should be able to get a birds eye view to figure out the overall opinion from the majority of blogs that are covered by the service. At the very least, get a handle on how much coverage 2.7 received.

The Search Engine – The search engine works in a similar fashion to Google Blogsearch whereas the results are displayed newest first. However, this can be changed using the advanced settings to organize the results by relevance. Using WordPress as my search term, it was no surprise that a large amount of results appeared. Many of the results were from blogs in languages I don’t understand. Unfortunately, BlogPulse does not provide a way for you to filter results by language which is a shame. Each search result has two additional options, track conversation and view blog profile. More on the profile stuff later but the track conversation link enables you to see a list of sites which have linked to the original article. During my testing of this feature, I noticed two things. Many of the WordPress 2.7 search results didn’t have blogs linking to them and most of the sites where I did see part of the conversation were scraped.

If you’d like to dive in deeper into the search results as a whole, Blogpulse provides a trend this option which will take all of the search results and place them into a graph that looks similar to an Alexa traffic growth graph. As you can see in the following screenshot, there was little buzz regarding the newest version of WordPress prior to October. As more articles were published about the topic and from the WordPress development blog itself, the trends rose. Eventually, WordPress 2.7 was released which is easily identifiable via the eye gouging spike in December. Last but not least, you can also subscribe to the XML feed for your particular search string.

When browsing through the search results, you can track the conversation or view the blogs profile. The profile contains information that the the blog owner filled in during the submission process. Blogpulse does provide a form for you to fill out if you want to submit your blog URL to their database of blogs which are monitors. The submission process couldn’t be simpler. Give them your email address and then list the blogs you want added to the database and click the submit button. Your entry will be sent off and with good luck, will be added. Hey, the submission is free and it could be yet another way to generate traffic so why not submit your blog?

Conclusion:

What I’ve described of BlogPulse thus far is just scratching the service. The about page goes on to describe the various ways in which to use the service depending on if you’re a blogger, web surfer or a journalist. A couple of caveats though. First, BlogPulse currently states that they have identified a total of 99,200,000 blogs with 186,000 discovered in the last 24 hours. When monitoring or discovering trends, 99 million blogs is a decent number to go by but, I have to wonder just how good at discovering trends BlogPulse is compared to something like GoogleTrends which is used by many more people. Also because of Google’s dominance, I can only imagine that many people use Google’s own BlogSearch tool to find recent blog posts on a certain topic. However, I really don’t like the way Technorati does anything so BlogPulse makes a good substitute in my opinion. Until Technorati starts over and does things right, I’ll always despise of them.

Measuring The Pulse Of The Blogosphere


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

In the book Stephane interviews 40 of the most influential bloggers on the web. It’s a very simple concept but as you know, sometimes those are the ones which work the best. Stephane first started developing this book about a year and a half ago and you can see the general outline for the book in his post ‘Marketing And Sales For Small Online Businesses‘.

Before I talk more about the book, I though it would be good to give you all a little information about the books author

About the Author

Stephane Grenier has been working online for several years. In 2003 he established his flasgship company LandLord Max, which sells Property Management Software to real estate agents.

In June 2005 Stephane started blogging about himself and his online successes and failures on his blog Follow Steph. This blog has now become the main source of marketing and advertising for LandLord Max and gets over 500,000 unique visitors per year.

Blog Blazers – 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets

After a quick summary about blogging and why Stephane wrote this book, the book dives right into the interviews. The 40 interviews are packed into 206 pages with each interview being around 4-6 pages long, which I think is a good length as no interview seems to drag on too long.

Because each interview is only 4-6 pages in length, the book has a sort of magazine feel to it i.e. you don’t have to concentrate really hard when reading or sit and take notes. That’s not to say there isn’t a lot of great information in this book, far from it, however because each interview is just a few pages long and because the interviews have so many questions in them, the information is just so much easier to digest.

Here is a list of all the bloggers who are interviewed in this book. I’m sure you will recognise some of the names

• Aaron Wall from SEO Book
• Ades Tynyshev from Ades Blog
• Al Carlton from Coolest-Gadgets.com
• Alex Papadimoulis of Worse Than Failure
• Andy Brice from Success Software
• Anita Campbell from Small Business Trends
• Asha Dornfest from Parent Hacks
• Ben Casnocha from My Startup Life
• Ben Yoskovitz from Instigator Blog
• Bob Walsh from 47 Hats
• Dan Lyons from The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs
• Dane Carlson from Dane Carlson’s Business Opportunities Weblog
• David Armano from Logic+Emotion
• David Seah
• Derek Semmler
• Dharmesh Shah from On Startups
• Eric Sink
• Ian Landsman of Userscape
• James and Alex Turnbull from Google Sightseeing
• JD from Get Rich Slowly
• Jeff Atwood from Coding Horror
• Jeff Clavier from Jeff Clavier’s Software Only
• Jennette Fulda from Half of Me
• Jenny from 101 Reasons I Hate Being Fat!
• Jessamyn West from Librarian.net
• Joel Cheesman from Cheezhead
• Jonathan Snook
• Manolo from Manolo’s Shoe Blog
• Neil Patel from Quick Sprout
• Pamela Slim from Escape from Cubicle Nation
• Patrick McKenzie from Micro ISV on a Shoestring
• Penelope Trunk from Brazen Careerist
• Ramit Sethi from I will Teach You to be Rich
• Rob Walling from Software By Rob
• Rohit Bhargava from Influential Marketing Blog
• Seth Godin
• Stephane Grenier from Follow Steph (the author himself!)
• Steve Rubel from Micro Persuasion
• Trent Hamm from The Simple Dollar
• Yaro Starak from Entrepreneur’s Journey

Each blogger was asked a range of questions rancing from the basic ‘Which five blogs do you regularly Read?’ to the more taxing ‘What is your best monetization method?’. The answers were very interesting and highlights how different some high profile bloggers think.

For example, when asked about which blogs they read some bloggers preferred smaller more personal blogs, others preferred larger more mainstream blogs which broke news whilst others confessed to not even reading blogs on a regular basis.

There are hundreds of blogs referenced in the book, you will be familar with many of them but there are lots you won’t (I’ve added a few to my newsfeed already!).

Summary

Retailing at 16.95 US Dollars, Blog Blazers is a thoroughly enjoyable book which you will find hard to put down. It gives a great insight into how some of the most successful bloggers on the internet think and what they believe is most important when developing and marketing a blog.

If you are looking for some inspiration for your blog then you can do much worse than pick up a copy of Blog Blazers. Recommended

Link : Blog Blazers

Blog Blazers – 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/