Monthly Archives ⇒ March 2010

Writing a press release

· Brandon Hann

When you hear the term, you might get the impression that this form of media exposure is intended only for the “real” businesses out there and people like you should stick to the YellowPages. The reason for this thinking stems from the fact that people mistake press releases for sales pitches. In reality, a press release is a form of newspaper advertising used to generate buzz around your business and/or product.

A press release can be a sales pitch, but you don’t want it to sound or look like one. The idea is to give an editor something to write about. Newspapers couldn’t exist without news and they’re reporters don’t always get the stories because they happened to be caught in the middle of it. So, let’s bring the story to them!

This guide will focus on HOW to write a press release. Finding out where to send it varies greatly on who you’re sending it to. Generally speaking, you can send a press release alone as nothing more than a one-page writing or you can go all out and develop a full press kit. More on this later. Right now, let’s get into the creation of your first press release.

The easiest way to do this is to break apart a standard press release template and focus on each section. A standard template I recently found online looks like this:

Top Section/Headline

The very top is self-explanatory as you can see. Simply start with some professional letterhead for your company or website and begin thinking of your headline. This headline should be written just like you see in a newspaper and should grab your attention just like it too. Keep it short and concise. Again, remember that you don’t want to come off as promoting your business. Use the headline to offer the best part(s) of your story. Pretend that you know the editor is only going to read the headline. He/she needs to know right from the start what this release is going to be about. Formatting tip: the headline should be in all capitals.

For our example, we’ll be writing a press release for a webhosting company. As we go along, I’ll show you a good and bad example for each section.

A bad headline:

NEW HOSTING COMPANY SERVEROCITY.COM OFFERS UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH TO PROVIDE BETTER SERVICE FOR ONLINE BUSINESSES AND BEAT OUT COMPETITION

A good headline:

ONLINE BUSINESSES: NEW WEBHOST TO OFFER UNLIMTED BANDWIDTH

Body – Introduction

This section is known as the lead paragraph and its goal is to provide a more detailed description than the headline can offer. This paragraph should condense the entire story into an “introduction-style” format that enables the editor to gain a firm grasp on what’s about to be told. Use this section to speak the facts and stay far away from lies, exaggerations and sales pitches.

A bad lead:

A new webhost named Serverocity.com, which offers the lowest priced webhosting plans anywhere and is regarded as a top webhost has just announced that they will be offering no bandwidth limits on their already extremely valuable webhosting plans.

A good lead:

The Internet is a changing forum. Today, websites are packed with more and more content-rich media such as music, videos, Flash and web applications. While the Internet has evolved, hosting providers have not. Anyone who operates a website knows how expensive it can be if their website goes over its bandwidth limit. To top it off, these sites can be shutdown for the remainder of the month until the counter is reset. A new hosting provider seeks to change this. Serverocity.com has recently announced their plans for providing webmasters worldwide with no bandwidth limits every webhosting plan. According to John Smith, the CEO of Serverocity.com, web hosts need to wake up and realize that limited accounts will no longer “fly” in this new wave of Internet technology.

Body – Bulk

The rest of the body is used to reiterate the text you wrote in the lead paragraph. This is where you dive into all the little details of your story. Use quotes from people that express a concern that your business is addressing and/or quote other articles that can also relate to your claims. Ideally, you want to provide credible backup to your claim. Of course you still want to remain concise, so don’t overdo the quotes or you may not sound legitimate. If you’re offering particular services, try not to make this section look like a flyer, but if you can integrate the information with related sentences, you can get away with it.

For example:

…and Joe, from Cnet.com says, “I can’t believe the amount of overages I pay every month!”. Serverocity has gotten fed up with webmasters that share the same sentiment. Because their plans have no “overages”, nobody feels gouged.

In the above example, I was able to make a specific claim about my business’ service, but you can see how well it fits into the previous quote.

Boilerplate

‘boilerplate’ is an old term that defines a block of text that is continually used over and over. It referred to an unchangeable section of text that could be used on printing presses. Right after the body, you are now free to discuss more clearly what the business is with details such as when did you first open, who founded it and what the overall purpose is. This, again is not a sales pitch–it’s simply a short paragraph that talks about the business.

Bad boilerplate:

Serverocity.com – the world’s leader in webhosting services. We offer 5 hosting plans to choose from that will fit well in anyone’s budget! Stop by our website today or give us a call now. We can work with you on any number of specific addons or needs that you require.

Good boilerplate:

Serverocity.com was founded by John Smith in 1998 and is home to thousands of websites. Serverocity also offers free web design tips, how-to guides and industry news through its website and monthly newsletters.

After the # # #

The three hash symbols simply means “no more copy”. In other words, anything written after this line is not part of the release and should not be considered part of any reporting done with this document. After this line, you would want to put some personal information like:

To receive more information on this subject, please contact John Smith at: 555-555-5555 or to request an interview, please contact press@serverocity.com

That’s it! You’ve just created your first press release. So what should you do with it? Start sending it to your local newspapers or if you can offer a service nationwide, send it everywhere you can. It costs nothing more than postage to send these out, so as many as you can get to, the better. Of course there’s no guarantee that anything will get printed, but that’s ok. If you do get printed and your business benefits from it, then you just got more customers and didn’t have to pay much for them!

Social Bookmarking – Technorati

· Brandon Hann

I’m sure at some point in your blogging career, you’ve seen an article or two that pops up on the mega blog site, Technorati.com, but you probably didn’t know much about it. Don’t feel bad; neither did I.

We all know and love Google for they’ve been able to accomplish in the Internet industry (it’s amazing that we can now call this an industry!), and now we can love Technorati for doing great things just for blogs. As a reader, you’re able to search some millions of blogs all around the world talking about anything you can imagine. From there, you can leave comments, Digg articles, re-tweet your favorite bits of information, write for the site as a free lancer and even advertise your business there.

Freelance Writing

But as a writer, you can do one more important thing: promote your blog. Everywhere on this site, you read about posting quality content, finding backlinks and getting ranked high in Google. Well, here’s another way to promote and all it requires you to do is create an account. You can use Technorati to promote your blog and gain exposure and web traffic for your site.

Once you create your account, you “claim” your blog by adding a link to it and then Technorati will have you place some random text somewhere on your site. Within a few days, they will have found your site, verified you’re the author of it and then added it to your account. Now, whenever you post an article on your site, it will be referenced in your account and therefore, searchable. The more you post, the more likely your stuff will be found and that equals more traffic for your blog.

The advantage here is that you are listing your content specifically to a blog community. Being listed here can only help your cause over at Google. One thing to remember is that above and beyond any tips you’re going to find about how to create a successful blog, the most important one is whether you’re credible or not. I’ve said it many times before, but I’ll say it again. You can have a wonderful site with tons of content, but if nobody cares about what you have to say, then you’re lost and your site is considered dead.

Technorati Ranking

Technorati will also rank your blog against every listed blog in the database so you can watch your site gain popularity as your rank climbs higher and higher. Here’s a screenshot of my account page showing my claimed blog and ranking:

As you can see, at the time of this writing, I’m ranked at 40,606! I plan to drop this number as fast as possible and if/when I do, I’ll post a follow-up to this post to give you an idea of how long (and how many posts later) it took to get to that position. I may also post the traffic/rank ratio to help you get an idea of where your site ranks.

I think another great thing about Technorati is that you can claim multiple blogs. Just keep adding them to your account and you can then compare ranks between them to find out which ones are more popular. You mix this site together with your WordPress stats and Google Analytics, you will know exactly how to fix your blog if you need to.

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Promoting your new blog

· Brandon Hann

You now have a blog up and running, you have your own domain name and you have your ideas for original content. Now what?

It’s time to get some readers and hopefully turn them into subscribers! Naturally, your blog will get picked up by the major search engines, but the question is how long will that take and once listed, how long will you last? To increase you chances of becoming popular, start with the content of course and begin using the tools you already have in front of you.

Social Networking

You might already be a member of Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, so start promoting your website there. Of course you don’t want to hound your friends every five minutes to look at your site, but you do want to display your recent additions whenever you can. For Facebook, get the WordBook plugin installed on your blog and let it do the work for you!

WordBook will seemlessly connect to your Facebook account and post a note to your wall that links back to your blog’s entry. This way, when you write something on your blog, your friends will know right away what it is after reading a small excerpt and then they can click through if they like what they see. In time, you may start to notice backlinks appearing for your site. More on how to get links to your site.

You can add all your Twitter tweets right to blog using downloadable widgets to show your web visitors what you’re twittering about and in turn, you may end up with a few more followers.

Email

Create a signup form on your site that allows users give you their email address in exchange for daily/weekly/monthly updates. Don’t slack on this one! If you promise a weekly newsletter, make sure you have one! Once your readers start to see that you’re not updating your site, they will lose interest fast.

SEO Firms

These companies will charge you a fee to optimize your site and they often promise certain results based on the amount of money you’re willing to spend. Although I will say “be careful”, I don’t mean to imply that these “results” are impossible to achieve. I’m just saying that some of these companies are less-than-reputable and even though you might see a huge spike in traffic at first, you could end up ruining your web image down the road.

Anyway, what they do is go over your site and offer information on how to create better pages, how to correctly use keywords, titles, descriptions, images, etc, etc, etc. In theory, the idea is to get your site looking great for your users and even better for search engines.

A word to the wise–all of the information that you will pay someone else to tell you and/or do the work for you is available for free on the Internet. I might actually be creating a section just for this topic!

SWAG

You know all that free stuff you get at conventions and concerts?! Well to you and I, it’s all about the free t-shirt and a lot of stickers because we obsess over “free” things. But if you turn the tables, you’ll notice that the company giving it away couldn’t be happier that you’re wearing their t-shirt. After all, they don’t have to pay you to do it and you’ve now become a walking billboard!

You can do the same thing for your website. Make up some cool products you can give away with your logo on it and start handing them out. Or maybe you can run a contest on your site. How about giving stuff away to everyone who signs up for your newsletter? Of course, this costs money to you, so you want to make sure that the stuff you give away is actually something that someone is willing to wear or use.

By the way, for those of you that don’t know, SWAG has been defined as Stuff We All Get.

Print Advertising

This one is more relavent for those of you who actually provide a service or product, but anyone can use ‘free press’, right? Don’t underestimate printed materials just because you think they’re antiquated! A lot of people still read them and the best part is that it’s printed material. Printed materials often get much better exposure than other forms of advertising.

Take for example a tv commercial. If your commercial plays once on tv, you were only able to show your ad to the amount of people that were watching that exact channel at that exact time. Let’s say that number was 10. Now take a print example: a newspaper or magazine. One copy can lay around a home or office for weeks and be read by everyone that happens by. Even if that one copy only reaches the same 10 people, imagine what hundreds of thousands of copies could do for you?!

Press releases in a newspaper are a way to not only announce your new business, but promote it at the same time. Contact your local newspaper to find out more about this. More on writing press releases.

WordPress Plugins

· Brandon Hann

I want to talk a little about WordPress plugins. These little “tools” can take the already powerful WordPress and completely change everything about it! You can add functions that you never thought were possible as well as adding (or removing) security features, editing current functions and most importantly, just make life easier in the blogosphere!

Near the bottom of this post, I made a list of my favorite plugins and reasons why you should add them to your WordPress install. But, before I show you the list, I want to make sure you have a handle on this subject. I want to give you a few notes to remember before you start adding everything that comes your way.

First off, plugins are made by anyone. You can find plugins created by actual software companies and some you even have to pay for, but the majority of plugins are created by users like you and I. One day, they were on WordPress and though to themselves, “I really wish I could…” and then all of a sudden a plugin was born to allow that user to do something different.

I mention this because when dealing with software on computers, especially serverside software, you always want to be concerned with security and stability. With that said, remember these key items:

  • The official WordPress plugin respository is located here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/
  • The plugin help site is located here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Plugins
  • Always check the version number of WordPress you’re using and match it to the “tested” version number of the plugin you wish to install.
  • Always keep current and consistant backups of your WordPress database in case something goes wrong.

Now, I always recommend installing plugins directly from your WordPress install. You’ll notice the Add New Plugins button after clicking on the Plugins menu item. This is a very easy process and it installs the plugin directly into the proper place and activates it afterward. It also pulls the plugin directly from the repository so you can be assured that the plugin is authentic.

You will notice that every plugin has it’s own website link. Some authors create many plugins and like to showcase them on their own website. This leads to the second way to install plugins. You can download them as a compressed file, extract them and upload them via FTP to your server if you’d like. Once the files are uploaded, you then have to log into WordPress, go to Plugins and activate it.

Paid Plugins

Not every plugin is free (although most are). Some developers out there feel that they have created a really valuable tool and wish to earn money from it. There’s nothing wrong with this as everyone should be paid for their time. My only hope is, for those who have paid for plugins, that they are getting proper support!

Paid plugins are not available from the WordPress repository. You will need to access them from the developer’s website and you will want to carefully review their terms and conditions while also checking to ensure that the payment process is secured.

My Top 5 Plugins

I use over 20 plugins and most of them are simply to make things easier managing this site, but I’ve picked out five that I think are must-haves. In time, this may grow to be a top 10 and so on!

Plugin

Description

Price

Download
Ninja Affiliate This little tool allows you to cloak your outbound links for whatever purpose you deem necessary. Click on the link to read much more about this plugin, but to put it simply: let’s say you have an affiliate program that offers you a link to promote. This link might look like: http://offers.12.offersite.com/refer=12345&id=24432. The idea is to get that link to look much nicer without having to perform a redirect. Ninja Affiliate does just this. You may have noticed some links around my site that are similar to: https://www.ledfrog.com/jump/ecm. Cloaking the link not only cleans up your page, but it also makes it appear as though you don’t have tons of offers all over your site. $97 From MaxBlogPress
All in One SEO Pack Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog. There is also a pro version of this that adds more features (costs money). View the differences and purchase it from here. FREE From WordPress
IntenseDebate Comments IntenseDebate Comments enhance and encourage conversation on your blog or website. Full comment and account data sync between IntenseDebate and WordPress ensures that you will always have your comments. Custom integration with your WordPress admin panel makes moderation a piece of cake. Comment threading, reply-by-email, user accounts and reputations, comment voting, along with Twitter and friendfeed integrations enrich your readers’ experience and make more of the internet aware of your blog and comments which drives traffic to you! To get started, please activate the plugin and adjust your IntenseDebate settings. FREE From WordPress
WordBooker This plugin allows you to cross-post your blog posts to your Facebook Wall/Fan Page Wall/Group Wall. You can Post as an Extract, A Status Update or even as a Note. FREE From WordPress
NextGen Gallery NextGEN Gallery is a full integrated Image Gallery plugin for WordPress with a Flash slideshow option. Before I start writing the plugin I study all photo and picture plugins for WordPress, I figure out that some of them are really good and well designed, but I missed a simple and easy administration back end to handle multiple photos, galleries and albums. FREE From WordPress

Searching the repository is a great way to start looking for all those extra functions your site needs. You’d be surprised what kinds of things you thought you could live without!

Busy weekend

· Brandon Hann

I’ve been away from the computer for the majority of this weekend and even parts of last week were slow. I apologize for the delays in posts, but due to a hectic work week as well as a funeral I attended, my posts had been delayed.

I want to assure you that I have plenty of topics coming up this week and you can expect updates 1-2 times each day!

I’ll be going over such things as: WordPress plugins, more affiliate offers, blogging tips, more links and much more information!

Thanks for bearing with me…

What is Google AdWords?

· Brandon Hann

Fair warning: this is an extreme beginner’s guide to AdWords! You can skip this one if you know what it is.

If you’re running a business, or if you’re following my blog, you’re getting into Internet marketing, you need to use AdWords! It certainly isn’t the only way to market your products, services and/or offers online, but it does allow you to compete for ad placement within Google and we all know how large Google is.

The operative word is “compete”. Another form of marketing is to place an ad on a well-known site that has large amounts of traffic coming to them, but they may charge upwards of $1000 for the monthly placement of your ad at the top of their page. There’s no competition and your ad shows everyday all day for the duration of your time slot. No competition for placement=large sum up front.

Another problem with this form of marketing is there’s no guarantee that those click-throughs are going to convert to sales on your site unless the site you chose has very targeted traffic that can relate to your site.

Who pays for these ads?

You do. Inside your account, you bid on keywords that people search for. As an example, your business is selling car parts. You bid $0.25 on the keyword “cheap car parts”. If your bid is the highest amount, your ad will appear at the very top search results page. So rather than battle it out with the thousands of other sites out there ranked high in search results, you can pay to get placed above them (and to the right side). These are the links you find under the Sponsored Results section.

Why bid for placement?

Ideally, you want your ads to be right in the face of web users searching for items that you’re promoting. There are two ways to do this on Google. First, build a high-quality site that has tons of links to it from other related sites and you’ll be ranked very high in the standard search results. Second, bid on keywords to put your ad right up top. The bidding process ensures that the thousands of businesses bidding for the keywords are ranked according to how much they’re willing to pay rather than at random.

Will my business revenue increase?

It should, but it may not. At this point, the toughest part of running a business is locking in sales. It’s easy to get people to call your number or visit your site, but what you do with them at this point is entirely up to you! When it comes to sending people to your website (or landing page), you have to “sell them” fast because if they don’t like what they see, they’ll move on faster than you can imagine.

How much should I spend?

Consider this answer to be part of your advertising budget. Once you have decided how much you’re willing to spend on advertising, this answer becomes clearer. AdWords allows you to set maximums on your account for things such as daily spending limit and bid amounts. Going back to our previous example, you can set up a $0.25 bid on “cheap car parts” and then add a maximum spendeture of $25 per day, so Google will keep showing your ads again and again until 100 clicks have been sent through ($25.00/0.25=100). This way, you can leverage your funds across many different keywords and be able to control your spending. I’ve known some local businesses to spend thousands per month on keywords.

My ad is at the top, but nobody is clicking…

Marketing can be tough and the market is tougher. You have to create stand-out ads so people will notice you and see a unique quality about your business. Think about if you were shopping for car parts. What kind of ads would you click on and what kind would you not click on? Utilize those thoughts and partner them with being concise and direct to create the best ad.

How do I get started?

Go over to Google and sign up! It’s free to join, but once you start adding money and running campaigns, you’ll be charged a $5 activation fee. Obviously, after that, you’ll be paying for the ads that you buy. Before you sign up, take a look around the Internet. A lot of times you’ll find promotional deals where you can get free money to put into your AdWords account.

What is Google AdSense?

· Brandon Hann

Fair warning: this is an extreme beginner’s guide to AdSense! You can skip this one if you know what it is.

Anybody and everybody who runs a website needs to sign up for Google AdSense. You’ve all seen the ads strewn across just about every site you’ve been to on the Internet, maybe you’ve clicked on them, maybe you just don’t even notice them.

It’s even possible that you’re under the impression that the people who run the site just put them there to try and offer you some pointless service or product in hopes that you’ll shell out tons of money. The reality is that these ads are not chosen by the webmaster and they do not make you pay large sums of money when you click on them.

The great thing about Google AdSense for both the webmaster and the company doing the advertising is that the ads are picked based on the content of the page you find them on. So as an example, if you’re reading a blog post about cars, the ads you’ll see are related in some way to cars. These can range from companies advertising car washes to car parts or to buying a car in general.

For visitors, this enhances the user experience in that they can view related offers, services, products and information based on the things they’re already looking into.

For webmasters, this enhances CTR (click-through ratio). What CTR simply means is how many times someone clicks on a link. Going back to our example about cars. If you posted a blog about cars and then manually inserted an ad about how to get a free trial of NetFlix, your visitors are less likely to click that ad because NetFlix has nothing to do with cars. This produces a lower CTR and that’s not a good thing when running advertisements.

Who pays for these ads?

Anybody wanting to advertise. Let’s say you sold car parts and you wanted an ad for your website to appear on search results and websites that are related to cars (and more specifically car parts). You would buy adspace from Google through another service called AdWords and you initiate a bid price for specific keywords. The bid price is how much you’re willing to pay for each time someone clicks on your ad. More on this in another post.

How much can I get paid?

This is a very large range that can be anything from $0.01 – infinity (technically) per click. The reason for this is that not every ad pays the same since not every keyword is worth as much to an advertiser. See more information on Google AdWords. So, you can paid every time someone clicks on an ad that’s displayed on your site. This money is then stored in your AdSense account until you reach a certain threshold and then Google sends you a check.

Are people really making thousands with AdSense?

Of course! However, these are people with websites that draw in many thousands of visitors. To give you an idea, take a sample CTR rate of 4%. This is a low rate, but for most sites, it’s considered normal. Applying some simple math assuming your site has 1000 unique visitors a month and you get about 40 click-throughs. If each click was worth $0.05, you just made $2.00! Of course, this number highly changes drastically based on how many clicks actually got counted, how much each ad cost, etc, etc. There are also many days when you don’t get any clicks. The most important thing to have on your site is traffic! Some websites have even written complete ebooks based on ways to increase you AdSense earnings. I read one in particular that helped me triple my returns in a matter of weeks.

How do I get started?

Simply go to Google and signup! It’s completely free to use AdSense and it does not cost anything to run it, but you do need a website to place your ads. Beyond that, you need content. Otherwise the ads won’t even show.

Is there anything else I should know?

AdSense revenue can now be earned through RSS feeds, search results, parked domains and mobile content. You can learn more about each of these when you sign up. In further guides on my site, I will explore these areas of interest.

13 Ways to Kill Your Blog

· Brandon Hann

Matt Mullenweg is the creator of WordPress and founder of Automattic. Over on his blog, he mentioned 6 ways to kill your community an added 7 more on top of that. I found these tips to be extremely useful, so I’m posting them here all together for a total of 13 ways to kill your blog.

I won’t list them as sarcastically as Matt did–rather, I’ll give them to you straight.

  1. Don’t Moderate — If you choose not to moderate your blog, you’re missing out on an important opportunity to keep you blog organized and relavent. If you’re noticing your posts getting lots of comments, but most them are not adding any real value to the topic, you’re actually doing a dis-service to your site. Clean up those comments and make sure that they stay on topic. Your readers will appreciate it too!
  2. Spam Comments — Your blog should (at the very least) be running some type of spam filter plugin. Akismet is just that and it comes with every install of WordPress so there’s no excuse not to use it! If you end up letting spam in, you’re just opening the door for MUCH, MUCH more spam to come your way. Also, if the spammer starts spamming the links of your authors, they’re not going to be too happy either.
  3. Forceful Signups — You probably experienced this one personally when wanting to comment on a blog somewhere. How many times have you really wanted to post something, but as soon as your forced to signup as a member, you simply close the page and move on? You don’t like it and neither does anyone else! Allow your visitors to post comments freely.
  4. Comment Participation — If you intend to ignore your visitors, why are you blogging in the first place? You should be thankful that people are even coming to your site. One way to do this is to respond to comments as part of the dialog. This is especially true when a user asks questions.
  5. Posting Random Junk — The Internet is filled with crap and LOTS of it! Don’t add to the trash heap by posting automated comments from people’s Twitter accounts, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Eventually it becomes too much to follow and along with making your site look cluttered, it’ll be a surefire way to send people packin’.
  6. “Design like NASCAR” — I had to quote this one because there was no other way to describe it! If your blog is covered in widgets, banners, ads, sharing buttons, etc., then you won’t have much of a blog left in short time. Some bloggers think that adding more “function” to their site(s) creates loyalty and having too little creates a lack of substance. The fact is, if you focus more on your content and less on your “experience”, you’ll notice that in time, your content will become the experience. As time moves forward, you’ll discover new things that you need to add to your site, but do it in small doses.
  7. Search Engines — Hosting comments on external systems and then injecting them into your site in an effort to make your site appear differently to search engines as it appears to your users is a shady practice and you don’t want to get caught doing it. Getting ranked in the search engines is a never-ending game, but the most important things you can do is create original content and have other important sites link to yours. Both of these requires time. Take the time to make your blog relavent and unique and the results will come naturally.
  8. Comment Pruning — While you’re advised to prune unnecessary comments and other irrelevant notes, don’t go deleting comments just because they shine a negative light over you or your site in an attempt to make it seem like you can do no wrong. This is just bad business and if people catch on, you’re going to look a lot worse.
  9. Comment Box Placement — Keep the comments below the post. Not to the side, not on top–at the bottom. The point of having such a place to leave comments is because people are supposed to read your blog and then make a statement. What sense does it make to have comments anywhere else but after the post?
  10. Subscriptions — Give your visitors a reason to come back. If they don’t want to come back, at least give them a way to still get your content via services such as RSS or email. This allows users to keep getting your content without having to come back and look for the latest stuff.
  11. Too much Clicking — K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple, Stupid. It’s really that obvious. As a web user yourself, you already know how annoying it is when you’re on a website and you’re looking for something, but to get there you have to click about 15 times. On blogs, this is usually related to loooong posts that get separated onto multiple pages or huge comments lists. My advice: just let it ride. Leave that content on one long page if you have to. The user will be happy to know that everything they need is right there.
  12. Comment Moderation — There’s an option in WordPress to moderate comments before they’re posted to the site. Although this is a great tool for filtering spam, it’s also a great slap in the face to posters that have previously posted and been approved for their comment(s). Make sure these users can get through without the extra hurdle. They will appreciate that you know they’re not spammers.
  13. Audience Participation — Get your users excited about coming to your site. They love participating in polls, surveys, contests, etc. These features are generally used when your site starts to have regular traffic, but in most cases, it’s not too early to start. Just don’t forget rule 6!

This of course is just a smidgen of the things you should be weary of. As a rule of thumb, if you’re not sure what to do, just post content. Just post what you feel, what you want to talk about, what you’re passionate about and everything will come in due time. Your blog may not be ranked high in the search engines and it may not be considered popular, but as more and more of your words get out into the world, the more action you’ll see on your site. Don’t get discouraged and happy blogging!

Happy Anniversary Baby!

· Brandon Hann

We officially got together on September 9th, 2009 and yes, the date was planned so we both would never forget. Could you: 09-09-09?

It’s been an interesting six months to say the least and I don’t mean that in a negative way at all! All relationships take work; work that can break one in half or make it last forever. Needless to say, we’ve had our ups and we’ve had our downs, but as strange as it is, our “downs” never really seem that bad. It makes me feel good to know that our relationship requires less work than most.

Maybe it’s our personalities or our insane desires to remain independent, but whatever it is, it works.

In honor of this day, I’d like to share with you my top ten list of things I love about my sweetheart:

Number 10

She’s an artist. Although she may disagree with my taste for art (or anybody’s for that matter), I think that she’s a wonderful artist with a skill that most people could only dream to possess. It’s hard to get her to give up an original and it’s even harder to get her to draw something you ask for, but that’s what makes it all the more special if she does do one (or two) just for you. Here is my favorite:

Number 9

She’s sociable. I have never met anyone who can strike a conversation with the most random of people (including one that goes by the name, Red Wolf). In fact, it was this trait that I mistook for flirting that got us into this predicament in the first place! One thing I have learned from this is that everyone out there has a story to tell and if you just open your ears, you might find something very interesting about that person and by sharing your own tales, you may actually find a decent friend.

Number 8

She’s independent. I can’t tell you how important it is for me to be with someone that is not going to be attached at the hip 24/7. I don’t know how people do it and I certainly don’t know how people can rely so much on someone else that they become an extension of themselves. It turns the relationship into a necessity that they can’t live without. For me, this relationship is a lesson in growth and not a day goes by that I’m not thankful for her.

Number 7

She’s not selfish. Everybody wants to feel important and because of this, it’s not hard to feel like you’re a little better than some of the people in your life. What’s worse is that you can be blinded by these feelings and end up taking more than you should. I’m a prime example of this. She, on the other hand doesn’t know the meaning of take. Even when people are taking from her, she still keeps on giving. And when you try to give it back, she just keeps on giving.

Number 6

She has a big heart. Although I haven’t gotten the full effect of this one, I can tell you that it’s there. She has an undeniable passion for the things she does in life and it’s never more prevalent than in the work she does. I’d advise anyone wishing to see what it means to love unconditionally, go visit the Biola University swimming pool during the summer weekdays.

Number 5

She loves family. This one is a combination of six and seven. She is hellbent on putting family first. If there’s one thing that upsets her most, it’s when people put their own wants and desires before those of their own children. She understands that life isn’t perfect and things don’t always go as well, so the willingness to lose a little in her own life to give 100% to her family is a daily mantra–and she doesn’t even have her own family yet. That says volumes.

Number 4

She has personal values. While the rest of us were caught in the vortex of the social pipeline, she was working on her future. While we all went out for the evening looking for a glimmer of excitement in the dim shadows of a local bistro, she was building her business. Does this make us less of a people? No, but it does say something about her. She found solace in the comfort of her own home and the friends at the gym. Her personal health is of great importance and it shows–in so many ways.

Number 3

She is trustworthy. I have never once been in a relationship where I can say, without a doubt, that I trust someone with my life. It’s a great feeling to know that no matter how bad things get, no matter how scary the future looks, you don’t have to worry about trust. She is also trusting. It’s hard when your significant other has friends of the opposite sex, but to be able to place trust and faith above small bouts of jealousy is an amazing feat. To be able to return the favor is even harder.

Number 2

She has a “nook”. This one’s of a more personal sentiment, but she has found a spot (on me) where she can place her head and effectively distance herself from the world and just be relaxed. She once said she could never fall asleep anywhere but her own bed, but I take great pride in knowing that this statement is no longer true when she gets in her nook.

Number 1

She’s with me. I’m nothing special. I often think about what I can offer the world and although I have a lot, there’s nothing really unique. Maybe I don’t have to be and maybe it doesn’t matter, but it does help the human ego when you can leave your mark in history. The point is, I did something to make her want to be with me and now, I just hope I can give her reasons to stay. With that said, I’m the luckiest guy alive to be with such a wonderful girl and nobody in the whole damn world can tell me otherwise.

Amazon.com Affiliate Program

· Brandon Hann

Give your visitors full access to all of Amazon.com while making commissions from every sale you generate! Everyone knows and loves Amazon and you may have in fact purchased from them before, so it’s safe to say that it’s a trusted brand. However, unlike most affiliate programs where your visitor has to click on your ad, visit the website in question and make a specific purchase, Amazon Associates network simply passes on a tracking cookie to your visitor when they click on your Amazon link.

What this does is make any and every purchase they make with that cookie get credited to you! Commission payouts start at 4% and can go to 6% (after you successfully convert 6 sales). This may not seem like much when someone is buying a $10 cd, but I can remember on more than one occasion when a user clicked on one of my links and ended up buying something completely different (and more expensive)!

Using the program is super easy. Once you log in, you can view all of your stats including dollars earned, current commission rate, number of clicks, API access, Amazon store creation and most importantly, the link builders. Here are some of the various ways you can create links and product ads for your site:

Better yet, if you have a blog system such as WordPress, you can download plugins that allow you to plug Amazon links right into your site based on content. Think of Google AdSense, but with Amazon products! Plus, if you have multiple sites that you want to run separate reports on, you can simply create new tracking ids (up to 100) and they all lead to your account. This way, you can track the performance of each site independently to see how you can maximize your exposure.

Here’s a bit of information about aStore. You are currently allowed to create up to 100 aStores in your account and what this does is allows you to create niche stores based on your desired content. For example, if you had the domain name, computerparts.com, you could create an aStore full of nothing but computer parts and accessories that Amazon sells! Of course, this is probably tens of thousands of items, so rather than add each item one by one, you’re able to add them by category. You can also add search capabilities. When someone goes to buy something, they click through to the Amazon site and make their purchase. You’re essentially creating a landing page related to your specific content.

Within about 5 minutes, I was able to create a sample store for you to see. This is a sample, but it’s still a fully functional store. You can purchase anything you want from this aStore!

You also get a 15% commission rate and link building tools for all products listed at Endless.com–Amazon’s new online shoe store! Everything is managed under your one account!!

There’s no reason not to sign up with Amazon. It’s free and very easy to use. Join today and start promoting more products than you can get anywhere else!