Some of the things that I have seen posted lately on several of the blogs that I like to read are about things like, how to make money with your blog or what kind of things to write about to be sure that your blog is popular.
When I started writing this blog I knew it would be a good way of promoting my business by adding new content to the site, but the main reason that I write it is to try and help pass along some of the cool things that I have learned about the web.
I have always believed in sharing information. Even before the web I had family and friends ask me advice about things that were technical in nature or about business and if I could I would always help. I had seen companies on the web that were huge that got that way by giving away stuff and I suppose that was always in the back of my mind. What I have also found is that by having what I know already written and in a place where I can easily access it I can do many things with it that I hadn’t imagined and if it helps someone else then so much the better.
So I decided to write about things that I like and enjoy and it makes writing so much more enjoyable for me and hopefully reading it for you. If you are thinking about starting a blog and you still don’t know what to write about have a look at this post on the e-factory site. It’s about starting a blog that is popular.
I have a page on my site with some of my favorite site designs that are showing up on the web. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of designs that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these site designs, they all look good and are clear and easy to use. The graphics are good, but not overpowering. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of the sites are not in English and I still know what they are about.
The newest one is called Krysáci and I believe the gentleman’s name is animovaný večerníček. I’m not sure if that is the authors name because I don’t understand one word of this site, but I know what it’s about. It’s a cute stop action cartoon from the Czech Republic. The cartoon is very whimsical and so it the site. The navigation is right on top.
The site uses mootools (a tiny open source JavaScript framework) to get a cool effect for the video on the first page and the images on later pages.
I also like that the video looks like it’s on this site, but it is actually on YouTube. This way it doesn’t use up all of the sites bandwidth if the video gets popular.
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Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
Ahoy Mateys,
I was going to save this one for Talk Like A Pirate Day, but it’s still five months away and I can’t wait.
Puzzle Pirates is a social networking pirate world. It has lots of quick fun games and can also get you flashy booty! AAAARGH!
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One of the things that I like to mention to my clients trying to promote their site through “Viral Marketing”.
We have all heard the expression “they told two friends and they told two friends and so on and so on…”
The Internet can be the perfect medium for this kind of promotion, except on the web it can be “they told two thousand friends and they told two thousand friends…”
Unfortunately with anything that big and moving that fast it can be almost impossible to control. So some of the big questions can be…
- How do you start something that’s good being said about you?
- How do you keep the buzz positive?
- How can what’s being said actually help you?
I found a good ebook that helps answer these questions and more. It’s being offered for free by Wordpreneur.com and I would recommend downloading it and giving it a once over. This Ebook comes with full re-distribution rights. You can sell it, include it in a membership site, or give it away as a bonus gift from your own website.
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Looking for a great free calendar program to keep track of your life? Lightning is a great-looking, full-featured calendar and task list for Mozilla Thunderbird.
The free Lightning add-on for the Thunderbird email client is a calendar and a task list. You can create multiple color-coded calendars, so you can have a different one for work, one for personal stuff and maybe one for your club or organization. If you are already using another calendar it’s also easy to import from other calendars including Google’s.
You can view the calendar on your sidebar or switch to a full page view. I just downloaded this yesterday and as with all of the Thunderbird and Firefox add-ons and plug-ins that I have tried it’s an easy install and I have found many good uses for this one already. So if you are using Thunderbird for your email I suggest that you download and
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If you are looking for a good place to start when designing a new site ere’s something that looks very neat for speeding up your work when you are starting from scratch. These are commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels.
You get grids and templates for Fireworks, Photoshop and more, along with CSS framework with demo HTML. It’s free and uses a GPL and MIT license, so you can freely use it for any application.
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It seems that everyone who I make a site for wants an about us page. Even on sites with only a couple of pages that is usually the second request right after the home page and even more requested than a contact us page. This makes it clear to me that the reason they are asking for one right away is that’s probably the first place that they go to when checking out a new site.
They’re probably right. I know it’s one of my first stops when I an interested in using a product or service from a site that’s from someone that I don’t know. That makes the about us page a pretty important one so you should think carefully about what you want on it.
Many times after telling me that they want an about us page I get the information that the customer wants on it and it reads something like “John Doe has been making and selling widgets in Pittsburgh for 25 years”.
I know that if I read that page the first thing that would come to mind is that if he has been doing this for twenty five years that if he was any good he would have some sort of awards or accolades that would let me know that his widgets are pretty good. Has he been making them in his basement? Perhaps if there was a photo of his factory or staff it would inspire me to buy his product.
I do know that on the Internet where most of your visitors don’t know a bit about you or your business you need to do everything you can to inspire enough trust in them so that will buy from you and not your competitor.
Stoney deGeyter has a nice post that got me thinking about this and if you want to know more about what you should have on your about us page…
Read 5 Easy Ways to Make Your About Us Page More About Your Customers
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I have a page on my site with some of my favorite site designs that are showing up on the web. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of designs that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these site designs, they all look good and are clear and easy to use. The graphics are good, but not overpowering. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of the sites are not in English and I still know what they are about.
The newest one is called Eric Ryan Anderson Photography.
This site is all pictures, but that’s what a photographers site should be. I like the navigation and the way the white highlight on the current page stands out to make it look 3D.
It’s a cool slideshow that moves you to the right instead of down. It’s something that you don’t see too often so it makes the site stand out. In addition it’s really good work to display.
It’s an easy to use artsy site that looks and works very well.
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Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
I have played several miniature golf games before and this is one of the best. You could waste your whole day with this one. Happy Friday!
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I think that an email newsletter is a wonderful way to build your business.
You could do it the easy way and hire me to design and run your campaigns or you can do it yourself.
Either way an email marketing blitz is inexpensive and can still be one of your most effective marketing tools.
There are some important rules for starting any email campaign
Post your old newsletters
It is always a good idea to post your newsletters on your site.
This will do at least two good things for you.
- It will get you new content. That’s one of the best thing that you can do for your site to raise your rankings in the search engine results pages. Plus it will give you many new keywords that you can be found for in the search engines.
- t will give your potential subscribers an idea of what they will be getting when they do sign up. That will make your newsletter even more powerful because you will be getting subscribers who read what you have and request more.
You can have a newsletters section on your site or a way to do it for my customers who want to do it themself would be to create a blog category named “newsletters” and post your email newsletters in that category. You can place a link from your newsletter sign up page that goes to this category. That way the link will always go to the most current editions. This is also a good page to link to in the header of your newsletter for those readers that are unable to view your email newsletter.
Well, that’s the end of my little mini-course, but there’s so much more to learn, many things that I may have missed or just glanced over and email marketing is changing all of the time. I invite your comments, techniques and opinions. and if you would like to learn more..
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