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A Keyword Poor, Rambling Sort Of A Post Concerning E Books…Lots Of E Books

Sunday, January 31st, 2010 | 5 Comments

So many e books, so little time…

I fully expect that this post will have the longest title I will ever use for a blog post.  Having written a book review recently, I started thinking about all the e books I have.  I have not even finished reading most of them.  I start them, and then get distracted by silly things.  Things like logging into Google Analytics to check my stats for the day.  Checking my Google Reader.  Checking my Google Mail.  I see a pattern here.  Apparently the main obstruction to better productivity for me is Google.  Oh yeah, my search engine of choice is, of course, Google.

But getting back to my main point, I recently swept all my internet marketing, and blogging e books off my desktop and into their own little folder on said desktop.  Now my desktop has a much cleaner, leaner look.  It was my intention to centralize them and then I could just go right down the list and read them virtual cover to virtual cover.  It has been about 3 days since I accomplished this housecleaning.  I have yet to finish reading even one of them…well, there is one exception…the one about which I wrote the review.  But other than that I have made no progress.  I even have had one open down on that little menu on the bottom of the desktop for those 3 days.  Yup…not finished yet.  Okay, I just counted.  I have 53  e books concerned with blogging, writing e books, internet marketing, creating money making sites, keywords, SEO…Getting the idea?  I have an enormous library at my disposal.  I have no excuse for not succeeding in online money making.  Except for one.  I still haven’t read the darn things.  Why is that?  Some of them I put out some cash for too.  Most of them were free, and the bits and pieces that I have read seem to show value.  So why won’t I finish them?  At this point part of it is that the list is long and I know it will take hours away from what I’d rather be doing, namely writing content for this blog, and writing guest posts.  And , of course, hitting golf balls.

The swing
Creative Commons License photo credit: Bei Shu Lan

On the plus side I have a tremendous reference library for when I start to write e books myself.  At some point isn’t it considered de rigueur that a blogger will produce an e book of their own, normally used to entice enrollment in the email list.  Ya gotta have a list.  Everyone says so.  I know…I have the e book.

As alway, comments are encouraged.

The Coming Community or Jeremiah’s Revenge

Sunday, January 31st, 2010 | 7 Comments

Creative Commons Licensephoto credit: Wesley Fryer

The Friggin’ Muse

I must apologize for the late posting today.  I have not written a nice stock of posts yet, and if the muse is late in finding me, then the post will be commensurately late.  Damn muses…so NOT dependable.  Rest assured that I have taken appropriate corrective action (they taught me to talk like that when I was a Postal Supervisor), and hopefully the situation is resolved.

The  Beginning

WDW Aug 29, 2006
Creative Commons License photo credit: coconut wireless

What I thought I should talk about today is the concept of community.  I hope that this blog will eventually grow into a community of people helping each other to grow as bloggers.  Right now it is still more like a meeting of mountain men from the American past.  Out there in the mountains of the west before the cowboys and before there was any civilization other than the indigenous people, there were a few hearty souls that trapped for fur to trade and spent the vast majority of their time alone.  And they liked it that way.  Once a year or so, they would meet and party, and catch up on each other’s adventures.  Who had survived, and who had not.  At least that’s the way it seems in the movie Jeremiah Johnson.  Which, according to Wikipedia, was based on a book about a fellow who went by the moniker, Liver-Eating Johnson. Such colorful characters, these mountain men.  You hardly ever meet anyone with a fun name like that anymore.

So, here we are in the wilderness of the internet, and a few of us meeting here from time to time and sharing information.  With time and some blog commenting, a guest post here and there, and some really effective SEO, this blog will begin to grow.  We will become more like a small fort perhaps.  Carving our place in the wilderness and providing a safe place for weary internet settlers.  As more time passes more people will come and settle with us.

The Village

Tombstone AZ HDR
Creative Commons License photo credit: photodecker

We will become like a small village.  As we grow we will learn more and want to branch out and explore some more.  We will develop each others’ virtual homes and shops.

Then we will become more like a city, and then we will grow more and become like a state, or a province.  Then, finally we will become like a country.

The Goal

Mysore palace
Creative Commons License photo credit: Senthil-kumar

…And I will be your emperor, and you will be my people.   And together we will  achieve total world domination.

Just think, all of this because Liver-Eating Johnson liked to skin beavers.

There is something terribly wrong with my muse.  My muse could really use some therapy.

As always, comments (and abusive insults directed at my muse) are encouraged.

E Book Review-Mike CJ’s “Case Study”

Saturday, January 30th, 2010 | 5 Comments

Mike CJ is a sort of a blogger’s blogger.  His very helpful blog is Mike’s Life.  If you’ve never been there, then you should check it out.  Mike, like a number of people in the “helping bloggers blog niche”, has some informational offerings.  For instance, he and Nathan Hangen recently offered “Beyond Blogging” to the world.  Their excellent book about the biggest names in blogging success.  By the way that’s a link to a sales page that will explain more about Beyond Blogging, but it is NOT an affiliate link.  At this point in this blog’s development, there is no monetization.  There will be later on, just not yet.  Back to the review now.

Mike CJ has just released his latest blogging e book.  It’s entitled Case Study.  There’s a rather telling subtitle too:  “Taking A Website From Zero To A Full-Time Income In One Year”  And that really describes it perfectly.  Mike outlines the steps that were taken on a timeline, and then proceeds to go back and give detailed descriptions of those steps.  There have been many e books on how to make a profitable blog.  Some free and some not-so-free, and I probably own most of them.  This one is free.  For a fairly short e book on the subject (20 pages), Mike covers a lot of ground in astonishingly fine detail.  Having read his new e book, I can even tell you that he the Drupal CMS (that’s Content Management System for those who don’t know).  As an aside, I asked Mike how he’d arrived at the Drupal choice over say, WordPress, or Joomla.  His answer was interesting to say the least.  He told me that the he was given a choice between the three and that they were listed alphabetically, and he just went with the first one.  That should give you an idea of just how much of a beginner he and his lovely wife, Julie were when they started.  If that doesn’t give you hope, then nothing will.

The bottom line is this.  If you are at all interested in learning what steps need to be taken in creating a successful blog; not wildly million dollar ginormous problogger successful sort of blog, but a respectable growing and producing full-time wages sort of a blog, then how can you not click on the link and take a look?  I mean, it’s not a long read, and it’s FREE.  What more can you ask?  So either click on the link above or this one, and get yourself some information that you can actually use.

As always, comments are encouraged.

More Cool Tools – Tools To Help You Blog Better

Saturday, January 30th, 2010 | 10 Comments

From time to time I will write articles on some of the programs or apps that I like to use to make blogging a little bit easier.  Herewith are some more of my favorites.

Google Reader

I love my Google Reader.  If your commenting on or submitting guest posting on other blogs, and you should be if you’re trying to grow your blog, then you should love it too.  It simplifies finding articles that you care enough to want to leave comments on.  Simple is good.  It saves time, and saving time leaves more time for doing the things you really love to do; like writing great content for your blog.  Commenting is fun too, but your blog is your number one priority isn’t it?

Once you’ve subscribed to a blog on the Google Reader it’s a breeze to peruse a nearly unlimited number of blogs, just by looking through the article titles.  That’s the beauty of the Reader.  It shows you the article title, and an excerpt.  Just click on the title and there you are.  When I said,”a nearly unlimited number of blogs,” I wasn’t suggesting that the reader limits the number of blogs you can review.  I was suggesting that after a point it would become impractical from a human standpoint.  As far as I know, the reader doesn’t have a limit on the number of blogs you can add.  I must confess that I haven’t used any other readers, and at first I was thinking of looking some up for comparison, but then I thought ,”That would make for fine informal poll.”  So if you’re using another reader besides the one of the Google persuasion, let everyone know which one you’re using and what you think of it in the comments.  This leads me to the next tool on this short list.

Sticky List and To Do List on my iGoogle homepage

These are  almost indispensable.  I used to create a document on my desktop to make notes on articles I wanted to write, or even just things around the house.  You know, you get a tiny seed of an idea, but if you don’t write it done right away, you lose it, and then spend some time trying to remember what it was.  I solved that problem.

On my browser, I use the iGoogle homepage.  It has a number of components.  Components (called Gadgets) you can choose to add to your page, and then ypu can grab them and drop them within the page to whatever position on the page makes the most sense to you.  Two of my favorites are the “Sticky Notes“, and the “To Do List.”

Sticky Notes is a small notepad with an area you can type in.  It starts as one line, but if you have more to add, it will expand as necessary. It looks like this:

sticky notes

It’s very handy.  I keep my homepage open in a tab, and when I think of something I want to write down, I just open my homepage click on that slightly pinkish area and start writing.

The other member of this powerful gadget duo for organizing is the To Do List gadget, which looks like this:

To Do List1 More Cool Tools Tools To Help You Blog Better

My iGoogle Homepage

I believe your homepage should be a tool.  As I mentioned previously, I use iGoogle for my homepage.  The reason is that it’s hard if not impossible to beat the combination of gadgets you can put together to make your homepage exactly what you want.  It’s not just a homepage really.  It’s a vital part of your workflow for blogging.  From my homepage, I can check out the articles being added to my favorite blogs.  I can list things I need to get done, write down any ideas that pop into my head before I have a chance to lose them, and even check my email.  Here’s how my iGoogle homepage is configured:

my iGoogle homepage

So there you have my latest batch of cool tools for blogging.  I hope you like this series.  I’ll be adding to it from time to time, and remember…

As always, comments are encouraged.

How To Profit From The New Goldrush

Friday, January 29th, 2010 | 10 Comments

Creative Commons License photo credit: ToOliver2

The internet is the new goldrush.  But it’s different this time.  I don’t think the gold is going to play out.  It looks pretty much to be endless.  In fact it’s still growing all the time.  So the question becomes, not if you’re going to be a part of the rush (you have a computer, you are a part of it), but what part will you play?

I thought of this analogy while I was hitting some golf balls; my favorite way of relaxing and doing some thinking.  It suddenly occurred to me that the internet is the goldrush all over again, and that the people who profited most from the goldrush were NOT the prospectors.  Nope.  If you could go back to those days and choose your part, and you wanted to really make the money, you wanted to be the storekeeper selling supplies to the prospector’s and miners.

As a storekeeper, what sorts of things can you sell the modern day internet prospector?  How does the analogy hold up?  Well, let’s see.  Prospectors needed food, clothing, mining tools like picks, shovels, pans for panning for gold.  I’ll take this opportunity to mention that at present I am not selling anything on this site, and receive nothing for any of the following links.  They are there for two reasons.  The first and least important is to give you examples of what I’m talking about.  The second and most important reason is so I can suck up to them.  With a little luck, maybe they’ll read this and see the value of my thoughts and words, and gimme a little link love.  With that said, on to the analogies:

Food:  Knowledge is the food of the modern day internet prospector.  You can sell them food as an affiliate marketer.  There are plenty of food producers.  Two new sources of food just arrived at the stores in the last 2 days.  There was Shoemoney’s latest offering, The Shoemoney System, but that’s closed to new members right now.  It was a limited offering and sold out in just a few hours. I understand that a waiting list has been created, and you can find out more about it here.  David Risley’s new program, The Blogmaster’s Club, just opened also.  You can learn more here about that one.  Both of these men have proven their abilities as expert prospector’s, and now they produce nourishment in the form of knowledge for prospective prospectors.  Darren Rowse’s offering of 31 Days To Build A Better Blog is a famous and tremendously useful resource.  Many times you can locate food sources for free.  Sites like my online friend James Richmond’s The Infopreneur are valuable too.  I learn a lot there.  James has created a terrrifically active community of friendly, supportive bloggers.  You should come join us.  And of course this site.  It’s growing quickly, and I mean for this to be a helpful and useful site.  I have a pantry just filled to the brim with tasty little morsels I have found.  These are the free e books that you can get for signing up on the mailing lists of some blogs.  Paid for, or found for free, it’s all knowledge, and it’s all nourishment to keep you going.

Clothing.  I suppose miners and prospectors need to be clothed.  You wouldn’t want to see a naked miner would you?  Nooo.  At least not in my case…the fit jerk is a different story.  I really need to spend more time at his site. By the way, fit jerk, I like the new look of your site.   Clothing may be likened to the look of a website.   Whether it’s a blog or an internet store, it has to look good.  If it doesn’t look nice, you probably won’t be visiting very often.  There is plenty of software to create the look you want for your site.  Much of the time, you’ll want to tweak it, or have someone create the look for you.  Interior decorators gotta eat too.  In the case of blogs there are thousands of themes available.  Some need some customization, some may suit you right out of the box.  Either way, it’s important that your storefront be pleasing to the eye, and easy to move around in (navigation).  If you don’t know how to change the code to get the look you want then either learn, or find someone who does know how.  There are fellow prospectors out there who make their living decorating other people’s mines.

Tools.  The tools of the trade are your computer.  Your hosting.  Your domain name.  The nuts and bolts of having an online presence.  I really haven’t any recommendations on this.  I probably will after I have increased my traffic and subsribers, but for right now there is no monetization on this site.  One day there will be, but that day hasn’t come yet.  I’m still growing.  This blog is only 6 days old, but has already improved its Alexa ranking by more than 15 million places.

Do you think I missed anything?  Are there other analogies you can think of and want to share with the other readers and me?  We can discuss it.  Leave a comment because on this site:

As always, comments are encouraged.

Schedule Your Posts

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | 3 Comments


I am going to implement something new to this blog.  It’s important to provide new content on a site such as this often.  All the top bloggers agree that it should be done on a regular basis, so starting tomorrow, I will begin adding content at a regular time.  I thought about what time would be a good time for this and came up with a few ideas.  Really, it doesn’t matter when, as long as it’s the same time each day.  I was thinking of using 1 minute after midnight my local time (pacific standard).  Then I thought about basing it on GMT.  But then, I had another idea.  I plan to use 1 minute past midnight at the international dateline.  It appeals to my sense of fairness.  It also appeals to my sense of humor.  When my posts go active, they will be going active the day before they went active for me.  Until I get ahead on the posting, I could be publishing before I’ve even written them.  It’s an amusing effect.  They will be published at the beginning of a new day for the whole planet.  It’s a small thing I reckon, but I like it.

Readers like to know when they will be able to find new content on your site.  They don’t like checking back with your site only to find that they already read everything you have.  It wastes their time.  Have more respect for your readers than that.

As always, comments are encouraged.

Capture Screenshots The Easy Way With The Snipping Tool

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 | 1 Comment

WHAT IS IT?

The snipping tool is an application included in the Windows operating systems starting with the Vista distribution.  Rather than use use the PRTSC button to capture the whole screen and then have to crop it down, the snipping tool allows you to capture only that part of the screen that you want to use.  A real time saver.

HOW DO YOU USE IT?

When you activate the The Snipping Tool, a small box appears on your screen.

thesnippingtool copy Capture Screenshots The Easy Way With The Snipping Tool

As you can see in the image above there are instructions on the little box that appears.  When you click anywhere on the screen the little box will disappear and the little + so familiar to anyone who has used photo editing software will appear.  All you do is pull it in any direction to outline the area of the screen that you want and click.  Then all you do is open MS Paint and paste your image there.  On paint you can highlight an area and draw on it.  (see my article on the text editor for a screen shot of the sort of highlighting I’m referring to)  From there all I do is save it to my pictures file and open it in Photoshop Elements for further editing.  There are other editing software programs you can use, but Elements makes it so simple to resize to fit my content column, that I just love it.

WHERE DO YOU GET IT?

As I said at the top. if you have Windows Vista (other than Basic) or the new Windows 7, you already have it.  If you’re an XP user, you’ll have to download it from Microsoft.  You can do that here.  For Vista and Windows 7 users it’s a little easier.  Follow this sequence to find it: Start > All Programs> Accessories> Snipping Tool.  If you can’t see it there, then you need to activate it.  Open the Control Panel, and then click on Programs and Features.  On the left side click on Turn Windows Features On or Off.  Click Continue if you get a prompt for it.  Then scroll down until you see Tablet PC Optional Components and click the checkbox.  Then click OK.  That’s it.

After you play with it a bit you’ll develop a real appreciation for its ability to really spice up your blogging articles.

AS always, comments are encouraged.

How Long Should A Blog Post Be?

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 | 23 Comments

When you write, do you take the long road?  How long should a blog post be?  300 words?  4,000 words?  Is there a perfect length for a blog post?   The length of a blog post must be a secondary consideration to the purpose.  On many blogs, the posts are concerned with instruction of some kind.  These will tend to be of a greater length, than the very short articles you see on a blog concerned with the entertainment industry.

If you can get your point across in 200 words, should you go on and on restating your point in order to pad the word count?   You must realize that different subjects lend themselves to different lengths.  Several of the top blogging blogs have addressed this very issue in the past, and they all have come to the same conclusion.  Blog readers have a short attention span.   The number I kept seeing was approximately 96 seconds.  The general consensus was that somewhere between 300 and 700 words was ideal.  They also all made the point that the length was not something you should concern yourself with very much.

So write your article, and if it you can make your point in just a few words, then let the article be just a few words.  Just use the time saved to write another one.  If it takes you 3,000 words, then write a 3,000 word article.  If you are doing your job and being entertaining your readers will want to hear what you have to say.

As always, comments are encouraged.

How To Get Past A Writers Block

Monday, January 25th, 2010 | No Comments

The other day I was writing  a post, when I came to a sticking point.  I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say next.  I thought for a while, and still nothing would come.  Finally I got a wild idea.  I just started listing possible directions to go as headings and started writing about each one as I came to it.  EUREKA!!!  It worked.  Where before the writing had slowed to a mere trickle of words, now it had come around and a torrent of words was pouring from my fingertips.

A Happy Happenstance

I had accidentally stumbled upon a method to get around a block, and perhaps it can help you too.  The reason it works is because it gives some organization to your thoughts.  Some order.  If your ideas aren’t clear, then your mind just flits from one half-formed thought to another, never finishing any of them.  I have no idea what made me start that list, but it was a real breakthrough for me.  Usually when I’m writing a post the words just flow continually, but that time they just didn’t want to come.  I found myself easily distracted and more than once I just walked away from the computer for a few minutes.   I’d find myself just staring at the computer screen and listening to dogs barking and roosters crowing.  They do that a lot around here.  All night long.  In fact, it can sometimes be a noisy distracting place.  But that’s true anywhere, and you have to be able to focus your mind on your writing.  And that’s just what this will do.

Next time you’re stuck, you might want to give this a try.

As always, comments are encouraged.         `

Text Editor For WordPress Update

Monday, January 25th, 2010 | 6 Comments

I finally found out how to get the wordpress “advanced” editor up.  Did you know that there was more to the default text editor than what you see when you go to write your first post?  I was using the  “Dean’s Tiny MCEditor” plugin, but it has more buttons than I wanted to work with and then there was the fatal flaw.  At least it was for me.  The default wordpress post editor autosaves your posts while you’re writing them.    The Tiny MCEditor either reset the time function to be greater than I liked, or it turned it off.  I’m not sure which, but in any event I hadn’t noticed, so I was not a happy camper when I lost about 300 words from a post I was writing.

I finally found the “on” switch for the “advanced” functions in the default editor.  I had this enabled in a previous blog, but I had forgotten how to get it.  I read an article that said there was a keyboard switch (CTRL+ALT+V), but that didn’t work anymore.  I just couldn’t find anything else about how to do it.  Well, I finally found it.

wpeditor3 Text Editor For Wordpress Update

When I clicked on the button, I got this:

wradvancededitor1 Text Editor For Wordpress Update

Boy,do I feel dumb.  There’s a little button on the right side that looks like a palate for text color, but it’s not.  It toggles the “advanced” functions on and off.  So now I’m writing with a safety net.  And I like it.

As always, comments are encouraged.

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