Critiquing a website
January 31, 2008
Increasingly people are discovering that putting together a basic web page is incredibly simple. It’s easy to take your information, drop it into a template and tweak. But when people come around to launching their sites and requesting critiques I think there are a couple of things that may speed up this process and allow them to get and give better feedback.
The holy grail of the Internet
January 25, 2008
Businesses online want, ultimately, one thing.
Money.
Whether you’re online to up your exposure or directly sell a product, you will always find, at the root of it, the want to exchange a product or service for its value.
So where does blogging and podcasting fit into this?
A lot of my clients, when consulted have said that they stopped blogging/podcasting because ‘the money just wasn’t there’. When asked if their business showed an appreciable rise, 9/10ths of them said yes.
And that it had dropped over time since they’d stopped.
Copywriting Cheatsheet
January 24, 2008
Before I start talking about swipe files, information on the best ways to do split testing and more, I thought I’d offer a resource.
Ultimate Copywriting ‘Cheat Sheet’
Enjoy!
Anatomy of a blog
January 24, 2008
Blogs have several necessary and needed elements. It used to be enough to place static posts on your site - now, people have designed reams and reams of scripts, designed to do everything, except, possibly, what you expect.
The most common question I’m asked about blogging is ‘what IS a blog exactly?’
A blog is a weblog. Nothing more, nothing less.
So, what are the best functions - the definitional attributes of a blog?
Blogging for Wahms
January 24, 2008
Blogging can be one of the easiest ways to spread the word about your WAHM business, and in fact, can be a business in itself. However, that does not mean that it is easy to make money from your blog. Don’t start a blog and expect to see money rolling in immediately. Like everything else online, you’ll find that consistent work pays off - and lax inattention results in very little.
(you can find the rest of this article at Possibly…Maybe….BABY!)
Hot tip (Aweber)
January 24, 2008
You can sign up for Aweber here
One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard lately from my clients is that they have to put in ‘an extra step or six’ to tell their auto-responder subscribers that their blog has updated.
The good news is that if you’re with places like Aweber, they offer a way to post your blog - or in some cases, specific posts from your blog, to your newsletter straight away.
How do you solve comment spam?
January 24, 2008
Comment spam is the bane of bloggers’ lives - it ruins open discussions and is a form of search engine fraud.
The single best way though, to solve comment spam, is to use Akismet - its core bundled from 2.2 - and easily installable as a plugin otherwise.
You’ll need to sign up for an API key from Wordpress.com - which is free, and easy to do. You’ll also get a blog at Wordpress.com, but of course, you don’t need to use it.
There are other options for solving comment spam, but by and large, I recommend Akismet because its by far the easiest and most inobtrusive I’ve used.
How do I refresh my DNS?
January 24, 2008
A reader writes:
“My old webhost told me that once I’d transferred to the new host, I’d have to ‘refresh’ my DNS. I tried hitting ctrl+f5 but that didn’t work. Can you help?
Hi there!
Ctrl+f5 is the windows browser refresh, its not quite the same as what your old host means. However, its hard, sometimes, to tell when you’ve moved.
There’s a simple way to check whether you’ve moved. Firstly you can check your nameservers (after changing them) at http://dnsreport.com - this site will let you see lots of information about your server that is hosting you.