Do you create videos for your website? Did you know that you can monetize those videos with product links that are relevant to the video’s content? If you are a member of the ShareASale affiliate network, you now have a pretty amazing tool that will allow you to recommend individual products throughout your own videos and generate revenue from those product recommendations.

Let’s say you have a craft site and you do a video containing step by step instructions for creating a project. With the Make-a-Video tool, you can go back through the video and link to merchants (that are part of ShareASale) that sell the materials you used in your video. How cool is that? ShareASale has so many different merchants in their program that chances are, what ever your video topic is, there is a product that would be a good match.

Another example – would you ever imagine that a video about a golf event would be the perfect opportunity to recommend a ballroom dancing product? Think again.

Better yet, go to the ShareASale blog and watch the video tutorial on creating your own monetized video, then watch the finished product below to see how golf and ballroom connect. If you are patient and watch the entire golf event video, you might just see a lady wearing a purple shirt sink a pretty fabulous putt… (hint, that’s me).

Disclosure: I was one of the invited guests to the ShareASale Think Tank event and had the pleasure of playing (sleep deprived) in the Golf Event. I also use ShareASale to monetize many of my sites. However, their Make-A-Video tool is still awesome, and you needed to know about it!

If you are a blogger, website owner, social media hound or have a presence on the web in any way, shape or form, you have probably heard the new from the Federal Trade Commission this week on disclosure and the potential for fines if you fail to disclose.

Disclosure is a good thing. It helps keep the social web honest.

Personally, I am not going to review, promote or endorse any product I don’t love, use or feel strongly about its benefit anyhow. And when I do receive an item for review, I let my readers know. However, like many bloggers, I have gone one step further by adding a blanket disclosure statement to my site to let my readers know that I do make money from my website and that it comes in many forms – affiliate marketing, product reviews, direct sponsorship and consulting. If I am providing you with good information then why should I not be compensated?

So, what do you put in your disclosure statement? The team at IZEA, one of the leaders in the sponsored conversation space, have put together a very useful tool – DisclosurePolicy.org. Use the tool to customize and build out your own disclosure policy. It’s quick, easy and relatively painless. (And no, I have not been compensated in any way for recommending this tool to you – I just happen to think it is a really good idea!)

Its October again and that means websites and twitter profiles around the globe are going pink in support of Breast Cancer awareness (including mine). Its not too late to get involved – and you don’t have to turn your website pink to do it – how about a pink Twitter background or give your avatar a pink sheen. For the past few years I have turned my site pink and highlighted some of my favorite Pink for October sites. Below are 13 fabulous websites that have already gone pink. There is also my list from last year – 13 more beautiful Pink for October site designs to go with my 13 favorite pink themes from 2007. Plenty of inspirational designs and stories, too!

Let’s start by showcasing the primary Pink for October website, designed by the INCREDIBLY talented Natalie Jost. So creative, so clean and easy to navigate, too.

The team at 525creative have created one of my favorite Pink for October designs so far. I love the clean lines, the use of different pink shades and their introductory text showing their support for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I love that so many men are showing their support of Breast Cancer Awareness and that they are using their pink so creatively! For Dan Rose, the pink works great for his portfolio site!

Adventures in Motherhood is the personal blog of the very talented Shazia Mistry. She always comes up with something fun for Pink for October and this year is no different. Fabulous.

Totally creative. Totally fun. How could you not want to at least think about hiring that Fred?

Natalie Jost designed this year’s Pink for October site (see top) and has designed some of the most beautiful P4O themes and designs over the years. Her own site went pink for October too – complete with a random header design so you don’t know which piece of pink goodness you might get!

Sometimes less is more. I love the subtle use of pink in the design for Without Words. Just perfect.

Designer Jim Renaud really thought out every detail of his Pink for October transformation. The pink stocking cap is the best! Great work Jim!

Dani launched a new design for Anidan Designs recently and while I doubt it was created specifically for Pink for October, the use of pink is gorgeous in this very bold design. Always good design from Dani – she is another one of my favorite designers.

Kristy’s blog, Good Like a Medicine got a super sweet pink update specifically for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Stupifier, a digital design company, went for shocking, bold shades of pink for their October look. Interestingly enough, the entire site is a single page with navigation that takes you to anchors within the code.

Dean Robinson opted for the very low key, keep it simple and easy on the eyes pink transformation this year. Very nice.

Rose colored glasses anyone? Bainbridge Studios did just that with their rosy P4O makeover. Is this a trend – another single paged portfolio site?

Which one is your favorite? If you or someone you know goes Pink for October, leave me a comment! If there are enough new designs I will post a follow up and spotlight even more pink designs.

Summer is coming to a close which means not only are the kids going back to school, but it is time to get back to business! What a better way to rev up your business than with some shiny new business cards? As a UPrinting.com sponsored blog, we are giving away not one, but two sets of 500 high-quality business cards in the winner’s choice of three business card sizes – a great way to make your card stand out.

So, give your current cards a check-up!! Do they represent your current business offerings? What about the contact information? Name, email, phone, web address? What about social media profile? Whether you need to start from scratch or just update a current design, now is your chance to do it for free!

What Will Two Lucky Readers Win?

• 500 Business Cards
• Choose size: 2×3.5”, 2×3”, 2×2″;
• Choose paper: 14pt cardstock (matte or gloss coating) & 13 pt cardstock uncoated
• Choose Color: (4/4) Color both sides; (4/1) Color 1 side , B/W backside; (4/0) Color 1 side, black backside
• Shipping must be paid by Winner. Offer Valid for UNITED STATES SHIPPING ONLY.

How Do You Enter?

• Leave a comment on this post telling us how some shiny, new business cards will help you grow your business this fall or how you might use them. For example, I will be launching a new off-shoot of my Keystrokes Design & Marketing business this fall and need a separate set of business cards just for that purpose. I am thinking of going with one of UPrinting’s unique die cut business cards (however, this giveaway is just for their standard business cards).
• Get a second entry for being social – use any of the buttons at the bottom of this post to spread the word about the giveaway. Leave a separate comment telling me whether you tweeted, stumbled, or otherwise shared this post using one of the social buttons. Or you can post about the giveaway on your own blog.

Contest Rules

• You may enter by leaving your comment(s) below until midnight on Friday, September 11, 2009.
• You must use your real name and email address in the comment form below. If you don’t we can’t contact in the event that you win.
• We will be using Random.org to select two (2) winners.
• Remember, the cards and printing are free if you win, but you will have to pay for shipping only.

Need some inspiration? Take a look at some of these very slick business card design round ups:

• 36 Cool Business Card Designs
• 45 More Creative Business Card Designs
• 18 Smokin’ Hot Business Card Designs
• Business Card Design: Better than a Plain Ol’ Business Card

No time to waste! Get your business on the fast track this fall and start by entering to win some slick new business cards.

UPDATED: The giveaway is now closed. The winners are Heather and Jane.

I was just reading a post at WPBeginner on the Evolution of WordPress – definitely worth taking a look at as they have included screen shots of each major release.  It is hard to believe that WordPress, a completely free, open source piece of software has inspired so many to push it to the next level with every update.

In the beginning of the WordPress era, there were a handful of passionate developers who created free themes around the WordPress platform. Now there are literally THOUSANDS of free WordPress themes and hundreds of premium WordPress themes which will allow you to have WordPress morph into about any use you can imagine.

As the WordPress developer community continues to push the envelop of its capabilities, the end result is a platform that is easier to manage, customize and use as a business tool. Even non-techies can customize their own sites easily using premium themes from the likes of Studio Press, iThemes (especially their Flexx theme) and now the super flexible and friendly Headway theme. One of the benefits to using a premium theme over a free theme is there seems to be a better support network in place so you can get questions answered as you need them.

WordPress has come so far in 6 years – I’m sure the next 6 years will see some amazing new additions to make my favorite web development platform even better than it is right now.

By guest author Joe Pawlikowski

If you’re reading this, then you’re likely already among the most fortunate group of people who work from home. It’s a great life, isn’t it? You can work when you want, take breaks when you want, rearrange your schedule so you can enjoy the things that matter in life when they happen. When you telecommute, you can plan work around your life, rather than the other way around.

Even with all the advantages, there are still limits to a telecommuter’s freedom. It’s just as tough to take a day off as it is in an office — and if you update a daily blog with timely material it might be even tougher (says the guy who hasn’t taken a full vacation in almost four years). There are yet other instances where you can’t go somewhere — possibly your child’s baseball game — because you have work which needs doing. There are many other scenarios, but it all comes down to one factor: your home office is immobile.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though. There are ways to take your home office on the road: a day trip to the city, to a youth sporting event, heck, even to the coffee shop on the corner for a change of scenery. The issue with this kind of mobility, for the most part, is finding an Internet connection. In this post I’ll go over three ways you can pack up your office and bring it anywhere you want.

Mobile broadband with laptop modem

If you’re one of the many telecommuters who uses a laptop as your primary machine, you’re in luck. Over the past few years cellular carriers have introduced mobile broadband modems. These plug right into your laptop, usually through a USB port, and pick up signal anywhere you can get 3G cellular service. This gives you the freedom to travel and still do work.

The biggest advantage of mobile broadband, as stated above, is the freedom to go anywhere you can get 3G cellular coverage. Traveling by train? Just plug in your modem and you’re free to surf and work. At your kid’s soccer game? Even though you surely don’t want to have your head in a laptop, it’s better than not being there at all. Best of all, mobile broadband service is available from all four major cellular providers — Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile — and you can just add it to your existing service.

There are downsides, of course. The price is foremost: $60 per month. That’s a lot to add to a bill, especially at a time when many are looking to cut costs. The best way to determine if the cost is worth it to you is to determine how much your time is worth. How much do you earn per hour? How much more could you earn per hour if you could work while on the road? If it works out, you might want to consider adding this plan to your cellular bill.

The other major disadvantage is usage level. The major carriers impose a 5GB limit each month. This typically is not nearly enough for the typical Web worker, what with downloading images, streaming video, and uploading data of all kinds. It should suffice for the times you are working on the road, but by no means is it a substitute for your current home broadband plan.

Speaking of home broadband, understand that mobile broadband is not faster than most home connections. It ranges from 800 Kbps to 1,500 Kbps, with most services hovering around 1,000. This is a bit slower than DSL, and considerably slower than cable. It’s not about speed, per se. It’s about convenience.

Turn your BlackBerry into a workstation

More and more Web workers are turning to BlackBerry devices. This helps them keep up with email even when they’re not at the computer. Personally, I like it for the peace of mind it brings. Beyond the best email system in the biz, the BlackBerry is a powerful device which can perform a number of functions. Among them: allowing you to leave your home office while continuing to work.

While your BlackBerry alone can perform basic functions like Web surfing (and with new mobile Web browsers, that’s becoming even easier), but it also has word processing capabilities. In fact, with the swath of software available for BlackBerry, you can do most anything with the device. All you need is a little ingenuity.

For instance, check out this post on how to turn your BlackBerry into a virtual workstation. It goes over all the hardware and software that will allow you to do so — including a Bluetooth keyboard which will save your thumbs some agony.

The advantage here for current BlackBerry users is that beyond the one-time cost of the software and hardware, this won’t be any more expensive than your normal monthly plan. You might not get all the functionality you get on your laptop, but it’s more than enough to get by.

Get a netbook

Netbooks are all the craze these days. For those unfamiliar, they’re the tiny laptops you might see in your local coffee shop or on the train. They’re geared mostly towards Internet usage, but can also handle low-level tasks like word processing. Perfect for the work at home type.

Netbooks work the same as mobile broadband, so there’s no need to go over service again. The major advantage they have over laptops is size. While laptops, even the smallest ones like my Macbook, require a carrying case of some sort, Netbooks will fit in tiny bags and backpacks. They’re lightweight, too, which makes them easier to tote around.

The upside to netbooks: they’re becoming incredibly cheap. This isn’t because of the decreasing cost of technology, though. Instead, they’re subsidized by cellular carriers, just like cell phones. In exchange for signing a two-year agreement you can get a netbook for under $100 — and sometimes even virtually free. That’s the trade-off. You get a cheap machine, but two years is a long commitment, especially for a service that costs $60 per month.

While telecommuters already enjoy an incredible level of freedom, there’s still more for the taking. So what will it be? Will you continue to tie yourself down to your desk? Or will you decide to take advantage of modern technology and get out there?

Joe Pawlikowski is the editor of Wireless Internet Reviews, a site which provides information and news on wireless Internet services.

One of the web statistics we all look to increase is the number of actions per visitor. The higher the number, the more pages of your site visitors are viewing during a session, and the more likely they are to suscribe to your RSS feed or mailing list, purchase your product or services or simply become a new regular reader. In the past I have used the Yet Another Related Post Plugin and really liked it. The plugin matched tags and categories from previous posts and displayed them as a list of related entries at the end of each post.

A few weeks ago I discovered a new related post plugin – LinkWithin (thanks to Heather at Celiac Family) that displays your related posts along with images it generates automatically from images it finds in your posts:

Looks nice, right?

The plugin is called LinkWithin and is custom made for your site. You visit their site, enter your email address and your site name, let them know what platform you need the plugin for (they support WordPress, Blogger and TypePad as of now) and your plugin is created instantly and ready for you to save to your computer.

The install is easy – from your WordPress dashboard select Plugins, Add New and Upload the file from your computer, Activate and you are in business.

The one thing I realized quickly was that the plugin worked great on WordPress themes that were more traditional, meaning the home page was not set up with excerpts or a fancy magazine style layout. However, many of my sites that would really benefit from this plugin were using Studio Press themes that displayed as a magazine style layout on the home page. The LinkWithin widget would show up on the home page and it looked horrible.

Now for the good part! The team behind LinkWithin ROCK. I dropped them a quick email and let them know my challenge. I got an email response from a person almost immediately thanking me for using the plugin. She also let me know, not only would they make a version just for my sites with magazine themes, but that they are working on the next version of the plugin that will give users more input. Features in the next version will include things like whether to show the plugin on the home page, weighting categories or tags more, the number of related posts displayed and more.

And now for the real test – does the LinkWithin plugin really help increase the number of actions per user? YES!  I can see in my stats when visitors click through the LinkWithin widget to go to another story and the number of actions per visit has increased on each site I have the plugin installed on.

Have you tried Related Posts plugins? Which one do you prefer?

Here are some of the best articles I have read this week, but first a public service announcement:

WordPress 2.8 is out and I just did the upgrade without any issues. If you haven’t upgraded your WordPress installation, DO IT NOW, your site will thank you.

And with that out of the way, here are some links I think you will find useful this week:

• WordPress 2.8 and 10 Things You Should Know Before/After You Upgrade from Web Design Booth
• 9 Proven Headline Formulas that Sell Like Crazy at Copyblogger
• Problogger shows how Simple Changes to Your Adsense Layout Can Increase Revenue
• Chris Cree has a great list of 21 WordPress Plugins to Make Your Life Easier
• The State of WordPress Theme Options Pages from Pro Blog Design
• Randa Clay shares her excellent post on the basics of going from a Photoshop Design to a WordPress Layout

Have a great weekend!

Working on a computer most of the day does not really do much for one’s figure – I have even heard it referred to as “Geek Gut” and “Blogger’s Butt”.  Personally, I love to walk, ride bikes, and play golf, but there isn’t always time or the weather is bad. Riding a stationary bike or walking on the treadmill can be so boring!

Enter SurfShelf! You can attach the SurfShelf.com to your treadmill, stationary bike or elliptical trainer and watch videos, catch up on your RSS feeds, read your email, and more.

Now, I don’t think you can pound out an in-depth blog post or design a website while jogging on your treadmill, but you certainly could combine some of your more basic tasks with some exercise and take care of two tasks at once. Your heart, waistline, and inbox would thank you.

I think it is a pretty cool gadget actually! What do you think? Would you use it?

WordPress, which is undeniably one of the most amazing pieces of open source software to ever be developed, is getting ready for its next release – WordPress 2.8. While WordPress 2.8 is still in beta (round two at the time of this post), it appears that this already powerful and easy to use platform is about to get even better.

One of the highlights of this latest update is the ability to upload and activate a theme through the dashboard, much like you can do now with plugins. This is a huge plus – especially when you consider that the average WordPress user is intimidated by FTP.

Rather than rehashing what others have already put together so nicely – check out the following articles on the the new features for WordPress 2.8, its benefits and a very cool tutorial.

The official word from the Codex – Wordpress 2.8

Kim Woodbridge spells it out in her post on WordPress 2.8: Upcoming Features and Enhancements

Clint Maher keeps it positive with Seven Reasons Why WordPress 2.8 is Better than Ever

Justin Tadlock has three posts on WordPress 2.8 already – The Complete Guide to Creating Widgets in 2.8, Custom Taxonomies in WordPress 2.8, and Tag Descriptions in WordPress 2.8.

I have not heard when the official release date for WordPress 2.8 actually is, but suspect it will be sometime in the next month or so. Have you tried the beta? What did you think? Do you think that the newer versions of WordPress are better or worse than the WordPress of old (2.1 and 2.3)?