photo credit: bixentro

I received a lot of fairly intense comments on my post on How To Build a Donations Page in Wordpress, one comment from Dynasty Web made me think, so I’m going to answer two questions here:-

Do you have any suggestions on how to get people to make donations on your site that really works?

I’ll explain two things, later for what works for me, but first what you shouldn’t do.

Ethics of Donation Soliciting – The Big No Nos

What you shouldn’t do straight away is ask for donations on pages with advertising. Yes, I know I’m breaching my own code of ethics here at the moment, but that will be sorted shortly, when I get a special “donations only template”. Furthermore, I do not ask for donations from my daily readers, this is key as I know my readers probably wouldn’t give me money, but it feels wrong to do so, so I don’t.

So looking at your site Dynasty Web, I would strongly advise you not to put on a donation page. You really should be earning enough from all those adverts you have put on your site, if you’re not, you need to question why.

Donations as a Business Model

Donations as a business model does work, but you need to make yourself the best in the businnes, and that’s too tricky. Wordpress has managed it, as well as a number of free & open source pieces software, but it’s very very difficult.

Why I ask for Donations

I ask for donations for one reason and for one reason only: to supplement my income & making writing Wordpress Plugins worthwhile. I haven’t made a fortune, but I’ve had a few people offer me nominal amount of money for thanking me for making the plugins.

When Should You Ask For Donations

For the work done on the free plugins, the value added to blogs is considerably more than any donation. Even the donations put together. As a result, donations should only be solicited for people you have given inherently more value to the user. Plugins do this. Blog posts don’t.

So if you really want to get donations? Create a plugin seems to be the best way. However, for the work involved, you’re probably better selling it.

Giving away plugins for free does offer value (for example, I’ve been linked to on techradar for WP Email Capture, and here’s a great post on problogger where the writer, Joey Daoud, got 12,000 page views & mainstream media exposure for his free piece of software Typewriter), but that doesn’t always lead to dollars & cents. It’s about looking at the big picture, and helping others.

If they like you enough, and only then, would they consider giving you a donation.

Finally

A lot of people know that money is a great leveler, and will often say “I’ll donate if you add this to your software”. I’m not saying that these verbal contracts never come off, but what I will say is be careful. You will have a lot of ideas thrown at you for ways to make your software better (my to do list for WP Email Capture is huge), but some of those aren’t really suitable, or could make the software trickier to use. Stick to your goals, and don’t let money sway you.

Of course, if more than 1 person asks for it, then yes code it, but don’t feel like you have to.

After all, you are not working for donations, you’re working to make things better.

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One thing that didn’t go well the last time was there was that I froze on the microphone, which ruined the show in my eyes. Last night, no such problems and I had a lot more to do than the previous shows. Nevertheless, I felt I coped well (if not brilliantly), and it was good seeing the other guys as well.

There were a couple of injuries, and my leg is rather sore as I write this with brusing where one of the fans kicked (yes kicked) me, but other than that, it was a great show, and hopefully we’ll go back to Wrexham again!

Anyway, as pictures tell the story of 1000 words, here’s some photos from the show, curteosy of ace photographer Helen Sheridan.

And here’s a great video from the show:-

Click here to view the embedded video.

Anyway, finally, this week was twinged with sadness for many of the guys I know, the sad passing of Orig Williams, a guy a lot of the people in the photos was trained by, he will be sadly missed.

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Create a Wordpress Page on why People Should Donate

Far better than just putting a button on your sidebar, is to create a donation page. A number of reasons for this, the first one is because by having a Donation’s page you can explain why you are asking for donations, and why you should donate (mine doesn’t really, not yet anyway), but the other reasons is that if you don’t want to shove it down your regular readers’ throats your donation solicitations, you can push for it elsewhere. For example, on my wordpress plugins that are listed in the Wordpress Plugins Directory, it allows you to specify a direct link to your Donation page. That reason alone is why it’s up there.

Anyway, to create a page, in the administration section of wordpress, click on “Pages > Add New”. From there, you should get a new page, call it something like “Donations”, add a few lines of text on why people should donate, and click on “Update Post”.

Be sure to switch off comments & discussion on the page as well, and note down the URL for future reference.

Get Your Paypal Button

Now to put the code into the page. Visit Paypal.com and login to your Paypal account. Click on “Merchant Services”, then “Website Payments” and it should take you to a range of buttons. It should look something like this:-

The button you want is the Donate Button. Go through the options for styling the buttons, and you get a small amount of HTML code to paste into your site.

Add The Code To The Page

Go back to your wordpress page and add the code to the page. Make sure you’re in HTML mode, rather than Visual mode. Select HTML and copy & paste in the code where you want it to go. Publish the page and you’re all ready to take donations!

How to get more Donations

Well that’s upto you! It’s really not for everybody – even I’m debating taking off the link from the navigation (though leaving it for Wordpress.org users) – but some people have really done well from it. Jason Kottke gave all his content away for free, before asking for donations. I’m not condoning that route, but if you want to make a page, you now know how!

“It’s Tekken”.

That pretty much sums it up. If you are not a fan of Tekken, you will not like this game. However, if you are, then your appetite will be appeased. The game contains over 40 characters, with the new characters being Lars (a Tekken Force rebel soldier), Miguel (a stereotypical spanish fighter), Leo (a metrosexual fighter), Bob (a super agile fatso), Zaphina (an odd character that’s stupidly bendy) and Alisa Bosconovich (a cyborg that can regenerate parts of her body). Characters have had makeovers (Armor King, for example, fights in a more Lucha Libre style), a lot of the characters have remained the same though, so if you want to stick with one of the older characters, you’ll be comfortable straight away.

If you are a Tekken fan, you’ll be most interested in two modes. The first is the Scenario campaign, which is basically the story of Lars & Alisa, their involvement in the tournament, and how they came together and why they are fighting together. It’s similar to similar modes in previous games, but plays quite well, with a chance to expand your characters with custom attire, it’s a nice touch and good fun. Furthermore, early on in the mode you unlock “Arena” mode. This gives you a chance to unlock the ending movies of characters you unlock as you make your way around Scenario. What makes this great is that you only have to beat 4 people to unlock the ending movies, rather than 7 or 8 in the Arcade Mode.

As well as Arcade Mode, mainstays such as time attack, survival, team battle & practice mode are also on the “Offline Mode”, but the second mode that has whetted the appetite of a lot of people is the “Online Mode”.

Yes, I know Tekken has been online before, but that was on the PSP & PS2, which didn’t really have great online support, certainly not to the level of the PS3 & Xbox. It’s your standard battle fare, with ranked (score recorded) & player (score not recorded), and you can download ghost data of any fight fought offline, which is interesting. Each character has to advance through levels, so it encourages you to play with more characters, rather than sticking with one character, though at higher levels, you unlock things for offline mode such as money for the shop, so sticking with one character could be worthwhile.

Bad points? Well the graphics don’t really shine. They’re not bad, but some characters look a bit odd, plus there are some horrible clipping issues within the game, particularly during throws. Furthermore, the text was designed for HD screens, which makes it nigh on impossible to read on a normal screen, it’s too small and blurry. I missed a lot of the setup story because of this. It doesn’t have even the voiceover like Tekken 4 does.

Speaking of voiceovers, one really odd thing is that everybody speaks both Japanese and English, so the Japanese characters will converse with Westerners with no language barrier, it comes accross as a little odd & lazy from Namco, as I suspect the western characters spoke Japanese in the Asian markets. I don’t suspect, I went to Japan, I played this, and I know. Furthermore, subtitles for English speakers are set off by default, which annoys me as I usually play games late at night, with no sound on, so I missed a bit of the storyline.

Other than that though, it’s a solid game. Some great looking stages (my favourite one is based at La Tomatina festival), which many of them appear as a surprise. There’s a great score, a tough last boss in Azazel (but not unbeatable). But the best thing is the gameplay. It’s solid, you lose because you screwed up, not because of the controller. It’s easy to play, but it’s so difficult to master.

It’s so, to explain it in one word, Tekken.

Click Here To Buy Tekken 6 for Xbox 360

Click Here To Buy Tekken 6 for PS3

photo credit: bixentro

Being an SEO’er, you encounter a great range of people who share your job title. It does seem like everybody in Hollywood is an actor, everybody in Oxford is a professional and everybody on the internet is an SEOaffilientrepreneur, with people dispensing advice. I don’t usually for a number of reasons – a lot of people do dispense SEO advice who are far more knowledgeable about the subject. If I can provide a unique spin, or if I have an opinion on some stories assoicated with it, then yes I’d probably give an opinion. Now though, it’s something for other people to talk about.

However, more and more people are having their fingers burnt by snake oil SEO’ers, something I don’t particularly want to see happen. However they are easy to spot once you know what you are looking for. Here’s 3 things to look for.

1. They decide on quality

View any thread on Sitepoint on Digital Pointless entitled “Why can’t I get into DMOZ? I have a quality site and I’ve submitted it numbers of time*, yet it still not in?”. To coin a phrase – quality is in the eye of the beholder, and often these sites are thinly veiled affiliate sites. It’s sad, because they get all defensive with their site, when in actual fact we’re trying to help them.

They can hurt your site by completely rewriting it and getting it linked to a number of bad neighbourhoods. If anybody says that they’ve rewritten your site and it’s a “much better quality site*” because they have “High Keyword Density” (something I’ll debunk in a later post), restore your old site, then run.

2. They don’t listen to you.

SEO should be a two way street. The most successes I’ve had in the SEO field has been both on my stuff, and stuff I’ve done for other people where they have had a lot of input into the campaign. I’m not saying they do the work for me, but they offer suggestions, talk about their wares & generally position themselves in the best way possible. It’s important to remember that if you’re embarking on an SEO campaign, they may know the keywords, but you know the customers. You should have the final say in everything they do on-site wise, and offer suggestions off-site wise.

3. They’re Submissive

Take your mind out of the gutter, when I mean that they’re submissive, I mean that they do nothing to build links except submit them to the gazillion directories on Digital Point. Woe betide any of them doing work to actually get links (and by get links, I mean promotion, networking – both offline and online, and building up a set of resources to share), they’d rather submit to endless directories.

They believe the best links are submitted, and will try and tell you this. Most SEO’s do do some form of directory submission (usually to local, regional or niched directories), but if this is the crux of their SEO policy, again, run away now.

Anyway, these are three things I’ve noticed bad SEO’ers do. What have you noticed?

* Their spelling is atrocious too

photo credit: qthrul

Little bit of a fun post today, I am taking part in Movember.

Movember is a charitable event where men (and possibly a few women with hyperactive overies) spend the entire of November growing facial hair. Choice of facial hair is important, and that’s why I’m leaning more towards the Benitez.

Of course, it’s all good fun, but there’s a good reason for doing it – it’s for charity. Yes, Men’s health charities are benefiting from raising money. The UK charity set to gain is the The Prostate Cancer Charity.

I’m also trying to get a team of “Mo-Bloggers” to try and be the best team of Mo-Bro’s (the official term for Movember participants).

To either join my team, or donate (which would be appreciated) please click the link below to check out my profile.

Movember Profile for Rhys Wynne

Are you guys doing Movember? Share your thoughts and your blogs below. What type of “Mo” are you going for?

We are told thousands of times by people more talented at content creation than ourselves that we need to put images onto posts. Sure, it’s easy to use pictures for blog posts where you talk about products or conduct a website review, you simply use screenshots or product box shots. However, what about posts that require a bit of creative imaging, things to catch the eye, to inspire your readers into reading the rest of your post? More importantly, how do you do it legally? Here are three places I find photographs to use on blog posts, cheaply.

Posts from Flickr with Photodropper

You are free to use a range of CC licenced, non commercial photos for your blog from Flickr if you attribute the author. To do this, visit the Flickr Advanced Search, type in your chosen keywords, and make sure the Creative Commons is set like this:-

The “content to use commercially” is a bit of a grey area, though I set it just to be sure. Yes I have adverts & affiliate programmes on my list, so I think it’s better to tick that box, so there’s no ambiguity.

Unable, or too lazy to set three checkboxes? Check out the Photodropper Wordpress Plugin where it will do this all for you, as well as add the picture to the posts, with proper attribution.

Free Stock Images from sxc.hu

There are various free stock images sites out there, some are better than others. One other people seem to rave about is sxc.hu, and there are some nice photos you can download and use on your site.

I’m being deliberately vague here, with good reason. I’ve only used free stock imaging sites (it was sxc.hu) once, and I got burnt as I used a photo that was actually under copyright – the original artist contacted me a while later demanding an insane amount of money. I acted in good faith, but I couldn’t prove it. So, whilst a lot of people do rate it and use it successfully, the lack of audit trail means that you could get unlucky.

However, a lot of people do use sites like sxc.hu, so who am I to tell them what to do? Just be careful.

iStockPhoto

For special posts, or for your templates (that you won’t sell), your far better off going to istockphoto and spending a dollar or two buying that photo that just matches perfectly. The also have the free photo of the week, if you are really cheap, but spending a dollar or two to get that photo that fits your blog can save you hours of time searching flickr, and days of time trying to capture that perfect photo for your site.

Over To You!

What do you use to get your perfect photos for your blog?

photo credit: geishaboy500

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Some arse was pratting about on the opposite platform, falling almost onto the train track, but quite badly falling from the stairs to the floor (he was pissed, no sympathy). A guy was walking behind us, and quipped something towards us. On second reflection we realised who it was – stand up comedian Lee Evans.

Guy is a huge Lee Evans fan (I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan, I wouldn’t switch him off though), and he’s a true megastar of comedy, selling out arenas throughout the UK and Europe. He was trying to hide himself, I wouldn’t have spotted him in my semi drunken state, but Guy rather impressively did. We spoke, he was cordial (he has history with North Wales, particularly Rhyl, so he did speak quite a lot about that to me), and we had a photo taken, which I’m desperately trying to get hold of! A true gentleman.

The other highlight of the weekend was watching the NFL in Wembley – the New England Patriots destroyed the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 35-7 (read the match report), but it was really about the spectacle of the game, sport is done fantastically in America, a real showpiece, and Tampa Bay’s run out was akin to a Shawn Michaels walk out, with fireworks and loud music, it was incredible, and loved it dearly. I did even really get into it, as a neutral (had to suspend belief that the owner of Tampa Bay also owns Manchester United, who quite fabulously got destroyed by the Mighty Liverpool, and cheer on the Bucs), and we’ve already made preparations to go again.

It was a great weekend, but pictures tell the story of 1,000 words, and videos tell a lot more, here’s some from the weekend!

Videos

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers Take to the Field

Mexican Wave

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I say book, it’s more of an e-report, as it’s only 10 pages long, but from pre launch testing, what it lacks in quantity, it more than makes up in quality.

In this e-book you will learn how to promote your websites through effective retweeting.

It features featuring must have tips for retweeting. How to do it, how to format your retweets, and most importantly, when you should not retweet.

An easy read, this is aimed at people looking to create value with their readers, rather than spam them!

That’s the official blurb, to receive it for free, fill in your details below, where you will also receive the Gospel According To Rhys Newsletter, which is sent once a month.

Powered by WP Email Capture

As somebody who regularly curses blue streaks at spammers, I will not share you email address with anybody. If I do, feel free to hunt me down and beat me with a baseball bat.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it! If you do, please let me know your thoughts below.

See you next week!

One way is to send the commenter to a separate page on leaving the comment. This should leave them in no doubt that  they have left a comment, and also gives them a few ideas on where to go next. How do you do this in Wordpress?

Step 1 – Create A Thank You Page For The Comment

Open up the administration panel of your Wordpress installation, and visit Pages > Add New. It’s a great idea for the page to be called something that is unambiguous (such as “Thank You For Your Comment”), with a short explanation on why their comment isn’t showing (that it is held in the moderation queue).

Furthermore you can also use the page to promote some of your other wares. On my thank you page I have a link to my newsletter and my twitter feed. But you can put whatever you want on there.

Step 2 – Install Comment Redirect

We will be using a Wordpress plugin called Comment Redirect, what this plugin does is that it redirects first time commenters to a separate page on your blog (this is important, your previous commenters won’t be bombarded with stuff they already know). Download it, unzip it & install it to the plugins directory on the wp-content (or do a search for it on the Add New menu on the Plugins site.

Step 3 – Set up the comment redirect so that it looks at the Page Created in Step 1

Before the plugin becomes useful though, you need to set it up. To do this, click on Plugins > Comment Redirect, and you should see a screen that looks similar to this:-

Select the page you created in Step 1 from the drop down box, then press “Save Settings”, to save the settings.

And that’s it! Hopefully you should see traffic pickup on that page, which shows that it’s working. If it’s effectively written, instead of leaving your site, you should get a number of new commenters checking out your other areas of your site, not just that one post.

However, the other bonus is that you’ll save yourself time. Instead of moderating two or three comments, you now moderate one or two at absolute most.