If you’ve visited sites like Cracked, you’ve probably noticed the collection of recommended articles for when you are done reading the page you are on. Very likely, you’ve found these links to be extremely addictive, keeping you long on the site long after you’re done reading the article you came to the site for.

While WordPress has a slew of related posts plugins, the most popular of which is YARPP, they aren’t for everyone.

While these related posts plugins are great, they aren’t exactly the most visually appealing (at least not without a great deal of work) nor can they be used on other blogging platforms. LinkWithin, however, aims to make this process incredibly easy. In fact, the process doesn’t have any signups or advertisements to put up with. You simply enter your site’s information, paste a few lines of code and go.

But how well does it work? The answer really depends on the type of site you have and how you designed it but for many bloggers it will likely be a near-perfect solution.

How it Works

The fundamentals of LinkWithin are pretty straightforward. You simply visit their site, enter your blog’s information and, depending on your blog’s platform, you’ll either copy and paste a short embed code into your blog’s template or install a WordPress plugin.

Once you do that, LiinkWithin will start spidering your site and using an algorithm to find posts that are related to each other. The process can take several hours and, during that time, the recommendations likely won’t make much sense. In the case of my site, it took about four hours before the results were truly “good”.

Once that’s done, at the footer of each post (or wherever you place the code) you will see a series of recommendations for content similar to what is there. If possible, LinkWithin will include an image with each recommendation, pulled from the post itself.

If done correctly, it should look like this article on For the Love of Cooking. Attractive, neat and relatively well-targeted.

The Good

Though LinkWithin is far from a perfect system, there are many things it does very well. First and foremost, it is dead simple to use. Whether you are using the plugin or the embed code, it is pretty much a matter of selecting your options, uploading the code and forgetting about it.

When working, LinkWithin does a great job selecting relevant posts and thumbnails. Though it isn’t always perfect, its algorithm is at least as good as any related posts plugin I have seen and its image selection, for the most part, is very solid. Though you have to give it time to finish indexing your site, once it does you will probably be very pleased with the results.

Finally, it seems to work and achieve its goal of increasing pageviews. Having installed it on my site just a few days ago, making the results far too premature to be conclusive, I have already noticed an increase in the pages per visitor. The difference isn’t drastic, perhaps only about 10%, but it is still noticeable.

All in all, the system seems to work great, load fast and be dead simple to use. However, there are limitations that have to be weighed.

Limitations and Drawbacks

What LinkWithin gains in simplicity it does so by sacrificing features and customization. When setting up the script, you only really have two options, the first is how many recommended posts are displayed (3-5 specifically) and whether to use a light background or a dark one. Beyond that, you really don’t get a lot of say in image size, orientation, etc.

This means that there are a lot of things you can’t do with LinkWithin. For example, I’d like to either ignore or limit the linking to certain categories on my site, especially on my main articles, but there is no way to do that. Likewise, you can’t change the orientation or make any manual adjustments as the actual code for adding the links is pure JavaScript.

Furthermore, since it is pure JavaScript, not only are you putting much of your site in the hands of this third-party service, trusting that they will be reliable and quick, but it seems to cause problems with analytics applications and doesn’t allow the search engines to see the links.

Still, for those who want what LinkWithin offers, it is a very tempting service and likely one that you will at least want to try out.

Bottom Line

It’s important to remember what LinkWithin is: It is a simple way to add an attractive list of related posts to the bottom of your blog posts. It is that and nothing more.

It is not a sidebar widget, it is not a customizable solution, it is not Google fodder. It is simply a way to get you readers to click on more articles on your site.

It’s simple and it works. If you don’t need more than what it provides, have a blog that regularly uses images and don’t mind losing a little bit of control, you have nothing to lose by giving it a try. If you need more power, you’re better off with another solution.

If you do decide to go with YARPP, you may find this template particularly useful for mimicking LinkWithin using the plugin.

Get More Pageviews With LinkWithin


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

It had been so long since I’d signed up for the Reinvigorate beta that I’d practically forgotten what it was. – and the name didn’t give it away. As it turned out, Reinvigorate is a web-based analytics program (it also has a desktop reporting program) so I promptly accepted my invitation to test it and downloaded and installed the WordPress plugin, entering my site ID to enable it to start tracking.  (If you’re not on WordPress, don’t worry, as you can simply use the tracking code.) I’ve been down this route before, trying out many analytics programs before settling on one I liked. Would Reinvigorate be the program that could seduce me away from my beloved Clicky?

Getting Started

The first page you see on Reinvigorate is the overview page, which features two large boxes showing the number of active visitors and active pages. This is similar to the Spy view in Clicky (but without the map). Click on the small report link on each button and you can see more detail, such as the page title and when it was last accessed. Reinvigorate has a ‘name tags’ function that is supposed to tag visitors and commenters by name to make your reports more reader friendly, but this does not seem to work very well, though it did tag me once. Also on the home page is an indication of how long visitors have spent on your site that day, how many visitors there have been, how much of that is referral traffic and what the bounce rate is.

What’s On The Tabs

A number of other options appear next to the summary tab, but these are setup options (name tags, snoop, tracking code and preferences). If you want more stats, move to the top row of tabs and click on one of the options, each of which has further sub-tabs:

• Traffic (hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, referred, visit length, bounce rate, entry pages, page summary)
• Visitor Detail (browsers, platforms, screen, regions, languages, time zones)
• Session (visitors, activity, detailed activity, active pages, heat map)
• Search and Referrer (referrers, referred visitors, referred searches, top referrers, keywords)

In-Depth Analysis

Click on any option or sub-option and you get a couple of graphs and a table for varying periods. You can change these via a drop down menu. Most of tabs give the information you expect, so I won’t outline those in detail, but here are the functions I thought were pretty cool:

• the pie chart showing top pages on your site
• the heat map showing the areas of a page or post that attracted most attention from visitors
• the detailed activity listing showing you how long a particular visitor spent on a certain page
• the table showing when your top referrers last sent you traffic
• the map showing which time zones your visitors are in (trust me, this is cooler than it sounds!)

A Promising Start

My first impressions of Reinvigorate are that it’s promising, offering some of the same real time functionality as programs like Clicky and Woopra. However, there are still a few things to be improved, such as the ability to exclude your own visits to your site. Its visitor figures also differ from those recorded in Clicky (so one of them has to be wrong). I’ll look forward to seeing what else Reinvigorate has to offer.

Note: I’ve decided to cut back on posting here at Blogging Tips for a while, though you will find me in lots of other places on the web. Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting over the past year.

Reinvigorate – A New Way To Track Blog Analytics


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

When you are looking to make money online, you need to be mindful of the many facets that go into each of these Internet exploits. You have to consider the user experience, marketing tactics, keyword research, and the effectiveness of your landing pages.

In order to best optimize your landing pages, you need to have the right set of information. Aiding in this area is Converseo, a company that “improves your online conversion rates and therefore revenue.” You do want to make more money, don’t you?

Maximizing Your Income Through Testing

Effectively, that’s the goal of Converseo. The services offered revolve around the testing of different landing pages to discover which combination is the most efficient and most effective.

Through the Converseo process, the company will help to understand your company’s business goals, devise an appropriate testing plan, implement and monitor the plan, and then analyze the results to provide insights and recommendations.

The core here is via A-B split testing, but they also do multivariate testing as well. You can also turn to Converseo for customized solutions to best suit the specific needs of your online endeavors.

Conversion Doubler Online Software

One major component to the Converseo product portfolio is the Conversion Doubler online utility. This does not need to be installed on your own computer as everything is done through a web browser.

It is here that you can set up a series of campaigns and experiments to test the effectiveness of different landing pages. There is a wizard that walks you through the process of defining a landing page and the target (“thank you”) page. From here, you insert the appropriate code on both pages and the conversions can then be tracked.

By utilizing multiple experiments with multiple pages, you can see which pages are getting the most hits, which are getting the most conversions, and thus, which have the greater income potential. Presumably, the Converseo staff can help you with this process.

The software is easy on the eyes and you are really only shown one step at a time with the wizard. In this way, the utility may seem easier to understand for novices if it wasn’t for the relative lack of documentation and instructions along the way. You may still need some assistance.

How Much Does It Cost?

Ah, the million dollar question. Or at least the question you hope won’t cost you a million dollars. Unfortunately, there is very little in terms of pricing information on the Converseo site, so you’ll have to use the contact form to inquire further.

Link: Converseo

* This was a Paid Review. If you are interested in having your site reviewed on Blogging Tips, please check out our Advertising Information Page.

Maximize Revenue from Your Landing Pages


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Adding photos to your posts is a great way in which to get people to notice your blog and stop for a moment. A great photo can be so compelling as to make someone stop and take notice. With any hosting site you can copy the embed code and place photos on your blog posts pretty easily, but what if there was an easier way? Maybe you don’t take your own photos but would like to use other photos to express your points, that might be trickier with licenses and other factors. I’ve listed below a few WordPress plugins that can help you with those issues.

Picapp – The Picapp plugin is very useful if you don’t take your own photos and you’d like to be able to use some photos from the best journalistic and creative photographers in the business. Picapp has partners in Getty Images, Corbis, Newsroom and many others. With this plugin you will be able to select photos right from your WordPress “Edit Post” screen. You are given a window to view the image and select the one that you want. You can even search for the topic, celebrity or event that you are blogging about, there will be images. Picapp is very timely so if you are writing blog posts about current events you should be looking at Picapp.

Embed Image – This plugin from EmbedAnything is a great way to allow your content to be embedded on other blogs. You can choose to allow your photos as well as your written content to be copied and embedded on another blog with built in links of attribution back to you. And what’s more you can include ad code to be shown on that image automatically. You can choose the ad code or ad code will automatically be added. A great way to put in your affiliate links in return for someone using your content.

Here is an example of an embedded image being used.

Picasa Widget – The Picasa widget plugin allows you to easily add a sidebar showcasing your latest Picasa images. With this widget you can showcase a random assortment of your Picasa images or the most recent thumbnails from your galleries. I’m not overly impressed with the limited functionality of this plugin because I would much rather have the ability to control which album will be used to show images. However, the controls are pretty good and you can make many adjustments to size as well as layout of the images. If only you had more control over which albums were displayed it would be a much more usable widget for me.

WP Flickr – The WP Flickr plugin is similar to the picapp plugin in that you get a window where you can choose images from your Flickr library. The nice thing is that you can choose any of the standard sizes and then choose your image. You can also choose from any of your sets or directly from your public photostream. It is easy to connect to your Flickr account and a simple way to add your photos to you blog. The title of your image automatically becomes the image alt text too.

What are some photo related plugins that you would recommend for WordPress users? Please share them in the comments.

4 Must Have Photo Plugins for WordPress


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Ask just about any successful Internet marketer and he or she will tell you that it is of utmost importance to build up a strong mailing list. There is just so much you can do with all those email addresses, especially since everyone on the list has opted in and likely will not view your messages as spam. But how do you grow this list?

One of the most effective methods is a simple pop-up on your website and that functionality has been further simplified with the PopUp Domination plugin for WordPress. You can literally have it set up and running in a couple of minutes.

Pop-Ups Generated the Easy Way

That’s effectively the value of PopUp Domination. If you know anything about using WordPress and installing plug-ins, then you’ll have no trouble using this product.

It is likely that your chosen mailing list provider, like AWeber, already comes with some pre-built forms that you can use. However, PopUp Domination appears to offer more options, greater simplicity, and better overall looks. Little graphical differences can make a world of difference when it comes to your conversion rate.

According to its developer, this plugin allowed him to increase the number of daily opt-ins on his mailing list from 17 to over 100. That represents monumental growth and, consequently, the potential for monumental growth in income as well.

Installation and Customization

The installation process for PopUp Domination is the same as most other WordPress plugins. Upload the appropriate directory, activate the plugin, and head over to the “settings” page to customize.

The settings area, which is accessible from within the WordPress administration dashboard, is broken down into eight different sections: Look and feel, Mailing List HTML, Template Fields, List Points, Schedule, Preview, Promote PopUp Domination, and Advanced.

The first section allows you to choose between the four different templates and select the appropriate color scheme. With Template Field, you enter your custom text for the title and body, as well as the field values for name, email, and submit. This is also where you can upload a custom image up to 243 x 270 pixels.

The templates typically involve spaces for bullet points too and you define these from the List Points section. The Schedule section is quite handy, because it allows you to set the delay before the lightbox pop-up appears and the number of days until the popup reappears if the user clicks the close button (cookie-based, presumably).

So, How Does It Look?

Running quickly through the available options and features, I was able to generate this lightbox for Beyond the Rhetoric in a few short minutes. The interface was easy to understand and changes can be made on the fly.

Whether this “lightbox” popup results in much higher opt-in rates will depend on a number of different factors, but I can see how an attractive and professional-looking box like this probably doesn’t hurt. It’s slick, sleek, and easy on the eyes.

The ability to define the number of days until the box reappears for a visitor is good too, as it helps to ensure a better overall user experience.

How Much Does It Cost?

Does PopUp Domination offer incredibly innovative functionality? No, not really. However, it is a remarkably easy-to-use WordPress plugin with plenty of customization options.

The current list price is $37 and that comes with a 60-day money back guarantee.

Link: PopUp Domination

* This was a Paid Review. If you are interested in having your site reviewed on Blogging Tips, please check out our Advertising Information Page.

Grow Your Mailing List with PopUp Domination


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

If you’ve heard yet, cloud computing is the latest thing that we should all be paying attention to whether you’re a programmer or a blogger like you and me. We need to know what this is even though no one seems to be able to accurately tell us and that should as sound familiar and as strangely mystical as Web 2.0.

Still there are a few things that seem to have managed to fly under the clouds ( sorry about that ) and stay clear. For example, Wikipedia seems to have a handle on things and is able to compare it to the electricity grid in the sense that is by definition all about shared resources and information. I know, that sounds like the Internet we already have, but please read on.

Cloud computing is all about making the transfer of information on the Internet easier. It all comes into a little more focus when you consider that the internet is always looking for ways to makes things bigger, faster and better without spending a lot of money on the things that will slow it down like licensing new software and adding clunky personnel.

What it means to you and me varies because much of what it’s about id being directed to big business. Still the experts in the field are saying that cloud computing will mean there won’t be a need to invest in servers and the costs will be lower compared to more conventional hosting. That’s exactly the kind of bottom line stuff that makes cloud computing something we should be interested since we all live on a writer’s wage.

It seems that cloud computing is all about sharing and that’s good. Another article that I looked at stated that it will be good because it will make it easier to run your applications. Instead of needing to run them yourself, cloud computing will be able to run them as part of a shared data center.

Cost is another big factor. When you subscribe you can forget about servers and software since all that will be bundled into the one cost. In a nutshell, cloud computing promises several different things:

• Undeniable web service integration. With the right technology, you’ll find it’s easy to integrate with other web applications.
• Great service. One of the most important things that you need to remember here is that cloud computing has impressive service credentials. Among the things that you can look forward to is complete disaster recovery and impressive uptime numbers.
• There’s no hardware or software to install. This is one of the biggest selling features. Remember here that you’ll be spending less money to get it up and running.
• There are also automatic upgrades with cloud computing that makes it easier than more traditional options.

Cloud computing promises to be the next big thing. There are many different reasons why this latest technology is the buzz with big industry names like Google and even Microsoft.

A Cloud Computing Primer


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Miio is a new microblogging platform that allows you to meet new people, engage in conversations, create and participate in groups and much more. The sites makes use of Twitter OAuth for login, though you can create a regular account if you prefer. At first glance, the site may seem as if there’s not much to it but, as you dig deeper you will discover an impressive amount of features. The main purpose of Miio is to meet and chat with people who share the same interests as you.

That dashboard is where you will find your timeline. Here you can update your status (on Miio), and share content. When you click in the status update box you will notice that some new options will appear below it. You’ll then be able to share text, reviews, questions, links, photos, videos and locations. For each type of content that you share, there are specific options that you can add to go with it. All of them allow you to add metadata — keywords, location, address, country, state, city. All of them also let you choose the distribution type — public to everyone, public to specific users, private to friends only, private to specific users or to a specific group.

On the left hand menu you’ll be able to see whenever you have new messages and replies. You’ll also be able to see whenever threads that you’re in have been updated as well as other notifications (such as you followers).

Miio lets you send and read messages on your mobile phone but in order to do this, you’ll need to confirm your phone on the site. As far as general notifications, you can receive things like new follow requests and group invitations on the site dashboard only or via email and/or SMS (your choice); message settings work the same way. Miio can also automatically refresh on its own or you can set it to manually refresh. If you choose auto refresh, you’ll be able to set how often (in seconds or minutes) that it refreshes.

One thing that I like about Miio is how easy it is to send messages to your friends. You simply go to their profile page and type your message in the status box at the top. You can choose right there to have your message public or private. You also have the ability to mute specific friends (without having to unfollow them). Each friend can have its own specific options besides being on mute; you can also choose to receive updates (that you pick and choose) about a certain friend on your dashboard, via SMS and/or via email. So, there are a lot of customization options that let you tailor the site to meet your needs.

Groups is another big thing on Miio. You can join groups created by other users or create your own. Groups can also be put on mute and you can also pick and choose which content you receive notifications for on the dashboard, via SMS and/or by email.

The public timeline has lots of filtering options. For instance, you can choose to view only status updates, RSS feeds (which Miio lets users import), groups only, links only, etc. You can also filter by a specific user by typing their name into a text box. So, Miio makes it really easy to read what’s important to you and filter out the rest.

For items that you see on the timeline you can share it on your own timeline (and on Twitter if you have connected your account), reply or delete it from the timeline as well as view the metadata or view more info about the user that posted it.

My only complaint here is that clicking on an option will take you away from the timeline and to a new page, which causes you to lose your place on the timeline. Items are not marked as read, so one you return to the timeline you’ll have to find find the spot where you left off. So, if you were 3 pages down, you’ll have to navigate back to that 3rd page. In my opinion, this is a bit of a nuisance.

I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of Miio’s features so, if you want to know more be sure to stop by and sign up. I have found the community there pretty active, welcoming and friendly. If you do sign up, be sure to share your thoughts and feedback in the comments.

Miio – A Social Messaging Platform for Sharing and Meeting New People


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Swipely is a new purchase tracking site built around conversations. If you’re familiar with the service Blippy, then you’ll pretty much understand how it works before even reading this. Swipely lets you import purchase receipts (automatically or manually) that can then be shared across the Web; it can also be used to recommend services, places, products and more to friends.

To start, you can sign up for an account or simply use your Facebook account to sign in. If you use Facebook as your login, you’ll automatically be able to follow your Facebook friends who are already on the site. You can also use the friend finder to find and invite other friends. You’ll only get 10 invites to start out with so choose wisely.

Swipely respects privacy which is why your purchases can be set to public or private. You can also choose to manually approve them or have them posted automatically (as soon as they’re imported). If you choose to manually approve them, you’ll also have the option to ignore purchases that you don’t want posted. In addition, before posting you can add a location, description, rating and even photos to enhance your swipe.

There are 2 ways to get your purchases imported into the site. You can automatically import swipes by adding your debit card, credit card or email account. Swipely uses “bank-grade encryption to secure your login credentials”, so you can rest assure that it is secure. If you don’t like that method though, you can simply forward any receipts you get by email to swipes@swipe.ly — within a few minutes you’ll receive an email letting you know that your purchase is available for posting on the site.

Once you start adding friends and seeing their swipes in your timeline, you can comment, share and like their purchases as well as add things to your wishlist. So, if you see a purchase that you wish you had made or looks interesting, you can add it to your wishlist for future reference.

Swipely is currently in private beta, meaning you’ll need an invite to try it out. It took a couple months for me to finally receive an invite but luckily, I have an invite code to share with all of you. I’m not sure how many can use this code so be sure to snag it while you can!

Invite code: BLOGTIPS

Personally, I am a huge fan of Blippy so I was a bit skeptical signing up (mainly thinking that it couldn’t compare); I was wrong. I can honestly say that I’m quite impressed with Swipely and I have even been pretty active there for the past week (since signing up) — which says a lot since I’m more of the sign up and forget about it type. If you do sign up, be sure to leave your feedback in the comments; I’m sure they will appreciate it.

Swipely Turns Purchases into Discussions [Invites]


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Most of us, if we aren’t just now crawling out of our caves for the first time, understand that if a Nigerian prince needs your help to move a large sum of money out of the country, it is a scam. We know not to trust people who ask for our social security numbers or tax IDs, we know not to give out our banking information and we know not to download, buy or even look at suspicious things we get in email.

The Internet has made us all a bit more wary of being scammed but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few cons out there taking in otherwise bright intelligent people.

Bloggers are a common target of such scams. Their public profile, predictable needs and ease of contact make them prime candidates for con jobs, big and small.

So, if you’re a blogger, here are five cons to keep an eye out for and to avoid.

5. Unlimited Hosting

Of all the lies and scams on this list, this is probably the only one used by otherwise reputable companies. Many hosts, large and small, offer “unlimited” hosting accounts that are anything but.

If you read the fine print on these accounts you’ll learn that your hosting is only unlimited insofar as you aren’t negatively impacting the server. They don’t meter your bandwidth or server usage but, if you use too much, you get the axe. Many learn this the hard way when they get a traffic spike, such as a Digg effect, and wind up getting shut down.

Think about it for a second. If you could truly get unlimited hosting from a $7 per month account, why would Google bother running all of those data centers? They could literally save millions hosting with company X and be done with it.

For those interested, here are some other hosting warning signs to watch out for.

4. Guaranteed Visitors

Depending on your field, cost-per-click rates may be well over $1 per visitor, making them impractical for bloggers to advertise on. So, when a company promises X thousand visitors for a nominal sum, it can seem like a steal.

Assuming it isn’t just a “take the money and run” scam, there is still a huge problem. Rarely is this traffic targeted and even more rarely do they tell you where they will be coming from. A lot of these operations are set up by spammers as a way to profit from otherwise useless traffic they receive to their sites.

Unfortunately, the connection with the spammers can have hurt both your chances with the visitors who do come and the search engines when they spy the links.

The same holds true for programs that promise X number of Twitter followers or Facebook friends.

3. Link Exchange Programs

You’ve probably seen the emails where the author claims to “really enjoy” your site and to have added a link to it on theirs. All they want in return is a link back. They provide the URL to their site, you click through and find that the did indeed link to you.

The problem is that it is a scam. Spammers often hide referral code in their links so that they know which site/email you are coming from and add the link in then. To normal visitors without that code, meaning everyone else, the link doesn’t appear.

But even if the link is really there, this kind of link swapping is highly discouraged and routinely-penalized by Google as a form of spam. Furthermore, since these sites are viewed as spam by visitors and search engines alike, they are often banned outright by Google and others.

In short, you have nothing to gain but everything to lose from adding these links to your site.

2. Give Me Your Password

Most people realize that they aren’t supposed to give out their password to anything, including their blog’s. However, you probably get email asking for your account information for everything from your PayPal account to your Twitter profile.

For the most part, these scammers stick to lucrative targets, such as banking information, that they can use to steal identities. But some spammers are asking for FTP or database passwords so they can hack servers. Another common method is to gain access to email accounts and access the site information stored in there.

Spam filters do a good job cleaning up most of this garbage but sometimes spammers get lucky and a letter gets through and it arrives at a time where a blogger is having support troubles and such a request doesn’t seem outrageous.

Always, when asked to give out password information to your host, do it through the secure trouble ticket system and not over email. Likewise, don’t store your passwords in your email if you can avoid it. It may just save your blog.

1. Front Page of Google Scams

There’s no shortage of services and eBooks that guarantee you a spot on the front page of Google for a price. Unfortunately, these methods rarely, if ever, hold any water.

The problem is simple, the only way to really reach the front page of Google is to create solid content, get good inbound links and have just a bit of luck. It is slow and time-consuming, but usually free. Anyone offering to sell you a search ranking is almost certainly engaging in some kind of spamming or other underhanded search engine trickery.

These techniques rarely work and, when they do, the sites that use them are swept under the rug on the next Google algorithm change.

That guarantee? Good luck collecting on it. These sites open up and close down so quickly they are impossible to track. You’ll never see the money again and have likely borked your site’s chances of ever doing well in the search engines.

Bottom Line

When it comes to deals that are too good to be true, they almost always are.

When presented with any deal, stop for a minute and try to figure out what the other side gets out of it. If someone really could guarantee a top ranking in Google or thousands of visitors, there’s much more money to be made than just selling the services for a small sum per person.

If you think about the deals you are offered, your odds of getting suckered goes down drastically.

In the end, the reason people get taken in by scams isn’t because they are stupid or foolish, but because they didn’t think for one crucial moment and made a bad decision.

That can happen to any of us and that is why we have to always be on our guard.

5 Blogging Scams to Watch Out For


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

It’s no secret that I’m a Feedly fan and have been for a long time. All the same, when I found out that there was a new Google Reader interface called FeedSquares (available for Android and Chrome), I decided to give it a spin. I installed the Chrome version.

First Impressions

Once I installed the extension and clicked on the icon, I got a nice bunch of colored squares representing my feeds from Google Reader.  I assumed that the feeds in the middle of the screen (in shades of red, orange and magenta) were hot (i.e. recently updated), while those in blue were not, but that impression didn’t hold up for long.  As it turned out, frequently visited feeds are clustered in the middle of the screen, though there were quite a few I read regularly that had migrated to the edges.

Each square had a number in the top right hand corner indicating the number of unread items, but I headed right for the ‘top picks’ square, which showcased recently updated feed items. When I clicked on an item, I saw the whole thing inline (provided the blogger had provided full feeds) as well as options to star, like, share, share with note, keep unread and view the original post. There were also buttons for easy sharing on Buzz, Twitter and Facebook. Links on Twitter are shortened with Google and include via @feedsquares at the end. Finally, each post showed any tags you could use and you could add tags simply by clicking on what was there. So far so good.

Digging Deeper

Having explored the top picks, I then looked at some of the other feeds. Clicking on a square brought up a scrollable set of post squares (left to right). These are quite attractive, featuring photo thumbnails. but the rectangles are greyed out if  the items are old. Anything that you haven’t seen appears in a green rectangle if it’s within the last few hours, or a sepia/mustard rectangle if it’s sooner than that.

Half hidden under the squares in the main interface are a few links which give access to other options, such as:

• deciding whether to show read items or not
• how items should be marked as read
• switching from the default light background to a dark one
• adding squares for starred and shared items
• marking all as read.

You can also select your folders (in a list along the top) to see only the feeds in a particular folder.

What’s Missing

If you look at the Rocket in a Bottle bog, there are three main requests from users:

• keyboard shortcuts (coming soon, say the developers)
• the ability to display only unread items
• more intuitive color coding (I’d like to see this too)

Some would also like the ability to drag and drop squares, though that didn’t bother me much

The Verdict

Will I use it? My gut feeling after using it for one day is that I probably won’t use it much until it acquires some more polish. Anything that makes Google Reader look better is great, but looks aren’t everything. Functionality counts, and some  I don’t think it enhances my user experience in the same way as something like Feedly.

Dressing Up Google Reader With Feed Squares – Review


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Sharktopus is a new SyFy movie that is helmed by Roger Corman. The movie is about a crazy cross between a shark and an octopus. Not only does it swim through the water, propel itself out of the water or grab on to ships and people in the water but it comes out of the water and onto land wreaking havoc everywhere. From the trailer it looks like this killing machine was genetically created and is radio controlled. Of course the control gets lost early on and the Sharktopus just goes crazy and starts mayhem.

Now, I’m not saying that the Sharktopus is entirely bad. I think that if you think of your blog as a Sharktopus you can see some positive and negative aspects.

The Negative

You Cannot Control the Sharktopus

Are you in control of the direction of your blog or is it controlling you? Are you being pulled into multiple directions at once? When your blog is pulling you all over the place and you are not focused it is easy for things to get completely out of control. You might start out blogging in one direction and the next thing you know your focus gets shifted and you are headed in an entirely different directions. By being completely unfocused and moving in different directions you will lose your audience.

The Sharktopus is Indiscriminately Killing Off Your Readers

I’m sure that no one is actually killing off their readers, but along the lines of being off focus you might be losing readers as quickly as the Sharktopus can snag a bungee jumper from the air. I saw the trailer, it was fast. If your blog started as a food blog but then you decided to call it a tech blog and you completely switched gears on a whim you most likely killed off your foodie audience. Maintain the focus that brought in your initial readership.

The Positive

The Sharktopus is not Limited by Environment

Do you make the excuse that if you only had your own office or blogging space that you could be more productive and successful. If you only were able to quit your job and were able to focus only on your blog you would be more successful. Some of the most successful bloggers that I know are not in the same space day in and day out. They are working out of coffee shops, airplanes, taxi cabs and even soccer games. A power blogger does not let environment limit them, they find a way do get the job done and to do it well. These bloggers are also doing so many various things and not just banging away on their keyboards pontificating. Get out and do something interesting, it will make your blog much more interesting.

The Sharktopus is Mobile, Agile and Lethal

Is your blog a bloated mass of widgets, ads, images and chicklets? When you have those items spread all over your blog then your readers will become distracted. Strip your blog down to the essentials and let it stand on its own. One of my favorite examples of a blog that is mobile, agile and lethal is Jonathan Fields.com. Go to this blog and you see a few things immediately. Content is at the forefront, important calls to actions are prominent and advertising is at a minimum. The blog is lean and the headlines grab you in its tentacles and the content swallows you whole, or sometimes bites you, but either way you are caught up in the power of Jonathan’s blog.

So, is your Blog A Sharktopus?

Is Your Blog A Sharktopus?


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

As we all approach whatever it is that’s called Web 3.0, one thing is for sure and that’s the fact that everything is still changing at breakneck speed on the Internet. That includes the Web’s new favorite child in social media.

Places like Facebook and Twitter are becoming more and more popular not only to build communities but to advertise as well, and it seems like it might be the right time for Facebook at least to start looking to make some kind of move.

A recent article I read says that the social media platform is starting to loose much of its teenage audience. According to statistics, Facebook only gained 330,000 new members in June. Now while that might seem like a lot, you need to look at the facts that it really isn’t. For example, FB logged 7.8 million new users in May.

So, it stands to reason that people wanted to understand why there was such a dramatic dip and why. What they found might be a little troubling for the social media building block. It seems that apart from the usual teenage restlessness that always has them  looking for something new, there’s A Facebook Fatigue setting where people are starting to question why they invested so might time on the site in the first place.

Sure, the sagging numbers could also be the result of some bad media attention they’ve received over their privacy policies, but that should go away. Just ask Bill Clinton how forgiving people can be and how quickly they forget what the press turns up.

Still , there might be a bigger question here for social media in general and Facebook particularly and it centers around what’s certain to be around some big changes that are on the way with Web 3.0 , social media and advertising.

Here’s a case in point that the good people at Facebook could use to detract their naysayers. More and more , business is looking toward social media as a  way to reach a demographic that’s Web Savvy. So brands like Old Spice have turned to Facebook Twitter and YouTube to engage their consumer base using the likes of an interaction with former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa.

The result? They might be sagging with their initial base of followers in the teenagers, but  business looks like it still has enough confidence in the platform to use it to enagage a different demographic. It’s also possible that marketing people have missed the boat entirely and don’t understand yet the social media fires seem to be cooling.

More than likely, what will happen is that a new buzz will be created and social media platforms like Facebook will find a new or different life as a kind of interactive electronic classifies for big business and their big brands.

Of course people will be left wondering where that leaves the people that broke the ground for social media, those grassroots users that are behind a slight decline in new memberships.

They’ll still have their place because the chances of anything really drastic happening to social media just because something called Web 3.0 is approaching are slim. They will just be more of it to sort through.

Old Spice, Facebook and Web 3.0


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Have you noticed that new URL shortners are always popping up here and there? One would think that just a few would be enough, but then again what fun would that be? It’s always nice to have a choice or just be able to try something new. Don’t you think? Though most people are usually faithful to one of the more popular services (ie. bit.ly, tinyurl, is.gd, etc), let’s take a look at some of the newer URL shorteners to recently hit the scene.

Crum.bs

This one has a cute, catchy design that is sure to get your attention and have you coming back. When you shorten a URL, you’re actually “crumbling it”. You have to agree to the terms before crumbling a URL and you can create a custom link if you desire. You can also add a password and create visitor limits (which limits the amount of clicks for your link).

ByZe.us

Here when you shorten your URL you’re “zapping it”. The design is very clean and simple. You can create an account in order to track your links. Each time they redirect someone using your short URL, they “pass the redirection along with a “301 status” which means the page has permenantly moved”. They do this so that you get all of the “link juice” for your URL; your site will always receive the proper credit – not theirs. They also have a couple bookmarklets for instant URL shortening from your browser.

go2.tl

This is another clean design with an interesting background. You can shorten a URL and create a custom alias if desired. There are 2 bookmarklets: one is for shortening URLs directly from your browser toolbar and the other is for sharing a short URL directly on Twitter. If you want to track your URLs you can create an account and sign in. On the public stats page you can view the 25 recently added URLs.

bi.gl

This one is as simple as they get. There is a box to enter your link and a button to “short it”. They also have a bookmarklet that you can add to your browser toolbar for quick URL shortening. They also provide their API documentation for those who want to implement it.

tdb.rs

According to their site, “tdb.rs is just another URL shortener service, but much nicer than the others on the Internet”. I somewhat agree. Their design is eye catching and their service is simple to use. Like bi.gl (above) you simply enter a URL and click the button to shorten it. They also provide a bookmarklet for easy shortening from your browser.

Blu.cc

Here is yet another quick shortener with a bookmarklet to match. They claim that they provide “small links for tweeting” yet, there is no way to actually tweet a link from the site. The site is powered by Shrten.com.

Trii.us

Their design kind of resembles a search engine. There is a box for entering your URL to shorten. Once you shorten the URl there is a button to copy the link and a button to share it (via AddThis). If you’re not familiar with AddThis, it lets you bookmark and share on hundreds of sites. You can also create an account if you want to track your links.

twi.gy

This is yet another URL shortener with a cute design. Here you can shorten links, tweet them and gain more followers on Twitter. They also have a developer API for you programmers out there. Unlike Blu.cc (above) they do offer a way to tweet your shortened URL. Unfortunately though, you will need to manually enter your Twitter username and password (no OAuth). When someone clicks on your link they will have the option to follow you (if they aren’t already) on Twitter via the integrated header; they can also retweet the link. You can create an account if you want to track stats for your URLs.

Which one is your favorite? Will you stick with the URL shortener you currently use or switch to one mentioned above?

8 New URL Shorteners for Quickly Sharing Links


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

“Listiki lets you find, make and share lists of stuff you care about.” In order to use it, you will need a Twitter or Facebook account in order to login. After that you can begin by creating a new list or searching for a list created by another user. The homepage of the site also lets you see the top 5 lists, top 5 items on a list, top 5 users and currently active lists.

When creating a new list you start by adding a title (232 characters or less). The large character limit gives you a chance to be pretty creative. After you enter your title, it will show you other lists that are kind of similar or may be a duplicate. You can choose to add items to a pre-existing list or continue with creating your own.

Your list will be empty at first, so of course you’ll need to add new items. All that is needed to add a new item is a title, the URL is optional.

After you get a good list going, you care remove items if you change your mind or rearrange them (to change the ranking) by dropping and dragging.

Since lists can have more than 1 contributor, you are able to invite contributors or people can join by simply finding your list on the site. You can invite a contributor by sending them an email, posting a tweet about your list or posting a status update on Facebook. This email, tweet or status update can be customized. On the left hand side, you’ll be able to see the list of contributors as well as see who started the list and when.

For each list you can also subscribe to the RSS so that you and others can see when it is updated. You can also share it on Facebook and/or Twitter with the simple click of a link. If the list topic really interests your or you just want to see a similar type list, you can do that is well by clicking on the “similar lists” tab.

There are many uses for collaborative lists though I do think that it would be nice to have private lists too is needed. Sometimes you may just want a list for your own reference and not for the the whole world to see. Also, maybe you may want a public list but one that only you can add to. Since Listiki is in beta and continually being updated, maybe this is something that will be changed in the future. Until then, Listiki is still a useful list making tool that anyone (beginners and pros) can use.

Create, Share and Collaborate on Custom Lists with Listiki


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Have you ever had an idea for a video but simply haven’t had the time or budge to actually shoot and produce it? You’re not alone though the Xtranormal hopes to make that problem a thing of the past.

The idea behind Xtranormal is that you provide the service your script and it converts it into a movie using 3D animated characters, text-to-speech reading of your words in one of many different voices as well as animations and camera angles that you select.

The results are not always convincing, as you can see in the video below, you can certainly do some impressive things with Xtranormal. It can be especially useful for quickly “mocking up” a video or putting an idea out there for others to see.

In short, it may not be a replacement for a real video with humans, but it might be a way to get a project up in a hurry if you don’t have the resources or time to do it yourself.

How it Works

After creating an account with Xtranormal and signing in to the service, you’ll be given the chance to start creating your own movie. You’ll first be asked to choose from one of a series of “showpaks” that feature a variety of animation styles and settings. Once you’ve chosen your “showpak” and the number of characters you want, you’ll be greeted with a three-pane interface that looks like this:

You’ll likely start your editing at the bottom pane where you can choose your scene, your actors and their voices. You’ll likely want to experiment some with the voices later but should set it to something at least close to what you want for the time being.

Once you’ve got the basics of the scene down, you can then look at the upper-left hand pane, where most of the editing will be done. You’ll likely first start by adding in the text from your script, this is done by selecting the character you want to speak the line and simply pasting or typing in the words. You can then add new lines below the existing one, creating the dialog in the scene.

Once you’ve got the words down, you’ll likely want to add some direction to the scene, which is what the icons on the far left are for. The icons on the left represent cameras, animations, expressions, looks, points, pauses and sounds. You insert these into the script, between words or at the beginning/end of lines, and they instruct your animated characters to execute the action.

Once you’ve finished directing the video and are ready to test it, simply hit the “Preview” button in the right-hand frame and let Xtranormal spin as it animates your video. You can then preview it, make adjustments to it and, when ready, publish it.

Publishing the video, however, is not free but Xtranormal’s pricing system is somewhat unique. Rather than paying for the individual video, you pay for the scene and characters. This means that, if you create another video using the same scene and/or characters, there is no charge but each additional character or scene you use will incur a charge. You can buy credits for the price of $5 for 300 and the most expensive a scene can be (two actors and one background) is 114.

Once you’ve published the video, you can then either view it live on Xtranormal’s site or upload it to YouTube via the site’s YouTube uploader.

All in all, creating my first video, “The Principal and the Lazy Plagiarist” required about an hour of work on my part for a clip that is about four minutes long.

The Limitations of Xtranormal

To be clear Xtranormal, as neat as it is, is also far from perfect. It’s not meant to be a replacement for human actors or hand-created animation and instead focuses on quick, cheap and easy video production. Specifically, be aware of the following issues:

1. Text-To-Speech Limitations: Though the text-to-speech is good as far as such technology goes, it is not great. The voices are flat and the characters struggle with many words. I had to make many changes to my script so everything could be understood and even then the video sounds flat.
2. Limited Animations: The animation and expression selection is limited. Characters can not interact with one another, only make gestures and point, so you won’t be choreographing a fight scene with Xtranormal.
3. Directing Difficulties: I had minor problems where pauses and gestures would be placed in the middle of words causing the word to be broken in two. Also, the timing on gestures is odd and takes some getting used to.

The biggest problem, right now at least, is more of a technical one. Previewing a video can take an incredibly long amount of time. Though I spent only an hour working on my video I probably waited for previews to load for at least three or four and that was only with a handful of previews. This problem is much less during off-peak hours but it is an issue Xtranormal acknowledges.

The best you can do is plan to get a big meal while waiting for a preview, even for just a short clip.

Bottom Line

All in all if you want to do a quick, dirty and cheap video, Xtranormal is a great service, if you’re willing to wait for previewing (or just willing work on the video in the wee hours of the morning). It won’t win you any awards nor will it rival the quality of what humans can do, but it is the fastest way to go from concept to video I’ve seen.

If you’re interested in it and can deal with its limitations, give Xtranormal a try. There are many situations where it can be useful.

If nothing else, it can be a lot of fun to play around with.

Sample Video

Create Cheap Animated Videos With Xtranormal


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/