During my entrepreneurial journey, I have discovered many cost-effective tools that are very helpful, especially for small-businesses and freelancers. I’m going to start a new category labelled as “Small Business Tools” so that I can share these resources with those who are just starting out on their journey to run their own businesses, and anyone else who may find these tools useful!

The tool I’m referring to today is called “DimDim”. Yes, it’s a bit of a strange name, but definitely an easy name to remember, which is a bonus!

Have you ever attended an online webinar where the presenter shows you a powerpoint or keynote presentation, and perhaps they’ve also shared their browser and showed a few different website? Or perhaps you’ve attended an online training session where the trainer has guided the attendees in a how-to lesson and thought to yourself, “Wow, was that ever cool! Wish I could afford to use this tool!”

The two “biggies” that I’m aware of out there are WebEx and Go2Meeting – both completely out of my price range. They do have a competitor, though, that is much more affordable, and even allows you to have more people on your online webinar than these two providers for less money (and in some cases, for free!). This competitor is DimDim!

I’ve had the pleasure of using DimDim a few times now in the past year or so, and I must say that I’m very impressed with their offering! If you’re just starting out, you’re in luck – you can use DimDim without paying a penny! Yes, they have a free option, as well as a pro option, and webinar option. Below is a small chart profiling what they offer and how much each option costs.

I first discovered this type of service through my day job in the corporate world. My present employer uses WebEx, but they charge $49/month for up to 25 participants. I’ve also heard a lot about GoToMeeting, but their minimum is $49/month for up to 15 attendees, and the plans just go up from there for both… as you can see, DimDim is more cost effective.

Another aspect of DimDim I really like is that your attendees don’t have to install anything at all – it’s all browser-based, so there’s no download required! This is an awesome feature, especially for those who have online meetings with people who are not necessarily the most technically savvy.

If you go with one of the paid options, you can also access the collaboration function where you can have more than one presenter – another great option for people who work in partnerships. Want to use a whiteboard? Yet another option that’s available to you!

DimDim’s Features and Benefits:

• meet instantly
• share your desktop
• use mics, webcams, and chat
• use widgets to spread the word
• record and embed meetings
• whiteboard and annotate
• leverage the social web

In my (humble) opinion, DimDim is definitely the easiest and most cost-effective way to organize and attend online meetings.

You have absolutely nothing to lose – go try it for FREE!

Have you ever held an online meeting or conference or webinar? What service do you use? Have you ever tried DimDim? I would love to hear your opinions!

I was recently introduced to some free image editing tools that I thought would be useful/helpful to others, so I’d like to share this awesome resource.

It’s called Aviary, and it’s a line of multiple web-based applications (no installation required) that seem awesome, and are now free to use!

There are several tools, actually (not just image editing), including:

• Image Editor
• Color Editor
• Effects Editor
• Vector Editor
• Image Markup
• Screen Capture
• Audio Editor

I’ve briefly played around with the Image Editor called Phoenix, and it seems pretty equivalent to Photoshop Elements!

I hope this resource is helpful to you!

Now, I’ve made a very rough video tutorial (my first ever!) to show you what Aviary’s Image Editor, Phoenix, looks like… mainly, I wanted to show how similar its workspace is to Photoshop Elements, which is what I normally use… I couldn’t think of what edit to make, so I made a very simple change in color hue by using a layer and changing its opacity… probably not the best way of accomplishing this, but I made the video on the fly with only one take, so I had to think on the spot!

This also means I now have my very own YouTube Channel, which you can visit here:

http://ucwebcreations.com/youtube

You can visit Aviary and try out their tools for yourself:

http://aviary.com/

Sign up so that you can login and start working with the tools… also, be sure to update the Permissions & License area if you don’t want your images to be publically available (under the Profile and Account settings).

I really disklike having any kind of Flash on websites and/or blogs that I own or design, and I know there are many designers and developers out there who agree with me. Using flash also makes SEO more challenging for websites and blogs, which is another reason to stay away from flash if you can.

In addition to working by day as a Technical Trainer, working by night as a freelance web and blog designer, as well as dabbling in photography here and there on the side, I also compose my own music. I have a separate website for my music that is also (of course) WordPress-based, and I used to use an audio plugin to allow people to hear streaming mp3s of my compositions, however, it used Flash, which meant I’d never been the biggest fan of this particular plugin.

Recently, someone on the ProBlogger.com community forum<-- [notice that I'm featured on that page!] posted an entry on audio plugins for WordPress and what people generally use, and he mentioned what he’s been using lately:

My only minor complaint is that it doesn’t have a volume control option, but really, how hard is it for people to use the volume controls on their speakers or operating system? As I said, minor complaint, and not a big enough deal for me to not use this plugin. I also like the fact that you can customize the colors to match your site, which I’ve done for my music site (default colors are blue)… the screenshot below shows black/grey colors, but when you mouse over the song title, it changes the text to green (feel free to click on the image – it’ll open my music site in a new page/tab):

Apparently, you can also add images, though I haven’t tried that option yet.

I just wanted to share this awesome little resource for those of you who may want to feature podcasts or any other type of audio on your WordPress sites or blogs… remember, FLASH = BAD! Avoid it at all costs!

Yesterday I mentioned that the “MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate” plugin was going to have a discount soon, and I now have more details, so as promised, I’m passing this information on to you!

It’s a $30 discount that brings the cost down from $97 to $67, and it’s only available for 3 days starting tomorrow! (From Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010, until Friday, February 5th, 2010.)

Again, the features and possibilities definitely make this plugin worthwhile:

• You can create professional redirect links, without being technical and without hassle
• You can quickly and easily convert keywords on your blog into money-making affiliate links
• You can improve your affiliate marketing income

The “Easy Affiliate Link Management” option makes it extremely easy and is very comprehensive, even for a non-techies, to start using “MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate” plugin for redirects (such as social media like Twitter, Facebook, etc.), affiliate links, sales pages, etc.

This is a perfect opportunity to purchase this plugin if you haven’t done so already. I also purchased this plugin for myself during a previous sale (and this discount doesn’t come around very often), and it has saved me a lot of time and hassle when it comes to organizing all of my affiliate links, as well as making it extremely easy to create redirect addresses that are easy to remember for my social media sites. To me, time is EXTREMELY important, and anything that helps me to keep from redundant tasks is worth having and using!

I highly recommend this plugin, especially if you’re not overly technical – if you’ve been having trouble keeping track of all of your affiliate links, or you’ve been dreaming of having a simple address to your social media sites (such as yourdomain.com/twitter, or yourdomain.com/facebook), I guarantee this plugin will make these tasks much simpler, and you’ll be ready to go within minutes!

Again, the discount starts tomorrow and is only available until Friday! Click on the following link to grab this plugin for yourself:

Have you ever been on someone’s site and noticed that a link was shorter and simpler than expected? Maybe an example will illustrate this better:

http://www.sitename.com/xxxx

Where “xxx” can be anything from twitter, facebook, maybe a product recommendation, etc. (so www.sitename.com/facebook, or www.sitename.com/twitter, or www.sitename.com/recommends/productx, etc.)

I’ve had this question recently come up with a client, and I often wondered this myself until discovering just how other bloggers were achieving this.

They use a plugin that basically redirects a custom, simple address (usually an address related to your own domain) to the “long and complicated messy URL address”.

For example, I have a Facebook fan page set up for UC Web Creations, and its “true” URL is the following:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/UC-Web-Creations/114418174240

Now, using this awesome plugin, I can set things up so that the below address leads to the above “messy” address:

http://www.ucwebcreations.com/facebook

Personally, I think this is awesome, and especially if you participate in affiliate programs, which have equally long URL addresses. One of the nice thing that this plugin provides is that, not only does it make it shorter and simpler to use and remember, but it also masks your affiliate links, which increases your chances of earning those affiliate bonuses!

Another nice thing is that it’s nice and easy to use… to the left, you’ll see a screenshot of where in the WordPress dashboard you find the plugin settings access link. Unlike most plugins, it’s actually not located in the “Settings” area of the dashboard, but rather in the “Tools” area, so it makes it easy to find if you use a lot of plugins.

You’ll just need to remember what this plugin is for – I know that for me, it took a little time to get used to it, but if you keep the word “ninja” in mind, that will help tremendously. What do ninja’s do? They are masters at hiding themselves, and essentially, this plugin hides the true identity of a link!

From there, you’ll be able to add a new link, and you’ll see the following screen:

Here, you will see a field where you can input the following:

• the name you want to give to the link (for example, “Facebook Page”),
• then the Affiliate/Destination Link (this would be the actual or “true” link),
• and then your desired “Ninja Link”, which will be “yourdomain.com/whatever-you-want”.

There are a few other options as well, such as the cloaking option. If you do not use the cloaking option, when someone clicks on your shortened link, once they arrive at the destination, they will see the “long” original link, whereas if you choose to cloak it, they will never see that longer address. You may be wondering why this may be useful, as did I when I first saw this option… it actually can be used in several situation, such as a method of preventing affiliate sales theft, and also using it for a sales page that perhaps sits on another domain, but you don’t want people to be aware of it. Definitely a useful feature!

Then there’s the “Convert Keywords to Ninja Links” option, and this will basically allow you to choose some keywords directly associated with your link so that when those keywords appear on your pages and blog posts, they will automatically link to your ninja link! (Whether this be an affiliate link, a social media link, or even a sales page.)

As you might have noticed by now, this can be a very handy plugin to have, and I highly recommend it!

Now, I’m believe in being honest at all times, so there is something I’d like to clarify regarding this plugin: many available plugins for WordPress are free, however, this is what’s considered a “premium plugin”, so it is not free; there is a cost associated with it.

It normally costs a one-time investment of $97, but don’t buy it yet – I have some insider information! Next week, there will be a sale happening with a discounted price for this plugin! Feel free to hop over there to read more info on the plugin itself, but if you are interested in purchasing it, please follow my blog via my RSS feed or sign up for an e-mail subscription as I will be posting more details about the sale here on my blog!

You can read more details about the MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate Plugin here:

MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate Plugin

Do you already have and use this plugin? What do you use it for, mainly? I use it for my affiliate links and social media links, and in the future I’m sure I’ll use it for sales pages as well – there are so many possibilities! If you don’t have it yet, what do you think you might use it for? Leave a comment below to let me know – I’m curious!

I haven’t written in my blog for a while because I’ve been busy working on clients’ sites and blogs. As I presently only do this as freelance work on the side (ie. in addition to my full-time job as a Technical Trainer), something always falls through the cracks, and this time it was the blog, unfortunately. There are only so many hours in a day to work with! I wish we didn’t need sleep – there’s another time drainer, but alas, I am only one person, and can only manage to do so much with my waking hours! The holidays were also busy, but today I’m trying to find the time to post something I’ve been meaning to post for a while.

People often wonder and ask about the differences between having a blog on WordPress.com and having a blog through WordPress.org. I recently watched a video interview with Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress. He gave a very unique, yet fitting analogy that I really liked, and wanted to capture in this post where I attempt to explain some of the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

He basically equated the differences between the two to renting an apartment versus owning a house. When you rent an apartment, you can’t necessarily choose where you’ll be living as you have to choose from what’s available, but all you really need to worry about (generally) is rent – everything is taken care of for you (for example, appliances, water, electricity, etc. can be included in the cost of rent, if something breaks down, you call your landlord, etc.). On the other hand, when you buy a house, you have more freedom in choosing exactly where you want to live, and everything is your responsibility, between the extra bills for water, electricity, acquiring your own appliances, maintenance costs such as fixing things that break down or regular maintenance, and you also have to worry about property taxes on top of it all!

WordPress.com is the equivalent to renting an apartment, and everything is taken care of for you:

All you need to worry about is the initial design options (from a list of available designs), and then content. You can’t necessarily choose your domain, you have to take what’s available, but it’s maintenance-free.

WordPress.org is the equivalent to owning a house – you have to take care of everything yourself

As with renting versus owning, though, there are advantages (and disadvantages) to running your own WordPress site/blog with WordPress.org – you have a lot more freedom to do what you want with your blog, such as turning it into a full website and using it as a CMS (Content Management System), having a custom design (whether you design one yourself or you hire someone to design it for you), using plugins that add functionality to your WordPress site/blog, etc.

As always, though, with freedom comes responsibility, and it comes in the form of keeping things up-to-date, and making sure certain costs are covered (domain name cost, hosting, potential site/blog design costs, etc.).

I think this was an awesome analogy to comparing the two, and wanted to share the information! It’s a popular question, and one that is important to understand when you’re thinking of starting a blog. For most people, it’s better to start off with a WordPress.com blog to become familiar with the setup, the process, even the aspect of blogging itself. From there, you can decide to take it one step further and have a more personalized blog or website using WordPress, and it’s easy to export blog posts from WordPress.com and important them to a self-hosted WordPress.org installation, so there’s no need to worry about any kind of hassle in that regard.

I hope this has given you a better understanding of the differences between working with WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Which blogging platform do you use (whether WordPress or not)? If you’re using WordPress, which one do you work with? If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and ask away! If I don’t have the answer, I will find it out for you!

Google has always provided some awesome FREE tools to make people’s lives easier, but many of their tools come in handy when it comes to managing your blog or website (some more than others).

Below is a list of some of these tools, most of which I use myself. If you’re a business on a budget, or starting your own business and you’re on a very tight budget, or you just have a personal blog, or you just want to know a little more about some of Google’s available services, you definitely want to be sure to check these out as they can come in handy!

Google has a lot more services available than I’m listing here. For this post, I wanted to concentrate mainly on services that you could use in relation to your website and/or blog.

Many of Google’s services requires that you have a google account, and there are other ways of creating a google account without having to use gmail if that is your preference, but I find that creating a gmail has come in very handy for myself, and is really easy to do. I have multiple e-mail addresses, and since gmail is web-based and is easy to check, I have associated many of my e-mail addresses with my gmail account so that I can see all of my e-mail from one location, and when I send an e-mail from the gmail account, it can be set up so that it appears to have been sent from one of the e-mails associated with the account. For example, if you have your own domain name, chances are you have an e-mail with that domain, something like name@mydomain.com. Your host provider can give you the details for how to set up this e-mail in a program such as Microsoft Outlook, and these are the same details you need to associate that e-mail address with gmail as well. From there, you can even color-coordinate the e-mails you receive so that you know which address it was sent to through the “labels” function.

If you’re rather not create a gmail account and would prefer to just have a google account, then you can click here: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

The three most important services (in my opinion) for websites/blogs:

Feedburner was bought out by Google and is now a Google service, and if Google valued it to the point of buying them out, you know it’s a service to look into! Basically, it helps manage an RSS feed (that all WordPress sites and blogs have, by the way), and keep track of your subcribers. You’ll be able to check people’s methods of subcriptions (ie. what kinds of feed readers they’re using), regional location of people who have viewed your feed, etc. Definitely useful in market analysis, and keeping track of who you’re reaching!

What is an RSS feed? RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, and is basically just a format used to publish regularly updates sites and blogs. For example, if you click here, you’ll see my blog’s feed (fed by feedburner) in a new tab/window. You can use the URL (web address) for my feed and subcribe to it via a feed reader (such as Google Reader – more on it below), and you can subscribe to other blogs that you enjoy and read them all from one place! It also provides your blog with more exposure as it makes it more easily accessible to people.

Google Analytics is a must have for anyone who owns or manages a website and/or blog. Life the Feedburner statistics, Google Analytics provides detailed information on your visitors – where they come from, how many visits your site/blog has had, how many page views, what pages were viewed, what your bounce rate is, etc.

What does Bounce Rate mean? (taken from Google’s Analytics help section here)

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

As you can see, this tool is absolutely essential to helping you gear your site or blog towards the audience you’re trying to reach, and best of all, it’s free to use!

Google’s Webmaster Tools are a definite must to keep track of your site from Google’s point of view, including keep track of your site’s top search queries and what rank position your site falls for a particular search query. It’ll basically help you analyze what you may need to update/change/tweak on your website to give it more exposure, and if your site is at all coming up in searches consisting of the key words towards which you’re gearing your website or blog. It’ll also confirm if your web pages are being indexed by Google.

Other Google services:

As mentioned above, Google Reader is a tool with which you can subscribe to RSS feeds and read them all from one location, thus making it easier to keep track of different website and blog feeds you want to read. Whenever you see “subscribe to my RSS feed” or the little RSS icon image: , on someone’s website, you need to use some form of reader to subscribe to that feed, and that’s where Google Reader comes in. I use Google Reader myself, and I also use it as an add-on to my iGoogle page so that I can easily view new posts directly from my main Google search page. More on iGoogle below.

I myself find iGoogle very useful in that Google has been my browser’s homepage for many years, and now, instead of having the basic search engine page, I now have a new “homepage” to work from, where I can easily see the latest news from CNN, the latest blog posts from the feeds to which I’ve subcribed, the date and time, the weather, and other things that interest me (such as “Word of the Day”). It basically allows you to create your own little portal that contains only things you want to see!

Google Docs is Google’s version of the Microsoft Office Suite, but it’s different in that a) it’s web-based, and b) it’s free! Definitely useful on many fronts, from making presentations that you can embed on your website and/or blog, to creating spreadsheets, word documents, etc., and always be able to access them from anywhere in the world (as long as you have an internet connection).

We all know what YouTube is, and again, this is a service that was bought out by Google, so you can trust its value and usefulness. YouTube can be an integral part of your social marketing plan and strategy. It’s an area I haven’t quite delved into yet, but I plan on doing so in the future. You can go to YouTube and search just about anything and find a video on it, from how-to videos (such as, how to use WordPress), to videos of people’s kids in talent shows, to just about anything you can think of!

If you’ve ever searched for an easy way to post photos online, Google has a tool for that as well! They call it Picasa, and it’s both an online webalbum as well as a piece of software that you download and install to help you organize, edit, and share your pictures. I’ve used Picasa in the past, and there are other popular photo-sharing website online as wel such as Flickr, but if you’re a fan of Google, you’ll definitely want to use this tool. It’s very easy to use, and the web albums can be set up as public or private albums, so it’s also an easy way to share your personal photos with friends and family, if you don’t need it for your website and/or blog.

I don’t know a lot about Google Checkout as I’ve been using Paypal for 10 years myself, but if you’re looking for alternative to PayPal, it’s definitely something to check out.

Google Bookmarks works like your bookmarks in your browser, but you store them on the web in a centralized location where you can always access them (as long as you’re online). I user my browser’s bookmarking function for websites I visit regularly, but I like to bookmark certain sites that I want to go back to in the short term (but likely not always or forever) using Google bookmarks. Sometimes, this includes my competitor’s web pages and/or posts, which will sometimes give me an idea on what direction I should take with a blog post, or perhaps provide me with an idea of what not to do on my own site and blog.

Google Scholar is really good to use for researching purposes, when you want to find information that comes from reputable sources. It can be used by students, for example, working on projects/essays/papers, however, it can also be used for blog research, and it’s pretty up-to-date. I was able to see some interesting results when searching “social media”.

Google News is a nice way to view the world’s headlines, and be able to view news in specific categories. Once I’m logging into my google account and it knows where I’m based, it actually personalizes this page for me, so for example, I’m in Canada, so one of the categories Google gives me is “Canada”. The categories I have to choose from are:

Top Stories
World
Canada
Business
Sci/Tech
Entertainment
Sports
Health

You can also search different terms and Google will find headlines that contain your search terms. I find Google News useful for researching topics that I want to blog about. For example, is if I were to search “social media”, the results would be headlines from all over the world, and it tells you how long ago the article was posted.

Google Maps can come in really handy when trying to show the location of something – whether it be your business, where you live, or a business or place you’re referring to, and Google Maps provides and embed code so that you can put them directly on your web page or blog post, like this (Arnprior is the town in which I live):

Google 411 is a newer service where you basically dial (1-800) GOOG-411, say where, say what you’re looking for, and GOOG-411 will connect you with the business you choose. This service is currently only available in the US and Canada for American and Canadian businesses. Google has a FAQ where you can find out more information about this service.

Now, you can’t really say that Google is just a search engine anymore! Which services do you use, and what’s your opinion?

Do you feel a lack motivation, or that you’re a failure? Even if you don’t feel like a failure, you need to stop and take a few minutes to watch this video – I guarantee it’ll make you appreciate your life a little more!

I discovered Nick Vujicic last year, and whenever I start feeling anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, or anything along those lines, I think of Nick. He is an amazing man who has overcome more obstacles than most people face in their lifetimes!

If you need a little encouragement, please watch this video – you won’t regret it! Nick is an inspiration to all who meet him – watch to find out why!

After you’ve watched the video, sit down for a minute (if you’re not already), and just remember to never give up! If you fall, you just need to get back up again – successes are awesome, but failures are also a necessary experience because we learn the most from our failures.

How did this video make you feel – what did you think? Leave me a comment to let me know! I hope it encouraged you as much as it does me every time I watch it.

Because many people missed the emails and blog posts last week due to being sick, or traveling or because they forgot to turn their computer on (what!) or are just plain unorganized, Yaro is opening up his Membership Site Mastermind course for one more day.

The doors will reopen for 24 hours only on Tuesday at 11 AM EST US Time, and I’m offering a special bonus to those who sign up through my link:

I will help you set up a WordPress site/blog (if you don’t already have one), or if you have one, I will assist you in setting up your own membership site for FREE!

I have access to many awesome premium WordPress themes that are easily customizable to your liking!

I normally charge $695 for a blog, not including add-ons (such as Page Setup, Google Services setup, Graphic Design (header graphics, buttons, social icons, etc.), so this will definitely give you more value for the course itself!

In order to take advantage of this offer, it is important that you use my link so that your name shows up in my control panel. If you do sign up, please also be sure to leave me a comment below, or fill out my contact form if you would prefer to communicate with me privately.

24 Hours only – Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 – Membership Site Mastermind

Yaro told me that several people emailed him asking to join because they were too indecisive last week. Indecision is a killer sometimes, causing you to put off things you really should do today.

I hope you already signed up because I know you’re an action taker, but if you missed out you have one more chance on Tuesday.

Yaro’s first live coaching call is next week. That gives you time to study the materials and prepare yourself for the first live call.

This could be a life changing learning experience for you, Yaro is a great teacher, and membership sites are the best model to make money online today, so why wouldn’t you take this course?

24 Hours only – Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 – Membership Site Mastermind

Don’t forget that there is a full 60 day refund period for this program, so even if you are not sure, I recommend you join and try it out for yourself!

If you decide it’s not what you want, email Yaro to cancel and get your money back. There’s no reason not to try it, go here on Tuesday to sign up:

Last chance to get in for 2009 – Membership Site Mastermind

If you are planning to build a sustainable online business but you are not sure how to put all the pieces together, I recommend you take advantage of this coaching course (click this link):

Membership Site Mastermind

Yaro Starak’s Membership Site Mastermind is for you if you want a very simple system for setting up near-passive income streams from the Internet, using the membership site model.

It works like this:

The formula is simple enough, but obviously you are going to need to help, which is exactly what Yaro’s training program is for.

He will teach you the following:

…plus so much more.

If you want to see exactly what is inside the program, watch the video here:

CLOSING DEADLINE IS TODAY

I don’t want to rush you, but the doors to this program close tonight (Friday) at midnight (12am) EDT US Time.

You should take a look at the sales page and video, decide whether the program is right for you, and join today if you like what you see.

Already over 400 people have taken this course and Yaro’s ready to work with the next group, starting now.

If you want to be part of this amazing community of people all working to build real sustainable and profitable Internet businesses, join today or you will miss out. This is the last time the course will be open this year, so this really is a big deadline.

Membership Site Mastermind – Sign up!

Winners are action takers, so if you want to start winning – take action today before the deadline ends!

Please be aware that there is a full 60 day refund period for this course, so even if you are not sure, I recommend you join this program and try it out for yourself.

If you decide it’s not what you want, email Yaro to cancel and get your money back. There’s no reason not to try it – just go here now and sign up:

Membership Site Mastermind – Sign up!

And on that note, have a great weekend!