Archive for September, 2007


Blog and Website Promotion

Filed Under: Blog Promotion
Sep.19, 2007

Some things will never change, and using the US Postal Service for promoting any business, online or off will probably always be a viable advertising option. Years ago I used the VistaPrint online service to purchase some business cards. Although they actually had a free option available, I upgraded and paid a small sum to have my cards done. It was well worth the time and effort because I got exactly what I wanted for a very reasonable price.

Now I see that VistaPrint also has personal address labels, and I was just recently thinking of ordering some to use for one of my websites, which is a vintage gift and collectible website.

What I like about the VistaPrint service is the fact that it’s easy to use to either customize your own labels, or you can upload a graphic you already have to use for customizing. Both options are easy to do from their website. The way they make it real easy is with a template program they provide so you can be sure to get your design layout just right. Plus, the cost of the address labels is very reasonable. For less than $25.00 you can purchase over 400 labels, which for me would take some time to use up for what I have planned.

In regards to blog or website promotion, return address labels could also be used to promote your website or blog address. They could be used sort of like a business card, but only they have the sticky back on them, which could come in handy. Hmm, that gives me some new ideas to think about that I had not thought of before for my blog or website promotion.

Whatever a person might decide to do with the address labels from VistaPrint, from my own personal experience I can tell you that they have a good service and they’re reasonably priced.

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Fast Cash Online from Blogging

Filed Under: Make Money Blogging
Sep.11, 2007

Not everyone can be so lucky to earn fast cash online from blogging, as it generally occurs over a period of time, which is certainly not fast! This is where one’s test of faith, patience and perseverance comes in. An entrepreneurial spirit is one that develops the patience to work for delayed gratification.

An entrepreneur is also the type of person that perseveres to maintain their goals even if they do not earn fast cash. Most people are not willing to work for delayed gratification, as a true entrepreneur will. That’s probably due to the fact that much of the world focuses on earning money as the only measure of success, which is far from true.

For every story that reflects someone who earned fast cash online from blogging or other endeavor online, there are many more stories of those who failed after they tried, and then they quit thereafter.

The best lesson we can learn is the fact that like this fellow, most people will not earn fast cash online, and we therefore must remember to not quit and to persevere!

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Virtual Office Voip for Business

Filed Under: Technology
Sep.10, 2007

This is something that I’ve thought about, but never took the time to research and thought you might find this to be of interest if you are in the need of a business voip service. Although they offer unlimited calls for a residential plan, I’ll share one of the options available to satisfy the needs of a business since many of you that blog are also business entrepreneurs! :D

Packet8 Virtual Office offers quite a few options for the business person, and anywhere from a small business need to a larger company with call centers. I’ll get into some details about the system that would be a good one for a small business person to consider, but before I do, here are some basic points about their service and phones to consider:

First off, their system works with your existing high speed Internet connection, so there’s no need to make a change with that. Secondly, their phones are one-touch controls, which are a great benefit for someone who is not wanting to mess with a great deal of multiple step buttons!

Here’s their system I picked to blog about because it would be the closest fit for me as a small business person if I went with a Voip program:

It appears one of their best phone and service programs to consider, which is middle of the road cost-wise, would be their “Unlimited Extension” service. Why would I choose that one? Because it provides unlimited calling to the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, Guam, US Virgin Islands, France, Ireland, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom; plus any international tolls to other countries!

For $49.99 a month plus the price of the phone, which is just under $100.00 plus a service activation fee, it certainly seems reasonable for the ability to call so many places in the world, and for unlimited use!

If, on the other hand you needed a Voip service for your business, my preference may not be what you’re would be, so I encourage you to take a look at the large variety of plans and services they have available for Voip. There are close to ten different programs to go with, and what would be a good pick for me, might not be for you! That’s something to consider and some good food for thought, and now I know a bit more about voip service as well!

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You Comment We Follow

Filed Under: Blog Master Tools
Sep.10, 2007

May 2009 Update: Due to page rank loss from utilizing the “do follow” attribute, we are currently using the “no follow” attribute until we regain our lost ground from the Google page rank changes last year. Along with many other bloggers we lost our page ranking and need to rebuild our pagerank before we reactivate the do follow attribute. Thanks for your understanding!

Most of the blogosphere has been saturated with the knowledge of the do follow and no follow attributes, but in case you missed it you may need a handy resource for locating the various plugins or hacks to fix your templates to enable the “do follow” attribute.

Although I haven’t added a graphic display here proclaiming the fact that if you comment we follow, yes my blog does have the do follow attribute enabled! Just a friendly reminder here that we appreciate your comments, unless of course you’re a robot trying to beat the system!

If you’re human, please feel free to post your comments. Please be aware that we have comment moderation enabled, so your comment will not appear immediately, but we do check daily for your comments. :)

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Webcam Security to Blog About

Filed Under: Technology
Sep.10, 2007

Now here’s a great use of technology to blog about! Webcam security home camera provides a great way to monitor anything of concern, or that you need to keep a watchful eye on. Have there ever been the times when you needed to be in two places at once? Maybe at your computer finishing up some work, but your kids insist in playing where they’re out of your sight or hearing distance? This would be a great way to keep an eye on them for that added piece of mind.

Or, in my case for a psycho-dog. Yeah, we have one of those! This is one way I would use one of these security cameras! One of our dogs is an escape artist, and although they’re quite spoiled with indoor access from a dog door into our utility room, there’s times when our female dog manages to use the doorknob to escape from the utility room! There have been many times that we would have liked to catch her on camera to see how she does it – lol.

Another way I would use one of these cameras would be of course for security issues. Our neighbor just had their car broken into last week and it would be an added piece of mind if we had the ability to have our vehicles in our driveway watched overnight. Or, my husband will need to clear out his workshop so we can park our cars in the garage.

The webcam home monitoring made easy service certainly appears to be easy to use, plus it’s free during their beta program so that’s a good time to give it a try! To begin you simply download the Windows webcam software, and then login to your HomeCamera account to select your monitoring options. You can even monitor your webcam action from your cell phone, or email!

To use the HomeCamera service you don’t even need to buy an expensive camera since it works with most web cams, and you can access the service from anywhere in the world! This would be a great benefit to a parent who really needs to get a chance to go on a trip, but isn’t that comfortable leaving the kids at home with a sitter overnight. That would certainly eliminate any concerns if you could monitor your child!

One last reason why they’re beta free program is something to consider. When they switch over to the paid service, they will not delete a beta members account even if they don’t convert over right away to the paid service! They will also offer special pricing to the beta HomeCamera users, so that’s something to keep in mind.

I wrote this post because it looks like they’re service is a good one to consider, and I was asked by HomeCamera to indicate the fact that my information about their service is fair and impartial. If you’re in the need of a webcam security camera that you can monitor from anywhere in the world, it’s worth checking them out!

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Saturday Show and Sell Blog Challenge

Filed Under: Featured Challenges
Sep.10, 2007

We’re starting a brand new group challenge for each Saturday in our Link and Blog Challenge community! As usual it’s for members only, so if you have not yet registered to participate this just may be something to jump start your blog, or to bring in some traffic to an existing blog!

The new group challenge, “Saturday Show and Sell” will give our members the opportunity to promote a specific product or service from a blog post they wrote for the challenge. You will only find this blog challenge in our community as it was just created today! Details on how to participate in the group challenge is provided for our members in the “Challenge of the Day” section.

Be sure to stop in and participate in the Saturday Show and Sell Blog Challenge! Even though today is not Saturday it’s a good time to prepare your blog post to submit for the blog challenge on Saturday! :D

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RSS Feed Copyright Notice

Filed Under: Blog Master Tools
Sep.09, 2007

Writing content requires a substantial amount of time, effort, and creativity so it becomes very frustrating when you discover that your creative works have been stolen — and such has been the case more than once this year for me, and probably for you too!

Plagiarism and content theft is probably far more widespread then what anyone can imagine, and it’s down-right disturbing! With the RSS Feed syndication it makes it even easier for this to occur, and the end result can be that your content shows up on another person’s website. In addition to myself there are countless others out there who had their content used for plagiarism or stolen from their RSS feed, blog post or website.

What prompted me to write this article is the fact that one of my articles from one of my Blogger blogs has had an excerpt from it published on another person’s website, without proper author credits going to my blog! At the very least the quote, or in this case “excerpt” from my article should contain a workable link to my site where I have the article published, but instead the individual only provided my url, not hyperlinked text for a human to click on! :( The person acquired my excerpt from my article from my RSS feed.

Now before you think that individual may have done enough because they at least provided a link, it’s not the case! Again, the minimum requirement for copyright law is that the individual should provide a workable link that a human can click through to provide credit to the original author. It doesn’t matter if the content came from an RSS feed, article, or blog post. In each case the same copyright law applies.

By all means I’m not a lawyer, however if one simply reads a few basics of the copyright law, it seems to me it covers our content that goes out via an RSS feed! This pdf document US copyright law states,

Copyright is secured automatically when the work is created, and a work is “created” when it is fixed in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. “Copies” are material objects from which a work can be read or visually perceived either directly or with the aid of a machine or device…

According to what I read above, the content our RSS feeds puts out would certainly be considered as “copies” as stated above by the US copyright office. By the way, for those of you who do not reside in the US, it does not make you exempt from the requirements of the law!

Not only did this individual use my content by using an excerpt from my RSS feed, but it’s also among a long list of at least 20 others — all without a workable link to any of the authors sites! But, here’s what is most annoying of all! The person is using the long list of RSS feed excerpts to promote his/her ebook they are selling from the same web page!

That in itself is enough of a violation as it is, but this leads me to the question, “Did the person publish my creative works in their ebook?” which they are now marketing for monetary gain! My suspicions are that most likely they have, but the only way I will know is if I purchase their ebook for the asking price of $7.00 to determine if their 30 page ebook is publishing my tips provided in my article!

At the very least it makes one suspicious of plagiarism, and makes me wonder if he/she re-wrote my creative works, as well as the other author’s works whose content excerpts were displayed. Why else would they show excerpts from over 20 articles pertaining to the same topic that their ebook is about?

In closing, if you have your content stolen you may be wondering what to do. One of my favorite places to look is on Lorelle on WordPress for a very thorough article on what to do if your content was stolen.

In regards to how you may provide greater protection for your RSS feed content, if you’re using WordPress, you’re in luck! For WordPress blogs (on your own domain), you can install a plugin, which will add a copyright notification to the bottom of each of your blog posts displayed in your RSS feed! :D I just installed the plugin today, and thought you would like to learn about it to help protect your RSS feed content.

Angsuman’s Feed Copyrighter Plugin is the plugin you may want to install! It will add a copyright notice to each blog post that is displayed from your RSS feed. Be sure to follow the instructions for use once you have it installed into your WordPress plugin directory. If enough bloggers use the plugin, perhaps it would serve as a way to help reduce the amount of content theft from RSS feeds.

I hope this tip about RSS feed copyright notice provided you with some good food for thought, and something for your brain to feed on — with or without the use of the RSS feed! :D Either way, don’t let the content thieves discourage you from blogging!

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