Archive for April, 2009

Apr 30 2009

Baby steps into podcasting

Published by TJantunen under General

So you bought your $80 condenser mic, found a quiet room to record (or maybe built a makeshift sound box using egg cartons for walls) and you’ve got Garage Band or Audacity running in the background. You’re ready to podcast.

Now what? Those who’ve tried podcasting before may have realized how different it is from writing blog entries — and it should be, because podcasting, unlike blogging is a performance art. If you’re a bit lost in the art of intonation and enunciation, my suggestion is to go with baby steps.

1. Browse through your blog for one of your more interesting commentaries. Read it out loud. Read it out loud again. Repeat. Your podcast can be a weekly read of your column.

2. Doing this regularly — let’s look at once a week — instills a sense of confidence allowing you to venture into extemporaneous speaking later on.

3. If you stutter, clench your first. It helps.

The art of podcasting adds new dimension to your blog. But only if done well. Famous NYT columnist David Pogue reads his columns out loud for his shows so there’s nothing to be ashamed of. The trick is to do it regularly, just like like blogging, but never to appear gung-ho at the start by recording daily. It might turn off readers who still prefer your usual daily dose of posts.


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Apr 30 2009

Chitika Premium Ads Plugin for WordPress

Published by TJantunen under General

Chitika has launched a new WordPress plugin for Chitika Premium ads.

Chitika Premium Ads is a CPC search-targeted advertising solution with 20 ad unit sizes that can be be run on the same page as Google AdSense, or on its own as an AdSense alternative.

The plugin enables affiliates to easily change the display of Chitika Premium ads through a settings page in the WordPress admin interface.

The following aspects of the ads can be customized with the plugin:

  • Ad size
  • Link and text color
  • Background color
  • Display position (above or below your post)
  • Channel

More details at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/chitika-premium/.

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Apr 30 2009

How to Make Money After Building Your List

Published by TJantunen under Make money online

money bagThe hottest tip for marketing online these days seems to revolve around building a mailing list. Many tell you that if they could start out all over again, they would start with building a list.

However, when it comes to ‘building a list’ there seems to be a lot of mystery about how to proceed. Do you sell the list to make money? (The answer to that one is NO!)

So how do you go about making money online using your new found mailing list?

If you’ve ever taken a marketing class, an e-mail list is a sales technique known as an “endless chain.” You call one person, they might not want to take advantage of your offers, and then you move on to the next.

With a mailing list, you can reach hundreds (or thousands, if you’re that good) of people to promote your new product, website, service, etc. Mailing lists are extremely versatile for promotions.

Before discussing specific ideas, let’s talk about how NOT to make money with your mailing list. Here are some things you should never do if you want to be make money with your list:

  • Do not spam your subscribers! They opted into your list to get some helpful resources/offers, not to be spammed with all sort of craps.
  • Do not fill your campaigns (newsletters) with affiliate links. Try to keep it down to one or two per newsletter, and always inform your subscribers that they are going to click affiliate links.
  • Do not send multiple e-mails a day. Once a day is fine enough, and you might lose subscribers from those who don’t appreciate the multitude of e-mails you send them.

How to Make Money with Your List

There are several ways that you can make money from your e-mail list.

Consider your list to be the audience at a company meeting, and your e-mails to be your pitches to loyal customers. The best way to generate money from your list is to make your subscribers feel like the elite. Offer them things early, get their opinions, and give them special deals.

Aside from that, the best ways to make money with your mailing list are:

Promoting a New Website: Send your leads an intro of a new website and how it benefits them. Encourage them to sign up and maybe even offer a benefit for subscribers such as early usage of the
website or a free month of service, etc.

Promoting your new site will not only drive traffic faster and more effectively, it will drive people who are interested in what your site has to offer, and who will possibly recommend it to their network of friends.

Selling a Website or Domain Name: You can use your new list to advertise websites or domain names that you might want to sell. Make sure to make your subscribers feel as though they are taking advantage of a quick offer.

Just like real-estate, you have to make them consider all of the benefits your available website can give to them, and how it could go fast.

Affiliate Marketing: You can make money through affiliate marketing by picking a product to promote with in a campaign and sending it off to your subscribers.

Be sure to tell them how the product works for them, and if possible, create a special promotional code to give them a discount. For HTML e-mails, promote your affiliate link (but don’t go nuts!) and for plain text, promote the coupon code more heavily (so people don’t see the affiliate URL).

Donations: If your website is more towards non-profit, or provides a free service, then ask your mailing list (nicely) to support your efforts with a small donation or contribution to development.

This is probably the least effective marketing technique, but if you have extremely loyal leads and a good cause, this method could work well.  Just be sure to setup a “thank you” page!

Making money using a mailing list is easier than many might think. While a mailing list is not the magical end-all-be-all make money online idea, it is a tried and true method with various benefits for yourself and your website.

As it’s most often cited that “The money is in the list“. Now go build your list.

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Apr 30 2009

Interview with Murray Newlands at ad:tech San Francisco

Published by TJantunen under Make money online

I met up with Murray Newlands in San Francisco during ad:tech and we chatted a bit.

We talked about how I got started in affiliate marketing, things affiliate programs are doing wrong, and attempts to be green in the office.

Also, the interview reveals the shocking information of what I am reading currently, as well as what’s on my iPod.

The interview ended on an odd note with Murray pressing about some sort of “super secret affiliate forum.”

If anybody has a spare tripod, please send it to him for future videos. ;)


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Apr 30 2009

ShareASale RoadShow this Summer

Published by TJantunen under Make money online

ShareASale is hitting the road this summer and visiting a half dozen or so cities on the way to New York City for Affiliate Summit East 2009.

Carolyn Tang, ShareASale Client Services, is heading from Chicago on Monday, July 27, and winding over to New York City on August 6.

Information to come on the locations in each city along the way.

More details at http://forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=118839.


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Apr 30 2009

Affiliate Fatblogging: The Psychology of Eating Food

Published by TJantunen under Make money online

This installment of my affiliate fatblog takes place on my birthday, so I decided to give myself the gift of a week off from the scale.

Last week, I was out at ad:tech in San Francisco and didn’t really get a chance to exercise from Monday through Thursday.

While I have been hitting the gym each day since then, I figured I’d take the pressure off and enjoy some birthday treats.

That brings me to a whole different conversation… the reasons why people eat.

I have talked to my wife in the past about it, and she mentioned how some people stuff their feelings when they’re upset.

Maybe it’s a difference between men and women, but when I’m stressed or upset, it doesn’t trigger me to pig out.

Instead, I would classify myself as more of a “celebration eater.”

For instance, since it’s my birthday, all rules go out the window and I like to have a feast of stuff that’s not good for me.

Similarly, last week in San Francisco I went to a Giants/Padres game. I love any baseball game and celebrated with some junky ballpark food and beers.

So, I’m not sure what the psychology is behind eating, but based on my weight, I’ve been having too much fun and then celebrating eating.

Since I don’t plan to scale back on the fun, I guess my only alternative is moderation. Damn.

Starting weight: 225
Last week: 217
This week: -


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Apr 30 2009

Best Wordpress Plugins

Published by TJantunen under General

Access 55 of the best Wordpress plugins that every blogger should consider adding to their blogs to boost traffic and comments, add functionality, and make your life easier.
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Apr 30 2009

15 Blog Sidebar Items

Published by TJantunen under General

15 items bloggers put in their blog sidebars to increase traffic, reader loyalty, page views and earning potential.
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Apr 30 2009

Hyperwords Hacks for Firefox

Published by TJantunen under General

using-hyperwordsHyperwords. Metaphysically it does what it says on the tin. It’s a Firefox addon that adds a whole range of contextual right click menu items to anything you select in your browser window, allowing near instant, search, reference look up, “go” to a selected URL that hasn’t been properly linked, near instant translation between a dozen or more languages, and a whole lot more. Apparently, Stephen Fry just tweeted about it and so it’s trending on twitter.

I’ve been using Hyperwords for well over a year in Firefox and it’s the main reason that I haven’t switched to using the much faster and more straightforward Google Chrome as my default web browser (that and the lack of NoScript for Chrome).

Just select any text and choose a command. It’s really that simple. But, more than that for the Facebook and Twitter generation, Hyperwords has just added support for those two apps, which makes it a near perfect tool.

Related Posts:

Post from: David Bradley’s Sciencetext Tips and Tricks

Hyperwords Hacks for Firefox


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Apr 30 2009

Akismetting Spam Is Good SEO

Published by TJantunen under General

Matt Mullenweg recently published a great little article over on the official Akismet blog where he shares three reasons why eliminating spam is good SEO for your site. There are three things you definitely don’t want to encounter when running a blog and that is:

  1. Undermineing Your Sites SEO
  2. Attracting More Spammers
  3. Damaging Your Reputation

I wanted to also bring to light a new technique that these comment spammers are using which I discovered through Growmap.com. Apparently, spammers are taking bits and pieces of already published comments and re purposing them into their own comment. This means their content is generally on topic and makes it harder to distinguish than a random, off the wall comment. According to Growmap, Akismet flagged a few of these comments for them so it’s good to see the spam catcher on the ball but I’m willing to bet a few novice bloggers will be publishing these as legit comments. How well has Akismet worked on your blog?


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