We are living in the age of visual content. We are living in the age where engaging imagery has become an integral part of all content marketing tactics. It’s hard, if not impossible, to conceive a blog post today without quality photos since articles accompanied by photos are likely to get 94% more views. Blogging is indissolubly linked to imagery, and this is due to multiple reasons. [Read more…]
GetResponse Vs Infusionsoft
Email marketing is booming. Most smart online marketers are using it, and projections show that it will continue growing. It is insanely profitable, with a 3800% average ROI. For you to make the most of it, you need to use the right tools. [Read more…]
Due.com Review: It Really Is An Easy Way to Keep Track of Your Invoices
As a full-time writer who is consistently taking on different freelance opportunities, at different times, and from different businesses, managing invoices has always been a challenge. Because not all companies use one system, such as PayPal, all of the invoices you send manually or through different platforms can get confusing. If you run your own business then chances are you’re even more overwhelmed, which is why Due.com is such an exciting new tool to review.
It fills the gap in invoicing that the online industry is missing without having to charge you an arm and a leg. Check out the review below, improvements I think need to be made, and the verdict that talks about who can benefit most from this particular tool.
5 Tools to Keep Track of Your Online Writing Business Finances
How did you start out as an online writer? Perhaps you got odd jobs here and there, and you didn’t really see what you were doing as a business. If you’ve been doing this for several years now, your client base has probably expanded, and you might even consider what you do as a small business.
When your online writing activities transform into a legit business, things get better, albeit with some more responsibilities. While you may have more revenue streams, you may have more expenses as well. You might have to tap into savings, consider credit card balance transfers if you have existing credit card problems. According to Jeffrey Weber of SmartBalanceTransfers.com, this is one of the most effective and cost-efficient ways to manage credit card debt and starting anew.
You may even have to learn how to manage your own books. You can always take on the services of an accountant, but that will only add to your expenses.
If you need a little help tracking your online writing business finances – expenses and earnings both – here are some tools which can make things easier for you without having to outsource this aspect of the business. [Read more…]
Productive Blogging: My Two Favorite Tools
From spelling and grammar to on-the-go photo editing, the folks at Webware have put together a great post on online tools for more productive blogging.
My addition would be Google Voice. I love the fact I can call my own phone number and then receive a transcript (fairly accurate if I speak slowly) of the conversation. It’s easy for me to then clean it up and adapt it as a blog post. I can also embed the audio if I decide to go the audio blog route. and as an added bonus, I can use the audio as part of a podcast.
I also like leaving myself audio notes with ideas for future blog posts.
As a PC user, and a chronic copy-and-paster, I am also in love with ClipMate. This nifty add-on boosts the power of Windows’ clipboard functions. It’s strongest tool is the ability to hold thousands of ‘clips’ in reserve – rather than just one.
What Web tools are you using to be a more productive blogger?
feedforward: New Blog Traffic Driver? Lucien Burm Believes So
We caught up with Lucien Burm, founder of Kimengi, which has created an interesting new tool for bloggers called feedforward (see demo). Here’s the interview.
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1. How do you explain what feedforward and Kimengi do to people who have never heard of them before?
The first thing I say is that we create a more lateral web, but most of times I need to explain two things first: recommendations and widgets.
Everyone knows about recommendations that webshops provide, such as ‘people bought this, also bought…’. So at first I explain to people that this is the functionality we provide. Then I talk about our widget as a very smart website within a website that can create the same kind of recommendations on your blog/title and even better. It is better because all widgets on all participating sites can work together creating cross-site recommendations. And then, the recommendations are not only based on what other people liked, we look into context too. [Read more…]
Twitter Following Interface Changes
Twitter has added a couple of neat features to your Following List interface. Now you can see the most recent tweets, a straight list as before, and more with a contextual menu to the side. [Read more…]
Blogger Conference Calendar 2009 Now Live at TBH
Hi everyone! Just a quick weekend announcement to let you know about a new resource page from The Blog Herald.
It’s the Blog Conferences page, and while it’s very much a work in progress, we present it to you with the invitation to help us make it the best list anywhere (and map, and calendar) of upcoming conferences and events for bloggers.
There’s a 2009 blogging conferences map that lets you look at the locations of offline events, as well as a calendar that lets you see when each event is taking place.
And of course we’ve got an itemized list, chronologically sorted, of this year’s planned blogger meetups (BlogWorld,BlogHer, Web 2.0 Summit, etc.).
Well, what are you waiting for? Head on over to our new blogger conference list and let us know if there’s any information you’d like to add!
Link Saving Methods
With so many hours spent cruising the Web, it’s a guarantee that you’ll come across useful links that you’ll want to share with a friend or revisit at a later date. We all have our own methods. Personally, I crack open Notepad and save lists – named by date – on my desktop.
Clearly, there has to be a better way. The fine folks at ReadWriteWeb have put together a list of six bookmarking tools designed to make your life easy. Among their selections:
ReadBag
Instapaper
LaterLoop
LinkRiver
Read Later
Short on time? Read more here.
The Web Browser Wars
There’s a war going on, a web browser war, where you are the grand prize. The participating players all want to be your number one choice when surfing the web, and the #1 reason for this is search engine ad dollars. That’s right, every web browser has a search field connected to a premiere search engine, and although you can swap it, you can be sure that the company behind the browser will earn money whenever you search with this field, and then click a link. Apple does it with the Safari search field, Mozilla does it in Firefox, Flock does it, and so on. Even Microsoft does it, with the extra spinoff to try and add more users to its Live Search site, another war going on with Google there.
So Flock took money, $15 million, and it doesn’t surprise me one bit. As Mark Evans notes, there’s a lot of potential money in social networks in the future, but the immediate money is in search engine traffic. To be hones, I don’t think Flock will be the leading web browser for social network users in the future. It’s more likely that the big players, being Firefox and Internet Explorer, adds this functionality through brilliant extensions, or that the social networks repack and rebrand browsers to release themselves.
There’s a war going on.
