Comments (7)

By Les Scammell, February 29, 2008 12:53 pm

I have come across two very useful tools that could make the development of your posts just that little bit easier. The first is a creation tool and the second a simple photo plugin.

Microsoft Live Writer. Does any one use Live Writer to create their content. Potentially it is a great tool. Create your content on your desktop or laptop, give the polish and feel that Wordpress and other publishers don’t do that well, add some photos or images from your desktop and when completed – upload it onto your blog. All very easy, all very straightforward. it even uploads the photos and images and alters the URL in the post so the images load correctly. I really enjoy using it, it has a MS Word feel about it. Installing is easier. The whole process is very smooth. The price is great to – FREE.

There is one downside to Live Writer and that is on my Wordpress installation – it doesn’t work. This I know is a problem with Wordpress and not Live Writer and that somehow I need to overcome a 403 permission denied error. I just cannot seem to get around it yet. If you don’t have that problem then you will find that Live Writer is a great tool.

Photo Dropper Plugin. The Photo Dropper plugin is one of the most useful plugins around if you want to insert images into your posts. With Photo Dropper, place the cursor where you want the image placed, type in a search keyword and Photo Dropper will search Flickr to find images to match your keywords. As you can see here it has found a picture to match my keyword – when added to your post the attributes are automatically added – just a little untidy for my liking.
photo credit: mrpbody33

Comments (3)

By Les Scammell, February 25, 2008 11:58 pm

Update on the 1000 blogs against whaling, the entre card competition and just a general rant.

I must say this weekend just gone has not been a great one. I don’t know if anyone else uses 3ix as their domain host, if they do they will most like know where I am coming from. Every thing seems very slow at present and they seem to be having a lot of down time just lately. Two hours yesterday followed by another hour about six hours later. I seem to be getting at least an hours down time every day now, sometimes twice a day – perhaps it is time to move to a new host.

The Entre Card contest has been a big disappointment as well. Only 15 entries with 10,000 credits up for grabs. If you are thinking of entering there is only one week left. This weeks winner of the 500 credits is Chicken Soup For You – congratulations.

I am almost pleased with the 1000 blogs against whaling campaign. I now have 63 blogs registered. If you wish to have your blog included then by all means leave me message either here or on the petition page. If nothing else you will have a link back to your site on a page that is being heavily promoted.

photo credit: Big Blue Ocean

The latest blogs to register are:

1. Bebo Author
2. Too Beautiful To Quit
3. A Wolf Adventure
4. Dolphin Smile
5. pop critics
6. Loose Ends
7. El Gigante Verdoso
8. The Solo Gazette
9. Living Vegan
10. Bush Vitality

If I have left your blog off or not spelt the blog name correctly please let me know.

Comments (5)

By Les Scammell, February 21, 2008 11:33 pm

We have just gone past the 50 blog mark with a total now of 53 blogs registering their protest vote against the unnecessary whaling hunt that the Japanese in particular are conducting in the name of ’science’. What triggered my anger was the photo of the mother and her calf that had been slaughtered and where being dragged up into the mother ships hold.

If you wish to join this protest vote please either add your name to this post or go to the petition page and leave a comment with you blog details. I will keep going until I have reached that 1000 blog milestone. The latest blogs to join the protest are:

• Fragile Heart
• Ruelicke.net
• 7MilesDown
• AllForWomen
• Official Remergence Blog
• iPentimento
• The Vegan Diet
• GET YOUR LINK HERE

If you wish to write a post supporting this campaign please do and let me know. I will update all the above links to point to relevant pages or posts as soon as I get a spare couple of hours. At the top of my right side bar is a banner – if you would like to use please feel free – if you need the link code let me know and I will send it on.

To all who have added their blogs to the list – I thank you – I sure the whales would thank you as well.

Comments (17)

By Les Scammell, February 20, 2008 11:56 pm

How I Quadrupled My Blog Income is quite a statement – yet it is true. I have tried many different ad units on this site. I have tried Adsense with little luck. I have also tried some of the other pay-per-click ads like Widgetbucks – all to no avail. Text link ads don’t work – I do not have a high enough PR nor do I get high traffic.

Not only that, at one stage I had accounts with six or seven different advertisers and that meant six or seven different ad units on my page. Keeping track of each of these accounts can be time consuming and a little dis-heartening when they are only incrementing by cents each day. With Adsense there were days when I didn’t get a click – not even enough traffic to get a token couple of cents for impressions. Continue reading 'How I Quadrupled My Blog Income'»

Comments (8)

By Les Scammell, February 20, 2008 12:25 am

I will start today’s post with a quick apology. For those who thought that my statements from yesterday regarding the traffic received from each ad placement was derogatory – the contrary was the situation. All blogs mentioned in my previous post were mentioned because I thought they delivered good traffic. As a realist getting a quota of 3 or 4 to 1 is in my opinion pretty good. If spend 400 credits and get 100 visitors – I am satisfied. On too today’s post.

I have mixed feelings about Entre Card and at present I am in two minds whether or not to continue using it. First, I do not have the time to go card swapping all day. At present, whilst I am receiving a good price for my ad spot – I know that will not last long and the credits will run out. Continue reading 'Entre Card – A Radical Blog Review – Part III'»

Comments (5)

By Les Scammell, February 18, 2008 11:32 pm

Yesterday I reviewed some components of Entre Card that I thought were the positives and negatives. Today I will go through how successful this campaign has been. Before continuing I am not going to go through what ads were miserable failures, and there were a lot of them. I am only going to go through those that were a fabulous success – and there were a few of them.

Advertising through Entre Card is no different to advertising in magazines. You will not gain much success advertising marketing concepts on a parenting site, you will get some interest, but not buckets. The other observation I make is that Entre Card design is so very important. I have four designs. One for my site Just 4 Families. Three for this site, my trademark photo, another advertising the 10,000 EC competition and the third advertising my 1000 Blogs Against Whaling campaign. Continue reading 'Entre Card – A Radical Blog Review – Part II'»

Comments (7)

By Les Scammell, February 18, 2008 12:02 am

Entre Card – it has been an interesting experience. Please feel free to share yours. For those who are not in the loop at present – Entre Card is based on the old fashioned business cards. Each participating site has an Entre Card drop spot where you drop your card (actually its just a click – but same principle). The more people who drop on your site, the higher the value that is placed on it. The more cards you drop, the more credits you can earn. With the credits earned, you can buy advertising space on other participating sites. That is Entre Card in a nutshell. Continue reading 'Entre Card – A Radical Blog Review – Part I'»

Comments (2)

By Les Scammell, February 17, 2008 2:20 pm

Since the last update we have had several more blogs join us taking the numbers to 46 in total. The new blogs to join in include:

• Down On Our Luck
• My Only Photo
• Jaggy
• Discontinuous Permafrost
• Postcards From Myself
• I Want To Breath
• A Time and Place
• Blogging MoRe
• MultiDimension
• Mi Blog
• Home Biz Resource
• GET YOUR BLOG LISTED HERE

Continue reading '1000 Blogs To Save The Whales'»

Comments (3)

By Les Scammell, February 17, 2008 2:07 pm

The winner of the week 2 Entre Card Contest goes to number 4
Fragile Heart

Congratulations – you have 500 EC coming to you

There are still two week left in this contest – that means there are still 9000 EC waiting to be won.

Get the contest terms and conditions and enter HERE

Comments (7)

By Les Scammell, February 15, 2008 12:26 am

If your are looking for some free traffic – look away. If you don’t mind spending a few dollars – well ten to be exact, then read on.

I have seen several services around that offer to Stumble your posts for a fee. I know one that will give you 100 individual stumbles for around four or five dollars. Trouble is, StumbleUpon soon works out that these are bought stumbles and effectively kills them, along with your post.

There is a legitimate to do it. It must be legitimate because StumbleUpon are the ones offering it. You can buy from StumbleUpon extra traffic at the rate of five cents per view – if you like, five cents per click. That is a bit cheaper than Adsense and many others. It is not keyword targeted like Adsense however. You can target an audience based on age, gender and category.

What does make this interesting is the possible viral nature of this offer. StumbleUpon will show a page to say 200 different individuals for the cost of $10.00. They are shown under normal stumble conditions so if the viewer thumbs it up, it stays live in the free section as well. The more thumbs up you get, the longer it stays in the system.

I tried it out several days ago to see what sort of response I got. From 200 paid views, I ended up with over 500 actual views extra on the day – nearly all from StumbleUpon. That is over 300 more than I paid for. The following day I received around 150 extra visitors so it hung around a little longer than the one day.

You can buy the traffic and set daily limits so it is spread over several days – not just surging on the one day.

Are there any benefits to this for extra traffic. The negatives first. Did I get any extra subscribers? Four. I cannot say if this was from the natural traffic or the stumbled. Did I make any extra income – about $4.00 – again from natural or stumble – I do not know.

The upside. My Alexa rank is now the best it has ever been. The daily rank go to 67,000. The average is now down to 114,000 (a drop from 127,000) – at this rate I may break through that coveted 100,000 mark.

As I did not set any targets it is hard to know if I gained much apart from the extra traffic. Is it worth the ten buck? That is hard to say. However, to see my traffic spike up as it did was quite interesting. With targeted traffic you may get much better results when it comes to subscribers and revenue.

I think the real key is to wait until you have a real top notch article (post) that is stumble worthy. If you then target the article to the correct category, age and gender and perhaps spread the paid stumbling over a couple of days, the end result may be quite good. It is certainly good for the ego to see all that extra traffic. The article I selected was not great but it certainly got some traffic. Is this for everyone? Probably not unless you are prepared to wait for the right post.

It was an interesting experiment and of course, completely above board.

Comments (10)

By Les Scammell, February 13, 2008 2:03 pm

Humans are a strange race. Millions around the world protest against the whaling activities of the Japanese and yet, out of over 1000 unique visitors this week, only 40 have joined the blog the petition. I repeat, many talk the talk – few walk the walk.

Comments (2)

By Les Scammell, February 9, 2008 3:31 pm

First the 1000 Blogs Against Whaling

The total blogs number of blogs to join to date is a massive 7 with 4 new blogs joining my three. The blogs are:

• (See)King Truth
• Design Boston
• Money, Love, and Change
• Will Taft

Thanks for your support – you have all been added to the blog roll. If you wish to be added to the blog roll in support of a ban against killing whales – particularly baby whales then pop over to my 1000 Blogs Against Whaling page. Continue reading 'Update On Entre Card Contest and 1000 Blogs Against Whaling'»

Comments (3)

By Les Scammell, February 8, 2008 12:38 pm

I have started a campaign to collect 1000 blog URL’s into a blogroll as form of petition to campaign against the needless slaughter of whales, particularly baby whales. I do not have a problem with mankind fishing to provide food – we are after all hunters. I do however take issue with the slaughter of mothers and their babies when the general consensus is that these animals are threatened with extinction.

If we must hunt then it should be controlled with limitations on when, where and what type are allowed to be hunted. In general fishing we limits regarding size, gender and season. This is designed to ensure that the species survives and ensures sustainable fishing. To slaughter a baby as shown in my previous post is senseless and further threatens the species. Continue reading 'Bloggers Unite Against Whale Slaughter'»

Comments (8)

By Les Scammell, February 7, 2008 8:46 pm

Pictures of Japanese Slaughter of Mother and Baby Minke Whale. This is absolutely disgraceful. Every fishing region that I know of have specifications when it comes to what you can and cannot take. These specifications relate to size and gender and often the time of the year. Why? To protect the species. I do not know of any area that allows one to take a mother and baby – particularly when it is an endangered species.

I urge everyone to visit this site and view the photo gallery. Then voice your concerns in the loudest possible voice. For the Japanese to claim they are catching these animals in the name of research is beyond words. I for one feel this is totally disgraceful.

Read the main story here:

Mother and calf whale killed – first photo of the slaughter

Comments (2)

By Les Scammell, February 5, 2008 10:09 pm

While not really my favorite ads, most of these ads are at least pay by the week or month ads and not pay by the click. Most appear to be okay. I have an account with Link Worth but I haven’t earned much at all from them. The contextual ads really do annoy me on other sites so think about it carefully before using them. View a few sites that already incorporate them before making a decision. The other issue is that some of these sites require PR’s of 3 or in one case a PR of 4 before even considering you. Continue reading 'Income Stream Part II – Text Link Ads'»