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| Entrecard Giveaway - Win Your Share of 36,723 Credits Posted: 04 Jun 2008 05:27 AM CDT Regular readers to ProBlogger will notice that the advertising campaign that I was running with Entrecard has come to an end and there’s no longer any Entrecard widget on the blog here. I want to thank Entrecard for their sponsorship and giveaway the credits that I earned from the widget today. I’ve got a total of 36,723 credits at present and am going to divide them up into three prizes of 12,241 credits for three winners of this quick little competition. Here’s what you’ve got to do to put yourself in the running to win.In 250 words or less tell me in comments below tell me about a quality undiscovered blog. The catch is - it can’t be your own (and it can’t be mine). You will also need to be an Entrecard user to win - otherwise the prize is kind of pointless. I want to know a URL and up to 250 words on why it’s a great blog in your eyes. I and a secret judge will pick three winners to win the prize in three days time. |
| A ‘Quick’ Tip on Landing an Interview for Your Blog Posted: 03 Jun 2008 03:02 PM CDT
Over the last month since launching the ProBlogger book I’ve done more interviews with other bloggers and sites than I’ve ever done before. It’s been a lot of fun but it’s also taught me a lot about how to approach people for interviews on your blog. Perhaps the best piece of advice that I could give a blogger wanting to approach another person to be the subject of an interview is to make it a manageable task for the person that you approach. There is nothing more off putting when you’re asked to do an interview than being sent 20 questions. Actually - there is one more off putting thing than 20 questions…. It’s being told that there will only be a few questions… which you agree to…. and then getting sent 20 questions. I’m not against long interviews (and have even done a couple over the last months) but it is important to establish the scope of the interview that you want up front with your potential interview subject. If you’re looking for something in-depth then let them know this so that they can put the time aside for it (if they say yes). Just be willing to get a ‘no’ if you’re after a long interview as they can take considerable time. As a guide - my 18 question interview with Guy Kawasaki a couple of weeks back took me 6 or so hours (over numerous days) to write up. To increase the chances of someone saying yes to your interview a shorter interview might work. You can also increase your chances by giving them a brief insight into the topic of your site and how it is relevant to them. Many people are willing to do interviews with bloggers - but you’ll increase the chances when you make it achievable and realistic to do. An example of this is that the most success I’ve ever had with interviewing other bloggers is with ‘one question interviews‘. Further Reading - How to Get and Conduct Interviews for Your Blog |
| How I Make Money Blogging - Top Income Streams Update Posted: 03 Jun 2008 09:08 AM CDT
My top income earners for the last quarter were:
I’ve included where it was previously ranked in my income streams so you can see how things have changed (and where they have not. AdSense and Chitika continue to dominate although Private Ad Sales have been making a move, as have affiliate programs. You can read a complete description of each one and how I’ve used it in the Make Money Blogging post. |
| Zemanta - First Impress Review Posted: 03 Jun 2008 08:06 AM CDT There’s some interesting buzz around the blogosphere today about a tool called Zemanta (found via WebWare) which is a blogging tool that works in your browser as an add-on that suggests content and licensed pictures that relates to content that you are writing at any given time. Once you’ve got it installed at any point that you start writing a post in your blog’s backend (it supports Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, Typepad.com, and self-hosted Wordpresses from version 2.0 onwards) it begins to suggest images, related articles, links and tags that relate to what you’ve written. I am currently using Zemanta as I write this post and here’s the screen shot so far of what it’s suggesting so far (click to enlarge):
The suggestions update every 300 characters that you write - so as your article develops, so too do the suggestions that Zemanta comes up with. When you see something that you like you can add it to your post by clicking them. If it’s a link Zemanta automatically makes the first mention of that word in your post that link (which is what I did with the first mention of ‘Zemanta’ in this post in the first paragraph. It works similarly with tags, related articles and images. I’ll include some related articles at the bottom of this post as suggested by Zemanta. You can see a demo of how it works in the video below:
So what do I think of Zemanta?A few thoughts come to mind: 1. I like the concept - it has the potential to really add depth and interest to blog posts. The idea of adding related links, articles and images is a really good one. All in all I like the concept - but it’s probably not something that I’ll be using at this point. Keep in mind that I’ve been testing it for all of 20 minutes - so my observations are premature. I’d love to hear what others think of Zemanta?  |
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