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5 Tools that I’m Happy to Pay for as a Blogger Posted: 13 Jun 2008 02:40 PM CDT There are so many free applications and services available for bloggers that many of us get into a mindset of being anti paying for anything. However sometimes you get what you pay for in life and as a blogger wanting to build your blogging into a business there are some things that can be well worthwhile paying for. In this post I wanted to look at some of the tools that I do pay for: Skype - Skype has become the backbone to my online communications. I use it as my primary instant messaging tool as well as to chat voice to voice with business partners and in networking. For the main it is free - however I pay for a couple of extras to make it even more useful. The main thing I pay for with Skype is calls to landline phones and mobiles with SkypeOut. I regularly call overseas and the rates on Skype are considerably cheaper. I also pay for SkypePro which gives free calls to landlines within my country, free skype Voicemail and a discount on having an online number (something I also have). I spend around €20 a month on Skype. Aweber - For a long time I used a free newsletter service to send out weekly newsletters to many thousands of subscribers. However I increasingly found that you DO get what you pay for. Emails were not being delivered in greater and greater numbers and I was finding the service quite unreliable. Since switching to Aweber I’ve felt a weight lifted from my shoulders. It works - every time. Emails are delivered in much higher numbers and the tools that Aweber offer are leave anything else I’ve used for dead. This is one tool I should have paid for years ago. Pricing varies depending upon how many subscribers you have but starts at $19 a month. ImageWell - this image editor (for Macs) is amazing. It is a light image editor that gives you the power to do a whole heap of image editing quickly yet professionally. It is how I edit most of the images that I use here on ProBlogger and allows the adding of text, cropping, adding borders, reshaping and in it’s latest version the ability to change contrast, brightness, saturation and sharpening. Yes you can do all this in photoshop - but this is a much lighter and easier to use tool. It used to have a free version but recently it became a paid only tool - well worth the $19.95. Picturesque - this tool is similar to ImageWell as it is another Mac image editing tool. In many respects it leaves ImageWell for dead as it’s got some great extra features (it allows you to make images 3D, add reflections etc - however the only thing that it doesn’t do is add text to images (something I need). Still - I’ve paid for this one too and am using it more and more. It costs $34.95. ecto - regular readers will know about this one already as I’ve been an ecto (for Mac) fan for quite some time. I’ve tried other Mac desktop editors and they are quite good but ecto ‘fits’ with my own posting rhythm so well. The only one that I’ve been playing with lately that I’ve found increasingly useful is Scribefire (a firefox add-on). However I tend to do a lot of offline writing so ecto works well for me. It costs $17.95. Other Expenses I’ve only picked out five tools that I pay for - but of course there are many other services and expenses that can come into blogging including hosting, domain names, paying writers, advertising, ISP costs, computer costs, blog design etc With most of these you can find ways to do them for free - however sometimes the outlay can be worth it. What blogging tools and services do you pay for? Share This

The Main Difference Between Twitter and Plurk (to me) Posted: 13 Jun 2008 09:06 AM CDT Over the last week I’ve been experimenting with a social messaging/micro blogging service called Plurk. Over the last week I’ve seen many comparisons between it and Twitter - but wanted to show one of the main differences that I’ve observed: To illustrate let me show you a ‘tweet’ and a ‘plurk’ message that I posted an hour ago: I shot this question out to my ‘followers/friends’ on both services - “What is the #1 reason that you blog?” The response was instantaneous on both services. I got great replies on both. There were many more Twitter answers than Plurk ones - but that is because I have around 10 times as many ‘friends’ on Twitter as I do on Plurk. However there is one main difference…. The responses that emerged on Twitter were a whole lot of individuals responding to me in isolation. Your followers on Twitter don’t know what other people have answered. On Twitter I saw this page a few minutes after I asked the question: There’s some great responses there - (and there were another 60 or so) but the problem is I was the only person who saw them ALL. On Plurk the responses are all grouped together - not only for you to see but for your followers to see also. Here’s the beginning of the responses on Plurk a few minutes after I plurked: If you scrolled down further you see that I added a followup question - something that people responded to in the thread: You can actually view the full Plurk conversation on this page. This style of conversation means that everyone benefits from the whole conversation - not just me. It means that it’s not unusual for conversations to emerge between your friends as well as between you and your individual friends. The other thing that I like about Plurk is that conversations are contained and don’t get as mixed up as they do on Twitter. 10 minutes after asking the question on Twitter my ‘replies’ page contained all kinds of messages. Some were still responding to the first question I asked, some to the followup, others were responding to earlier tweets, some had moved on to new topics with me…. Which is Best? This is the question I’m being asked more and more. Is Plurk ‘better’ than Twitter? My answer is generally that I think both are great. You see there are times where the more communal, multidirectional conversation that Plurk offers is brilliant - but there are other times where you don’t necessarily need it and where the more one on one conversation is more effective. I also get the feeling that while there is a definite overlap between Twitter and Plurk in terms of who is using them - that there’s a different kind of person using each one. Plurk seems to have emerged out of a younger crowd than Twitter - perhaps this is more useful in some circumstances also. Share This

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