Let’s face it, a lot of online book reviews are done by people who have absolutely no training in writing, let alone how to write a review. If you’ve ever come across one of these reviews, you’ll know it. I’ve personally seen reviews with a 4.5 star (out of five) rating, but to read the review you would think that the reviewer despised the story.
You really need to think these things through before you hit “publish”, don’t you?
I just had the responsibility of writing a review myself. In doing so I stumbled on this article at Schoolastic by Rod Philbrick. It is hands down the most informative I’ve ever read. Give it a read, you’ll be glad you did!
Jerry Helpful Resources, Tools of the Trade, writing for the web
There are a bunch of different Paid Post services out there, but not all are created equal. don’t get me wrong, I belong to nearly all of them and I’ll use them if the payout on a post or review helps me to achieve my daily income goals. (Yes I have one, but that’s a different post, for a different blog.)
The problem with most pay-to-post systems is the lack of available topics to post about. There’s an endless amount of checking back in with the service to see if there are opportunities available, then it’s a race to grab that opportunity before someone else gets to it. There’s only one service I’ve used so far that hasn’t had this limitation, and that service is Smorty.
To this date Smorty’s blog advertising service has had an opportunity available for review whenever I needed one. This is a wonderful opportunity for a blogger that’s interested in earning his or her keep. Depending on your specific niche, they may even have more work than you can handle!
Give them a try!
Jerry Uncategorized Blogging, Monetizing
If you are a blogger that accepts paid posts or paid reviews, you have either experienced or will experienced Google’s policy of wiping your PageRank to zero. I have seen several methods posted on other blogs for counteracting this issue. The most notable of these methods has been to cave completely to Google and ad rel=”nofollow” to all sponsored links. While this method will work, it isn’t a real help to those of us who depend on paid posts or paid reviews for a revenue while we’re waiting for numbers large enough to drive affiliate sales.
The next most effective method was spelled out by Andy Beard, and included using a robots.txt file to limit the posts that Google indexes. While this method works perfectly well, there are issues involved, especially for people who aren’t all that familiar with updating this file or are uncomfortable doing so. It also has the inherent issue of having to update two files for each and every post that contains a paid advertising link, something that can seriously add to a bloggers workload, which is something I avoid at all costs.
I wanted a method I could use on a post-by-post basis to keep Google happy and to keep advertisers happy, and I think I’ve managed to do so in just a few easy steps In WordPress. I’m not sure how to do this on other platforms, but I’m sure there’s something available for your specific blogging tool of choice if you dig around enough.
- Verify your blog with Google by using the Verification tool at Google Webmaster Tools. This step is crucial if your blog has already been penalized.
- Download and install a plugin that allows you to modify meta tags on a per-post basis. I used the MetaTagz plugin by Brandon Buttars, but there are others available, take your pick here just as long as the plugin allows you to modify the robots meta tag.
- In each and every post you have with a sponsored link, or a link that looks like it might be a sponsored link, modify your robots meta tag to look like this:
<meta name="robots" content="index, nofollow" />
This tells the Google spiders to avoid indexing the page or follow any link on that page. Other spiders may or may not honor this tag, but Google is the only spider we’re worried about in this instance.
Be sure to modify the robots tag on each new paid post!
If you haven’t already had rank lowered or removed by Google you should be all right at this point. If you have had rank penalized or removed, run over and file a reinclusion request. In my case it took about a week to see results, but my main site is now back up to a happy PR4. The nice thing about that ws that the blog only had a PR3 when they hit it!
As I said, I only know how to do this for a Wordpress powered blog. If anyone out there knows how to pull this off using another platform, let me know and I’ll add the instructions here, or just give me a link and I’ll do the legwork.
Peace!
Jerry Blogging, WordPress, WordPress plugins Blogging, Google, pr, WordPress
It’s not often that I come across a WordPress theme that I almost instantly fall in love with. It’s even less common when that theme claims to be a “Magazine Style” theme, but when I downloaded the Structure theme from Justin Tadlock, I was hooked from the get-go.
Let me say right off the bat that this is not a theme designed for people who just want a drag and drop experience. To get the full power of this theme working on your WordPress install, you’e going to have some theme tweaking to do. If you’re comfortable making some simple modifications to theme files, you’ll have little trouble getting this theme humming like no other you’ve ever seen.
The primary advantage of this theme is flexibility. Nearly every single aspect of layout can be modified to suit the site owner’s needs without any major modification. All three of the columns on the home page are widgetized, allowing for infinite layout possibilities either by hard coding or just by moving widgets around. Default theme sections are available as widgets as well, so no functionality is lost in the process.
The only downside to the theme that I can see is that it is not GPL’ed, though the license does allow for customizations and use on any type of site you can imagine. All the author asks is that the credit link remain intact.
If you’re looking for the future of WordPress theming, you’ll find it in Structure.
Jerry WordPress Themes WordPress, WordPress Themes
Make no mistake, if you are writing for a living, even if it’s only for a small second income, you are running a business. Businesses thrive on organization. You wouldn’t be able to tell that I subscribe to that theory by looking at my desk right now, but a glance at any of my filing cabinets would tell the tale immediately.
The key to being able to react to changing circumstances in a timely fashion is having the ability to get the information you need without having to think twice about it. Digging through a stack of papers to find client information does nothing for your bottom line. It’s a waste of your time, and since your time is money, it’s a costly mistake.
One tool you should probably consider having in your arsenal is a label maker. I’m not talking about the old-time rotate-the-wheel-to-punch-a-tape variety, modern label makers can do a lot more than tell you which client folder you’re reaching for.
What would you say if I told you this one tool could help you with postage and printing? With just a few clicks of your mouse you have access to online stamps as well. Not too shabby, is it?
Each of these things can save you time. Saving time relates directly to your bottom line. Dymo offers a slew of different USB ready solutions for both Mac and PC. The question you need to ask yourself is this:
Can I afford not to be more productive?
If you are anything like the rest of us, that answer would be “No”.
go take a look at what Dymo can offer you, you’ll be glad you did.
Jerry other articles, thanks!
