January 27, 2007 By

Windows Live Writer: Write Your Blog Posts Easily

live-writer-1 Editing via WordPress own build-in WYSIWYG editor can be frustrating at most time, especially with the lack of some essential features like spell checking and the lust for more advance image editing.

Last year Microsoft had released an interesting blog authoring tool known as Windows Live Writer (WLW) – Still in Beta atm. Originally geared towards Windows Live Spaces users, it also support other blog CMSs like WordPress (yeah..), Movable Type, LiveJournal and Blogger.

I have never being fond of using blogging tools actually, Let see if WLM can change that.

Installation

live-writer-error This part was pretty much the same, WLM will request for your blog URL and login info and it automatically does the rest. Notification upon your blog detection will pop out and it will start to setup and download all the settings and necessities from your blog.
You might see a test post (see figure) since WLM need to check with your theme setting too. Just delete it once the process is finish.

First Impression

When I first launch it, I thought I mistakenly click on the MS word icon on my desktop…it resembles a lot only with simpler type of user interface. The usage was pretty simple and straight forward, really was a no brainer. Nothing much impressive here, lets look deeper into its core function.

Features

WYSIWYG Authoring

One of my favourite feature is the built-in WYSIWYG authoring that comes together with a real-time live preview of yourlive-writer-categories post without even the need to save and load. This is certainly time efficient and bandwidth saving if you’re dealing with multiple editing at one time. There are a few type of preview that you can choose from the drop down list, includes web preview and HTML source-code editing.

You can specify category (see figure), change the timestamp, post status and almost anything else you want, just like in the web editor.
Similar to the web editor or more, WLM also have those regular quicktag like headings, fonts, margins, colors, background image, paragraph parsing and block quotes.

Photo Publishing

Photo publishing and editing with WLM does have it own advantages. Although I have no issue here, but a bit more customization compare to the bulky web editor would certainly add up the spice to my posting.

With WLM photo publishing feature, it make easy to insert custom and upload photos. You can even specify a thumbnail that links to a larger image elsewhere, modify size, text wrapping and graphic effect (like adding shadows…etc).

Map Publishing

I think this one is not really a crucial features to be consider here, unless your site deals with travel or direction related. Basically this features enable you to insert a windows live local map directly to your post without the need of third party plugin.

Writer SDK

WLM SDK allows developers to extend it capabilities to publish additional content types.

- Images for online publishing sites
- Embedded video or audio players
- Product thumbnails and/or links from e-commerce sites
- Tags from tagging servers

Definitely a neat features to add more functions to WLM.

What does differentiate Live Writer is that they’ve released an API that allows developers to extend the capabilities of the software to publish additional content types.

via Techcrunch

Compatibility

Originally WLM was developed to be a great client for windows live spaces but now it seems to support other type of famous weblog too like blogger, live journal, typepad and most importantly wordpress.

Bad news for Mac user though as WLM doesn’t support MacOS yet.

Overall

Overall, this is definitely a great tools to be consider especially for those heavy bloggers and with slow line connection. I find that it still lacks in some features compare to those establish one like w.bloggar and ecto for windows and macOS respectively. However, the available features should be enough to get you posting in a breeze.

Windows Live Writer has the features and capabilities of a program you would expect to see bundled in the next version of MS Office. I really think other companies can learn from this product – and they need to.

Via PaulStamatiou

If you have decided to give it a try, be sure to check out the available WLM plugins too.

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: , ,
January 26, 2007 By

Amazon Associate Program: Get Rich Slow and Die Trying

 Amazon Associate Program

Here’s something I discovered some time back: Amazon’s affiliate program sucks.

Since I’ll be developing a new blog on music, I thought I might as well try to login to my account and see how much I’ve made.

My opinion hasn’t changed.

If you want to get rich slow and die trying, build a website and try selling strictly Amazon stuff only. Sure, you’ve probably heard of someone in someplace who made a six figure income with Amazon, but for the most part, ordinary people like me don’t make enough to even pay for web hosting.

I saw this on their site:

Beginning January 1, 2007, standard Amazon Associates payments will be monthly instead of quarterly, paid approximately 60 days after the end of each month. For example, referral fees earned in January will be paid at the end of March, and payment of referral fees earned in February will be paid at the end of April.

Like, so what? It doesn’t make any difference to me cos the program is useless.

So I changed my mind about using Amazon. Instead, I’ll use data feeds from iTunes and feed them to my blog using . At least that makes better business sense.

Personally I think that anyone that tries to make money from Amazon should be shot in the head. It will save them the agony and suffering..

Filed Under: Home Business
January 25, 2007 By

Pink, Two Column Theme

Pink-Kupy Theme is, as you may have guessed, an extremely pink theme. The theme is very graphics heavy and could present long loading times for those without extortionate amounts of bandwidth on their side, but there wasn’t too much of a problem when loading the example theme. The theme has two, fixed width columns, a vector style header and background images and, naturally, an entirely pink colour scheme.

pink-seo-ituloy-angsulong.jpg

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: ,
January 25, 2007 By

EzineArticles Says “No Can Do” To Article Rewriting

On Ezine Articles:

Don’t even consider article rewriting. Demand more of yourself and produce the majority of your article content from your own expertise before you even consider researching what others have written so you won’t be tempted. You can do it and it is possible.

[....]

Article rewriting is the fastest way to ruin trust and destroy your own credibility so don’t even consider it. Take the option off the table and start writing articles from your own personal creative genius inside. You are creative and you can write your own articles without having to use other peoples works as the basis for your content.

I know that they guys at EzineArticles are not too happy about PLR articles either. This article is about “rephrasing” other people’s work, but I think PLR goes in the same category.

From their point of view, it’s a lot of similar content clogging up their network. There are other uses for PLR though, and I still use PLR in some of my online ventures.

Filed Under: Home Business
January 25, 2007 By

Malaysian Bloggers Muted – An Update

In my previous post about Malaysian Bloggers United campaign, here’s what I managed to read-up on after a busy day preparing my business plan for submission by 31 Jan:

The Prime Minister’s official comment via The Star:

The Prime Minister said these laws were enforceable and bloggers must bear in mind that they could not hide or take advantage of the Internet to do something that was against the law.

“They cannot hope to cover themselves or hide from the laws,” he told Malaysian journalists at the end of his three-day working visit here yesterday.

He said bloggers, just like newspaper journalists, must be responsible for what they wrote or risk facing legal action from others.

“Me hiding?” says Jeff:

Am I a “law-hider”? I thought I had published my picture, my name, my email and my phone number when I first started blogging on January 2, 2003! My server is parked right in the heart of MSC!

Responsible journalism must draw a clear line between someone being incriminated over alleged offence, and someone being persecuted after all avenues for recourse are exhausted. That separates an innocent from a convict.

Anti-NST feelings flare up [via MalaysiaKini]:

I believe no one should have unrestricted freedom and one shall be punished if he has abused his freedom and harmed others. But what caught me surprise was NST suspending its column by lawyer Malik Imtiaz Sarwar indefinitely. Simply because Malik is the defence counsel for Jeff Ooi in the suit.

[...]

I do recognise that the NST has the right to decide who shall be its columnists. However, this right should not be abused. The NST owes a moral obligation to the society at large.

We shall say a big ‘No’ to The New Straits Times. At least we have all the own freedom and right to choose which newspaper to subscribe to.

Well…

Things are starting to get in motion. I subscribed to MalaysiaKini today to stay abreast of the situation.

Filed Under: Malaysia Boleh
January 25, 2007 By

Residual Income From The Internet

I’ve been in a couple of MLM and other business where everyone talks about residual income.

Yet I have never experienced residual income like what I get on the Internet.

Residual Income Check

I just received a check for $20.58 from NoteAble Holdings Inc, and for a few days I had no idea who they were, or why they were sending me money. Not that I mind, though…

I finally figured out that it’s for the commissions I earned selling sheet music (guitar, piano) on the Internet. It was one of the older affiliate programs I applied for, and I left a couple of links up on a website that I haven’t as much as touched or even monitored for the last 2 years.

$20.48 for two years shows how badly I did with this affiliate program. They pay about $0.40 per sale so I must have made like 51 sales to even get this. However, getting a check that you were not expecting, and having to figure out who sent it to you is fun :)

Most people never get started.

They buy a lot of internet marketing ebooks after getting hypnotized by the huge commission checks they see on the sales page. They read the whole damn thing, but they never get that first domain name. They never write that first page. They never sign-up for that first affiliate program.

And if you don’t do all that, you’ll never enjoy residual income from the Internet.

But the same people will tel themselves, and every other prson they meet, that making money on the Internet is a scam.

Yet I’m sure $20.48 is more that the interest income most people earn from their savings.

My first website was a total mess, but it gave me a wonderful learning experience on what to do and what not to do. It made me decent income in the past, and today I still get some small checks when I least expect it to.

Residual income takes time.

You need to do it NOW to set the gears in motion.

Once you have your website up and getting at least 300 vistiors a month, and you’ve made at least one sale from an established affiliate program, you’re on your way to feeling the satisfaction of earning residual income on the Internet.

From my experience, the traffic will not stop, and the sales will not stop either.

So go get started!

Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing
January 24, 2007 By

First Theme With Custom Image Header

Mistylook 3.0 is the first WordPress theme released after WordPress 2.1 (see post below) to incorporate the new Custom Image Header function. The header image (currently an Autumn scene of trees and a river) can be easily changed within the WordPress admin section using the new tab under presentation. The theme requires the new version of WordPress 2.1 Ella for this function to work correctly.

mistylook.jpg

The theme is two column, with tabbed navigation and a changeable header image. The main colour scheme is white and pale greys with green accents which gives an overall classy feel. There is an “attachment.php” file which allows users to comment on attachments to posts and the theme is fully widgetised.

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: , ,
January 23, 2007 By

Get Your Pages Indexed in Minutes

One of the problems most people have is how do they get their new pages indexed in Google quickly?

Since I started this blog in March 2006, my answer is always the same: use blogs.

I have spent a lot of time creating static websites before, but now almost all of them are replace by WordPress blogs. Here’s why:

  1. You can add and manage content easily
  2. Your pages can get indexed easily by tagging Technorati and also pinging a couple of ping sites
  3. You can generate a lot of user-driven content from the comments people leave on your website

I think the third point is the most important. Here’s an example of how I got ranked number 2 in Google very fast for the keyword “easy member pro” and “easy member pro review”:

Easy Member Pro

As you can see, the part that’s displayed by Google is actually a comment left on my post by a user. I never had the word “review” on that post, but I did have a lot “easy member pro” keywords.

I got ranked for this in days, not weeks or months. Of course it’s not a competitive keyword, but it’s highly targeted.

How Do I Know If My Pages Are Indexed?

I don’t check for each and every page, but I do use the Google Alert service. I make an alert for my name “gobala krishnan”, so everytime Google indexes a page with my name on it, I get an email notification.

I was suprised when I get notifications just a few minutes after making the post, either on this blog or on Easy WordPress. That’s how I know my pages get indexed fast.

The Google Alert service also helps me keep track of affiliate promotions, and how many people are talking crap about me :)

So, if you want to build a high ranked site, use blogs, and encourage user-generated content. I go through great lengths explaining the entire process in the WordPress Adsense System, and you should get it if you’re new to blogging.

Update: Here’s the email from Google, about 30 minutes later:

Google Alert

Filed Under: Blogging Tips, Search Engine SEO
January 22, 2007 By

Dynamic Calendar Widget

This WordPress calendar widget helps you manage future events as an online calendar. Display upcoming events in a dynamic calendar, on a listings page, or as a list in the sidebar. You can subscribe to the calendar from iCal (OSX), Sunbird or Google calendar. The current date is highlighted and event days are displayed as a link with their information as a title, displayed when you hover over it, and a more detailed page on click.

Choose one WordPress category as the ‘event’ category, and then add posts for dates in the future. Add the calendar or event list functions to your template, or just use the ‘Event Category’ page to list your forthcoming events. The EventCalendar widget works fine with WordPress v2. It should also work with WordPress v2.3.

Download: WordPress Calendar Widget 

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With:
January 22, 2007 By

Plugin: Organise Series Posts

The Organise Series WordPress Plugin helps with the organization and presentation of articles/posts you write as part of a series. It helps make it easier for readers of your blog to discover all the series you’ve written and also to easily find post that are part of the same series. Used with the Category Icons Plugin (optional and not required- available for download on the same page as the main plugin) by Ivan Georgiev you can even add attractive graphics/logos to accompany your series.

The plugin integrates seamlessly with the category system of WordPress, with an administration options menu for the plugin which allows you to control much of the output of the plugin to suit your own tastes without having to open the plugin file and edit things manually. Of course, for those less familiar with html tags and .css the default options will let you “drop in” and go. The plugin has automatic tag insert for displaying a “container” on the full post page that will show what series it belongs to and other articles in the series. This can be altered or omitted entirely should you wish to display it elsewhere (ie. the sidebar). There are many more features of the plugin which I can’t fit here but, if you’re prone to writing long series and spending forever searching for the specific entries, you might find this is a plugin you just can’t live without.

Filed Under: Free Tips Tagged With: ,