This post is for my new blogger friends and associates. I get asked from time to time about blog commenting protocol or manners. This is old stuff for the veterans out there.

Here are my thoughts.

If someone comes to your blog and comments and also leaves a url to their blog or web site in a signature under that post - that is acceptable - maybe. It is one way to use blogs help boost your blog or web site and build back links legitimately...BUT BUT BUT...it depends on the publisher.

Some publishers don't allow links like that and some do. More often than not, people just post comments and the comment system sign in captures the e-mail address or url. I recommend that if people want to leave a url back to their site as they comment that they first check the blog they ...   more »

Please note that you will not be able to access this site between 7pm to 8pm EST. Blogware.com is growing! There is a scheduled maintenance window during that time.

Thanks for your patience.

The Triple Threat Content Publishing Model
Blogs, RSS and Podcasting are the triple threat of the digital explosion that is upon us. The next wave of online marketing and promotion will be multi-channel and micro-niched and DISTRIBUTED.

If there is one thing that we should be learning about this movement of new media publishing model of "publish" and "broadcast" is that we have to reach out to our markets and meet them where they are as well as draw them in.

But drawing costumers in requires a message that is more than a sales page and reaching them where they are requires a dialogue instead of a marketing message.

Additional Streams of Internet Income
Additional revenue "streams" will be a literal fact of the Internet as content creators produce content and create value through a multiple community centric ...   more »

Welcome to this addition of BlogBack! Radio
Running Time: ~18 minutes
File Size: ~16MB

In this installment I ask "Are you planning to create blog success?"

Listen to these quit tips on planning your blog before launching your blog as well as a couple of mistakes to avoid as you get started.

Learn how you can help me and win a $25 gift certificate from Amazon.com.

Also:

Learn how you can help me with a couple more projects I'm working on!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

sponsored link
RSS AutoPublisher
Broadcast messages and deliver scheduled and follow-up messages to your subscribers via RSS

NicheBot - Keyword Ranking Tool

StatCounter.com
A free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. Insert a simple piece of our code on your web page and you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time!

Resources not mentioned is the episode:

sponsored link
Mike the Internet Audio Guy
Simply one of the best guys with the best equipment and information to help you with your podcasts!

Podcast Articles from How To Blog for Fun and Profit
Here's the rundown on several articles that I've written that mention Podcast or Podcasting or directly talks about it. Check them out and see if there is anything in here that can help you. :-)

How To Listen To This Podcast
If you don't have a media aggregator or FeedDemon to use to subscribe to this podcast with, no worries. Just click the attachment, more>>> link or the permalink link in this post and you will see the text link for this mp3 podcast. You can click that and the podcast will play right there in your browser. How's that for easy listening? :-)
==========================
[UPDATED 02.21.2005 1:37PM EST]

Thanks for listening!

Okay, I know I'm always blogging about blogging. I think an Off-Topic category for short musings could be useful. I promise that navel gazing will be a random event.

Now...is it me or is Googles GMail service simply very, very good and filtering spam and Phishing emails.

Ultimately the spam begins. I've been on GMail for just a few months. I've only had one friendly email fall into the spam filter. Not bad.

I got a phishing email from someone pretending to be PayPal and of course asking that I update my account details. Now I know we've heard a lot about this and I believe not enough people still know or are guard themselves against it. I do look out for them but I don't get phished for often...actually only two times with this one being my second. Now this email I got was filtered by GMail and the malicous link and code automatically removed. Sure, filters and such on the back end but I just could not help thinking about how many mom and pop users on GMail were spared exposure to being tricked and robbed. Nice.

Trackbacking testing.

Jim Edwards and I were doing some trackback testing with an online training application that I'm testing. He kindly allowed me to send him an irrelevant trackback. But Jim Edwards is a no-nonsense entrepreneure and Internet marketer. He's is not a hype man. He delivers great content and useful products to help you run your online business. So instead of making this a completely useless post I've edited it to give it some degree of usefulness.

Thanks Jim. The testing went perfectly. It should work well for our training objectives.

[UPDATED 01.18.2005 10:52AM EST]

Let's talk about how to create blog traffic success. This is a questions I'm ask about all the time and with good reason. Your success rises and falls on traffic to your blog. No online business survives without traffic that buys.

Back in January I published an article entitled Social Marketing Optimization. That article gives some background for what I'm writing here and I believe it is a very important aspect of blogging to keep in mind if you are to create blog success.

Blogs have been referred to as next-generation marketing tools because of their powerful influence. The Church of Customer published and excellent article on citizen marketers who generate media on behalf of products and services.

These citations refer to aspects of market conversations that mark the new online marketing landscape.

It is important to note that ...   more »

Blog design is a very important part of branding your customers and prospects for repeat visits and repeat business. Since blogs are relationship tools as well your blog can be even more effective at deliver your message as a brand simultaneously. Blogs can do excel by simply provide great content to interested audience but most bloggers who publish with regularly do give considerable thought to layout and design as element for building site popularity and stickiness.

Most blog software or subscription-based blog hosting sites like BlogHarbor offer default templates. Host services will offer a range of templates from basic to more advanced. On the other than standalone blog software like WordPress and Movable Type offer just a default template with many fan and support sites providing templates that you can easily load up by using modified Cascading Style Sheets.

...   more »

Well sort of and not exactly...Here's the story...my Friend Paul Chaney and Susie Gardner have started a line of fun Bloggerwear called ...well... what else...BLOGGERWEAR!.

Bloggerwear is a complete line of fun T-shirts, bags and baby items just for bloggers.

Got a blog? Do you get questions all the time about how to create blogs? Are you a professional blogger or looking to become one? Do you just blog for the passion and fun?

Show your blogger pride and support while having a little fun and get yourself some blogging gear at Bloggerwear.

Hey, everyone's talking about blogging right? Blogging is one the top trends for 2005. If you are blogging in any fashion your trendsetting.

Why not grab some trendy BloggerWear? Promote your love and passion for blogging.

This is really great stuff with more to come. :-)

[UPDATED 02.12.05 11:45PM EST]

FeedDemon is an RSS reader and RSS aggregator for microsoft windows.

I've been a user of FeedDemon for quite awhile now. There are many RSS readers on the market and most of them are free and for free software several of them in my opinion do their jobs well. FeeDemon is a bit more special however. FeedDemon is not a free RSS reader. It will cost you $29.95 to own but it is worth every single penny.

For those of you who don't know, FeedDemon is created by Nick BradBury of Bradbury Software. Nick was responsible for the HTML editor Homesite that I was also a big fan of way back earlier days of the Internet when the race was on for HTML publishing tools and editors. Nick had great success with Homes as it was bought by Allaire which ...   more »

Blogging for business is a hot topic right now and interest in using blogs for business and marketing continues to grow. I get frequently asked questons about how to create blog success for business and marketing. I wanted to publish a few here.

1.What are blogs and how are they different from web sites?

Blogs are identified with different names to signify their impact on media and marketing communications. Names such as social tools, citizen generated media, participatory journalism, word of mouth, online journals and more.

Blogs are dynamic web sites that publish content easily, instantly and frequently.

Web sites excel at publishing static content as web page for the purpose of getting your most wanted response whether that response is a direct sale, a sales lead or click to another site or page. Web sites are rather impersonal ...   more »

Based on my recently published post about the RSS Submit software, John Hesch who also publishes the Blogging Pro blog asks the question about the difference between blog and rss directory submission versus ping updates. Is one better than the other? Are both necessary?

He asks a great question I've given my reply but I'd also like to from others on this topic as well. Will you join our disussion?

Click Here

Here's are great article from SignOnSanDiego.com which talks about the changing advertising and marketing landscape and how blogs are amplifying the power of the consumer in controller marketing messages.   more »

Sometimes a piece of software comes along that just plain makes certain tasks really simple. RSS feed marketing and promotion is part of and overall blog promotion strategy for communicating your content to targeted audiences across and broad range of content sources.

RSS Submit is a Windows software tool that allows you to submit your RSS feed to a number of directories at once with the click of a button. This tool is easy to use and must have piece of software for your blog promotion and RSS feed submission efforts.

Blogs and RSS are a powerful publishing (blog) and broadcasting (RSS feeds) tool set for content distribution. RSS marketing and promotion is extremely powerful because of the potential traffic you can generate to your blog.

Blogs matter because they are not just standard web publishing tools. Blogs also ...   more »

Robin Good reports on how to submit your RSS feed to MSN Search. Very good article and must read for all blog and RSS publishers alike.

Microsoft went live with the New MSN Search this past week.

Google provides the lions share of search engine traffic to this blog but my Daily Success Motivation and Positive Thinking blog has seen an explosion of traffic from MSN for top keywords since the new MSN Search went officially live last week. Google was the primary source of search traffic for that blog but now it's almost 50/50 between MSN and Google. The good thing is that my results in MSN are much, much better than what they were before.

Check out this article by Robin Good. He discusses the relationship the New MSN Search has with Moreover for getting your content and ...   more »