Archive for December, 2007
How Many People Are Listening to What You Have to Say?
The best way to measure the influence of any blogger is readership (traffic). Thanks to companies like Feedburner and Alexa, we can measure readership statistics and trends. In fact, displaying RSS and traffic rank stats in a visible place on a blog is one of the best ways to advertise (and measure) the popularity of a site. Some might even argue that it’s a marketing technique that turns a popular blog into a REALLY popular blog overnight, as visitors subscribe in droves just to see what all the fuss is about. I have to admit that I find it totally fascinating in the geekiest possible way that a single person/blogger can develop a readership in the tens of thousands a DAY. Can you imagine 50 to 100 thousand people getting an email or a feed every single time you posted a thought or an idea? It’s difficult, if not impossible, to picture that many people in one physical space paying attention to one person. To put it in perspective, it’s the equivalent of an entire football stadium listening to one person sing the national anthem. Considering that the most popular blogs are posting daily, some of them multiple times a day, the “who’s-paying-attention” figures can be staggering.
Best Wordpress Designers: Michael Pollock, Solostream Webstudio
Michael Pollock is an influential force in the Wordpress community and is undoubtedly one of the most innovative and talented Wordpress Theme Designers on the web today. His impressive design portfolio includes popular sites like The Boy Genis Report and E-Auction Air. Not only are his themes expertly coded and visually stunning, they are versatile and packed with advanced functionality. His latest premium themes in particular are truly special - they come widget-ready and fully loaded with gravatar support, glider boxes, built-in site guides and mutiple layout options - prefect for bloggers, affiliate marketers and web designers looking to use them as templates for multiple sites.
A special thanks goes out to Michael, who designed and helped me customize this site, which is available for purchase and download here. For any of you looking to take your blog or website to the next level, Michael is a great resource who I would recommend to anyone.
You can find out more about Michael’s Wordpress Themes HERE.
Must Have Tool For Developers: The Ardvark Firefox Extension
Web developers and designers, rejoice. Welcome to your new favorite Firefox extension. The Aardvark extension offers, among other things, a new variation of the “View Source” command. It generates Javascript rather than HTML code. The Javascript code will then build the elements using “w3c DOM” techniques…a far, far better way to do things than, say, using inner HTML.
How It Works:
After installing the Firefox Extension and restarting, with a quick right click you “Start Ardvark” and you’re off. As you glide the mouse over the page, you will see a red rectangle framing each element under the cursor. You’ll also see a little yellow caption showing the HTML element type and its class or id if they exist - great for figuring out any wordpress CSS style coding.
Things You Can Do With Ardvark:
- See (only) what what you want - Clean up unwanted banners and surrounding ads prior to printing a page.
- Learn How Great Design is Done by Reverse Engineering a Page - See how the page is created, block by block. This is by far my favorite feature - especially when I find a really cool piece of java/dhtml that I’ve never seen before and want to know how it’s coded. You can get an exact snap of what the code looks like.
- View the source code of one or more elements
Don’t take my word for it - go and run the demo. If you’re a developer/designer, I promise, it’ll be love at first click.
Getting Started: Is An Online Business Right For You?
Starting up your own online venture can be extremely rewarding, but as with any business, there are pressures and challenges involved. Understanding what those challenges are, and readying yourself to deal with those pressures up front a great first step toward achieving success. It’s easy to be overcome with enthusiasm when you come across ads on the net like “Beach Bum Makes $235,000 From Laptop This Month” (which is a real, popular ad right now I’ve seen on many blogs). Don’t get me wrong, you should be excited an optimistic about possibilities like this, but keep your cool and maintain a level head. Rome was not built in a day. Even though monthly income like the one this ad is portraying is attainable, it’s not likely that you’ll get there in the first month. Most of the big money makers out there - the power bloggers, the super affiliates, the eBay powersellers etc. - have been online for years, have established networks and all have high levels of traffic. The most important thing in the beginning, though, is not to get discouraged and to stick with it. Every day that you learn a new technique, find a new tool or increase your RSS subscription is an opportunity to make more money. And if you’ve got a good idea, solid Search Engine Optimization and a good mix of Marketing Strategies, you can make SERIOUS money online very quickly and become a big dog yourself! If you’re new to making money online, the good news is that DigitalEntrepreneur.net is here to help. Subscribe today to our RSS feed or our free updates via email (see the link the right side bar) and start yourself on the path to learning how to start making real money online today. The shameless plug aside, here are some questions you may want answered before deciding that making the commitment to start an online Business is right for you…
What Is Digital Entrepreneurship?
For those readers wondering what Digital Entrepreneurship is exactly, I’ve created this short post with a few relevant links for people who want to do a little bit of research on the topic.
