Never in my life have I seen more bugs than I have since I’ve relocated.  It could be my attempt to adjust that has inspired a few guest posts that I’ve written recently, or I could just be plain crazy – who knows which it is really.  :)  Read more »

Would you like to increase the time that readers spend on your site?  Well, there is an application that I use on my blog, that has improved the time readers spend on my site.  The application is the Apture Bar. Read more »

Guest post by Eric Rea

Once your blog has built up some traffic, you’ve probably considered accepting paid advertising. I’m all for paid advertising – as long as it helps both you and your readers out. Read more »

One of the common pages found on business blogs is a Recommended Reading page. In theory, it’s a great idea, and many consultants and business owners are on the right path when they ask for advice on how to monetize those lists.

My advice is to think beyond Amazon affiliate links. Creating a huge list of books linked to Amazon is okay, but there are better and more effective ways to entice people to buy the books. Here are a few creative ideas that you could quickly put into place. Read more »

I recently logged into my Sponsored Tweets account, and for the first time, I saw a long list of open opportunities, all of which would be paid by the click. I really didn’t get all that excited at first until I submitted a few offers.

Some of the offers were from previous advertisers I’ve written for, so I went ahead and accepted them without much thought.

Some received a click or two, nothing that would make me rich, but the more I thought about it, I realized those clicks could add up to more than what I charge for sending out one tweet from a traditional offer.  Read more »

Last week Brian announced the re-opening of the community’s ad sharing program. Bloggers who add their Google Adsense publisher ID to their profile and then submit their stories have a 50% chance of having their ads viewed and clicked. Read more »

In The Experience Economy, Joseph Pine and James Gilmore argued that in an era when consumers were more sophisticated than ever before, it was no longer enough to meet their needs with commodities, goods, or services.  They argued that to compete in the modern era, you had to make their interaction with your business an experience, compelling enough to be memorable such that the memory itself becomes the product.  They relied heavily (and convincingly, in 1999 anyway) on examples from Disney, Starbucks, and Nordstrom to make their case. Read more »

I’ve sent out over 20,000 tweets since getting started on Twitter. Exactly three of them have been sponsored (via Sponsored Tweets). Each carried a disclosure of some kind and I earned a total of $23 from those tweets. But some feelings kept nagging me, so I erred on the side of caution and de-activated my account… and I’d like to tell you why (whether you care or not).

First, I don’t think you should avoid sponsored tweets solely on the basis of what I say. There’s a good, healthy debate going on within the Twitter community and that debate should probably continue. Therefore, I’m actually going to state some points to the contrary of where I’m really going with my thoughts.

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Who likes spam? Personally, I love it, seared in a pan with mayo on fresh bread with a slice of pepper jack! That’s one reason to be careful with the word spam. It’s pretty good stuff, and if everything washes away or burns up in December of 2012, the few who survive could live off of a stockpile of spam for quite some time.

Obviously, in the world of the internet, the word spam has come to refer to unsolicited commercial emails. There are rules about spam, and rightly so. I’m as opposed to spammy practices as anybody, but I also have another pet peeve and that is when people abuse the word spam, applying it to almost anything they don’t particularly like. For example…

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About a week ago, I downloaded and installed the MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate plugin on two of my blogs, and I’m totally sold on it. I wanted to pass along not only the recommendation, but a few reasons why I like it so much…

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