Evernote Tips

Content creation can be tedious and expensive. That’s why it’s such a great idea to re-purpose everything you write or create. One idea (thanks to Susanne Myers of Daily Affiliate Tasks) is to re-use the content in our autoresponders. You can record them as audios or create PDF reports with them. The not so easy part especially if you’ve been in the business for a while is, to get all that content out of your autoresponder account. Some of our lists have been in existence for years and we have many lists. Big headache. We use Aweber. One great feature they have is the ability to export all your autoresonpder and broadcast messages too. The not so great part – you have to re-download regularly and there is no way to only download in increments. So you get the entire archive every time. If you are a prolific emailer, you’ll find your archive set getting outdated pretty quickly. Good thing there is another option and oh such a wonderfully simple one it is. Ready? Just subscribe your Evernote account to your lists. Inside each Evernote account, you can create your own private email address. Simply log in. Click on your

Read More→

Comments (2)

IFTTT… Little Bits of Automation Equals Awesome!

Thursday, March 29th, 2012
Robot

You know I believe in automation. Here’s another thing about automation I believe in. Small increments matter. That is why I use tools like RoboForm, auto typing software and tons of filters in Google Apps (Gmail). Now, I have another tool to add to my arsenal. ifttt. No, it’s not a typo. ifttt stands for “If This, Then That”. This little bit of logic is the basis of many software including plugins, themes, content management systems, your operating system and if you look clearly – in our everyday lives. How many times have you said things like, “If it rains then I’ll go later” or “If it is within our budget then we’ll do it”. Well, ifttt works on the same principle except it ties together many of the popular tools you find on the Internet. Here are some ways to use it. Usage #1 Let’s say you get alerts when someone mentions your name and you normally tweet or post to Facebook to promote these kind people’s content as a thank you for mentioning you. Using IFFT, you can automate it several ways. You can tell ifttt to automatically tweet or post the alert to Facebook. Or you can

Read More→

Comments (2)

Secure Your Blog With Two-Step Authentication

Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
Photo courtesy of duosecurity

In Gmail, when you enable 2-step authentication, each time you log in to your account via an unknown device or computer, you will be asked to enter a verification code that can be sent to your cell phone via SMS or good old fashioned phone call. The idea is to provide an extra security layer to verify you are the person logging into your account. My initial thought is, how secure can this be? After thinking through it a little, 2-step verification is perhaps as good as it gets for now. Why? Because a hacker sitting somewhere half way around the world is not likely to have my cell phone. So when they try to log in to my account, they are immediately presented with the code request, which is sent almost immediately to my cell. Without that, they cannot enter and I know at once someone is trying to log in to my account. Is it fool proof? Of course not. If there is a concerted effort like someone breaks into my office, steals all my logins and my cell phone. Yeah sure they can get into my email. Can people half way around the world hack my cell

Read More→

Comments (3)

Dummy Text Generators That Rock

Monday, March 12th, 2012
fillerati

All you who work on web design or development will eventually find a need to fill spaces and your CMSes with dummy content so you can see the effects of our tweaks and edits. Normally I’d go to Lipsum.com it’s one site I’ve visited over and over and does the job. Generate, copy and paste. Problem is, sometimes you want more like the text formatted with headings headings, bullets and stuff like that to mimic real content. Of course you can do that either through regular HTML or inside your CMS WYSIWYG editor but that takes time. I love finding ways to shave off time on stuff we have to do regularly so I’m quite happy to find these two dummy text generators. They each have their own strengths and will come handy depending on the task. Loripsum.net Fillerati

Comments (0)

Super Fast Opt-in Page Setup With WPSqueeze Pro

Monday, March 5th, 2012
WP Squeeze PRO Banner

It usually takes a lot to impress me when it comes to software and plugins then once in a blue moon comes a plugin that gets you really excited. Frankly, I didn’t expect to be excited about WP Squeeze Pro at all when it was demo’d to me in a webinar. Good thing I decided to pay attention – great lesson there, don’t write things off at first glance – and it was worth it. What Makes WP Squeeze Pro Different? Sometimes, I need to get opt-in pages setup lickety split so I can move on to other things. I don’t want to think about copywriting, I don’t want to be logging into Aweber to grab form codes, I don’t want to mess with design options like adding images, page widths, font types or add a gazillion testimonials. Don’t get me wrong. Those can be important in the long run. Good copy obviously helps with conversions and so does the right design. However, there are times you need to throw something up fast and tweak later. This is where WP Squeeze Pro shines. It lets me get it all set up super fast with very little tweaking. My copy may not

Read More→

Comments (0)

What Do Your Business Cards Look Like? Here’s Ours

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
my-business-cards

Design, graphics *sigh* what can I say? I’m just no good at them and when it comes to business cards… let’s not even go there. In the past I’ve always opted for the uninspired plain old boring white card with a dash or color in the text perhaps and some cheesy art that the card printer suggests. I’ve gone as far as adding a photo to my cards and that’s about it. Then… I found MOO! I’d spend hours just admiring those beautiful cards. Take a look at these. Aren’t they gorgeous? Question is, can I the geek and just about anyone who is design challenged make such lovely creations? You see, one of my problems with business cards is, I do so many things within technology. How can I pack all that in a card? Seriously, it hurts when I have to tell people “I make websites” because what I do is way, way beyond that. I decided to try. There’s something about MOO that gives birth to inspiration. The grand idea – use word clouds. I headed over to Tagxedo. You can use Wordle too but I like Tagxedo better because you can make shapes out of your words.

Read More→

Comments (0)
Air Sketch

After a long day this week, I decided to tear myself away from the desk but alas, there was preparation for our tech training class to be done. So, I pulled out the iPad, got cozy on the bed and fired up two apps. The Tools One of them – believe it or not – is an app I bought for my daughter. It’s called Drawing Pad. She absolutely adores it and despite my challenge with drawing and graphics I love doodling on it too. The other is AirSketch. This one is a work tool. AirSketch is essentially a whiteboard type application but it has a neat feature that allows you to broadcast your whiteboard locally so anyone in your office can just pull up a web browser, type in the IP address for the app and voila! Everything you draw or write shows up on their browser. It is so very cool. The How How can these two apps replace PowerPoint? Remember, I said I was not working on the computer but I still wanted something that look like slides. Step One Using Drawing Pad, I loaded a fun background and used a brush to write my slide heading.

Read More→

Comments (4)

Generate Image Placeholders On The Fly

Friday, January 13th, 2012
Placeholder blue

A lot of web work require graphics but I’m so graphically challenged it’s not funny. So it’s always a problem when you need a mock up for your own work or clients and don’t have something to put in its place to indicate there is a graphic coming soon. Today I found a tool to solve that. Woo hoo! It’s very flexible. You can change the colors, size, add text all on the fly. Below are some placeholder images generated. Check out, bookmark and use Placehold.it.

Comments (0)

Making Affiliate Deep Links Available In aMember

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012
URL

According to Wikipedia… “Deep Linking is making a hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on a web site instead of the home page” A real live example is in the paragraph above. I just deep linked to Wikipedia so you will land on the exact page explaining this term. You may not even think twice about it when you’re on blogs and other people’s site. You may even be actively doing it because it helps make your content rich and relevant. Deep linking is also good to establish usability. The last thing you want to do when creating content is to frustrate readers and make them search for the page or item you’re referring to. People expect logical continuity when they click on a link. As an affiliate, I always love it when marketers allow me to use deep links to their content and still cookie my referral. It makes me want to talk about that program, their content and link to their stuff everywhere in all types of content I create – videos, blog posts, reports, tools, landing pages etc. In short – deep linking is good for you and your affiliate. Many shopping cart and

Read More→

Comments (0)

WP Sales Letter Review

Friday, September 23rd, 2011
WP Sales Letter Web Site

It seems like there are so many sales letter and landing page themes and plugins popping up everywhere. One of the latest to join the fray is WP Sales Letter. What attracted me to it is The headline, guarantee, opening text, PS suggestions. You won’t believe how much I struggle with these It can work with my existing theme (or most themes) Pre-Written Copy Suggestions The moment I got my hands on it, I ran a quick test and managed to cobble up a landing page in 15 minutes. Obviously, I’d need a lot more time when writing a real opt-in or sales page. However, I can already see how much it will speed up this process for me. You need to understand that for me, writing a sales page even a simple landing page is like asking me to jump off a cliff. The result – big time procrastination and that’s never good. With copy suggestions, the plugin helped me start and re-start my thought process as I work through the different sections a landing page should address. It is like a little nudge to keep me going. That is just as important as getting started – to keep

Read More→