Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Start a free newsletter for your blog

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As I mentioned at least once before, I’ve noticed that a number of people have been registering on this blog. This is the only blog I have set up where people are able to register as a member. However, up until now I didn’t really have a good way to keep in touch with members of Tricia’s Musings.

Instead of registering as a member of Tricia’s Musings through the WordPress Interface, why not register to become a member of a blog email newsletter instead?

Zookoda has created an easy way for bloggers to keep in touch with their readers, and that is the program that I think I’m going to use on this and likely my other sites. With Zookoda I’ll be able to send daily, weekly or even monthly summaries of my latest posts directly to my visitors. It’s a free service, so I might as well give it a try.

I’ve discovered that by using the Zookoda email newsletter subscription program I’ll be able to manage my subscribers easily, as well as schedule regular broadcasts by day, week or month.

What I like about Zookoda is that I’ll also be able to customize my newsletter so that it will match my blog design, as well as create a customized newsletter subscription form. Mobile users can get their newsletters in text form which will keep the cost for those receiving mobile text messages down.

I have registered for an account with Zookoda and I’ll be setting up a subscription form for the new Tricia’s Musings Newsletter on this site. I’ll update this post when I’ve set up the newsletter so that interested visitors can sign up. Don’t worry. I don’t think that I’ll send out a daily newsletter, but one every two weeks or once a month with summaries of the best posts that I’ve made during that time period may serve as a nice reminder for people to come back and visit.

I think this is a great way of promoting your site, and getting those who only visit every once in a while to return more often.

Sites that provide content, but aren’t in blog format can also use this as a way of keeping in touch with their site visitors too. I might even set this up for my two websites. Oh dear, I’ll soon have 10 newsletters to maintain!

I hope that my favorite bloggers decide to set up their own newsletter through Zookoda too. I’ll sign up. I will. I promise.





Check out my box widget

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widget.jpg
I just added a nice new widget to my side bar. Do you see it over there on the left? It’s the green Box.net Widget. I can upload anything from podcasts, videos, music, photos or any other type of file that I want into my Box.net account and then display it using the Box.net widget in my sidebar.

All of the files that I upload will be hosted at Box.net where I can upload as much as 1gb of files for free. That’s a lot of space. Box.net also gives you unlimited bandwidth when using their widget. Which means that popular sites that get a lot of traffic will always have a widget that can be viewed by their visitors. The widget can be used on blogs, myspace, and I suppose any website where you can use Flash code as the widget box is a flash player.

Setting up the widget was very easy. I simply went to the widget page where I was asked to upload files that I’d like to use in my widget. I decided which of my files to upload, inputted my email address and a password, and then the page went to work uploading my files onto box.net. A short time later the files had been uploaded and the page changed to show me my personal widget code.

The standard widget box is two tone black, but you can customize the box with a color and title of your choosing. The color choices are black, dark blue orange and green. Obviously I chose green for my widget.

I discovered that you can also adjust the size of the box widget. The default size is 289 px wide, but my sidebars are narrow so I simple changed the width size until it fit into my sidebar nicely. Unfortunately you can’t see the full title that I gave my box widget now. I had named it Tricia’s stuff however it now says Tricia’s … Box. Maybe I should come up with another name? Many of you have much wider sidebars than I do so it’s unlikely that you’d have to change any of the coding, but it’s nice to know that you can change the size without making the box look odd.

I’ve only uploaded a few photos at this time but I think I might add some of my favorite music. Don’t worry it’s not auto-play. you have to click on the music title before it will begin to play the song of your choice.

I really like my new widget box. Perhaps I’ll upload different things each week for my readers to discover?

What are Pointless Directives?

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I’m beginning to get a very good idea what Pointless Directives are after reading Fabs newest blog. Yes it’s called Pointless Directives and it’s … well … full of directives that are kind of strange.

You really have to read a few posts to understand what I mean.

Fab is a humorous guy and his posts will make you giggle. At the end of his Directive posts you’ll find a directive – some silly little thing that you should do that’s tied into whatever the topic of the post was about. He often tells his readers to do some pretty strange things.

If you like a good laugh head on over to Pointless Directives.

Linky Love – Skeet’s Stuff

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My friend Skeet, a fellow postie, just took the big plunge and moved her site from blogspot over to her brand new domain. She’s a domain virgin but she’s learning quickly.

I always enjoy reading her site, and just about any thing she writes on the forums. She’s a good hearted soul and it shows in her writing style.

On Saturday I was visiting her site and after reading one of her recent posts re-confirmed all of the reasons why I don’t like eating peanut butter. My regular readers should know by now that I dislike peanut butter and her post added another reason as to why I won’t eat the stuff. You should read about her experience as it does contain some important information.

You’d think that having worked in an all male field when I was a jeweler, and now working as a nurse in one of the busiest Emergency departments in Canada that I would have heard all of the dirty words ever invented, but there’s one that my new friend is very familiar with that I had never heard before. Perhaps it’s just not as popular in Canada as it is in the US.

So what’s the word? Well it’s Skeet. Yes, my friends nickname just happens to also be a dirty word in some circles. She actually just found out that skeet is used as a dirty word recently (just Google it), and was quite surprised since this is not only her childhood nickname, but a very common name in the Southern States. To understand how she came to be called Skeet you should read “Skeet is not a dirty word”. It’s a good read, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Please do give Skeet a visit and tell her that Tricia sent you. She’s a great writer and I’m certain that many of you will enjoy her writing style and outlook on life.

ETrafficJams gets your site into the top 10 search results

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Search engine optimization, or SEO as it’s known, becomes extremely important to business owners when they begin an online venture.

Certainly any smart website owner practices some form of search engine optimization and works towards getting their sites listed in the big search engines as well as online directories who’s categories fit with the websites topic.

Online businesses quickly learn how important being at the top of the search engine lists for their particular search terms can be if they want to make money. Many turn to companies such as eTraffic Jams for their SEO needs.

ETrafficJams specializes in getting it’s clients websites into the top 10 rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

If you’d like to know just how well ETrafficJams does for it’s clients you only need to take a look at the results that FurnitureESuperStore.com received when they started working with ETrafficJams.

FurnitureESuperStore.com is an online furniture store. The store manager was unhappy with the results that the online store received from another SEO company that they had used in the past and claimed that they spent a lot of money, but didn’t see the results that they desired. Their sales and rankings on the search engines actually dropped.

It was at that time that the store manager knew they had to work with a company that was a “Pay for Performance” provider. Of course that’s exactly what ETrafficJams is – you don’t pay if they fail to get you into the top 10 rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

The online stores manager, Brent Edger, was please with the results that he got when they used Etrafficjams. The store now has 30 different keywords that are in the top 5 search terms, and 50 keywords that are in the top 10. Those are amazing results!

As a result of having so many keywords within the top 5 and top 10 search terms FurnitureESuperStore has seen a 161% increase in traffic that can be directly attributed to visits via the top search engines. This increase in traffic has obviously benefited the company with an increase in sales.

So, if you are looking to promote your website on the search engines and want to see your site coming up in the top 10 for your websites main keywords give ETrafficJams a try.

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