Website Promotion

Comment Relish- the WP plugin that greets new commentors

August 10, 2008 by Tricia

What would you think if I added a plugin to my site that would keep track of new commenter and send them a personal greeting?

The plugin is Comment Relish and it identifies new commentors and allows the blog owner to automatically send out a pre-defined message to that new visitor.

With so many new blogs being created daily sometimes you need an edge to grab that first time visitor or well in this case commentors attention. They’ve already like what you posted enough to leave a comment. Why not send them a greeting welcoming them to your site and thanking them for their visit? While you’re at it you could also list your RSS feed and email newsletter subscription link or possibly introduce your new visitor/commentor to another similar blog that you write.

I need your opinion

If you were a first time visitor to this site and you received a warm welcome visa email that also promoted the sites RSS feed and newsletter would you appreciate the message or be ticked off that you got yet another unwanted email? Mind you, this would be a one time email.

My other concern with this plugin, or well for that matter any new WP plugin that I add to my site is whether it will be a CPU hog on my hosting account. A plugin that makes too many calls to the MySQL database or behaves poorly in other ways can get your hosting account shut down as fast as a blink of the eye! I’ve had hosting problems in the past (not with current web host – Hostgator – thankfully!) and I don’t want those issues revisited just because I tried to enhance my visitors experience with a new WP plugin.

If you’ve used or if you currently use this plugin I’d love to hear from you.
Have you had any problems with this plugin?
How do your visitors like it?
Is your site fairly busy or do you have a number of other sites on your hosting account (this is where hosting issues come in on shared hosting accounts)?

Please help me decide whether I should use this plugin or if you know of another one that does something similar (but definitely doesn’t cause problems) please let me know which one you use.

I don’t get twitter?

July 31, 2008 by Tricia

I like Twitter and I can see the benefits of using Twitter both socially and as a way to promote blog posts, websites or special events but I’m puzzled by the people that I see constantly using twitter.

I follow quite a few people on Twitter and I use the TwitterFox extension in my Firefox browser so that I can see all of the most recent tweets as they happen. Some people barely tweet (me), others only tweet a few times a day at most and then there are the constant Tweeters.

I see some people posting Tweets from 5 in the morning until late at night – sometimes as late as 2 or 3 in the morning. Some of these people must do one hundred or more tweets a day.

I just see it as a time waster.

Perhaps that stems from me having so many blogs, websites, blogrolls and mailing lists to manage that I barely have time to answer emails or reply to comments (bad bad blogger!), but I think it also stems from my past experiences with Chat.

Back in the late 90’s when I only had websites and ran mailing lists I got involved with a group of friends. We spent several hours each day chatting online. I’d work all day, getting up at 5:30 in the morning, come home from work and check my email, perhaps check the chat room and try to make dinner as I multitasked. Then when my husband would get home from work we’d have dinner and perhaps watch a TV show or two, but by 9:30 or 10 pm I was back online chatting with my friends as we had a standing talk time. I’d stay online sometimes until 4 in the morning falling into bed to sleep for only an hour and a half.

This went on for months, perhaps even as long as a year. In the end I was exhausted all the time and not very productive at work. Considering that I’m a nurse that’s probably not the greatest thing right?

I realized that spending so much time on line was affecting pretty much all aspects of my life so I shut it all down and stopped chatting. I still ran my website and mailing lists and continued to answer something like 400 emails a day, but I also got my life back – well mostly.

These days I have accounts at all the main I.M. sites – Yahoo, MSN, AIM and so on, but I don’t use my accounts. I never chat. I guess I’m afraid I’ll get hooked on it again and waste too much time – time that I just don’t have anymore.

So as I watch these people Tweet all day I wonder if they are falling into the same trap that I did. I know some of these people have multiple blogs as well as children and jobs. Are they neglecting important aspects of their lives as they send out all those tweets?

So … Do you have a tweet account? If you do, how do you use it? Are you becoming a tweetaholic or do you only tweet occasionally when you have something important to pass on or to promote a new blog post? ( Same question could apply to Plurk I guess.)

Design your own Logo and Business cards

May 29, 2008 by Tricia

If you’ve been thinking of creating business cards to promote your website, online business or company you might want to visit LogoYes.

I just tried out the free logo design demo on their site and within just a few minutes I had created a logo for Tricia’s Musings. Take a look at what I created:

It was easy! LogoYes has a simple step by step proceedure that’s foolproof. You can even go back a step or two if you change your mind about what you are creating!

The first step is to choose the type of image you want your logo to portray – High-tech, bold and flair are the three choices. I picked flair for my logo style.

Once you’ve selected your style you’ll need to decide which industry your business or website falls into. This is a fairly general blog that discusses a number of topics so I had a bit of trouble choosing my “industry”. I eventually decided to go with health and beauty as I discuss health topics quite often.

Step three involved picking a symbol (image) from my industry of choice to use in my logo. As you can see I picked a flower bouquet. There is a wide variety of images to choose from so you’ll be sure to find a symbol that will depict your website or business quite well.

Step four and five were the most fun steps. This is where you can chose the colors of your logo and add text to it as well. I choose to simple add the name of my blog – Tricia’s Musings. I then decided to make the bouquet a red color and matched the text of Tricia’s Musings as closely in color as I could to the main green colors of my blog.

What you see above is the logo I created.

I then went on to create a simple business card by going through two additional steps:

Now i have a logo for my site that closely matches the style of my blog. This of course is known as branding. If I order these business cards those who visit my site after receiving a card will see that the cards colors and logo are similar to that of the site.

I’m quite pleased with how my logo and business card turned out.

LogoYes also does custom Logo Design so if you can’t find a Do It Yourself logo that works well for your company you can inquire about having a custom logo made for your business.

This was actually a fun process to go through. Anyone could design their own logo using a system such as this. Give it a try.

Double or triple your Adsense Earnings with Adsense Secrets 4.0

April 25, 2008 by Tricia

Normally I don’t write posts quite like this, but I’m excited about this product and I hope that you will be too! Read on to see why I’m so excited.

About a week ago Adsense Guru, Joel Comm, came out with the fourth edition of his best selling e-book Adsense Secrets.

The last edition of this best seller was in 2006 and if you’ve been following and or using Adsense on your sites you know that they’ve introduced a lot of changes since that time. Adsense Secrets 4.0 has been updated with all the changes up to early 2008.

Normally Joel sells this e-book for $97 – most feel it’s worth much more than that of course as many have said that once they started implementing some of the suggestions from his book their Adsense earnings doubled, tripled and more.

Joel has been increasing successful with his own sites since 2004 and has been happy to share what he’s learned. He’s been thanked many times over in the last four years for the knowledge he’s passed on and he wants to do something special to say thank you to his followers and those new to his products.

For a limited time, Joel is offering AdSense Secrets v4.0 to you for just $9.95!

This book is the definitive guide to making money with AdSense and it is the only book you ever need to master AdSense. Joel regularly earns $500/day or more in passive Adsense income and there’s no reason why you can’t as well.

I’m not sure how long Joel will generously be offering this Adsense Secrets e-book for the low price of $9.95 – so don’t hesitate for too long!

I went to his site and instantly downloaded my copy a few days ago. I do ok with Adsense – I certainly use it on all of my sites, but I know I could do better.

I haven’t had a lot of spare time to go over the whole book, but I already made one or two changes to my sites Adsense wise and I’ve seen a slight improvement in earnings. Over the weekend I’ll be implementing more of Joel’s suggestions and I hope to at least see my Adsense earnings double. Certainly the changes that I’ve already made will pay for the e-book!

One thing I must tell you is that when Joel introduced is updated Adsense Secrets 4.0 last week there was a bit of a glitch in how things were set up. You see, his sales page is long and along with selling visitors his Adsense Secrets for $9.95 purchases were also asked to opt into a monthly newsletter called The Top 1% Report. The monthly cost of this newsletter is $29.95 and when you opt in you’ll get your first issue along with a Free Bonus CD filled with more secrets absolutely free.

Most people didn’t notice the opt in earlier in the week and if they might be surprised when they get a bill of $29.95 a month from now on their credit card.

Don’t worry … he’s changed things around. He makes it clear now. When you get to the end of his sales pitch page you have two options.

The first option is for the Adsense Secrets 4.0 e-book for $9.95 and the first month of his newsletter free (plus free bonus CD). It says:

“I understand that I will have an opportunity to read and enjoy my free issue before you bill me $29.95 for the next issue, and that I can easily reach you to cancel at any time! “

As it says in the offer you can get your free stuff and then decide to opt out without ever paying more than just the $9.95 for the e-book.

The second option is for Adsense Secrets 4.0 and nothing more.

You can select whichever one you prefer and then proceed to the checkout.

When I purchased my copy of the e-book I knew about this controversy. He hadn’t changed the links yet to make the options obvious but there was still a way to opt out at the checkout.

I decided to get the free Top 1% Newsletter and free bonus CD and then decide once I receive them whether to opt out and not be billed a monthly fee for further newsletters.

In future updates as to how my implementation of Adsense Secrets I’ll let you know how good the newsletter is and whether I decided to continue to receive it or not.

Finally joined Entrecard

April 25, 2008 by Tricia

Well I finally got around to joining Entrecard. I started yesterday and I’m happy to say that I’ve already seen an increase in visitors.

Of course to get visitors you also need to go around and visit other sites too. In my travels I’ve found some very interesting blogs. Right now I’m slowly going through the blogs listed in the Home and Garden category and I’m pleased to see that many of them are truly garden related.

I suppose I’ll eventually get some of my other sites listed in Entrecard, but I’ve only listed this one so far. If you’re visiting this site in response to my visit from Entrecard and you have a garden blog be sure to check out As the Garden Grows – that’s my garden blog.

The only frustrating thing about Entrecard that I’ve found so far is that if you’re like me and you have more than one blog – or a ton! and you’d like to list more than one site at Entrecard you have to set up a new account for each site. I’d love it if they’d allow you to list more than one site in an account.

Have you joined Entrecard yet?

BTW – Don’t forget to check out my Entrecard advertiser. My badge is just to the left in the sidebar. Todays renter is one of my new blogging friends. She has two blogs. I featured her main blog Roxiticus Desperate Housewives yesterday and now I have her Roxiticus Best Blogs site up.

I’ve already got renters/advertisers set up into May! I think Entrecard is going to keep me busy … as if I’m not already busy enough!

If you’re new here please stop and say hi. I don’t bite!

I don’t get twitter?

Design your own Logo and Business cards

Finally joined Entrecard

Meta

Search this site

Blogs I Visit

Meta

Search this site

Tags

Blogs I Visit