Blogging

New Definition for the idano.net Blog – A Blog Network Portal

Posted on May 7, 2008

This is not the first time that I written a post with this same basic theme. I have changed the purpose of this website more times then I can remember. Really this domain name is the one that started it all for me. It was my first personal website that I had. Over time it was gone through several different variations and purposes but I think it has finally landed on its true purpose in life – A rollup for all the the rest on my sites.

Yep, as of today the idano Blog Network is born. This website will now be the portal to all the rest of the websites and blogs that both my wife and I manage which we are now giving the title of a “Network”. The idea here is that through this website a visitor may be able to discover other sites that are apart of our network.

I will blog here about updates to and around the network and hopefully give some good advise and insite into the world of blogging that will be helpful to others. I have definitely gained some expereince in the last couple of year blogging and I am more then willing to share the knowledge I have gained.

At this time we are not accepting other sites or authors into our network but that could definately change in the future.

Look for more updates to the site and the network in the days and weeks to come!

Sometimes You Shoot Yourself in the Foot and Don’t Realize It Until Later (Affiliate Marketing)

Posted on November 30, 2007

doh I have been having a phenomenal month with Amazon.com due to a couple of RC Helicopter Reviews that I did for Air Hogs Havoc Heli and Air Hogs Laser Battle. I have search engine results for both and current have over a 20% conversion rate for people who click through to Amazon.

There was another helicopter that I reviewed called the Air Hogs Reflex . My review of this helicopter was not as positive as the other two reviews. On top of that I did not place a link to the Reflex on Amazon but instead to the Havoc. I did this because at the time I thought the Havoc was better then the Reflex.

Since the review I got my hands on some other heli’s and also another Reflex. I was pleasantly surprised with the Reflex and it was much better then I remembered it was. The problem was that I never updated my review with my newly acquired experience.

Today I logged into my Google Analytics account and noticed that my Reflex review was number 3 after the other 2 heli reviews. The Reflex review was pulling in over 10% of the traffic that my site was getting but I was getting zero sales from it :-( . I had been sitting on my more positive view of the product for a couple of months and now realized that I was paying the price for it.

Needless to say I quickly updated my review and provided the appropriate links for BOTH helicopters mentioned in the review. I may have missed a chunk or change for this month but hopefully December is just as good for me.

There’s the Reflex on Amazon to the right if you want to check it out.

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Making Links in Posts from iPhone in WordPress

Posted on October 1, 2007

In my last post I was complaining about not being able to add links to posts from my iPhone. I was thinking about it again this morning (among the other limitations of the iPhone) when I remembered “hey, I know HTML”. Yes, that is right, I can hand code the link (oh the horror!).

So here it goes, a link to somewhere – digg.com.

Wow, that was some work. I thing a popup would still be nice. The iPhone does support JavaScipt afterall.

Mobile Admin Plugin for WordPress is Awsome

Posted on September 27, 2007

It finally happened. Someone came out with a plugin so that you can comfortably blog from your iPhone. Jared Bangs and Dan Cameron put the work in and now I can finally blog from anywhere.

With the plugin I can assign categories, manage comments and a whole bunch of other things also. There are only 2 things that it does not do which I wish that it did. One is that I was I could insert links and two is that I wish I could insert pictures.

Oh well, this is version 1.0 so hopefully they can trick the iPhone into

Posting a Photo from the iPhone

Posted on September 18, 2007

photo.jpg

Well I found out the hard way that WordPress does not support posting photos via their post by email function.

I did a little searching and found the Postie plugin that allows you to do so ( sorry I cannot provide a link – the iPhone doesn’t have a way to do so).
Anyway, this is cool because now I can blog from anywhere.
Now to go get it setup on my other blogs…
- This was sent via my iPhone, please excuse any typos.

Text Links Ads – Cleaning Up The Code for Prime Time

Posted on June 12, 2007

wrench_1.jpgI just got done doing a round of maintenance on the various blogs that I have. The main reason for the work was that I had been approved to sell links on those blogs through Text Link Ads.

The real work in adding the link code was cleaning up the code that renders from the Text Link Ads plugin for links in my sidebars. Their plugin would add it’s own <ul> tag that would break my other lists in the my sideba. Also, the had inline styles that were ugly that did not go with the CSS that I already had on my site.

With a little bit of elbow grease I was able to get nice clean lists so that Google and and the other search engines can get right to my content.

As a note – If you have a blog or website that gets alright traffic and has a Pagerank 4 or better you should check Text Link ads out. I have been selling links through them since the beginning of the year and have gone from making $65 my first month to making over $500 this month. I never thought that I could make money like that but I am and it is great.

Anyway give them a lookup and see if you can score some cash too – Text Link Ads.

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I Am Reduced to Using Live Writer in Parallels to Blog

Posted on June 8, 2007

Parallels Desktop Software I really have not been doing very much blogging lately as I have not found a desktop blog editor that works as well as Windows Live Writer for Mac.

I have to tell you that I have really been disappointed.

What I have done in order to try and get myself motivated to blog again is to install Windows XP in Parallels and then install Windows Live Writer in the XP install. It actually works quite well but both my MacBook and my Mini only have 1GB of memory so firing up XP really slows my computer down.

Oh well I will just have to suffer ;-) .

I have to say that I have really been spoiled by Live Writer and really wish that someone would make something for the Mac that would give it a run for it’s money.

Image Manager for WordPress 2.1+

Posted on April 11, 2007

Picture_2.pngAs you know I have been searching hign and low for a Desktop Blog Editor for Mac that works half way decent. I recently tried Ecto but was not impressed.

The biggest item that has been missing from all the Blog Editors is the ability to resize images easily within the post. So instead of looking for a desktop client that could do this I looked for an image manager for WordPress.

I found a great one.

The name is quite simple – ImageManager. ImageManger replaces the included imag upload feature that is included with WordPress. It gives you ability to upload and image which creating a thumbnail. It also allows you to resize the thumbnail and apply style to. When you are done manipulaing the image you just click OK an the code is automatically entered into you post.

The above image was added to this post with ease.

Next I am going to look to get the photo border added to my CSS file as you can add classes to the images also.

It looks as though I am back to using the online editor now.

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Test Post from Adobe Contribute on Mac

Posted on April 2, 2007

I was recently editing a page in Dreamweaver 8 and discover a cool little function in it. The function allowed you to resize an image in the page and then resample so that the original image became the same size as the resized image. I thought to myself that this would be really cool when doing a blog post. Windows Live Writer does this but I am still on the hunt for a Mac equivalent.

Enter Adobe Contribute.

Adobe is in between versions right now and is supposed to be releasing the CS3 version in about a month. With a little digging I was able to download Contribute version 4 to try out. Another item to mention is that Contribute is expensive @ $150, especially when other desktop blog editors are free. I am trying it out because I am planning on upgrading to the CS3 web suite and Contribute is a part of it so in essence I would not paying for it (on it’s own anyway).

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