Blogging - Dan Masters - Austin Freelance Web Designer

Blogging From a MacBook

Posted on March 21, 2007

Call me a hypocrite – go ahead. But right now I am writing this post from a brand new MacBook. I have come a long from my post – I am not going to buy a Mac – back in April of last year.

Why the change of heart?

I would like to say that I have seen the light and switched, but… the real reason is that the company that I work for is going cross-browser on the software that they develop. That means that my team and I need to make sure that what we do looks good and works properly in Safari. The only way to do that is – you guessed it – to purchase Macs. Right now we only have one for our team but I think that may change in the future.

What do I think so far? Read the rest of this entry »

Making Money From Blogging – Getting Started

Posted on March 6, 2007

So you want to make money from blogging? Where do you start? With a blog of course. Unfortunately a lot of people want to jump into making money without getting the basics down first.

But before you even get your blog you need to decide what you are going to blog about? If we take the stance that you are going to try and make money from blogging then you need to have a subject that you know about and that can open the door for you to make product recommendations to your readers.

How do you do this?

Look around your house, what is it that you do? Are you a mom with a couple of small kids? You could blog about being a stay at home mom and offer tips and ideas to other moms on what makes your life easier. Are you a guy that is really into RC cars and Airplanes? Start a blog about that and share your experiences and ideas. The sky is the limit.

Read the rest of this entry »

Zookoda – Blog Email Subscriptions Done Right

Posted on February 21, 2007

I do not if anyone noticed but I recently removed the email subscription box in my sidebar. The reason for it was that it felt a little dated and I am pretty sure most people were subscribing to my feed as opposed to wanting email updates. I pretty much thought that the idea of email notifications for a blog was an old one.

But then I came across Zookoda blog email service. It is similar in that you signup to receive post notifications but that is where the similarities end. With Zookoda you get to control what content and how much of it is sent and how often. You also get analytics to see how your subscriptions are doing.

The best part about it is that it is free.

Read the rest of this entry »

WordPress 2.1 New Features

Posted on September 12, 2006

I logged into my wordpress.com blog today (danmasters.wordpress.com) and noticed that the new blog entry page had a cool change to it. It had a “Compose” tab and an “HTML” tab. Clicking on either tab switches you between the rich text editor and the HTML views via Ajax.

I had noticed a while ago that whatever shows up at wordpress.com is what you are going to be seeing in the free download of WordPress. Therefore I downloaded the latest alpha build to confirm it. Sure enough it is there.

Pretty sweet!

I cannot wait until 2.1 is out although there is no release date scheduled right now.

Technorati: WordPress, WordPress 2.1, Ajax, wordpress.com, Blogging

Internet Marketing Podcasts Available from MindComet

Posted on September 4, 2006

I visited another one of MindComet’s site this morning which specifically provides marketing podcast. I listed to one of the podcasts that focused on generating revenue from RSS.

As an avid blogger I was interested as I am always looking for new streams to generate revenue from my sites.

The podcast was pretty informative as it was an interview with the VP of a company named Pheedo. He talked about how RSS is a new way to generate revenue as there are a lot of people who new actually visit your blog because they view your content through their RSS reader.

While this podcast was interesting I would like to see other Podcasts that would help me in placing ads, building traffic, and other avenues of generating money from my sites.

Technorati: MindComet, Podcast, RSS, Blog, Blogging , Internet Marketing

Better Adsense Results with Ontok Highlighter

Posted on August 22, 2006

As I mention in this post – The Adsense Cleansing is Complete – I removed all of the Adsense from the template of my blog because it was ugly and really intrusive. Also I really was not making an money on it.

Well the same day that I removed the Adsense I came across Ontok Highlighter which scans you page the same way that Adsense does but then makes a hyperlink out of any keywords that it finds. Then when some either hovers or clicks the link it opens a layered window (not a pop-up) that displays a couple of Adsense ads and relevant Google search results for the keyword.

I totally like this approach because it is non-intrusive to people and if people are interested in the keyword they will click on it.

Not only does it look better, I get a better click through rate also. I am now making almost double in Adsense then I was before I started using the Ontok Highlighter.

Technorati : Adsense, Ontok Highlighter, blog, blogging, monotize

WordPress SunFlower Theme – 500 Downloads in 2 Weeks

Posted on August 18, 2006

Simply Amazing.

The Custom WordPress Theme named Sunflower that I made for my wife’s blog has been downloaded over 500 times since it was released 2 weeks ago.

This theme as you know is a rendition of my Beach House WordPress Theme that has been downloaded over 2000 times in the last 2 months (see my post Over 2000 Downloads of the Beach House WordPress Theme).

Just a reminder I have made the Photoshop file available for download for this theme so that you can customize it yourself.

Thanks to all those who have downloaded and are using this theme!

Technorati: Blog, Blogging, The Sunflower Theme, WordPress, WordPress Theme, Beach House Theme