Customize Your Header Logo to Build Brand Recognition
written by Anthony Dinh
After hours upon hours of browsing the internet and googling for just the right Wordpress theme, I finally settled on one. I downloaded it and was pretty pleased with the 3-colum layout, its adsense and widget ready capabilities, its ease of navigation, as well as its pleasing color scheme which was easy on the eyes. Still, something seemed to be missing…aha! It was the header! The template was lacking a header logo which made it look very, well, for lack of better words, “amateur”! It had a very pre-canned, out of the box ready feel to it, and I had to do something about it. I wanted readers to eventually be able to associate my logo with the Diaries Of A Blogger brand just from the logo itself.
So, the search was on again, but this time, it was for a logo that would represent my brand. I burned through a couple more hours looking for something that spoke to me, and by now it was almost 2am, so I decided to retire for the night and continue searching in the morning.
It was Sunday morning and I usually sleep in late on weekends, but I got up at 8am, too excited with ideas running through my mind to sleep. I plopped down on the couch with my laptop and started to brainstorm, then it hit me. Since I can’t seem to find anything that I like to use for my logo, why not make my own? That thought was quickly denounced as I remembered how limited my art skills were, not to mention I didn’t have any quality graphics programs like Photoshop at my disposal. I drudged on using whatever crude resources I had at my fingertips (Word, Paint, etc.), and came up with this.
Ok, now we’re getting somewhere. Nothing too dramatic, just plain and simple, but it gets the job done. I uploaded the image and refreshed the page, and voila! I was quite happy with my work, so I decided that it was time to grab some breakfast. About a week later, while researching for SEO methodolies and reputable affiliate programs, I came across a few sites that had visually appealing headers which caught my attention. Johncow.com, TheUniversityKid.com and TylerCruz.com all had something in common which I liked - they were all cartoony in nature. Their headers made mine look plain and absolutely pitiful, and no longer was I pleased with my artwork.
Once again, I perused the web looking for reputable graphics designers and after debating between a few that I liked most, I decided on FreshMeatDesign.com.
They specialize in logos, banners, caricatures and mascots, and their portfolio is rather impressive. I immediately placed an order and received a rough sketch for proof of concept the very next day…these guys are fast! The package I purchased included 3 unique design concepts, unlimited changes and direct chat with the designer. I’ve been swapping ideas back and forth with my designer, Randy Ariestoteles, and now I’m waiting for my final revision. Next time you stop by, hopefully you will be looking at my new logo! I won’t spoil the surprise, but in case you don’t quite get the connection, it’s related to my tagline, “A Newbie’s Journey to Making Money Online”.
If you’re looking for a customized header logo, I suggest you head on over to FreshMeatDesign.com, they do quality work at a reasonable price. For more information on how to modify your header logo, check out this post at ShifterTheme.
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Enter to Win a 2GB USB Pen Drive
written by Anthony Dinh
John Chow is running a 4-day contest between Tuesday, May 6th , and Friday, May 9th. The prize? A really cool James Bond like pen which doubles as a 2GB USB drive! To enter, all you have to do is watch the video below and leave him a comment…oh and try not to get too distracted by his adorable little girl, LOL.
To better your odds of winning, you can gain a 2nd entry simply by blogging about this contest as I’m doing here and sending a trackback to JohnChow.com. The winner will be announced this Saturday during John’s weekly Dot Com Pho gathering.
So what are you waiting for? Watch the video, leave a comment, blog about it and good luck!…actually, I don’t really mean that because I want it! 
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Jason Pereira and Fabian Speak Their Minds About Paid Reviews
written by Anthony Dinh
As a newbie blogger, I’m always looking for new ways to get my name out there and to generate some buzz about my site within the blogging community. The concensus among most seasoned authors seems to be that Paid Reviews is the way to go. So, I started researching for some prospects and in my travels, I discovered that the going rate ranged anywhere from $50 to $500+. The decision was tough, but I finally was able to narrow my choices down to a few of the more reknowned bloggers like JohnChow and ShoeMoney, but then I came across a couple posts that stopped me dead in my tracks.
What Jason Pereira Says
Jason Pereira, author of TheUniversityKid, wrote a post entitled “You Are a Moron if You Buy Paid Reviews for Exposure” that quickly changed my mind about paid reviews. Jason feels that paid reviews are worthless and stated that about 90% of the time these reviews do not convert, and the short-term buzz that they generate will eventually die off. He pointed out that The Social Millionaire was an exception because there was some decent publicity surrounding the launch of this site. I tend to agree with this, however, though the site was off to a good start early on, it has lost considerable momentum and appears to have plateaued at $3,362.15.
Reviews lack longevity, usually increasing your traffic through curiosity for maybe a day or two at most, then it will be forgotten once the next review comes along. At the minimum review rate of $50, you’re paying roughly $2/hr for exposure. On the flip side, purchasing an ad slot for $30-$35 on a well trafficked site will buy you a month’s worth of exposure which comes out to about $.05/hr, a much better return on your investment.
Jason recommends utilizing guest posts as a means of showcasing you and your blog for free! Not only is it free, but unlike reviews which are a once and done deal, it’s possible for you to guest post regularly, especially if the hosting author diggs your style. Eventually, readers will become familiar with you and your blog, and you may even gain some loyal readers from that community. One last thing Jason suggests is running contests. Readers love winning free prizes, and one prime example is in the case of Guytae Park’s contest which landed him hundreds of reviews and free press. I would imagine that the total value of these reviews exceeded the true value of the contest prize by tenfold.
Jason acknowledges the fact that his blunt opinion may hurt his future review sales, but he candidly stated that he makes a lot more money in his other business ventures, and that he’s willing to take a bit of a financial loss to save newbies like you and me from wasting our money on worthless reviews.
What Fabian Says
After having had a poor experience, Fabian of SmallFishBigMoney now echos some of the same negative thoughts on paid reviews as Jason did. Last month, in his efforts to increase RSS subscriptions and to build a larger community, Fabian bit the bullet and purchased a paid review, but he was in for a rude awakening. He came to realize that the traffic, the effects, the buzz, the review…fake, fake, fake, it was all fake! The review itself was not to blame as it was top notch, but the traffic that it generated was very dismal.
To support his argument, Fabian provided two real life examples which you can read about in his post entitled “Shocking Revelations…Traffic from Paid Reviews“. Only in the rare event that a mammoth-sized blog like TechCrunch covers you, will you stand the chance of gaining some worthwhile traffic, visitors and possibly RSS subscribers.
Fabian concluded by saying, “paid reviews are good for exposure and publicity…nothing more, I repeat, nothing more. Trying to get the readership of a blog - to buy a product, subscribe to your RSS feed or do anything more than that is like trying to get a 9 year old kid to eat his vegetables…it just won’t”.
What Anthony Says
In short, I’m glad that I found these posts before I squandered my money on paid reviews. I will have to refocus my efforts and spend my advertising dollars elsewhere, but where is still to be determined. What are your thoughts??
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Don’t Be Foolish, Backup Wordpress Regularly and Before You Upgrade!
written by Anthony Dinh
As a followup to my Wordpress 2.5.1 Released post, I just wanted to stress the importance of performing regularly scheduled backups of both your Wordpress installation files, as well as your MySQL database since it contains every post, link, comment, plugin and css modification you’ve ever made. For you new bloggers out there who are just joining the blogging community and even some of you seasoned bloggers, regularly backing up your files is a good habit to get into. For the rest of you, if you’ve already implemented a solution to cover your butt in the event of a natural disaster or file corruption, give yourselves a pat on the back! Taking the few minutes required to perform a backup now will save you a lot of headaches in the future when a major catastrophe strikes, and trust me, you’ll surely be glad that you did it.
How often should I backup?
This is totally up to you, but minimally, I would suggest at least once a week. Some things to consider are how often do you blog, how much information would you lose if something were to go wrong, how much of a setback would it be if you were to lose the data, and how would you feel about the loss of the posts that you worked so hard write?
How many backup instances should I keep?
Typically, I think most authors retain 1 instance and overwrite it with each successive instance in the interest of saving space and time on managing multiple copies. What if the backup gets corrupted or is lost, you might ask? I would recommend keeping a copy in at least 2 different locations that are geographically remote from each other using any one of the following formats (flash drive, CD, hard drive, remote ftp/host server, etc.). It wouldn’t do you any good to have a copy at home and one a couple miles down the road at work in the event of a major flood like we had with Hurricane Katrina would it?
How do I address large databases?
If the database is large, you can try compressing it using any of the various file compression tools such as Winzip for Windows based systems, or you can just tarball or gzip it on *nix platforms. Also, if you are running any anti-spam or statistical plugins that are constantly logging large amounts of data, you can opt to exclude these tables from your backup since they are not too important to keep.
How do I automate backups?
There are several methods available to automate backups via cron or scheduling, but regardless of whichever method you choose, I would highly recommend running backups manually once in awhile so that you can verify nothing has “broken” and that your backups continue to run properly.
1. Backing up your Wordpress installation files
Below are the files that should be backed up
• Wordpress Core Installation
• Wordpress Plugins
• Wordpress Themes
• Image Files
• Javascript, PHP, CSS and other scripts
Most hosts backup their servers regularly, but you still run the risk of losing some data if their latest copy is older than what you’d like, not to mention the downtime you would incur while waiting for them to restore your site, so it’s best to put control in your own hands rather than rely on sombody else. You can either use WinSCP or 2Bright Spark’s Synchback to keep a mirror of your site on a remote server or local machine, or you can use FTP or *nix shell scripts to copy the files to a folder on your local machine.
2. Backing up your MySQL database
phpMyAdmin is the database management system of choice used by most website hosts, so I will explain how to backup your database using this method.
• Click on Databases in the control panel
• You may see several available databases, select the one that you created during the Wordpress install
• Only default tables will be listed, you may have other tables if you’re running any statistical plugins or anti-spam software, select only the ones containing your Wordpress data and hit Export
• Check the “Add Data Drop” box, “Complete Inserts” box , “Save as File” box, “None” radio-button for compression, and click Go.
For detailed instructions and additional information, please visit the links below.
Resources:
Skippy’s Wordpress Database Backup Plugin
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The Next Best Thing Since Sliced Bread: Behavioral Targeting
written by Anthony Dinh
Most ad networks such as Adsense, which most of you are familiar with, uses contextual targeting to serve relevant ads to users. In other words, if I’m on an auto enthusiast site such as AutoWeek, or I’m perusing the autos section on NYTimes, then it would make sense for me to see a Honda or GM ad right? Well, this isn’t very exciting or groundbreaking technology is it? Displaying an appropriate ad depending on the content of the page, how hard could that be? Not to mention, the ad inventory on these highly prized pages are usually either sold out, or are priced way out of range for most entrepreneurs like most of us who run small operations with a limited advertising budget…enter behavioral targeting.
Since 2001, TACODA, Inc. has been at the forefront of this new and exciting technology. What is behavioral targeting and how is it different than contextual targeting you might ask? We’ll get into that a bit later, but first, here’s some information about the company.
“TACODA®, Inc., a wholly owned division of AOL and a Platform-A company, runs one of the world’s largest and most advanced behavioral targeting advertising networks. Since 2001, TACODA has provided a comprehensive range of behavioral targeting solutions to thousands of web publishers and brand marketers. Its patent pending technologies enable brand advertisers to target relevant messages to specific audience segments. Major advertisers who have run campaigns on TACODA include General Motors, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Cadbury Schweppes, Bank of America, AT&T, GlaxoSmith Kline, and Sears.
TACODA has more than 4,000 sites reaching over 140 million monthly unique users. Major US media partners include Dow Jones, The New York Times Company, NBC Universal, Fox, AOL, Comcast, HGTV.com, FoodNetwork.com, Kelley Blue Book, and USAToday.com.”
At a very high level, BT, as the name implies, is where users are served relevant ads based on the web surfing behaviors that they’ve exhibited. Here’s how it works. First, the publisher (that’s you, the blog author) places the TACODA network data tag, and or ad tag on their site. Behavioral data is then collected from users which then places them into audience segments based on the behaviors that they’ve exhibited on a given site (job seeker, music enthusiast, auto shopper, etc.), but no personal data is tracked, so there are no violation of privacy issues here. The users’ behavior is not only tracked on the publisher’s site, but it will continue to be tracked once he or she leaves that site and visits any of the other 4000 sites within the network. A relevant ad will then be served to the users based on their behavior, not on the page context. If there are no relevant ads to serve, then TACODA does a pass-back to the publisher so that they can serve one of their own house ads, or a PSA (public service announcement) ad will be served by default.
Not only can the user’s behavior be tracked on other sites within the network, but TACODA has the ability to serve a relevant ad to the user on another site within the network as well if the TACODA ad tag has been deployed, even if the current site’s content does not match the user’s previously exhibited behavior. In other words, if I visited AutoWeek which has highly prized inventory (ad space) and is most likely sold out, then I leave and visit the obituaries section of NYTimes where the inventory is probably not sold out and more affordable, through behavioral targeting, TACODA is able to serve me an auto related ad on that page as well! This allows advertisers to attain the massive reach to their targeted audience more affordably and at scale. Additionally, not only does NYTimes get paid for serving the ad, but Autoweek will also get a split of the revenue share since it contributed behavioral data which resulted in the ad being displayed. So, an obvious benefit of joining the network is that you will in essence be leveraging the power of the network by having 4000 sites working as one to generate revenue by reaching 140 million unique users monthly.
To learn more about BT, visit TACODA.com.
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