HyperWebEnable.com is the next generation blogging service provider. It provides bloggers with a free website name as opposed to a sub domain name off the service provider’s main site.

This is how hyperwebenable.com distinguishes itself as a unique and FREE blogging service by providing bloggers with a complete web domain(yoursitename.com) compared to other service providers allowing only sub domain names(yoursitename.blogspot.com), and charging extra for site name, space and hosting. In addition, if you need help getting started, Hyperwebenable.com will help you build your blog or website through a quick and easy site building process. Also, gone are the days of forced ad hostings, bloggers are free to place their own ads on their own blog.

Here are the main benefits that comes with your free account at Hyperwebenable:

	1. Free website of your choice (yoursitename.com)
	2. Free Email service for your blog
	3. Free Multi flavored blogs for your blog like (tech.yoursite.com, movies.yoursite.com and more)
	4. Free add on services for your blog like Forum,CMS, image hosting and more.
	5. Unlimited bandwidth.
	6. Free domain name, hosting and renewal.
	7. Free Tools and tips to improve your site rank and traffic.
	8. Blogger earn money by placing their own ads on their own blog.

I encourage bloggers to take advantage of this great opportunity by visiting Hyperwebenable and get a free account now – registration is FREE !

So what are you waiting for ? Start building an identity and brand name for your blog now !

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Learn Affiliate Marketing For Free

The Internet has become a great source of Information. Billion of people use it to find the information they want. But, they aren’t always obtaining what they want because some valuable information isn’t available free on the Internet. They will have to pay money to get it. Since these people desperately need the information, they will be more than willing to pay the seller who can provide them the info.

So, if you have deep knowledge on a particular field, then you may sell the knowledge on the Internet for profit.

With the valuable knowledge you have in your mind, you can turn this knowledge into your information product and sell it to a target market. A quality info product will keep on making money for you. There are several types of information products and the types that are currently selling well are e-books, e-courses, reports, podcasts and video tutorials.

What Skills You Need?

Your information product is going to be focusing on a topic, so you must possess great knowledge in that topic. You may also need to gather more information from different sources like the Internet, libraries and other sources in order to produce a quality information product that contains loads of valuable information.

It will be even better if your have experience in Internet marketing. Your skill and experience in marketing will enable you to promote your products to your target prospects more effectively.

What Tools You Need?

This will depend on the type of information product you want to create. If you plan to write an e-book, a report or a guide, the MS word program will be suitable and once you have done writing, you can then convert the MS Word file to PDF format. Your e-book needs to be in PDF format to sell online.

For e-courses, you must use an autoresponder program to create them. Other info products like podcast and video are much complicated to produce. You need to have audio recording and editing software to successfully create your podcast. Video is most difficult, you need a digital camera or webcam, editing software and special knowledge.

How to Begin?

First of all, you must decide on a topic for your info product. Think about your expertise, the field that you have most knowledge in or the things that you are passionate about; ask yourself what valuable knowledge you possess. Doing all these will help you make the right decision on what topic to focus on.

A topic usually is very wide. You won’t be able to write everything about the topic. So, you should narrow down it into a specific area and then focus on that specific area.

Subsequently, you need to do some keyword research to find out whether there is a market demand for the product you want to create. This is an important step you must take as you don’t want to create something that no one wants to buy.

Then, you may research your topic and gather all information necessary for your info product creation project. Once you got everything needed, you may start creating it.

When you info product creation project finished and your product is ready for sale, it is time to put up a sale website to market your info product online. You need to have a sale letter on your website to persuade your potential buyers. It is not suggested that you write the sale letter by yourself because you don’t have the experience and skill in this field. It is better to leave the job to a copywriter.

Hiring a copywriter will cost you money but it is worth it because the copywriter can write sale content in a way that make your product so desirable that anyone would want to buy it.

Your information product should have an e-cover or a product image. So, you will also need to hire a graphic designer to create one for you.

People often like to receive more when it comes to purchasing information product. Don’t just sell your info product alone. Your info product should accompany with several bonus products. Add in as many bonuses as you can. This will make your offer more compelling.

When you website is ready, you can start several ad campaigns to promote your product to your target prospects. You are going to need to put in a great deal of effort and time in marketing and promotion in order to generate sales and profit.

This post was written by Alan Liew. Alan is the blogger of Money Maker Info. If you are interested to learn how to make money online, visit his blog at http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com.

If you would like to receive free updates on future posts about making money online, please subscribe to Bloggin-Ads’s blog feed.

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The following is a guest post by Mr. Javo

The success of a blog mostly depends of the blogger’s ability to socialize with other people. There are bloggers in the blogosphere, who write good content in their blogs but always you see their subscriber’s count in the same number. Why? Beside other factors, it’s because they don’t socialize with anybody. This cause that their blog get stuck in the same place, being unable to evolve in something bigger.

If you want to get success with your blog, beside building relationships with your readers, you should build relationships with other bloggers. Building relationships with other bloggers will give you credibility and confidence, imposing your brand in the blogosphere. The following one is a list of tips to build relationships with other bloggers, and how they can help you in the respective cases:

1. Give Backlinks: Many times I had linked other people’s posts in my blog, as long as their post is related to mine. This can give you good opportunities, at the very least the blogger will send you an email thanking you for the backlink, what it means that he read your post. By linking other people’s posts you will be knocking doors, and you don’t know when one of them will be opened.
2. Establish a Link: By establishing a link, you will be known. What I want to say is that you need to make contact with them, may be it could be through social media networks or simply using the contact form in their blogs. The point is that you need to find the way to contact them, having a specific reason or not, is good to send them an email saying hello, telling them who are you and what you do.
3. Share Ideas: Something very useful you can do, once you had contacted other bloggers, is to share ideas with them. Sharing your knowledge about a specific topic can help you both to improve your blog significantly.
4. Meet Them: The ideal thing is to make contact personally, but the most of the times it can’t be possible. Instead, you can meet them through any instant messenger or even better, through Skype. By talking with them, you will be making potential contacts to make any kind business. Also, it will help you to buzz your blog in social medias, which normally give tons of traffic and potential subscribers.
5. Interview Them: I don’t know what about you, but I would feel very honored being interviewed by another blogger. Interviewing a fellow blogger and publishing his answers in your blog, will help him to get traffic from your blog, at the same time you will be solidifying your relationship.

Once you are friend of another blogger, you will have someone to contact in any case. For example, if you want to launch a product or service, those connections will help you to get your product or service, exposed in other websites which obviously will help you with your marketing.

But remember, you need to be persistent. Don’t expect so much of someone that you contacted a couple of times a year ago. You need to keep your friendship alive, sending them an email regularly would be fine to do it.

Do you have great relationships with other bloggers?

Make sure you checkout Mr. Javo’s blog as he has great internet marketing and blogging tips to teach you how to better your own blogging or money making life.

The following post is submitted by a Bloggin-Ads author, Luis Sandoval Jr. of Daily Slackr.

More and more businesses jump on the social media bandwagon. We are seeing the traditional business model turned upside down by the community that becomes involved. Whereas the old business model put all the power of what is right and wrong inside the hands of the businesses, today’s model allows the customer base to have influence on the direction of a business. Now not all have become open to the idea of listening to the people, but for those that have, a tremendous community has lead these businesses to success; Dell, Starbucks, H&R Block, & JetBlue to name a few.

What I’d like to look at is the people that are designated to be the voice of the company and the responsibility they carry with that honor. If any of the readers blog for a business, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the charge you’ve been given. Maybe you blog for your own business. I’d also like to hear how you handle community interaction, both positive and negative.

Personally, I blog for the non-profit that I work for. My immediate position involves handling of the programs and events for our location, along with working with volunteers, but attached to it is the maintenance of our online community of supporters, prospective volunteers, and city as a whole. Sounds like a lot of people to keep happy, and it is.

Never assume that what you write will please everyone, whether they be in the community or in the business you are a part of. To assume that is to set yourself up for a major disappointment when you are called to account for your posts. Nevertheless, if you stand firm by what you write, there is no reason why you cannot intelligently discuss the topic of the post.

More often than not, businesses will allow the community aspect of their business to run open ended with little to no heavy handedness with regards to involvement. Dell for example allowed negative posts to be available for all to read, but they accurately and professionally responded to them in order to show that communication was indeed traveling both ways. For some it would have been more appropriate to simply squash the negative comment and move forward as if everyone was happy with the company and it’s product. Instead they remained open and honest, and that deserves a lot of credit.

If a business blog attempts to put a face on the business that is controlled behind the scenes by the “machine,” the community will become aware and lash out. The backlash of the dishonesty can severely hurt the brand of the business and in today’s connected society negative word of mouth will spread like wildfire. With so much at risk, it’s amazing how much businesses want to maintain their hold on their community relations by encouraging dishonesty in order to maintain a positive public image.

Be honest, build community, admit your failures, learn and grow. These fundamental ideas which some businesses are undertaking is gaining them a huge following with regard to customer base. When you go to your favorite site, Amazon.com, Target.com, Nike.com, take a look a the blog, read the comments and see if you can determine whether the community is free or if the business has a hand in what is shared.

This was submitted by Luis Sandoval Jr. of Daily Slackr and author for Bloggin-Ads. He is a graphic freelancer that runs a small firm that helps other small businesses, while continuing to expand his knowledge of social media.

The following post is submitted by a Bloggin-Ads author, Luis Sandoval Jr. of Daily Slackr.

The Power of A Blog In The Customer Service Industry..

Everyday, whether it’s virtual or face to face, we experience the law of supply and demand, we the customer needing something from a provider. Whether we continue to use the same provider, and our happiness with an experience is what we call customer service.

Customer service can be the downfall of even the mightiest of giants. How we are treated, respected, and ultimately served can effect the profits, customer base, and image of said provider both short term and long term. Some companies have invested millions of dollars in training and support to give their employees the right training to provide top tier customer service; meanwhile other companies have invested millions of dollars in attempting to reverse their image due to disastrous customer service.

Customer Service Stats

According to Accuconference:

• 6 in 10 customers are upset with their most recent customer service experience
• 81% of consumers who feel they’ve been treated badly say they’ll purchase from a competitor next time
• 27% of people who received “average” treatment say they’ll buy again from the same company

These are staggering but truthful numbers. Think of the last time you received horrible customer service, have you gone back lately to give them your money?

For companies dealing with automated call centers these are their numbers according to International Customer Management Institute:

• Phone interactions still dominate: 73% of contact center interactions take place via phone; 24% take place via email; and 4% via chat.
• Consumers who reach an automated system, rather than a live person, say they will do less business with the company.
• 22% of consumers who had to repeat information after being transferred from an automated system to an agent will do less business with the company.
• One in seven consumers report the automated system did not give the option to speak with an agent.

Look at that last bullet, a company that does not even give the option of talking to another human being. This type of customer service disgusts me.

Where does the power of blogging come into play?

Blogging for Change

We live in a more connected world, society has access to tools that 15, 10, and even 5 years ago that did not exist. We are the media, we have the ability to report, read, and investigate news because social networks and social media has taken down previous barriers that kept us from knowing the truth.

As such, bloggers and video-bloggers are now making sure their voice is heard and you know what? People are listening.

Let’s take two simple blogging examples for this article. The first I want to look at is The Consumerist.

For those that don’t know The Consumerist is one in your face, boot to the @ss, send your butt flying out the door site that really supports the consumers. I don’t know of any site that is so heavily supported by its community that it has literally forced corporate giants to change their way of handling customers. Everyone from computer companies, airlines, car rentals, and even restaurants.

The Consumerist is unique because it has a moral and responsible duty to investigate all claims given to them by customers. Never does it wantonly post gripes and complaints without digging deeper to make sure a case for argument truly exists. When it does have some ground to stand on, watch out!

Having captured the eyes of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of readers, businesses know that their name is mud if they ever hit the pages of The Consumerist, and customers know that this site elicits change. In other words, great customer service.

The second tool that has had a massive impact on relaying information to large masses of people very quickly would be Twitter. Now you can insert any massively followed micro-blogging app (friendfeed, plurk, tumblr, etc.). For this instance I will be using Twitter as the example.

I have seen a ripple effect from one unhappy customer with Microsoft become the bane of that company’s existence and in turn get exactly what they wanted the first time around. No magic, no extortion tactics, and no animals were hurt in the process of the demand, just an unhappy customer venting their frustrations.

You may say to yourself, “I only have 25 followers, if I gripe to them, how does that make a change.” It’s a trickle down effect. Let’s say you are very good friend with those 25 people and you complain about horrible customer service from a business and how you were completely wronged. Let’s now say just half of those 25 people share that same new with each of their 25 contacts, and so on. You see how the word spread exponentially.

Now take a person who has 100 contacts, or 1,000 contacts, or the power users that have five and six digit followers. The message spreads, negative feedback creates a PR nightmare, and people will listen and share.

The Power of The Written Word

Never forget the power you wield as a blogger. The written word has a history of toppling governments, changing whole countries, empowering the weak, eliciting the strongest of our emotions; the overall theme in all this, is that words have the power to change.

Share your experiences both good and bad. This post only focused on the side of bad customer service, but all of the above can be just as true for positive customer service and happiness with a product or business. Never settle for being treated less like a person, or being disrespected by any business. Make your voice heard, utilize the tools that are available and broadcast yourself.

In your experiences, whether you are brand new to the business or a seasoned vet, have your personal writings, petitions, blogs, reports even brought about change? If so share them with us.

The following is a guest post submitted by Luis Sandoval Jr. of Daily Slackr.

My post today has no set topic. There is no agenda, no fancy lists, no do’s and don’ts. This post is just something that has been on my mind my entire trip home. Today at work I was bombarded with information overload. It’s good to be home now, but on the way here I started to digest some of what I had read, heard, and even been part of. I wanted to get your thoughts and opinions on some of these issues.

Nothing like a good conversation with the readers.

1. Twitter vs Plurk: Ultimate Smackdown

A Twitter post, is a Twitter post, is a Twitter post. I’ve seen a great many out there, even have done a few myself, but the horse is dead. No more posts solely on Twitter from me unless I come across some amazing new way that really makes the program stand out. I personally love Twitter, I use it, and will make mention of it in my posts, but in the past 45 days Twitter has had it’s fair share of problems.

For anyone who has been fixated on Twitter, it’s a great micro-blogging application that allows you to quickly relay and share information. A few thinks it’s boring, others think it’s useless, but again, all that matters is how the user utilizes it. I’ve seen Twitter help land jobs, land freelance gigs, open up relationships, and even the first wedding proposal via Twitter, but as always, a new little app has reared its head. Plurk.

The last 45-60 days for Twitter were pretty uncertain. Massive downtime, lost messages, server issues, you name it. Twitter was also experiencing major backlash from its followers in the form of video blogs, blogs, and ultimately a migration to other applications. One of those apps that filled the void was Plurk. Let me just say for the record, I completely dislike Plurk. Crucify me if you wish, but I don’t like the timeline layout, and I don’t really have time for karma points. That might be great for the kiddies, but Twitter was nice and simple, with quick and easy to recognize features.

You like Plurk? Good for you, but share why you like it with me and the rest of this community. Perhaps you see something I don’t. For me, no matter what, Twitter is still the best micro-blogger for me, and remains my application of choice for quick communication.

2. Social Media Club

Anyone out there involved with the Social Media Club? I have an opportunity to help get one established in my city, and I’m pretty excited about it. The prospect of unifying a community of social media geeks and exchanging amazing ideas to build upon is quite the opportunity.

Bloggers, video bloggers, podcasters, online personalities will all converge at our meetings to expand upon what we know and build what we have to greatness. That’s the idea of the Social Media Club.

I’m interested in hearing some thoughts on the group. They are all over, most major cities already have one, and some pretty big names are attached to the club and occasionally do appearances at the conferences to share their experiences in the field.

3. Secrets To Blogging Your Way to A Six Figure Income

I did a double take when I saw this book from ProBlogger. Anyone out there making six figures? I think the possibility is amazing. It sure is a high goal to reach, but I’m curious how much time is involved. If any of you out there are like myself, you have school and/or day jobs so blogging full time is not really an option unless there is a viable income to be made from it.

The book came highly recommended, so I might give it a look. I’d like to hear some success stories of the first check you received from blogging. It does not matter if Adsense sent you a check for $25 bucks. Share your stories with us because I think the more we share the more we can become inspired. It builds the community and gives us some insight on what quality content can do for a blogger.

4. A Matter of Principle

I had a Twitter follower post an interesting comment today. I will refrain from mentioning him, but the issue at hand was whether he should remove a blog post with a tagline that a company was going to use for an upcoming promotion. They were willing to pay him for the removal and just leave it at that.

Is that right? Should a blogger delete a post in order to appease a business simply because they want to use the material for an ad? Now the amount of money was never mentioned, but I’d imagine it would be a pretty sizable amount, but that’s not the issue. Sure money is great, but as bloggers, what do you do?

Personally, I can’t see how the blogs existence puts the business in jeopardy, but lets look at the big picture. If a company came to you and said, “We’d like you to remove your post, and in exchange we’ll pay you $XX dollars.” Do you say yes? Does it effect your readers or will they understand?

Perhaps it is a matter of principle. Sound off!

5. When the Idea Well Runs Dry

I did a post on my site a while back on inspiration; more appropriately, where people find their inspiration to write. Today a website which remains nameless literally copied an article from a more popular website, changed a few words, changed images, and paragraph structure, but ultimately was the same article. I called them out on it, not to be an butthead, but because someone worked hard to write that article, how fair is it that someone else profit from it in order to boost readership or traffic?

What happens when your idea well runs dry? Luckily I have an idea to pull from. I’m a member of a lot of social networks, and the community chatter always has my wheels turning. I’m very observant when I communicate in person with others and I’m always keeping an eye out for inspiration material as I commute to and from work. Still I’ve been guilty of the well running dry.

What do I do? I STOP WRITING!

No use trying to force something that won’t. What inspires you all? A lot of us come from all types of background and we’re probably scattered all over, so I’m sure there will be a lot of different answers, but I’m truly interested.

Okay, that’s enough rant. My hyperactive mind has been bouncing all over today, and these topics were on my mind. I love this community of readers, and I really wanted to delve into a conversation with you all. I’ll be checking on the comments over the next couple of days to see what you have to say.

Have a great and empowering week readers!!

This was a guest post submitted by Luis Sandoval Jr. of Daily Slackr. He is a graphic freelancer that runs a small firm that helps other small businesses, while continuing to expand his knowledge of social media.

The following is a guest post by a huge geek friend of me, Gerardo.  He is the owner of the VolkDefense blog, which is mainly on technology, security, and products.  Pay him a visit and I’m sure you would be able to protect your computer.

With the new release of Firefox 3, a lot of good things has been shown by Firefox 3 that it has increased in Speed, Reliability, and Security. Blogging has really seemed to increase around the Internet world and with many blogs opening and getting popular (such as Bloggin-ads ), there is nothing stopping these bloggers.  The only 2 thing that may stop you would be lag and security issues. With Firefox 3, your post typing speed will increase and so will your visitor rate, but only if you are able to complete more and more posts.

I don’t know if a blogger has ever told you that he/she missed a day’s post because of the lag and Wordpress (could be other CMS scripts too) crashes that occurs, but sometimes it really isn’t the CMS or the Database (which sometimes It can be), but your browser.  It also plays an important role in blogging, which I’m sure you’ve never thought of .

How? Well, for example, if you use Internet Explorer (some still do) and it becomes your main browser to edit, upload, and add things on your blog, chances are that somewhere along the road, IE will crash and lag over and over.  This causes a blogger to just freak out. On the other hand, if you had used a fast browser such as Firefox 3, the loading speed would have been faster, memory used on your computer would have decreased, and security would have gotten better than IE6. This is really important to a blogger because:

1) Speed

Speed is really important to a blog reader because nobody would want to wait 13 minutes for a post (unless it’s a long one). Some browsers may give you a connection error and you may have to restart the browser or your page load, but Firefox 3, pages are loaded faster for a blog reader. To make this more understandable, it is like John Chow using Dial-up instead of Cable. Of course this is also the same case for a blogger that writes up daily posts.  A slow browser would force some capabilities of Wordpress or other CMS scripts to run a lot slower, which causes hang times.  I have dealt with this problem and still dealing with a bit now, but Firefox 3 has allowed things to move a bit quicker.

2) Security

With many exploits and malware going around on sites, Firefox 3 is the only browser I know of that could prevent these “hacks” from going onto your computer.  An exploit is basically a security hack that is placed anywhere there is a glitch or missing code.  An exploit is able to squeeze into the gaps and take control of whoever is using it.  A malware is similar to an exploit except that it has been already placed into a software that is being downloaded.  These two security issues could distract you in a huge way by preventing your from giving 100% of your time of your blog.  Instead, you would have to deal with the problems before actually blogging.  With Firefox 3, it would allow you more time and patience on writing posts without having to bother with a pop-up that popups every single minute or so.

3) Reliability

I know that there are a few bloggers who are reading this post that have either yelled, kicked, or tossed their computer out the window because of some program errors.  Any type of error would slow a blogger down unless you run a super computer. Many bloggers need a reliable browser that can save their work in time of a crash, load pages without showing a error every second, and a browser that doesn’t require much hard drive space. A new feature in Firefox is the  “one-click bookmarking“, which could be useful to bloggers who need fast saving when they are reading other posts on blogs. Even the Firefox “session restore” is important because if Firefox 3 crashes while you’re typing a post or an email, you’ll pick up where you left off, even down to the last word you typed with session restore.

The 3 points above are very important to bloggers because all these can affect not only your blog, but your computer as well. If security was crappy in a browser, chances are that a hacker would be able to get into your computer and then into your account and passwords. If Speed was slow, the amount it would take to save pages or even load them would frustrate many bloggers. Without reliabilty, we would have 30 different programs installed on our computer instead of Firefox 3 (which has it all).

Downloading and using Firefox is just what a blogger needs to complete the daily blogging life.  Just to add on the side note…Firefox 3 actually broke the record of the world’s most downloaded file in one day.  The total downloads actually broke over 3million in 24 hours, making this a real record.  Not to mention that this also means that Firefox is the most used browser of choice

I’m sure you’re using Firefox, right? Download it here.

Make sure you subscribe to VolkDefense if you wish to secure yourself and your blog!

The following is a guest post submitted by Luis Sandoval Jr. of Daily Slackr. He is a graphic freelancer that runs a small firm that helps other small businesses, while continuing to expand his knowledge of social media.

Being an early adopter of new technology is almost a must for those bloggers that want to stay on the cutting edge. I read a comment to my earlier post on this site mentioning that they try not to let the specifics of blogging get in the way of having fun with the actual post. Let me start off by saying that I completely agree; if you’re not having fun why would you spend all the time on blogging?

So to take some of the seriousness of some of my other posts on both this blog and my own, I wanted to focus on a discussion on the tools YOU use for blogging. I am going to share my tools and perhaps some of you may have pros and cons about what I use, and perhaps can share some recommendations of their own.

Remember, a tool is only as useful and effective as the person using it. That being said here are my top tools when I blog.

1. Jott

I love Jott because it provides for me a way to quickly get ideas before I lose them. I’m more likely to pick up the phone in the wee hours of the night and leave myself a message than I am to turn on the light, find paper and pen, and actually write down my ideas.

What Jott offers the user is a way to leave a message to yourself, another person, or a group via audio message, transcribed message in your email, or posting it to your favorite social media site (your blog, Twitter, various calendars). I have an account set up for blog ideas, so when an idea comes, I hit speed dial to Jott and leave a message for myself, which is also transcribed for me to review later. This way I never lose track of my thoughts, and whether I have a pen or not, it now becomes irrelevant.

This is the first tool that I typically use because it’s non-stop, day or night thing.

2. Evernote

This 2nd tool has only recently become a vital part of my blogging process. Once I’ve acquired my thoughts from my email, I begin a web search which allows me to do research. I begin to find support for my idea, but I also find it interesting to find people that disagree with me, which helps me build my counter argument. All of this reading and searching can take a lot of space in your bookmarks and that is where Evernote steps in.

Evernote allows me to capture information to be used later no matter where I am. If I’m out in the city and I find something that inspires me, I can take a picture of it and send it to my Evernote account. If I’m in deep web research, I can copy and paste whole sites, or quotes directly to my Evernote account. This prevents me having to add and later remove bookmarks I am no longer using.

Evernote syncs to your phone, PDA, laptop, and desktop, so no matter where you are at, you have access to your material.  Evernote keeps all your saves as “clippings.” The clippings can be shared publicly, can be edited, and grouped in any way you wish. The binders can be renamed and shared with an entire community.

I specifically enjoy the use of my mobile phone to Evernote, so when I take pictures for my articles, I can send them to Evernote for editing later. Check out Evernote if you’re looking for something new. I got some invites left (12), look me up and drop me a line if you are interested.

3. FireShot

I found this tool not too long ago and it has saved me a lot of time when working with screen shots. If you have ever used Skitch, this program is very similar to it. It does a great job at screen capturing, but what I love about this plug-in for FireFox is that you can then add commentary bubbles to detail or explain something from the screen shot.

I used to use the Print Screen command on the keyboard and pasting the capture into Photoshop for image editing, now I can quickly get what I need, focus on any segment of the website, and write up some explanation on the actual image. This helps the reader understand what I am talking about. I just added FireShot to my  newly downloaded FireFox 3, so I know it works for sure.

I honestly had a hard time finding another alternative for screen capturing, so do any of you have other suggestions?

4. Zemanta

This tool is useful for both the newbie and the veteran blogger. I personally try not to lean too much on this tool, but I cannot deny its usefulness when finding material for the blog becomes difficult to the point of straining your brain.

Zemanta is a plug-in that works hand in hand with your blogging platform of choice. I currently use Blogger while I’m coding my WordPress themes, and Zemanta fits nicely onto the screen where you write your posts. The way it works is every 300 words I type, the plugin updates itself by offering you pictures to drop into the post, links for the page, key words for the article, and supplementary material for you to read by showing you other links to articles that might be related to your topic.

This little add on can be a hit or miss, but usually a miss for me. It gets me out of a jam every now and then. For starters, I find the pictures it locates for me to be useless, but I definitely appreciate the articles it recommends since it adds some depth to the article. The keywords are okay, but I usually have keywords in mind already. If anything, it only serves as a reminder of what I was going to add in the post. The links it offers are pretty useful, especially linking heavier concepts to Wiki’s and other resources for further explanation.

Naturally, Zemanta will want to put advertising on the page, but interestingly they are easily deleted and will not come back to show on your page. I suggest that if you do use them, use their advertising sparingly, to delete them totally would counter their efforts in helping our blogging community.

5. Google Documents

Any word processor will do, but I chose Google Docs because all my material is online, tied to the google network of products, and no matter where I am, I have access to my documents. It sure beats carrying around a USB flash drive with documents on them. This is important for me because I move between a MAC and a PC quite often throughout my day and constantly using the flash drive between the two systems would tend to corrupt some of the data.

I am sure there is a great many tools that our community uses when researching, building, and writing their blogs.

Sound off!

Let us know what you find most useful and perhaps your thoughts on products to stay away from.

This was a guest post submitted by Luis Sandoval Jr. of Daily Slackr. He is a graphic freenlancer that runs a small firm that helps other small businesses, while continuing to expand his knowledge of social media. Bloggin-Ads currently in need of a few more guest posters that would like to obtain a permanent spot here on this blog. Please contact Mike if you’re interested.

The following is a guest post by a huge geek friend of me, Gerardo.  He is the owner of the VolkDefense blog, which is mainly on technology, security, and products.  Pay him a visit and I’m sure you would be able to protect your computer.

Bloggers today have become very popular on the Internet, such as the legendary John Chow, Darren Rowse, and Shoemoney. With many of them creating rich content that attracts over thousands of readers, most bloggers have forgotten one of the most important aspects in blogging and also crucial to the blog itself, which is security. Many of you may not know too much about security in blogs nor know how to protect your blogs. As a geek in computers, I will point out a few things you can do to protect your blog and prevent from ending up like some with their blog hacked and more.  You may have read the guest post by Ashley that slightly touched the topic of computer security, but this post should elaborate a bit more for you.

Some of you may know about David Airey who had his domain stolen from him for a while until finally resolving a few days later. This was not a lack of security on the blog, but rather on the user’s computer. There was no way that the hacker was able to steal or as most of you know it “hack” GoDaddy’s Registry to take over the domain. Some ways that this could have happened are:

1. The user fell for a phishing page, which is a page that looks exactly as a real page but it isn’t. An example is when you go to a page that is suppose to redirect you to PayPal.com, but redirects you to PayPai.com. Notice that a capital “i” will make it look like PayPaI.com. After you go onto the page it would ask you for your email and password as usual, but instead of sending you to your account, you would most likely receive an error after you’ve just sent your account details to the wrong hands (hacker in other words).
2. A keylogger on your computer has been dropped by downloading an infected file or was dropped via an exploit. A keylogger can do the worst of damage because what it does is it captures all your keystrokes throughout your whole session on the computer; every account, every password, every letter will be recorded down into a text file then sent to the hacker who created the keylogger. This will give them access to your accounts without using bruteforce (forcing passwords) or any other technique.

Some ways you can protect yourself and your blog as well is to use Anti-Viruses to prevent keyloggers from getting your passwords and having to go through what David Airey went through. Bloggers usually use Wordpress, so I will go over some security techquies for that. Some ways to protect your Wordpress blog are:

1. Updating your Wordpress CMS (content management system) is the most simplest way, but many users wait until it is released for auto update on Cpanel, Hsphere, or any other panel they use, which gives the bad guys time to come up with exploits or use MYSQL hacks to get into your admin panel.  You would be in trouble then
2. Setting permissions to 644 on files in your FTP. Some common ones are the wp-******.php  files in your root directory. Index.php is important as well because if someone gets access to it, they can ruin your front page. Some bloggers get screwed over because of their hosting or because someone (could be them) left the directory permissions on 755 or 777.  I won’t go into detail with this, but here’s a small tutorial on how to set your directory permissons for Wordpress.
3. Your computer is crucial! Any viruses or keyloggers can make you go crazy because hackers can steal your passwords to your blog. Lets put it this way, your computer has access to your blog because you use it to edit, write, or do anything to your blog. If somone gets access to your computer, they would basically have access to your blog without you knowing.

These are some of the simplest ways for anyone to follow to prevent getting your blog stolen or even hacked. If you are using Joomla, Drupal, or any other CMS for blogging. Overall, Be safe, Surf Safe, and remember that security is important because security these days are getting tighter and tighter due to the fact that new exploits and viruses are being distributed, don’t get hit by one!  Your blog is your investment

Make sure you subscribe to VolkDefense if you wish to secure yourself and know about new products!

This is a guest blog by Matthew Berman of Internet Business Daily.

When I first started my blog about 2 years ago, the only way I knew how to make money from it was Google Adsense. Quickly after that I realized there are a handful of other methods that not only made more money than Adsense, but I could use them in addition to Adsense. In this article I will outline a few other ways to make money with your blog, whether you get a million pageviews per month or a thousand.

In-Text Advertising

In-Text advertising is one of my favorite ways to monetize my blog. The simple reason for this is I do not have to substitute this for anything else. This is incremental income at its best. In-text adverising are the ads you see that usually contain double underlines highlighting a word. When a user hovers over a highlighted word, a small ad pops up. You can specify how many links are in each article, or on each page. You have full control over how the ads act on your site. The two leading in-text advertising companies are Kontera (which I currently use) and Vibrant Media. They are pretty similar, so test out each to see which one works best on your site.

Affiliate Advertising

Affiliate advertising is very popular amoung bloggers who blog about blogging (confusing sentence?). They realize that readers of their site are looking for blogging tips, so they refer them to tools, ad networks, and affiliate programs for bloggers and receive a commission. This not only works for blogging blogs, but it can work for any blog. There are a ton of affiliate networks out there to promote, so no matter what your blog is about, you should be trying different affiliate programs. For example, if you have a blog about cats, you should search for an affiliate program that has a cat food deal, or cat nip offer. These are just examples. Two popular affiliate networks are NeverBlueAds and AmpedMedia.

Reviews

Reviewing other blogs or products is another great way to monetize your blog. Reach out to companies in your niche and explain to them that you have readers who would find value in a review of their product. They will most likely pay you, but at the very least give you something for free. Also, reviewing other blogs in your niche is a great way to meet new webmasters, and provide valuable links to each other.

These are just some of the ways to squeeze some extra cash out of your blog. Whether your blog is your full time job, or just a hobby, it is nice to have some extra cash in your pocket at the end of the month.

Matthew Berman is an Internet Entrepreneur and the owner of Internet Business Daily. Please make sure you check out my blog and subscribe to it if you wish to learn more about making money.