How-to

Now You Too Can Subscribe to Comments

For the longest time I’ve been trying to find a plug-in that would allow readers to receive notification of a new comment on a post.

Today I found it!  Finally!  I just installed the plug-in “Subscribe to Comments” by Mark Jaquith (don’t ask why it took so long for me to find – clearly it should have been pretty obvious since the name of the plug-in actually describes the functionality I was looking for).

So what does it do you ask?  I does exactly what the name implies.  You leave a comment here, check the “notify me…” box under the captcha code and when the next person comments below you, an e-mail will be sent alerting you of the fact.

Hopefully the next comment will be a reply to you from me where I tell you that your comment was witty and charming and I thank you for reading SuperBlogTime!

Personally, I really like to find out when someone has replied to a comment that I wrote.  The problem I have is remembering where I left comments and going back to them later.  With e-mail notification, I don’t have to worry about it; I receive an e-mail everytime someone leaves a comment.  And now, SBT has the same system in place!  Sweet.

As I was looking for the plug-in, I came across a great post by Ms. Ileane about keeping the conversation going in your comment section.  One of the people commented saying that although subscribing to comments by e-mail is a good idea, your in-box can quickly fill up if you do it too often or on a very popular site.

That can be a problem, but one thing I might do to get around it is to create a new e-mail address just for comments.  That’s a really good idea if I do say so myself.  Genius, really.

What do you think?  Do you like e-mail notifications?  Is it too much for your in-box or does it keep the conversation going as Ms. Ileane said.

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Pic by osde8info

Flattr – A New Way to Make Money with Your Blog

There’s a new way to monetize your blog on the interwebz!

The service is currently in Beta, but soon you will be able to make an extra buck or two using a new service I stumbled across while surfing the interwebz called Flattr.   According to Wikipedia, it was created by the co-founder of the super infamous Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde.

What is Flattr, you ask?  Well…

The basic idea is that members pay a certain amount of money to the site each month – sort of like a donation – which ranges from 2 – 100 Euros (the site is very Euro-centric right now because it was created in Sweden).  You can use PayPal or a credit card to put money into your account.

During the month, you check out other members sites and vote for your favorite content.  Anything you can imagine can be voted on: software, blog posts, images, videos, anything.

At the end of the month, your membership fee is divided into a number of shares equal to the votes you cast.  Then the magic happens!  Each site you voted for gets one share of the amount you “donated” at the beginning of the month.

If you make something super cool on your site and you get a lot of votes, you could make some serious money.  Last month, someone was paid out about 100 euros (about $125).

The site is basically a mix between Kiva, Paypal and Kickstarter.

There is a really great video of how it works.

So, for example, if the monthly membership fee is $5 and the member clicks on 40 sites during the month then each site would get $0.125.

Lets say that 100 members see your site that month and “like” just one of your articles.  Your total for the month would be $12.50.

What if 1000 members voted for on of your articles.  Your total increases to $125.00.  That’s nothing to sneeze at.

The BETA version of Flattr was opened to the public on February 10, 2010.  Initially 200 invites were sent out.  A lot more have since gone out so the site is getting populated nicely.  Again, it’s very euro-centric right now so there are a lot of foreign language sites.  It won’t be that way long once the site is officially launched though.

I have one extra Beta Key that I’m going to give away to the person who leaves the most convincing comment about why they are interested.

Of course, please only take it if you are seriously going to use Flattr!

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Pic by Nextconf

Can You Make Money With Adsense?

So far my blogging venture has earned me a net total of $0.63 through Google AdSense.

Awesome!

It’s time to ask myself once again, “Can I make money with adsense?”

From what I gather, the answer is a qualified yes.  It can happen eventually but it takes a long time and lot of very good content before you will see any return from an AdSense campaign.  And of course, SBT has only be en  up and running for 2 months during which time I was mostly learning how to make a blog and not adding a bunch of yummy content for the universe.

How about a real life example of someone making money with AdSense?

Check out this video I found on YouTube by Lisa of 2createawebsite.com.  Now granted, Lisa has had a website for years and is very experienced with online advertising but the point is, she is making good money through AdSense.  Yes it takes a lot of work but it’s always nice to real examples of people who have made the system work for them.

Enjoy!

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Image by thisisbossi

Where to Find Free Images for Your Blog

When I write an article for SuperBlogTime, I always try to include an image or two to give my post some extra personality.  For the most part, I get my images by going to the media search page over at Creative Commons (CC).   I like starting my image search at the the CC site because it automatically includes the creative commons license in the search query.

When publishing content online, you need to be very careful where you get your images.  Using images under the Creative Commons license is one of the best ways to avoid copyright issues.  The license basically means that you are free to use the media for your blog as long as it is attributed to the author.

There a few different CC licenses that you should be aware of.  You can see a description of all of them here.  Don’t worry about the “commercial use” clause – that only refers to selling the image, not using the image on a commercial site or blog (thanks Brian and Sue for clearing that up for me).

Well, the other day I couldn’t get the Creative Commons site to work for some reason.  I could have gone to Flickr directly and searched for images under the CC license but at the time I didn’t know that was possible (it is and it’s really easy).  I really needed another source of pictures so I went search the interwebs.  Here is a list of the sources I found.

I searched for “starfish” and posted the first image from each source.

Wikimedia Commons

Image by Nevit

Open Clip Art

Image by Addon

FreeFoto.com

U.S. Government

Google Image Search

Click on “Advanced Image Search” and look for the drop down menu under “Usage Rights”.  I usually select “labeled for reuse with modification” for my searches.

FreePhotoBank

No starfish here.  Lame.  Don’t use.

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Where do you find photos and pics for your site?

Was this helpful for you?  Donate to SBT and keep this site going!  A penny or a buck – doesn’t matter – just help out if you can.

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Top image by Rick

How to Add Video to Your Blog

Jolene over at OldLovelyMoon recently asked me how to embed video into a blog.

Well here’s the answer.

In a video.

In my blog.

Clever…no?

This video was created by Jack Humphrey from FridayTrafficReport.com.  I learned how to embed this video into SBT from watching it.  It’s quick and very clear.  Enjoy.

I’ve found quite a few videos on YouTube about blogging and I’ll be posting the best of the best.  Someday I’ll buy a video camera and make my own.  BestBuy here I come!

Did that help?  It’s really, really simple.  Go ahead and add a video to your blog from YouTube and tell me about it.  I would love to come by and see how it’s going.

Q&A

I created this post because someone asked me a question about video.  If anyone out there has other questions about blogging, let me know.  Even if I don’t know the answer right away, I’ll do the research and post the information here at SBT.

Good Luck!

What is Comment Luv?

I’ve added new something new to SuperBlogTime this week.  It’s called CommentLuv and it is tool that helps bloggers get links back to their site when they add a comment.

When you leave a comment, it looks up your blog and leaves a link to your latest blog post in your signature line.

CommentLuv was designed to encourage bloggers to communicate with each other.  How does it do that, you ask?

Well, when a fellow blogger leaves a comment, a link to their latest post is inserted into the signature line.  For CommentLuv to work, though you have to be signed in.  Just make sure you leave your name, e-mail and blog URL when asked for it.

The author of the post is then able to not only read and reply to comment left by others, but also to read the latest blog entries of the person who left the comment (who in turn will do the same back to your site … and then you visit their site and comment… and then they visit you and comment…and then you visit them and comment…infinity).  Powerful stuff.

Since SuperBlogTime is so new, I clearly have a shortage of comments so maybe this will help.  Before anyone says it, I know that thing that’s really going to help is adding articles to the blog, telling more people about SuperBlogTime and time.

I know, I know.  I’m working on it.

In the meantime, let’s go for the some instant gratification with Commentluv!

Here’s a link to the article I was reading when I found out about CommentLuv.  It’s called “How to Get More Comments on Your Blog Following 10 Simple Ways”. CommentLuv was “simple way” number six.

If you have a blog, leave a comment below and I’ll make sure to read your latest post!

If you don’t have a blog then you should leave a comment anyway  and tell me how great my blog is.

Like this article?  You might also want to read How to Leave a Comment in a Blog or How Do I Make My Own Avatar?

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Pic by Tim Morgan

How do You Leave a Comment in a Blog?

This might seem like a very basic question (well, it is) but it needs to be addressed.  Yesterday, I introduced my friend to SuperBlogTime and I think she had a good time reading some of my articles.  She was especially intrigued by this story and the fate of the finger that the drunk guy lost in the bar (answer:  no one knows).  The only question she had about the blog was, “How do you leave a comment?”  Well, let me show you.  It’s very simple.

Comments are Blog Currency

At the end of most every blog article or post, there is a comment section where readers can leave a note to the author.  Comments are coveted by bloggers so it’s almost like leaving a donation.  Comments show the author that someone read the post.  Sure you can use analytical software to see how many people visit your blog, but a comment from a real human about something you wrote if much more satisfying.

Commenting is one of the reasons that blogs have become so popular.  The comment section of a blog has made the Interwebs more interactive because it allows for direct dialog between author and reader.  If you’ve ever left a note about a blog post and not received a comment back from the author then shame on them!

Some comment sections require a name and an e-mail address before you can post anything.  SuperBlogTime does not.  I personally don’t like it when I’m required to enter stuff so this blog is open to anyone and everyone whether they add their name and e-mail or not.

So, go to the bottom of this post, enter your name and e-mail if you’d like, and then say something nice about SuperBlogTime.  As soon as you hit “Submit Comment” your words will immediately show up in the comment section of this post.  Some blogs don’t allow comments to show up immediately because the blog owner or moderator has to approve each one.  I decided to go for maximum freedom so I don’t moderate my reader comments before they are posted live.  No naughty language please people.

When you start looking at the comment section of the articles here at SuperBlogTime you’ll notice that some people have a little picture of themselves next to the words they wrote.  That is known as an avatar and I wrote a quick “How-to” guide about avatar creation here.  It’s extremely easy to set up and it’s fun to personalize your comments.

That’s it!  Go ahead and leave a comment now that you know how!

How Do I Make My Own Avatar

Translation - "The Smurfs are in Danger!" "But...you're an idiot"

First off, what the heck is an avatar?

Is it a ginormously tall blue hippie from another planet that flys around on small pterodactyls and talks to trees through creepy tail connector doodads?  Nope.  Well, not in this context anyway.  The movie was cool though and if you haven’t bought the DVD yet, you can buy it through the link at the end of this post.

Anyway, an avatar is simply a graphical representation of you on the interwebs.  Some people use small pics of themselves, some people use cartoon images, other us animals, logos, flags, naughty bits – you get the picture, right?

SuperBlogTime is currently setup to use some default graphics in the comment section that look a little bit like snow flakes.  That’s fine, but wouldn’t you rather have your own avatar that represents who you are as an individual?  Something that will make you stand out in the vast, ever expanding universe of the interwebs?  Sure you would.

One way to do it is through a service called Gravatar.

Gravatar

Gravatar is short for Globally Recognized Avatar and is a way to use the same avatar in the comment section of millions of blogs and forums (check out Wikipedia for more details).  When you enter your e-mail address on a compatible blog, site or forum, Gravatar uses it to pull down your image and insert it into your post.  Cool, right?

I went to the Gravatar site this morning and signed up for an account.  After going through the e-mail verification process I was ready to go.  Well, I thought I was.  It turns out that Gravatar doesn’t actually have any images to choose from.  In fact, I was sent to my “Manage Gravatars” page and it said, “Gravatar doesn’t have any pre-made avatars to choose from.”  Fair enough.  But where do I get an image?

Gravatar gives you the option of adding images from your computer, web cam, or the interwebs by using the “Add One by Clicking Here” button.  I chose a pic from my laptop, clicked next and was given the option to crop it as I pleased.

The next page asks for a rating.  Gravatars are rated like films so that bloggers and webmasters can control content.  I gave my self a G rating which means the pic is good for any site.

And that’s it!  Here’s my avatar.

Now for your homework my dear readers.  Go to Gravatar.com, follow the simple instructions and post a comment here to show off you new avatar!

If you don’t have a pic of yourself (or don’t want to use one) then a good source of images that are available for public use is at Creative Commons.

And finally, as promised.  Here is the link that you can use to buy Avatar through Amazon!

Enjoy!

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Avatar pic from akae.blogspot.com under the Creative Commons license.

Mind Maps – A Better Way to Organize Your Thoughts for your Blog

Have you ever felt like you had a bunch of great ideas for your blog but you just couldn't get the info out of your head onto a piece of paper? Do you want a better way to organize your thoughts and ideas? List are fine (believe me I love my lists) but sometimes they are too restrictive. A list doesn't allow you to build new ideas and be creative - it's linear, static, cold even. Enter mind maps!

Read more...

New Category Added

I realized yesterday that my post about adding an RSS bookmark to your FireFox Browser was uncategorized.  So I added a new category for SuperBlogTime called “How-To”.  As I go through my own learning process about building blogs, attracting traffic and making money online, I’ll add posts to the How-To section so that everyone can gain from my experience.

That way you too can make a ton off cash of the interwebs!  In 2 days or less!  Get rich now! 

Or you can just make a very nice blog about bunnies.  And kittens.