Have you ever gone to a blog and seen comments where the commenter has their picture next to their comment? At first, I thought this was just how blogger or wordpress.com rewarded their members. Mine would always be a gray blob or a gray square smiley face. Well, it wasn’t something they did, it was something the commenter had done.

It is called a gravatar and you can get yours at gravatar.com. At the site, you register the email address that you use for your blog comments and upload a picture. That’s it. Blogs that allow gravatars will pick up yours based on your email address.

Why is this important? Blog brand. Yes, your blog has a brand, whether you want it to or not. And if you aren’t maximizing your brand, you’re minimizing it. Like the flavicon I posted on last month (see Flavicon From A Picture File), a gravatar shows professionalism and polish.

My flavicon and gravatar… sounds like a kid’s robot cartoon a bit there, doesn’t it? Sorry , I’ll be back on topic. You’ll see that I used the same picture for both. I also use this image for my message board avatars and for Twitter. With this, I’m keeping my brand intact across sites. I’d encourage you to do the same.

Happy blogging!

I’ve seen it happen in the tech industry where various tech companies that compete with each other cooperate (EDS was reselling IBM tools). I’ve seen it in other mature industries (Joint ventures created for oil and gas exploration). But blogging?

Very much so!

The first, and most prevalent form of cooperation that I’ve seen is link sharing (particularly in blogrolls). In this case, two bloggers include links on their sites to other blogs. Obviously, if you like a blogger, you should like the blogs they like, right?

I’ve also seen guest posts. In this case, you have another blogger guest post on your blog (or you guest post on theirs). The blog gets good content and the guest blogger gets more exposure. The goal is to create some reciprocal traffic as the result.

But both of these provide very limited (typically one-on-one) results.

Now, I’ve found a new form of cooperation that has me really excited. Effectively, it is an RSS/Twitter Cooperative. The organizer has created a list in a special format that allows members of the cooperative to subscribe to each other’s RSS feeds through a simple import. As a function of the cooperative, we all agreed to assist each other in marketing to include Tweets, Stumbles, Diggs, etc. This could be big!

I’ll be monitoring the results over the coming week or so and will let you know how it is going in my monthly update.

I found this little gem while surfing around other blogs and needless to say, it kept me on the site longer than I otherwise might have been. Nothing graphic, but just enough to make me watch.

It got me to thinking. I know we’ve talked about content. Content is king (or queen)! But what makes good content? Or in other words, can you make your site sticky?

The short answer is, “it depends.” Who is your audience? And why are they coming to your site?

I have built up some traffic to the site in six core places, Entrecard, Sitehoppin, Mybloglog, BlogCatalog, Twitter, and by commenting on other blogs. The audience is clearly identifiable. They are other bloggers, which is perfect for this blog because this is a blog about blogging. For other sites, a pure diet of bloggers might not be a good fit.

So, now I know my audience. Why are they here? Most of the bloggers that come to my site are doing so to promote their own blogs. I use Comment Luv, so all comments return a back link to their site (hint, hint). And they know I’m much more likely to visit them if they write good comments here. There are new bloggers joining the fray every day. Many of them, like me, are looking for easy to understand answers. That is my niche.

Now I just need to ensure I do three things:

1) Provide regular and fresh content.

2) Provide it in an easy to understand (and preferably entertaining) fashion.

3) Rinse, lather and repeat.

P.S. My apologies that the video was off topic. Stick around a bit longer and join the conversation and I’ll feel less inclined to pull out the gimmicks.

Just a quick note too all of the mothers out there. Thank you for all you do!

Now that I’ve been at this a while (okay, a few weeks), I’ve looked at a lot of opportunities to make money online. So far you’ll notice that I’m mostly talking about affiliate opportunities. What I haven’t discussed are the “pay per post” opportunities. Why not? In one word, integrity.

I’ve looked at a few of these opportunities and I must admit that they are quite impressive. Some of these sites will pay you upwards of $30 just to make a post about their product. Seems like a good deal, right? Well, maybe not. For one, if I haven’t used the product, then what business do I have touting it? And if I’m getting paid to post about it, can you really trust what I have to say?

I also don’t feel it is a good deal for the advertisers. Yes, they get some good press, but who is reading it? And do the readers trust them?

In my opinion, affiliate marketing is different. I present the ads and the reader decides whether or not to act. If I like the product or service, I’ll often blog about it. The readers know how I feel. And the advertisers only pay when I bring them leads.

I hope over time that my readership and their trust of me increases. At that point it will be a win-win-win.

When I heard about More Niche, I thought it was too good to be true. I mean, an affiliate market partner that wants your business so much that they will pay you to join (and pay those who refer you!). How much will they pay you? Try $15 just to create an account. And for each person you refer you get $20.

Here is my account screen. I did nothing but sign up and there it is, $15 in my account.

There’s a catch, right?

Well, no. They have some really good products (one of which pays a commission of as much as $300). I really think you should check moreniche.com out! Tell ‘em baldeagle sent ya!

I came across this interesting article from a recommendation by someone I follow on Twitter (I guess there is some value to it, huh).
For 30 years now, you’ve been getting spam

Maybe your blog or website isn’t everything, but I bet it is pretty important to you. Especially if you’re relying on it to be an income stream. Now, when was the last time you backed it up? I take it it has been a while…

Right after you Stumble, Digg, Reddit and Twit this post, do it!

Backing up isn’t difficult, it just takes patience and diligence.  I back my sites up about once a week (or just before and after I’ve made significant changes).  And while you’re at it, don’t forget to back up the databases too.  If you’re using Wordpress, you have a MySQL database that contains all of your posts, pages and categories.  If you have any questions on how to back up the MySQL database, check out the support pages of your host.  Most have easy to follow instructions.

Do your friends a favor and send this to them as a reminder.  Back up your site!

Okay, maybe I jumped the gun on that one. Spottt is showing ads (I’ve seen quite a few today, so maybe yesterday was an anomaly). My apologies to Spottt for my prior post.

From what I gather, you must have the Spottt widget above the fold. This is prime space on a website. Further, most of the users I discussed this with (current and past) have indicated that they are not getting many click throughs from this exchange. So, in my mind, this is not a good route for a blogger to take. There are far too many other opportunities to promote and monetize your site.

This is awesome!