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Archives for February 2008

Performancing Hive: The Weekly Buzz

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The Hive, a project started by Performancing to provide a community for those looking to increase the performance of their blog/site, is steadily growing in numbers. There are many great things going on in the Hive, and I will take this opportunity to let everyone know what they are missing out on.

First, I just wanted to send a warm welcome to our latest member, preschoolmama. Welcome to Performancing Hive! We are fast approaching 100 members!

The First In-Depth Special Report

Chris Garrett of Performancing has released the first Hive Special Report. “Planning for Success: How to Build a Professional Blog” has a plethora of great content that explains in-depth on how to build your very own professional blog.

Here is just a tiny portion of the entire 33 page report:

Creating a Niche-Leading Blog

Here are what I believe to be the key ingredients of a great blog:

1. Credibility Why should the reader believe you?

You can project credibility through your writing, through your design and through your professional conduct. It doesn’t hurt to have some claim to fame of course. It could be that you have just “been there, done that”. Employees of Microsoft or Google are going to be credible when discussing those companies and markets. Why are you qualified to talk about your topic?

2. Authority
…

There are over 33 pages and 8,000 words of detailed information and insight from this report alone, but you will have to be a Hive member to check out the rest of this amazing work by Performancing’s own Chris Garrett. The PDF file is available to download in the Hive, and there will be much more to come.

Revenue Resources

Ryan Caldwell of Performancing set out to find which sources of revenue worked best. People have disclosed the percentages and discussed which advertising networks and services they gain revenue from. It is nice knowing what works. If you were part of the Hive, you could see what works for others as well.

Special Jobs

The Hive’s marketplace is buzzing with great opportunities. From great advertising deals to amazing work opportunities, the potential to make money is here. After all, earning $1,000 for a single article is no joke — there is serious money to be made. Also, you have the opportunity to post opportunities that the professionals will see.

Professional Advice

You simply won’t find this amount of personal detailed advice anywhere else on the web. There has been question after question posted in the Hive, and people are finding the answers they want. This is what it is is all about! The professionals are helping those that are in need of help to grow their own business. People like Raj Dash, Chris Garrett, Ryan Caldwell, James Mowery (myself), and all the other great members of the Hive are here to help you with your blogging needs.

Join Performancing Hive today, and see what all the buzz is about!

A Gadget That EVERY Professional Blogger Should Consider Having

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Do you come prepared? Interestingly enough, many professional bloggers are not prepared for professional work. One single simple gadget can help in a myriad of ways, but unfortunately, people seem to under-estimate its use. When you have that killer idea, interview opportunity, or chance to become a live reporter, you must be prepared.

Digital Voice Recorder

Right now, you should invest in a digital voice recorder. It does exactly what its name implies — it records voice and sound. You might have seen old school voice recorders with cassette tapes, but today this type of technology is becoming quite impressive and reliable. Some might think this is a waste of money, but I strongly disagree. It is a tool that could potentially be one of the greatest investments to a professional blogging career.

digital voice recorder

You might think it is easier to remember or write down information, but even if you have superhuman memory or pen and paper, there are certain things you can’t do in a reasonable and timely manner. A digital voice recorder can.

Interviews

A digital voice recorder is the ultimate gadget to have when an interview needs to be done. You might, for example, bump into someone of important interest while being out and about. Let’s say you are at a blogger’s convention and have a few moments to talk to Darren Rowse of ProBlogger — wouldn’t it be a wasted opportunity if you couldn’t record an interview with him? Your readers might appreciate something like that. Depending on the type of blogs you write for, that missed opportunity could be very painful.

Ideas

You and I know that we have both forgotten some great ideas in the past. There have been several times previously when I was laying in bed thinking about article ideas and would have forgotten them the next day. Realistically, how many of us are going to go through the effort to turn on a light, grab a pen, and jot down those ideas? Not many of us would. A digital voice recorder by your side could result in this never happening again. The first night I was hired for Performancing, I had recorded over 70 article ideas. This article was one of them.

Live Reporting

Another great use would be to report a developing or live event. You know those people that take their video cameras with them everywhere to find great news? You could think of a digital voice recorder as the same thing. Who knows when something like just being able to record and report a live event could turn out to be one of the greatest moments in your life.

Other Uses

  • Reminders
  • Goals
  • Dictating blogs/articles

I have an old school cassette based digital voice recorder/player. I also have the ability to record unlimited audio on my cell phone. I have used these features many times when I simply have an amazing idea. There are plenty digital audio recorders available. Some are more fancier than others, but pick up one that is good for you.

Now, sure, you could take a pen and notebook everywhere you go, but this is the 21st century. It is a fast and impatient world. Things are forgotten and opportunities are missed on a daily basis. Don’t let it happen to you. Those that are prepared and take their job seriously are those that succeed. Remember that.

Interview with Mr. Larry W. Phillips, Editor of “Ernest Hemingway on Writing”

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It is a pleasure and honor to welcome Mr. Larry W. Phillips. In 1984, he was the editor for a book that has become an essential tool for the contemporary writer: “Ernest Hemingway on Writing.” The book is available on Amazon.com.

Preface to his Book on Mr. Hemingway

“This book contains Hemingway’s reflections on the nature of the writer and on elements of the writer’s life, including specific and helpful advice to writers on the craft of writing, work habits, and discipline. The Hemingway personality comes through in general wisdom, wit, humor, and insight, and in his insistence on the integrity of the writer and of the profession itself.”

Similar Career Path as Mr. Hemingway

Mr. Phillips, a native of Monroe, Wisconsin, began his writing career as a reporter for the United Country Courier newspaper. Before focusing upon books, he authored many magazine and newspaper articles.

Published Books

Covering the Second Coming
F. Scott Fitzgerald on Writing
Ernest Hemingway on Writing
Madison Retro
The Tao of Poker
Zen and the Art of Poker

Ernest Hemingway and “The Old Man and the Sea.”

Larry, please accept a warm welcome.

Thanks, it’s a pleasure Steve. I’m just going to write the answers to your questions off the top of my head– which may be the best way. I’m a big believer in “free association” (as distinct from stream of consciousness).

You were born and raised in Wisconsin. What attracted you to the writing profession, and who were some of your early mentors?

I’d say Hemingway was an early mentor. And possibly Mark Twain. Also, as a kid I remember watching episodes of the “Twilight Zone” on TV and keeping a notebook and writing down the plots to each episode. It’s hard to think why I did that. It just seemed somehow so cool that a plot-twist in a half-hour TV show could have such a big impact on a person. I guess I got curious about that, and why it was.

One my favorite quotes by Mr. Hemingway was “Newspaper work will not harm a young writer and could help him if he gets out of it in time.” Since you began as a reporter, how does that quote resonate with your own experience, and what lessons from that period assisted you as your career progressed into other areas?

This is a good question and a big subject. I think numerous dangers lurk in journalism for the writer who wants to go beyond journalism. Bloggers are actually closer to having the kind of freedom to really develop as writers, IMO, than journalists. I’ll give an exaggerated answer here, in order to show what I mean.

A journalist has limitations. He can’t use slang, he can’t use the way real people talk (often), he can’t (or isn’t supposed to) include his opinion, can’t mention personal beliefs or convictions, isn’t supposed to draw conclusions, can’t use obscenity, can’t use long, odd or quirky sentences, can’t say anything bad about a company or product (you may get sued), can’t make the story too long, and on and on—I could list many other limitations. It’s rather like a painter being told to go paint a picture, but without using yellow, blue, red, green, brown, black, or purple. This is an exaggeration, as I say, but it hints at what the problem is, and what Hemingway was getting at.

What were your motivations and goals behind the book on Mr. Hemingway?

My exact motivation, oddly (and laughingly) enough, was that I had a file of Hemingway quotes and I was looking for a couple of quotes and couldn’t find them. And this had happened to me before. I became so frustrated that I decided to start at one end of Hemingway and go through to the other and collect all the quotes. In the end I had enough to send to Charles Scribner’s Sons, the publisher. A motivation then was to create a small book for college students based on Hemingway’s observations.

Could you please share a few of your favorite quotes?

I think the Hemingway quote about “finding the thing that makes the emotion” is very valuable advice to a writer. And the one about “making” a scene rather than just describing it. The latter is kind of what journalism does, while the former refers to recreating in the reader what it felt like to be there. That’s the difference.

In your opinion, what was Mr. Hemingway’s legacy on literature and how we write today? For example, what might have been his perspective about the Internet and blogging?

Hemingway should be studied, I think, just to see how he did it. He has some rather amazing word constructions and turns of phrase. The lesson is not to write like him, but rather to mull over the act of writing itself, and think about it. What does repetition mean? What does page after page of just dialogue mean? What does paring things down to the bare essential mean? What do I have permission as a writer to do or not do? Hemingway’s style is not really the way people write these days, but there are things to be learned from it.

Two of the most influential American writers of the 20th century were F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Since you have written books about both men, and read many of their personal correspondence, could you compare and contrast their writing styles and personalities?

I think I wrote in the preface to the Fitzgerald book something to the effect that Hemingway was a “today-is-the-first-day-of-the-rest-of-your-life” kind of guy. He was always “breaking the plane” into the existential present. Fitzgerald saw things just the opposite, as a kind of “whole”, a kind of waltz on a yellow afternoon, seeing the whole of it, from A-to-Z. Fitzgerald’s particular writing trick– and a very difficult one to duplicate, even when you know what it is– was to “make things do things”. Shadows move against dressing-room blinds, stars “stir and bustle” and “neat sad waltzes” drift out through open doors. This is much harder than it looks to pull off. Fitzgerald also seems to key his writing to the continuation of a mood, rather than a plot. He’ll keep the same mood going, from scene to scene, and take up the book at whatever point necessary to do this, and the plot trails along almost secondarily. His books are the story of a mood (though the mood may change as the story goes along).

In your opinion, what are the necessary traits and attributes for a contemporary writer?

There’s a saying in the poker world, “It depends”. Should I raise, should I fold, should I check-raise in this particular situation? It depends. It’s the same for writing. It depends on what you want to get out of it. I read bits and pieces of a lot of blogs. Every so often you read one that is crushingly boring (for lack of a better word). You’ve all seen these. “I got up about 8:30 a.m. I made coffee. I moved the potted plant from the dining room into the kitchen. I called Julia. I looked out the window. About 11 o’clock I went to the grocery store.” And so on. Clearly, this person is never going to be ascending the steps to the podium taking down the National Book Award. But if this is what they want to get out of it– and maybe it is– it could be a form of perfection or something.

For everyone else I would advise: try to get down to the next level below the obvious level. There is a kind of obvious level that exists that we all operate on in our day, but just underneath this there are a lot of things going on of what we all really think. I’ll use an example from something I’ve been working on, about the decade of the 1950’s. The obvious level is the Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs level. The level just underneath that is the way Tinker Toys tasted when you bit into them, the wood smell of the can, the sound the can made when you were filling it up, and so on. There is a kind of secondary level like this to everything. Look for it. Proust, in particular, was very good at drawing the curtain back on this level. After you read some of him, you start seeing it everywhere– and you realize it was always there.

Let’s turn to poker. On your website, you describe it as your vocation. When did your passion for poker begin?

Oh, I’ve been playing poker since I was a kid. Somewhere about in my 30’s I thought it would be a good idea to start spending a lot of time playing cards on riverboats in the Mississippi. I find high stakes poker players and world class poker players to be very interesting people. It’s kind of like the old joke about the mafia. “How do you know if someone is in the mafia?” Answer: “Well, if they are sitting in a restaurant and the person next to them gets hit in the head by an anvil, and they don’t even look up, then they’re in the mafia.” It’s kind of the same with world class poker players. Something like that happens and they don’t even flinch. There’s just something interesting about it. It’s almost like professional actors who you might meet. Most of them are great story-tellers too.

After viewing the titles of your poker books, is it accurate to say that you view the topic as more of an art than a science?

It’s just something you never quite get to the bottom of. Just when you think you know it all, you confidently bet 40,000 chips in a tournament, and a young kid across from you wearing music headphones and a cap turned around backwards, lights up with an expression like, “Aha! I’ve finally got him!” and he reraises you all-in for 200,000 more… So you fold your hand, and he turns his cards over to show you that he had nothing at all. Two terrible cards. It’s like that. You just never quite get ahead of it, or learn it all.

Kenny Rogers wrote a famous song called, “The Gambler.”

“You got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

Now every gambler knows that the secret to survivin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep.
Cause every hands a winner and every hands a loser,
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”

Besides knowing when to hold them and when to fold them, what are other key factors for successful professional gambling?

Well, with regard to line 3 (above), you better count your money when you’re sitting at the table, especially if you’re playing any kind of big bet poker, such as pot limit or no limit hold’em. You need to know not only how deep your own stack is (for strategic purposes), but how deep everyone else’s stack at the table is, because it’s going to influence how you play the hand.

As far as professional gambling goes, there is very less of this going on than the lay person knows– the number of successful gamblers (over a large sample of time) is actually pretty small. This would include probably fewer than 10 or 20 people (if that) who actually know what they’re doing in sports betting handicapping, who wait for just the right spot to bet their money, and several hundred poker players and blackjack players that make a consistent living at a fairly high level.

You have been a newspaper reporter, magazine writer, and book author. If you were to advise a person who wanted to pursue a writing career, regardless of genre, what would you share with them from your own journey?

They should write to the level they want to get to and not feel like “failures” for not selling a million books or something like that. A lot of my writing just goes out to 5 or 6 friends. Maybe that’s all you need to do. Maybe that’s success. Maybe writing in a blog– or 2 or 3 of them fulfills you. I’ve stopped thinking that’s a bad thing– or somehow “not enough” in some weird Hollywood “success” kind of way. Of course, it would nice to sell a million books, but if you don’t, so what? Poets have moved the world with a few lines that didn’t even sell in their own lifetimes. Become more indifferent to the whole success thing. Write in your own voice. Be your own success.

Larry, thank you very much for sharing your insights and expertise.

Thanks Steve–
Take care–
Larry W. Phillips

About the Interviewer

Steve Amoia has published articles and book reviews about alternative health, art history, career-related themes, historical figures, Italian and international soccer, martial arts, psychology, and sport topics. His writing portfolio can be found here.

48 Unique Ways To Use WordPress

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WordPress, one of the most popular blogging platforms (if not the most), is capable of being more than just a blog platform. It’s capable of being a full-blown CMS (Content Management System). As someone who has both written small, custom CMSes from scratch as well as evaluated million-dollar professional CMSes for large corporations, WordPress‘ robustness never ceases to amaze me.

The key to many of the unique uses can be attributed to any or all of the following components:

  1. Custom theme.
  2. Custom code tweaks
  3. Custom or widely-available plugins.
  4. Custom fields per post.
  5. Custom code to use the custom fields.

Why Use WordPress?

Not everyone is for the idea of WordPress as a CMS. Some bloggers point out a variety of technical issues (which I’m not getting into here). True, WP is not a high-end CMS, but it can get the job done, especially for low-volume use. The point is that with WP, you don’t always need to pay $50,000+ for a proprietary, difficult to learn CMS. And that’s for starters. Many of high-end CMSes require “seat” licenses. That is, a fee for each person that MIGHT use the software. Add maintenances/ upgrade fees, support licenses, training, etc., and most small businesses or online publishers are spending more than they have/ is necessary.

WordPress can do the job, and as has been discussed here and elsewhere many times, has a lot of community support, free themes and plugins, and is relatively easy to customize or to find someone who can for a fair price. Below are some ways that WP can be used.

Basic WordPress Uses

The uses in this section require the minimum amount of customization, often involving only additional available plugins.

  1. Basic CMS for a traditional site or web magazine. One of the most common alternate uses for WordPress is to build a traditional website with no focus on chronological posts (blog) – that is, to use WP as a basic CMS. More recently, this approach is being integrated with a blog as well, particularly using “magazine” themes.

    Some of the best visual examples I’ve come across are Twist’n’Shout and Simms Furniture Warehouse both designed by Charlene of Essentially Keystrokes, and Camacho Cigars. The latter integrates WordPress and Flash to produce a traditional site that you’d probably never know was built on WordPress if you didn’t check the source code. Another nice example is Ford’s Autoshow site. (This is not an endorsement of any of these sites, just simply an observation.)

    There are reasons not to use WP as a CMS, but there are also reasons to use WP and many tutorials on how to do so. The fact is, you can use a Caching plugin to speed up the rendering of pages on your web server. If you prefer more traditional URLs, you can use an .HTML or .PHP extension.

  2. City guide or geocoded news site. The Thunderbird, a college journalism site built in WordPress, has an excellent example of what I mean by geocoded news. News stories on the site (which uses one of Brian Gardner’s Revolution magazine themes) are represented by colored icons on an embedded Google MyMap map. Clicking on an icon displays an excerpt bubble, complete with a “Read more” that, when clicked, opens a new browser tab/ window with the story in question.

    You could expand on this idea to build City Guides. Instead of news stories, publish reviews/ profiles of restaurants, nightclubs, businesses, as well as interviews of local celebrities. Then geocode each post into an icon on a Google map. (I’ll cover Google Maps and geocoding here on Performancing starting in the near future.)

  3. History/ timeline site. Timeline from MIT is a visualization widget for time-based info. Event items are draggable, and clicking on one pops up a dialog with more detail, including links. Freshlabs offers a WP plugin that allows you to embed SIMILE Timeline windows into your posts. You could combine this with maps, video, images, and articles in order to create a history site. (E.g., a religion or dinosaur timeline.)
  4. Image gallery or photoblog. There are a number of ways that you can use WP to create a Photoblog (such as by using the Photopress theme) or an image gallery. For the latter, there are lightbox-style WP plugins and widgets, or regular image gallery plugins.
  5. Intranet. Intranets, in a nutshell, are websites that are internal to an organization, typically firewalled off so that only employees/ members have access. WP can be used for an Intranet that combines blogs, traditional sites, or pretty much any of the other uses described in this article.
  6. Movie poster and trailer site. Sprout Builder
    is a new web service (still in beta) that allows fast creation of Flash media content. You can use its image and video components to build movie Sprouts. Each Sprout would simply be embedded in a WordPress post, possibly accompanied by a review and/or ratings area. The reason for taking this approach is because Sprout Builder allows you to build in interactivity.

  7. Network hub/ feed aggregator. Many bloggers have multiple web properties forming a blog network. Some also like to have a hub site that offers snippets of posts from across the network. A simple way to do this is to use an RSS feed importer plugin (such as the very cool WP-o-matic, which uses SimplePie) that automatically produces a new WP post snippet for each feed item. Hart’s Battling for Health hub site is an example of this.
  8. Polling site. There are numerous WP polling plugins (such as Democracy AJAX Poll and WP-Polls) that can be used to produce a polling site. This could be a standalone site, or combined with a blog.
  9. Real estate listings or guide. Take the idea of a city guide, mentioned above, and tweak it to build a real estate guide – possibly using a custom real estate WP theme (not free). Add maps, exterior 3/4 pics of a property, video, details and contact info.
  10. Web Chat. Embed one of web-based chat services into your home page or the nav bar. There’s even a new one that will “ping” your AIM chat client. So site visitors can chat with you without having to download and install AIM. Something like this could even be used to give web-based advice by church ministers, on a church website.
  11. Webcasting station. Imagine a main page with a single, large media player, with member “twittering” to the side. The best example of this used to be Evil Backwards, which used to use the very robust Splashcast Media player where the current video window is now. They’ve ditched the Splashcast player, so you’ll have to imagine it’s there. Splashcast offers embedded “channels” for video, audio and documents in a borderless player. A theme similar to Evil Backwards’ home page can be produced in WordPress using the Blueprint CSS framework (discussed below in the Techmeme clone item, in the next section). Of course, you can use a media player similar to Splashcast, but to my knowledge no other player offers embedded channels.

Website/ Web Services Clones and Alternatives

The uses in this section are visual or functional mimics of popular web sites/ services. Several can be done with a combo of a special, available theme and plugins. Some might require a bit of custom coding.

  1. Feedburner alternative. Feedburner, a web service that Google recently purchased, offers multiple functionality, but mostly the republishing of site RSS feeds and monitoring. Many bloggers say they don’t want to use Feedburner because Google tends to give the latter the search juice for an article. (There are feed direction plugins to get around that.) I like Feedburner because I don’t have to worry about server resources, and I can monitor my stats. But there is a WordPress alternative to Feedburner that uses a simple set of plugins to accomplish similar functionality (though not a visual clone).
  2. Popurls clone. Popurls is a popular site that lets you get a bird’s eye view of several popular sites. This format is very handy and can be used to monitor the blogs in a niche or even several niches. Ericulous offers a handy free WP Popurls clone theme. (There are a few plugins necessary, but they’re included in the ZIP file.) While it’s not robust enough yet to handle non-RSS format feeds, it’s still an excellent launch point.
  3. Techmeme clone. Techmeme is in my blogger’s toolbox as handy way to monitor the tech niche. It’s not as “bird’s eye view” as a Popurls clone, and it algorithmically follows a set of RSS feeds. If you blog is in the tech niche, it might be included one day in Techmeme’s stream and not the next (or ever again). You can solve that with your own Techmeme clone using WordPress and various plugins. Though there are two things to point out:
    1. I haven’t come across a ready-made WP solution to Techmeme. The closest clone to Techmeme is Megite, which I understand is available for licensing at $15,000+.
    2. Techmeme and Megite use “topic clustering” algorithms that are the core driver to how the story items are presented on both sites. I haven’t deciphered this yet, but I’m working on it.

    Nevertheless, the basic idea behind Techmeme is a “river of news”. This can be produced using RSS import plugins and a custom WP theme – best created with the Blueprint CSS Framework and related tools (something I’ll try to cover in the future). You’ll end up with something like Techmeme River as a starting point. From here, you’d have to apply clustering algorithms, which are way beyond the scope of Performancing.

  4. Twitter clone. Twitter microblogging has become something of a phenomenon online, with some people even preferring this mode of communication over blogging. But it has its drawbacks – namely a 140-character message/ tweet limit, no simple inclusion of visual media, scrambled URLs, etc. Sure, there are Twitter alternatives such as Jaiku and Tumblr, but if you want to do something similar in WP, you’re in luck. Matt and Automattic (makers of WordPress) have released the Prologue theme. It has Gravatar support and loads of RSS feeds, and is ideal for group “twittering” activity. (See the section below for specific uses of Prologue.) Their download site is down at the time of this writing, and apparently doesn’t offer a ZIP, so go visit Sizlopedia instead.

Additional Uses of the Prologue Theme

The Prologue theme, mentioned in the last section for “Twitter clone”, is a versatile theme/plugin package with a lot of potential. Here are some additional ways you can use it. Keep in mind that for some of these uses, you might want to either password-protect each new posting manually, or write some custom code that automatically sets a post’s status to “private”. (That’s not covered here, but if you’re using WP 2.3+, it probably has simplified privacy options.)

  1. Article assignment system. There are several ways to set up an article assignment system in WP. The simplest way is to use the Prologue theme. Each writer gets an account, and when the editor posts an available assignment, the first person to claim it by posting gets it. (Details of the assignment might be elsewhere.) The success of this approach depends on the discipline of writers not to post anything else except acceptance of an assignment. Questions can be posted as comments on the source assignment message, not as additional messages. Otherwise, the message stream will get cluttered fast.

    Now, if you want something more sophisticated that sends out reminders, etc., you’d need to write custom plugins/ code to manage that information.

  2. Confession log. People love to confess private things (or hear about others’ confessions.) Set up a site with the Prologue theme. Keep registration open (but possibly with email confirmation) and let people confess whatever they like.
  3. Celebrity or political microblog. If you only want to post short newsy items about a niche (such as entertainment or politics) and don’t need to upload images, Prologue is ideal for this. Thrivecore is an example used for pop culture microblogging. (Just keep in mind that to include links to other pages, you need to enter the appropriate HTML code in Prologue’s textarea.)
  4. Grocery list. Use the Prologue theme and enter grocery items. When you go to the grocery store, access your list with your Apple iPhone. (You can use other devices, but from what I understand, the iPhone is the best mobile Internet device around in terms of usability and readability.) You could also write custom code to tweak the list and convert it to some other format via a web API.
  5. Log book. One of the biggest pains in the behind when you run your own business is tracking expenses and/or logging meetings. Use the Prologue theme and enter items AFTER they occur. Voila, an automatic logbook. If you have a mobile phone with Internet access, use it to enter items on the go. Later, you can use a desktop computer to collate the items and record them more permanently in a spreadsheet. If you’re a codemonkey, you can write a WP plugin to export items to a private Google Spreadsheet, a web calendar, or a web to-do list service. Alternately, you can use your log book site’s RSS feed.
  6. Reminders. A Reminder system is similar to a to-do list but actually sends out reminders with a service such as Retweet’s Timer. Setup a Prologue theme as usual, but rig a Twitter stream using your site’s RSS feed. Use the necessary notation for Timer, and reminder items will be sent to you. Keep in mind that this shouldn’t be used for anything but items that are at least a day ahead, as it’s hard to predict when Twitter will check your updated RSS feed.
  7. Review site. Use Prologue with a group of friends to easily share brief reviews of movies, music, books, etc. Browse through JakartaBar for an interesting example. Make sure to check the comments (labelled as “reviews”.) I’m not sure what plugin they’re using for their ratings, but here are a few places that you can find review/ ratings plugins: Dan Grossman, Paul Goscicki (movie ratings – compliant with hReview microformat), Sneak, Channel-Ai.

    I haven’t tested any of these with Prologue yet, so I don’t know how they’ll look. (The movie ratings plugin is for the use of a post’s author, so may not suit Prologue use.) Which plugin you use depends on who will do the rating (author or reader) and what is being rated (the actual post or something referenced in the post).

  8. Software bug logger. Are you testing web or desktop software with a group of developers/ testers? Setup a subdomain with WP, using the Prologue theme. Turn on “privacy” in your WP control panel so that search engines don’t know about the site. Give each tester an account and have them follow a specific notation that can be parsed into a web spreadsheet or some other bug log.
  9. To-do list. Use the Prologue theme to post new tasks for yourself. It’s not elegant, but it’s easy to set up and use. It’s also available from anywhere that you have Internet access, and you can always pretty up the items later. In fact, if you can define a notation for items and use it consistently, you can send the to-do list feed through custom code (or a Yahoo Pipe) whose output works with the API of either a real web to-do list, calendar or spreadsheet service. (I.e., Google Calendar or Spreadsheet.) Check out Twittercal (and its Twitter bot) to get a better sense of this.

Note: If you’re serious about the above uses, get
yourself a personal domain (e.g., yourname.com) and create one subdomain per use. Or use a single subdomain and create a unique notation that makes clear what each posting represents. Then use a Yahoo Pipe or other code to filter the RSS feed, which then can be sent via APIs to a web spreadsheet or calendar.

Custom Sites

To my knowledge, the uses in this section are mostly speculative and thus require custom code, themes, plugins and/or web services.

(Note: Several of these ideas are taken from a blogHelper article.)

  1. Article library. Set up WordPress so that the home page template displays no posts on the home page, only a static index of articles. Each article is a post with its own permalink page. An example is A-Level Econoref.
  2. Calendar. You could drive your web calendar by using a Prologue-like home page (discussed indepth above), using a custom notation for items. The items would be parsed elsewhere and sent to a web calendar such as Google Calendar, or displayed on a calendar widget on your site. [This is an extension of the idea discussed for To-Do List and Reminder items above.]
  3. Classifieds. Using the Edgeio Classfieds plugin, you can add paid or free classifieds to your WP site. This could be integrated with something like a real estate listings site, as discussed above.
  4. Contact manager. As discussed in Pushing the Envelope of WP Functionality, Design Canopy is offering a WP-based Contact Manager theme (with plugins).
  5. CSS/ Site awards gallery. There are lots of gorgeous CSS Gallery sites out there, and if you have the need to create a niche one of your own, you have several choices – including writing your own custom theme and plugins. If that’s too much work, Shabu at OS Designer offers a free WP-based CSS Gallery theme (with necessary plugins) that uses two columns. (Example: CSS Design Gallery.) If two columns are not enough, or you want some flexibility in item pages, Small Potato at WP Designer is selling a CSS Gallery WP theme. Both Shabu’s and Small Potato’s themes use a voting plugin whereby visitors can rank a site.
  6. Ecommerce site. WordPress can be integrated with plugins or custom code, and PayPal, to produce online shops. An example is Filipino Artisans. (I’ve read that Moo.com also uses WP, but I think it’s for their blog, not their online store.) There are also code packs that allow you to integrate Amazon or other merchants into your own e-store.
  7. Media collection manager. You’ll need custom code, but WP can be used to track your CDs, DVDs, books, software, collectibles. You’re basically using it as a database manager for a specific type of item, though you could generalize. Alternately, you can use a Prologue theme interface with a unique notation, then parse added items and send them to a web spreadsheet via its API.
  8. Voting site. The CSS Gallery setup examples above use a voting plugin. You could tailor one of these for a more traditional social voting site, or you could produce a custom template like the one at N4G (News for Gamers) – though I don’t believe they are WordPress-based. But with all the components discussed in this article, a WP-based theme similar to N4G’s is possible. You could also combine the WP Prologue theme with a voting plugin to build a rudimentary voting site.
  9. Web portfolio. Designers and other creative types might like to offer an online portfolio showcasing their past work. W web portfolio has elements of an image gallery and a CSS gallery but isn’t necessarily either. One example is Twist’n’Shout’s portfolio. Also, check out blogHelper’s two-part series (part 1, part 2) on how build a WP-based portfolio.

15 Additional Uses of WordPress to Explore

Here are some additional possible uses of WordPress that didn’t have time to research and write up, but wanted to share with you. Much of the technique you need to use WP this way is already discussed above in this article.

  1. Church sermons.
  2. Fark-like user-submitted links.
  3. Forum. Sure, BBPress by Automattic is probably a better choice than a WP-based forum, but the fact is that you can do it.
  4. Job listings site.
  5. Music archives.
  6. Press release site.
  7. Project/ task management.
  8. Resume.
  9. Sales pages.
  10. Social network.
  11. Short film festival site.
  12. Video sharing site.
  13. Web command dashboard. (Private site to monitor your sites’ metrics, etc.)
  14. Web directory.
  15. Web soapbox.

Summary

These lists above are only a sampling of the uses for WordPress. So if you thought WP was only for blogs, hopefully you these examples stir up some ideas for your own projects. (Thanks to all the input by Hive members.) I’ll be covering a lot of these examples in more detail all this year.

Five Tips For Increased Speed and Efficiency While Editing Blog Posts

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The actual writing of a blog post is not the most time consuming process for many. Actually, it is the editing which takes up the most time. In my case, I can write a thousand words in a matter of minutes, but it is the editing which will take up the most time. Fortunately, with experience, I have developed a few methods for my writing process to minimize the amount of editing I do. It still takes awhile, but it is nowhere near as long as it once took to accomplish.

These tips will help those that feel they take too long editing their content. All of these tips are from personal experience, and they might or might not work for you. However, I would recommend that everyone gives these tips a chance to see if they help make you more productive.

Preparation, of Course

Preparing each paragraph of your article is a great way to reduce the time it requires to edit your posts later on. Reorganization of content can add a significant amount of editing time. Previously, I would end up rewriting several sentences just because they did not fit the overall flow of my post — I was the type to just jump right in without any planning. It was certainly not the most efficient way of approaching things.

To reduce the chances of needing to reorganize an article later, I now create headings or introductory sentences for each and every paragraph before I write it. Each heading or sentence represents the overall topic for that particular paragraph. It makes things much easier and faster to know what you intend on writing. Taking a few minutes to plan ahead will undoubtedly help reduce the amount of editing you do later on.

Write First, Edit Later

Are you a person which likes to edit as you go? I used to be that way — I would make sure that every sentence was perfect before moving on to the next one. Unfortunately, this is one of the worst habit’s a writer can pick up, and I did exactly that. I could spend several minutes on just a sentence or two trying to find out the best way to mash it all together to sound great. It was inefficient and often lead to me finding ways to distract myself.

If you want to finish your posts faster, write everything on your mind first, and then worry about the editing later. Get the idea down, and then move on to the next idea. I find it much better and faster to do the research first, write the article after, and then edit it last. Mixing these steps while writing has often resulted in wasted time for me. It might be difficult to adopt these methods, but it could be worth it. It has worked very well for me so far.

The First Read — Reducing Unnecessary Editing

You should read your article in its entirety at least once before even starting the editing process. Many of us tend to do edits on a paragraph by paragraph basis. This is somewhat similar to editing as you write, but the difference is that you focus in on one paragraph and forget that the content needs to play nicely with your other existing ideas. There is no point in editing one thing only to end up having to edit something else later on.

After reading your entire article, you can ensure that everything makes sense. It is almost like a good preparation step for the editing process. When I previously edited articles for a site I worked at, it was the reorganization of the content which took the most time and editing.

Sentence Structure

A paragraph is a collection of related sentences that discusses a single topic. The first sentence should introduce or summarize the topic. The last sentence should end the topic or transition to a new or related one. Everything in between should be the discussion about the one topic being discussed. People make the mistake of forgetting to start a new paragraph for every new thought. It is also a pain to edit.

Having a single sentence within a paragraph that strays off topic can add much confusion to the editing process. It will require much more thought to figure out how to include the sentence. Instead, just stay on topic. If you have to write about something similar — but it doesn’t fit — just transition into a new paragraph to handle your other thought. It will make editing much easier and less complicated. After all, editing should be primarily for fixing minor problems. If you’re having to fix errors like these, it is time to read my first tip again.

No One Is Perfect

Some of the greatest minds in the past and present have known when to move on to bigger and better things. This is also true for editing and writing. There will always be something that could have been done better. There is always a better word you could have used to describe something. There is always a better way you could have organized your post. In the end, perfection is the wrong attitude to have.

I admit that when I am editing my articles, I sometimes worry that people might take my articles the wrong way. I worry that I will have misspelled a word or written a sentence that does not make any sense. It is this worry that sometimes causes me to take an incredibly long time to edit an article.

The fact is, if I spent less time worrying and more time reading and editing what I have written, I would finish faster. It is only a matter of time before I make a mistake, and there is no point in worrying about it. Everyone will make mistakes, and they should just let the words flow and try their best the first time.

I take pride in trying to represent my articles as professional as can be. Even I notice bloggers for big magazines like Wired and PC World which seem to make glaring mistakes that can make me cringe at times. Regardless, the opinions and facts expressed within a post are what should matter the most to a reader.

To sum this all up in one sentence: preparation is key to making the editing process a faster and more efficient experience; it is what you do before that will make the biggest differences later.

Sugarrae Interview

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Last night I had an opportunity to interview super affiliate, conference speaker, SEO expert, blogger and popular Twitterer, Rae Hoffman, AKA Sugarrae.

Alone or with her website publishing company she has managed to dominate and profit from all sorts of competitive niches. This is one lady you need to be listening to if you want to make serious coin from affiliate marketing.

Read on after the jump to hear about networking, creating super performing affiliate sites and how to properly approach social media.

Thanks Rae for agreeing to be interviewed 🙂

I know you are busy flying around the world
lol, no worries… yeah, my friends call me
carmen sandiego all the time
heh

When I see your name I usually expect to see
presentation notes
why is that?
You seem to have done every conference?

Or is that just my perception
lol, well, PubCon I do regularly… I owe
that series a lot

I’ve done SES I think twice … it was a bit
too corporate for me, in all honesty

I’m doing SMX this week, but it is a Q&A
panel – I mentioned on my blog this past year that I will no longer be doing
formal presentations – only clinics and Q&A’s

that said, yeah, there was a time when I did
almost every single conference as far as flying out for the networking at
them

but I’m tired… on top of that, I’m doing
more "industry shows" for industries one of my companies owns a lot
of sites within, like the CTIA show coming up in April

so you’ll probably be seeing me at a few less
seo shows in the future than you have in the past
That’s a shame but I can understand it 🙂
yeah, it’s a tough life we lead 😉
Do you think that networking helped you?
oh, definitely

my first pubcon

it was Boston 2003

I had been an affiliate for quite a while
then

a good friend convinced me to go

I learned a lot of things at that conference
– one of which was that I was indeed fairly good at what I did

the second was that the affiliate marketing
world had very few women represented that year

and the third was I made not only contacts,
but also met people who now, five plus years later are some of my best
friends – both online and off

I came home with such fire too

that feeling is something that I think starts
to pale the more conferences you do
I have done way fewer networking events than
you but I have had similar positive experiences of networking
I miss feeling that kick in the ass

but am still meeting tons of great new people
via each one
Do you think you can get some of the benefits
online?

or has to be face to face?
I think you can get some of the benefits, but
definitely not all

looking someone eye to eye has a lot to do
with it

take the mad hat …. I knew of him from
online and because he commented on my blog

but I finally met him for the first time at
this past pubcon

now he’s on my IM and someone I’d trust to
have a business conversation with

you need human interaction for that type of
trust to develop in a decent time frame

that said – I have a few "online
only" friends that I’ve been in touch online with for years and years
now

who have a trust level with me

but it took way longer to earn (and I’m sure
that was both ways)
Yeah I can see that
the other thing too

is that some people are much different online
than off

someone told me at this past PubCon that I
was "exactly like my blog"

as if it were an unusual thing

I’m not sure if that was a compliment or not
though 😉
heh, I think compliment

Did you make direct profit from all those
conferences?

In business deals or consulting?

Or was it more contacts
Well, direct as in walking home with a signed
deal that day?

no

But have I made money off the relationships
I’ve built at conferences – yes, way more than the conferences have cost me
over the years

I don’t do much consulting

I’m very limited in that regard

as hokey as it sounds, I speak more to give
back to the community

if some of the old schoolers hadn’t been
willing to make posts on public and private forums in the early days and
throw me on their IM’s

I wouldn’t be where I am now

I’m very grateful for the free education I
received from the early goers… but at the same time, they also never gave
me a formula… they put the pieces on the table

and it was up to you to put the puzzle
together
If you do not do much consulting, would you
say your job is full time affiliate marketer?

I’d say I’m a full time monetizer 😉

I probably take on four audit clients per
year

outside of that, I build websites, give them
a POD, get them an audience and figure out how to monetize them
POD = Point of Difference?
yes… why people should visit your widget
site over every other

every site I have has some kind of hook to it

meaning "oh, yeah, widgetworld.com – you
guys are the ones who have the [insert something others in that niche aren’t
doing here]"

everything else is the core basics any site
in the niche needs

but with one, two, three or however many
POD’s we can find from the rest
Like Ryans PopCrunch show – something that
makes you take notice, right?
exactly

oh, popcrunch – you guys are the ones with
the snarky show with sarah east, right?

it seperates him from every other celebrity
blog
Yup
same thing – with sugarrae – for a long time,
people would go "oh, you’re the site with the spy chick and the
‘colorful language’ right?"

I didn’t intend for that to be a POD – but
sugarrae is a personal site – so the POD was me and my style … with a
corporate or commercial site, you need to work a bit harder and usually with
a bit more thought into developing a POD
I advise people to choose their positioning,
differentiation, and also have "flagship content" – content that
goes out and brings people back
exactly… that flagship content – to me – is
what I mean by POD – what are you doing differently

imho

the days of building thin aff sites is
nearing its end
so you have your brand, the armed and dangerous,
plus you have the knowledge you share
yes, there are exceptions

but I’m choosing to focus on long term
survival

aka, the affiliate evolution

lol, armed and dangerous
How do you choose a new niche? Do you
"follow your passion" or go where the money is?
I’d say I’m smack dab in the middle

I don’t care how much I like something, if
there is no money in it, I’m not building a site for it

vice versa – I won’t bore myself to death for
some money

I go where I see traffic, money and the
ability to create a POD

now, some may take that to mean I stay away
from competitive industries

which would be completely false

the large percentage of my sites fall into
competitive to heavily competitive categories

we just find a POD and do our best to exploit
it
When you started did you intend to do the
affiliate thing?

Or did that come later?
no, totally not

I started because I had a child with serious
health issues

I got a computer to research his condition as
a gift from my dad

and built a webpage about my son

long story short – for the first few years, I
was running the first international support group on the condition my son had

totally volunteer

I marketed the hell out of that site – but
had no idea I was "marketing"

I was just trying to get the people who
needed us to find us
So the content and traffic were a consequence
of your passion, and obviously POD
yes

but after several years

I was hoping there was a way the site could
become a source of income due to all the time I was spending on it

I fell into affiliate marketing as a result

I decided I wasn’t comfortable monetizing the
support group site

but decided to give building some new
websites a try

the full story is here
You had learned the ropes at that point?
yeah… I ran into some "pro"
marketers early on

they took me under their wing

and started showing me the ropes of
commercial marketing

again, always by teaching me to fish and
never by handing me a meal

I’d give you their names to put in bold, but
they’re both private guys

but I owe them the world
It is always golden when you find someone
like that
I finally met both of them via my first
PubCon after a few years of being an apprentice to them online

yeah, they were rocks in the early days
is that partly why you give back with the
conferences?
yes… that first pubcon was what showed me I
actually had a *skill*

family referred to my new career as me
"playing on the computer all day" – even once the money started coming
in as a result of that "play"
If you were to start now, what would be your
approach? How do you choose a new niche? Do you "follow your
passion" or go where the money is?
you know what’s funny….

I start over again every once in a while –
just to keep myself fresh

for instance

I just bought a brand new domain… I’ve
given myself a marketing budget of 1500 dollars out of pocket (meaning
earnings from the site can be reinvested – just no more than 1500 out of
pocket) and the rule NOT to pull links in from my other sites if I have
related ones…

I’ve set goals for it to reach within a year

friends think I’m nuts when I do things like
that

"why handicap yourself?"

well, I don’t for every site obviously – and
never for the sites owned by my publishing company – which has a partner –
but every once in a while

it’s good to get your ass back in the
trenches

and know you’ve still got it 😉
Keeps you sharp?

I guess also confirms your strategy
yep

things change
You know for real what works
old sites can get away with having nothing
but reciprocal links and still rank

a new site? not anywhere near as much
How did you select this new domain and niche?

Are they middle of the night inspirations?
lol

I have a rule

no buying domains after 2 am
🙂 I need that rule
the number of useless domains I own as a
result of a great idea at 3 am is nuts 😉

usually, picking a niche isn’t too hard – as
I said, I tend to go after the more competitive areas
Even with the amount I have lapsed I have
well over 30 unused domains because of "great ideas"
choosing the POD is much harder

but finding smaller niches is usually a
result of one of three things

1. total dumb luck

2. experience in an area due to personal
reasons

3. the hundreds of business cards I get at
conferences

"what the hell is _____?"

I look it up, check the traffic, check the
money and/or affiliate opps floating around it

though, I have a rule of not poaching client
industries… but since I don’t take on many clients

and refuse clients where I’m a competitor of
theirs

that’s never much of a problem
Do you have a qualification process you
follow or go by gut instinct?
a little of both

I check traffic, number of advertisers,
competition backlinks, competition monetization

but nothing scientific

traffic advertisers

line them up largest to smallest and start
where the lines start connecting near the top )
So a little competitor analysis but you kind
of already know which industries you will be able to work?
yes… since knowing finance is a profitable
industry isn’t much of a result of any type of analysis
Are there industries you just won’t touch?

Like many people will not do porn pills poker

out of distaste
haha… there’s a story from years ago, where
a bunch of us were sitting around a table at an event

and that question was asked

and I said I didn’t do gambling

and someone said "yeah, I don’t like the
idea of that industry either"

and I said, "oh, it has nothing to do
with morals – it’s because I can get better ROI in other industries due to
the competition and the industry being a little unsteady as far as
longevity"
🙂
so I guess the answer is, yes, there are
certain industries I won’t touch… but not due to distaste as much as for
business reasons

that said, I obviously have some standards

like, I wouldn’t do beastiality (though you’d
be surprised the traffic that industry has)

but if it’s legal

doing it or not is merely a business decision
What kind of sites do you routinely build?
Mini-sites vs blogs vs one big authority site?
kind of a hyrbid model

we like to have up to date and fresh content
(blogs) but also have timeless information and be an authoritative source as
well

picture several mini sites and a blog that
make up an authority site
When you say several mini-sites, are they
connected as satellites?
no, never

we don’t "game the system"

if a site has a natural connection, we’d
connect it

so as an example

lets say our main topic is red widgets
(sorry, webmasterworld has me trained well ;))

we’d have a blog covering all things relating
or important or tied to red widgets

but then we’d also have a section reviewing
red widgets, and we’d also have a section discussing accessories for red
widgets and we’d also have a section where we’d answer reader questions about
red widgets and then another section about how to use red widgets

each section could stand as it’s own site and
contains a lot of great info

but we merge them all together under one
umbrella

and market it as once force
So less buy-red-widget.com more widget-world
no, less buy-red-widget.com and more
redwidgetworld.com
right
if red widget world goes well

we eventually build widgetworld

and instead of covering red widgets on widget
world

we simply link to red widget

they are two totally distinct sites

massively different information

nothing is duplicated

and we only build redwidgetworld’s for sub
sections of a main niche that have the traffic and audience to deserve the
effort
When it comes to conversions, the actual aff
sales, is that mostly done through reviews or do you have specialist tools
like price comparisons, and such?
we’ve built price comparison tools

when the sites have enough traffic where we
make sales of the banner space

we have some merchants that build us
customized stores

they also make sales based on
articles/research/reviews we publish about them

we have some sites where we won’t even run
cpm ads because the aff ads make enough that the cpm for the space would
"seem" insane to an interested advertiser
So you link to the merchant in content as
well as more salesy pages?
well, not "sneakily" in content

we’ll usually create a page tailored to that
merchant somehow

and link to that from within articles

we want to be transparent

we want to earn and retain trust

we’re going more for a fewer sales from a
larger audience type thing

our credibility is the most important thing

its why we earn the links to rank where we do

we also don’t not cover content based on ads

meaning – we cover whatever a consumer would
be interested in – whether it monetizes or not

any content that isn’t "highly"
montizeable (meaning past adsense) is still created – it helps to strengthen
the highly monetizeable pages

long term, long term

I don’t build any site without a long term
vision
So these are more editorial sites and you are
not chasing the "buy" terms?
the business plan is here in black and white 🙂

these days, you need to deliver some
editorial value to truly be a resource and rank because you deserve to and
not because you’re chasing an algorithm

I can still rank buy-red-widgets-online.com
and have an insane conversion rate

but for how much longer?

and what is the exit strategy with a site
like that?
So you build your resource site and grow the
content

Does social media come into play?

With traffic and links?
yeah, social media plays a part – for sure

but not for the reason so many social media
amateurs and detractors think

we don’t submit every article we do to digg
and go "yeah baby, one more backlink from digg!!"

I don’t care about the backlink from digg at
all

or any social media site

we use social media to put our brand in front
of the masses and build outside links

example… if we write a killer piece on
hacking your red widget to also act as a blue widget that is 3000 words,
complete with a video and picture

you think I care if I get a digg link?

that would be a complete failure if all I got
was a link from every social media site

what I am looking for is a big site with tens
of thousands of feed subscribers to pick up our link and go "hey
readers, check out this cool ass post"…

I’m looking for social media users to see it
and go "wow, cool site" and hit the subscribe button on our rss
feed

people like to complain affiliate marketers
game the social media system

we do and we don’t

we can push our story to the homepage of digg
– sure – but if it doesn’t belong there (and half the time, even if it does)
the diggers will bury it within seconds

the purpose of social media – to me – is
about putting us in front of thousands of people – a lot of which are members
of the linkerati

and hoping to god they like us enough to hit
subscribe or blog about whatever fantastic thing we’ve done
Good advice
most people don’t truly get social media

they think they do, but they don’t
So long term aff sites and authoritative
blogs are not so different after all
the best is when they’re one in the same 🙂
Excellent point to finish on I think 😀

thanks for your time, I appreciate it
you’re welcome

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