Big Foot Web Marketing

My friend Ruud Hein has been trying to get me to use Evernote s for years now. I took the plunge and signed up ( again) this time I will make a concerted effort to use it. He swears by it.
Normally you have to get an invitation from am existing user , but today anyone can join ( If you miss this promo and if I have some left, twitter me or email me and I will invite you)

Evernote Open Registration

I am told it will be an improvement over my copy everything into an email and send to myself method of information management … AND best feature is it can search text in a photo- so can take photo with phone and scan later….

Tags: Free Tools and Utilities by Lisa Stewart
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Adding a Flash gallery to your blog can really make your pages and posts pop. If you are a small or home based business a flash gallery can really step things up a notch and breathe life and visual interest to a page. They add a professional look and give blah pages pizzazz. You don’t have to be an expert programmer or know anything about Flash to create a slick Flash slideshow - here’s how.
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Tags: Free Tools and Utilities, Internet Marketing and Blogs, Tuesday's Tool, Web Site Accessibility, WordPress Plugins by Lisa Stewart
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One of my dreams is to master or- at least having a working knowledge of how to use Photoshop. I have tried using several tutorials- including the excellent “Lynda” series. But I just can’t get it. I can follow step-by-step directions on how to do pretty much do anything using step by step intructions but to do it on-the-fly is above my abilities.

The software I use is called MicroGrafx Picture Publisher. The program came on a CD that I got with my first scanner- in 1996!.
It is with great shock when I write this and realize that I am using a piece of software from 1996 that is almost 12 years old. Gosh- does that make me feel old. It does what I need it to do.. most of the time.

I have been looking for FREE alternatives and found one called GIMP. I tree to make suggestions that anyone can do with little or no experience and little or no money- using free stuff whenever,.
I am all about free anything and open everything and this is an Open Source project. I found it looking for a tutorial on how to make rounded corner buttons. They look much slicker and more *web 2.0* then plain old square corners.

Make Rounded Corners On Your Buttons

The tutorial for making rounded corners is here: Gimp Tutorial

I am using the rounded corner images for ads and “Your Ad Here’ type buttons on some of my blogs. They are also good to make buttons to some of your “best” work posts or more popular posts, rather than just using text links which can get over looked.

I keep my buttons simple and not too jazzy mostly because of my limited abilities. if this is something you are good at- go for it.

Tags: Free Tools and Utilities, Internet Marketing and Blogs by Lisa Stewart
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I am a tool junkie. I will try any tool once. My kitchen counter has been crowded with a Magic Bullet, George Foremen grills and every chopping device imaginable. I regularly take apart my computer and add new and “better” stuff to it. My floppy drive is from 1995. I am also er.. um… frugal and do not part easily with my money (Scottish genes) so my gadgets and gear are bought second hand- let other people buy the latest gizmos and I’ll pick up at next year garage sale.

I am the same way with my blogs. I will give most plugin and tools a chance- if only for the coolness factor. Plugins appeal to my need to try new things and do it for free. Same with tools. I love stuff that does stuff. If its free even better.
This new tool is a doozy.

What would you do if you could find out what pages attract the most interest on your competetions site? Would you like to take a peak into your competitions blog and see what the MOST popular pages were? What pages had the most links pointing to it?
Damn right you would. And you can - for free! Patrick at Blogstorm.cm has come up with such a tool, The Blogstorm Link Tool ( For those new to link building and blogging- this is a perfect example of great link baiting - he has created a USEFUL tool that many will link to and they are also forced to visit is site to use it.)
What the Link Tool Does:
In under 30 seconds I found out how many links are pointing to pretty much every page on John Chow’s Make Money Blogging Site.

See results here

I don’t mean to single out John’s site- it was just the first name that popped into my head without having to check URL.
Some of the highlights:
After his main page some of his most linked to pages are:
http://www.johnchow.com/make-money-online-review-my-blog/ has 2897 links
http://www.johnchow.com/make-money-online-recommended-money-makers/ has 1433 links
http://www.johnchow.com/make-money-online-with-john-chow-dot-com-e-book/ has 487 links
http://www.johnchow.com/john-chow-dot-com-blog-income-report-june-2007/ has 232 links

How can you use this information?
I say this over and over gain- information is power. Anytime you get a window into user behaviours look into it. You will be able to glean something useful from it. ALWAYS. Figuring out what to do with the information is the harder part.

Looking over John’s info you can see that his most popular pages are the ones where he discloses information most people don’t give out; i.e. earnings. You may surmise from this two things- people are nosy and people want real numbers.
Maybe people like to compare. Maybe they are just plain curious. You can apply this to your site by offering your own earnings reports or sharing something honestly.

I did something similar when I started my Raise Your Alexa Traffic Rankings Test. It was embarrassingly- because my ranking was so awful. But it was the truth. What becomes more interesting is over time seeing numbers grow. It is more fun to be in the ground of something. The most popular page on my mom’s diet blog is her pictures. She has some before during and after pics and that page gets 50 times the traffic of all the the others.

We can see people like e-books- or at least they link John’ Chow’s e-book. It is worth a shot to create your own e-book. If you are an expert in your field do up a manual or guide or tutorial to something people are interested in. Look at your stats to see what people want- or use the Link Tool to find out what your competition is offering.:-). Do NOT do a half-ass job. It may take you weeks to do it right.

Other patterns I notice in John’s popular pages- pages that engage the reader. He INVOLVES his readers somehow and invites them to “join” and come along for the ride. He asks them to review his site for example. He is combining communication with his readers with link bait. “Hey- help me make my site better by reviewing my ( and link back.. of course) I will help you by linking to your site.

Since most reader of this posts are looking for ideas for their OWN blogs - I do invite you to submit requests. Please submit your own blog URL as well as your competitions site and we can take a look and see some real examples of taking a competitors site and using the info for your own advantage. Use comments section below to submit.

Note: Blogstorm LinkTool uses Yahoo API with sitemap.xml so the site must have a sitemap.xml file on the site (most blogs will)

Tags: Free Tools and Utilities by Lisa Stewart
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