Just a few weeks ago a guy named Brad from Melbourne, Australia, popped up on my channel’s chat page while I was broadcasting on Justin dot TV. Since then, we got in touch and shared thoughts about blogging, traffic building, computers, and lifestyle differences between our countries. It’s always cool to have some new friends from different cultures and learning from them. Just today, Brad invited me for a YouTube interview I never had yet ever since — so he made a new record for me.

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Blow all your whistles and toot all your horns for BlogRush, but I beg to disagree that their web service is able to drive substantial traffic. The teaser on their homepage, which reads “the fastest and easiest way to instantly drive a flood of targeted readers,” is none other than just a highfalutin blurb. I’ve been using it for months and the highest traffic I got from a single post was one – quite a drought.

BlogRush is a cooperative syndication network launched by John Reese. Their web service binds the blogs of their members through their widget which displays five clickable blog post headlines. Each member earns one syndication credit every time the widget is loaded on their respective blogs. It also costs them same value to have their recent blog post title displayed on another member’s blog.
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For three days starting May 2 next month, bloggers inclined towards online business and marketing will meet in Chicago, United States, for an annual conference dubbed this year as “SobCon08 Biz School for Bloggers.” The conference will be held at Summit Executive Center, popularly known for hosting meetings of most influential international brands. The 48-hour summit will touch various topics concerning social business, social media, business management, and online marketing.

The speakers of the said event are popular bloggers and known corporate professionals who have established their own business brands on the Web. So to speak, these people surely would share their online strategies, experiences and business tactics to the attendees.

• Anita Bruzzese from Gannett Today, online reputation management
• Brian Clark from Copyblogger, an online business models that work
• Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress, which focuses how to put your business on spotlight
• Chris Garrett, editorial management
• Chris Brogan, social media and social networking choices
• Dave Bullock, effective sales model that converts
• Liz Strauss, building an irresistible offer
• Wendy Piersall on success management

Event organizers are expecting over 200 participants to attend the conference. Most of them are professional business bloggers representing their own business brands. The conference would give each of the attendees a chance to share their online business experience. The coalescence of effective business methods and ideas that would be shared by each participant is expected to actuate new strategies towards successful online business. Participants are guaranteed to bring home a business action plan that can be immediately executed for measurable success.

The registration fee costs $450 for new participants and $350 for returnees. This fee constitutes the participation to the whole event and access to giveaways. Hotel accommodations around the venue will be shouldered by each participant, costing around $139 to $225 per night.

The conference is sponsored by the following online organizations and companies:

• WordPress
• Network Solutions
• b5media
• Top Hosting Center
• Chitika
• Wiley
• ProBlogger
• E-Junkie
• Blogger and Podcaster
• Plante Moran Financial Advisors
• Summit Executive Centre

It is good to note that Mashable, a popular social networking news website, has listed the annual SobCon event as one of Top 10 Events for Bloggers.

My Personal Standpoint

Well, basically I wish I could attend conferences like that. It is good place to meet business people. They give connections and open doors to new opportunities and partnerships. If you have the bucks and the will to succeed, attending SobCon08 definitely is not a bad choice.

Last March 29, I saw another notice in my WordPress control panel telling me that the latest version of WordPress, version 2.5, has been released and my installation must be upgraded. I’ve read from many blogs that this version will bring new looks and speed to the WordPress control panel. So, without further ado, I instantly downloaded the new version from WordPress official website and upgraded mine.

The upgrade process went very smooth and definitely transparent. As usual, WordPress guys made things easy – no “computerese,” no jargons whatsoever, just good steps. After I upgraded, I was redirected to the WordPress login and it is where my impression begins.

The login design has been changed for better. It looks very neat and fresh now, unlike the blue one that we used to see in the previous version which, in my opinion, was large.

The center of improvement came after I logged into my WordPress control panel. I was surprised – indeed, there are big changes. The first thing I noticed basically is the design. The new WordPress 2.5 default dashboard configuration displays recent comments, incoming links, WordPress development blog, popular plugins and the typical box news.

The default main menu now comes with only five items: Write, Manage, Design, Comments and Ratings. The Write menu item when clicked displays the Write Post page featuring the revamped (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) WYSIWYG WordPress blog editor. The Manage menu item lets you manage posts, pages, links, categories, tags, link categories, media library and like before, boasts WordPress Import and Export function. The Design menu, on the other hand, is equivalent to previous “Presentation” menu. The Settings, Plugins and User menu items are now displayed in small font to the upper right portion of the administration panel.

Another thing that is noticeable with the new WordPress is the speed. It is a whole lot faster than the previous one – one thing many bloggers will like (including me). The one-click plugin upgrade is superb. It asks for your domain’s FTP login information, and then it upgrades the outdated plugins for you.

My conclusion is that I very much prefer the previous blue-themed control panel. When I found that the color scheme can be changed to classic through the Settings, however, my little disappointment vanished. Now, WordPress 2.5 looks good and I love it like other bloggers do.

Becoming a blogger is a good thing. First, you’ll start learning how to write articles properly, then you’ll begin to appreciate doing research that you never really liked when you were still at school. You’ll learn how to promote your blog to various social networks, and then finally decide to monetize it at the same time. The difficult part is, when you immerse into blogging, you can hardly stop.

One thing about blogging is that is it very time-consuming but very satisfying when your published articles are able to make good traffic to your sites and clicks on your affiliate advertisements. Blogging is very addicting indeed. The bonus is that you also get to know with new people from anywhere in the world and befriend them simply because of a popular blog post you submitted on Digg or get stumbled in Stumbled Upon by other users.

Today, to celebrate the Fool’s Day, I’m going to show you the first craziest video I ever did in my whole life that was uploaded in YouTube. I did not make it for nothing, it is for this blog and for other bloggers. The video actually tells bloggers to take a while and get a break from writing or doing tasks related to blogging. And if you want to know what bloggers should do during breaks — well, just do the locomotion!

If you are a blogger and you want to join the “locomotion” phenomena, then just download that song, get your webcam to record a video, and use that dance step. Send it to me after and I’ll weave all our videos to become a global blogger locomotion.

Earlier today, I came across a website called JS-Kit from nowhere. I was immediately caught by it when I read that it offers something interesting to websites and blogs. Because it sounded like there’s another useful WordPress plugin to me, I decided to peruse further and give their services a try. Now, here’s my honest review after playing with their services for few hours.

What is JS-Kit?

I was intrigued when I found out that JS-Kit is not a set of WordPress or any blog platform plugin – and it’s not exclusive to blogs either – it works with any web page. JS-Kit is in fact, a package of web services that you can take advantage in many ways. It works similar to a widget. JS-Kit comprises of five different services that work amazingly with each other: Navigator, Ratings, Reviews, Comments and Polls.

The installation is flawless and very easy. You only need to insert the code snippet they provide for each service, and then load the page in the browser and poof – there you go. If you’ve ever tried using Google Analytics or StatCounter’s web analyzer codes then you’ll find the installation process similar.

One of JS-Kit’s weaknesses is that it will not run on websites that block JavaScript (since it is mainly powered by that scripting language). Therefore, there is no hope adding it on MySpace or Friendster which potentially could promote socialization.

JS-Kit Navigator

JS-Kit Navigator service provides a configurable widget that is implemented in a tab. When I run the page with the code for the first time, an admin console appeared and it let me configure how the service will look when the code is run. It displays basically three default tabs: Top, Hot and Best Picks – however, only one tab is required to be enabled for the service to work. I strongly suggest though that you enable all them for greater advantages. The caption of each tab is modifiable. However, for this review’s sake, I’ll use their default names.

In the Top tab, JS-Kit Navigator is able to show the most popular objects (or pages) using weighted average user ratings collected by the JS-Kit’s Ratings and Reviews services. It also able to gather the most active or “hot” objects measured by similar JS-Kit services in the Hot tab. On the Best Picks tab, site administrators can build custom views and put their own internal or external links for increased visibility to the website visitors. Finally, you can “viralize” your site contents with the “Grab It” feature – enabling your readers to embed the JS-Kit Navigator on any site on the Web.

The main advantage of this web service is that it can potentially increase traffic to the website. I could personally declare that with confidence because this so-called “widget” is very eye catchy (though some users would falsely identify it as one of Google advertisements). Its dynamic list generation is perfect for blogs and news websites.

Should you use JS-Kit Navigator? Well, JS-Kit’s Navigator brings no disadvantage so it is unreasonable if you don’t enjoy the blessings. If you have an extra ad space in your homepage, you can use the service, boost your page views and reduce your bounce rate. Just be sure to place it in a conspicuous place or anywhere above the fold.

To use JS-Kit Navigator web service, insert this code to any page you desire:

<div class="js-kit-top"style="width: 300px" title="Easy Site Navigator"></div>

<script src="http://js-kit.com/top.js"></script>

Learn more about JS-Kit Navigator here.

JS-Kit Ratings

It’s unfortunate for me that I learned about this web service too late. I’ve been using WP-PostRatings plugin for my WordPress blog for almost a month and I am still fairly satisfied with its performance. However, unlike WP-PostRatings plugin, which is rather specifically tailored for WordPress, JS-Kit Ratings web service goes beyond the boundaries. Aside from blog entries, it can also be used to let your visitors to rate merchandise items, services, pictures, and any other objects.

JS-Kit Ratings service presents benefits to visitors and web publishers. For visitors, it allows them to express their opinions through ratings to any associated object. For publishers, they can collect valuable stats about their audience’s preferences that may help push the efficiency of marketing plans. JS-Kit Ratings presentation is also customizable – however, only to a limited extent. It can show stars, and you can change its colors, but just stars. This limitation is the only drawback I found with JS-Kit Ratings web service.

Should you use JS-Kit Ratings? If you don’t have a ratings feature yet integrated in your blog or website, this web service is definitely a very good choice. The five star rating is very attractive and somehow entices the visitors to interact with your pages and rate your articles. If you ever plan to use this, I suggest that you use other JS-Kit services as well.

To use JS-Kit Ratings web service, insert this code to any page you desire:

<div class="js-kit-rating" title="" permalink=""></div>

<script src="http://js-kit.com/ratings.js"></script>

Just like that.

Learn more about JS-Kit Ratings here.

JS-Kit Reviews

If you feel that JS-Kit Ratings are not enough and you need to actually know what your visitors or customers have to say about a certain product or content, then it is where JS-Kit Reviews service enters center-stage. It is definitely the easiest code snippet I’ve seen in integrating reviews feature to any web page. I was amazed how the three lines of code could do such thing.

JS-Kit Reviews web service basically lets you interact to your visitors with its threaded comments. Like what I said, its deployment takes only a few minutes and then it will enhance your visitor’s site experience and potentially improve your page’s conversion rates. Its powerful moderation, spam protection and service statistics are thumbs up.

Should you use JS-Kit Reviews? Personally I don’t think I can take advantage much of this service on this blog. However, for merchants who sell products online, I highly recommend this service. It gives a chance to your visitors to leave reviews about the items you sell. The only missing part of this web service is that reviewers aren’t given a chance to leave their signature links. It could somehow boost the reliability of reviews. JS-Kit Comments web services, also shares similar shortcomings.

To use JS-Kit Reviews web service, insert this code to any page you desire:

<div class="js-kit-rating"></div>

<div class="js-kit-comments"></div>

<script src="http://js-kit.com/reviews.js"></script>

Learn more about JS-Kit Reviews here.

JS-Kit Comments

JS-Kit Comments amazes me in a way that it provides extended functionality with just two lines of codes. You will get a full-featured commenting engine to any page you want it to be applied on to. It lets visitors to leave comments without the annoying registrations or logins. Plus, JS-Kit Comments also lets commentators to upload their own avatar which is rather good.

A major drawback of the JS-Kit Comments web service is the lack of URL field for commentators. Though it surely fends off spammers, it would also discourage people (especially bloggers) to do some comments. I think that to grow a community we need to respect each other and at least have the courtesy to leave the link field optional.

Should you use JS-Kit Comments? Bloggers will be hesitant to try this web service as it easily gives the impression that it would not help or benefit their sites. For other website types that need a commenting engine, webmasters don’t need to find scripts anymore and take the hard road dealing with tricky database installations. JS-Kit Comments already provides you same functions with just – well – two lines of codes!

To use JS-Kit Comments web service, insert this code to any page you desire:

<div class="js-kit-comments" permalink=""></div>

<script src="http://js-kit.com/comments.js"></script>

Learn more about JS-Kit Comments here.

JS-Kit Polls

User polls are one of the efficient methods of getting opinions from users quickly. JS-Kit Polls service offers an attractive, simple-looking but highly customizable poll system. It lets web publishers modify existing polls on-the-fly without changing any HTML. After a website visitor casts a vote to the poll, JS-Kit Polls instantly shows a visual poll result which looks great – and I mean it.

I have decided to use this web service in my future blog posts. I believe bloggers can really exploit this in fetching their readers’ opinions about certain competing products or people. Perhaps I can do online election using this.

Should you use JS-Kit Polls? If you feel like you need this – why not? It invokes your readers mind to contribute some quick opinions. If you’re a blogger or writer, you could make new headlines with the final results of the poll.

To use JS-Kit Polls web service, insert this code to any page you desire:

<div class="js-kit-poll" style="width: 350px"></div>

<script src="http://js-kit.com/polls.js"></script>

Learn more about JS-Kit Polls here.

Are JS-Kit web services free?

As much I have dug the JS-Kit’s official website, I never found the word “free” there. However, I asked a friend who’s familiar with their services and I was told that their services are free. I personally hope that the people behind JS-Kit would clarify on their website whether their services are free or not.

TechCrunch, a popular tech blog, featured JS-Kit last year and described it as “Web 2.0 for the Lazy People.” Generally, I don’t have objection with that: with just two, three lines of code you’ll get extended features that will improve your website traffic, enrich your visitor’s experience and arouse their senses to interact with objects you put on your page. Truly, JS-Kit suite successfully delivers Web 2.0 “bling bling” services for everyone.

Bloggers commonly have two sources of significant income: money earned from the sponsored advertisements of affiliate programs, and the income coming from paid reviews. Signing up for an affiliate program is much easier to do than registering for programs that pays for every review post you make. Affiliate programs only require you to have a running website – that is why it’s the easiest thing to do if you want to monetize your new blog site.

Paid review programs usually require a certain reputation, PageRank (PR) level of a blog and number of existing blog posts, before an applicant is accepted to the program. Rumors about Google penalizing blog sites who participate in paid reviews, which in their view is a way of building links “artificially”, also discourages new bloggers to get involved to the said program. However, doing paid reviews still and yet the biggest income source of popular bloggers like John Chow.

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