I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

A fair question, and something we ask of every element we place on our blogs. Some widgets work, some don’t. Some ads perform better than others. And so I had to stop and ask myself, is Entrecard working for me?

Notorious list-maker that I am, I drew up a list:

What I like about Entrecard

Discovering new blogs. The top of my list, and the reason I keep returning to Entrecard: I love finding new blogs, the ones that the search engines haven’t indexed yet and the blogerati don’t list on their blogrolls. It’s all about new voices, and there are so many great new voices on Entrecard.

Leaving my “card” at these blogs. I’m not really one for leaving lots of comments, and I like the idea of just “dropping my card” off at a blog I visit. It’s sort of like saying, “I was here. I liked what I saw. Visit me, and you might like what you see.”

The Entrecard Shop. Okay, so I visited it for the first time yesterday, and I’ve yet to make a “purchase”, but there’s honestly a lot of good stuff over there. From custom Shakespearean Sonnets, to critiques on your blog, to blog hosting, to a mix CD, there seems to be something for everyone.

What I don’t like about Entrecard

Dropping cards for the points alone. I can’t say for sure how often this happens, but sometimes I get cards every day from the same person. Do they want to make sure I know of their existence, or are they just building up their points?

Ugly cards. I know that many bloggers aren’t designers, but there are some very ugly cards that I just refuse to approve because of a design clash. Maybe Entrecard can include some pretty templates?

Cards for useless sites. You know what I’m talking about: those spammy sites that call themselves “blogs” just because they’re on blogspot, and have no purpose other than to spam the search engines with badly written, keyword-ridden articles, and make money off Adsense.

And now back to my partner’s question: am I keeping Entrecard? Is it worth it? Reading everything I’ve just written, I have to say… yes. Maybe the system is flawed in certain ways, but right now the blogs I’ve discovered and the people I’ve met through Entrecard make it all worth it.

Do you use Entrecard? How do you feel about it?

Using PopShops

To use PopShops, you’ll want to be signed up with Commission Junction, LinkShare, or one of the other large affiliate networks that PopShops supports. I’ve found that the problem with using only the tools provided by these networks is that things can get pretty overwhelming pretty fast. Usually, you’ll find yourself searching through several pages just to find a specific product. PopShops, however, makes it easy to search through available products at your affiliate shops of choice, build a store out of these products, and “pop it in”-to your site or blog by cutting and pasting a bit of code. Yes, it’s that simple.

Using it with Wordpress

I built my Blogger’s Bookstore in less than 10 minutes. Here’s what I did:

- Installed the runPHP Wordpress plugin. This allows me to use PopShops’ PHP code, and not just javascript… although the javascript works fine from within Wordpress.
- Logged into PopShops.
- Created a new shop called, appropriately, Blogger’s Bookstore.
- Searched for each book on my list (I had written my list down on a piece of paper beforehand), and added it to my new shop.
- Customized the display to make sure it fit in with the layout of my blog.
- Created a new page in Wordpress. Copy and pasted the code from PopShops. Published!

… and ta-da! My very own bookstore on my blog. My favorite thing about PopShops is that I can login anytime and make changes to my Bookstore, and it will automatically reflect the changes on my live store.

Why not try it out? PopShops has a free version, which is a little limited compared to their paid versions, but works just as well.

In case you’re wondering, yes, I have every book on the list. What can I say? I’m a booklover and a blogger!

I used PopShops to build the bookstore, so my affiliate links are embedded right in there. If you decide to buy through me, thank you very much! Visit my Blogger’s Bookstore ».

$psps_parameters = '';

foreach ($_REQUEST as $key => $value) {
if (strpos($key,”psps_”) > -1 ) {
$psps_parameters .= ‘&’.$key.’=’.urlencode($value);
$psps_base_url = str_replace(’&’.$key.’=’.urlencode($value), “”, $psps_base_url);
$psps_base_url = str_replace($key.’=’.urlencode($value), “”, $psps_base_url);
}
}

$psps_parameters .= “&psps_show_search=true”;
$psps_parameters .= “&psps_show_navigation=true”;
$psps_parameters .= “&psps_show_products=true”;

$psps_url = “?psps_base_url=”.urlencode($psps_base_url);

$psps_url=”http://shops.popshops.com/shops/php/ddf46452b0114d179298b30533e3cd71$psps_url$psps_parameters”;

# Include the shop
if (function_exists(’curl_init’)) {
$shop=curl_init();
curl_setopt($shop,CURLOPT_URL,$psps_url);
curl_exec($shop);
curl_close($shop);
} else {
readfile($psps_url);
}
?>

“An autoresponder is a computer program that automatically answers e-mail sent to it. They can be very simple or quite complex.” – Wikipedia

I used to think autoresponders were something I didn’t need. You know those automated, “I’ll be out of the office until Monday…” emails you get when someone goes on vacation? Since I hardly ever stop checking my email- even on vacation- I didn’t think I had much use for them.

Since I started blogging professionally, however, I’ve learned just how powerful autoresponders can be. Here’s an example:

A few days before Thanksgiving, we released our very first (free) Stylish Shopping Guide at our shopping blog Something Stylish. Featuring hot deals and tips for maximizing your dollar during the Black Friday / Cyber Monday craziness, we generated a lot of buzz among our visitors. The emails poured in, and each email signup required us to reply with details on how to download the guide for free. Now, because we had an autoresponder, we were able to do the following automatically:

• Send an immediate response to each person, thanking them by name, and providing details on where and how to download the guide.
• Add them to our mailing list, so they immediately receive alerts when our future shopping guides become available, and
• Be able to see who clicked on what on the emails we sent out.

What struck me about all this was how automatic and immediate everything was- and all thanks to our autoresponder.

But how can a blogger make use of autoresponders? AWeber, the autoresponder we use (and love!) features a tool to send out “blog broadcasts”:

You can send out the most recent- or the last 5 or 10, whatever- post on your blog, and prettify it with HTML, AND track who’s clicking through and when. AWeber will do this automatically from your RSS feed. And, of course, you’ll be building a mailing list of your own. Our Build a Better Blog newsletter (scroll down to subscribe!) is powered by AWeber, and we couldn’t be happier.

No, autoresponders aren’t the sexiest of blog tools- but they’ve made my life so much easier.

Dude, what’s your blogspot?

I’ve actually heard people refer to their blogs as their “blogspots”. Using whatever.blogspot.com was very smart of Blogger. It is, indeed, the “spot” where your blog resides… your “blogspot”.

The Power of Gooooogle

Since Google acquired Blogger, things have only gotten rosier over there. I use Google’s products a lot, and whether I’m checking my gmail, using their image search, or obsessing over my stats in Analytics, I keep on running into invitations to Blogger. Ah, to be owned by Google.

It’s Called Blogger

This might be the best thing about it. If you want to blog, and be a blogger… go to Blogger. It’s self-explanatory. I’ve had to explain to clients what Wordpress and Movable Type are, but never Blogger.

Keeping it Simple is Not So Stupid

In fact, it’s brilliant. Blogger is simple to set up, and simple to use. You can be up and running as a bonafide “member of the blogosphere” in less than 10 minutes. And in an already overcrowded blogosphere, that’s a good thing. It’s because of this simplicity, this ease of use, that so many of us got started blogging on Blogger- and why so many are still using it.

Open up your footer.php file, and just before the closing </body> at the bottom of the file, make sure you have:

<?php wp_footer(); ?>

This happened to me- I must have deleted that bit of code because it looked redundant to me, but apparently it’s used by various plugins to insert PHP codes after everything else on your page.

And if you’re wondering whether you should install the Wordpress Blog Stats plug-in, do. Even though I use Google Analytics, I love being able to check my stats from within my Wordpress control panel.

You’ll see the results after voting- and, while I wasn’t too surprised to see Wordpress (.org – referring to the script you self-host) leading the pack, I was a little surprised at how far behind all the others were. The poll is still ongoing, so there will no doubt be changes to the results, but as I write this:

Wordpress.org is at 113.
Movable Type is at 9.
Blogger is at 40.
Wordpress.com is at 45.
TypePad is at 16.
LiveJournal is at 3.

As someone who’s used all of the above platforms at one time or another, I honestly expected more from the non-Wordpress platforms. Movable Type, which I only recently stopped using, is excellent and imho much better than Blogger.

Then again, I did stop using Movable Type recently. Why? Because Wordpress is easier to use. Installation is a breeze. Widgets have made adding and removing things from your sidebar ridiculously simple. And if I ever run into any problems, there’s a very good chance that someone has experienced and solved the same thing. At the end of the day, it’s about what gives me more productivity as a blogger.

Download Wordpress 2.3 now.