Dustin Diaz wanted to give the web world an opportunity to remind everyone of the benefits of CSS web page design. By removing the stylesheet for the day, the world would see naked web pages, giving a little more appreciation for the skills of web page designers. - from Lorelle’s announcement

Apparently, this is the third year of CSS Naked Day. I’ll be joining in, stripping this and my other blog on Wednesday.

Want to join? Visit Dustin Diaz’s blog to learn more about CSS Naked Day »

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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.

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The answer is, of course, yes. You can make money setting up your own blog, writing about topics close to your heart, and earning through Text Link Ads, Google Adsense, or similar blog monetization techniques. You’ll have to work on publicizing your blog, though- and if you want to really earn money, you’ll need a healthy dose of good marketing techniques.

What’s easier? Blogging for someone else. Many of the big blog networks are always on the lookout for new bloggers, and they’ll usually take care of the marketing side of things. Here’s where to find the best blogging jobs:

Blogger Jobs .biz
A lot of listings here. I recommend subscribing to their RSS feed until you find something that interests you.

SimplyHired Blogging Jobs
This is an aggregator- which means that they pull job listings from different job sites.

Weblog Labs’ Jobamatic
Thanks to Jobamatic, we have our very own job boards featuring blogging jobs from a variety of sites.

One of my favorite ones, ProBlogger Job Board, isn’t working for me right now. But I’m listing it here anyway, because it’s such a great resource.

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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?

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Resolution 1: Redesign… but not too often.
I know that WeblogLabs has just been redesigned, but now that I’ve been using it, I’ve realized what changes I need to make to it. I’ve already started on a new Wordpress theme that promises to be bigger and better and easier to read- and should be launching it very soon. I love putting fresh faces on my blogs, but I’ll try not to do it too often- giving myself more time for…

Resolution 2: Blog smarter, blog meaningfully, blog with love.
No more namby-pamby posts. I will strive to write useful, meaningful posts, so that nobody’s time is a-wasted. And speaking of wasting time…

Resolution 3: Prune my RSS feeds.
I’m subscribed to about 300 feeds right now. Can you imagine how much time I spend reading them? I’ll try to get them down to about 100.

Resolution 4: Get to know my readers and visitors better.
You, you, dear reader, are the lifeblood of this blog. I’m so grateful whenever any of you comes to visit, drops an entrecard, or subscribes to my feed or newsletter. I will make better use of entrecard, blogcatalog, mybloglog, blogrush- all the lovely blogging tools I have at my disposal- and try to meet more of you in the coming year!

Resolution 5: Kiss my husband more often.
Okay, he made me put this one! But seriously, I need to remember to just stop blogging sometimes, and get up and give my husband a kiss.

What are your blogging resolutions this year?

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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.

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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 ».

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“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.

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Among quiz sites (and there are many!), JustSayHi is our favorite. The quizzes are well-written, well-designed, and easy to understand. Take, for instance, the How Addicted to Blogging Are You? quiz (my result = 82%!). There are 14 questions, ranging from whether you blog at your own domain name, to whether you’ve ever “live-blogged” (guilty!), to whether you’ve ever tried to convince someone else to start a blog (guilty again!). As you take the quiz, a graphic of an injection (filled with blog addiction juice?) fills up according to your answers. When you’ve completed the quiz, you’re given HTML code to copy and paste directly on your blog. Simple, and fun.

While you don’t want to clutter your blog up with too many of these quiz results, they can be fun and a good blog conversation starter. Visit JustSayHi

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