Not long ago the web was full of great advice for setting goals for 2010. Every website/blog you visited touted the same things:

-Set your goals for 2010

-Make 2010 your best year

-Improve your writing in 2010

-Get more clients in 2010

-Earn more money in 2010

-Tips to set goals for 2010

There was so much information on goal setting and making this year the best it could be that we almost got sick of hearing about it.

As I was deciding what to work on this week for writing material it occurred to me that I haven’t looked at my “Goal List” in some time. How can I reach my goals if I don’t even look at them? The hard truth is; I can’t and neither can you if you don’t get them out and look over them. It may even be time to tweak them again.

It’s time to get them out and see if you’ve stuck with them or if other things have popped up that were better than you expected. Maybe you planned to write for certain websites and it’s not happened. It’s a good time to look for others and start submitting work to other places if some of your “possibles” have fallen through.

In looking over mine this morning, many things have changed–not just a few. What I’m working on at the moment barely resembles the list of goals I created. Some things fell through, others replaced them and some things are even better than I intended. But, after looking at my list, I know I need to change some things and keep them fresh in my mind because some of the things on my list haven’t even been started yet.

As we near the end of the first quarter of 2010, it’s a good time to pull those goals out and see where you stand, what you need to change or add and get them back in the forefront of your working mind. You can’t reach a goal if you don’t have a clue what that goal is.

Image courtesy: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2544/3876577832_e13f0e518c_o.jpg

---

Copyright © 2010 Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us so we can take legal action immediately.

Are You Meeting Your Goals for 2010?


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Print24. All opinions are 100% mine.

When you are the owner of a brick and mortar business, most people will expect that you have a business card of some kind. If you happen to make your money on the web as a professional blogger or Internet entrepreneur, you should treat your online business no differently than an offline business. This means getting a business card too, but it doesn’t mean you have to break the bank to do it.

Rather than paying for a custom designer and going to a local print shop, it may be worthwhile to consider an online service like Print24. From this one-stop shop, you can design your business card (and other stationery products), choose the format, select the paper, and have the final product shipped straight to your door.

An Overwhelming Front Page

Normally, when you go to the homepage of an online business, you are greeted with a welcome page of some kind. Such is not the case with Print24; they get straight down to business.

Right from the front page, you can get started with your online order. It defaults to selling flyers, but the product pulldown lets you choose business cards, address labels, catalogs, notepads, posters, and more. After choosing your product, you go through each of the pulldown menus to define your order, including page type, size, colors, UV coating, quantity, and so on.

This interface is very overwhelming, especially since it is the first page that prospective customers see. It would be a lot more user-friendly if there was a basic welcome page to start, giving a brief overview of what we can expect to find and buy from Print24.

Plenty of Pre-Designed Templates

After selecting the business card product and determining the other characteristics, you are given the opportunity to choose from a wide array of pre-designed templates. These are organized by category, showing eight possibilities at a time.

Hovering your mouse pointer over any single design will give you a quick (larger) preview of what it will look like. The categories are quite varied, so it doesn’t really matter which industry you desire. Some designs are more generic-looking than others, but it’s good to see the variety of business card designs offered.

On-Site Custom Card Designer

Naturally, the default templates may not be exactly what you want. That’s why there is a very robust and powerful business card designer built right into the Print24 website.

The problem is that this tool, much like the homepage, can be daunting and intimidating for many users. The toolbox isn’t quite as obvious as a more professional tool, like PhotoShop or Illustrator, but many similar utilities are contained within.

For the purposes of this review, I put together a business card for my role as a senior editor at Mobile Magazine. To customize the design, I moved, removed, and added some of those “circle” elements. Naturally, I also changed the text in the text box to reflect what I wanted to see included.

While some other websites that offer inexpensive (or free) business cards restrict you to their default designs, Print24 goes beyond the call of duty with this tool. It’s also very useful that you can import any images that you’d like, so it’s easy to implement a company logo.

And the Verdict on Quality?

After placing the order, the business cards typically arrive within about a week. It should be noted, however, that promo codes do not appear to work across all countries. An “American” coupon code did not work when I was on the “Canadian” section of the site.

The quality of the business cards is about par for the course. They’re not the most impressive of cards, but they’re far from being the poorest quality either. If you’re looking for some cheap cards, Print24 looks to be a very good option to consider.

Link: Print24

* This was a Paid Review. If you are interested in having your site reviewed on Blogging Tips, please check out our Advertising Information Page.

---

Copyright © 2010 Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us so we can take legal action immediately.

Design and Print Your Own Custom Business Cards at Print24


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Like many of you I have a full-time job in addition to working on my blog. In my job I’ve taken on the role of the media guy. This is not my actual job title or even in my job description. Because I am skilled with HTML, photography, and video production I get to do some extra things at work. Sometimes this can be really fun. Other times however, it is not. The times when it sucks is when I have to work with a micro-manager on my back.

How do you deal with the micro-manager?

Micro-managers want to control you. They want things that they do not understand to be done their way. The worst micro-managers are those people who do not have any real authority over you, but perceive that they do. They make little petty changes to your work and demand to see finished projects over and over. They make a change and want to see that change right away. They could ask you a question directly but instead e-mail you and CC your boss on the exchange making you look like someone who does not cooperate. They always have some change to make seemingly to justify their position and exert control. When you are finally done you are so sick of the micro-managing mentality, distraction, nuisance that you may even miss something that is actually a big mistake.

Is Constant Change a Good Thing?

Imagine going to your local bar. One week it is a karaoke place, the next a biker bar and the week after a coffee shop. This sort of brand multiple personality disorder only serves to drive customers away from the venue. How long do you think that this brand’s identity crisis will retain customers? Not Very.

Do you Micro-Manage your Blog?

Spending hours and hours tweaking your theme is a form of self-micro-managing. Changing themes 2, 3 4+ times a year, a month, even a week is not unheard of. You might think that these changes will attract more followers with all the new pretty, shiny changes. The constant changes actually hurts your blog and can alienate your audience.

I was guilty of doing this early on when I was finding my brand as well as my blog’s voice. I’d just change my theme on a whim. I’d micro-manage the theme because I didn’t really know how to make a theme of my own. I could make the blog pretty but I was essentially rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It wasn’t until I let go of the theme tweaks and focused on producing content that things really got moving on my blog. Later, I was blessed with a gift of a new blog theme from a good friend who was an actual designer. I didn’t then decide that I knew more than him and go back to tweaking the design. I focused on what my strengths were and produced good content with photography, video and writing.

There is no need to control everything if you trust the people that you are working with. Micro-managers do not trust those around them and so those people become more stunted the more interaction they have with the micro-manager. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Avoid the Micro-Management Trap. Focus on what you do Well

A micro-manager tries to do everything including those things that they are ignorant of. A micro-manager cannot give up control to people who actually know how to do things. A micro-manager doesn’t understand things but will do them anyway. Or they will bug people who know how to do things and offer their own spin on things they know nothing about. Don’t be that guy.

If you do not understand something then don’t add it to your blog. Learn all you can before you tackle something new. There is a prevailing sense of urgency and the desire to be first that is found on the Internet. The perception is that if you aren’t first you will be left behind. That is so not true. People who study and learn as much as they can before acting often excel even if they enter a space later than the crowd. This overwhelming urge of immediacy and the need to say something before understanding completely is what leads to mistakes and misunderstandings. Micro-managers act before they think and do so with a false authority, one they did not earn.

A Few Steps to Avoid Being an Online Micro-Manager

• Reflect on your strengths.
• If you don’t understand something… learn it.
• If you can’t learn something or don’t have the time to do so then… don’t. Focus on your actual strengths and find someone who can help.
• If you don’t have the aptitude to design… don’t. Find someone who can help.
• If you can’t write… don’t. Hire writers who can help.
• If you can’t promote… don’t. Find people who can and who can help you.
• Define your strengths… cultivate them.
• Understand your weaknesses… identify them.
• Find trusted advisors who can bolster your weaknesses.
• Listen to those Advisors… trust them.

  Above all Don’t Micro-Manage Them

Do you see areas where you can give up a bit of control and find help? What would that free you to accomplish?

---

Copyright © 2010 Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us so we can take legal action immediately.

Squash the Micro-Manager


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Once you decide that you want to start an online business, it’s important that you make a series of decisions carefully. Especially when it comes to content and how you’ll use it because you need to keep in mind that even with all the other advertising techniques that happen along like vseo and social media, the written word in the form of blogs and articles is still the cornerstone of any successful advertising campaign.

Making Content Decisions

After the design and layout that you’ll use for a website or blog, you need to take into account what kind of content you want and that’s more than just an aesthetic decision.  In other words, you need to take into account more than just how the content is laid out on the page because even the text you will use on the Homepage and About Us sections can be optimized to your advantage. It’s important here that you find someone that knows about search engine optimization so that they can place the keywords and links in strategic positions to help you with your page ranking.

What makes this process a little more difficult is the fact that you want the content to read smoothly and at the same time give you as much seo punch as possible. Sometimes it’s best to use the mindset that a website or WordPress blog is really only the jumping off point for you business. It’s a fine line that you need to walk to appease the search engines and the visitors to your site and that means that you need to balance advertising objectives with solid content.

Articles Or Blogs?

Next you’ll need to decide whether you want to use articles or blogs primarily when you’re dealing with the kind of content that will drive traffic to your site.  The social media websites like Twitter and Facebook come into play here as a method to draw visitors in, but it’s generally accepted by most Internet marketing professionals that the blog and or article won’t be replaced anytime soon as the cornerstone for drawing traffic to your site.

Here there are a few different choices you can make and some people prefer setting up a separate WordPress blog that relies on keywords and links to point back to the main business site, while other people use articles and syndicate them to accomplish the same goal.  Either way you need to keep in mind that professionally written content is a good investment. It’s not just the fact that these blogs and articles point back to your site, but what they say.  In fact, well written content will get a prospect to click on your site and even search out the link based on the information the content provides.

It all comes back to the content. People who look at blogs and articles as mere vehicles that couch search engine optimized keywords and links are sadly mistaken about the correct use of these platforms.  Well written content done by professionals should be the reason someone clicks where you want them to.  Assuming that someone will follow links in spite of bad content is a mistake.

---

Copyright © 2010 Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us so we can take legal action immediately.

Using Content Properly In Your Online Business


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

Things Take Time (TTT) and it is one the hardest things to understand while blogging for obvious reasons. Almost all of us at some point of time have watched our blog statistics to get a minute-by-minute idea of how many visits our blog is garnering as analysed by the various statistics plugins and Google Analytics or StatCounter. It is certainly an enjoyable exercise and one which is hard to resist given the immediate gratification it brings. Here are my views on why worrying inordinately about your blog statistics, hits and blog traffic is not a very good thing to do.



Don’t waste your precious time

Time is money. Many bloggers spend a lot of time watching those stats (often real-time) and getting a lot of satisfaction or tension. More often than not it is tension because everyone wants as many hits as possible and one is rarely satisfied which is normal human behaviour. Statistical analyses of your blog(s) once in a while are necessary and desirable but spending a lot of time with it not advisable.

It also gives you tension

You are not getting what you want unlike your rival whose traffic and PR is just shooting upwards! You will only accentuate that painful feeling (aka tension) if you do not control your obsession with your blog’s traffic. Remember, Things Take Time (TTT). Ask any established and successful blogger and they suggest you to concentrate on content and quality more than traffic analyses. Traffic will follow sooner or later. Why torture yourself by thinking about it incessantly?!

You will compromise on quality

Blogging is not just about numbers and hits. If you worry about traffic and blog stats all the time you may end up writing for search engines than human beings. Blog for human beings not for bots. Build your credibility first traffic later. As a matter of fact, traffic is a concomitant of good content and will chase you and your blog though it may take some time.

Slow and steady wins the race

Many successful bloggers today are not fly-by-night online entrepreneurs. They worked hard with their blogs and exhibited a high degree of perseverance. “Between saying and doing many a pair of shoes is worn out,”  is a popular Italian proverb. So work more on your blog and less on your stats.

Worrying in moderation is fine

Moderation in all things! As they say you can eat whatever you like as long as it is in moderation. The same sentiments apply here. Do not ignore your blog stats and do not let it get the better of you. Wise bloggers know how to maintain the balance. Be wise and not otherwise!

---

Copyright © 2010 Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us so we can take legal action immediately.

Are you obsessed with watching your blog stats?


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/

As you’ll see from the first half of this list yesterday, I took to the time to mention each feature along with my likes and dislikes for each iPhone/iPod Touch Browser. So, needless to say the list is pretty extensive, which is why I decided to break it up into 2 parts (which both are still pretty long). Hopefully, this info will come in handy for some!

This is Part 2 of “6 Free Browser Alternatives for the iPhone and iPod Touch”. To see the first half of this list, be sure to check out Part 1 from yesterday.

Blueberry

Features

• This browser is optimized especially for Twitter.
• It hides your web page history.
• There’s a button that lets you open the current page you’re viewing in Safari.
• There’s only one menu, the Twitter menu, which allows you to go to the Twitter home page, view the people you follow, view the public timeline and go to Twitpic.

Likes

• It’s totally free – there is only ONE version so, there’s no paying for a “full” version.
• Twitter search is integrated within the search bar – not Google.
• There’s a button that takes you straight to your @mentions, which is pretty convenient.

Dislikes

• Though it’s called “web browser WITH Twitter” it should be called “web browser FOR Twitter”. Even though you can view other web pages with Blueberry, there’s no browser type functionality at all to go along with it; you can simply perform Twitter actions and that’s it.

If you don’t like any the numerous Twitter apps out there and prefer the mobile site, then this browser is for you. I personally feel that this browser is even lacking with Twitter functionality but it is a good start; it definitely needs an update.

Tiki’Surf

Features

• Bookmarks are displayed as icons as opposed to a list.
• You can use Google search via the top right bar to search the web.
• There is a default start page which contains Google search, a link to their mobile sites directory, access to their interactive tutorial, a link to leave feedback and a link to ask questions.
• You can share the current web page via email.
• You can copy the current URL to the device clipboard.

Likes

• It’s totally free – there is only ONE version so, there’s no paying for a “full” version.
• There is a short interactive tutorial to help you get started with Tiki’Surf.
• “Instant visualization of your bookmarks: just by running your finger above your bookmarked sites you get an instant snapshot of the actual site always updated.”
• Save time by tapping and holding a category to visualize the sites in that category without having to actually dig deeper; the sites within that category will appear above the category area.

Dislikes

• There are 6 categories for your bookmarks and they’re not customizable.
• You can only have 6 sites within each category; you’ll start out with 6 default sites that you can then replace according to your own preference.

If you’re someone who has a lot of frequently visited sites that you need to access quickly, then this browser is for you. Though lacking in other features, it’s beautifully made and a real time saver when it comes to accessing bookmarks.

Mercury

Features

• Private mode can be turned on (off by default). While on, the browser won’t save any history and cookies will be cleared upon exiting. Also the font color of the URL will change to purple so that you know you’re in private mode.
• You can choose to hide images in order to speed up the loading time of web pages.
• You can choose to remember history or disable this feature in the browser settings.
• Pages can be saved for offline viewing.
• You can save ANY page as your home page.
• You can share the current web page via email.
• Rotation lock allows you to look the screen so that it stays in that position no matter how you turn your device.
• You have three options for starting the browser: with your personalized home page, the bookmarks springboard or your saved tabs.
• You can use Google search via the top right bar or the address bar to search the web.
• There’s multi-touch support like mobile Safari.

Likes

• Full screen browsing – the tab bar is automatically hidden but can be brought back with the tap of a single button; the bottom icons remain in place.
• Tab support with favicon view; tabs can also be opened in the background.
• You get an internal springboard for your bookmarks – save your bookmarks as icons as opposed to a list. If you’re someone who saves a lot of bookmarks on the iPhone/iPod Touch springboard then you can save space by using the internal springboard provided by Mercury.
• Address bar history – when entering a new web address you get a drop-down list of possible matches.

Dislikes

• You can only have up to 4 tabs open at a time (the full version supports up to 10 tabs).

Full Version Additional Features ($.99)

• You can save pages along with images.
• You have four options for starting the browser: with the dashboard, your personalized home page, the bookmarks springboard or your saved tabs.
• The toolbar is customizable – choose which buttons are displayed and which are hidden.
• You can import your bookmarks from your desktop browser (it’s not specified as to which ones).
• There are tap and hold features for links and images in order to open links in a new tab, copy links, mail links, save images or email images.
• You can search using Google, Bing, Yahoo and Wikipedia as opposed to just Google (in the lite version).
• You can password protect the browser so that no one can use it but you.
• You have the ability to edit the bookmarks on the internal springboard and organize them by folders.
• You can hide/display scroll bar, dashboard, status bar; you can also shake the device to hide the toolbar.
• Supports Google mobilizer so that web pages are loaded faster.

Well, I think I saved the best for last! Mercury is definitely my top choice when it comes to browsers for the iPhone/iPod Touch and even better, the lite version seems to be good enough; no need for upgrading!

So how about you? Do you use an alternative browser or do you just stick with mobile Safari? If you do use an alternative browser, which one do you use?

---

Copyright © 2010 Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact us so we can take legal action immediately.

6 Free Browser Alternatives for the iPhone and iPod Touch [Part 2]


A selection of e-books to help you improve as a blogger. Find out more at www.bloggingtips.com/books/