On my other site BigBizBlog.com I’m renovating, and one item is the addition of my AdBlock Widget for WordPress. Of course, to look good, I wanted 125×125 blocks - but the column was too narrow, so I had to span TWO columns to make it work. How to do it, and the code I used is a useful item for anyone trying to tweak any WordPress theme. You can read more about it on my...

It’s a little thing, but nice - those fancy pictures by the comments on some blogs. They’re Gravatars, from (obviously) gravatar.com The name stands for Globally Recognized AVATAR, and it’s the image that accompanies your email address, and that blogs understand and use (of course, the blog must understand how to use them - not all do) To set one up: • Go to the Gravatar Central, at http://en.gravatar.com/ • Sign up with an email account -...

The June 2008 Issue of ‘The ActiveBlogging Report’ is ready. Topics: • What’s New With ActiveBlogging • Pings, TrackBacks And Comments: The REAL Story. Although they seem similar, this trio of attention-grabbing techniques have different uses - and provide different opportunities to advertise your blog. • The AdBlock Widget - Setup And Options. The AdBlock Widget lets you rotate ads on your WordPress blog - but it can do so much more... • Using The AdBlocks Widget To Make...

tinyurl.com is a service that provides shortened links for visitors - take a long link (like a PayPal payment link or affiliate) and turn it into something like: http://tinyurl.com/66vgmr Now this is a good thing. If you have affiliate links, for instance, it obscures the information (ClickBank links are notoriously easy to hijack, and this makes it harder to pull apart). As well, if you email links, shorter ones have the advantage of fitting on...

I’ve been looking at blogs for awhile that have that nice ‘block’ of ads - and wondering how best to get them. In the end, I wrote myself a plugin. And now I’m selling it, so everyone else can add ‘ads’! The plugin takes a list of ad images and URLs, and forms a grid of ads. It shuffles them around to prevent Ad Blindness, and never repeats, so you don’t get duplicate ads. For...

I was reading a forum today, where people asked about their top three picks for Internet Marketing books. That’s a tough one - if I was to pick two books on just marketing, I’d probably recommend one on mental sales techniques like Robert Ciadini’s “Influence” or Dan Kennedy’s “The Ultimate Marketing Plan” (which I’m currently reading). For money making, I’d want a book specializing on specific methods - Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad” series for real...