Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This is the last show for 2008 originating at www.weeklywebtools.com This is show 62

Mon.itor.us

http://mon.itor.us/ is a free website performance, availability, and traffic monitorig system.  This system looks interesting (free is always good). In theory the business model is to get you interested enough to go with their paid service at http://monitis.com/

Test Everything

http://tester.jonasjohn.de/ is an interesting site that has tools to allow you to check your ranking, your images, social networks (I checked to see if I had been stumbled upon). Not a bad little site, although it did take a while for it to load (which seems ironic).

Google Search Engine optimization Starter Guide

Google recently released a starter guide about SEO. It’s a quick read of 6 items you should and should not be doing on your website in terms of title tags, meta tags, urls and more. Read it here.

Cool Forums For Wordpress

I have not done much with them yet, but I have install the ismple press forum on this website. This ties the forums into your worpdress installation and vice versa. The great thing is all the forum adminstration is handled inside your wordpress installation. I had some issues installing it on one of my websites, but that may have been to me running Semiologic on my blog. Check it out (its free) at www.simplepressforum.com

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Store Stacker Automatic Updates For Affiliate Websites

storestacker.com

This software starts at $97 and you can purchase it for $1 (with the second payment completing the transaction). It takes your affiliates for Amazon, Ebay, ClickBank, and more and creates a site with thousands of searchable products.  You can use this software on as many website as you’d like. Here is the text from their website:

“This popular software created to date, it literally ’stacks’ products from multiple affiliate sources (ebay, amazon, regnow, clickbank, overstock, etc, even youtube), and builds an entire website and affiliate store, hundreds of pages deep with content, complete with product pictures, descriptions, on-topic articles, targeted youtube videos, and buy buttons automatically embedded with the user’s affiliate links. Automatically updated with new products, articles and videos, it StoreStacker is the Internet’amost advanced affiliate store builder.”

Affiliate Links in Wordpress For Free

From Nick Daugherty of www.nicksjourney.com

If you are working on a Musicians Website with Wordpress? Check out Gig Press at www.freepress.com

Alinks is a free tool that will take words in your Wordpress Installation, and link it a website. I had mentioned in a previous show I had mentioned Affiliate Elite which was $47. Nick points out that Alinks is free, but it doesn’t cloak the link like Affiliate Elite.

However if you use the Gocodes plugin with wordpress you get the automatic linking, and cloaking for free (you do not get the link stats like you do in Affiliate Elite ). (Note as of this publishing date, the alinks website is down. I’m hoping this is temporary).

Viva Wordpress

Since we are talking about Wordpress, I cam across some interesting tools at Viva Plugins. The include plugins that will:

Turn your website into a magazine

Let you add thumbnails on the fly

The Zoom feature takes your thumbnails to a new level

The Viva Carousel is another great graphics based plugin.

They have a gallery plugin and a User submitted plugin for those looking to build their community.

You can find them all at meditricks.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Looking for Christmas and Holiday Graphics?

I got tired of looking so I purchased a pack of 150 megs of holiday graphics. You get everything from Jesus, Churches, to Christmas ornaments, lights, reindeer, etc. It’s only 27 bucks.

Instant Slide Up

I can’t decide if I like this tool or not.  On one hand it really gets your attention, and on the other hand it takes up alot of space at the bottom of the screen (although it doesn’t stop the visitor from seeing anything). You can use it to promote your email list, or specials going on with your products. It’s $67 bucks, and I could see this making a definite boost to your site.

What is Squidoo?

It’s a website that gets HUGE amounts of traffic. The idea is you get traffic from Google to your squidoo website, and then link to your website. So the Google love flows from squidoo to your website. I went to learn about it, but I didn’t want the learning curve.  I found a cheap ebook called Squido Profits for 7 bucks. If you want someone to build your lens there is a service that will do it for $249

FaceBook - Are You The Caboose?

Much like Squidoo, I  signed up for Facebook many moons ago and did nothing with it. I’m ready now with some time off in the future to get into the game. There is a $47 ebook that will help you get the most out of facebook, and use their advertising system to make some income.

Wordpress Cloning Tool

The Wall Street journal has now started publishing using Wordpress. It’s a very powerful, and easy tool to use. You could set up a wordpress site template and then when a customer wants a site, just clone it and tweak it to suit their needs. That would take about 90 minutes in the past, but not any more I found a Wordress Cloning tool that will copy everything from the original installation into a new installation. This is a HUGE time save. While it carries a price tag of $97, the time it saves will more than pay for it.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

I just saw one of the coolest web tools that will spruce up your website, help build your list, and give you lots of opportunity to connect with your visitor. It’s from the same folks that brought us Peel Away Ads, only now they are Corner Stay Ads.

Corner Stay Ads are great looking graphics that will stay in any of the corners of your website. They have attractive people that are eye catching. One girl had her hands on her face with the caption “Wow” when you put your mouse over her, a you tube video popped out. How cool is that?

You can have ANYTHING in that pop out window (this is not a pop up, its like a great hover ad). It’s got a very easy installation, and comes with all sorts of bonuses (more on that later). In the end you have great graphics, and a flexible tool to increase conversions, build your list, give away an ebook, whatever you are doing with your website. The cost is only $37

So I thought, “What’s the catch? Here it is. This is a great flexible tool, but what it turns out to be is a lead product to try and get you to sign up for their membership site (which you don’t have to, and in my case I didn’t). So it’s great marketing, you almost give away your product to entice people to sign up for a 4 minute money membership site. You can read the free report about their system.

Away Find

This tool allows you to get away from your email, and in the event that there is an emergency people can use a special contact form that then send you an SMS message to your phone. There is a free version, and the premium version is around $7 a month, or 50 bucks-ish a year. You can find it at www.awayfind.com

Max Bounty Affiliate Network

Affiliate Webmasters… Join MaxBounty.com and earn the highest CPAs in the market. Their specialty is maximizing payouts to our affiliates
Click here for details

Efax - Turn Your PC Into A Fax Machine

While most of us have access to scanners, your clients may not and you really need a fax. You can use efax to send and receive faxes and it’s really easy. You can try it for 30 days at efax.com They have a couple of different plans starting at around 16 a month (depends on how much you use the service)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

MemberGate Subscription Web Site Manager

What if you took wordpress, an affiliate program, a membership script, a shopping cart, forum software, a banner add rotation script, a download script, the ability to podcast, and rolled it up into one package? You would have Membergate. It’s the Cadillac of membership site software coming it at a starting price around $4k!

Affiliate Elite Wordpress Plugin

This is a pretty cool plugin for wordpress. It’s called Affiliate Elite. You can define a keyword, and a link that goes to that keyword, as well as the style of the link, and it finds that keyword in your posts and links that keyword to the url you assigned. It has the capability to turn on the no follow tag so you don’t mess up your SEO with spiders following affiliate links. The great thing is now if an affiliate program is canceled you can easily redirect traffic to a new site, or delete the key word entirely. It’s not free. It’s $47 but for the power it provides, this could be a very useful tool, and a big time saver. Check out the video below.

SEOPress Formula - Maximize Your Wordpress Traffic

If you’ve ever wanted to know how to maximize SEO with your wordpress site. It’s a pretty extensive course. Here is the table of contents.
Wordpress Video: 1 - Naming Your Site For Maximum Google Traffic
Wordpress Video: 2 - Install Wordpress With Three Simple Clicks
Wordpress Video: 3 - Manually Installation (For Maximum Control)
Wordpress Video: 4 - Cleaning Up Your Wordpress Installation
Wordpress Video: 5 - Core SEO Site Elements & How To Get It Done With Wordpress In Seconds
Wordpress Video: 6 - Wordpress & Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) To Easily Dominate Google
Wordpress Video: 7 - Permalinks - A 30 Second Tweak To Multiply Your Online Traffic
Wordpress Video: 8 - General Settings & What You Need To Know
Wordpress Video: 9 - General Settings, Simplifying Your Work Space
Wordpress Video: 10 - General Settings - Discussion
Wordpress Video: 11 - Privacy - Careful Here
Wordpress Video: 12 - Pages & Posts Basics
Wordpress Video: 13 - Plugins - Basics & What They Do
Wordpress Video: 14 - Links & How To Use Links Effectively
Wordpress Video: 15 - Working With Various Themes
Wordpress Video: 16 - Themes Part Two - Editing Themes
Wordpress Video: 17 - Posting Content - The Right Way
Wordpress Video: 18 - Adsense Integration
Wordpress Video: 19 - Database Backup
Wordpress Video: 20 - Affiliate Links / Cloaking Plugin
Wordpress Video: 21 - Automatic Wordpress Update
Wordpress Video: 22 - Google Sitemaps Do’s & Don’ts
Wordpress Video: 23 - Add A Custom Header
Wordpress Video: 24 - All in One Seo Plugin
Wordpress Video: 25 - Fight Blog Comment Spam
Wordpress Video: 26 - SeoPress Theme *sidebar explained*
Wordpress Video: 27 - Plugin: Auto Social Poster
Wordpress Video: 28 - Plugin: Popshops
Wordpress Video: 29 - Working With Css (stylesheets)

Now in addition to the videos there is a pretty extensive ebook to go along with it. If nothing else you can go over and sign up for his email list and get to free wordpress themes. The packages is only $57

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Affiliate Meter - Track All Your Affiliate Stats in One Place

If you are into affiliate marketing this may be something that can give you more hours in the day. This tool is a software that is run from your computer (not web based) where you load all your login information into affiliate networks in one place. You can then get a reading of your income from one place, it remembers your login and passwords, it even tracks your ad words, and gives you a view of the big picture. That’s the good news. The bad news is it has a monthly fee associated with it. In my opinion this is a great idea with a bad pricing structure. For more information go to affmeter.com

Create Your Own Magazine

I hesitated to include this as its not really a web tool, but it is a tool webmasters could use for promotion. It’s called Mag Cloud (http://magcloud.com). You can have your own magazine printed for .20 a page and then sell it. For example, a 20-page magazine would be four bucks plus shipping. And you can make money! You set your issue price and all proceeds above the base price go to you. Shipping is a flat $1.40/copy (USPS first class mail) for quantities 1-9, or a flat $13 for quantities from 10-100 (per box of 10-100). You basically submit your PDF document and they turn it into a magazine and handle the shipping. It’s an interesting concept for those looking to promote their websites offline. There is no minimum order.

WP Remix - CMS Wordpress Package.

WP Remix is a “remix” of wordpress which means they customized it with some added features. It claims that

“WP Remix 2.0 - the only theme on the net that offers WYSIWYG page template editing.
Over 50 page templates to choose from. Web standards, Colorschemes, Usability, grid, typography… you ask for it, it has all in it!”

It comes with 50 templates to choose from.  You have the ability to specify a different sidebar for different pages. An easy tool for making menus, and more. They also build modules that you can add on to the blog. These include  a magazine module, with gallery and portfolio modules coming soon. The cost is $75 bucks for a single license and $275 for multiple license. Click here to view more details

Revolution WP Theme - Awesome Looking  Customizable Themes

If you are looking for a theme that you an grow into, check out the Revolution Two Themes for Wordpress. These things are awesome. There are many falvors to choose from including “office,” “Lifestyle,” “Church,” “TV” and more.  These themes are user friendly, customizable, and are an ideal solution for online magazines, online newspapers, and other websites that wish to use WordPress as a content management system. According to their website you can watch tutorials to learn how to customize the themes. All their themes start with a $99 a year package (support and training are included), or a $149 lifetime. Check them out at revolutiontwo.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Today I have a video to show off a software that I am really excited about. I’ve wanted a software like this for years, and I’m so glad this exists. It’s called Artisteer, and it allows you to create a wordpress theme from scratch in minutes.

You can customize every aspect of your worpdress theme. Choose your colors, your layout, the location of items like categories, etc, your header, your buttons, your menus, and on and on and on…

In making a video for the podcast, I typically try to keep them under 5 minutes. This is an almost impossible feat as this software has so many features (but I gave it a shot). The best part of this software is its price. You can download a trial version for free. If you like (and how can you not if you work in Wordpress), you can buy the “home” version for $49. There is also standard version that regularly sells for $149 (NOTE: I ACCIDENTALLY SAY $129 in the video it’s normally $149) and you can buy that version (during this introductory offer for $99.95 The standard version will have the ability to output to Joomla, and drupal (in the future), it also has a library of textures and glares, and you can export to CodeCharge Studio. If you’re not working in Wordpress it also exports as XHTML+CSS (so you can work with Dreamweaver, etc).

According to their FAQ, when it comes to selling themes created with this product, “Yes, as long as you do not include Artisteer photo objects within your header (Header -> Foreground Photo), as those objects are licensed from a 3rd party only for your own use. You may re-distribute any other designs you create, including those with Artisteer header background photos (Header -> Background) and your own photo objects.”

Watch the video, and for more information go to www.artisteer.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This show originates at www.weeklywebtools.com Today’s sponsor is www.godaddy.com where you can get a domain name for $7.49 using the coupon code cooler3

Tweet Later Auto Responder Tool For Twitter

This tool will tweet someone who decides to follow you automatically. So when they follow you they get a tweet that says “Hey come ______” etc. Find it at http://www.tweetlater.com/

Smart Page Rank Tool Helps Track Back Links

I think we all know you can track back links at google by typing in links: yourdomain.com and that will give the number of backlinks. If you want more information you should check out www.smartpagerank.com

Zemanta - A Fun Tool For the Lazy Blogger

This tool is freaky. You can find it at www.zemanta.com As I type this blog post it has pulled up pictures of the twitter logo, and some picture of tools. It also has a found a story about backlinks, as well as domain names.  I like it. This is the first time I’ve used it.  So here are some of the related articles from Zemanta:

Related articles by Zemanta

• Choosing a Domain Name - 10 Essential Tips to Get it Right
• Ten Reasons Why Google Took My PR
• Social Bookmarking Strategy - Automate Social Bookmarking

10 Networking Sites For Entrepreneurs

Interesting article at http://www.blogtrepreneur.com/2008/05/13/10-social-networks-for-entrepreneurs/

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This show originates from www.weeklywebtools.com

Privacy Policy Generator

http://www.dmaresponsibility.org/PPG/

On this page, Webmasters and administrators can complete a questionnaire (basing their answers on their site information policies) and create a privacy policy statement to be posted on their own Web page. This tool has been developed to help marketers create policies that are consistent with The DMA’s Privacy Principles for Online Marketing.

KompoZer Tutorial Videos

I’ve never heard of Kompozer, but it appears to be a very powerful free open source website creation tool. It evens has the ability to make pages using CSS.  While free is always welcome, who wants to go through the learning curve (especially for software so powerful). Enter Kompozer tutorials. These videos are from Jay Jennings (regular listeners and readers know I’m a big Jay Jennings Fan), and once again Jay has put out a great product that delivers high quality without requiring you to break the piggy bank. The whole set of videos is 20 bucks. Sure beats reading an outdated book.  Check it out at kompozervideos.com

Contest Machine

ContestMachine is geared to making contests and giveaways easy.  The tool is like survey monkey in that we let you collect responses.  But that’s just the beginning.  When your giveaway ends, contest creator allows you to pick as many winners for you as prizes, at the push of a button.  It automatically sends the winners emails asking to verify their entries and supply their mailing addresses, and then lets you know if a winner hasn’t responded so you can pick another.  Contest creator gives you a widget to embed in your website, and a hosted page you can link to.  It manages the tedium or organizing a contest so you can run them without issue.  When I contacted the company they stated, “Many of our users have received many more entries and experienced much less headache by using our system. We also do things like allow only one entry per user — optimizations that aren’t possible with comment systems on blogs (what most of our customers used before switching to us).”

It sounds cool and there is a free version.  This version does not allow you to export the entries or have access to emails (you can also only have two contests per month). The next level is 9 bucks a month that allows 10 contests a month (and the ability to use it to grow your email list).  You can also sign up for a yearly payment option which gives you 50 contests per month with unlimited submissions.

I’m playing with the software so here is my contest. Check it out at contestmachine.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Virtual Smart Agent

I thought I would never purchase a script that had my first impression for my visitor be a robot. As an ex-customer service rep this just seemed wrong. When I looked into them and saw that some scripts had a monthly fee, or in some cases they took a commission every time they saved a sale. I like my scripts on my server with no fees. I found one and you can find it at virtualsmartagent.com

The cool thing about this script is its basically an interactive FAQ script. You anticipate what your visitor will ask, and enter a question. You can put links to special deals (or whatever you want) and then insert these links with special codes for tracking. You can customize how it looks (even add audio to the agent), and control when it appears (or make it so it only appears if you click on it.

One of the great things about it is you can purchase the script and run it on one of your websites. Then you can create virtual agents for all of your websites. Right now I have one on my School of Podcasting Join Page if you want to see it go there, and then exit the page. If you want to have fun, tell the agent that they suck.

You can use it to build in your opt in list (which I have), and if someone asks a question that the agent can’t answer it emails you. Now you can go in and add that question to your list. Pretty cool eh?

The script runs $197.

Live Face on The Web

If you’re looking at a site and all the sudden someone walks on the screen and starts telling you about the site it seems pretty cool. I always thought it must be very expensive to make this happen. I do like this a little better than Site pal as its not quite so “Scooby Doo” (as its not a cartoon). I was very surprised to see you can have this on your website for less than $300. It’s a quick and easy process to go and choose your model, send in the script, choose what camera angle to use and Live Face on the Web takes it from there. The models are not just young hot people (although there are some people that fit that description) there are also older and many other types of people. I am seriously considering using this service as it starts at $259.

Animoto

This site makes cool videos from still photos. You upload pictures, choose music (or insert your own), it analyzes the music, and works it’s magic. There is a free version that is heavily animoto branded, or a business version ($99 for 3 months). I made a video in about 10 minutes. Check it out at animoto.com

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download