Do you really understand Wikipedia?

Last year I read the book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything and felt like I got a masters degree in how wikipedia works. Then today when reading the wikinomics blog I bumped into a post suggesting that there is a site wanting to catalogue (wiki style) all 1.8 milliion animal species on the planet.

Can I just say WOW!

Collaborative information (FREE) at it's best. Good luck.

John Chow EBook on Online Income

I read this eBook this morning, easy and quick, now time to re-read and follow some of the hundreds of links. Make Money Online with John Chow

Important information:

• How to set up google ad sense
• Recommendations against blogspot hosting (like I've been doing)
• Best ways to write for search and for RSS
• How to connect with you readers

Blogged.com newest directory for real estate blogs

I know you've hit all the sites so far, joined all the social networks, we are probably friends on all of them. Well time to update your blog directory listings. When was the last time you checked them out?

clipped from transparentre.com Blogged.com has been receiving coverage for its official launch Monday from the major tech blogs as a human--edited blog directory. Congrats to friends Reggie and Joel for receiving high marks from the reviewers of real estate blogs. In addition, new directories Trafficjam.com and BlogCatalog also serve the same purpose of identifying relevant blogs by industry (in the above links' case, real estate). This blogger compiled a list of blog directory sites by Google page rank, with the caveat advice that participating in these blog directories

Write a novel - Blognovel

For a long time I have dreamed of writing that great American novel, have you? If so, this appears to be the time, a proverbial democratization of novel writing is underway using blogs as the platform.

From Promoting Tips comes this list of recent novels, created and published on blogs:


Simon of Space (Which was recently picked for print by publisher Ephemera Bound.) The Fifth Tomorrow (Nice format though there are only 4 chapters posted of this effort by first time author C.F. York.) Le Spirale Fantastique (Very professional effort by an author previously published in print) Irrational Histories (A somewhat regular serial style novel by up and coming author David Moles) American Invisible (Fine effort by writer Hugh Madison.)

Using StumbleUpon to gain traffic

So you're still mystified about gaining traffic for your own site by using Stumbleupon? Me too, here's one expert on just such a strategy

clipped from performancing.com Magnify StumbleUpon Traffic With pMetrics Spy One cool thing I've been doing with pMetrics lately is monitoring my sites, in real time, for any natural Stumble Upon traffic. In the past few weeks, from time to time, I've caught some brief traffic trickles come in from StumbleUpon. With pMetrics, I see this happen in real time, and capitalize on it. Say I'm monitoring pMetrics Spy for Performancing and notice five visitors referred by StumbleUpon to Raj's article on 41 Reasons Your Blog Probably Sucks. While having this knowledge is fun, this is where you take action to capitalize on Stumble momentum. Step 1: Visit the page yourself and stumble it, with a review Step 2: Find some friends to stumble the article for you as well If all goes well, and you get a few fresh stumbles over a few hours, you should start seeing a steadier flow of traffic coming to that page.

Win $500 on JimKarter.com

In my pursuit of means of growing traffic and RSS readers, I often come across contests and carnivals that purport to do just that for the administrator.

JimKarter.com is offering a $500 paypal win if you are the lucky drawn name, of course you must first subscribe to the email RSS and to get a second submission post on your blog. Thus this post. I'm really not as concerned about the $500, sure we'll take it, but in watching the process so I can learn how to extrapolate the ideas and turn them into hypere-local strategies for our Northwest Indiana businesses.

Top Ten Blog Experts to Read Daily

I was talked to Aaron Simac (On Home Comfort) yesterday about the world of blogging, and trying to learn how to make money online. I related that I am trying to use my google reader every day (my shared items) to read the posts by those I consider to be experts in the field. Men and Women making money posting, writing solid material, and innovating daily.

For those wanting to build a folder on google reader for just this sort of reading package, here are my Top Ten Blog Experts to Read Daily ... complete with the RSS addresses for each. Now, it couldn't be any easier than that.

1. Chris Brogan - with specific focus on social media tools - RSS Feed
2. John Chow - a ton of money making ideas - RSS Feed
3. ProBlogger - Darren is totally honest about making money online - RSS Feed
4. Copy Blogger - writing still matters - RSS Feed
5. JoelComm - loves ad sense still - RSS Feed
6. Performancing - coaching style team blogging - RSS Feed
7. ZacJohnson Super Affiliate - Affiliate marketing income - RSS Feed
8. Andy Beard - niche marketing - RSS Feed
9. Shoemoney - more online ideas - RSS Feed
10. Synergy Bluprint - me of course, who says I can't list myself - RSS Feed

I'll come up with a legit number 10 sooner or later, but the top 6 or 7 are really my favorites. They are all legit money making bloggers, consultants, and coaches to online marketing.

Advertising Agency - You Design They Power

Online friend Paul Chaney, asked that we give a hat tip to his site Bizzuka Partners which appears to help advertising agencies keep creative control of their clients sites, while accessing powerful web and online tools.

I think the gist is that the normal free-lance web geek just doesn't get it.

Kudos Paul, keep up the great work.

Checking out Site-sell

In my attempts to find some viable affiliate relationships, I happened across Site-sell yesterday. This site will help a potential online business owner build the entire business from scratch. They host, they help with design templates, teach how to do an online store and handle payments.

There may be tons of other companies out there but this one does seem to have some great products at low monthly prices. Head over if you want to check it out, may be a better solution than going it alone with GoDaddy or learning how to do it all yourself.

Site-Sell Homepage

What's all the excitement about Twitter?

Chris Hedges, editor of Life in Northwest Indiana and beyond and Northwest Indiana Blogs, suggested last week that I write a longer than normal post on Twitter. You see, normally I try to grab the top ten or fifteen issues affecting Northwest Indiana for my sites, but occassionally write a longer post.







With the birth of a Northwest Indiana blog community, I've been doing a lot more commenting and quick posting, so I readily accepted the challenge. I'll also be submitting this post to the NW Indiana Blog Carnival for this week. If you have a post for the carnival this week submit it here.



What is twitter? Twitter is a way to communicate quickly and efficiently with the people you choose to "follow." That's it, quick and easy. Anything you post must be 140 characters or less in length.


I've been watching the twitter community form over the last couple months, with explosive growth, and frankly a growing amount of my traffic and communication is taking place on twitter.


Sound boring? Well it's anything but boring. The communication is rapid fire, with thousands of post a minute. Obviously choosing who to follow is key, you won't want to read the minute by minute posts of anyone that you really could care less to hear the answer to twitter's question "What are you doing?"


I'd like to see all of us here in Northwest Indiana who are blogging on twitter since it's a really fast way to communicate new posts, or throw around ideas on what's really going on. Here's my profile (Daltonsbriefs) head over to http://www.twitter.com/ and sign up, it takes a few minutes and of course it's free. Then hit my profile link here and press "follow" so we can be connected.

It's that easy and we're on our way to communicating quickly, in short bursts.


When posting on twitter one important tool is to add links to your posts or things you've recently read online. You'll find that when you put in the link twitter will in most cases automatically shorten the link to a "tiny url" format making it even easier to read.


This morning alone I found 15 posts and sites that I never would have found on the things I like to follow ie. real estate, mortgages, John McCain, and northwest indiana. One last trick, when replying or engaging a person use the following format: @daltonsbriefs and then your comment. This format sends this specific post of your directly into my replies tab, so that even if I'm not online at that moment I'll find this specific post and be able to reply. Place the @ in front of any person's profile name and you're engaging.


I have had the chance to engage some A list bloggers, who eventually went to my sites. These people would not have done so on Facebook or Linkedin or Plaxo, too time consuming. This has been a terrific way to watch what the A listers do, how they write, how they engage.

Take the few minutes and join me on twitter, I think you'll find it very helpful in engaging with other writers, bloggers, and media personalities.


Daltonsbriefs


Porter County Politics
Northwest Indiana Real Estate
Northwest Indiana Mortgages
Hoosiers for John McCain
Northwest Indiana Blog Community
Daltonsbriefs - International Affairs







SEO Diva writes Twitter Tweet some very practical reasons to get on twitter now.

How do you read? How do you think?

Scott Karp from Publishing 2.0 asks the question: How do you read?

He goes on to say that he feels he no longer enjoys linear reading, novels or newspapers, but finds most satisfying the networked experience that Google and others have made possible. Jumping from link to link, delving into an idea or a debate, backing up and trying from a different perspective.

How do you think, gather information, make decisions, follow stories?

I was also thinking about the panel I organized for the O’Reilly TOC
conference on Blogs as Books, Books as Blogs — do I do all my reading online because I like blogs better than books now? That doesn’t seem meaningful on the face of it.

Then I read this really interesting post by Evan Schnittman at the
OUP Blog about why he uses ebooks only for convenience but actually prefers to
read in print. So do I do all my reading online because it’s more convenient?
Well, it is, but it’s not as if I don’t have opportunities to read books. (And I do read a lot of Disney Princess books to my daughter.) But the convenience
argument seems to float on the surface of a deeper issue — there’s something
about the print vs. online dialectic that always seemed superficial to me.

Books, newspapers, and other print media are carefully laid out. Online content
like blogs are shoot from the hip. Books are linear and foster concentration and
focus, while the web, with all its hyperlinks, is kinetic, scattered, all over
the place.