Tag: Wordpress

Adding some revenue (hopefully)

Teabass (aka Andrew Nesbitt) (no not Seabass or C-Bass) shared a great little bit of WordPress love/help/code today on his blog.

Of course you’ve probably all realized that there are some ads on both my blog, and Laurie’s blog. You may have ignored them all the time — and that’s OK (well sorta ;-)). We’ve added these ads in hopes to at least cover the cost of our webhosting ($150 a year) and if possible, help pay off some of our debt (see the ongoing battle on the lower right hand column).

Anyways, we’ve attempted to do this as non-intrusive as possible while still making the ads visible enough and attractive enough that you’d want to click on them from time to time. Different ads mean different money — i.e. clicking on a Google ad might give us one-cent or maybe even 17-cents (depending on the advertiser). Clicking on an Amazon ad doesn’t give us anything – but if you purchase something from Amazon after clicking on our ads – we get a percentage of the sale.

So why do you care?

Well if you’re a regular reader, you probably won’t noticed we’ve added Andrew’s new code and thus more advertising to our blog posts. You won’t likely notice, because you probably read all the blog posts within 30 days of their original posting. However, for folks who might find a blog post via Google (say something that I wrote back in January about Justin Farmer) — then they’ll notice a new Google ad on each blog post that’s older than 30 days.

It was super simple to add and while I’d love to give you the code here — you can go right to the source for all the details.

So that’s that. Keep reading (and clicking/buying) and let me know if you’ve found other creative ways to build your revenue stream on your blog or website.

testing WPhone

Just installed the WPhone plugin for my blog. Its made to make updating/administrating my blog easier from my cell phone (Blackberry 8310). Looks and works better than the default admin on a cellphone. Still wish there was a Blackberry ap for WordPress like there is for iPhone. Oh well.

how to be interesting

Thomas shares a great post on how to be interesting.

  1. Take at least one picture everyday. Post it to flickr.
  2. Start a blog. Write at least one sentence every week.
  3. Keep a scrapbook
  4. Every week, read a magazine you’ve never read before
  5. Once a month interview someone for 20 minutes, work out how to make them interesting. Podcast it.
    Collect something
  6. Once a week sit in a coffee-shop or cafe for an hour and listen to other people’s conversations. Take notes. Blog about it. (Carefully)
  7. Every month write 50 words about one piece of visual art, one piece of writing, one piece of music and one piece of film or TV. Do other art forms if you can. Blog about it
  8. Make something
  9. Read:
    * Understanding Comics – Scott McCloud
    * The Mezzanine – Nicholson Baker
    * The Visual Display Of Quantitative Information – Edward Tufte

I think I’m a pretty interesting chap – but one trap I find myself sinking into is sharing so much with the world via the interweb that I don’t stop and take time to share that with others in real life. And other times, I forget to take the time to find out what makes other people interesting and sharing those things with others.

I think that’s one thing I try to do when we host dinner parties, or work on the something beautiful podcast, or introduce friends – make each person see what makes the other person interesting.

In other words – this person must have some qualities/values that I find to be interesting – so be sure and share those qualities with others when you introduce them.

And also, find the beauty in each person around you. Each person has a story. Each person has value. Each person already has “interestingness.” Find it & share it.

Something I’ve also found that helps add to a person’s interestingness is reading and responding to those random surveys on MySpace. I’ve found out so many random thoughts, ideas and history behind so many of my “acquaintances,” friends and family through MySpace surveys.

Twitter has also helped bridge the time/space gap between many (new) friends as well. In fact, many of the suggestions above can be done with 140 characters or less via Twitter, rather than a full blown blog… or you can incorporate the two together.

Related ::

Thomas’ blog post
the original post from Russell Davies
share your photos for free on flickr
get a free blogger (google) blog
get a free wordpress blog
get your own free Myspace profile
micro-blog for free on Twitter
Twitter tools for WordPress

Power your church/ministry website with WordPress

Delta theme for WordPress

If you’re still behind the curve, remember it is 2007 and your church and ministry needs a website. Why not use WordPress or Blogger to power your site?

It’s as easy to use as blogging and with RSS already built in, visitors can always have the latest information delivered to their e-mail or RSS reader.

Seriously, it doesn’t get much easier.

And here are a few great themes to plug-in and get started with.

Delta Theme (as seen above)

Several other themes by the same designer

And here’s a great example of how you can really put WordPress to work: Missouri Valley Baptist
Or there’s also a sample site, Cory Miller did to show off how you can make a website with minimal effort and maintenance with Blogger.

Thanks to Cory Miller for the links.

Word Press – Evening Star

Update on The Evening Star website:

I got some help from my webhost, Brian.net and decided to give WordPress a go.

It’s pretty simple to run once you get it going – but for anyone not knowing anything about computers – it could be a bit of a headache.

I’m gonna play around with it some more, try different themes and designs, but so far I like it.