John Dilbeck And Friends

My friend, Mitch Mitchell, has been posting some excellent questions on his I’m Just Sharing blog over the last couple of days.

Now, that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t regularly write good posts, it just indicates that I’ve been thinking a lot about the questions he’s been asking recently, and still haven’t come up with complete answers for some deceptively deep questions.

It started with his Truth In Marketing? post.

He followed that up with Who Is Your Blog For? and Who Are The Affiliate Programs On Your Blog For?

I commend him for addressing these issues and asking these questions.

Do you have anything to add to the discussions on his blog?

Act on your dream!

JD

About two months ago, I was wondering about the following question:

Is Aweber or Feedburner better for syndicating blog posts via email?

I still don’t have a definitive answer to that question, so I may just offer both methods, as well as the obvious RSS feed for anyone who wants to subscribe via a feed reader.

It was on March 1st that I discovered that Google had transitioned all the feeds from Feedburner.com to feedburner.google.com. I learned this by discovering that I had no access to any of my Feedburner feeds or the associated features.

After corresponding several times over the last seven weeks with several support reps, I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I checked in at feedburner.google.com to see if anything had changed.

Instead of the annoying message that I had no feeds, I found a link to login at my old account. When I followed that link, I was able to click another link to migrate my feeds to the new system.

Basically, it turned out that I had one or more feeds with URLs that conflicted and therefore they didn’t transfer any of my feeds.

Last week, I told one of the support reps to go ahead and delete the feeds that conflicted, and that must have been the key to solving the puzzle.

I’m happy to have access to these feeds, once again, and I’ve already deleted three that are no longer in use. In the next day or so, I’ll be looking at all the others and deleting all that are no longer relevant to what I’m doing.

I never suspected that it would take as long as it has to stop using old blogs and to clean up after myself from all the experiments I’ve been doing with blogging and various ways of building websites.

Now, all I have to do is try to remember what I was going to do on March 1st.

I wonder if there will be additional problems because of the migration.

If you subscribe to any of my blogs’ or other sites’ RSS feeds via Feedburner and you encounter any problems, I hope you’ll be kind enough to comment on this post and let me know.

Act on your dream!

JD

I don’t know about you, but most of the people who subscribe to my blog posts prefer to subscribe via email rather than using an RSS feedreader.

I used to use a feedreader, but I’m finding that I like subscribing to email feeds better, now.

There are at least a couple of ways to do this. You can use Aweber or Feedburner. I’m sure there are other ways to do it, but those are the two that I’ve used and like.

Feedburner is a free service that is owned by Google, so there isn’t much danger of it going away anytime soon.

Aweber is a company that specializes in email marketing and autoresponder services. I use them for several email marketing series, distributing newsletters, and broadcasting messages to subscribers now and then.

Both companies provide reliable service.

When you subscribe to someone else’s blog via email, which do you like best?

When you offer your readers the option to subscribe to your blog via email, which do you prefer?

As long as you have an Aweber account, I guess you could use both, but for some reason I can’t define right now, I don’t think that’s a good idea.

So, which do you prefer, or do you have another option you like better?

Act on your dream!

JD

The more I participate at Squidoo.com by building lenses and adding those lenses to groups, the more I see pages on Squidoo referenced in my traffic stats on various sites I have.

What?

I mean that Squidoo is sending an ever-increasing stream of traffic to my sites, blogs, and forums.

Thinking about that, I took a little time this morning to create a new Get A Free Marketing Site lens on Squidoo.

Then, I found several related groups and submitted my new lens to them.

This morning, my lens is ranked at over 180,000. I’m guessing it will jump to about 30,000 or less in the next 24 hours. Then, who knows where it will end up.

To make it a bit more interesting, I added a Plexo module where you can vote for your favorite marketing book on the lens, and I added an RSS feed for marketing articles from 21st Century Articles, my article directory specializing in business, communications, technology, and self-improvement articles.

If you don’t see your favorite marketing book on the list, please feel free to add it.

I have been getting tens of thousands of page views to my Get A Free Marketing Site suite of marketing tools at LinkScout, and I know it has been worth the time and effort - and money - I’ve invested in it.

Therefore, I feel confident in recommending it to you, too.

Act on your dream!

JD

PS. I also recommend that you start building as many Squidoo lenses as you need to promote your business, talk about your hobby, or write about anything in which you are interested. It’s free, and you may well get paid by Squidoo. I earn a small check from them every month, and that’s a lot better than buying advertising, in my opinion.

If you have a blog on just about any topic, you should create a related lens at Squidoo, and don’t forget to use the RSS module to syndicate your blog feed.

It brings me more visitors, and I’m sure it will work for you, too.

On Memorial Day, the monitor on my faithful Macintosh 8500 died.

I’ve been using that computer and monitor for about 14 years and even after all that time, I was surprised when the monitor went from a full screen to a thin horizontal line and then turned itself off.

I’ve been thinking for some time that it’s about time to get a new - or newer - Mac. After all, the 8500 is a dinosaur in terms of computers, and sometimes I’m surprised that I can still use it for real work.

On the other hand, I have many thousands of dollars worth of software that will not run on the newest Macs and I don’t plan to upgrade all of that perfectly usable software unless I absolutely have to.

So, I went rumaging through my old computer parts and found an old multisync VGA monitor that I used on the last PC I owned - or ever plan to own. When I turned it on, it looked like it would work, so I turned my attention to finding a VGA adapter so I could use it with my Mac.

But, I couldn’t search online with a headless computer.

So, since I’ve been working 7 days a week for months, I decided to take a few days off and consider the best path for moving from my ancient computer to a much faster system running the latest version of OS X.

The trouble is, some of my software will only work in Mac OS 9, so I need to be sure to buy a computer that will dual boot into OS 9 or OS X. Even classic mode in OS X won’t be sufficient for some of my software - including some I developed for myself. One of the reasons I haven’t wanted to move from that computer to a new one is because I’ve spent over a decade customizing and programming that system to work exactly how I want. If I started over with a new computer, I’d lose lots of functionality and I’d have to either recreate what I’ve been using or do things totally differently.

So, taking time off and musing about it seemed like a good idea.

I caught up on my sleep and watched about a dozen episodes of Stargate Atlantis from Netflix.

Yesterday, I decided I would go to the library the next day (today) and do some searching for companies that sell refurbished Macs so I could order a custom system with exactly what I want.

I was talking to Mom and noticed her even-more-ancient Mac LC 580 system sitting in the corner. She had used that computer for years for genealogy research and email and it hadn’t been turned on in months. She hasn’t been able to use it for several years and the last time it was turned on was so I could play Tetris on it - a game I won’t put on my working system if I want to get any real work done.

I fired it up, dialed into the Internet, and started the Netscape version 4 browser.

I was totally surprised that not only could I search on Google and find several refurbished Mac dealers, but I could even look through their websites. It was slow, yes, but it worked. I don’t even know how old that computer is, but it worked!

So, I browsed MacOfAllTrades.com in Tampa, Florida and found some interesting systems and software for sale.

Later, I went to PreOwnedMac.com (resale.headgap.com) in Memphis, Tennessee and looked at what they had to offer. This was the company I was looking for. They build custom systems using old Macs and new optical and hard drives. I can configure just what I want and purchase from them and maybe not lose all the functionality I have with my current Mac 8500. Plus, the newer system would be much faster and have much more storage.

So, I spent much of the day looking over what they offer and comparing it to brand-new systems.

I still haven’t made up my mind about what I want to do; I make these decisions slowly and deliberately because I intend to use any system I buy for years.

I found a universal Mac to VGA adapter that I’ll be ordering in a few minutes and that will solve my immediate problem. It feels strange not to check my email or work on any of my blogs or websites for a whole week, but it has been a restful week and I look forward to getting back to work.

This morning, just to see if it would work, I went to JohnDilbeckAndFriends.com on Mom’s old LC 580. I could read the blog, but could not log in and post any updates.

Then, I tried some of my WordPress blogs at JohnDilbeck.com/musings/ , blog.cherokeecountync.com , and MurphyNC28906.com .

I was completely surprised to find that I could post new items to all of those blogs.

I couldn’t see the blogs with the theme I expected, but I could read all the entries and click all the links.

So, I spent a few hours this morning posting some updates.

I tried logging in to Localendar.com , but that didn’t work, so I’ll have to wait to update my calendar there.

The point I guess I’m trying to make is that these Macintosh systems from back in the 20th century are still useful and can do real work in the early 21st century. Yes, they are slow, have outdated browsers, not enough memory, and don’t support current software and hardware, but they still work for much of what I want.

I move forward slowly and no longer adopt anything on the bleeding edge of technology or even the leading edge of technology. I did way to much of that over the 30 years I worked as a computer consultant. Now, I want a system that works - all the time. I don’t want to constantly update the software or the hardware. I still use software that I bought or developed over 15 years ago and it works just fine.

Yes, it’s about time to move to OS X and I may even buy some new software one of these days, and then again, maybe I won’t.

Time will tell.

Think different(ly).

Act on your dream!

JD

Over the last few days, there have been some big changes at Squidoo.com with the release of the new groups feature.

Now, your Squidoo lens is not a stand-alone page. You can join appropriate groups for cross promotion of similarly-themed lenses.

Don’t find a group you like? Start one of your own. Help all the members of your group find more readers and more success with Squidoo.

New Squidoo lenses

I just created a new Success With Blogging lens and I invite your feedback for resources that can be added to that lens.

New Squidoo groups

I have several lenses, websites, and forums related to North Carolina, so I created a new North Carolina Group and I invite you to add your lenses to this group as long as they relate primarily to a place, event, person, organization, or business that is in North Carolina.

Darren Rowse has an article about 9 ways to make your blog more inclusive.

Blogging, at its best, is a conversation with topics initiated by the person who owns the blog. Most blogs allow for comments, and this is where the conversation takes place.

However, sometimes, especially for people new to blogging, these conversations seem inaccessible for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the blog is rather technical and uses terms that don’t mean much to a new reader. Other times, the blog has a small group of regulars who are familiar with each other and the comments have private jokes and obscure references or other interactions that exclude anyone who is not a regular part of the conversation.

In 9 ways to make your blog more inclusive, Darren offers some suggestions to make it easier for new people to join the conversations and to understand more about what is being discussed.

Blogging, at its worst, is just one lone person typing away with no responses and can feel like yelling into a fog with no echo.

Some blogs are more technical than others. Some have topics that make conversations easier. Not all blog posts get many, or even any, comments.

I think it is a sign of a healthy blog when there are lively discussions, lots of feedback, different opinions, and a community where people feel free to express their opinions and experiences.

Darren has that kind of community at ProBlogger.net, and I applaud him for helping the rest of us find new ways to make our own blogs more inclusive and open to feedback.

Over the last six months, I’ve been doing a lot of work to learn more about blogging and syndication, using a variety of tools.

One of the things I wanted to do was to create multiple blogs on specific topics. I’m interested in, and do, a lot of different things, and I didn’t want to confuse someone who was reading a story about marketing in one message and then one about nonprofits in another and making customized t-shirts in a third.

How can you build a readership when your blog has no focus?

So, I decided to use the easiest tool I could find: Blogger.

I built about two dozen blogs and learned how to syndicate them on multiple sites using javascript, iframes, and php. Things were going great, and I was getting ready to turn my attention away from building the infrastructure to writing more about the topics to which each blog was devoted.

However, about a month ago, Blogger installed new software, apparently, and I started going through a round of being blocked, then whitelisted, then blocked again, and so forth. Finally a couple of days ago, I had had enough of it and decided to move all my marketing, affiliate marketing, and network marketing blogs off Blogger. But, I didn’t want to lose what I’d written.

So, I registered BlogFeedSyndication.com and archived over 20 of those blogs there. Since they’ll no longer be powered by Blogger, they are suspended until I find a new way to do what I want without having to do a lot of extra work in the process.

I’m testing WordPress for this, but really don’t know enough about it to make a determination if that’s the way I want to go or not.

Ideally, I’ll find a way to blog in one place, choose separate categories for each posting — as I can do with Radio Userland — and generate a separate RSS feed for each category that can be syndicated as I want. So, I have some learning to do over the next few days.

I did decide to leave my Cherokee County, NC Blog and Murphy, NC 28906 Blog on Blogger for now. Since they do not have the marketing characteristics of some of my other blogs, perhaps they won’t trip the new algorithms that have caused me so much trouble over the last few weeks.

(Update: September, 2006 - I’ve restarted both those blogs using WordPress and I’ll be reloading the old postings from the archives to the new blogs as I have time.)

In the meantime, I believe I have archived my test postings from my blogs so I can access that information and use it again, if I need to do so.

One lesson I’ve learned, again, is not to trust a free service enough to try to build a business around it, especially when their terms of service tell me my only recourse is to stop using the service if I don’t like what’s happening.

I’m old enough to have learned that lesson decades ago, but I keep making the mistake that I can trust people I don’t know, systems over which I have no control nor influence, and the inevitable gremlins that find new places to live.

Back to the drawing board, one more time.

A few months from now, I’ll probably laugh about this new opportunity to have a learning experience.