the blogger’s and webmaster’s blog
Here are some of my favorite sites for Photoshop Brushes (and other things). This will be a very useful list for the graphic designer in you! A quick google search will turn most of these up for you aswell as many more, so never neglect google, my friends!
Remember everyone, credit the brush creator when required! It’s the polite thing to do!
After huge amounts of pressure from the movie, music and software industries, Japan’s ISP’s have agreed to work with copyright holders to ban persistent pirates from the internet entirely using “Special Detection Software” to help track down those responsible for persistent copyright infringement on the Japanese “Winny” P2P network.
This new agreement will be enforced by around 1000 smaller, local providers along with four major organisations in Japan, including the Telecom Service Association and the Telecommunications Carriers Association.
The estimated user base for file-sharing software, such as Winny, in Japan is roughly 1.75 million people, most of which use it for less-than-legal purposes such as transferring copyright material like movies, music and computer software (including games).
Two years ago a similar measure was suggested by a major internet provider to ban any user detected using the Winny software, but the government had to step in over worries of invasion of privacy. Hopefully the government can do something about this new plan before all our Japanese friends have to watch their back whenever they log on.
What worries me most about this is that my home country, Australia, also proposed similar plans a year or two back. What is the world coming to?
via yomiuri.co.jp
I have now purchased www.blogmastr.com, so now you can all access this lovely blog from a true domain name, rather than b.smash5.com! It only cost $8.99 through Dynadot.com and only took about 5 minutes to get set up and pointing at my blog!
Well well well, now back to some real blogging…that is all.
This is totally random, and not really at all related to webmastering, blogging or making money, but here goes…
Here in Australia the newest season of Big Brother is starting soon. To create some type of user-interaction i suppose, they’ve set up an online video site where you can vote for your favorite wanna-be housemates.
Now I don’t remember how i managed to find myself on this site (I hate the show big brother), but i managed to come across this video:
http://www.bigbrother.com.au/voting.html?memberId=601434&CMP=LEC-ViewVoteBBappsSHAREURL
Now, as i said before, i hate the show, BUT if this woman got on it, i would watch big brother just for the laughs. Seriously, that 47 year old woman in with a bunch of tweens would be hilarious.
So all you aussies (or even if you’re not!) head on over and vote 5/5 for Julie!
That is all.
Advertising 101: Commenting
When many people first establish a blog, the first thing they should do (after posting some content) is draw visitors to that content. There are many avenues to this goal, both paid and free, but I’m going to take about one of the most basic, easy and simple methods: Commenting similar blogs.
Say you run a blog about your favorite subject. Shoes, Bags, Fashion, Fishing, Video Games - it doesn’t matter. Whatever it is, you probably read other people’s blogs on the same subject. You might even spend more time reading other people’s blogs, than working on your own blog. Don’t worry, you aren’t neglecting your blog, in fact, you could soon be helping it!
When you read about something interesting over at a similar blog, why not simply leave a comment? Put in your name, email and url and then anyone who happens to read the comments on that blog, will automatically be exposed to a link to your site (or whatever URL you put in there), and because you’re commenting on the most interesting posts, the higher the chance that other people will read it and comment it and be exposed to your link!
For example, here are a few Webmaster, Blogging and Money-Making Blogs that allow link-backs that you should check out:
Now Mashable, for example, has 155K (Yes, 155,000) RSS Readers according to Feedburner. And according to Mashable themselves, they have over 5,000,000 page views a month. Now, if only 0.1% of those pageviews are exposed to your link, that’s 5,000 free exposures. Now, if only 1% of those exposed to your link actually click it, that’s still 50 free visitors a month with absolutely no paid advertising! Now, comment a bit more, say…10 comments a month. Those numbers go up to 50,000 free exposures and 500 free visitors each month!
Now multiply these figures by many times by commenting on many, many blogs and you’ve got a steady influx or new visitors to your website! Well done, you’re advertising your site for free AND to a relative audience. Stay tuned for more advertising tips ;-)