Jamdo Marketing Blog

Losing an entire is not (touch wood) something I have yet had to endure.

The thought of it does make me break out in a cold sweat though - the postential of losing years of posts isn’t something I relish.

The problem for bloggers traditionally has been that “back up your database” to a non tech person sounds something remotely similar to Swahili. I mean how the hell do you do that? Blogging is supposed to be simple!

Luckily there are a couple of really simple solutions available to people who aren’t so tech savvy.

The first is the Wordpress Database Backup Plugin - this installs as like any normal plugin on your blog and is really intuitive to use. In fact, Tubetorial has a 5 minute video on installing and using this plugin that is well worth the time to watch. If you have a recent version of Wordpress installed, then it should already be in the plugins option - you just need to activate it. If not, then you can still download it from here.

The other option, which is great if you are totally technically illiterate is a site called Blog Backup Online which is really easy to sign up to and get your blog backed up. The only glitch I found is that one of my blogs only offered partial feeds and Blog Backup Online backs up using the XML feed, so only those excerpts were being backed up (rather than the full content), so make sure you change your settings from your Options>>Reading menu in your Wordpress Login to offer full feeds. Now, I still think the above plugin is  better option, but as I said, if you are a total technical incompetent then this is a great service.

So go backup everything and stay safe!

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The first partnership in a website I entered into had quite a few problems. It didn’t end particularly badly or anything like that (in fact I am having a beer with my old partner on Monday), but there was always a bit of tension regarding the site and the business surrounding it. This is a real risk for online business collaborations where partners don’t necessarily meet face to face or talk with each other all that often (and sometimes never at all).

The main reason for the tension in that first partnership was that our communication system wasn’t all that good. Sure we had spreadsheets and email and phone, but we never really got a system settled for how we recorded business decisions, marketing decisions or design and content decisions. It was all a bit ad hoc with us emailing and saving over each other’s documents (sometimes unintentionally). It was not a great setup.

Recently, I have started another online project with a partner and it is quite the opposite. Everything is going startlingly smoothly and there have been no tensions, no fights, no disagreements or really anything like that.

The single greatest reason for this is Google Documents.

Now, I am sure you have heard of Google Spreadsheets (which was formerly iRows). It is basically a collaborative spreadsheet that saves in real time so one person or twenty can be working on the same document.

We have a single spreadsheet document that has a bunch of different worksheets. One for keeping track of finances, another for keeping track of the publishing schedule. Another for keeping track of advertising and marketing campaigns, another for keeping track of other blogs and sites that we want to be mentioned on. There’s really no limit there.

But the main point is that we are on the same page! (sorry - bad pun).

We also keep a another document that has the template of the format that we use to post content to our blog. That way we can both refer to that document for our own purposes and we can also share it with contractors who we hire to write content for us. This seems to be working quite well so far.

Once again, the central idea is open communication.

Google’s online documents allow collaborative abilities that simply weren’t widely available (let alone free) all that long ago.

The thing is that these tools are a great arrow in the quiver of good business communications for online partnerships and projects.

With the imminent release of Google Gears, which will allow users to take Google Docs offline, one can only hope that the aids to successful online collaborations will get even better.

Technorati Tags: google, blogging, arguments

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Useful and free software is the best kind.

I use a lot of quite expensive tools in my day to day online activities, but there are a lot of less-polished pieces of software that are also pretty handy. Many of them can perform a lot of the tasks their more expensive counterparts can do too.

So, I thought I would compile a list of useful (and free) desktop applications for those of us who like to build websites and blogs.

There are probably better paid versions of most of these, but if you’re
on a tight budget, these programs can save a bit of time and have the right price tag.

Keyword Research:

Good Keywords - saves a little time on keywords and can do a quick site analysis too.

Domain Name Analyzer - handy little desktop application that helps you find which URLs are available for purchase. Stick in a few keyword rich terms and you should come up with something that’s pretty good.

Competition Analysis

Backlink Analyser - once you have your keywords and a list of competitors for those keywords, you can plug them into this tool to see how they are getting
their rankings.

HTTrack - a little piece of software that will copy entire websites to your harddrive so you can view them later on (while you’re offline). This is especially handy if you want to go down to the coffee shop and take some notes on your competitors, but you don’t have mobile wireless.

Ad Management

Adwords Editor - the desktop application from Google to manage your Adwords campaigns. Again, this is very handy for working remotely when you don’t have an internet connection - just remember to upload your changes when you get home.

Content Generation

PDFCreator - a very handy tool to create PDFs. As I am sure you are aware, “white papers” or “special reports” in PDF format have a higher perceived value than a lot of other content formats and can draw a lot of interest (and links). This program lets you take advantage of that.

NVU 1 - if you don’t know anything about coding HTML or any other languages then this free little editor will let you get your website online without any of that. It’s a WYSIWYG editor for website builders so you don’t need any coding skills. Basically like an anorexic Macromedia Dreamweaver.

Primetime Podcast Receiver - free utility for creating podcasts. Very popular.

Utilities

CoreFTP - if you need to transfer files to your server, you need an FTP program. This is the one that I use and I like it.

Coffee Cup Free Zip Wizard - zip your large files so they’re easy to email! Now with extra zippiness!

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Now, I am sure there are a bunch of other really cool downloads that I don’t know about (or possibly just forgot about) so feel free to list them here if you know of any.

The ones above should, however, get you off to a good start and help you on your way to blogging and internet glory.

Technorati Tags: downloads, blogging, internet tools

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I have been realising how addicted I was to the Overture Keyword Tool over the last few days.

It has been down for a while and rumour on affiliate forums had it that it was going to stay down as Yahoo! have intimated that they are going to stop supporting the tool at some time in the future.

In the meantime, I reverted to using the free keyword tool from WordTracker which is also pretty decent.

But my worry that the Overture Tool was down for good was ill-founded.

As of now it seems to be working fine again. Yay!

You can read a bit more on the shenanigans over at SEO Roundtable, but the short of it is they’re back in business.

Even so, this is a good lesson that it is wise to have a backup option that you are familiar with using and understanding.

I know what the general rule is for converting Overture results to how much traffic I could expect, but to be honest, I am not sure of that with WordTracker’s keyword tool.

Time to do some research!

Technorati Tags: overture, wordtracker, keywords

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