The Balance Quest

Archive for December, 2008

I updated my Microsoft Word yesterday to the latest Office 2007 version. I was delighted to find out that Word has an API interface directly to the WordPress blog. It also has interfaces to many of the popular blog platforms. It has always been a mystery to me why Microsoft did not support online mediums. If you tried using Word to edit text you wanted to place into a blog or even a web page, you would find out quickly that Word would leave some cryptic HTML tags that would have to be edited out before the text could be used.

So imagine my disappointment when I gave Word the coordinates to my blog and it returned a “Word Cannot Register Your Account” Error. After several hours of fiddling with Word, it finally hit me. There must be a setting in WP to enable this function. (this actually occurred to me at about 4:30 the next morning) Once I enabled this feature it worked like a charm.

To enable the XML-RPC feature in a WordPress blog:

• Log on to your admin account
• Go to Manage>Writing
  
• Scroll down to the section titled REMOTE PUBLISHING
• Check the Enable XML-RPC Publishing Protocol
  
• Click Save Changes at the bottom of the page
  

I have also read some reports since this revelation that would suggest that this setting may get changed when the WordPress blog is upgraded to a new revision.

I trust his helps.

I just finished shovelling 10 inches of snow from the laneway. We had a huge dump of snow last night. We are in the third day of winter and I am tired of winter already. We have had 4 snow storms in the last 10 days. In a normal winter in this part of Ontario, we would get only 4 or 5 major snow storms in an entire winter. I thought those of you in warm climates, would appreciate this picture of 5 foot snow banks. Today marks a mile stone for me personally. It was one year ago today that I quit my job and became a work at home entrepreneur.  I can honestly say that I have not missed the corporate world. I have been completely enjoying internet marketing with the Carbon Copy Pro system. Life is now fulfilling, balanced and exciting. I would like to wish all of you all the best of the holidays and a happy and prosperous new year.

David Perry

The Balancequester

PS.

Become my friend on FaceBook

http://www.facebook.com/people/David-Perry/1496895328

Congratulations you have completed your first post. Its time to share it with the world!

I have prepared this short video to explain how to promote your blog post with Social Bookmarking sites. You have seen and often overlooked the little icons at the bottom of blogs and web sites. Now you will find out what they are actually used for. I think you will be pleasantly surprised how effective they can be at promoting your blog.

Enjoy the video.

By the way, if you have any comments please leave them in the form below the post. I would love to hear your impressions of these videos. Are they helpful? Have I missed anything? Let me know.

[dailymotion x7rago]

How To Promote Your Blog Post Using Social Bookmarking Sites

If this huge list of bookmarking sites seem daunting to you, take a look at this site. It is an uptodate listing of the top 30 bookmarking sites.

http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/social30

Here is the second part of Mike Dillard and Perry Belcher’s Social networking Video.

Click Here to View Video

Social networking and Web 2.0 is all the rage at this moment in time. People are Twittering, Blogging and checking their Facebook pages hourly. Up here in the frozen north we all know what a Skidoo is, but what the heck is a Squidoo?

Mike Dillard sent this email around the other day with a Youtube video by Perry Belcher. This video has received over 30,000 hit at Youtube. When you watch it you will see why. Finally, someone has explained clearly why we should be out there participating in the social networking sites.

Here is part 1 ….

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn1cspHx7DU[/video]

Here is a short video that explains why we need to add hyperlinks to our posts and how to add them. Have a listen and enjoy.

[video]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6967115792708460522[/video]

The quickest way to get yourself online and get  your self known to the internet communtiy is with a blog. On the surface a blog looks complicated, however, nothing could be further from the truth.

If you are on my Balance Quest team you are eligible to recieve one of my SEO optimized WordPress blogs hosted for FREE on the Balance Quest site.

This is the first in a series of HOW TO video’s to help you begin blogging and do some basic maintenance of the blog.

If you have any questions please leave a comment on this post.

[video]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3990025676762682631[/video]

One of the very common questions I get when I speak to people who are new to internet marketing is “I guess I will need a web page”. After a short conversation, I usually convince them that they only need to set up a blog.

It has been interesting listening to the IM guru’s do their year end wrap up and forcast for next year. Everyone, Howie Schwartz, Jim Edwards, Perry Belcher, etc, are forecasting that blogs will continue to be hot into 2009.

Perry Belcher, of www.PerryBelcher.net, goes as far as to say that the blog is more relevant, in most cases, than a static website.

Here are the reason’s sited for using a blog:

1. Blogs are easy to setup and maintain. Static web pages are not.
2. Blogs cost = $0 + your time
3. Blogs encourage fresh content. There is nothing worse than a webpage with old outdated material on it.
4. The Web 2.0 movement on the internet is causing a shift from the classic website model to a more de-centralized model where the blog is one spoke in a multi-spoked strategy. The blog shares equal importance with social networking sites , social bookmarking sites, forum sites etc.
5. Finally, the search engines such as Google and Yahoo, are hungry for new content. Blogs by their very nature, encourage the creation of new content.

I have been setting up WordPress Blogs for my customers for some time now. They have had a great deal of success getting ranked by the search engines with their blogs.

Over the next several weeks I will be showing you the correct way to set up a WordPress blog and to manage it.