Archive for November, 2010
Protect Yourself Don’t Let Guest Bloggers Upload their own Images
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Blogging, Tips & Advice on November 30, 2010
Are Guest Bloggers flocking to post on your popular blog? Guest Blogging is an excellent way to add posts to your blog and expand your reader base. I’m not going to get into all the details of why you should be a guest blogger, and why you should publish guest posts – there are enough articles about that available (take a look for yourself!) 
Instead I wanted to offer a word of caution and advice. You must protect yourself and your blog, and DO NOT allow guest bloggers to add their own images to their submissions. While I’m at it, if you are a blogger you need to be aware of the potential consequences of using copyrighted images on your blog.
Protect Yourself: Don’t Let Guest Bloggers Upload Their Own Images
Reason #1 You never know where guest bloggers got their image.
A lot of bloggers don’t do anything more than a google image search and grab the first picture that catches their eye. I know, I’m guilty of doing this (in the past!). The bad news is that the image is definitely owned by someone (though they may not have registered their copyright).
Fish & Associates in California was asked “Can the owner of a copyrighted picture sue a blog for using it without permission?” Their response (which technically is based around the laws of the state of California, but would likely be very similar everywhere else), states “Infringement is infringement. In general, if you have no permission to use the image, then such use is infringement. There is a “fair use” defense, but that very well may not apply. On the other hand, from a practical standpoint you might be able to keep using the image indefinitely. Although copyright attaches when an author reduces an original work to a tangible medium of expression, (i.e., paper, or computer image), the copyright owner cannot sue on that copyright until the copyright is registered with the copyright office. Generally, if the infringement commenced before the date of registration, the only remedies are are (1) injunctive relief (i.e., the infringer is told to stop) and (2) actual damages (which are probably very to prove). For such infringement, the really strong remedies of statutory damages and attorneys fees are not available.”
Admittedly I do think the likelihood of a lawsuit is exceptionally low, I wouldn’t personally want to risk putting myself in a situation where I could be confronted for using someones copyrighted image. Do the right thing. Finding images that are legal and free to use may require a bit more work than a simple google search, but ultimately you’ll find higher quality images and have a greater peace of mind.
Reason #2 You need to have control over the flow and visual appearance of your blog
Your blog needs to flow, and be visually appealing. You are the designer of your blog, as such you should have total control over its content. In the same way you wouldn’t publish an inferior quality blog post, you can’t just publish any image. If you’re investing time in quality written content, you should also be paying close attention to the visual quality of your content. Namely, the images you are using. Do they catch the eye? Are they well placed, and do they flow with the rest of your blog?
High Quality Royalty Free LEGAL images for your blog
The best resource I’ve found on the web for quality royalty free images is freedigitalphotos.net. For the vast majority of their images you simply insert a link crediting the author at the bottom of your article. There are options to purchase the image at a higher resolution with no need to link back, but for the majority of bloggers web sized images are perfect for blog posts, and a link back is not a big deal at all. Perhaps you can tell your guest bloggers that if they want to pick their own image this is the resource you’ll accept images from.
If you’re wanting more information on the copyright laws surrounding images you can read this post on eHow.
Image Credit: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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So protect yourself and tell your potential guest bloggers that you’ll be supplying the image for the post. They should be able to understand this. If they do want to supply an image, make sure you check the source, and verfiy whether or not the owner of the image needs a link back. Ultimately your readers, and your guest bloggers will thank you!
Article Spinning: Do you Steal?
Posted by djfunkyslick in Blogging, Guest Posts, Tips & Advice on November 27, 2010
So you’re thinking about recreating some content, or more specifically, article spinning. Your purpose here is to get more content on your blog. Before you do this, I want you to consider carefully the cons of article spinning.
What is Article Spinning?
Article Spinning is a search engine optimization technique in which website owners or bloggers attempt to manipulate their rankings in the serps (search engine results pages.) This is done by taking original content and replacing sections of the text with synonyms or reorganizing the existing structure of the article.
How Does One Spin Articles?
There are two techniques commonly used in article spinning. Manual and automatic. Manual simply means a website owner can pay someone to rewrite their article or they can do so themselves. The flip side is article spinning software which allows someone to enter an article and out comes several different articles. The spun articles will utilize synonyms to make the article seem “new.” For example, I am sad will now become, I am depressed or I am down. Doesn’t seem all that fresh to the reader, but it might to the search engines.
So, What’s the Problem?
It actually is a big problem. Most of the articles are stolen from the original author without their knowledge, let alone their consent. Placing this content on your own site is considered plagiarism. Don’t they expel students for that these days? So why on earth would you want to conduct business in this way now? I also am pretty sure most of you have heard of copyright infringement. The basic premise is that you can not claim someones work, whole or in part, and use for yourself without their consent.
The Cons
I, personally don’t see the pros in article spinning. Therefore, I am giving you the cons. Here are just a few.
- Morality. It is morally wrong to steal…and that means content too. You can spin and spin and spin, but it won’t change the fact that it is someone else’s hard work.
- Legally. There is no in between here. Stealing is illegal. Stealing content is copyright infringement and it’s against the law in most countries. I don’t think much of an explanation is needed here.
- Education. Switching the order of paragraphs or blocks of material to disguise the source obliterates the logical flow of an article. Computers can’t produce good articles. Using synonyms oft times changes the whole meaning of a sentence. If you have read a spun article, many times it makes no sense at all.
- Visitors. If you have ever done a search on Google, you will see mounds of information..repeated. Useless junk cluttering the web. People are trying to educate themselves and learn. How infuriating it is to click on five sites that all share pretty much the exact same content. What happened to diversity? To unique content?
Article Spinning: Final Thoughts
I won’t pretend that you have probably read many posts on article spinning and I am not sharing earth shattering news to you. However, what makes this post completely different from anyone else, is that it’s MY opinion. It’s my theory on the subject and that makes it unique. This is what we as blog owners must strive to achieve. Obviously we are going to discuss the same topics from time to time, but HOW we present it is the key. When writing your posts, incorporate your opinion and your experiences to give the readers a fresh new outlook.
It’s like the movies…how many movies have been made about, “boy meets girl, boy loses girl, etc..?” A million! But each one is presented to us in a different manner. Each one utilizes the writers’, directors’ and producers’ own vision of the theme. And we buy the tickets, we rent the movies and we talk at the water cooler about them.
So, if you were considering article spinning, I hope that you may reconsider now. It insults your readers intelligence. You are above that tactic. Formulate the ideas for your post and figure out your take on the topic. Then write what you know. Write about what you do, what you have tried and even what has not worked for you. I would much rather read about this then some half baked version of an article I already read somewhere else.
Image: healingdream / FreeDigitalPhotos.net Editors note: This guest post on Article Spinning was contributed to info carnivore by Lisa Drubec, I hope you'll take the time to follow her on twitter!
Are you a fan of twitter?
Posted by Daniel Snyder in social media, Twitter on November 25, 2010
Many of my readers know I’m a huge fan of twitter, so are you a fan of twitter? Today I’d just like to take the opportunity to thank you for being a loyal reader of info carnivore, and offer you these fantastic twitter posts and resources. If you haven’t read these top twitter articles and joined the conversation on them then do so today! I’d also like to ask you to become a FAN of info carnivore on facebook, here I post exclusive content and web discoveries you won’t find on my blog. Become a fan today!
Like anyone else I’m sure you are looking to increase your reach and influence in the twittersphere! Am I right? Here at info carnivore I focus on technology, social networks, information security and blogging about blogging. If you want to know more about the site take a look at my about page.
I’m ready to FOLLOW YOU BACK on Twitter as well. If you take a moment to retweet this post, I’ll be sure to follow you as soon as I can!
If you’re keen on expanding your twitter reach, then it is important to take a look at Twitter Dummy, a good friend of mine has built a Twitter Empire and he’s helped a lot of others (including myself), Click here to view more details. If you’re not on twitter yet or you have friends that don’t get it, here’s WHY you should join the twittersphere.
Popular Info Carnivore posts about Twitter
How to be an Engager on Twitter
Twitter Faux Pas (10 Twitter no-no’s)
Twitter Etiquette for Bloggers (Part 1)
Twitter Etiquette for Bloggers (Part 2)
How Many of Your Twitter Followers Actually Follow You?
Not all your twitter followers are fans… Yet!
Twitter Guide: Do You Tweet More than You should?
Don’t forget to check out Twitter Dummy, the only twitter guide you will ever need.
So are you a fan of twitter?
How To Use Facebook Lists to Control Your Privacy
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Facebook, social media on November 22, 2010
This post will teach you how to use facebook lists to control your privacy! I’ve been using facebook for years, primarily to connect with friends and family, but I recently decided to expand my facebook account to include online friends, and work colleagues and acquaintances. The reason I’d in the past hesitated on doing this is because I didn’t feel comfortable with anyone and everyone I added as a facebook friend being able to see all my content. I’d never considered using facebook lists, and wasn’t aware of the control one can have with facebook’s privacy options. This post gives simple instructions on how to create lists of friends (such as acquaintances, work colleagues, online friends etc.) and give them specific permissions to see or NOT see parts of your profile. Perhaps you want to have a list for all the ‘friends’ you work with, but you’re not ready for them to see all your photos, or ready for them to see your status updates. No problem! With facebook lists and their customizable privacy options you can do this.
Here’s how to set it up!
Number ONE thing Computer users neglect!
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Technology on November 20, 2010
The number one thing computer users neglect is physically cleaning the inside of their computer. “Your computer could fry if you don’t keep it clean,” says Jonathon Millman, chief technology officer for Hooplah Interactive. It’s important to keep dust, out of your system, and taking the time to clean it regularly will seriously extend its life. The biggest cause of hardware failure in a computer is overheating, if you’ve not cleaned dust out of your vents, or off your fan for a while, you could be asking for trouble. Before beginning you need to get yourself some compressed air, here’s an offer I recommend: Falcon Dust-Off Professional Compressed Gas 12oz. (6-Pack)
Six of My Biggest Blogging Mistakes, Round 2
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Blogging, Tips & Advice on November 17, 2010
Find me a blogger who has never made any blogging mistakes, oh wait, you can’t. There are none. Blogging is a journey, and just like that it’s loaded with ups and downs (kind of like traffic spikes), and full of mistakes. We’ve all made them. As I learn from my mistakes I like to write about them to help others, hopefully, avoid them! If you haven’t read my first article “My Biggest Blogging Mistakes” jump over and read it now. It contains a lot of the more fundamental mistakes I made in the early stages of my blog.
Six of my Biggest Blogging Mistakes
Blogging Mistake #1: Writing outside my area of expertise.
I just did this the other day, oops! Yeah, that was a blogging mistake. I wrote a post about backing up your wordpress database, and gave instructions only on how to backup your files… overlooking the database entirely. I’ll spare you the complex technical details, but when I submitted the post to a social network I was confronted with a comment that told me straight up, basically ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’. Thankfully the commenter was kind enough to link me to some articles and enlighten me! I was also able to update my post (read the updated post here), and apologize to my readers… Hopefully I don’t have to do that ever again! I learned my lesson. Make sure you know what you’re talking about, verify your information, and check your sources, before hitting publish!
Blogging Mistake #2: Cluttering the sidebar with ads.
The sidebar on my blog used to contain a handful of 125 x 125 ads that sat right near the top of my blog staring you in the face as soon as you came to visit. I also know I’m not the only one that makes this popular blogging mistake, and it certainly is a mistake. For one, they’re an eyesore and they take away from the overall minimal design of my blog. Two, they don’t get clicked on there, people tend to avoid the obvious ad spots. Using Google Analytics you can take a look at click data right on top of your website, find out exactly what people are or aren’t clicking on. This is valuable information which has led me to ditch numerous plugins because of non use, and rearrange things on my blog so they are more likely to get clicked. I also removed in content google ads because I felt they were too distracting from the post. It’s not all about money! The blog has to look clean as well. Point three, they were robbing me of key real estate that I needed to use to brand my blog… which also takes me to mistake number three.
Blogging Mistake #3: Not branding my blog properly…
There are two mistakes that have happened in this realm, the first is the fact that I am still without an official logo. Although I developed a simple one on my own, it’s not what I want to stick with so I’ve used it very casually. Not having a logo is likely something that is hurting me from establishing myself in a greater measure online… unfortunately this is a mistake I am still making, and will have to rectify really soon! But the biggest branding mistake I made was not clearly identifying the blog and myself “above the fold”. Rather then get into the details on that one, you can read more about that here.
Blogging Mistake #4: Using too many plugins, and social shares.
Plugins can really slow down the load time of your blog. Now that google takes load time into consideration when ranking pages, too many plugins can also affect your page rank! Plugins also can be counterproductive by simply adding too much clutter and noise to your blog. Simpler is often better. See if you can’t grind down to the meat of what your readers are after, and the tools / features that they need. Remove everything else! If you are curious about the load time of your blog, you can use Pingdom Tools to check it out and get an incredibly detailed report. I also made a point of removing social share icons for networks that my content would not be relevant to. I have found that you are articles are more likely to get retweeted, stumbled, or dugg if there are only a few options to choose from, rather than a long list of social network icons!
Blogging Mistake #5: Allowing a third party to manage my comments.
This could possibly be the biggest blogging mistake I have ever made (so far!). When I abandoned Disqus and switched to the simple WordPress comment system, I was able to install a handful of reader friendly plugins that have seriously enhanced my blog and more than quadrupled my comments! Want to know more about how that worked, and what plugins I’m using now? Find out here.
Blogging Mistake #6: Failing to do keyword research on individual posts.
The final mistake I’ll mention in this article is how in my early blogging days I did not do any keyword research on individual posts. I now take the time to research keywords, before I begin writing and am able to implement keyword phrases into my post titles, first sentences, last sentences, and also into h1, h2 tags etc. I’m learning to be conscious of my keyword density, and to seek out keyword phrases with low to medium competition. I use Google AdWords: Keyword Tool for my research. I know there are other options available, but I’ve not explored yet. SEO is probably one of biggest areas of learning, and so I’m certain other SEO related mistakes will jump out in future articles!
Share Your Blogging Mistakes and Help Others Learn
Okay come on out, I know I’m not the only blogger that has made mistakes like these! Let’s start the conversation, what mistakes have you made. You are now officially encouraged to leave a comment. Are you willing to share your blogging mistakes to help others learn?
How to Backup Your WordPress Database and Files
Posted by Daniel Snyder in Blogging, Tips & Advice on November 15, 2010
Are you regularly doing a wordpress database backup? According to a recent poll conducted by PC Advisor, 30 percent of people back up data every day, but one in 13 never back up valuable data! I suspect the same can be said about bloggers, and yet your blog is very valuable data and if you’re not backing it up, it’s time to learn how. There are many wordpress plugin options for backing up your blog, but I resort to old fashioned methods in which I am in 100% control of the backup, and happy seeing the data stored on my own hard drive. It’s important to avoid losing data and hours of hard work, our friend Brian at Blog Engage recently had a database issue and nearly lost a whole lot of critical content on his blog (this happened while he was running a contest and contest information was nearly lost!), luckily Brian had a very recent backup and was able to restore his database. Read the near-horror story here.
Backup Your Blog: WordPress Files Backup
Editor’s Note. UPDATE This post originally gave instructions on file backup only, and yet was titled as a database backup. I apologize for the error and the misinformation. Only downloading your files from the FTP will not backup your MySQL database (which is where your posts, comments etc. are stored). Read about backing up your database directly on wordpress.org
Doing a wordpress backup is not too difficult, depending on the size of your blog it may however take more than a few minutes. That’s okay, you can let the backup run in the background while you’re promoting your blog!
The first step is to back up your files. I like to access my files directly, and for this I use the FTP client Filezilla. (Download filezilla by clicking on the previous link) (Note: the file backup method is only for those who own their own domain, and can gain access to their FTP)
Once you’ve installed and loaded up filezilla you can simply login to your website with your FTP username and password. This is different information from your wordpress login, and you should have been provided with this FTP login information from your host. Filezilla looks like the below screen (click on the image to see it larger), your login credentials are entered at the top, while the screen splits showing your local computer system on the left and the remote server on the right.
Now you simply use filezilla like windows explorer, by clicking and dragging from the remote server to your local machine you will download all the data to the directory you specify. Simple! In this manner you can backup your blog files and do a complete backup without any extra plugins or concerns.
Step 2 requires you to do a WordPress Database Backup. The only database supported by WordPress is MySQL version 4.1.2 or greater. There are numerous plugins available to do this, or you can do it manually using phpMyAdmin. I’d like to be able to walk you through that process, but at this time the best source of information is directly from WordPress.
The plugin I am using is called WordPress Database Backup, which is simple to use and allows you to backup all or selected tables. The completed backup can then be downloaded as a tarball. Should you ever need to use the backup to restore your database you will need to utilize phpMyAdmin, and you can find instructions for that here.
What method do you use for doing a WordPress Database Backup? Or do you prefer doing it a different way? Let our reader know your thoughts with a comment below! And remember, info carnivore is a DO FOLLOW blog so commenting here will help increase your page rank!
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