As a blogger, I have no fondness whatsoever for comment spam. But I do love to comment on other blogs, and the earlier the better. Today I’m sharing a free tool that makes it easier to be one of the early comments on your favorite blogs.

It’s called Comment Sniper, and it was created by Duncan Carver. He creates some pretty useful and sometimes free software.

The software is pretty easy to use, although if the blogs you like use something other than Blogger or Wordpress software you may have to do a bit of work to figure out how the feed is formatted to get Comment Sniper to work. Here’s a screenshot of the software’s main screen:

You subscribe to blogs by filling out the following form with information about the location of the blog, its feed and the format of the feed. It knows how Blogger and Wordpress feeds are formatted, and this works for many blogs.

One of the best parts is that you can decide how often you want it to check feeds for new entries. I don’t check as often as some might, just every half hour. The initial setting was more frequent than that.

A trick to remember is that you can only change things if you stop Comment Sniper, and then you have to click the Start button on the Sniper Process screen again. You also only ever want to minimize it. Click the red X and it shuts down rather than going back down into the tray of the taskbar as some programs do. My first week or so it gave me a bit of trouble remembering that part.

If you decide to use this software, a key thing to remember is that you need to make quality comments. Being first is not nearly as important as saying something interesting enough to make people want to visit your website.

Be informative. Bring up additional points. Talk about your experience relating to the post. Keep it interesting.

Technorati Tags: comment sniper, blog comments, commenting

Just had to smile at this. Since everyone always talks about huge commissions, showing sale after sale, I thought I would buck the trend and show a screen shot of a really low commission.

Yes, it’s just one sale, but I don’t do all that much through Amazon anyhow. This item was apparently the entire sale.

It’s not Photoshopped, honest, beyond what it took to shrink to the relevant portion and ensure it wouldn’t mess up my blog template.

Don’t worry, this is far from what I earn monthly from other sources. I do much better in other areas.

Technorati Tags: low commision, screenshot

With the holiday season very much upon us, it’s time to start contacting your customers. A quick card to remind them that you offer items that make great Christmas or other holiday gifts. Odds are, many of them will be wanting ideas.

Tiny Prints has some beautiful, professional cards. You can even have photos printed on them to give a more personal touch.

Getting your holiday cards professionally printed is a good thing, but I would also recommend using a more professional touch and signing each card by hand. It may take a bit of time, but it shows just a little more thought than a printed signature. If you have a huge list this may be rather more than you care to take on, but do it if at all reasonable.

Consider including a coupon code on your cards. It will help you to track the response your cards get as well as motivate people to order from you. Just remember to think about whether or not you need an expiration date or other terms of use for the code.

Existing customers are a group you should never neglact in your home business marketing efforts. Take a little extra time when they’re more likely to be shopping.

Technorati Tags: home business, holiday business, holiday business cards

For many home businesses, the holiday season is a great time. People buy more. If you sell physical products, there’s probably customers looking to give what you sell for Christmas presents.

This applies to a wide range of home businesses. People who have joined network marketing and direct sales opportunities can probably sell a lot of their products for use in gift baskets. If you can recommend complementary products, even if they aren’t in your product line, your customers will appreciate it.

Affiliate marketers can do similar, depending on what they focus on. The nice part is that you may be able to sign up for programs that will give you commissions even on the products that go along with their core recommendations.

Of course, much of your marketing should have long since started for the holidays, but you can work at it even now. Contact existing customers to inform them of holiday specials. Use pay per click marketing to build more traffic to your website. Don’t give up just because you haven’t gotten the head start you want. Get moving now.

Technorati Tags: holiday marketing, christmas marketing

I’ve developed quite a fondness for StumbleUpon. Not only is it good for marketing a website, it’s fun. It’s hard to beat that kind of a combination.

Now, I know a lot of articles on building up a Stumble account really annoys regular Stumble users. That’s reasonable, considering that many tactics do nothing more than annoy people who Stumble because they enjoy it so much. I think it’s important to consider how to use StumbleUpon correctly.

Take the time to Stumble

People debate whether or not you should Stumble your own content. I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with it, provided the content is something that is likely to be enjoyed by other users. Before you start submitting your own content, figure out what appeals to other Stumblers.

The easiest way to do this is to pick interests to show in your profile related to your topic, and start stumbling. Look at the reviews the pages that get your attention get.

Doing this will help you to figure out just a little of what appeals to Stumblers. There’s no easy formula, but you can get some idea as to what qualities you should consider when creating your own content.

Pick your Stumbles carefully

Whatever you do, do not Stumble just any article you’ve posted on your website. I see far too many sites that I have trouble picturing being of interest to people using StumbleUpon. Pages focused purely on selling something, for example. If it’s something unusual or funny it can work, but without something like that, I have trouble picturing them doing well as Stumbles.

Similar for purely self promotional items. If you wouldn’t want to read it about someone else or their site, your fellow Stumblers probably won’t want to see it from you or your site.

Pick articles that are well-written, have a unique perspective, have a humorous slant, or are otherwise interesting. Same for images, videos and so forth. Stumblers get very tired of seeing the same thing over and over again, so you don’t want to submit something that you’ve seen on several other sites. Be more creative than that.

Don’t Stumble your own site excessively

While the limitations are guesses, most estimates I have seen say you can Stumble a given site no more than about 15 times. However, I have seen some people say you can get cut off after far fewer Stumbles. The more honest you are about your Stumbles, I suspect, the more freedom you have in Stumbling your own site.

Make friends and fans
It’s not entirely clear whether or not having more friends and fans on StumbleUpon improves the power of your Stumbles, but most people believe they do. People who have interests in your field are great choices, especially if they are also regular Stumblers.

Stumble often

And Stumble honestly. Submit pages that aren’t your own that you genuinely enjoy. Thumbs up pages when you like them. Enjoy yourself. Stumbling can be incredibly addictive if you relax and don’t worry about whether or not you’re getting anything out of it.

Think before you contact friends

Contacting StumbleUpon friends is a feature I’ve never taken advantage of personally. I know you can do this, but it is a feature to use with caution. Overuse is a great way to alienate friends. But if you’ve written something that you especially want attention to, and think it will do well, give it a try. But I wouldn’t send it to your entire list of friends right away, or possibly ever. Send it to a few and see if it was really a good idea.

And do so rarely.

Remember that traffic for traffic’s sake means very little

Stumble traffic may not be right for your website. It doesn’t necessarily convert or bring links. But it can.

The better the content, the better your chance of getting something from it. But it’s also the greater the chance you have of getting a ton of traffic, possibly too much for your server. You do want to be aware of this impact and certain about whether or not the potential extra costs will be worth it.

Technorati Tags: stumbleupon, stumble, stumbling, social bookmarks, social networks, building traffic, oneline business, home business

So many times a business opportunity sounds great. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone tell me they have what they think is a great business idea. Sometimes they just want my opinion. Other times they want my participation.

With that in mind, the post on Shoemoney on How to Pass Up the Opportunity of a Lifetime. It has a lot of great points on what you should be thinking about when considering whether or not to go for a business opportunity.

Of course, it basically comes down to using good sense.

When it comes to dealing with family members getting business ideas, I’ve found it best to give them some advice and decline to join them. Too many of them have listened to my advice and then never do what it takes to get things going. I really feel that a lack of action is one of the biggest reasons businesses fail.

There’s a risk to any business. Even if the financial investment is small, the time investment is likely to be large. You have to think carefully before deciding to spend either.

Before starting or joining any business opportunity, you have to do your research. That’s what much of the advice boils down to. Know what will be expected of you, both financially and timewise. Find out if the opportunity is what it seems when someone approaches you with one or you get an idea of your own. Research the potential customer base.

And if it becomes clear that you don’t want to do the business, for any reason, be willing to say no. Don’t give into pressure, don’t feel guilty.

Technorati Tags: business opportunity, business opportunities

More important, what drives your target market nuts?

One of the things you need to remember is that customers love solutions. The more annoying the problem, the more people will want a solution.

Thinking about what drives people nuts is important as you write your marketing copy, blog posts and articles. There is little point in focusing on things people don’t care about.

You don’t have to be perfectly serious as you write, even when you’re focusing on providing solutions to problems. A touch of light humor can work very well, but too much will make the humor more memorable than whatever you’re trying to sell. It’s something to use cautiously.

So how do you know what problems to address? There’s an old saying about how people don’t buy a drill because they want a drill. They buy a drill because they want a hole. That’s the kind of thinking you need to use.

There are a few ways to do this. You can take sides on a controversy, discuss the faults of other solutions, discuss the many ways you could solve a problem, and so forth. Creativity is good; you don’t want to sound like everyone else. You want to stand out.

And yes, thinking of what drives you nuts can drive you nuts some days. All a part of the process.

Technorati Tags: copywriting, taking sides, controversy, marketing, customers, clients, home business, online marketing

There’s a change being made to AdSense units, dealing with an issue I hadn’t ever considered. They’ve shrunk the clickable area to just the link text and domain name, rather than the entire ad block. I hadn’t particularly noticed that the entire block could be clicked, but I can see wher that would be a problem.

I first read about this in a post over at Problogger, but it’s also up at Marketing Pilgrim, JenSense and many other websites.

Many people are concerned about the decrease in income for the publishers, but I think it is more important to consider that this move may well make advertisers more satisfied with AdSense, since accidental clicks will be less likely.

I do pretty well with AdSense on some of my sites, and so I will be watching this with quite a bit of interest. My AdSense numbers today look normal. The clickthrough rate is no lower than usual, so I don’t know if this hasn’t been rolled out on my sites or just is not having an impact.

In terms of quality, I have to call this a good move. It means ad units will be clickable where people expect them to be clickable; that is, at the actual links.

Technorati Tags: adsense