AdesBlog.com

Do any of you guys know of good anti-spam plugin for WP? As you can see from the screenshot to the right, SPAM are really wasting my time. I used to use Peter’s Custom Anti Spam before, it worked fine but I was still getting about 50-100 SPAM comments a day. After that few days ago, I changed to reCAPTCHA. I thought maybe this will reduce the spam, and at the same time I can help translate some books.

But the result was, even more SPAM comments! Now it gets more than 300 SPAM comments a day (see screenshot).

I know this can differ from blog to blog, but is there any effective anti-spam plugin out there? What can you recommend?

I have joined the Twitter bandwagon too, which I was resisting for some time. Recent busy schedule of mine, which resulted in my blog being not updated for few days, prompted me to search for ways to keep my readers informed of what is going on in my life.

Well, first thing that came to my mind was Twitter, so I went ahead and got myself a twitter.com/adesblog. I don’t think I will be active twitter user though. But as I said, when the blog is not updated, you will be able to find the reasons there. I have just tested it through mobile posting (sms), and it went well. That means I can update it virtually from anywhere in the world (as long as there is reception and roaming).

You may subscribe to my twitter RSS here if you want to be notified of my new twitter entries.

How about you? Do you use Twitter? If yes, what can you tell about the service? What it is good for? What are the good and “not so good” things about the service? Any good tips you can share for effective usage of Twitter?

New Year is around the corner, and internet is full of all kinds of sales. I thought I would make a sale of my own product too. For a limited time only (till Jan 1, 2008) AdesClrPicker (my color picker tool) is sold for $5.00 only (normal price $19.90).

If you have been wanting to buy this color picker, now is the time! Get your copy here.

It’s only natural that the more successful you get, the more challenges you will face. There are business challenges and there are people related challenges. This post will discuss the latter.

Intentional false information that results from envy, competition, hate etc. is one thing that you will have to deal with, if you are on the way to success. Or if you have already achieved considerable success.

When this occurs, how do you deal with it? Large corporations do not comment on baseless information and accusations. But as a blogger, you cannot afford to do that. Because corporations are an entity - not individuals, but as a blogger (as a human being) you have your dignity and honor to preserve. Therefore you can’t just ignore if someone is disseminating false information about you. You have to take corrective measures. How do you do that?

Be professional at all times

In blogosphere, usually these false information would be posted on blogs. The authors of these blogs might intentionally post false information. That is a possibility, but you have to take into account that they might be simply unaware of the real situation too. Therefore, you need to be professional when you are trying to communicate to the author. Even if the person had the intention to discredit you with his/her post, do not get emotional. Rather reply to the author in a professional manner, correcting his mistakes and telling your side of the story.

Ways to respond

You can choose one or more ways to respond to the author. According to the situation, you need to choose the most appropriate option.

Comments - You can comment directly on the post. It’s the most common way of correcting the blogger. It will also allow you (the accused) to reach out to the blog’s readers. The important point here is to be heard, to tell the facts, and to correct the bloger and not to argue with the blogger.

One disadvantage of this option is that, blogger can ban you from commenting on his/her post if he/she wants. If that is the case, then you should try the following options.

Email (Contact Form) - if the situation warrants that you talk to the blogger directly. Then you can employ this option. You can contact him through his contact form or through email. Talking one to one can give you more confidentiality to discuss the issues in detail, that you might not otherwise post in comments.

Post on your blog - you may also dedicate a separate post on your own blog for the issue. In the post you can set the facts straight and let the people know about the real situation. Usually this is only done when the situation is getting out of hand.

How to respond

Responding to the allegation can result in regret if not done properly. In the heat of the moment, you can get emotional and thus post something that you wouldn’t be proud of. In some cases, the person who posted false info about you, might want you to get emotional and loose your temper, so that you will be depicted as a “short tempered incompetent person” who might just prove the accuser’s point. Therefore, when responding:

Be professional - whatever the accusations are against you, be professional and use gentle words when explaining the real situation. Try to be as polite as possible. You don’t have to drop to such a low level as the accuser.

Do not be emotional - when you are in the state of anger, your logical mind steps back and your emotional brain takes over. During this time, everything you do is controlled and executed by your emotional brain. Therefore if you feel angry after reading a particular post, you better take a time off. Don’t post your reply immediately. Rather give it some time, give it some thought and come back to respond only after some time (preferably few hours) passes. This way, you will have a better chance to reply professionally (and logically).

If you are interested to know more on Emotional Intelligence, you can read these two books: The Emotional Intelligence Quick Book and Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

Don’t defend yourself, rather state the facts - in the middle of the accusations, it’s very easy to get carried away and start defending yourself. You should always remember that you are not there to argue with the accuser. Your objective is to tell the facts, true information, and real situation. Because argument won’t bring a solution. Especially if the person’s intention is to discredit you and not to get the true facts. If that is the case, no argument will bring solution. Because he is not interested in what you have to say. So it’s better to limit yourself to the facts that concern the current issue only.

When I say don’t defend yourself, I mean something which is personal, not related to the issue that you are discussing. For example, if someone is accusing you of not providing a linkback that you promised and at the same time calls you names like “fat” or “crazy”. Don’t go and defend yourself for these unrelated personal things, saying “I am not fat or my IQ is 160!” ;) Rather, concentrate on the real issues. Anyway, you know what I mean right?

When you are at fault

It’s also possible that you might be somehow at fault in some situations. For example if someone sent you an email and the email was caught in your SPAM. The person might have sent you emails numerous times and didn’t get any answer from you. So, he decided to write about it on his blog.

In these cases, you need to accept your mistake. You should apologize politely and explain to the person the real situation (i.e that his emails were caught up in your spam folder, and you didn’t check).

After you have explained him what had happened, if you can, try to fulfill his request. If it was about linkback, give him a linkback from your blog. If it was something that cannot be done now (the contest that you did last year, and the person tried to participate in it), then offer him something in return if possible. You can give him free advertising. That works most of the time. Or a paid review! (I am sure he/she will be delighted)… Because, explaining the situation is one thing, but making people happy (satisfied) is another. If possible, you should try for the latter (i.e to make them satisfied).

Conclusion

I have had my share of envious and unhappy people. Some with the fact that I had PageRank 7 blog

before. Some people were just not happy. It all surfaced during Google’s war on text links. There were some people who were posting about my blog selling text links, yet not being punished. Because my blog was not downgraded in the first PR downgrade.

And some people were not happy with the contest that I organized for my color picker tool. For some reason I didn’t receive few people’s emails (some of them SPAM related). Even though I explicitly stated that people should contact me using my contact form. But no, there were some people who sent me direct emails and later complained that I was not fair to them, that I didn’t publish their reviews intentionally.

Recently, some people made a speculation that my criticism of LinkWorth’s marketing strategies was in fact a reverse marketing, that I was actually working with LinkWorth and that the post was part of a pre-planned strategy to promote LinkWorth. (sigh!) Sometimes, I think people have nothing to do or what?

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If you notice, many successful bloggers do not rely on blogging alone for generating money on internet. In fact, their blogs are usually the secondary source of income for them.

This applies to myself as well (not that I am a successful blogger). My primary source of income comes from my long time online business, which has been around since 1999 (acquired its own domain name in late 2002). I started this website as a hobby in my university years, providing free tutorials on photoshop, dreamweaver, css, php… etc. But after some time it became popular and was driving thousands of visitors every month.

After my degree, when I was working in Web Design field, I added free website templates to my website. This too attracted a lot of visitors. After all, who doesn’t love free stuff right?

Traffic and free stuff brings business

By now, I was getting a lot of requests to design websites. Initially, I did a lot of freelancing (not all listed in portfolio). It did bring quite substantial amount of income, but it also involved a lot of hard work on my part. So, to reduce my workload, I introduced ready website templates to my website. This took huge workload off my shoulders. Because, now people who were looking for web design were purchasing my website templates directly, instead of hiring me for custom design. As a result, I had more free time for other things.

So, with my free time I decided to make my own products. Latest being the color picker tool that was launched in early 2006.

By now my hobby site that started humbly in 1999, was making money from many sources, including advertising (i.e text links, publisher programs, affiliate programs etc.) If it was not for my free tutorials, I wouldn’t be where I am now - doing what I like most, staying at home and creating my own projects and products. Of course blogging has been part of my everyday life for the past 2 years now.

Lessons learned

Here are some of the lessons that I can bring to your attention from my life, work and entrepreneurial experience so far.

• Have more than one online business - if you have only a blog as your online income generator, try to open few more businesses. If you are not sure what kind of business you can do online, there are tons of ideas on Amazon. Just make some research and pick few ideas to work on.
• Pursue your hobby - just keep doing what you love i.e your hobby. You never know what it might bring you in the future.

  For example, I graduated with a degree in ICT, majoring in Databases. But I ended up working in the field of Web Design. And now most of my income comes from web design related things. Not bad for a hobby that brings money, huh? If I had abandoned my interest in web design then, I wouldn’t be where I am now.

• Turn services into products - if you can, try to turn your service into a product. This way you can put your business on auto-pilot! As a result, you will have more free time for your new projects. For example, I have turned my web design service into a product, which is website template.
• Give away things for free - by giving away things for free you benefit both parties; the community, and yourself. I gave away tutorials (my knowledge) and website templates for free without knowing that they would one day bring me enough money to be self-employed. Leo Babauta has a good article on this too, read here.
• Make your own products - sure you can make a lot of money by selling someone else’s products. But why not reverse the situation? You could easily become the party that provides the affiliate program. This way others would sell your products, and you would get the larger share of the profit.

  There is nothing more satisfying than selling your own products. Moreover, investing in your own products is a long-term strategy, which could very well secure your profitability for a long time to come. You have no programming skills? No problem, there are thousands of people who has. Just invest some of your time and money, and you can have your own product in no time.

• Act on your ideas and thoughts - Don’t read all the popular business books and bestsellers just for the sake of reading only (So that you can say “I read that book”). Because knowledge that is not acted upon, is no better than not having that knowledge at all. Unfortunately, many of us simply don’t take that first step to make our ideas and thoughts a reality, to turn our ideas into a potential business that could sustain us (possibly for the rest of our lives). So if you are not gonna act, don’t waste your money on books. Instead you could collect that money and hire someone to do some project for you.

I hope you will find some of these tips useful. Please do share your own tips that have made a difference in your life or business.

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I have added six more new icons to my project UserInterfaceIcons.com. For those who are not familiar with UII, it’s a website that provides high quality user interface icons for free. No strings attached.

Latest Icons are: Podcast, Newsletter, Dialog Box, Notice Board, Vacancy and Forms. You may see them at what’s new page or download them here.

Feedbacks: Since the project launch, I have received tons of feedback. Most of them are emails thanking for the free icons. I have also received some feedbacks on the theme of the icons. They said while they liked the icons, the blue and yellow theme was not suitable for their web application. I have noted about this, and for the next icon-pack I will release realistic type of icons. Realistic type of icons are the ones, like you see on your Windows Desktop, each icon having its own unique colors. That way everybody will be able to use the icons. www.userinterfaceicons.com