In the article, Should the Internet Be Taxed, WebPro News shared:

On Friday [July 1, 2011], a new California state law goes into effect that will tax Internet sales through affiliate advertising. Rather than pay such taxes, online retailers like Amazon will instead shut down their affiliate programs in the state. For Amazon, that is said to come to 25,000 sites in California alone.

Amazon has told affiliates in the past that they’d have to move to another state to continue earning commissions on referrals. Overstock.com has reportedly done that before too.

Some groups representing brick and mortars feel the law should be extended on a national level, claiming the taxes take away competitive advantages from Internet retailers that don’t have a physical presence in a particular state. Consumers are able to avoid fees from purchasing from these retailers that they’d otherwise have to pay by buying in-state.

My heart goes out to these affiliates. Hopefully this issue can be resolved in an amicable way.

Today’s Lesson

I think it’s great how us bloggers can potentially make an income from our blogs. It not only covers our overhead, but can also lead to new opportunities and even self employment.

And with the economy remaining slow, every little bit helps.

That said, anyone in business knows it’s not wise to put all of our eggs into one basket. Anytime we rely solely on one client for our livelihood , we set ourselves up for potential problems. If our star client dies, files bankrupty, goes out of business, hires our competitor, or ___(fill in the blank)___, our income stops. Sadly, the bills don’t.

I think there’s an important lesson to be learned here.

If we bloggers continually put our trust into one or two big named businesses, happily promoting the products/services of others, and wait with baited breath to receive our piddly commission checks, we could be setting ourselves up for disappointment and even financial ruin.

Just like when big banks and big government go down, the same can happen to us.

Trust in others is one thing, but when that trust could be broken on a moments notice, we soon realize our trust was misplaced.

Making money with a blog by using affiliate links or Google AdSense is one of the easiest routes to go, however our livelihood is in the hands of others.

Maybe it’s time we start thinking how we can do it on our own*.

What say you?

Today’s Assignment

Did you get caught up in the California tax law dilemma?

What do you think is the best way to protect ourselves from situations like this?

Care to share?

*Watch for an upcoming article where I share how fellow bloggers are making money with their blogs as well as ideas on how to diversify.

Today’s Lesson

As many of you have noticed, I decorated my blog for the holidays.

Since I use a theme which has the “custom header feature”, adding the photo was simple. For the RSS widgets I searched for “holiday icons” and then recoded my widgets.

Listed below are a few new (to me) plugins I am testing.

1. First is Sexy Bookmarks by Josh Jones and Norman Yung which is visible at the bottom of each post.

   The Sexy Bookmarks plugin is easily customizable, looks good, doesn’t take up too much space and is positioned so readers will be reminded to Tweet, Digg, or use StumbleUpon, etc. to share a post.

2. The “Follow Me” plugin by WP Burn.com can be seen on the right of the page.

   This plugin is to remind our readers they can follow us on Twitter. The customization includes using different colors as well as different Twitter birds images.

3. The Wibiya toolbar can be seen at the bottom of the page.

   What I like about this toolbar is if you don’t want to clutter up your sidebars with an RSS feed, recent posts, etc., you can include them in the toolbar.This isn’t a plugin, but more of an add-on which requires an invitation. Just go to the Wibiya site and follow the instructions. In a matter of days you should receive an email from them and at that time you can set up an account and customize your toolbar.

4. Thanks to the suggestions from both Internet Strategist @ GrowMap and Betsy at Passing Thru I added Zemanta and Apture.

   In a nutshell, these two applications which work for all blogging platforms* make blogging easier and faster by suggesting photos, links, related articles, etc. for our posts. (Disclaimer: I’ve only tested them on WordPress.)

   Zemanta adds a interface to your dashboard from which you can drag and drop photos and/or links into your post as you’re writing it.

   

   Image via CrunchBase

   Apture adds icons which when clicked on, does the same.

   Zemanta also adds a “reblog” feature at the bottom of the post which makes cutting and pasting quotes much easier, plus and an option to add links to other posts which may be beneficial to our readers.

Thus far, the only downside I see to using some of the above applications is they do slow down the page load time.

Today’s Assignment

What are your favorite plugins or applications?

Care to share?

.

Footnote: When using Zemanta on a self hosted blog, the Zemanta plugin must be used. For WordPress, the plugin can be downloaded here.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Do you have a strategy for social bookmarking and crowdsourcing? (socialmedia.biz)
• Manage Your Social Networks In One Place With Pond (100 Invites!) (makeuseof.com)

What an exciting week it’s been. We just concluded the second round of interview topics with Lorelle (of Lorelle on WordPress) and learned:

1) Revisitng old posts can provide fresh content

2) How to Manage our feed readers

3) And then we Wooped it up.

4) On Tuesday we welcomed our first teenage blogger to the NBOTW series

On to the Free ‘n Easy Friday Finds (FEFF).

If you didn’t follow the comment thread on Wednesday’s post, Lorelle stopped by and shared a link for anyone who uses Firefox and the Greasemonkey Scripts Extension which will help speed up our reading/commenting time. I used it last night while visiting blogs and estimate I shaved 20 minutes off of my visiting and commenting time. It’s fabulous.

Lorelle has written a post detailing the use of this script.

I’ve also been cleaning house (no, not my home, although that needs it, too). I’ve been tidying up my blog by removing the monthly archives list (it was 17 months long), taking off all affiliate ads (In over a year they haven’t made me a dime), and for my recent commenters, I removed the snippets. My “Recent Commenters” now shows your avatar and name with hopes of giving you more name recognition and traffic to your blogs.

Although it’s my blog, it’s all about you!

I hope you like the changes.

Have a great weekend!

Hi all,

Welcome to my new series.

It will be called “Free ‘n Easy Friday Finds”. As some of you already know, I like to use acronyms (abbreviate with letters), so it will often be referred to as “FEFF”.

Each Friday, I will share something that is free to bloggers. It may be a plugin, a site that offers free themes or photos, a potential (free) income stream, advice that will save you time and money, or something else. Plus, it will be easy to use.

For blogging, there is tons of free stuff online, so before you get out the “plastic”, ask a question in my comment section and either I, or one of the other bloggers in the BWAB community, may know of a free source.

As an added bonus, there will be no “assignment” on Fridays. Did I hear a “yeah”? ///clap, clap, clap\\\

The comment section will be open for questions, comments or anything you might want to share. Just remember, I don’t allow profanity on my blog, so keep it clean.

Let’s get started:

Last week Dr. Cason mentioned she wanted to organize the blogs in her reader. This was something I needed to do, too.

Organizing Your Google Reader

With the Google Reader, this is pretty easy.

Go to your reader (duh!)

1) Click on “manage friends”

2) Click on “subscriptions” – All of the blogs you’re following will be listed. Each line has “Rename”, a garbage can, and a white rectangular box.

3) If you click on “Add To A Folder” (the white box) It gives you the option to make a new folder

As you make new folders, the names of the folders are added to the “white box” option.

4) Add the first blog to a folder, and that part is done.

5) Move on to the next blog

As you go through the blogs in your reader, you can add it to an existing folder, move it to a different folder, or create a new folder.

You’ll also see a small garbage can on this page. This is used to delete blogs from your reader.

If you want, you can also rename a blog you’re following. e.g. Instead of being listed by the name of the blog, you could rename it by the author.

When you click “Back to Google Reader”, the blogs you are following are neatly placed in the respective folders. The folders can then by opened or collapsed by using the + or – signs (to the left of the folder icon).

As an example, I currently have four folders:

1) “NBOTW” (these are all bloggers who were named New Blog Of The Week)

2) “Visit Daily” (Updated blogs I read on a daily basis)

3) “Visit Twice A Week” (Blogs I read at least twice a week, but usually more often, if time permits)

4) “Blogs To Watch” (These are new blogs I’ve found that have the potential to be part of my NBOTW series)

What I like about setting up folders is that you have two choices

1) You can open all updated blogs on one screen, (by clicking on the name of the folder), or

2) You can open the folder and then open up each blog in the window.

Warning: With regard to the #1 choice, be careful not to click on “mark all as read” until you have finished reading all of the updated blogs.

Although my explanation of this may sound confusing, it’s actually an easy process.

Once you start playing with, and becoming comfortable with, the options in your reader, you’ll see the advantage of setting up folders. (It’s similar to setting up folders in your email account).

That’s my first FEFF….

Now the floor is yours.

Have your say, share an idea, ask a question or………

We all make mistakes when we start blogging.

I know I did.

Today’s Lesson

I didn’t do enough homework and was unprepared for what blogging entailed.

I made small mistakes like typos (and I still do), and big ones like crashing my blogs.

I didn’t know HTML, coding or the blogging language.

I had no idea what SEO (search engine optimization) was, nor did I have time to learn it.

I didn’t know the difference between a plugin and a widget, or a trackback vs a ping. (Thank you John Hoff for the great explanation on pings and trackbacks)

I spent too much time checking my visitor stats when I should have been concentrating on other areas of blogging.

I wasted many precious hours signing up for, placing ads and then checking stats to see how much money I wasn’t making.

Social networks like StumbleUpon and Digg got me addicted, and they too consumed my time.

Although all of the above are important lessons to learn, (and I did), the biggest mistake I made was…….

Not making the time to comment on other blogs sooner than I did.

I had read many times how important it was, but thought it didn’t pertain to me.

When I did consider commenting, I was often intimidated by the other comments, and felt my words might sound stupid.

Instead, I worked quietly behind the scenes, wrote for my imaginary audience, and told myself, “If I build it, they will come”.

I was content……..for awhile.

Then I realized blogging is actually about interacting with others.

I was a one way street.

It wasn’t until I made time to visit other blogs that I got caught up in the thrill of comments.

Not only getting comments, but leaving them as well.

I’m not afraid of admitting my mistakes, and that was a big one.

What about you?

Today’s Assignment

What do you feel your biggest mistake in blogging has been thus far?

Care to share?