Do you want to add polls to your site?

October 20, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 18 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, Web Services, WordPress

I have been thinking about adding polls and surveys to some of my sites, but haven’t had the time to research how to do it best.

Serendipity favored my efforts this morning when I read on Matt Mullenwag’s blog that PollDaddy Goes Automattic.

He announced that all the blogs hosted on WordPress.com now have PollDaddy features enabled and a new plug-in for WordPress has been released.

I just installed the plug-in on this site and this is my test post to see how well it works.

It took only a few minutes to sign up for free at PollDaddy.com and set up my profile there.

I have been wanting a way to create polls and surveys and to show them on my websites and blogs. Creating a poll with PollDaddy is very easy and there are several ways to link to your poll and/or embed it in your site, including javascript, a direct link, and a tag to use with the WordPress plug-in.

Here’s my first test of using a PollDaddy poll using the plug-in:

This is just a simple poll asking if you are a Squidoo lensmaster. It allows comments and I chose to moderate the comments before they are published.

I’m sure I’ll come up with better polls in the future, but I really love Squidoo and I like meeting new lensmasters and catching up with all the lensmasters I already know.

One thing I’m seeing that I don’t like is how the format of the poll changes as my blog page loads. At first, the answers are neatly lined up, but after the page loads completely, they change and no longer line up.

Are you seeing that, too?

It looks, to me, like I’m having a CSS conflict between this poll and one of the widgets I have on this blog.

You can compare what the poll looks like on this site with what it looks like on the PollDaddy site: Are you a Squidoo lensmaster?

Have you wanted to add polls and surveys to your sites and blogs? What tools are you using to accomplish this?

Act on your dream!

Tags: Automattic, PollDaddy, polls, surveys, WordPress plugin

New Privacy Policy and Disclaimer pages

October 20, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 11 Comments
Filed under: Affiliate Marketing

On September 25, 2008, I blogged about Disclosures, Disclaimers, and Ethics of Affiliate Marketing and this is a follow-up to that post.

I’ve been looking at quite a few sites to see what they are doing about these issues and I’ve looked at some of my older sites to see what I’ve previously done.

After thinking about this for a couple of weeks, I have composed and published a new Privacy Policy and Disclaimer page for this site.

I hope theses pages clearly address the issues and are useful to anyone who reads them.

I’m still considering what I want to establish on a Disclosures page and whether or not I want to post a Comments Policy.

While I do my best to evaluate affiliate programs before recommending them, there are many things outside my control and I feel that it is necessary to establish and publish these policies.

If you are new to affiliate marketing, please pay attention to the Caveats section of the Disclaimer page.

Do you have policies posted for your site? Have I forgotten anything of importance?

Act on your dream!

Tags: caveats, disclaimer, policies, privacy policy

My tweets on Twitter are no longer posted to this blog

October 16, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 12 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, Social Networking, Twitter

I have been using Alex King’s Twitter Tools WordPress plug-in to automatically tweet about new posts to this blog to my Twitter account.

When I set it up, I was new to both Twitter Tools and to Twitter. This plug-in offers an option to also post a daily index of Twitter posts to the blog. I chose to implement that option.

A few days ago, while looking critically at this blog, those Twitter posts stood out like a sore thumb. Most of them are entirely unrelated to affiliate marketing and I don’t think they belong here, even though it is now my primary blog.

So, on October 8th, I turned off the option of indexing my daily Twitter posts on this blog. Coincidentally, I got tied up doing some time-intensive things that just didn’t leave me with time to blog, so nothing has been added here since then, about a week ago.

If you subscribe to this blog via email, then you haven’t heard from me for a few days.

Most bloggers think that is a terrible thing to do, but I disagree. If I don’t have anything worthwhile to talk about here, I just don’t say anything. Most bloggers think we should write at least one thing every day to keep the readers in the habit of visiting our blogs. I just don’t accept that.

When I have something to say, or have news related to affiliate marketing that I want to pass along, I’ll write about it. Sometimes, I’ll post several times in one day. Other times, such as last week, I won’t post anything at all.

The daily index of Twitter posts violated that idea.

So, now they’re gone.

(The crowd cheers wildly!)

I’ve been doing some research on several things that I’ll be talking about, soon. I hope you’ll find them of interest for you and your affiliate marketing business.

What do you think? Did I make the correct choice in no longer blogging my Twitter tweets?

Act on your dream!

Tags: blog, tweet, Twitter, Twitter Tools

Twitter Updates for 2008-10-07

October 7, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Twitter

@Moonvine Congratulations on becoming a Giant Squid, Joan. You’ve worked hard to achieve this. #
@Dana_Willhoit Happy Birthday! I hope it’s your best birthday ever. #

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Help Save the Boobies

October 6, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 5 Comments
Filed under: Musings, Volunteering

For a few moments, I’m going to turn my attention away from affiliate marketing and towards something I find just as interesting and certainly more important.

The people who know me the best know that two of the things I appreciate most in this world are boobies. There, I said it.

I want to encourage you to do what you can to help save the boobies.

On a more serious note, most people know someone who’s life was tragically impacted by breast cancer. This is your chance to help promote the 7th Annual Blogger Boobie-Thon to raise funds for breast cancer research and to show your appreciation for boobies everywhere.

This fundraising drive ends at midnight on October 7, 2008, and they have a goal of raising $10,000. With one day left, they need to raise about $2,000 more to reach their goal.

Please do what you can to help.

Tags: boobiethon, breast cancer, fundraising

Twitter Updates for 2008-10-04

October 4, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Twitter

Time to take a break and start reading Steve Pavlina’s “Personal Development for Smart People” book. Goodnight, y’all. #

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Twitter Updates for 2008-10-03

October 3, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Twitter

Near western NC? 35th annual Campbell Folk School Fall Festival this weekend. More info: http://tinyurl.com/fall-festival-2008 #
Some lensmasters will get a bonus in their payment next week: http://tinyurl.com/3gwhto #
@JackBastide Jack, I enjoy the email notices about who is following me on Twitter. I check their profiles and follow some of them. #
@JackBastide (B) Work for myself. I’d probably make a terrible employee at this point. #

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Twitter Updates for 2008-10-02

October 2, 2008 by John Dilbeck · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Twitter

@OregonCoastGuy Tony, that’s the reason I quit consulting. Too many people not wanting to pay fair value for my expertise. #
@Mitchman3 Mitch, I decided months ago who I was going to vote for and doubt the debates will make any difference. #

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Where is my bail out?

October 2, 2008 by John Dilbeck · 15 Comments
Filed under: CafePress, Opinions

I’ll be the first to say that I don’t understand the real scope of the financial bailout of Wall Street firms and all the ramifications of passing, or not passing, the bailout that is being fought over in congress.

All I know is that I work hard, spend within my budget, no longer use credit cards, am completely debt-free, and see no reason that my tax money should be sent to bail out greedy people who didn’t manage their risk properly and got into debt over their heads.

Truly, I don’t understand it.

Since there’s not much else I can do, I added a new design, I am too big to fail. Where is my bail out?, to my CafePress shop.

Will this help to solve the problem? Of course, not.