New Blogger Gadget – Social Share for posts

I popped into my Blogger accounts this morning and saw a really nice gadget. Blogger now allows you to add Social Share buttons to your posts.

Here’s how you activate it.

1. Sign into your Blogger account.
2. Go to Design
3. Click on the Post ‘Edit’ option
4. Scroll down until you see option highlighted in red below. Tick the option and click on ‘Save’. Then save your blog design and view your page. Every post now has the ‘Share"’ option below it.

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How cool is that?

Update: Blogger issues with corrupt posting template

Some people cannot get the buttons to show. There is a fix that you can find here;

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2010/05/resetting-post-template.html

PLEASE BE CAREFUL. You need to backup your template before messing with the html code.

1. Find the line of code
2. Copy and paste it into a text file for safe-keeping.
3. Delete the line and save.
4. Confirm the deletion of the gadget.
5. Go back into the html coding and reinsert it EXACTLY WHERE IT WAS BEFORE.
6. Save the template again.

Di

How to stop your digital product exploding

Have you ever bought a digital product and when you unzipped it, it exploded everywhere on your hard drive?  Then you have to spend the next ten minutes rounding up the errant files and herding them in a neat and orderly fashion into a  sub-directory, so that you can find them when you need them.

How do you think a customer feels if that happens with a product that they bought from you? Probably not that thrilled.

So how do you zip your products so that they unzip in a neat and tidy fashion?

Here’s a step-by-step process to help you get it done.

1. Create a new sub-directory on your hard drive:
   1. C:|MyProduct
2. If your product is very big and might require two zip files then create two further sub-directories below that (or as many as you need).
   1. C:|MyProduct|Part1
   2. C:|MyProduct|Part2                  
3. It should look like this:
   1. 
4. Copy all the relevant files into Part 1 and Part 2. Copy all graphics, blog links, follow me links, terms of use and information text files etc. into MyProduct.
5. Let’s start with Part1. Move the sub-directory Part2 by right clicking on it and dragging it out of the MyProducts directory and store it somewhere safe.
6. Right click on MyProduct and choose the option to zip. Rename the zip file to MyProduct_Part1.zip.
7. Then move the Part1 directory out of MyProduct, and then move the Part2 directory back into MyProduct.
8. Right click again on MyProduct and choose the option to zip. Now rename the zip file to MyProduct_Part2.zip.
9. The final step is to get rid of those silly thumbs.db files that always end up in your zip files. Double click each zip file so that it opens like this;           
1.                                                                         
2. Then double click Part1. When you see the thumbs.db, click on it and delete. Do this for all your zip files.      
3.                                                                                  
10. Now your product is ready for uploading to your store. When your customer unzips the files, the files will all be under MyProduct, MyProduct_Part1 and MyProduct_Part2. They will love you for this.

You can obviously use your own naming convention for your product but the process remains the same. it’s also a good idea to keep the zip files size below 40mb as there are millions of people who still use dial-up and files take a long time to download.

Have you ever had files explode on you? I would love to hear about your experiences.

Di

Feel free to share with your friends.

Do it yourself, until you can afford to pay someone

Trying to start an internet business without any money or technical know-how is probably one of the most daunting prospects on earth, second only to asking a man on a date. I have managed to get the first one right reasonably well with moderate success. I have yet to get the second one right.

You have an idea, a dream that you know will make you money (or at least you hope it will) but you cannot make it happen because you don’t know how to and you do not have the money to pay someone to do it for you.

So what do you do?

Well, you could do what I did and spend hours researching on the internet every step you need to do to create the necessary web presence that will start the money flowing or, more realistically, trickling in.

This is not a blog about internet marketing or driving tons of traffic to your newly formed business. There are many highly qualified marketing specialists out there who I recommend very strongly that you go and read. May I suggest that you start by reading Darren Rowse from ProBlogger and Jim Connolly’s marketing blog.

Just come back here so that we can continue to build you a dynamic e-business, brick-by-brick.

We are going to learn how to cheat at html coding, design your own graphics, how you package your products for on-line delivery, customise your blogs and your websites, integrate your on-line store with your payment gateway, streamline the order process, get your newsletters setup and make them look professional, create Facebook pages that rock, customise your email signature to reflect your fabulous business and many other nitty-gritty details.

This is about the specific practical steps we need to take to get your business on-line as professionally as possible. We don’t want people knowing that actually we don’t have the money to pay for web developers and consultants, so this will remain our little secret okay?

Lets start by thinking about the areas we need to cover for your new venture:

1. Do you know what your business is?
2. Are you selling physical or digital items?
3. Do you have a logo for your business?
4. Will you need a blog?
5. Will you need a dedicated website presence?
6. Do you have access to an on-line store that is easy to setup and use?
7. Do you have access to PayPal or another payment gateway?
8. Do you want to setup a Twitter (huh …what’s that?) account and have people follow you so that you can keep them updated with regular news?
9. Do you want to setup a Facebook page to attract more people to your wonderful product? Should you choose a group or fan page? Do you know how to customise it so that it reflects your unique personality and/or product?
10. How often will you be able to communicate with your potential market?
11. Have you set yourself a workable time table to get this all done?

Once you have this all clear in your head we can start with the basics. What else should you be thinking about? I would love to hear comments from you.

Happy dreaming and planning!

Di

Feel free to share with your friends