2008 May | Wildheart's Works

How to Market Yourself for Free via The Net

May 21st, 2008 by wildheart4vr

Yeah Yeah I know you hear it all the time and have heard before so many
times it seems like information overload at this point. You can get
some decent traffic by aggressively following a
few
steps. Now I want to warn you ahead of time I don’t have the normal
schedule in my life but I can with confidence say that these techniques
are working for me.

If you haven’t heard about SocialMarker.com
this is a must have free tool that you can use to submit to 47 sites
all on one page without having to open up tons of window or tabs. It is
Firefox friendly and once you install it in your Firefox tool bar you
can go to the perma link for your article and click on the
SocialMarker.com icon in the tool bar and your article is instantly
propagated into the appropriate fields all you have to do is add a
description, and tag your article. Then click on submit and it takes
you through the 47 sites it supports. Now I want to caution you to use
common sense when submitting. Don’t post to Newsvine if your not really writing a news style article. For me I do not consider Wldheart’s Works Newsvine
material. Also pay attention to the categories your trying to add to if
you have an article on how to replace a broken light bulb safely, just
don’t throw it in General if you want targeted marketing you might want
to stick it in the Home and Garden, or DIY categories if they are
available, only choose General if it is the absolute only best choice.
In other words choose your sites, your tags and your categories with
care so you reach your target market more effectively.

Once I implemented SocialMarker.com my traffic increased and stayed steady. My top sites since launching Wildheart’s Works has been:

StumbleUpon with an 8 month total of 7104 hits which averages to be 888 hits per month, Reddit
with a 5 month total of 146 at an average of 29.2 hits per month, and
Propeller with a 7 month total of 112 and an average of 16 hits per
month. So you can see that by marketing myself to the right Social
Bookmarking and Networking sites I have been able to have a good stream
of steady residual traffic.

Now the next
thing is get out there and be active in the blogging community. The top
3 blogs that I have gotten traffic from are eMoms now SparkPlug CEO , Scraps of Mind and Life is Risky.Scraps of Mind has given me 186 hits within a 5 month period, eMoms
has given me 21 for just 2 months and Life is Risky has given me 93.
That is a total of 300 hits that I didn’t have to do anything for
except just be an active part of their community. Don’t be rude when
you are in their community either, offer constructive criticism just
don’t say this article sucks or your design sucks.

With that being said using good common business sense and etiquette
is free and goes a long way in ensuring the success or failure of your
online and off line ventures.You never know when you might need to call
in a favor to someone who may have the resources you need to make or
break your next big project. If you can not take the time to present
yourself in a professional manner then don’t expect others to do the
same to you.

I have only had a couple bad
remarks from folks who have happened upon my site and one was about a
camouflage tutorial I did and the other was a StumbleUpon reviewer who
said my blog theme was ugly. In my defense my theme works for me it
does what I need it to do and I fell in love with the color scheme.

For
those who do not have access to office software Google Docs is an
awesome tool. I use it to write up extensive papers. It is a free
service from Google and you can use it to prepare professional looking
articles. Also ScribeFire
from Firefox is another great free tool and allows you one touch access
to publishing your articles quickly to your blog so you can instantly
get on to the business of promoting it. If you have a web cam YouTube
is another free resource to utilize. You can use it to promote products
in a televised style manner and there are more and more Video Streaming
sites than ever before, JustinTv is one that I have played around with. Audacity is free and allows you to make audio clips to put on your blog. I am still working on that.

So
there you have it some great ideas to market yourself for free as well
as tools that are free and do quite a bit. There are tons and tons more
I can add to this and maybe Wendy will let me add to this at some
point, but for now I will leave it at this and let you get back to work.

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Category: tutorials | 5 Comments »

In Memorial of a Special Woman

May 15th, 2008 by wildheart4vr

I am writing this post for two reasons. One my blogger friend Anthony over at Old School SEO had something to do with it and after 7 years of my grandmother being gone I decided I needed to deal with her death in some way. My choice of dealing with things has always been writing.

My grandmother was my mother. She along with my grandfather gave up their retirement to take care of four kids that suffered early on the signs of attachment issues and early trauma from being neglected, and abandoned. My biological mother was not a mother to us. She neglected us and ended up being the cause behind us being taken away by the state and being put into foster homes. My grandparents fought hard to get us back together because they didn’t want us to go around in the world wondering who our brothers and sisters were. Despite the dysfunctional ways they grew up they had their family throughout their life. As soon as my mom went through all the motions for the court to fake she had changed she ditched us. I was 7 at the time. My grandmother made me who I am today a strong woman who knows how to take care of herself and her son. She made sure that I would not follow the same footsteps that my mom did. She took me aside and showed me how to do everything that involved running a household. By the time I was 15 and forced to leave home I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I could take care of myself when the time came. Our relationship afterwards was tested due to the fact that my grandfather who molested me held all the emotional cards to keep her from leaving him.

There are so many good memories I have of her and so many memories I have that I know I tried her patience time and time again. I was angry not at her but at the fact I would never get to know my dad and at the fact that I had no idea why my mom didn’t love me enough to want to stick around to be a mom to me. I was angry at being put in foster homes and juggled all over the place. Later I became angry because I was being molested and lived in a town where no one believed me until I did something drastic to get out of the situation. I could never be angry with my grandmother. I loved her too much. It wasn’t until I had been in three abusive relationships that I knew what she suffered being with my grandfather from her perspective.

I did falter in my confidence as a mom when she passed away because I didn’t know what I was going to do without her. Then a voice that was more like a scream than a whisper told me I was going to do what I did every day. Get up and take care of my son. Be the mother she tried to teach my mom to be, but had succeeded in teaching me to be. She gave me all the tools to be a great mother. She is my inspiration for running my blogs and doing what I do on the internet each day. I keep a picture of her handy now to look at when I get to feeling down or depressed. She seems to look at me like “You can do whatever you put your mind to; you are a pretty girl with a great complexion and you’re very smart.”

Inspired by Old School SEO Mother’s Day Giveaway for Mom Blogger’s

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Category: Creative Journaling | 1 Comment »

Cropping and Resizing with Paint Shop Pro

May 10th, 2008 by wildheart4vr

You can see how just a simple cropping or two can bring out details in an image better. This was done using the crop tool three times to really bring out the details of the lettering.

This one I resized first then cropped to really bring out the detail of the pony emblem.

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This is my First Try at Making a Brick Wall.

May 6th, 2008 by wildheart4vr

So I was checking out the developer biography videos for Stargate Worlds the other day and one of the developers was talking about brick walls and I wanted to try my hand at making a brick wall totally from scratch without the use of a tutorial and nothing to really go off of except some brick wall images I found at random off the internet. The process took about three nights to complete. The first night I spent scouring flckr to get some inspiration, the second night I spent creating the three styles of brick I used in this wall and then last night I spent laying the bricks and creating the morter.

One criticism I received already on this is that it looks too grid like and that I could maybe make it look less forced. I want to hear your input on how I can make it look more natural. Please keep it constructive.Anyone making nasty comments will not have their comment posted to the discussion.

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Category: backgrounds, designs, paint shop pro | No Comments »

Having a hard time getting some filters to work with Paint Shop Pro?

May 4th, 2008 by wildheart4vr

If so there is a file you need to download that I found over at Steve’s Desktop Photography

This is the file I eluded to in my first post on How to Make Camouflage. I can’t guarantee that it will allow your version to work with every filter or plug in out there but it should make it easier for you to work with most filters and plug ins out there. There are links that will describe how to install the file to your program as well. So Good Luck I hope this makes your program work better if it has been giving you fits.