Blogging Archives - Page 12 of 19

December 23, 2014

How to Make Money Blogging by Doing NOTHING but using AdSense #BlogTrends

It’s true.

I am earning passive income with this website.

I promised you in another post that I was going to tell you how I earn money by doing absolutely NOTHING, and today’s the day I reveal how I’m doing this.

I’ll provide some steps for you to follow so that you can earn passive income, too, using AdSense, and I’ll also tell you of some other ways you can make money blogging, using other methods.

Of course, you’ll have to do some initial work before you can reap the rewards.

– “Aye, there’s the rub” –

How I’m Earning Money

In July 2014, I installed some AdSense code on about a dozen of my Wording Well blog posts. I chose the posts that are high-ranking in Google Search, as I get hundreds of referrals from Google every day. (I pay attention to my blog stats!)

Sure, I had to write some fantastic posts first.

And then learn how to install some code on my posts.

For a non-techie such as myself, it wasn’t as difficult as I had thought it would be.

Now I’m earning money by doing absolutely NOTHING. It’s great!

Here’s how I’m doing it.

Make money by using AdSense. EASILY. #money #blogging

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December 8, 2014

How to Customize the Size of Your Blog Post Images #video #tutorial

Have you ever needed to customize or adjust the size of one of your blog post images? Have you ever edited an image using Colorcinch (aff link)?

I have done the former… especially when I learned how to create image quotes.

I also learned a little trick that some of you might know about. It is simple, really, and I created a video for this blogging tip, too.

In fact, I created this tutorial using some new screen recording software I have never worked with before, and am quite pleased with how it turned out! (*pats self on the back*)

It took a while for me to learn how to use it, but now that I have, you can probably expect more videos from me! 😉

Please watch the video to learn how to customize the size of your blog post images. This tutorial shows the steps you need to follow. They are simple, and you’ll be able to easily customize your blog post images once you watch it.

FYI, if you want a transcript of this video, you can find it below. Thanks goes out to my transcriptionist, Angela Shirley, whose services you can use, too!

How To Customize the Size of Your Blog Post Images #video #tutorial

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How To Customize the Size of Your Blog Post Images: Video Tutorial

How To Customize the Size of Your Blog Post Images #video #tutorial

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One Important Note about the CUSTOM Image Option

I didn’t mention in the video is that the Custom option is only available once the image has been uploaded. Therefore, the steps are:

1. Upload the image.

2. Edit the image. Choose Custom Size.

3. Save.

Video Transcript of How to Customize the Size of Your Blog Post Images

Here is a transcription of the video, for those of you who can read faster than you can listen:

Hi, this is Lorraine Reguly from Wording Wel,l bringing to you a bite-size blogging tip you can use any time you need to customize or adjust the size of an image in one of your blog posts. In fact I am going to show you how to do it using three different scenarios, one from each of my blogs: Wording Well, Laying It Out There and Poetry Perfected.

Now what we are going to do is we are going to is look at three different scenarios, the first dealing with a square image, the second with the rectangular one, and the third involves adjusting an image on a free blog on WordPress.com. I know not all of you have self-hosted blogs yet, and so I don’t want to exclude anyone from this tutorial.

Let’s get started.

Now, once you have uploaded an image from your computer into your WordPress dashboard, and notice that it’s not the right size – perhaps it’s either too big or too small – all you have to simply do is click on the picture. And here, in the “Interview A Blind Woman” post that I have yet to publish, but is coming soon on Wording Well, I am going to adjust the picture of Kerry, to make it a just little bit smaller. So click on the image and you will see two little squares pop up on the left hand side. If you click on the edit option – automatically a window will pop up. Now under the display settings, the first line shows you where the picture is located. Here I have it in the center. And then underneath is the size. And this is the part we are going to focus on.

It’s a dropdown menu, and if we click on it you’ll see there are some pre-set options: thumbnail, medium, large, full size, or custom size. Now we are going to click on Custom Size as sometimes the pre-sets simply aren’t good enough. So if you click Custom Size, underneath you will see the width and the height. We only actually only have to change one of them. WordPress will change the other one for us. From past experience, I know that I can choose 600 to be a good width for my pictures or my images. Now, if you don’t really understand the numbers, that’s okay. You don’t need to. You can learn as you go, through trial and error.

So now that we have selected 600 – because it is square, it is going to be 600 x 600 – we’ll update the post. We will update the image and then save this draft of our post… and once that has been saved, we can take a little preview of it and see if we made a good choice.

So when we preview it, we can see that Kerry’s picture shows up quite nicely within one window screen, and then the post goes on. So we made a good choice.

So let’s move on to the next part, on Laying It Out There, where we are going to deal with a rectangular image.

Here I have chosen a post called “Who I am + How I Became a Self-Published Author,” because you can see my little calling card or online business card is quite small and hard to read. Now because since this post has already been published, we are simply going to click Edit Post and change the size of the image.

So, again, here all we have to do is click on the image – our little boxes come up, we’ll select edit. And because, when we click on our sizes 541 x 247, I am actually not going to check the Custom Size. I will check the Full Size instead, simply because the writing will be more legible than if we were to Custom Size it and make it quite large. And I will show you the difference. So if we Custom Size it to 600, WordPress automatically calculates the height and it looks a little bit blurry. So let’s go back and change it to the Full Size and you can see how the writing is clear here. So we’ll update the post with this nice, new, re-sized image that’s legible, clear, and perfect. And we can just hit View Post to double check.

Excellent.

Okay, now we’re going to look at an image on a free blog of mine, which is Poetry Perfected. It’s on WordPress dot com, and in kind of keeping with the same theme – here is a poem I wrote called “My Blind Friends Taught Me To See” and Kerry is allowing me to use her image once again in this post.

And the only problem is that when we click on it, nothing comes up on the left-hand side. However, we do see a different bar show up on the right where we have our different alignments and the Edit. So we will click on the Edit and we will change this to Custom Size once again.

Although the large is 605 x 605 we could choose that. But we will choose custom size, we’ll go to 600 again. We will update this, and we’ll save our draft. And then once we have our draft saved, we can preview the post and see if we made a good choice.

So here we can see Kerry’s picture, very pretty girl, and underneath, because this is a poem called “My Blind Friends Taught Me To See,” there’s also a picture of Max, but Max’s image right now is really, really small and it is really not fair to him to have such a small image when Kerry’s is so big.

So what we are going to do is go back to this post. We’ll go underneath Kerry and click on Max, and we will edit this image here. So you can see this is just a thumbnail. We’ll go to Custom Size and we will make it … the width as being 500. The height we see is 889. So that is still a little bit big. So let us make this part 600 and then the width will be automatically calculated at 338. We’ll hit Update and let’s take a look and see how this looks.

We’ll save our draft, and then we will preview the post, and if it all looks good, then we are good to go. And yes, it looks perfect. You can see Kerry here, you can see Max here. We can actually make Max’s picture just a tad bit bigger. So let’s go back and edit it once again, and this time we will choose 700 instead of 600 for the height. We’ll update it. We will save our draft, and we’ll will take one final look at the Preview and see if this looks good… see if they kind of balance each other out. And they do.

So there is Kerry, there is Max, and there’s the poem. So that looks like we have made really good choices.

So as you can see, there are different ways you can customize your blog posts. You can choose either a pre-set, custom size, or one of the pre-sets – medium, large, thumbnail, full size, whatever. So there you have it.

So this has been a little tutorial for you. I hope you’ve learned something and don’t forget to stop by Wording Well and grab your free e-book (compliments of me), “20 Blog Post Must-Haves.”

You can get it right here.

Thank you so much. Have a good day.

UPDATE:

FYI, An Interview With A Blind Woman has been published.

So has An Interview with a Blind Man.

I hope you have enjoyed this post, How to Customize the Size of Your Blog Post Images #video #tutorial.

Please remember to share it on social media!

How To Customize the Size of Your Blog Post Images #video #tutorial

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November 24, 2014

Readability: How “Readable” is YOUR Writing?

Is your writing “readable”? How do you know?

To introduce the concept of readability, I have some more questions for you.

Have you ever used “big” words in an attempt to seem smarter than you are? Have you ever looked up a word in the dictionary . . . and then had to look up the words found in its definition?

I can see most of you nodding your heads. I can see a few smiles, too. 😉

Now let me ask you:

Have you ever wondered if the words you choose to use are too difficult for others to read and/or understand?
Have you ever wondered what others really think of your writing (whether it’s found in a blog post, an ebook, a novel, an essay, an article, etc.)?
Have you ever read something that was hard to understand (because of all the words you didn’t know the definitions to)?

I bet all of your answers to these questions are “yes.”

But . . . do you know what “readability” really is?

What this post on readability will do for you

This post will:

teach you what readability is
discuss some history behind how readability is measured
indicate the different methods for how readability can be measured
give you links to the free, online readability calculators that writers, bloggers, and freelancers should use
two additional articles you can read to expand your mind, and
it will also mention a brief announcement from Wording Well

You NEED to Consider Readability

Have you ever seriously contemplated the readability of your blog post, books, or articles, and then tailored your writing to your specific audience?

If you are shaking your head shamefully, that’s okay; most people don’t.

Perhaps you didn’t know what to do. Perhaps you didn’t know that you could check the readability of your text.

Perhaps – and this is the more likely option – you’ve never really considered what readability means, how it affects your readers, and how important it actually is.

If you are an author, blogger, writer, freelancer, student (or wannabe author, blogger, writer, freelancer or student), there are a few critical things you should know about readability.

What is Readability?

Readability is the measure of written language that makes it easy to read and understand.

Readability tests, which are mathematical formulas, were designed to assess the suitability of books for students at particular grade levels or ages. They were also meant to save time – because before the formula were used those decisions were made on recommendations of educators and librarians who read the books. These people were taking books already written and figuring out who were the appropriate reading groups.~ Source: All About Readability

The tests were intended to help educators, librarians and publishers make decisions about purchase and sale of books.

Readability, however, is dependent upon many characteristics: age, race, culture, and education. The use of slang also plays a part in readability. I think we all know that each culture (heck, even each generation!) has its own slang words or phrases!

Slang

Slang refers to a type of language that consists of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people. To brush up on or learn some American slang, I’d recommend opting to get 10 randomly chosen slang expressions from their database. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn!

Of the 288 factors that were identified, format or design factors were found to be among the three most important clusters of contributors to making a text easier or more difficult to read.

Reading and Writing

One of the reasons I love reading and writing stems from my love for word. When I read and write, I get to be exposed to more words!

When I encounter a word I’ve never heard of, I look it up so that I can add it to my lexicon. I also try to use it correctly in a sentence.

These two practices are something most teachers instruct their students to do in elementary school, and, in fact, were taught to me by my teachers.

They have stuck with me throughout the years, too. I love adding words to my lexicon, and I love using those words properly. When I am writing, I often search for synonyms to use to enhance my writing. However, I try not to use too many “big” words, for two reasons:

Most people won’t understand what I’m saying.
Keeping things simple makes for a more widespread understanding. Most people are not university educated (like I am). Many people cannot read complex sentences. Some people cannot read at all. (Of course, those people won’t be reading this!)

Literacy Statistics

It is estimated that 17-20% of the people in the world cannot read or write. Read More

October 22, 2014

Do You Know a Solution to this Gravatar Commenting Problem?

I thought I had found a glitch in the Anti-Spam plugin in my attempts to eliminate spam forever, but after investigating this problem further, I am finding that I don’t have a solution at all, and now I’m not sure where the problem is originating from.

So I need your help. I am not very technical, and so I don’t currently have the answer. Can you help me find a solution?

UPDATE: The solution was found.

Here’s the problem:

Whenever someone who does not have a gravatar leaves a comment on my blog, the image that is being used in place of the “Mystery Man” is that of Max Ivey, the wonderful guy who blogs at The Blind Blogger. (Max is going to freak out when he hears this, especially since he’s been so busy with creating his first ebook, which he has asked me to edit, by the way.)

So now I have a handful of comments left by various people that are showing the commenter as being Max. Here is one that Brian K. Morris left that shows Max’s picture with Brian’s name:

I thought this was resulting from the use of the Anti-Spam plugin, but now I’m not sure.

I even tried asking about this problem – this glitch – in a support forum (link to the developer), but have yet to receive a response.

I don’t know how to remove Max’s image from these comments! I want to keep the comments, so removing the whole comment is not a viable option.

I don’t know what to do, and I’m ticked off. I love the Anti-Spam plugin and am not even sure if it is this plugin that’s causing this problem to happen.

I also find it kind of ironic that, of all people to choose, it chose Max. Is it discriminating against Max because he can’t see what this plugin is doing? Why in the world would it do this to begin with? And how can I fix this?

UPDATE: The solution was found. I also was told to deactivate the NIX Gravatar Cache plugin I had installed and activated, so that I don’t have this problem again.

October 14, 2014

Help Me Determine if We Can Eliminate Spam Forever!

Are you sick of spam? I know I am, and want to eliminate it once and for all.

Akismet just isn’t cutting it, so I’ve switched to Anti-Spam. It might have to do with the current commenting system I’m using (as Connor Rickett points out in the last half of his video), but I’m just not sure.

Anyways, these are both FREE WordPress plugins, but one seems to be better than the other!

So far, Anti-Spam is doing the trick, and there is NO spam in my spam folder, but I’m not sure how it is going to affect people who want to comment on my posts, so I need your help!

My Commenting Plugin Experiment

I experimented with this in the past, but for only a few days. I wasn’t sure if I lost commenters. I know that Akismet sometimes classified a couple of my commenters as spam (a couple of times Adrienne Smith was considered spam, and I know for a fact that she is a real person), but, I’m tired of hunting for such commenters in my spam folder. Wading through spam comments is a time-waster, and my time is better spent elsewhere. I’m willing to bet yours is, too.

A New Commenting Problem

The problem that I’m facing now is wondering whether or not my commenters are going to make it through the filtering process. I’m afraid I’m going to lose commenters. I actually activated this plugin about 10 days ago, and so far have had no problems (that I know of) with peoples’ abilities to comment on my last post… so this post might be a waste of time on my part… but I don’t think it is.

At the very least, it will teach you about the Anti-Spam plugin!