Helping You Rock Out Your Site Like A Rockstar!

The Fan History wiki has been trying hard to preserve Yahoo! Geocities since it is due to close before the end of October 2009. Although Fan History is covering sites that are within the fandom realm, like fan sites, fan fiction sites, fan art sites, and the like, there are other places too that are trying to preserve more. AboutUs.org even covered this issue, so you know if they mentioned it in their article GeoCities is Closing: Here’s How to Wiki-fy Your Sites , it is important enough to pay attention.

The reason behind this is that there will be a lot of sites lost due to the fact that the owner may have long abandoned their site even though people actually visit it to get relevant information. Although Yahoo! offers paid services for their hostees to move to, GeoCities has been a great tool for many to just be able to have a website. Other than the paid services, Yahoo! recklessly redirects their hostees to choose other sites as if it was no big deal.

Although most of the places like Fan History and the Internet Archive, you can help with this, even if it is or is not your website.

If you did have a site at Geocities that is currently up, put some type of notation that it have moved and provide a visible link in your anchor text. I have done so at my old and ancient site – Petals In The Wind (as an example.) You can then go to the Internet Archive site and have them preserve your site. If you know of any websites that should be documented, but only have time to make a list, you can contact me and share your list, or contact the site owner Laura Hale on Twitter. In at least doing this people will be able to find your content if you have since moved it. Already, I am aware that Fan History has documented over 5,000 websites so far on GeoCities that are fan related.

Have you heard of the GeoCities Preservation projects? What do you think of GeoCities closing, even if you might not have used their services?

I came across the site Spottt and thought that this might be something to share with those of you looking for something that could help. Spottt takes the old idea of the banner exchange and instead of all of the people on the banner exchange eventually being seen, you should only see sites with similar content to yours.

This is idea for people with smaller sites that are seeking more traffic. Although it says it is a link exchange, you are really submitting both a link and a banner, so it really is a banner exchange. Banner exchanges have been a great way to get traffic, but they have usually been very unfocused. Banner exchanges with more than 150 sites with various content, so if you had a web design site, you would have seen sites that had no common grounds with your own.

It is free to use and you can place it on a multitude of sites like:
LiveJournal
MySpace
Xanga

or any site that allows you to insert outside HTML.

Requirements are that you must put the ad above the fold, or by Spottt’s definition, less than 850 pixels from the top of the page. In return, Spottt will calculate your site impressions and how many clicks have gone through so you can monitor your site’s performance.

Have you tried banner exchanges similar to Spottt? Where? And has it worked to bring traffic to your site?

So, I guess I should make it at least official. Blogrity is a social bookmark site built with the WordPress core. Of course, the site is pretty raw on design, but it is functional, and I am hoping that some of you might try signing up and submit your links to the site. I am just at the point that I need people to try it out, feel free to give some imput, and hopefully through that, I can add more features.

One thing on mind once I get to a comfortable point, I develop and will offer up to my own ‘digg’ type button that you can bring back to your website, or perhaps offer it to the other places like Sociable or that like so bookmarking your links will be easier.

For categories, I am not going to get too detailed on the categories. I would like them to not exactly resemble Digg’s categories where sometimes the article might not fit. I will be open to adding more general categories. I want to thank Webmasterish for some of the help provided along the way to get to this point. In fact, I probably should have mentioned the site before.

Do you think you might try out Blogrity?

Tumblr seems to be a nice little system that you can sign up and blog, share your twitter tweets, and import posts from other services. I recently signed up and perhaps it is because of their recent infastructure work on September 14th, the site loaded slowly, and frankly when it did load, I would have turned people to WordPress.com’s free blog accounts.

I have always expressed spreading out and signing up for different social handles online, but I believe it best that if you have a full blog, to just import your posts to your Tumblr account rather than use it religiously. I found it not as user friendly as I would have liked to see, and that is something I look forward too, not the fact that I was running in circles trying to find out why the places I am importing there did not start posting after the hour that Tumblr tells its users to wait. I got faster cross-posting with my Dreamwidth.org account.

I am sure I will blog more about Tumblr in the near future, but right now, especially for bloggers who are active, it is just better to use as an extra place to spread your blog posts and social network streams.

Have you used Tumblr? What do you think of it? What do you use it for?

The tech industry has its quirks. It comes with spats, seriousness, rolled up in great geekiness and sometimes even humor. NO! It is not for September 11th, 2001 events, but just regular humor, so no reaming me a new one for assuming. I would never joke about that – EVER!

However, for the first time ever, TechCrunch has made me laugh so hard in one day alone. The first three articles I read were:

• Google Voice Creeps Me Out On My Mother’s Birthday
• Facebook Lite: How Will Twitter Respond? Twitter Lite!
• Yeah Ok, So Facebook Punk’d Us

I usually do not expect this, but even with TechCrunch, between all the spats and seriousness, there are some great humor to harness. In fact, I hope TechCrunch continues to share their humor on occasion, but not too much. I know people are already getting tired of their Twitter articles. (Just in case you did not know, if you do a search on TechCrunch for the keyword ‘twitter’, the results of ‘twitter’ showing up are 162,495,336, which is only 30 million behind the search for the older company, Facebook.)

By the way, TechCrunch, care to do an article on Yahoo! mocking them for not giving a real reason why they are dropping GeoCities?

Have you read the articles at TechCrunch today? Are you a normal TC reader? What did you think? Should they show their light side more often?

I was surfing and came upon Icon Buffet. Of course, with the name, I thought it was going to be some cutsy site, but it was not. The site is chock full of icons in several varieties and they are all free.

Funny story though, they use to sell their icons, but according to Icon Buffet’s about page, they turned around and decided to offer all of their icons for free and make a community out of it. So now, you can connect with other icon fanatics and swap icon making tips, icon sets, and just about anything related to icons.

I think that is pretty nifty, especially for those looking for more resources to decorate their websites. Icons range from basic site navigation, to even some that I consider quite the novelty. I have not seen these anywhere else.

Have you been to Icon Buffet? If not, would you use this site as a resource in the future?

Recently I became a blogger for TwitterWatchdog.com. (By the way, in the title is the little motto “Watching Out for You, One Tweet at a Time”, so I cannot be given credit for making up such a title for this post.) The site is all about Twitter. Topics include Twitter scams, Twitter tools, Twitter Tips and just about anything helpful for users. The site was started by Skeeter Hansen and Al Ferretti, who have made it their goal to help Twitter users harness the power of Twitter effectively. Both men

For those who go to TechCrunch and see all the frequent posts about Twitter stuffed between all the other news, this is a great site to get your Twitter news. In fact, if you are very successful with using Twitter and know some things that most do not, you can become a TwitterWatchDog.com writer. All the the writers are friendly, and both Skeeter and Al are welcoming. I just posted my first article the other day called, You Can Now Publish Your Facebook Page Updates to Twitter!

Although I will still write Twitter posts here from time-to-time, I will be rolling up my sleeves and digging up as much as I can to contribute to TwitterWatchDog.com.

Deciding to freelance is a big choice. It is not easy and often in the beginning, you will have to have a side job to supplement your income until you can be dependent enough as a freelancer. Even being a freelancer, it can be difficult. There are so many others outside in the same niche that it is very competitive. However, during your decision and right after you decide to become a freelancer, here are some things to prepare yourself for the freelancing mentality.

Prepare a solid portfolio. You might get excited and post everything in your portfolio, but your clients are looking for your creativity, versatility as a designer, and your overall product quality. Your portfolio is very much that first thing, just like a resume, that your client will be wowed by and want to use your services.

Make sure you have a good reputation. You might sell yourself short and degrade yourself, but as I have been told by Marcie Hill on As NOT Seen on TV, you should have faith in your work and be proud of it. Each piece of work should be of the same or greater quality than the previous product. Be knowledgeable in your field and able to break it down into simple terms for clients not as savvy in the subject. Be consistent and also do not procrastinate. While some of your clients may be lax, others have a time table in mind. Be professional and for complex projects, a contract may be necessary. Sometimes a contract is mandatory for clients who require a non-disclosure agreement- meaning that you cannot mention to anyone that you worked on their site.

Be prepared to brand yourself in a way that makes you unique enough to stand out. Do you have a certain way you design that is different? What kind of services can you offer? Do you only do web design, or perhaps you can develope complex websites from scratch? Mention that and how your way could help a client’s site pop. Remember, you are designing for another person and they have expectations of you. Your client has a direction they want there site to take and also goals to reach. Your design could make or break them. Make sure you are clear on your services so you do not have clients who are confused on what you offer for a price. Do not undersell, but also overselling can be as much as a killer. While you would like to make money, underselling could be not worth the time. Remember that your are charging for your time, and creativity, so be confident.

Always be on the look for new clients. You might have a few winning clients, but eventually one or all of them may decide to go with another designer. Do not rely on them as things change. It would not be because you are a bad freelancer, but that the person they chose could bring their website to the next level. Or, it could be the result of the economy. It happens, so you have to be prepared and make sure you are always open. It is not the end of the world if you lose a client unless you lost it because you were unprofessional.

Are you considering to dabble in freelancing? How have you prepared yourself? What other advice can you offer?