If you are interested in Internet Marketing (and I assume you are or you wouldn’t be reading this blog), you probably are on a lot of mailing lists. If you check out any of the ads (and they are hard to resist, aren’t they?), you have probably noticed the dramatic increase in the use of video to promote products.

Video is the latest craze and is a nice advance in information sharing and communication. Since I have several web sites an four blogs, I decided to give video marketing a try. Today I purchased the software required to build training and promotion videos and also to take existing videos and convert them to streaming video content capable of being viewed by high-speed or dial-up connections.

I think these will be a tremendous addition to my Internet Marketing arsenal, but that is yet to be seen. I’m going t try using these products as soon as I finish this post. I’ll let you know how it went. If it works as well as I hope it does, I may even make a short video and post it here.

Read more »

Well, it took over a month, but last night I launched my Stock Trading Techniques blog (see http://www.stocktradingtechniques.com/). It is running on my own host using WordPress blogging software. The host and WordPress have been flawless the entire time.

Where I did have problems was with the templates (see I Finally Resolved My Template Problems). When you install WordPress you try to select a template that gives your blog a “theme” that is taylored to a look and feel that is intended to promote the message your blog is trying to convey.

Templates support “plugins,” which are pre-programmed functions you can selectively install to enhance your bog (most are free). Different templates and plugins work together in different ways. The template I used had some bugs, mainly due to old versions of plugins that came with the template and because of some configuration problems I made due to my lack of knowledge about the plugins I was using.

Read more »

What a challenge the last few weeks have been! I had all kinds of problems with my WordPress blogger software templates. These were not WordPress problems, but third-party template problems magnified by a lack of knowledge by the installer, me.

I finally bought a book on WordPress (WordPress for Dummies) to understand WP’s architecture and how templates interface to the WP software. After reading through the book I spent six focused hours and finally cleared up all known problems.

Now I have some template customization I want to do before I go into production with my new blog about stock trading techniques. The exciting thing is that once I understand WordPress and how to customize it, it is so powerful (and free) that it will serve me for many years to come. It can even be used to build web sites.

I may keep this blog on Google’s Blogger hosting and software system (again, free), but I’m not sure. It is mainly a dairy and I’m really not using it as a commercial blog, but then again it would be nice to have all blogs (I have four) running on the same software on hosts I control. Currently three of my four blogs are running on my hosts under WP. However, even if I do decide to move this blog, it won’t be until my new stock trading techniques blog is up, running and making money.

Read more »