Following up my recent article on starting building a new newsletter list using Aweber I thought I would mention where I am with it now. First of all I have to say that I love the Aweber system of managing newsletters, it’s definitely the best I have used to date. There are so many tools to help you automate your newsletter delivery.

So anyway the first thing I did after getting my account set up was to set up a few follow up messages. With the Aweber system you can automate emails that go out to the subscribers at set intervals. So for example you can have an email go straight out as people sign up and then you might have a follow up that goes out a few days later and you can set as many follow ups as you like.

The one feature I really liked and implemented straight away was the blog broadcast feature. Would this cool feature can do is monitor your RSS feed and when the amount of new items in your feed reaches a number that you set, it will trigger an email to all your subscribers containing the content of your feedback. This is so great for an update type newsletter because you can just set it up and forget about it.

So now I had my newsletter set up and ready to go, webform on my website but alas no subscribers yet. Thankfully for some time I had been including an opt-in box on my competitions pages to say “Tick Here, To Receive Our Site Newsletter”. So I was able to put together all those that have ticked in a csv file and import then into Aweber.

They don’t get added automatically, they get sent an email asking them to confirm that they wish to subscribe. So you get a nice double opt-in and you know that hopefully they are not going to start blacklisting you as a spammer.

So that is where I am now, I have several hundreds subscribers and a fairly automatic newsletter. Next step is to keep pushing hard to get that subscriber list up and up.

I really can’t recommend Aweber enough, if you’re thinking about a newsletter or wanting to move yours give them a try.

View The Whole Blog At SteveKinsey.com

Building A New Newsletter List Followup

• The Two Sides of the Bed - the hilarious follow-up to Spain’s number one box office smash The Other Side Of The Bed, is a slick and fast-paced romantic sex farce that throws sexual conventions into total chaos!
• Vexille - Hailed during its UK theatrical release as a work of ‘stunning futuristic animation’ by the Guardian Guide and by Metro (London) as a ‘superior, elegantly nuanced sci-fi anime’, VEXILLE comes to DVD in September as a special two-disc release in a limited edition Steel Book case and packed with exclusive fan-pleasing extra features that include an audio commentary by Jonathan Clements, an extended interview with director Fumihiko Sori on the making of the film, voice cast and music recording footage, interviews with Sori filmed at the Locarno Film Festival, a look at how 3D animation is made and at Sori’s work as an animation creator, plus bonus footage from Sori’s forthcoming live action feature, ‘Ichi’.
• Cashback - The first feature length film by Oscar® nominee Sean Ellis, deals with the unconventional life of art student, Ben Willis (Sean Biggerstaff), who is thrown into a world of insomnia after being jilted by his long term girlfriend, Suzy (Michelle Ryan).

Good luck anyone who enters.

View The Whole Blog At SteveKinsey.com

Three New DVD Competitions

So with a particular site of mine I needed to have a blog that could be linked to the main site which is an ASP.Net 2.0 application and share the same design elements such as header, navigation etc. So not only did it need to have all the features you require in a modern blog software but it needed to be easy to create a custom theme for too.

After much searching I believe I have found the ideal software and best of all, just like wordpress it is free. The software in question is called BlogEngine.Net, you can download it as either a ready to run site or as the source code project. I chose the application version as I really wanted to keep things simple and didn’t want to get into the complexities of compiling or altering any source code.

You can see my implementation of the blog here at my caravan rental site. Once I’d read through the instructions it was pretty straightforward to set up, but you do need to carefully check the user privileges on some of the folders. The only problem I found was that I couldn’t run the software as a subfolder of the main site, I needed to set it up as a separate web with a subdomain. So for example http://www.caravans4let.co.uk/blog was what I ideally wanted but I ended up having to use http://blog.caravans4let.co.uk.

That minor annoyance aside, it was pretty painless to set up my own theme, I was basically able to use my site.master page and CSS file from the main site with just some minor tweaking and after that I was pretty much done.

I’ve looked at quite a lot of .Net blog software including some rather expensive paid versions and I have to say BlogEngine.Net is the best and easiest to set up I have seen so far. If your looking for a windows based blog solution I would highly recommend it.

Blog Engine.Net Home Page

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Searching For Windows Based Blog Software

When the leader of the Persians, Xeres (Kevin Davitian, Borat, S.W.A.T.), threatens to invade his kingdom Leonidas (Sean Maguire, Eastenders, Grange Hill) must round-up 300 of his finest soldiers to defend his homeland. Unfortunately just 13 of his not-so-finest turn up to meet the call of war, and he heads into battle with his ragtag army armed with nothing more than a cape and his leather underwear!

Facing the greatest challenge of his life Leonidas must lead his hapless army to victory, negotiating a hunch-backed Paris Hilton, a ‘Yo Momma’ fight and a Deal or no Deal face-off along the way. Delivering a multitude of outrageous spoofs Meet the Spartans parodies motion picture heavyweights including 300, Transformers, Spiderman 3 and Casino Royale.

Sending-up pop culture favorites including Brangalina, Ugly Betty and Britney Spears the toga-filled spoof also stars Carmen Electra (Scary Movie 4, Baywatch) and Kevin Sorbo (Hercules). Featuring outrageous footage not seen in cinemas, plus a trivia game, behind-the-scenes featurettes and a hilarious gag reel, Meet the Spartans is a laugh-out-loud comedy with a spooftastic twist at every turn!

Meet The Spartans Competition Page

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Meet The Spartans DVD Competition

If you’d like to read more on the visual aspects of web 2.0 design, I recommend visiting Pixel Acres.

1. You often see special offer badges these days on sites, here is a great tutorial on how to make one. I’ve used this personally on my static caravan rental site.
2. Photoshopcandy has a large collection of free icons to download and use on your own site.
3. If you want to create big bold buttons that are just screaming to be clicked, there is a great little tutorial at iris design. I’ve personally used this to good effect at GetThatBargain.co.uk.
4. Good elements require good fonts and while there are many ways to get hold of fonts many of them are not for free. However there is a site called 1001freefonts which I’m sure you can guess from the name has lots of free fonts.
5. Websites these days are full of shiny reflective floor effects, you know the sort of thing where the text is reflected on the surface. There is a good tutorial on how to achieve this effect over at Photoshopcandy.

I hope there is something here that you will find helpful, these elements can be great fun to make and adapt to your own sites and used in moderation they can look good and be very effective.

View The Whole Blog At SteveKinsey.com

5 Great Resources For Creating Web 2.0 Design Elements

I read a blog posted yesterday from Jason Dale over at One Little Duck affiliate blog. The post was concerning online competitions and the fact that there are now online services that will enter competitions for you and keep entering, without you visiting the site. Now this of course is a very bad situation for the site running the competition for several reasons:

• You’re not getting any real traffic for your competition and have no chance of capturing subscribers or selling affiliate products.
• Your competitions sponsors (if any) won’t be happy if they find out.
• It’s not fair on those dedicated readers who visit your site regularly and enter the competitions correctly.

After reading the post I decided to check my latest competition at DigitalLard and was indeed shocked to find that one of the competitions had some very suspicious entries. It wasn’t really hard to detect them, the email addresses were all from the same few domain names and they all had something like j.doe12346@somedomain.com.

I quickly jumped upon this and changed the way the competitions worked, now people need to be registered and logged in to the site before they can even see the entry form, I also put a small disclaimer on the page explaining why I took the action, stressing that it was in the interest of fairness for all legitimate entries to take this action. Finally I added a message to the terms and conditions to say that any automated entries would be removed from the competition.

This I hope should be enough to deter these automated entry systems, and even though I am sure I will get less entries to the competition I will at least know that they are genuine site visitors and the contest will be much fairer to all those legitimate entries. Also as a side effect I will now get more registered users on my site and get all the advantages of a larger user base.

Anyone that runs a competition should take some steps to protect your competition from these automated entry systems. Some people will not have a registration system for their site, but you should try and do at least some of the following options.

1. Use a CAPTCHA system on the form to block automated entries.
2. Place a rule on the competition that any automated entries will be removed
3. Block the competition from all but registered site members
4. Watch your entries carefully when choosing winners to ensure they are legitimate

My thanks to One Little Duck blog, for encouraging me to check my own competitions.

View The Whole Blog At SteveKinsey.com

Are You Getting Real Visitors From Your Competitions

Everyone likes a giveaway so I thought I’d start posting here whenever I have a prize to give away at one of my sites. Over at digitallard there is currently a competition running to win one of three copies of Vantage Point on DVD. Entry is free and just requires you to fill in a simple form of your name and email address. Of course you can if you choose also tick the box, to join the excellent site newsletter. Here is some blurb about the film:

The gripping political thriller, Vantage Point, boasts an all-star cast headed by TV heart throb MATTHEW FOX (Lost, Smokin’ Aces) and a powerful ensemble of DENNIS QUAID (In Good Company, The Day After Tomorrow) and Academy Award® winner FOREST WHITAKER (The Last King of Scotland). Out to buy on DVD and Blu-ray and to rent on from 4th August 2008, courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, it’s an action-packed political thriller about an attempted presidential assassination told from 8 different viewpoints.

Also starring WILLIAM HURT (Into the Wild), SIGOURNEY WEAVER (Infamous, Ghostbusters) and Oscar-winning FOREST WHITAKER (The Last King of Scotland), Vantage Point is directed by British filmmaker PETER TRAVIS (Omagh, Henry VIII).

In a similar vein to action films like The Bourne Ultimatum and TV sensation 24, Vantage Point follows two secret service agents assigned to protect the US president at a counter-terrorism summit in Salamanca, Spain. When the President is shot, chaos ensues and disparate lives collide. It is only by carefully following each perspective of the same 15 minutes before and immediately after the shooting that the terrifying truth behind the assassination attempt is revealed.

The competition closes on the 24th August.

While your there, check out our great price comparison service where you can find the best online price for DVD’s, Games, Music, Books as well as electrical goods. Did I mention the great newsletter?

Vantage Point Competition Link

View The Whole Blog At SteveKinsey.com

Vantage Point DVD Competition Over At Digital Lard

So I recently acquired a WiiFit and I decided to see if it could help me shed a few pounds, I also decided to run this experiment in a very public way by blogging about it. My thoughts are that such a public exposure will encourage me to stick to it and hopefully this time do something about my weight problem.

Right now I have no idea if either I will keep it up or even if the WiiFit is capable of helping me achieve my goals but it will at least make for an interesting experience for me and who knows maybe even an inspiration to others.

The blog is called WiiFitLog.com and I officially launched it today. If you take a look feel free to leave any words of encouragement.

Link: www.wiifitlog.com

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Launching A New And Very Personal Blog

I tired a couple of screen capture tools for recording the video session but in the end the one I settled on was Camtasia Studio from Techsmith. For me it seemed to have the right blend of features versus price, and it also has a full feature 30 day free trial for you to really get to grips with the software.

The video is the first of a series I plan to make for my entertainment site and can be seen on the new virtual tour page, I created for the site. It took a few attempts at the recording stage to ensure that I had my screen set up ready to do all the video steps I need and to just get the feel for the general flow of it. I am sure having some kind of loose script of what you want to show beforehand will help.

Originally I planned to show lots of the sites features, including those for casual browsers as well as registered users. But as the recording time went up and up I soon realised this would be better broken into more manageable chunks and that way I can release the videos at an even schedule to the readers.

So initially I just settled on showing how the price comparison service works, by searching for a DVD, an electrical product and just giving a short overview of the shopping page. The final cut came to just over three minutes which I think is just about a reasonable viewing time. The original recording that I imported into Camtasia was around six minutes so even with my added titles you can see I cut the video quite heavily.

Editing in Camtasia is a breeze, I recorded the video at my full screen size 1680 x 1050 pixels and I set the output video to be 640 x 480. Inside the editing suite you can manually or automatically set it to zoom to the part of the screen that you want to focus on so that the 640 display is showing what the video needs to display. Personally I found the automatic mode to be zooming in and out too much, but it was very easy to set my own points.

The software makes it very easy to add title sections as well as various fade effects, and I knocked together a simple background image in photoshop to go with my titles. Finally just to round it off, with a quick search I found various royalty free music resources, that only required a simple credit to the author. So I downloaded some suitable music and added it into my video.

The whole process from starting recording to having a video ready on my website took no more than three to four hours and with practice I am sure it could be done in a lot less. I am very pleased with the end result and I’m sure I will be buying the software once my trial period is up.

View The Whole Blog At SteveKinsey.com

Creating My First Video Tutorial

If you have read some of my old posts you would see that I wrote a few times about using newsletters to help boosts a sites traffic / user interaction. The site that used to have a fairly large subscriber list was my movie / game site. Sadly I’m ashamed to say that I let the list die off and I stopped publishing my newsletters, I think the site has suffered because of this too.

So I plan to start rebuilding a subscriber list with this site and get my newsletters going again. This time I am going to use a service I have seen used by many respected sites. In the past I’ve managed the list myself but it was a lot of work to maintain, publish and manage bounces. The service is called Aweber, I signed up quite recently and they do offer some great functions, like automated follow up messages and messages created from RSS Feeds.

I hope to start a series of articles here on how I will build this list up from scratch again and use it to promote and monetise the site more.

View The Whole Blog At SteveKinsey.com

Starting Again With Newsletters