Google Shared Storage now available

Google users can add to their available storage for Gmail and
Picasa Web Albums now. They can now increase it to as much as 250GB for an yearly fee.

Not long after (within hours) Microsoft opened its Beta version of Windows Live SkyDrive online storage product to the general public, Google fell in behind them with the announcement of its new Shared Storage service.

Extra storage is given where ever you need extra storage, whether it be G-Mail or your Picasa Web Album. It is on auto-pilot, unlike Microsoft Windows Live SkyDrive storage product. Check it out!

6GB is about $20

There are currently 4 plans available, ranging from 6GB ($20/year) to 250/GB ($500/year). Two of the plans in the shared storage program are cheaper than the original plans for Picasa Web Albums, which were 6GB for $25/year and 25GB for $100/year.

You want visitors for your blog. They want visitors for theirs. What better way to get them then by paying niche blog like yours a visit and leaving a short, polite, and meaningful comment on a subject that truly interests you.

I do it. I haven’t for this one yet. The content is just too new even though the blog name is not. But as with www.coffeesage.com I do it all the time. I never leave a comment that is considered spam nor forced. What do I mean by forced? Fake. Purposely left to get attention and visits or linkage. Remember, most blog platforms now have -rel=”nofollow”- attribute built in for comment and links sections. A link will not do you much good since the search engines are not going to recognize it. I do have a secret for that though but I will not include it in this post. I am writing an ebook for later publication. It takes much research in order to avoid any duplication and copyright violations. The same can ring true for your blog posts as well. Such as product reviews.

I recommend setting aside a morning or afternoon one day per week to just surf and discover new ‘match niche’ blogs to read and comment on.

Tip: Find blogs you have never commented on before. You are trying to ‘add to’ your readership. Finding those who do not know about you is the greatest way to start.

If there are not many niche blogs that match your subject line, find those as close to it as possible. Be selective. Read what you are posting on. Know about what you are commenting on. Don’t embarrass yourself. Be sincere.

You can always add a ‘tip jar’ or the like to your blog asking for donations and what-have-you, having the funds sent to your PayPal account and even though this is just another way to have money sent to your account, I found it to be a bit more professional looking.

It is call ChipIn. You can find them at chipin.com (not an affiliate link) and read more about it.

It keeps are record of how much you’ve raised and by how many have donated to your cause, whatever that may be. It is pretty neat and I invite you to take a look at the image below to give you some idea what I’m talking about.

I feel that those who wish to donate to one’s blog may feel a bit more confortable with something such as this.

It is hard to sit here and believe that there are still people out there who do not have a blog but since there are thousands of new ones popping up daily, I’m quite certain there are that many more who do not have them.

In this entry I’ll just be covering a couple of common questions and will dig down deeper later on in other blog entries.

1. What is the best blogging platform to go with?

2. Should I host my own or create one that is already hosted?

These two questions are generally the main topic of discussion when first starting out with the idea of blogging. Once you figure these out, the rest is pretty much learn as you go.

1. What is the best blogging platform/software?:

Personally, I use Wordpress for all my blogs. I’ve tried others such as Typepad, Serendipity, and Blogger. I’ve even tried out CMS including Drupal and PostNuke CMS. I still keep coming back to Wordpress. Why is that?

Read the rest of this entry »

I suppose it is about time I started contributing to this blog again. It has been a very long time and since I lost my entire content a year or so ago, I just about lost interest. Thought I’d try again.

I’ve found one good way to promote your blog is to submit it for inclusion with the recent addition of MySpace News (back in April). I did not submit my blog Coffee Sage with them but some how it ended up listed. Good enough.

If you click this link: MySpace News, you will be able to submit your blog and feed link into the best suited category.

Considering the amount of traffic that MySpace gets, it is surely worth your time to list with them.