Last summer the folks at Sumo contacted me and asked if I’d like to review one of their awesome bean bag chairs. I agreed and they sent me the Sumo Omni, and we love it. So, when they offered me the opportunity to review their new Sumo Sway Couple I was totally up for it.

This chair is closer to being a “regular” chair than a bean bag. It’s formed with a back and a bottom and it’s heaven to sink into it- so comfortable. I wish the bottom were a bit taller, because it can be a challenge to get out of for old folks like me. <wink> I chose the microsuede chair in Funky Brown.  The material is very soft and there’s even a nice pocket in the side to hold a remote control.

The chair is perfect for a game room, media room or kids room. We now have two bean bag chairs made by Sumo, and the quality is top notch. The chair cover is removable, so washing it will be no problem. I expect my boys to be taking these off to college with them, still in excellent condition.

*Disclosure: though I did receive this chair at no charge, I am under absolutely no obligation to review it positively. If I didn’t like it, I’d tell you.

Last year I began to see reviews of a cool looking giant bean bag on several blogs, and I was impressed with the way the company was marketing their product through non-traditional means. I was also jealous. I wanted one. So, when I received the email from Andrew, purveyor of the awesome  Sumo Bean Bags a couple of weeks ago I jumped at the opportunity to finally get my very own Sumo Omni.

The Omni comes in 10 great colors- I chose the Funky Brown. (Be aware, if you order this color that it is several shades darker than the picture on the site.) The giant box it came in gave my son something to play with for several days, but he quickly discovered that the huge bean bag was way more fun. The Sumo site calls the Omni a “crash mat” and that’s exactly how it’s been used for the past 4 days since I received it. Big J has thoroughly tested the durability of the “space age rip-proof nylon” by repeatedly diving off the piano bench onto the bean bag.

I really like the versatility of the Omni. It’s final destination is the boys’ bedroom, but for right now it’s a very comfortable lounge chair in the living room (when it’s not being used as a crash mat). You could even use it as an extra bed for a kid when you have company!

Benefits of membership:

Access to source files – the free tutorials are great, but frequently I find that having the actual source file makes it much easier to put the tutorial to the best use. It makes it easy to copy layer styles and see exactly how the layers are set up, especially if you’re like me and tend to rush through and accidentally miss a step.

Exclusive content – there are tutorials and sources files available only to Plus members, as well as brush sets and vector packs. The bonus Photoshop and Vector tutorials are great, but what I found to be of the most value were several of the Net tutorials. The series, “WordPress: Beginning to Master” is very good and even teaches how to create an options page for a theme.

Affiliate program – I don’t get into affiliate programs much, and only mess with it if it’s something I feel offers real value to my readers. The Tuts+ program has a nice payout and is easy to recommend because the content is great.

Nit-picking:

Nothing is perfect of course…

1. The bonus tutorials are download only. There is no option to go through the tutorial online. Though I understand why they chose to set it up that way, I still would prefer the option of doing the tutorial online and only download it if I want to save it with the source file.

2. I wish the thumbnail preview images were a bit bigger on the bonus tutorials. It’s a little difficult to see what you’re going to be creating, and since the only way to really see the image to decide if you want to spend the time on the tutorial is to actually download the whole thing, it’s rather a hassle. I would suggest they make it possible to click on the thumbnail to see a larger preview image.

There is a 100% money-back guarantee, so you can’t go wrong if you decide to give it a try. What do you think? Has anyone else tried the Tuts+ Plus Program?

1. ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

Written by two professional bloggers, Darren Rowse (founder of ProBlogger.net) and Chris Garrett (writer and internet marketing consultant), ProBlogger aims to provide expert advice on how to create and run a successful blog. Useful for beginners and advanced bloggers alike, the book provides practical tuition on selecting a topic, analysing the market, making money directly and indirectly from blogs and optimizing advertising. The knowledge on all things blog related is extensive and best of all having being written by two professional bloggers, you can be assured that the advice is not purely theoretical but has been gained from practical experience.

2. Blog Marketing

Aimed at companies, Blog Marketing by author Jeremy Wright shows business owners and PR people how to fully utilize the power of blogs in order to raise the company’s profile, improve customer communication and transform the company’s image. It provides insight into blogging success stories achieved by companies including GM, The Disney Channel, Microsoft and Boeing. Blog Marketing is one of the best marketing resources currently on the market. It is comprehensive and while experienced bloggers may find it a little too basic, it is a great read for business executives new to blogging.

3. The Corporate Blogging Book: Absolutely Everything You Need to Know to Get It Right

This is one of the best books around for novice corporate bloggers. Written by Debbie Weil, the book is witty, entertaining and informative. The book is unpretentious and the advice delivered in a concise and focussed manner. It contains background information on blogs, tips on how to write an effective blog which will prompt responses from customers, advice on how to utilize the latest technology and tools and even provides guidelines on how to convince senior managers to enter the world of blogging.

4. The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly

Written by David Meerman Scott, The New Rules of Marketing and PR addresses the issues currently faced by many business – how to transform traditional marketing strategies into effective and profitable online strategies. Scott explains the most fundamental rules of defining an online marketing strategy such as targeting your demographic, using internet based tools and technologies such as blogging and podcasts to promote your business and drive traffic to your website and blog. It is written by a PR and marketing guru, for PR and marketing people.

5. Start Your Own Blogging Business (Startup)

A collaboration between Entrepreneur Press and author J.S. McDougall, this book provides sound advice to anyone wishing to start up their own blog and make money from it. It is insightful and easy to read, however it is aimed at the beginner and advanced users may find it too basic. It starts by explaining what a blog is, explains concepts like RSS feeds, SEO and other marketing techniques to raise the profile of your blog. It also describes how to generate income from advertisers, promotions or affiliation with merchants offering everything from (what were once lucrative) financial services such as credit reports to more mundane, but in-demand products such as food and utilities.

6. Secrets of Successful Blogging

Providing over 100 tips on how to create a successful blog and make money from blogging, author Ted Demopoulos provides clear and concise advice on how to drive traffic to your blog and to turn a profit from it. It is written for bloggers as opposed to professional marketing and PR people and is a great reference guide. More a booklet, than a book it is still worth having a read through especially if you are a novice blogger needing simple advice on how to promote your blog.

7. Blogging for Dummies

Written in the typical style of the ‘Dummies’ books, authors Susannah Gardner and Shane Birley disclose all you will ever need to know about running a successful blog. It is a very comprehensive guide and covers all aspects of blogging including tips on how to write a blog which is interesting and will result in repeat viewers, advice on choosing the right tools and blog applications to boost traffic and handle comments, generating revenue and how to protect your privacy. Like most ‘Dummies’ books it is aimed at the beginner and is not for corporate or professional bloggers.

8. Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers

Authors Robert Scoble and Shel Israel have taken a unique approach in its advice for corporate blogging. Unlike most marketing books which suggest the appropriate tools and tricks to use to promote blogs, Naked Conversations argues that there is much to be gained from not letting a business blog being vetted by the company’s Marketing and PR department. It is not a “how to” guide but rather provides best practice guidance to companies who are already blogging.

9. Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day

It is important to integrate your social media strategy with your overall company marketing plan. In Social Media Marketing, author Dave Evans discusses the basics for setting up a Social Media strategy including the use of blogs, RSS feeds and podcasts, as well as providing reference case studies and tutorials. It is informative and provides a sound guideline for anyone wishing to define a comprehensive online marketing strategy for their business. In addition to this, it also highlights how an online strategy differs from a traditional marketing strategy.

10. eBoot Camp: Internet Marketing Techniques to Grow Your Business

This book is aimed at small businesses and individuals who do not have extensive budgets for large marketing and advertising campaigns. In it, author Corey Perlman discusses the tools and techniques you can use to drive traffic to your website or blog including SEO, keyword research, press releases and e-newsletters. Tips include improving search engine rankings and traffic flow by utilizing social networking sites, affiliate links and much more. It is very comprehensive and a must read for all businesses wanting to improve their online presence.

The window will display “relevant content from across the web that’s populated using semantic understanding of the original link”. You can provide your Amazon Associate ID, and earn from purchases made if the reader clicks through the SmartLink pane as well. There is a nifty preview option for this plugin that will give you an idea if it will integrate well into your site.

Also available for your sidebar is a SmartLink widget, that lets you put over 50 automatically updated Top Lists from favorite sites (or personalized lists from Amazon or Netflix). Want to put your Amazon wish list in your sidebar? How about the best selling books on Amazon? These links are also set up with your Amazon Associates Id, so would be an excellent way to maximize income especially as we head into the holiday season. Here’s an example using my Amazon.com wish list:

(Be sure when you’re setting it up to click on the “Show Affiliate Options” link to add your ID.)

Anyone using SmartLinks already? Care to share how it’s working for you?

You can learn almost anything these days with an online education. Whether you are looking for great English lessons or you want to earn your technology associates degree you can find great internet resources to help you achieve your goals!

Everyone has failures in our lives and only by learning from them do we improve ourselves and succeed in our goals.

The quote above is from the the site of Ian Hedges who was the winner of the blog review in my recent Pimp My Blog contest. His blog title is “Failure is the Key to Success“, and he has been blogging for just over 2 years, most regularly for the last 6 months, posting several times a week. He uses a blog system I had never heard of called Thingamablog. I asked Ian if he was pleased with it:

I quite like Thingamablog. My hosting package didn’t have a database, so I was unable to use WordPress. I found Thingamablog, which uses a local database and then publishes the changed pages. I have been able to adjust the html and style sheets of the templates to get the current layout and look. It is a straight forward program with a Java frontend to the database. Unfortunately, things like Technorati tags have to added manually to the post as the post entry template cannot be changed from the default. The disadvantage of a local database is that I can only blog from home where I have access to the database. Also, I miss out on all the varied WordPress plugins, so maybe one day I’ll upgrade my package to one that includes a database and migrate to WordPress.

Ian’s blog posts are mostly personal, and he isn’t concerned with monetizing his blog. He is interested in growing his readership, however, and while his posts are interesting, his site could do with more “focus” if he is to grow his readership in any substantial way. It is a rare blogger who can increase their traffic much with posts that are mostly of a day to day personal nature. Readers will return and subscribe if they are helped, amused, inspired, etc., but you’ll end up with very little growth without providing regular benefit to your readers. I know this because I have a site where I just post personal things, and it’s really only ever interested friends and family for the most part. This is not to say that Ian never provides benefit and even amusement to his readers- he certainly does. (I particularly appreciated the post he wrote about anti-virus software. I had not heard of the free program he’s using – sounds very good.) My observation is simply that focusing on whatever Ian is an expert at that others might be interested in learning would be good for growth, for example, self-improvement and motivational type posts, as the blog title hints at might be a good choice. You can read more about why Ian titled his blog as he did here.

Some design improvements could certainly be made, but Ian may be somewhat limited with the system he’s on, so I hesitate to say much on that subject. Migrating to WordPress and choosing a sharp theme would be a good step. Stop over and get to know him when you get a chance!  Thanks again to Ian for participating in my little contest.

What’s the point?

I personally have avoided things like Twitter, and didn’t care about getting a Pownce invitation and had never even heard of Jaiku until I went about writing this post. I had heard of Tumblr, but didn’t really see the need since I have a blog. I really saw them as a way of wasting a lot of time with things of relatively little value. However, for some the real value is just the ability to more easily connect with others.

Have I changed my mind?

Having tried them all in the last week or so, I think I at least get why people use them so much. And, though I have this blog, it’s just a small part of my online activities and having a way of aggregating them all in one place is a nice idea. Jaiku or Tumblr works best for this purpose. I decided to start a Tumblelog and maybe I’ll keep using it, maybe not – we’ll see. I do like the fact that you can pull all your feeds into one place there (I’m still working on that), and the ability to completely customize it really appeals to me, of course. I will probably also release a Tumblr theme sometime soon.

So, stop on over and read the post and either comment there or come back here and tell me what you think. Are you using any of these? I have some Pownce invites left, if anyone wants to try it.

What I like about Pmetrics:

• this system has a clean, fast loading interface that is easy to use and understand at a glance
• the RSS feed thing is great. The fact that you can have a selection of stats delivered into your feed reader at any interval you choose is a useful feature.
• the tracking of file downloads is something I’ve always wanted out of Statcounter, and am glad to see in Performancing. My kids site and scrapbooking sites have lots of freebies for people to download and I have never been sure how much people were using them.
• quick response to questions, problems, etc. in the support forums
• they have an affiliate program that pays 20% of every purchase of their premium service.

What I don’t like:

• right now, you can only see the stats for one day at a time, but not aggregated over time. They are adding the ability to look at things over a defined time period, so hopefully that will be addressed soon.
• I was really hoping to be able to see who was referring the best ad-clickers to my monetized sites, and the outgoing links don’t show clicks on Adsense ads. I put in a question in the support forum and it turns out they’re working on adding the ability to track those clicks.
• I goofed up when I was adding my scrapbooking site, and then there was no way to delete it easily without sending an e-mail to them. That site is still not showing stats, though I’ve moved the code around in the site to try and get it to work. I’m sure the issue will be resolved soon.

Overall, Pmetrics is very good, and getting better as they add features. I would highly recommend it- give it a try.

• Make your blog the “go-to” site for your niche. People don’t really enjoy crawling around search engines trying to find things. Make your blog the “place everyone will link to when they think of your topic.”
• Write about problems you’ve had and solutions you’ve found. Someone else is always just behind you in the learning curve.
• Get the word out about your flagship content in as many ways as possible, including forums, blog comments, e-mails, etc. Don’t be shy about promoting yourself.

He also includes 10 Instant Flagship Content Ideas that I found to be very good idea generators. You’ll want to read this e-book with a notepad handy to jot down ideas as you’re reading. It really got me thinking about all my blogs in a new light, and I’m glad I took the time to read it.

To get this free e-book, just subscribe to Chris’ feed.

Pros:

• The set up was fairly simple, and it was easy to jump in and start using it.
• It opens in a pane at the bottom of your browser window, which I really liked, and you can drag text right off of the page you’re viewing.
• If you’re not ready to publish, you can easily save the draft to your blog to work on later. This may be my favorite feature. Often I’ll run across something on the web that I want to blog about, and it’s sort of a pain to open another tab and get into my blog just to post a quick link and a couple of notes to follow up on later.
• It has a place to enter Technorati tags to include with your post.
• You can use the built-in FTP tool instead of opening a separate FTP program.

Cons:

• Including an image in a post was not quick and easy. In fact I gave up trying to figure it out. It was just taking too much time.
• It has a built-in blog metrics system, and even though I had signed up for it, when I entered my username and password, I kept getting an error.
• Maybe my biggest gripe is the automatic inclusion of a footnote in the post (see below “powered by…”). This really annoys me. Sure, I can delete it, but it’s just unecessary to include that in the program.

So, in conclusion I think for me, Performancing is a great tool to quickly save drafts into my blog without having to log all the way in, but that’s about it.

What program do you use, if any? Should I give another one a try?

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