Daily Blog Tips

On a side note before the blogging tips. I am thinking about doing a contest for all the creative crafters in the land of blogging. I am processing all the details/rules right now but my beginning thoughts are it would be a contest for people to create an item it will be voted on and then will be sold on Lily's Laundry.  It could be anything from a hair accessory to  something in the home decor arena to an outfit...or whatever your creative juices leads you to...

What does everyone think?  Any suggestions...Would love to hear your comments. 

I love to look at all the crafters stuff.  It's all such eye candy!  I wish I could sew and make cool things but I can't.  I have good ideas but horrible execution. So stayed tuned for the details. Now for my tips...

Adding a Custom Signature

I have added a signature couple of times and it never really looked right until I got Photoshop and made a more professional looking image. I made my image. Uploaded and saved it in Photobucket and then followed this tutorial for how to upload. The only thing is when I went to  write in my blog post it was all up in the top would so I hit the compose tab (right corner next to preview) and have been writing in there every time.  Seems to work much better ;)

Picasa for Slide Shows
I use Picasa because I have from the beginning and it is owned by google so all my stuff is in one place. It is really easy to use for your slide shows. Go to www.picasaweb.google.com and set up an account. Hit upload. It says add to new file or create new one (make sure to write down exactly what your file folder is called, you will need it again.) Upload everything that you want and make sure that this file is UNLOCKED. Log into your blogger account. Go to your Dashboard, Layouts, add a new Gadget, add slide show. Within Gadget drop down Picasa. Make sure and type in the exact name of your file (if you don't someone else's stuff will be streamed into your blog) and BING! Your done!

Vote for 2GiggleBoxes in Full Bloom

This shirt is so stinking cute. I think I am going to have Sarah over at 2GiggleBoxes make me one...but in the mean time please go to www.MadeByRae.Blogspot.com and vote for her. She is a dear friend and sorority sister of mine (PI Love, that's what us ADPi's say ;) and I wanted to give her a little shot out to get her some votes!  She is in Full Bloom!

 P.S. Contest is only up for 24 Hours

Daily Blog Tip: Eat my Dust, Burn my Feed

Writing your blog post is only 1/2 the battle the other half is getting people to read your blog.  People are busy and like the saying says "Out of sight Out of Mind."  So the  best way I believe to remind your readers about your blog is having it directly emailed to them.

I use FeedBurner to do this.  It is actually quite easy.  Go to www.FeedBurner.com and type in  your blogs URL.  Once you have done this, Feedburner will give you tons of options. FB will analyze the traffic to your blog,  you can create banners to drive more traffic to your sight, you can configure ads and much more. You will have to have to play around inside Feedburner to see what suits your blog.

Make sure you get the HTML code that the offer and add it to your "Gadgets" on your blogger layouts!  Thats how people can add their email addresses.

Here are some more resources on using Feeburner.

1. Feeds Basics 101
2. Google Help for Feeds