Do you remember the time you first read or heard about website buttons and banners and you couldn’t figure out what those were? I mean buttons are sewn on your clothes and banners you hang up for a birthday party. How can you have them on a website?  I didn’t “get it”.  And then I learned.

What got me thinking about this recently was due to a conversation I was having  with my mom about her getting one to advertise her Ebay listings.  She’s a Top Rated Seller on Ebay and sells old or antique post cards.  She doesn’t have a “store”. But she CAN link her Ebay url to a button for advertising if she wants.

A brief word about them.

Buttons and banners are the square and rectangular “cute” pictures you see with store names or ads on them.  I don’t make them, but they are built with code and inserted in that code is the url of your website.

I use WordPress for my website. I can upload images (pictures of whatever) and click the “html” option in my draft to see my code. WordPress also provides an easy way to insert the url you wish to direct someone when they click this image.

For instance,  you can click on WebForU or SuzyQWebDesigns buttons to the right in my sidebar and be taken to their websites. By the way, WebForU designed my header (the top of my website with the juggling mom) and she made my cute “grab my buttons”.  SuzyQ is working a button/banner for a different purpose for me now.

My recommendations for button/banners makers:

WebForU

SuzyQ Web Designs

Ready Banner You can buy a set of matching predesigned banners for one set price here and this person also has a “free” banner generator. I was able to design  a few of the long horizontal banners I may use when the time comes. I created the banner below from Ready Banner.

For FREE miscellaneous premade banners that advertise “sales”, etc. you can visit MisBeehaven Banners. I’ve used theirs on my blog and on my Ebay store when I had one.

Another option is to upload a picture (say of yourself) or a scanned image from a biz card into a “draft” post in your WordPress site add the url of your desired location where indicated and save it.  See example below.  Our family participated in the March for Babies 2009 walk and I linked this image to my Squidoo Lens (page) about Preemies.  (By the way, both our boys were preemies).

We Marched For Babies in 2009.

And I shrunk the image a bit too. I could shrink it down to a 150×150 and it would fit in my sidebar and be the same size as the buttons in my Holiday Ad column. I could’ve typed anything in the caption line where I have “We Marched For Babies in 2009.” You could type a biz name.

Now, I’m no “techy-guru”.  I’m just sharing what I know. I hope this helps some of you!

I recommend these affordable WordPress Hosts.

Okay so I touched base a little recently about some offline marketing ideas and why you probably should be investing a little money into some promotional items (biz cards, magnets, etc.). I finally broke down and took Vista Print up on their offer of free biz cards and then they offered me a whole lotta more freebies that I scooped up all for the price of shipping. I’m glad I finally did it. Because my specialty on this site is highlighting the work at home mom or woman in general and not on selling my own products (physical) I guess I didn’t think much about needing promos. I don’t think that way anymore.

I won’t go all into the offline marketing ideas I already shared. You can find them by clicking here for that post. But I do want to share a few ideas for some online marketing…they are basic. But they could help you out with your bloggin’ adventure or selling business.

Social Networking.

This is how you’ll grow a readership or fan base. My Twitter following is almost at 700. This doesn’t just happen. Or it didn’t “just happen” for me. I pick people I want to follow and some of them follow me back…though there are people that find me first and I decide whether or not to follow them back.

Facebook. I already had a personal Facebook page. I eventually decided to add a Fan Page for my website. I’m pretty strict about what I post on my Fan page. I post my recent posts from my website but I also do something for my Fans on FB that I do not do for my post readers. I post selected freebies or other great deals I come across. I do get a lot of info on freebies and great bargains that I just don’t have time to post about on my website and that is not exactly the niche I want for my website. So when I come across something great I like to share that with my FB Fans. And I’m getting away from giving that info out on my personal profile too, cuz I want my friends to Fan my website page as well.  However, I do share some Misc $$  Savers – you can find them under that category…and keep checking back for more to come!

Other social networks. I just wanted to add, there are many. I don’t have time to be involved with too many.  So I pretty much focus on the two above.

Niche groups/forums.

So this is where you can lock shields with others in your area of interest. I’d like to expand my connections but for now I’m connected with The Mom Pack. Its free to join. You can click on my member button in my side bar for more info. Last I’d read there were possibly over 6 or 8,000 members there. I am a member of Twittermoms too. That group exploded with members fairly quickly and I just haven’t spent much time getting involved over there. But I remember when I joined I was like #124 to join and I think there are thousands there now.

Emails and more.

When you do anything electronically, if you can, put your url in your signature line. Always reminding people, quietly , that you have something going on online that maybe they need to check out.

Relevant Content.

Yeah, you need to blog if you want to get movin’ on the internet. Click here to read a short article about it. And you need to link up with other niche related sites.  At least thats what I’ve been taught.  It supposedly tell the search bots (?) that your stuff is worth crawling…or something like that.  I’d take their word for it. Get your url on sites that you respect and are in your genre and do the same for others. Perhaps you can use the power of  “reference” when you’re blogging.

So, now what do you do? Well, how about becoming a Fan of Hall of Fame Moms and joining me on Twitter too?!  The links are right over there in the sidebar. If you tell me you read this post and are joining me on Facebook or Twitter…I’ll follow you back

Cheers,

I have to share this with all my fellow technically-challenged blogger friends. You know that really cool thing you see on some blogs…the little mysterious box with the scrolly that holds the code that allows reader to just copy/paste your button onto their site? Well, I really don’t know what its called either. But I found a fellow blogger who spilled the goods about how to make one and better yet…(alas, some of us are code-illiterate) she made it so we could just copy/paste the code into our widgets or posts!

So kudos to All About Kimberly for making it so simple to have something so cool on our blog too! There are a couple different ways this trick pans out. I prefer putting the code into the text widget of my sidebar. You can also put it on a post or page and it seems to look different when you do it. But its your choice either way. I like the scrolly box myself.

Thank you a hundred times over, Kimberly! Now go check out Kimberly’s blog for the details

Cheers,

Ps- Okay, just realized that my quotation marks in the code needed changed. So if you grabbed my button before I fixed it, you might need to go in and change the quote marks (replace all the curvy ones w/ the straight up and down ones)… don’t ask…I don’t know.  I just used the keys on my keyboard and did the obvious and it worked. Now my link is up. The image was fine otherwise but the link wasn’t right. Now I see what Kimberly was talking about when she mentioned it in her “how to”.

I did a post the other day about relevant content for your blog. I only shared the list of packages from one of my sources. (Oops!) The other two involve Jimmy D. Brown and some food related PLR. Be sure to check these out. Jimmy D. Brown has earned a name in the internet marketing field and if you have a food related blog you need to check out those too!

Note: The food PLR offers a membership option (which includes getting 40 pieces of recipe content a month) or a non-commitment in which you can just buy the package of your choice. Some of the packages are as follows and vary in price from $7.97 and up.

Crock Pot Soups PLR recipe pack.

Dinner for two recipe pack.

Fruit PLR recipe packs.

Summer time smoothie recipe pack.

And then there are holiday related PLR packs for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Father’s Day, Memorial day and so on. You can find the list by clicking here! Just ignore the membership info if you’re not interested in that. You  DO NOT have to be a member to purchase the content packs.

Cheers,

I just wanted to share this information from a fellow Twitterer and Squidoo-er. It’ll make you think about the value of the follow/no follow tags on your blogs.  Read how you may increase your Google page rank, increase traffic and get more backlinks by using “do follow” tags. Read about it here and add your “do follow” blog to the list for your niche.

Well, I’ve done some touring of my new website and checked out the control panel. Since I have no budget for technical expertise I have to do my own research and ask around for help with getting my website into search engines, etc.. I’ve found some very helpful people on Twitter. I  highly recommend using it. Its a great resource and its free! If you don’t have extra money to pay others to do your work just start following some of the people on my Twitter network. There are other women & men there who’ll answer questions for you. Go to www.twitter.com/tzdelar. Play around a little bit once you’ve registered and you’ll find your way around. I have to do that  when learning new networks.

Now, I’m also taking SEO Powerup by Michelle Waters of Waters Web Solutions. You can find the link on my “Resource Links” page. I know, I’ve changed the name of my page 2-3 times now, but I only have 2 pages. You’ll find it! She definitely gives lots of info that you can download and save to your computer and  print out for convenience. I do that, put the pages in sleeve protectors and in a 3 ring binder to review when I have the time to focus on it. This is a year long course, right now the price is $10 a month but I heard the price is going to go up. At this time you can quit whenever you want but you can’t restart where you left off so its recommended to hang in there and she does promise some “treats” along the way!

Today my focus has been getting into the search engines. I’m a “researcher” at heart so its not hard for me to get into this. I just need some help at times knowing what to look for or how to understand and utilize the technical aspects. I have no professional skilled computer training so to speak…I learn on the job and I’m not too afraid to click here and there. Last Sunday in church Pastor Tom (www.fbcj.com)  pointed out that problems are opportunities in disguise. Well, thats absolutely the truth! I’ve learned much about anything having to do with computers and the internet by the obstacles I’ve faced. I’ve learned to disk defragmentize, disk clean, that there are free antivirus, spybot, etc programs to use on your personal computer (THANK YOU!…Rob, Eric and Keith! my techy friend/family)! I’ve learned to delete programs, etc … Okay, so back to the point. I Twittered to my followers for some help on free engine submission and a couple of my Twits answered! So I’m passing it on to you…you can submit your website to these engines or at least get started here… www.dmoz.org , www.directorycritic.com/free-directory-list.html and I was told that most search engines will have an “add a link” feature you can use. Apparently there are over a thousand directories, maybe there are thousands… I don’t know. I pretty much just use Google and Yahoo these days when I’m looking for something. Best wishes today to you moms or dads or singles or whoever  you are trying to make a living on a little or nothing budget. I’ll be sharing more tips as I’m learning!

TTFN!  (Ta Ta For Now…as Tigger would say)