New services and tools created especially for bloggers are important to know about; you might not always find them useful to your own needs or have the time to put them in place (and I hear you on that one!) but being aware of what’s out there can help you spot valuable opportunities. This applies not only to money, but to page views, visitors, page ranks, search engines, and reader experience, among others.
So what’s new currently?
An interesting new offering is Zlio. It’s basically a shop you can integrate with your blog. Yes, there’s already a similar service over at Amazon, but that’s pretty much it. It never hurts to have a little competition, it only makes things better — at least for us, the consumers.
What’s so special about Zlio? First of all, it’s really quick. You can literally have a store up and running within few minutes. Of course, you can also customize it to fit the blog’s look, which would take some extra time; I’d recommend doing it if you plan on running the store long term, but it’s very handy to just get started right away (especially if you’re just testing the concept). Like Amazon, you can choose to add millions of products to your store. If your blog is about… say… biking, you can have books on that topic, and even sell technical stuff that you personally use, like a specific bike component or jersey. If you have more than one blog, not unusual for power users, you can create several shops with different products using the same account. Very handy.
New WordPress Plugins
Ultimate Category Excluder is a WordPress plugin that allows you to quickly and easily exclude categories from your front page, archives, and feeds. Just select which categories you want to be excluded, and UCE does all the work for you!
“Deep Thoughts” Random Quote Widget is the widgetized version of Random Quote. Extra stuff can sometimes add a lot of style and feeling to a blog, so carefully chosen random functions and widgets like this one can be really amusing for your readers. I know I enjoy something smart or wise now and then, as an addition to the enjoyable post in a good blog.
