Free Text To Movie Site

I came across a great online site that allows you to create animation movies by just dropping in text and animation. The site is called Xtranormal and if you use your imagination, you can create some great commercials or mini movies. You can upload them to Youtube or Vimeo as well. You never know what type traffic it may deliver and perhaps you just want to add some video to your site. The site offers a members forum as well. Pretty nifty site to play with when you get the time. Let your imagination run wild.

Saturday Around The Web February 13th

It has been a while since I did my Saturday around the web type post, but I am back on it today. Here are a few items that caught my eye towards the end of the week around the web.

FreeNuts.com has a break down of the top 10 Websites to convert text to speech online for free. This is great for doing short videos up on Youtube.

Chris Crum goes over reasons to have a Facebook page and ways to make it better. These are some great tips to start you off in the right direction.

Michael Gray wonders if Wordpress is good or bad for SEO. There is also some great reading by following the links off of his post as well.

Is Link Building Worth Your Time? Chelsea Blacker examines buying links on Search Engine Journal.

Search Engine Watch gives 9 Google updates including a Google Buzz update. Some great links off of here as well.

Micro Niche Finder MOB Measure Of Backlinks Video

A reader of mine wanted me describe the MOB (measure of backlinks feature) of Micro Niche Finder to her as she had problems understanding that newer feature in MNF. Instead of having to type it out, I was able to point her to a video that MNF put out on MOB. That kind of sounds like a governmental code language. The feature is indeed great, but do not put too much stock into it. Make sure to look at the top 10 results it gives you instead of just the number. Looking at that number can sometimes be deceiving. It is just one of many factors you should use when targeting keyword phrases. Video is below on MOB

Bing Updates Webmaster FAQs

Bing certainly is carving out a little bit bigger hole into the share of search engine traffic. They are a ways away from over taking Google, but it seems their following is gaining steam. I have found myself Binging it a few more times as of late as well. I was really amazed that Google also showed up on Super Bowl Sunday with a commercial. Seems they may be feeling a little heat as well. Competition makes everyone better in my opinion.

Bing announced they have revised their Webmaster frequently asked questions into a 28 page PDF document. The document can be downloaded and read right here. It consist of 82 detailed questions and answers and is segmented into 12 separate categories.

Critical Update For PhpBay Pro

Unless you missed it, Wade has an update ready for PHPBay to accommodate the new link structure for Ebay EPN affiliate links. Wade does a fantastic job support wise on ALL of his Wordpress plugins and if you have not yet purchased PHPBay or PHPZon, you really ought to consider it. They really are fantastic plugins that will make your money back in no time.

Below is the email Wade sent out.

Yesterday morning, EPN made a sudden announcement regarding a new link structure for Ebay affiliate links. As you can see, the information was vague at best and lacking in any details.

A group of phpBay Pro forum members and myself spent the day researching, and early this morning, came up with a fix to the new linking structure for phpBay Pro users.

The good news is, only the auction.php file is affected, so you will only need to replace this file on your sites (if using any 3.x version).

There are two ways you can obtain the new auction.php file:

1) Login to your store account and download the latest .zip file(s) for phpBay Pro for Wordpress and/or phpBay Pro API. This email is being sent from the phpBay Pro store to all phpBay Pro customers.

2) Login to the support forums using your forum account and visit the Critical Update thread.

This update, the auction.php, affects both the Wordpress and API versions of phpBay Pro. You will need to update your sites with this new auction.php in order for your affilite links/clicks to track properly with EPN.

This update nor the EPN changes affects phpBay Lite or versions of phpBay Pro prior to 3.x. If you are using those versions, there are no changes needed.

I do apologize for the inconvenience. This was a sudden and unexpected announcement from EPN with virtually no information, that threw us all into overtime mode to come up with a quick fix.

Kind regards,

Wade

New Ebay Category Changes Are Now Live

If you are running ANY platform that uses eBay Partner Network, you need to check all of your sites this morning. eBay has made live several new category changes and yopu were likely affected by these numerous changes. Here is a page that list the category changes. Also, Sonjay from the BANS forum has a tool up to let you know what is in what category as well. These category changes have affected BANS as well as PHPBay, so do regardless of whatever platform or plugin you are using to show listings, you should probably sift through ever page on every site to be on the safe side.

Rotating Ads Wordpress Plugin

I received an email from a reader asking what is the best Wordpress plugin to use if you are wanting to rotate ads. I am not sure if it is the best, but I will tell you the one I use and like the best. The plugin is named WPAds and it is free to download and use. With WPAds, you only need to define the position of the ads and what ads you want to rotate in each position. The plugin will show your ads randomly. You can use it to show contextual ads like Google AdSense, Yahoo Publishers Network and Chitika and also regular image banners and text links should you so choose.