We're back! Apologies For The Missing Posts

Sorry about the long time between the posts. I recently had a new baby and that takes all the time and energy that I have. I'm back now and will be posting regularly again as well as adding new products to ProductCritic.

If you are currently doing research for a digital camera, camcorder, or cell phone, let me know and if the product isn't already on ProductCritic, we'll get it up there.

Almost 100 Online Photography Resources

I don't know why I didn't post this when I read it but last month Mashable had a great post for photography buffs like us that listed 90+ Online Photography Tools & Resources.

Read their post for the full list, but here are my favorites in each category:

Online Photo Editors:
Fauxto - The closest you can get to Photoshop online because it provides support for layers.
Phixr - Not just editing but supports uploads to Flickr, Fotopic, Livejournal, Photobucket, and others.

Photo Sharing:
Flickr - Everyone is using it anyways...
SlideShare - I love how easy they make it to embed a slideshow on your own page.

Free Photo Hosting:
Photobucket - MySpace's favorite.
AllYouCanUpload - Like the name says, no limit to image size you can upload.

Photography Blogs:
DPreview - One of the sites that ProductCritic summarizes reviews from. Still good after being bought by Amazon earlier this year. Not exactly just a blog.

Mashups:
Colr Pickr - Allows you to search Flickr photos based on their color. This one is fantastic!

Mobile:
Shozu - Upload to Flickr from your phone.

Photo Mixing and Slideshows:
Mixercast - All the ones listed in the category are good but this one stood out for me.

Photo Printing/Book Creation:
I didn't like the ones Mashable listed. I prefer Blurb and MyPublisher.

Photo Search:
Besides Google's Image Search, these ones stood out for finding stock or public domain photos - Yotophoto & EveryStockPhoto.

Stock Photos:
Alamy - Over 9 million photos to search through.
Stock.xchng - Only 300K photos but they're free.

Why You Need A Guest Blogger

We've committed to posting a blog entry at least 4 times a week. So, where were we last week? Well, Gerry is away on vacation and I've been sick.

Although we've only been doing this for a short time, it really highlights the need for every blog that is trying to be professional to prepare for a guest blogger during the times that you just can't post and entry!

Interview With SEO Book Author Aaron Wall

Jonathan Leger has a great blog dedicated to Adsense, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and Internet Marketing. Yesterday, he conducted an online group Question & Answer session with Aaron Walls, the SEO expert and author of the popular SEO Book.

If you joined Jonathan's list, you would have received an announcement about when the Q&A session was taking place and how to participate. I did not get a chance to do that. Fortunately, Jonathan, who continually impresses me with his professionalism and blog smarts, has posted a transcript of the session.

If you are at all interested in SEO, Adsense, or how to start an online career, I highly suggest you go to Jonathan's blog and read the transcript.

Blog I Never Heard Of Makes $1400 a Month? I Have Hope!

Before I started doing this, I always thought that you had to be one of those hugely popular blogs (like TechCrunch) to make even decent money. I ran across this post from a blog called American Desi Notes discussing his earnings from Adsense and some strategies that worked for him (like using the 336x280 ad sizes).

So far, for ProductCritic, because we've just started, earnings are small but we've definitely had some success with Chitika (probably because the ads are so targeted to the content).

I think that the blog author has a great point in this quote:

Most new AdSense publishers are demoralized by the low clicks and low traffic that they recieve. The one thing that new publishers has a hard time doing is being patient. A web site will not get millions of hits over night.

So, for all you new bloggers, keep going! Keep writing great content and people like me will subscribe to your blog in our reader. I guarantee it. I'm only hoping people find this blog (and the main ProductCritic site) interesting and also subscribe.

Starting Out Like ProductCritic? Read John Chow!

While there are quite a few blogs that I read to learn as much as I can about SEO and what works for an internet site now, one of my favorites is John Chow dot Com. Recently, he offered readers the chance to get a free linkback if you reviewed his blog. Although this isn't technically a "paid post", I am hoping that John adds this review to his list and we get a linkback from his blog which ranks high on Technorati (#1341). This helps raise the Google and Technorati rank of ProductCriticBlog and will hopefully lead to more readers (which will hopefully drive traffic to our main site).

Who Is This John Chow Guy?
You can read about him on his blog but I know that he lives in Vancouver (like me) so maybe at some point we'll get a chance to meet as he does seem like a genuinely nice guy. Also like me, his "real" job is not running his blog but running The TechZone which is a very popular hardware news site (over 200K page views per day) that he started in 1999.

What's Good?
I've been reading his blog ever since I found it on digg and then later read a great post he made about being banned from digg as spam. "Wow", I thought, "how do you get banned from digg?" This was especially interesting to me given that many of his posts are genuinely useful. Here are some key reasons why I like the blog:

• Great posts regarding his experience and knowledge in making it in the dot com business. Making money online is the strength and the "hook" for the blog. He's willing and ready to teach others.
• Very clear and concise writing. The blog is very easy to read and digest.
• Very regular, high quality posts.
• John is very responsive to his readers. He regularly comments on the comments left on his posts.
  

What's Not So Good?
Like I mentioned previously, the "hook" for his blog is about making it in the dot com business. I believe that most of his readers are coming for that (I know I am). So, what do I think that he could improve on his blog?

• He combines personal posts with "dot com" posts. As an example, he makes posts about Dine Out Vancouver (which if you live in Vancouver like I do, you'll know what he's talking about) but many of his readers will simply not care. In another post, he posts pictures of his Pho dinner with his friends.
  
• Although John is obviously successful in monetizing his blog, I believe that he has too many ads in both quantity and type. On his blog, you almost have to battle to navigate through the ads from Google adsense, feedburner, Dealtime, and IntelliTXT (the ones I hate the most).
  

Despite what I think he could improve, he's obviously doing something right in monetizing the blog so what do I know? Anyways, I definitely enjoy reading his blog. If you're starting a blog or a site, do yourself a favor and subscribe to his blog.