Not that this is going to rock anyone’s world, but I’m heading to Europe for a couple weeks of vacation on Sept. 6th.

Going to be hitting England, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France - can’t wait!

I won’t be connected at any point, I don’t think, so expect nothing new here for a couple weeks, sadly. Just poke around the read the info I have posted on my pages already if you’re that bored…

I’ll be pretty much taking pictures 24/7 while over there - indulging in another hobby of mine. Should be fun.

Thanks for coming by - I’ll be back soon and will get to posting asap!

WOW!

I checked Amazon.com this morning and suddenly I’m listed as an author and the book is posted in their system. It’s available for pre-order now, and Amazon is offering it at a discounted price. Not sure I like THAT, but hey - they know how to sell books, so who am I to question it…LOL

How to Make Money With Your Blog: The Ultimate Reference Guide for Building, Optimizing, and Monetizing Your Blog

You may have already heard about this tool.

I recently gave it a try, and have since installed it across all my blogs.

Tony Conrad, CEO & Founder of Sphere shared this with me via e-mail:

[quote]Sphere is displayed on over 1.5 billion monthly article pages on a number of the best blogs (TechCrunch, All Things D, GigaOM, Captains Quarters, Real Clear Politics, etc) and mainstream media sites (WSJ, CNN, TIME, NYT, etc), so you’re blog is connecting to a nice group of content creators The most important thing is that we’re connecting the voice of the people to that of mainstream media and we’re doing that across the web. As a result, we’re enabling a more mainstream Internet reader to discover blogs - a simple idea but one that is important in broadening the reach of the blogosphere.[/quote]

While Tony’s picture of things is taken from a higher altitude than my own, I still think there’s merit here, down in the weeds.

Essentially it boils down to this:

Provide a good user experience through solid design and useful content, and you’ll build a loyal following.

The Sphere product fits nicely into providing value for users. It’s an excellent way to offer up directly related stories on a hot topic - or any topic for that matter.

Sadly there’s no current way to monetize it for yourself, but it still makes your site that useful place folks want to come back to. In addition, because you’re connected to this network, there’s a chance YOUR posted story could end up under a readers nose on those higher profile sites. In reality, there’s no link love being passed, so there’s little value from an SEO perspective, but I’ll take traffic from the Wall Street Journal any day I can get it!

I’ll caution folks to not see this as way to suddenly rocket your traffic, though. As with most good things, they come your way with work. So you’ll still need to hold up your end on producing quality content.

Grab a copy for WordPress here:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sphere-related-content/

Now, go get this thing - it’s one of the hottest downloads for WordPress today.