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If you can write, you can blog. And if you can blog, you can make money. It is really that simple.

Blogging is nothing more than keeping a web log, or a series of posts on absolutely any topic you like. The majority of bloggers are just personal blogger, writing about their daily life and experiences. These people tend to have a large following among family and friends, but not necessarily anyone else, unless they happen to have a fascinating life.

In order to earn money blogging, you need a topic that interests someone besides your mother. That doesn’t mean choosing a technical or difficult subject, just one that will draw a crowd when you write something interesting about it. This could be anything from natural cosmetics to horror movies and anything in between.

Although some recommend choosing your niche based on things like high quality keywords, I personally believe that you are far better off selecting a subject that interests you. After all, you will have to write about it day in and day out for the next several years if all goes well! You ought to feel some passion for the topic.

Starting a blog is easy enough. Most people have plenty of ideas at the beginning. You can start off with a handful of articles on the basics of your topic and then post every day or every week, as you please, from then on. Keep your blogging posts on topic and full of interesting information to bring people back.

Now, just because you start blogging does not mean people will come flocking to read what you write. In fact, you will probably be dismally disappointed when you see the hits counter hasn’t budged in a week. Once you have a few posts up, it is time to start promoting your blog. That means talking it up to friends and family, MSN contacts and adding your blogging URL to your signature line anywhere you can . . . in your email, forums and assorted message boards. These also count as backlinks which will eventually help you out in the search engines.

Earning with blogging can be done in several ways. For example, you can add ads to your blog. Adsense is a good one to start with, but there are plenty of alternatives. You can also take on a paid review ad from a website like Pay per Post or something similar, where you write a review of a product and post it on your blog and the site will pay you.

Affiliate marketing is another way to earn through blogging. Recommending a product and then offering your own affiliate link for buying it or signing up for a service is a good way to monetize your blog.

You could also try selling your own products. These could be real life products that need to be shipped, print on demand products like from CafePress or Printfection, or information products like e-books. The idea is to turn blogging into a profitable venture.

Even after you start selling on your blogging site, remember to continue offering good solid information on your topic.

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Podcasting is a relatively new method of delivering radio to listeners with internet access. This free method of listening to your favorite radio show is becoming increasingly popular as more and more people learn about it. Podcasting is usually commercial free, which is another reason for its popularity.

Podcasting is also extremely popular because you choose when and where you want to listen to it. You can also decide which episode you want to hear and have a choice of listening to the podcasting episodes on an iPod (where this distribution form got its name from), a computer or any MP3. The flexibility of podcasting has catapulted it into the public’s attention.

In order to get started downloading podcasts, you need to download a podcatcher program. This allows your computer to automatically download podcasting episodes of your favorite radio shows which have been converted into digital audio files. There are several podcatchers, with the most popular being Apple’s iTunes which is also a searching device for new and interesting podcasting. You can use it to find more radio shows that you might be interested in listening to.

Other podcatchers that are free include Juice and Odeo. Both of these podcatchers also have podcasting search engines built in so you find new radio shows to download. Once you have a radio show that you wish to listen to, you can subscribe to the RSS feed so that your podcatcher can download the radio shows without you having to go to the radio website each time a new episode is released. This saves incredible amounts of time and is quite easy to use, as all the podcatchers have an easy to use interface that allows you to subscribe to the RSS feeds with just the click of a button.

Once you have set up your podcasting preferences, you don’t have to worry about anything except searching for new and more interesting podcasting feeds. It is very easy to discard or erase any shows that you no longer enjoy and since all the episodes of your favorite radio shows will be saved on your computer, they are able to be accessed or downloaded to your iPod or MP3 player for easy listening whenever you wish. Unsubscribing from any podcasting broadcast is quite easy as well and you can quickly find new shows to replace the ones you delete.

There are various websites dedicated to podcasting where you can find information and new podcasts as well as fellow radio fanatics who are more than willing to share their favorite radio show feeds with you. Among the more popular are Podcasting News and Podcast as well as Podcast Alley. You can find podcasting forums on all of these websites as well as featured radio shows, both popular and lesser known. It is a good opportunity to find something new and unique for your personal radio programming.

Podcasting is still growing in popularity as it is a fairly new technology. It has great potential though and will probably continue to improve and expand over the years to come, so go ahead and jump in now.

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For those of you who are new to the internet this whole online business thing might seem a little overwhelming. If you have never really surfed online, you might find yourself wondering how to find information on the things that interest you. Once you get the hang of things, you shouldn’t have any troubles at all. This article will explain the basics for you.

Search engines are the new to the internet surfer’s best friend. The most popular ones include Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, and Ask Jeeves. There are plenty of others, but as someone who is new to the internet, these will serve you just fine.

Since you are new to the internet, what a search engine does is take the important words that you type in and looks for the same words in millions of webpages around the world. It then throws back all those matching pages and they appear in front of you. This usually only takes a few seconds since all these pages and articles are already indexed. The most popular and most relevant (according to the main words) will appear at the top of the list.

For example, if you type in “craft supplies, wheat, felt, google eyes”, your first results on the search engine page will appear with all of these. Further down, or on the next page will come those that didn’t match all of the search terms. Perhaps they only had felt and craft supplies on the list. And so on and so forth until in the last pages you are looking at just one of any of the words that you entered, such as “eyes” or “craft”. For this reason, most people don’t bother looking further than those first two or three pages.

Once you have typed in the words or phrases that you are interested in and gotten back your results, you are ready to start looking at websites. This can get a bit confusing for those who are new to the internet. There is so much information crammed into a tiny space that it can be difficult to know what to look for. The first few results on the page, the ones that are separated by a colored box or a line, are sponsored links and they will generally lead you to a website that is trying to sell you something. Most new to the internet explorers fall for the appealing text of these ads, so stay away from them. Continue downwards until you find the real websites.

Each website has a title and a brief description. You can often tell from the few sentences that you can see whether or not this is something that you wish to look at. Many people who are new to the internet only read the titles and click, but these are not necessarily indicative of what there is on the page, so read the description, too. If the site is not what you thought, hit the back button at the top of your screen and try another site.

Just because you are new to the internet doesn’t mean you need to end up lost in cyberspace. Understanding how to use a search engine is the first step in getting to the sites you want to visit. After that, everything else is easy.

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It’s another day on the Internet and yet another form of ad monetization has reared its ugly head.

You Tube recently launched its InVideo advertising solution to a resounding dull clang of dissatisfaction from the exuberant masses who consume hours of content on the beloved Web site.

It’s not hard to see why. And in the interests of full disclosure, I do work in online advertising, yet I think it’s really kind of hard to love this solution.

Don’t get me wrong. For some, loving advertising is like loving tax preparation. YouTube’s solution isn’t easy to understand in the context of how it’s used with content. The relative context of application, if you will.

Specifically, hearing a lo-fi video defense of a pop star is bad enough, but when it’s shrouded with a slick transition to the ad message, it all seems a brash and out-of-place marriage of elements.

This blight-on-blight online advertising solution is only the most recent. There have been many others before, and rest assured there will be more in the future.

It makes me wonder why we keep coming up with the same solutions to monetize this relatively new medium. Can’t we get a little more creative? Or are we destined to a downward spiral of repeating the same advertising model on everything we do?

Make the logo bigger. Stick a special offer in at the end. Repeat. Yes, these forms of advertising are familiar, like a comfy old chair, but old and comfy can get stinky after a while.

In their book, “New World, New Mind” Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich point out, “Human judgment and humanity’s ability to deal with the consequences of its creations lags behind its ability to create.”

Bad times at any company’s online solutions division lie ahead.

We constantly trying to innovate, yet we don’t slow down our minds (or our development cycles) to really contemplate the impact of our work. It’s a truly vicious circle.

We develop measurement criteria in the same way. Often, these two crimes combine to provide poor ad solutions and mishandled performance valuations.

In a competitive industry, yes, time is money. But ignorance wastes time, money, and a user’s interest in your brand. I’d say the last is much more costly.

Damning as that may sound, it’s been true for quite a while. Did anybody ever think the floating rich media ad would dominate the online advertising industry forever?

For that matter, the lovely and controversial You-Tubian solution for integrating advertising into its spectacle of video content shares the same future.

Lest we forget, the practice of inserting :15 spots before and after video content that floods the news became the new hair extension for a thinning and expensive media market. Truly, to think an online spot can be included in overall television rating points (TRPs), regardless of screen size and format, is unfathomable.

But as bad as it sounds, there’s hope for an industry known for interrupting viewers’ valuable time (and being the spawn of Satan).

There are ways in which we can rethink this whole ad thing. First, we must ask ourselves a few questions: Why must an ad follow a traditional story arc? Why do we need to assume users must understand everything they see? Why do we need comedy to make a viewer remember an ad? Why can’t the user have several available options and interactions?

—

By  Dorian Sweet

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In part I, we introduced the concept of social networking sites and how to begin online networking. In part II, we detail some more specific networking and marketing techniques.

Keep it Real

Just as with every new communication technology, there are those who use the medium in overbearing, unwanted ways. Social networking sites are no different. The key term here is “networking,” give and take. According to Bob Baker, author of MySpace Music Marketing, social networking success stories have one thing in common: “They’re all about the ping-pong effect ? It’s you sharing yourself with and getting to know dozens, and then perhaps hundreds of people. In turn, those people mention you to their friends.”

It’s NOT about posting, sending and otherwise spamming hundreds or thousands of others. Because interaction is a key feature of these sites, the potential for backlash is enormous. Social networking sites are back-and-forth communication forums, not broadcast media. Annoy or abuse people and they’ll tell the world.

So what can you do on these sites? How exactly does one share his/herself and get to know people?

Basic Online Marketing Principles

There are certain basic online marketing principles that apply when networking online. Among them:

- First and foremost, no spam. Communication should be individual and meaningful, not bulk, impersonal nonsense.

- On a related note, do not use automated software to post generic comments or messages in bulk.

- When emailing or messaging, unobtrusively remind people of what you do through your signature. Include your name; clickable Website URL; tagline or short mission statement; and/or other contact information in the signature.

Finding Connections

—– Sidebar on Terminology. Those you connect with are termed differently across different social networking sites. “Friends,” “connections,” your “network” and “subscribers” all describe online associates. Here, I use “network” and “connections.” —–

A critical component of successful networking (both in the physical and cyber worlds) is finding quality connections. On social networking sites, first think about the types of people you want to connect with (see “Whom to Interact With” in part I). Then use a variety of methods to find them:

- Use the site’s search features to find connections by their psychographic or demographic features (religion, age, gender, geographic location, interests, likes/dislikes, etc.)

- Each time you find a new connection, look for additional connections in her or his network.

- Study comments on your connections’ pages ? or those outside your network with similar interests ? for potential new connections.

Approaching People to Become a Part of your Online Network

After finding potential connections, approach them about becoming part of your network. Ways to do this include:

- Send a friend request to each.

- Post thoughtful, relevant comments on their pages (which also creates new links to your page).

- Return comments on your page with relevant ones on the commenter’s’ page.

- When contacting someone, send a private message and leave a comment on her or his page.

Working your Network

The flip side of finding potential connections is having potential connections find you. There are several things you can do to become more approachable:

- Your page is the first thing people see when researching you, so keep it appealing. Regularly review comments others have left and delete irrelevant or crude remarks.

- Add new content to your page often, giving people a reason to visit regularly.

- Set aside time to respond to comments and messages.

Like all worthwhile business relationships, online networks must be nurtured. Make the effort to do so, and over time you will reap the rewards.

——-

About the Author
Bobette Kyle draws upon 15+ years of Marketing/Executive experience, online marketing experience, and a marketing MBA as inspiration for her writing. Bobette is proprietor of the Web Site Marketing Plan Network (http://www.WebSiteMarketingPlan.com). She is also author of the marketing plan and Web promotion book “How Much For Just the Spider? Strategic Website Marketing For Small Budget Business.” You can search all articles on the network through the marketing directory by going here: http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/directory

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Social networking online is one of today’s hottest trends. Many, however, wonder how social networking can help their careers or businesses and exactly how to get started with this online marketing technique. Here in part 1, we will help you get started. Next, in part 2, we will explain some techniques for expanding your presence and building a quality network of online contacts.

What is Online Social Networking?

From a conceptual standpoint, online social networking is no different than traditional networking and socializing. You meet people and get to know them by sharing information about each other. Those you like and/or share interests with become part of your “network.” The marketing magic kicks in when those in your network start talking about you. Your reputation spreads by word-of-mouth.

The Internet and related technology have taken networking to the next level, expanding each individual’s reach and exposure through online marketing. Where traditionally people gather in person to network ? at the same time and place as others ? members of online networking groups are not limited by time or geography. Each group member can interact 24/7 from any location worldwide. Consequently, online networking techniques are very different from in-person networking.

How To Interact Through Social Networking

Ways to interact are numerous. The first order of business is to decide what your marketing goals are with respect to social networking. While “finding new friends” is a sufficient personal reason for social networking, business marketing goals need to be more specific. Are you an individual looking for a job or freelance work? Do you want to gain exposure for your product, brand or company? Are you looking for potential employees or contractors? Do you want to get prospects interested enough to visit your Website or contact you? Your goals will dictate what you put on your profile and social networking home page, as well as who you look for to become part of your network.

After you’ve decided on your purpose for online networking, choose which social networking Website(s) you will participate in.

Where to Network Online

You can find a comprehensive list of social networking sites here, at Wikipedia. I am familiar with those listed below. They will give you an idea of the range of opportunities you will find at social networking Websites:

Yahoo! 360 (360.yahoo.com): Yahoo!’s social networking site is in beta as of this writing. The unique feature here is your Yahoo! 360 space is cross-promoted with other Yahoo! products, such as with your reviews on Yahoo! Local and your Yahoo! Groups. Like many social networking sites, you can also host a blog on the server.

MySpace (myspace.com): This is the mother of social networking sites. Originally dominated by teens, there are reports of the “graying of myspace” as older people and businesses are also networking on the site. It may be worth your while to spend some time there to see if your target customers hang out there.

LinkedIn (linkedin.com): LinkedIn is excellent for professional, career-related online marketing because it focuses exclusively on business and professional networking. You will find interfaces to connect with classmates or colleagues (both past and present); find service providers or clients; post or find a job; and ask or answer business-related questions.

Gather (gather.com): This network incorporates user publications (in the form of articles) and a points reward system into the usual social networking activities.

Each social networking Website has it’s own “personality” and a different mix of people to interact with. Before signing up, go to each site and explore a bit ? search on keywords related to your goals and interests, check out the different groups, the activity level, etc. This will help you determine if a site will be beneficial to you. Once you find a site that interests you, establish your presence by signing up and filling in the questions for your profile and site home page. Once that is done, you are ready to interact.

Whom To Interact With

The people you want to associate with (i.e. make “friends” or be “connected” to) will depend largely on your goals. There are several types of people you will want to consider contacting. Each can help you in different ways, so consider looking for more than one type of “target friend:”

Customers and Consumers: People who will benefit from what you do, consume or buy your products or services, and rave about you to their friends.

Others Within Your Industry: People with whom you can network, share resources and cross-promote with.

Media and Publishers: People who work for, or can influence, publications you would like to be mentioned in (e-zines, newspapers, Websites, etc).

Consultants: People who may want to hire or purchase products from you.

Event, Company or Organization representatives: People who operate businesses and associations that support your industry.

How To Find Friends

A few people will find you based on your profile, but you will want to actively seek out quality friends. You can start to find friends by joining groups related to your expertise, that have members who match your target friend profile or interest you in general. You can also approach individuals and ask them to become a friend and/or part of your network.

In part 2 we will detail some more specific networking and marketing techniques. Until then, explore your social networking sites, get comfortable with the features and find a few friends.

——–
About the Author

Bobette Kyle draws upon 15+ years of Marketing/Executive experience, online marketing experience, and a marketing MBA as inspiration for her writing. Bobette is proprietor of the Web Site Marketing Plan Network (http://www.WebSiteMarketingPlan.com). She is also author of the marketing plan and Web promotion book “How Much For Just the Spider? Strategic Website Marketing For Small Budget Business.” You can search all articles on the network through the marketing directory by going here: http://www.websitemarketingplan.com/directory

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In a big first, YouTube has decided to let advertisers inject their messages inside the video frame for select content on its site. The new offering, dubbed InVideo Ads, mimics the clickable ad overlays introduced in recent months on ad networks like VideoEgg and YuMe.

In testing for several weeks, the ad product consists of animated bars that obscure the bottom 20 percent of the video frame for a given clip. They initiate 15 seconds after the beginning of a clip, an interval YouTube selected because “it takes users 10 seconds to become acclimated to what they are watching,” according to Shiva Rajaraman, YouTube Product Manager. InVideo overlays are “80 percent transparent” and remain visible for approximately 10 seconds before shrinking to a small button users can later click to view the marketing message again.

YouTube has set a $20 CPM for InVideo ad buys consisting of an InVideo ad accompanied by a tiny in-player companion ad and an adjacent in-page unit. Brands advertised in the testing phase include Universal Studios’ “Evan Almighty,” Twentieth Century Fox’s “The Simpsons Movie,” BMW’s 3 Series convertible, NewLine’s “Hairspray” and approximately 15 others. Select content providers taking part in InVideo — and in any ad revenue it generates — at launch include Ford Models, Warner Music Group and Roadrunner Records. Several of the content examples YouTube shared during a press briefing consist of ads placed within music videos.

Rajaraman said the field of participating content owners is “significant,” but declined to identify their exact number or to estimate the volume of ad impressions YouTube expects to offer media buyers under the new program. But he insisted reach is not a concern.

“Our main goal is to support a range of genres and advertisers, and frankly to support any size campaign,” he said. “Given the inventory there, we’re comfortable with supporting large as well as highly targeted campaigns.”

Clicking on an overlay ad pauses the current video and launches one of two experiences brands can choose between. One is a new clip superimposed over the video in progress via a player-within-a-player interface. When the paid clip ends or is closed, the original automatically picks up where it left off. Rajaraman said 76 percent of those who click the overlay and watch the video ad viewed the entire trailer for NewLine’s “Hairspray.”

The other option is a Flash-based interactive experience in which the user is invited to navigate an interactive menu. Warner Bros. created such a unit where users can flip through selected album covers (click for example).

During YouTube’s research process, Rajaraman said, “One of the key things we found, not surprisingly, is that when a video is playing on YouTube their attention is [locked in to the video frame]. When we came up with an ad format, we realized that… it needs to be in the player.”

Yet when the Google-owned video portal tested pre-roll placements, YouTube users abandoned video clips at a more than 50 percent rate. The overlay, by contrast, results in an abandonment rate under 10 percent. Not only that, but click rates are five to 10 times greater than standard display click-to-video ads, according to Rajaraman.

He added YouTube also gathered data during the test period by monitoring comments, speaking directly with some users, and observing navigation patterns.

YouTube says it serves 3 billion minutes of video each month, creating “a lot of opportunities for advertisers.” The vast majority of that content will not support its new InVideo ads, however, owing to the adjacency concerns so often raised by agencies on behalf of their most blight-sensitive brands. Those same concerns are no doubt also behind the YouTube decision not to insert ads in partner content that users choose to embed on other sites, such as blogs and MySpace pages.

—

By Zachary Rodgers

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We are dwelling in a world that is constantly evolving and growing. Each passing day is witnessing some or the other development and evolvement in some or the other field. The latest buzz in the world of World Wide Web is social media optimization. The World Wide Web seems to be undergoing constant changes and to keep up to these changes we all need to be in tune with the latest things that are taking a front seat in the world of the World Wide Web. Social media optimization is nothing but diverse ways that are adopted to make an online site easily accessible to internet visitors and internet users. In this fast paced age people want information at extraordinary speed and in this case the faster and the earlier visitors can get information by accessing your site, the more popular you and your online site becomes in the World Wide Web. Social media optimization also works somewhat like search engine optimization but the only differences between the two are the techniques and the methods that each one follows to optimize a site.

There are several ways that can be implemented to go in for social media optimization and if you want to optimize your online site, social media optimization is the best solution. The basic idea behind optimizing an online business site through social media optimization is to optimize it in such a manner so the site is linked to other sites that are more visible in the social media search category. While opting for social media optimization, you must keep in mind that each business has different needs and requirements. This demands you to know your business requirements. Your business can become a success story only if you are fully aware of your business requirements. Apart from increasing links of your websites, you can even go in for exchanging your link with other related websites. Exchanging links is another criteria that social media optimization abides to.

Social media optimization ideally means promoting about something on all the social media platforms. Becoming famous in today’s competitive world is not an easy task. There are many things that need to be done to get famous and this also implements to any online site that wants to become famous on the web. Social media optimization caters to the needs of any online business who wants to get known in the internet circle. One of the best possible ways of undergoing a successful social media optimization process is to let the content of the website flow freely to webmasters who can easily help you and your site gain recognition. If your website has a great content you must make sure that your content can be easily accessed by people. Living up to the criterion of social media optimization, webmasters make sure that any good content gets accessed by different people through different platforms in the web. This means that you will need to constantly write articles and blogs for your website and make sure that they are well distributed among various links and websites.

With the advent in technologies, people want to try out new things and in this scenario social media optimization has become a very in thing that has not only helped online sites gain popularity but has once again proved that the world is progressing towards a new and a better world.

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In a couple of weeks, Friendswin LLC is launching a new web destination - right here on this page - to establish the web’s most exciting, private, online social networking community. Friendswin.com is positioned to capitalize on the widespread popularity of social networking sites (MySpace, FaceBook, etc.) by offering our members a unique service that offers video enabled profiles, video conferencing between friends, video dating and many other features to entice and serve a growing membership.

From Friendswin Web Page:

Since you have landed here, you have obviously been apprised of the benefits of Friendswin. But for the uninitiated, the following is information about our new company:

Our platform will allow sharing of videos, blogs, music, classifieds, events, forum entries, and favorite/popular categories among users and groups moderated by participants within the network. Internal email will allow private communications between users, thereby facilitating dating, personal and business networking, information exchange and optional communications with the “outside” world.

A feature that makes Friendswin unlike any other social networking site is an affiliate compensation plan that pays significant commissions for referrals. Instead of taking the Internet’s standard business model and spending millions of dollars to build a brand, we have chosen to create a killer comp plan for people who really want to promote the site. Friendswin will be the net’s newest and most exciting destination to connect with the world.

Anyone 18 years or older can join for free, sample our great destination and connect with their friends. They will have the option to buy monthly subscriptions that include a large variety of services, or pay for functionality (like video conferencing) on an a-la-carte basis.

But how will they learn about Friendswin? From our Independent Marketing Representatives, (”IMRs”) Friendswin IMRs now have a ground-floor opportunity to assist us in signing up customers who will want to use Friendswin for a myriad of reasons. Maybe just video dating. Or video conferencing. Regardless, revenue generated by regular customers with Friendswin will generate commissions for the IMR. This includes even advertising revenue, generated by member click-throughs and impressions, that can gross-up to sizable dollar amounts, even for “free” members.

Remember, this is about building a business. Social networking applications on the Internet have faired amazingly well historically, because of the viral nature of customer interest and the fun and utility of the platforms. Friendswin will be no different. We believe that this website can attract and retain regular customers in very large numbers with products and services that are simply amazing and better than “the big guys”…

But it’s going to be up to YOU…(the IMR) to make this happen. Remember, we have created an amazing business model that can compensate our Independent Marketing Representatives with significant commissions, but you have to get the customers!

For users choosing to become IMRs, Friendswin created the “SUPER MATRIX”, a 5X8 forced matrix that will govern and manage your downline network of IMRs. In addition, as your downline IMRs sign-up regular customers for subscriptions in Friendswin, your commissions will be calculated on the level through which they entered.
Now you know the basics. You know about the massive viral growth of MySpace, FaceBook, Hi5, Friendster and dozens of others. Social networking is the Internet’s “killer app”. All of those sites are growing at the rate of 89% per year. We can’t predict how many new users will join our site. Maybe only a few thousand. But we CAN tell you that this experience will be fun, offers great tools and will be an exciting place to interact with friends.

Let me ask you this question. Where do you think you would be right now, if you joined Myspace when they launched and got paid for all the people that joined it after you?  A system that offers video conferencing, audio, and a whole lot more!

If you want to give it a test ride, than click here to pre-register; Scroll to the bottom and click on “Click Here to Pre-Register“

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This is the first in a series of Myspace tutorials targeting specific blocks of the Myspace layout. If you’ve never tried to Modify myspace you should read some of the basic Myspace tutorials first, particularly where to customize Myspace layouts and backgrounds . The “extended network” block is the rectangle fount in the upper right portion of your profile.

You access it using the blacktext12 class. If you just want to make it disappear this is all you need:

<style>
.blacktext12 {
font-size:0px;
color:FFFFFF;
}
</style>
Be sure to change the color to match your background color. Technically you should not have to do this but Internet Explorer doesn’t render 0px fonts properly so you actually see a tiny font on screen if you don’t match the colors (a good reason to go to Firefox, it’s a better browser). This works because by default the Myspace extended network block contains only text.

It’s more fun, though, you place an image in that spot. The key to making that work is to know the dimensions of the image so you can set the size of the block properly. Here are the steps I use to find the image size if you have Firefox (if you have IE, sorry, you’ll have to dive into the source of the page or know where the image lives, another reason to upgrade to Firefox):

1. Browse to the page with the image you want to use (make sure it is on your own web space or you have permission to use it directly)
2. Right click (ctl - click if you have one button mouse) and select View Image or View Background Image
3. Copy the URL to paste into your code
4. Right click (ctl - click if you have one button mouse) and choose Properties (this will work in IE for page images but not background images, IE really does stink). Note the dimensions of the image.

Now your ready to take that information and customize your Myspace layout in a fun way:

<style>
span.blacktext12 {
font-size:0px;
color:FFFFFF;
background-image:url(paste URL from above here);
background-position:center;
background-repeat:no-repeat;
display:block;
width:468px;
height:60px;
}
</style>

Note that this time you needed to add the span tag in front of the blacktext12 property. The background properties aren’t strictly neccessary but help if you get the dimensions wrong.

If your adventurous you can play with other CSS properties. An example would be adding a border. All you need to do is add the following line of code to the end of the code above and you have a 2 pixel green border:

border:solid 2px rgb(0,255,0);

Note: you can only use rgb color codes or text color codes , hex codes (e.g. 00FF00) do not work in this situation.

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