Recently one of my non-computer-savvy family members asked me about this.  I knew that a few months ago it wasn’t even possible.  With the Gmail Labs there was an option to set a “canned response” which included a font type/color/size.  But this was sorta of a PITA way to set a default font to be used in ALL emails.

Apparently in late December 2009 Google heard the complaints and finally created a Lab feature that allows us to set a Default Font.  Woot!
 

Here’s some instructions:

1. Click the green lab beaker in the top right (or go here https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#settings/labs)
2. Scroll down about 2/3 until you find Default Text Styling (or CTRL-F to search for it)
   
3. Click Enable
4. Scroll up to the top
5. Click Save Changes
6. Click the General Settings tab at the top (or go here https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#settings)
7. Set your Default text style about half-way down
8. Click Save Changes at the bottom

Now marvel at how with this time-saving hack Gmail became even more awesome

Now that I have some experience outsourcing, I figure I may as well share my knowledge with others.

I’m both shocked and impressed at how simple it is to outsource IT work completely online nowadays.  I’m very curious to see what affect this trend is going to have on the IT industry in 1st world countries.  Instead of finding a graphics designer in your local city for $100, you can now hire one who does comparable work from the Philippines for $5.  It’s a no-brainer!

Although there are many outsourcing sites, services, and companies, here’s a few that I’ve used myself or heard good things about:

oDesk

• One of the more popular sites, thousands of potential employees (called “providers”) to choose from
• You only hire someone if you feel there’s a suitable candidate for your job posting, you’re not forced into making a decision or anything
• You can arrange to only pay after the job is complete, so there’s no risk!
• There’s online tests that providers take, such as English proficiency, PHP, etc. so you can have an idea of their skill sets
• You can arrange interviews with prospective candidates before hiring
• There’s a “Work Diary” section of the site where you can see screenshots of what your “employees” were working on, very cool!
• All in all, I’ve had a positive experience with nearly everyone I’ve hired.  There’s been a couple people that didn’t work out, but that happens in a normal office environment anyways.

Elance

• Another popular outsourcing service
• I haven’t used it myself, but I have friends that have had good success with Elance
• Has a great “Water Cooler” community forum where buyers (employers) and providers (employees) can share ideas and network
• “Elance University” training program to get both buyers and providers up-to-speed with how to use outsourcing effectively
• Like oDesk. there’s skill tests to verify that the candidates are up-to-par in specific areas
• Con – a tad on the expensive side

GetAFreelancer

• Apparently they have over 500,000 service providers…wow!
• People have complained about email spam; it sounds like once you register your inbox gets flooded with offers and whatnot
• Site has an easy-to-understand layout
• It takes 15 days after your first request for payment (this is for providers) to receive money, “for security reasons”.  If you need cash quickly you probably want to look elsewhere.
• All in all a decent service that has tons of prospects to choose from.  Really seems like an employers paradise.

Just some general rules I like to follow when running an SEO campaign.  Hopefully you find some of these helpful!

1. Keep the Content Fresh
   • At the least, a new post or page every week is great to keep the search engine bots continually crawling your site.  Plus the more pages your domain has the better.   The total Google PR for your entire domain can not exceed the # of pages.  So if you have a 1 page site you’ll never have higher than PR 1.
   • Yes I realize there’s irony in this point because I don’t update this blog nearly that often.  But I suppose that’s because this isn’t an income stream for me, I’m just doing it for fun, so I don’t really care too much about its SEO.
   • If you’re using a blogging platform, remember to use tags, as each tag creates yet another page.
2. Find Forums to Post in that have Do-Follow Signature Links
   • Be the first to respond to new threads so your sig will appear near the top of the page
   • Try to write useful, respectful comments, and not obvious spam…you know who you are…silly spammers
3. Submit your RSS Feeds to Directories
   • Search engines love RSS feeds, probably because they are great followers of Tip #1 (Keep the Content Fresh), and constantly updating
   • Two of the major ones are Feedage.com and Feedagg.com
4. Use ‘title’ and ‘alt’ HTML Tags for Images
   • This way you’ll get bonus traffic from search engine image searches, such as Google and Bing (my new favorite).
5. Social Bookmarking Rules
   • It’s powerful because each bookmark not only creates multiple backlinks (due to the tags), but also because of the “social” aspect your bookmark could appear on a “top bookmarks” page (with high PR) if other users vote or submit it as well.
   • With SocialAdr your webpages can be bookmarked (to 15 or so of the major social bookmarking services) up to 420 time per month.  And that’s just with the ‘Free’ account!
6. Keyword Research is ‘Key’
   • This is one of the (if not THE) most important parts of an effective SEO campaign.  Too many people rush through it and don’t take the time to realize either (a) there’s weak traffic for the keywords they’re targeting or (b) the competition is insane and it’s virtually impossible for them to get on Page 1 of Google.
   • I use a handy app called Micro Niche Finder – it saves a lot of time compared to using the free tools
   • The free method is simply using the Google External Keyword Tool to find how much traffic each keyword gets and Google (search for the keyword “in quotes”) to find how much competition you have.   I prefer > 1000 searches / month with less than 20,000 competition.  But there’s a lot of wiggle room in those numbers.

You’ve hopefully already heard about how the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will be soon starting to crack down on affiliate marketers.  There’s been a lot of confusion and rumors being spread about what’s acceptable going forward and what tactics you would need to avoid.

To help clear up the confusion, Internet Attorney Mike Young has written a short report covering the topic, which you can download below -

In case you’re not familiar with Mike, he is the president of the Internet Attorneys Association and is an expert on Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing.  He also created the popular Legal Forms Generator product, which allows you to easily create legal forms for your websites.

Please pass along this link to your internet marketing friends, as it is extremely important that everyone is properly educated on these new changes.   There’s less than a month now until these changes will be live, so we must all act quickly to make sure we’re compliant.

IMPORTANT – These FTC changes will be effective as of December 1, 2009

The best site I’ve found so far to download free fonts (to be used in graphic design, web design, or just for fancy Word/OpenOffice documents) is…<drumroll>…

It’s organized well, they seem to have new fonts added nearly every day, the fonts range from sophisticated calligraphy to crazy spray painting to symbols of aliens.  And of course there’s the boring stuff that looks like Times New Roman <facepalm>.

I don’t get any kick-backs for sharing this with y’all.  I just like doing my part to promote a good website or service when I come across it.

If you know of a better free font site, I’m all ears!