Hello All,

Welcome to Week 5B of John Thornhill’s Internet Marketing Training Masterclass Coaching Program.

So continuing on with my learning on how to create an online business, this post is the continuation of my last post on Week 5 Part A.

In week 5 Part A we were given the first 8 videos to watch and the tasks to do that were considered compulsory viewing. The next 6 videos and tasks are considered optional, meaning that we don’t have to do the tasks if we don’t want to at this stage.

So lets continue with Week 5B’s tasks…….

Marketing Masterclass Week 5B: Adding Graphics To Our Blogs Part B

The next set of videos are all about making some editorial changes to our blogs, such as adding and removing Google Adsense, adding video, widgets, images, banners to our posts and sidebar columns.

Video 9: Removing Google Adsense From Our Blog Posts

Some people may like having Google Adsense in their posts and others don’t so in this video Daniel shows us how to remove the html code from our post template.

When I first started my blog last year I didn’t mind the Google Adsense adverts from appearing on my site as I thought it would be a great way to earn a little money. A year later and to tell you the truth, I am seriously thinking of removing it.

After recently checking my statistics, the adverts are not a big earner. From 2 website with adds I have been lucky to ear a total of $30 in just under a year! Maybe I need more traffic? Who knows, but I am starting to think I may remove it and adding a freebies sign up form instead! I would rather develop loyal subscribers than worry about a few cents a click!

In this video we are shown:

1. How to access our ‘Appearance/editor’ tab from our blogs dashboard
2. How to find the Google Adsense page we need to edit
3. How to save the code in case of any editing problems or if we want to add it back at a later stage
4. How to edit/delete the code from the template
5. How to check our edit was successful
6. And how to fix the code if any problems occur

Video 10: Adding Youtube Videos To Our Blogs

In this video Daniel shows us how to add Youtube video to our blog posts.

We are shown:

1. How to start a new post (We should already know how to do this now! )
2. How to go to the Youtube website and find a video we want to include on our blogs
3. How to look for the “embedded code” that we need to copy to access the video
4. How to copy the embedded video code from Youtube
5. How to access the ‘html’ editor of our blog post
6. How to copy the Youtube ‘html’ code into our blog post ‘html’ editor
7. How to save our blog post and publish it (We should know how to do this one too! )
8. And how to check if everything is successful and if not how to fix the edit problems

Video 11: How To Use Widgets On Our Blogs

In this video Daniel shows us how to use ‘Widgets’ in our blogs and change the look of our sidebar columns from the default wordpress settings to make our blogs more individual to what we like and what we want to include.

Daniel shows us:

1. How to access our ‘Appearance/Widgets’ tab from our blog dashboard
2. How to understand the set up of the widgets page
3. How to remove the ‘Meta’ information (our blog access – this is only necessary if we want other people to access our blog such as staff etc)
4. How to add a widget such as ‘Calender’ to one of our sidebars
5. How to change the widget title
6. How to change the widgets location either up or down the list order
7. And how to reset the default settings if any problems occur

Video 12: Adding And Resizing Images For Our Blog

In this video Daniel shows us how to add images to our blog from our computer’s hard drive.

We are shown:

1. How to start a new post (We know this one! )
2. How to look for the ‘add image’ or ‘add video’ icon in the post text editor
3. How to select to upload from our computer
4. How to find the images we want to upload
5. How to upload the image
6. How to edit the image details ie; title, caption etc
7. How to insert the chosen image into our blog post
8. How to make changes to the image’s appearance within the post eg; centre, align etc
9. How to remove the image if we need to
10. And how to save our changes

After Daniel showed us image basics he then showed us a free picture software service available on the internet called www.picresize.com.

We were shown:

1. How to upload our images to the inline software
2. How to make changes to the image such as resize, crop, colour, brightness etc using the software
3. How to do special effects to the image
4. How to save the image files to different formats such as gif, jpg etc
5. And how to save/download the images that have been edited back to our computer’s hard drive

At the moment I haven’t had the need to use the free software service however I am sure I will in the future as my website develops more. The best thing about the software is that it is free and very easy to use.

Video 13: Adding A Graphic Banner To Our Blog Post

In this video Daniel shows us how to add graphic image banners to our blog posts. This is a similar concept to adding and image however this time we are shown how to add an image that is hosted on another website and then has an affiliate link hyper-linked to the image.

We are shown:

1. How to find the affiliate banner we want to use such as a banner from being an affiliate with “Planet Divinity”
2. How to copy the ‘html’ code of the graphic banner we want to use
3. How to open a new post to our blog (We should definitely know this one by now! )
4. How to select the ‘html’ view in our blog post text editor
5. How to paste the banner code into the blog post
6. How to change the banners position using basic ‘html’ code
7. How to change the banners position in normal editing view
8. And how to save our changes and fix any problems if they occur

Video 14: Adding A Graphic Image Banner To Our Blog Sidebar

In this video Daniel shows us how to add a graphic image banner to our sidebar, using an affiliate image like before. It is important to be aware of the pixel width of the sidebar so as not to upload a image that is wider or else it will distort the view.

The same should be considered for our actual posts such as being aware of the post width for video and images. I have seen a few blogs now in my blogging travels where the video spreads over to the sidebar and looks distorted.

Daniel shows us:

1. How to find the affiliate banner image we want to use and copy the ‘html’ code we need (Like in the last video)
2. How to access the ‘Appearance Themes Editor’ within our blog dashboard
3. How to access the sidebar template
4. How to find the area in the template code that we can edit
5. How to save the template to a text file in case editing problems occur and we can return the template to default
6. How to add a line break using basic ‘html’ code
7. How to add in the affiliate banner image code using basic ‘html’
8. How to save our edit changes
9. And how to check if our edit was successful and fix any problems if they occur

Week 5B Checklist:

Our checklist tasks for Week 5B were:

1. Add and remove the Google Adsense adverts from our blog posts
2. Add in a video from Youtube to a blog post
3. Change some Widgets from our sidebar columns, add or remove them, change their positions and settings where possible
4. Add and re-size an image in a blog post
5. Use the software at www.picresize.com
6. Add an affiliate graphic banner image to a blog post
7. Add an affiliate graphic banner image to our blog sidebar column

OK so that is it for week 5. It was a big one and very technical! I was very brain drained from watching those videos. One of the best things about this course is that you can watch the videos over and over again.  This is excellent especially if you have trouble understanding the task you are doing the first time you try and do the task.

If we have problems, we can just keep watching the videos, stopping, pausing and rewinding them until we can do the task. Having the videos makes it easy to learn as we can actually have the video open in one viewing browser on pause and can be following the steps in another browser at the same time!

OK so that is week 5 wrapped up in 2 posts! (I just looked at the word count, I think I have written nearly 3,000 words for this weeks tasks ).

So until next time……..

Enjoy Your Learning!

P.S If you want to read more posts on my master class training, you will find them all listed on my masterclass training page. Click on the following link to get to that page: My Masterclass Training

P.P.S John Thornhill’s Internet Marketing Masterclass Coaching may be closed at the moment. He has just started the new 2010 program and he only ever takes a limited amount of students at a time so as to dedicate himself to our learning, basically it is a first in first served situation.

Update 10/4/2010: John has just released a one month $4.95 trial to Masterclass meaning you can sign up for $4.95 and trial the training. As far as I know he is limiting these places. If you see a sold out sign, then do sign up to be notified when there are new places available again.

This training program was the best decision I ever made. I would not be doing what I am today if it wasn’t for John. I can not recommend this program enough!

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