I wish I would take the time to learn to use Photoshop (because I could have made myself look a lot thinner in my Halloween costume)! But I already have a long “to do” list.  Like learning PHP.  I bought the PHP & MySQL of Dummies book, but haven’t opened it yet.

So, I’m gonna continue to use Photobucket for my image editing and hosting.  I like to use it to grab images from other sites and resize them, like I did with this book graphic from Amazon —->

That way you aren’t “stealing” images and bandwidth from other sites that may delete the graphic sooner or later leaving a red X on your site. I don’t think Photobucket is going anywhere anytime soon (Alexa ranking is 34) at the time of writing. And did I mention it’s free?  FREE is my middle name.  Check out Photobucket.com yourself.

Speaking of Alexa, I found a post on Tips to Improve Your Alexa Ranking by GoogleLady. Of course, the top suggestion being to download and install the Alexa toolbar yourself since you probably surf your own site more than anyone else. Download it now! I did.

Back to Photobucket, I do have one suggestion though - can you make another resize option? The 640×480 is a tad big (seen here) and the 320×240 is a tad small (two shown here)- how about an size somewhere in the middle?  It’d be much appreciated.  Thanks.  And have a nice day.

Last weekend, Patrick and I had the pleasure of attending ShareASale’s Think Tank 2007 in Scottsdale, Arizona, where merchants and affiliates get together and brain storm. It was a wonderful experience. And one of the perks is that the merchants come bearing gifts for the affiliates!  Here Patrick and I (figured out the delay timer on my new camera) are wearing these cute tees from The Land of Nod, one of the presenters, which I learned is a partner of Crate & Barrel. I’ll try to blog about some of the other free tshirts before I leave for Ad-tech in New York next weekend (try is the key word). My daughter claimed the goodie bag from Chinese Laundry. And if you are an affliate marketer and aren’t an affiliate of ShareASale.com, join NOW! Great network (Brian, Carolyn and Sarah rock) with no parasites!

Today’s free tshirt is brought to you by Zvents.com “Discover Things To Do.” Cool place where you can see and post events and venues, and the best part is that it’s free to use! Looks like they make their money from advertising revenue.  Think of the free publicity opportunities! I wish I could think of something to post.  Kind of eerie, yet handy, how they track your IP address so you see local events immediately. But can change locations with just a click. Check it out yourself – www.zvents.com – and thanks for sending the shirt!

Speaking of tracking IP addresses, let me go off on a tangent for a minute… I hate it when dating sites (not that I’m an expert on dating sites, mind you) track your IP address to say “Look at the available men/women in Your Town.” Well, living in a town of 1700 where everyone knows everyone, I can guarantee that the pictures of those people shown in those ads do NOT live in my town.  And I bet those same good looking people live in your town, too. End of tangent.