In the meantime, here are some articles I read this week that I think you will enjoy!

• The Social Media Marketing List – 45 Things You Are Probably Not Doing – This is an excellent list for refocusing your social media efforts now that you have time to actually be social again.
• Freelance Folder’s Are You A Good Sports Freelancer
• Jen Goode wrote an excellent piece on acceptable behavior (and what is NOT) at professional conferences – it has definitely touched a nerve with many people in the industry.
• Looking to rev up your SEO prowess – How about these Top 5 Books on SEO ?
• 7 R’s of Good Management and Leadership by Evgeni Prussakov is another must read.

Have a great week!

WordPress 2.8 is out and I just did the upgrade without any issues. If you haven’t upgraded your WordPress installation, DO IT NOW, your site will thank you.

And with that out of the way, here are some links I think you will find useful this week:

• WordPress 2.8 and 10 Things You Should Know Before/After You Upgrade from Web Design Booth
• 9 Proven Headline Formulas that Sell Like Crazy at Copyblogger
• Problogger shows how Simple Changes to Your Adsense Layout Can Increase Revenue
• Chris Cree has a great list of 21 WordPress Plugins to Make Your Life Easier
• The State of WordPress Theme Options Pages from Pro Blog Design
• Randa Clay shares her excellent post on the basics of going from a Photoshop Design to a WordPress Layout

Have a great weekend!

• Daily Blog Tips: When and How Will Google Index my Website
• ProBlogger: Sign up for 31 Days to Build a Better Blog
• Drew’s Marketing Minute: The Marketing Magic Bullet Does Not Exist
• Sparkplugging: The Three Kinds of Sponsored Conversations – Paid, Trade and Straight
• Sparkplugging: Getting on the Today Show Thanks to Twitter
• Brian Gardner: Shades of Blue – Free WordPress Theme
• Vanseodesign: 5 Reasons Design Matters to SEO
• WebDesignerDepot: 10 Excellent Tips for Designers to Improve their Income

Have a great weekend and stay tuned for some new posts this coming week.

How about a few quick links in the mean time?

• Want to connect with others in your niche on Twitter? Try Just Tweet It – a directory of Twitterers broken down by interests.
• 23 Tips to Take Your Business to the Next Level
• Are You Being Misled by How Much Traffic Your Website is Getting?
• How to Grow a Blog

Enjoy the last few days of the holiday and welcome 2009.

First of all, do you want to learn 97 ways to drive traffic to your site from someone who really knows what they are talking about? If so, sign up for Dawud Miracle’s teleclass on creative ways to drive traffic to your site – but hurry, the class is next week!

In the words of wisdom department, David Airey reminds us that we should not be seeking praise, rather we should be asking for criticism. After all, how can you move forward or improve if you don’t know where you are missing the target.

You can get a free download of the book The Art and Science of CSS just by following sitepointdotcom on Twitter – read Digital Inspiration for all the details.

Looking for some fun new Photoshop Brushes, Laughing Lion Design is featuring a whole series of them this week.

YouSendIt has always been my first choice for moving large files on the web. They have taken a great product and made it even better – now you can send large files through their Microsoft Office Add-In. In otherwords, if you need to send a large PowerPoint presentation to a potential client, you can do so from PowerPoint using the add-in. Cool.

Have a great weekend!

• Interviewing a Potential Link Developer – Sugarrae goes into detail on the qualities she looks for when hiring a link developer. It is an interesting article from many aspects and would be relevant for hiring a virtual assistant or other web pros.
• At eXtra For Every Publisher, David reminds us of the importance and reasons why you should take every opportunity to deep link into your archive posts when producing new content. The short of it – not only is it good for SEO, it encourages readers to stay on your site and get more of your content.
• On a similar note, Chris G shows you how to make the most of your internal links, common linking mistakes and how to automate the process, too.
• Did you notice during the Olympic coverage that VISA had a congratulatory message for Michael Phelps queued up and ready to go right after his historic medal winning performance? And did you notice that the same commercial featured Morgan Freeman (who had just been in a car accident and was having surgery)? The team at VISA was certainly thinking ahead. Anticipating upcoming events and planning your link strategy can pay off big time. (I was able to do something similar on one of my other sites – thanks to the success of the US gymnasts and the fact that there is a tour planned now)

Do you know of any other recent posts about linking that are worth sharing? Let me know!

• Fellow July birthday blogger, Chris G, is having a birthday giveaway of his own! He is giving away some great tools for web publishers – you have until August 4th to enter.
• Freelance Folder turns one and is hosting their own giveaway contest too. Personally, I would love to win that Eee 900 they are giving away, but I’d be satisfied with any of the tools.
• If you are a web designer or web publisher, it is time to let your voice be heard in the A List Apart Survey for People Who Make Websites 2008.
• There is still time to register for Wendy Piersall’s Diversify Your Income Workshop. The first session is July 30 and I guarantee you will learn a lot from the course. Wendy has poured her heart and soul into building a way to share her knowledge and the knowledge of other web pros in order to help other small businesses.

• I am very happy to announce that Wendy Piersall and her team at SparkplugU have officially opened registration for their first series of affordable, online business courses for small business with topics such as Diversifying your Income, Podcasting, Starting a Blog Network, Home Office Organization and there are so many more to come.
• Brian Gardner has outdone himself again! He just released another fabulous theme in the Revolution family called Revolution City. The theme is sharp, flexible and oh, so powerful. LOVE IT!
• Performancing has launched a new ad network which gives web publishers yet another opportunity to make money by displaying high quality ads on their site. Take a look at the Performancing Ad network and see if you are a good match or find relevant sites to purchase advertising from.
• PepperJam Networks is offering a sign up bonus of $10 for all new publishers through the end of the month. The program features a good variety of high quality merchants to use for your own affiliate programs. (Read more of why I use PepperJam Networks)
• DivaMarketing has a wonderful interview with one of my absolute favorite bloggers, Liz Strauss, who I consider the Queen of Conversation! Go read it.
• Congrats to my dear friend and dynamite designer, Randa Clay, on the arrival of her new baby boy (she has a much better excuse for infrequent posting than I do).
• And you still have two days to enter my birthday bash giveaway and win some really cool and useful prizes!! Go. Now. Enter!

• Wake Up Later’s 10 Absolute “Nos” For Freelancers
• 32 Important Search Marketing Acronyms
• I love this as a quick reference – Font Tester’s List of Web Safe Fonts
• Digital Revolution has a nice list of 21 Resources for Freelance Designers
• DesignAdaptations reminds us that while so many of our favorite resources are free, there are some that we would actually be willing to pay for and she shares her list.
• How to Increase Your Sales Right Now from Dawud Miracle
• Small Business Mentor’s tongue in cheek post on 10 Excuses for Compulsive Email Checkers - are you one of them?

Enjoy your day!

• Deb at Freelance Writing Jobs asked if I would give her a guest post this month. Since her site is about writing and mine is about design, I wrote about a few of the differences in for writing for the web vs. writing for print.
• Even if you are not a non-profit, 47Media’s Non-Profit’s Guide to Websites is an excellent article.
• Dawud Miracle wants to know if Email Marketing is Dead? What’s your take?
• I like ChrisG’s post on Building Your Online Brand with Social Media Tools.
• By way of Laughing Lion Design, I found the link to 100 Photoshop Tutorials at 3D Total. Definitely bookmark-worthy.
• Pearsonified is back with a great post on How You Can Use WordPress Functions to Run a Smarter Blog. Note to self – read and re-read.
• Are you interested in buying domain names? Personally I have quite the collection and would have loved to have had this guidance earlier on. Digital Inspiration has some very sound advice on buying domains.
• Just for fun! Do you love fonts? Are you good at identifying them? Take this quick quiz from I Love Typography and see how font savvy you are.
• And while we are at it – 15 Signs You May Be a Geek. Wendy at Sparkplugging shared this link to the geek quiz and I am proud to say that we are both very geeky – a cool 13 out of 15 geek points.