Yes, you would have to be crazy to attempt any serious graphic editing work with Windows Paint, the graphical editor that has been bundled with Windows virtually unchanged since the days of  Windows 3.

However, when I recently upgraded my laptop i had a need for a photo editor fast, and free. I had Photoshop CS2 on my old PC however it was a bit like shooting a gnat with an elephant gun for the type of work I normally do these days. So I did a quick look around as to what was out there and settled on Paint.Net which you can download free from getpaint.net

For such a lightweight program, it really is impressive. The magic wand is great for stripping areas of photos, it has layers so you can mess with stuff and not mess the whole image up.  The undo tool is pretty awesome too when it comes to fixing cockups.

There is also an active community of developers creating plugins and scripts that add functionality.

For all my simple online photo editing and graphic tweaking, this will be my editor of choice.

With so many social communities online, it is easy to see why web sellers with restricted time have been attracted to the simplistic user interface and speediness of the ever-growing community called Twitter.

Twitter is an online social community that permits you to disseminate short messages and updates to those on your list, referred to as ‘followers’. Each time you circulate a message, everybody who’s following you obtains your updates.

Twitter is a very simple network to get involved in, even if you’ve been unsuccessful with other social networking sites in the past.

In fact, one of the most usual enquiries I’ve found from those weighing building a twitter marketing campaign is, “what is so remarkable about twitter?”.

Really, on first glance, twitter appears to be very basic compared to a lot of other microblogging communities.

As a matter of fact, it’s simplistic interface might actually give the feeling that it’s functionality and features are quite confining. But Twitter is not only the most popular microblogging network, it carries a buzz that few other social marketplaces can rival. In fact, due to twitters popularity and sudden growth, dozens of other replicated communities have cropped up, vying for their place in the social marketing scene.

Few have managed to prove themselves as even a viable option and even fewer have been able to generate adequate interest to stay online.

For whatever reason, twitter is the most potent, active and established microblogging network available at this time, and if you aren’t tapping its popularity to progress or advance your business, you’re missing the boat.

Just by concentrating on building a relevant, targeted following, and systematically participating within the twitter community, you will be able to easily build email lists, pre-launch products, promote affiliate products and even conduct all of your marketing research quicker and easier than any other technique online.

Twitter offers an incredible technique of instantly linking to your prospective customers.

You can channel traffic to any site you desire, and even if you are brand new to online marketing and have yet to build an online presence, twitter is an exceptional tool to help you acquire credibility in your market, and build up your brand.

Twitter has proven to be a solid network that continues to grow every day. It’s addictive, it’s diverting and it’s a phenomenal way to tap into your niche markets, discover what people are actively looking to buy, and even keep a pulse on what your competition is up to.

From a personal perspective as someone who failed to see the value in expending my time marketing inside other social communities in the past, twitter has widened my horizons by providing me with an chance to amplify my outreach without being forced to spend hours of my time within the community.

Keyword Country Reviewed

Better Than Other Keyword Tools?

After trying a lot of keyword research tools in the market, I came across Keyword Country…
and it would be safe to say that Keyword Country is the most comprehensive and most complete keyword research tool I have ever seen.

Keyword Country connects to major search engines for keyword research (including Google,
Yahoo, MSN, ASK) and also connects to the industry by performing a deep analysis of the competitor websites. It also steals all the niche keywords your industry happens to be focusing on.

Keyword Country claims that a keyword research done through it’s software can yield up to 230% more traffic than any other keyword research tool available. In this product review, we
will find out how far it lives up to such claims.

Basic Keyword Research (Network Search):

Just type in a keyword and Keyword Country will fetch you a huge list of keywords, which
will be sorted by profitability along with other alternate keywords that your audience is searching for.

This mode of keyword research is database powered. Keyword Country claims to be the world’s biggest keyword
database and displays useful information like:

Google Searches	Yahoo Search Volume
Google Competition (inanchor intitle)	Yahoo Competition
Advertisers on Google	Yahoo Advertisers
Google Max CPC	MSN Search Volume
Google Clicks	MSN Competition
AdSense EPC (estimated)	MSN Advertisers
R/S Ratio (Google, Yahoo, MSN)
KEI Ratio (Google, Yahoo, MSN)

And much more….

Since the data is too much to look at, an advanced search can help you can narrow down the huge keyword lists to get the exact keywords you want.

Watch Network Search Video >>

Besides keywords and their data, the related keywords list is quite useful and you often get new ideas for niches to target and content ideas that can help you tap into the audience that
you are trying to target.

Realtime Keyword Research:

This is another mode of keyword research and is even more powerful than network keyword
research. It not only extracts keywords from major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask but also gets keywords from KC’s Network Search and, most importantly, it reverse
engineers any industry’s top 100 high ranking websites for each keyword in the list. It also extracts niche keywords that those websites are targeting to rank high and tap traffic out of
search engines.

This type of keyword research easily finds new born keywords that industry is using actively but that free keyword tools like those offered by Google, Yahoo and MSN will take around
2-6 months to show and will only show if the keyword is able to make to their top 100 or 150 most searched keyword lists.

Realtime Keyword Research:
• Blocks junk keywords
• Filters duplicate keywords
• Keeps the keyword list laser targeted
• Clusters the keywords in ready-to-go format
• Gives you a great amount of control on your keyword research

Watch Realtime Search Video >>

Stealing Competitor’s Profitable Keywords - Site Analysis

This is a very powerful tool and I couldn’t find anything similar to this tool anywhere on the web that comes even close to KC’s Site Analysis. It lets you practically reverse engineer the
SEO strategies and PPC campaigns of your competitors. It can detect the search engine keywords (paid or non-paid) that are responsible for up to 96% of traffic to any given website.

Just load up your competitor list in Site Analysis and Keyword Country will rip all the keywords that your competitors are using on their pages, along with the HTML tag details in
which they can be found.

For SEO:
• Finds keywords that are common between all top rankers
• Finds the LSI matches they are using
• Finds Low competition / high traffic keywords
• Details of other niches that they are focusing on

For PPC Advertising:
• Analyze landing pages and extract profitable keywords out of them
• Profitable Adwords keywords that they have found profitable after spending thousands of
  dollars on market research

Site analysis even lets you analyze your own content before making it public to search engines to ensure that the keywords for which you are optimizing your content are actually
there in your content.

Watch Site Analysis Video >>

Semantic Keyword Research / Related Search Terms:

This keyword research lists all the LSI terms or semantically related keywords of a given
keyword. These are the keywords that you need to include in your web pages to naturally rank higher on search engines. Keyword results come with ‘Search Volume Estimates’,
which make it easier for you to judge the keywords to go for. Additionally, it also allows you to further dig your keyword deeper in Network Search or Realtime Search.

Watch Site Analysis Video >>

Keywords Research In 32+ Languages:

Keyword Country is the only keyword engine that gets you keywords in French, Spanish,Dutch, German and 32 other languages (and does it the right way). Foreign language
support options enhance your keyword digging reach and allow you to generate your keyword list in languages other than English

This is ideal when your audience speaks multiple languages and lets you target non-English speaking regions.

Misspellings Keyword Research:

Misspellings are the keywords that are cheaper to buy for Adwords campaigns and less competitive to achieve top search engine rankings. Keyword Country covers more than 8
sources of misspellings including mobile search misspellings and popular misspellings of English and 31 other languages. Here you can find many keywords that have less
competition, considerable traffic, are cheaper to buy and easier to target.

Watch Misspellings Video >>

Niche Keywords Brainstorming With Keyword Map

Keyword Map sorts the keywords in a directory structure that helps you find the most
popular niches that are driving traffic to your industry. It helps you uncover popular niches that are related to your main keyword but you are not targeting right now. A good amount of
traffic flows towards these niches and the level of that increases every single month. It gives you excellent ideas on which you can build content and increase your website traffic and
helps you discover many new opportunities. It is ideal when you are looking for new niches to compete in

Watch Keyword Map Video >>

24×7 Customer Service

The customer service offered by Keyword Country is excellent. I can personally recommend it given the fact that I had some questions to ask and all were answered fully and in simple
language. I accessed the Live Chat option but there were several ways in which I could have contacted Keyword Country to find out exactly what I needed to know quickly and efficiently. I
didn’t have to waste any time before using the services they offered and increasing my income. If only all providers of software services like this one went above and beyond the call of duty as
much! I am most definitely satisfied with the high level of service and would heartily recommend it.

Summary:

So what did I end up with after using Keyword Country?

Strengths:

• Largest keyword database
• Digs deeper into industry for keywords
• Supports keyword research in 32+ languages
• Shows lots of useful data for each keyword
• Steals competitors’ profitable keywords (legally!)
• LSI / Semantic keyword research
• Misspelling keyword research
• Exports keywords in ready to go format
• Excellent brainstorming tools

Weak Aspects:

• Owing to detailed keyword research, it may become slow at times
• Your computer IP may be temporarily banned by some online keyword tools for heavy web crawling

Keyword Country is the most complete keyword tool in the market and I feel that this tool is
well worth the investment. I can honestly say that Keyword Country has quickly become my new first choice tool for researching keyword phrases. I now use Keyword Country and my
keyword research ability has never, ever been so strong. I have also used several other programs but the Keyword Country is what I would recommend to anyone. This tool is
dynamite!

Get Access to Keyword Country
Watch Videos of Keyword Country

Compare Keyword Country with other Keyword Tools

Here’s another competition for you to get your writing sticks out for.  Lyrical Passions is a poetry ezine that runs frequent competitions with small entry fees and cash prizes. Scam? Maybe, but it is cheap to enter, guess you need to try it and form your own opinion. The current competition is for a Tanka Poem. Dunno what that is, if you don’t either, try your favourite search engine.

Anyway, here is the blurb from their site:

Only previously unpublished tanka poems accepted. Seeking high quality tanka poetry. Please type “World TANKA” in subject line to avoid deletion. Enter as often as you like by email (no attachments please) or by snail mail and you can make 1 total payment by paypal, US check or US money order. Early snail mail submissions from outside the US will be held until contest opens.

Entry Fee: $2.00/ tanka     or      5 tanka for $7.00

Email: LyricalHitmakers@aol.com

Winners and Honorable Mentions will be posted on website.

Like the headline says, I only just heard about this one, and there is only a few days to go. Aside from the monetary prizes, it looks like a good way to get your name out there. Go take a look at the blurb you need to join the forum and submit your work as a post. Here is the email I got:

Reminder:  Smashwords is sponsoring a free writing contest in conjunction
with Editor Unleashed. The deadline for posting your entry is June 14.  Simply
write 1,000 words or less, post it to the Editor Unleashed forum, and win $500
if you’re the Grand Prize Winner.  39 “Editor’s Choice” winners will each receive
$25.  Winners will be selected based on a combination of reader votes (starting
June 15, you can promote your entries on your blog, social networks and websites)
and an independent panel of judges (Maria Schneider + professional literary agents
and editors).

At last check, there were about 150 entries, so the odds of landing in the top
40 to win a cash prize are reasonably good if you’re an excellent writer.

I’m not a judge and I have no influence over the outcome so don’t send me your
entry or try to lobby me.  :)

All 40 winners will be published in a Smashwords ebook anthology that will be
available for free download to anyone.

For complete instructions, visit http://editorunleashed.com/2009/05/18/flash-fiction-40-contest-launch-today/

Thanks to Maria Schneider of Editor Unleashed for originating the idea for this
contest and managing it.  Also thanks to Kat Meyer of Next Chapter Communications
for creating the logo and award buttons for the contest.