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Did you ever feel the need to make the internet a less anonymous place.

That is what avatars, often referred to as gravatars, are for.
Your avatar is your profile picture only that is not limited to a single account at a forum, a blog, a social networking platform or alike. Your avatar follows you on the internet. It can be recognized by others at all places where you actively participated by leaving a comment, making an entry, posting an article etc.

There are only two major requirements.
The first being that you have to create such an avatar image and publish it on the net.
The second requirement is that the platforms and websites you choose to participate on need to have avatars or gravatars enabled.

If that is the case you can start making the net a bit less anonymous.

Being a regular participant on the net you should have your own avatar image. You leave your footprints on the interet and make it easier for user sharing your interests to follow your lead.
More importantly, adding your profil picture to your content, be it an article, a blog post, a comment etc. reminds you and others that the internet and the quality material found on websites is created by humans for other humans. The purpose of the internet is not to create value for machines.

Did you ever wonder what the difference between avatars and gravatars is? Which one should you use and why?

Avatars and gravatars are the same thing. An avatar is an icon or a symbol. It is used to make the recognition of youself, your company, your group etc. easier.
A gravatar is an avatar created by setting up an account at gravatar.com and uploading an image to it. Gravatar.com is a service provided by Automattic the company that is also responsible for the creation of Wordpress.

Setting up your account at gravatar.com couldn’t be easier.
All You need to do is to visit gravatar’s website and click the Sign up now! link.
You don’t even have to be afraid of wasting a lot of time filling out forms and providing your personal data. All gravatar asks from you is your email address and there is a good reason for it.

Gravatar images are linked to your email address. Whenever you use the address you provided at gravatar.com posting a comment to an article, your email address will be recognized and your avatar will be displayed.

After gravatar’s relaunch even the use of multiple email addresses and gravatar images is possible. That gives you the freedom to use a specific image for one of your interests and other ones for other topics. You don’t have to work with more than one account.

How do you create an appropriate avatar image?

Avatars have a standardized size. The default setting is at 80×80 pixels. The largest version you should optimize your image for is 128×128pixels.
Keep in mind that it always causes better results to provide a larger image that is downsized than a small image that is enlarged.
This graphic shows you the different sizes most commonly used for avatars. They are 128×128, 80×80, 48×48, 40×40, 32×32, and 16×16 pixels.

The sizes 80×80 pixels (gravatars default size) and 40×40 pixels are the most common avatar sizes among Wordpress blogs.

After you have decided which image to use you should open the image file with photoshop or any other image editor software for resizing. Cut your image to be a square and resize it to 128×128 pixels. Store the image and go to gravatar.com to create an account or login to your already existing account.

All you need to do now is to upload the image and activate it for an email address. You will find all the options in the dropdown menu.

A nice feature is that gravatar.com allows you to rate your profil image. That way you can assure that your chosen images is only seen by a suitable audience. It is up to the website’s owner / admin to allow avatars of specific ratings.

Why isn’t your newly created avatar image displayed?

So far I have not encountered many problems with this service. Yet, there are some reasons why your image might not displayed next to the entry you just made at a blog or any other platform.

One reason could be that you were simply a bit too fast and the gravatar server is not ready with processing your account information. Normally this only takes seconds but you should allow it some minutes to complete its tasks. Simply reload the website where your avatar should be published after a few minutes.

If your avatar still isn’t visible you should check that you used the same email address for your entry as you did for your gravatar.com account. If you don’t, gravatar can’t establish the connection between your entry and your account.

A third reason for your avatar not to show up is that images with your chosen rating aren’t allowed by the website’s owner. You can’t influence this. The only way to work around it would be to use a second email address linked with an appropriate avatar image.

If you double checked that all of the above was done correctly but your image still isn’t there it might be time to find out whether the website you want to leave your footprint on actually has gravatars enabled. A lot of Wordpress themes have gravatars enabled by default but this is not mandatory.

I set up my own gravatar image and tend to change it from time to time. I recommend that you do the same and go to gravatar.com to create your avatar image. It is fun to see the people you connect with over the internet.

I’d like to start a little experiment with this article. If were inspired to create an avatar or were a gravatar user already I’d like to motivate you to leave a comment to this post to let me see who you are and start am avatar collection.

You’ll help making the internet a less anonymous place.

Making money online is widely discussed in almost every online business forum. The approach I have made my own is to start by giving.

This is not only a path that I believe will lead to success. It is also very rewarding to see your work and the value you create for the benefit of others being really appreciated.

Too many people focus on what they wish to receive in return for all the effort put into their projects, even before they have actually started doing business.
Receiving a reward for you efforts is the last thing you should concentrate on. Once you manage to come up with real value for others the receiving will eventually start all by itself.

Your success is a matter of whether you have something to give that will be appreciated. If what you do it actually contributing to the lives of others they will gladly give something back to you. You will not even have to ask for it. It may be money as a sign of appreciation or they will simple start promoting you be letting other people know about your offers.

A couple of days ago I found an online tool making it really easy for your website visitors to show their appreciation for what you do and reward you. This tool is all about appreciating the small signs instead of making money on the large scale.

ScratchBack simple allows your visitors to tip you if they like what you have to offer. It only takes a couple of clicks to tip you some dollars. What they get in return is a link from
ScratchBack’s TopSpot widget at your site to any other web-destination they wish to share or promote.

On the right side you can see this tool in action. If you decide to test it right here at my site I’d be glad to have your links in my TopSpots.

If you are looking for a way to make a lot of money on the net in not time, ScratchBack is not what you are looking for. It is a nice tool to make some dollars by letting people show that they value your work and wish to support you.

All you need to do to get started is to sign up for a free account at ScratchBack. Once you have it verified and are logged in you can simply click the ‘Create new Scratch/Back widget’ link. You will be asked to complete a form and choose one of the existing designs. At the end of this procedure you will be given some lines of code to include into your websites source code.

Upload your modified source code and reload your website. Your TopSpot widget will already be there for your visitors to start giving back. They can do so by following the link at the bottom of the widget. After setting the link they wish to place among your TopSpots they can tip you with a preset amount using PayPal.

The money made through the
ScratchBack service will not pay for your house or car.
It will make you feel good by letting you know that your doing is appreciated. If you wish to share that feeling you can also reinvest into tipping someone else.
 
 
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