R.A.G.E. Media

Due to increased spam and security vulnerabilities on PickAFig, the site has just been updated.

Unfortunately, a lot of cosmetic changes have been made. While we re-construct the visual appearance of the site, please continue to utilize the site and email any bugs to sales@dyinglight.com.

Aquinas and More Catholic Books, the Internet’s largest Catholic bookstore, has added PickAFig voting buttons to many of the items in their store.

PickAFig users and Aquinas and More customers can now recommend books and products to others with ease, as I have done with this recommendation of Christopher West’s Theology of the Body for Beginners.

When “picking” a product, be sure to take the time to write why you recommend that particular product or book.

If you happen upon a product that you like that has already been “picked” you can simply add your vote!

Books and products can be posted in PickAFig to either the category the product belongs or to the “Books and Products” category.

Aquinas and More, the largest Catholic bookstore on the Internet, has added PickAFig voting buttons to their blog and their articles.

Their site is well worth checking out, as the articles cover several common questions and the blog provides valuable insights.

Catholic retailers and suppliers would do well to get familiar with Aquinas and More’s offerings, as they often share information crucial to the industry.

If you haven’t noticed, CathoilcExchange has added PickAFig buttons to their articles, such as this one.

Now you can easily submit your favorite articles from CatholicExchange to the Catholic Social Bookmarking site!

If you haven’t found your way over to PickAFig.com, the Catholic Social Bookmarking Site, I highly suggest you take the time to check it out if you are interested in increasing the readership of your blog or website.

Here are a few tips for using the new tool, which also apply for websites like Digg and del.icio.us - although those sites are not Catholic and it can be difficult to get noticed there.

1) Submit your own stories to PickAFig. Also, vote for your own stories if someone else submits them. There’s nothing wrong with self-promoting, since you can only vote once per article anyway. Besides, how can new readers find you if you don’t tell them on a directory like PickAFig that you have content worth reading?

2) Put a PickAFig button on your blog posts. If you put a PickAFig button on your blog template, it will automatically show on each post. It serves as a reminder to your readers to vote for your story and/or submit it, and it shows off your more popular posts at a glance.

3) Don’t pass up the free incoming link. To get better rankings in the search engines, you need to have quality incoming links. That is, links that are relevant to your content from other sites that are similar in content to your own site. PickAFig, being faithfully Catholic and pro-life, can provide those links… but you or your readers have to submit your stories!

4) Vote on other stories, and discuss other posts. Your profile name and link shows when you vote or comment on other stories, and if you comment enough you’ll show up on the “Top Comments” list. Your profile should provide a link back to your site, and will also include links to stories you submitted.

Also, this is free networking with other writers; if someone sees that you voted for their story, they may be curious about what it is you write and submit. Thus, they will be introduced to your content.

5) Get over Writer’s Block. Can’t think of a topic? Browse PickAFig and see what everyone else is talking about. You may have missed a tidbit of news, or get inspired by someone else’s post.

6) Recruit more PickAFig members. The more people that participate on PickAFig, the more people will see your posts on the site. Consider browsing Catholic directories such as catholicblogs.blogspot.com, Saint Blog’s Parish, or stblogs.net and finding posts you like, and submitting them on PickAFig. Then, let the blogger know that you liked their post so much you submitted it on PickAFig.

Many of us who run Catholic websites and blogs rely on Google Adsense to generate some income to continue our work.

Unlike other websites, though, we have to be careful about what shows up on our sites. And as careful as we can be, there is always the chance that someone’s heretical or outright anti-Catholic or pro-abortion ads will show up on our sites.

Brian McDaniel ran into an issue where an organization promoting women priests was advertising through his adsense links, for instance.

So here’s my idea: let’s put together a blacklist for Google Adsense that we can all pool our bad urls to minimize the effectiveness of these ads.

To add sites to your blacklist:
1)Log into Google Adsense
2)Click the “Adsense Setup” tab
3) Under that tab in the navigation bar there will be a link to the “competitive ad filter”
4) Add the urls of the ads you don’t want to see.

Here is my blacklist so far - please post any other urls you see on Catholic sites (such as PickAFig) here and together we can blackball heretical advertisers targeting Catholics.

The BlackList

americanprogress.org
dontblamemeivoted4kerry.com
earlyprivate.com
workingassetswireless.com
www.cafepress.com
www.choiceisgoodtshirts.com
www.diabetes.org
www.directrelief.org
www.illinoisabortion.com
www.ldsplanet.com
www.msaa.com
www.sspxsingles.com
unicefusa.org
unitedway.org
nbc.edu
scientology.org
mostholyfamilymonastery.com
howmuchtime.org/
lifechurch.tv
cacradicalgrace.org
romancatholicwomenpriests.org
ivoted4obamatee.com
KnightsforObama.org

(cafePress is on there since some anti-catholic and pro-abortion ads from cafepress stores were showing up. A few rotten apples in this case spoiled the whole barrel.)

Please post other urls in the comments section of this post.

Updated 8/9/08. Shockingly, I even found a protestant church targeting colelge students by offering “Mass online!”

To help spread the word and reward early adopters, we’re giving away a free copy of the Digital Catholic Library on CD-ROM (sold on our site for $30) to Bloggers and Webmasters of Catholic or Pro-Life Sites that add a PickAFig Voting button to their site’s template.

Here are the terms:

1) Your site must discuss Catholic and/or Pro-Life topics on a somewhat regular basis.

2) If your site is a blog, you must have at least 3 months of posts on a regular basis, or a Google Page Rank of at least 1. Websites must have at least a Page Rank of 1. We might be able to make exceptions, but we need to be sure that your site is not too new. Of course, adding a PickAFig button can help your traffic and page rank…

3) You must put a PickAFig voting button (from http://www.pickafig.com/button) on your template so that it shows up on each post and/or page. If you need help, we can help you get it put in.

4) You must agree to keep the code in place for at least 30 days. We’re doing this on the honor system, but if we do see it taken down sooner you will be invoiced for the CD-ROM.

5) Quantities are limited, and this is only offered for a limited time.

6) Once your code is placed, email us at sales@dyinglight.com with your website address, your name, and your mailing address. We’ll send out your CD within 6 weeks at the most. You can also email questions to that address if you need help getting the code placed in your site.

We hope that you’ll find PickAFig and the voting buttons to be a useful tool to boosting your sites traffic and popularity!

Frustrated by the fact that spiritual stories tend not to attract too much attention on Digg, or worse, receive negative votes from those who object to religion in general?

Well, now there is a site for Catholic and Pro-Life Social Bookmarks - PickAFig.com!

What’s in the name? Well, imagine the internet as a wilderness… We’re taught to judge by the fruits (Matthew 7:16), so if you find a good site for Catholics while browsing the internet be sure to “Pick It” so your fellow Catholics can find “good fruit.”

You can add buttons to your blog or site to make it easy for your readers to submit or vote for your content.