Blogging Arena

Flash Animated Label Tags Cloud Widget For Blogger

2010-03-06T13:53:00.000-08:00

Blogger blogging platform by default gives you the ability to add Labels for your post, so you can add and display your blog Labels at your sidebar.

But because we all want our blogs look great for our visitors, we need to give this labels good style,

So now, we’ll learn how to add amazing tag/labels cloud widget to our sidebar instate of the normal one that presented by blogger.

We’ll do it in few steps:

1. Log into your blogger account.

2. Go to dashboard >> layout >> Edit HTML

3. Find the next code

&ampamp;ampampampampltbr /&ampgt;

You can find it by clicking ctrl+f in your browser.

And past the next code just after the above code.

&ampamp;ampampampampltbr /&ampgt;

4. Click save template and now check your Blog. And enjoy.

Hints.
- You can change it’s location at your side bar by going to dashboard >> layout
and move it up or down.

- You can change the widget width and height by editing this part in the code.

width="250" height="200"

How to add Big Xmas Social Buttons to your Wordpress Blog

2010-03-05T16:26:00.000-08:00

As the Christmas comes ,many bloggers may want to add Big Xmas Social Bookmarking Buttons into their blog posts.At the same time,with eye catching big social buttons,you visitors much likely will bookmark your posts. In this short tutorial,I will show you how you can do it within five minutes.

First download this plugin from Wordpress Plugin Directory

Download

Then upload this plugin to your blog’s plugin directory and activate the plugin.

Next,download Big Xmas Social Button,these are 256×256 px Digg,Delicious,Facebook,Blinklist,Reddit, Stumbleupon and Technorati buttons

Download

Then,extract files from Icons.rar folder.The next this you must do is to login Cpanel/File Manager,find the site that you want to add button, then wp-content/plugins/socialfluid/images . Then,just upload the files from icons.rar in to the images folder of socialfluid plugin. It will ask you the files already exist in images folder,overwrite it,click Yes

Then,return to Wordpress Dashboard,click SocialFluid under Settings tab,check the social sites of uploaded files,set the size of icons to 48×48 px.

Now,you have Xmas Social Buttons.Happy Blogging!

Add Meta Tag in Blogger

2010-03-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

Meta tags are Simple HTML codes that can describe various factors of your site to the search engine spiders .These factors include web page title ,Description,keywords , language and many others . Though many blogs says that the meta tags don't have any value now , i strongly believe that they can affect SERPS in Google ,Yahoo and Bing . In this case i will help you to add meta tag in a Blogger blog.

Go to your Blogger template Layout and Edit HTML .

Fill the following example meta tag with your details

<meta name="Title" content="Your blog title" />
<meta name="Description" content="this is the description of your Blogger blog" />
<meta name="Keywords" content="Your keywords separated by comma" />
<meta name="Author" content="Author Name" />
<meta name="Language" content="Language of Website" />
<meta name="Copyright" content="© Copyright information" />
<meta name="Revisit-After" content="1 Days" />
<meta name="Robots" content="All" />

Now we are about to add meta tag in Blogger.

Find out the <head> tag and paste your details exactly after that selection.

Create Go to Top of Page Link in Blogger

2010-03-02T13:45:00.000-08:00

If you have lot of posts in a label or achieve page , its essential that you provide an easy navigation to the top portion of the page without making your visitors to scroll a lot .

Here's how you can do that.

Open your Blogger template's layout section and select edit HTML .

Move on to the bottom portion of your template and find out </body> .

Copy and paste the following HTML code above that section.

a href='#' style='display:scroll;position:fixed;bottom:5px;right:1px;' title='move on to top of page'><img src='http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/710/homepa2.gif'/></a>

Now save your template and preview the top of page link . Make necessary changes by editing the HTML code .

"Horizontal Scrolling Recent Posts" for Your Blog

2010-03-01T13:42:00.000-08:00

Found this hack to make a horizontal scrolling recent post at IdeasBubble, tested it at Star Home Improvements. Before you implement this, read this caution note.

If you want this horizontal scrolling "recent posts" just below your blog Header, first you got to add extra "Add a gadget" to the blog Header section (more specific instructions at Adding "graphic" to blog Header).

When you have this extra "Add a gadget" (gadget were previously called page element), sign into Dashboard, click LAYOUT then the "Add a gadget" in the Head section. Chose the HTML/JavaScript gadget:

then copy-paste this script into the HTML/Javascript gadget:

<script style="text/javascript" src="http://dreamydonkey.googlepages.com/scrolling_blogger_posts.js"> </script><script style="text/javascript"> var nMaxPosts = 15; var sBgColor; var nWidth; var nScrollDelay = 175; var sDirection="left"; var sOpenLinkLocation="N"; var sBulletChar="•"; </script> <script style="text/javascript" src="http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=json-in-script&callback=RecentPostsScrollerv2"> </script>

Replace http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/ with you actual blog URL, preview, and if satisfied, save.

Caution

I tried varying some of the parameters (attributes) like changing

nScrollDelay = 175;

nScrollDelay = some number;

and got erratic results, among which were getting error messages when trying to access the edited blog like this one: Recreation and sport (blog only displayed by clicking OK in the error message. Would do more testing later if I find the time) (Update: managed to get rid of that irritating error message by changing templates, and finally by going to LAYOUT > EDIT HTML > click Revert widget template to default at the bottom of the page, publishing a few posts. Don't know exactly what cleared the problem. Will do some more experimenting later).

Change Your Blog’s Hosting, Domain Name or Directory

2010-02-03T17:57:00.000-08:00

Moving your blog to a different area on the web

It doesn’t matter your moving your blog to a different folder on your domain or if your moving your blog to a totally different domain name due to branding or whatever, the process of moving your blog is the same.

The whole process can be dauting to a blogger who has more experience in writing that running a website. It needn’t be though.

The first thing you need to do is back everything up. Sure you can risk it but it’s something you really shouldnt ever do. Whenever you are changing something major on your site or moving files about you should always, always back up.

Ok, so heres what to do first :

Back up your files – Most blogs allow you to manually edit your theme/design via the blog admin area. So if you do edit files a lot online please make sure all the files on your pc match the files which are online. This means either downloading them from your server or copying them from your admin panel to the files on your pc.
Backup your database – Most blog scripts allow you to back up your entries via the blog admin panel. However, i would strongly advise you to also back up via your hosting panel as well. If your using cpanel you will be able to do this through phpmyadmin. For phpmyadmin, you select your blogs database, go to the export tab, select all and then export in sql format. There are way too many blogging scripts and way too many different kinds of hosting panels for me to cover it here. If your unsure about how to do this though, please drop by the forums and start a thread about it and i’ll do my best to help.

You should now have everything backed up so in the event of anything going wrong you can reupload your database and everything should be fine. However, your blog should not be affected as you aren’t going to touch your live site at all.

Whether you are moving your blog to a different domain or if your just moving it to a different area of your domain, you will need to set up a 301 redirect but i will address this later in the post.

Moving your blog to a different directory

I have noticed a lot of bloggers who install their blog in a sub directory called blog or blogs or something similar. Sometime later, they wish they had installed it in the root directory of their domain. One of my commentators has did this. Leeroy from Green Llama installed his blog at www.greenllama.net/blog/ instead of www.greenllama.net. I’ll use his site as an example

The root of the domain redirects to the sub directory /blog/ which is where wordpress is installed. For me, its always best to install the blog in the root of the domain for branding and search engine purposes etc. If someone moves their blog to www.greenllama.net he may experience a short change in page rank and search engine traffic but i dont believe this will affect Leeroy too much as both his blog page and his home domain have a page rank 4.

So what does Leeroy need to do?

First thing he needs to do is upload all of his wordpress files to his home directory using an FTP program (It is possible to copy all the files via unix commands using a console but ill assume that most bloggers arent too familar with unix). Note, i strongly recommend Leeroy not to touch the /blog/ directory until everything is moved.

So his wp-content directory will have been copied from www.greenllama.net/blog/wp-content/ to www.greenllama.net/wp-content/ and so on and so on (make sure file permissions are the same).

The great thing about moving a blog to somewhere else on the same domain name is that you don’t need to touch the database (backing up is still advised incase somethings up). If he uploaded all the files correctly then www.greenllama.net should show his blog as its accessing the same database as the config file in the blog sub directrory. All he needs to do now is go into the admin panel via www.greenllama.net/blog/ and change the url of the site to www.greenllama.net. Hey presto! The site should now be working fine on the main domain. Note, he would also have to move the redirect from the home directory so that visitors aren’t redirected to the blog domain anymore.

The only thing left to do is amend the .htaccess file so that files are redirected.

Moving your blog to a different domain
This section is also applicable to moving your blog to a new server

Note : I will assume in this section that the reader owns the domain name the blog is moving to and the one it used to be on.

As you know, i moved bloggingtips at the start of this week from bloggingtips.org to bloggingtips.com. Since i own my own server the whole move took me about 5 mins to complete.

Heres what i did :

I changed my hosting account from bloggingtips.org to bloggingtips.com. My server automatically updated the domain name servers for the account
I updated my blog to show bloggingtips.com as the url and not the org domain
I set up a new hosting account for the domain bloggingtips.org
I then uploaded an .htaccess file to the root of the domain to redirect all domains to their new url
I then updated all references to the .org domain on the blog to .com

The last action took me about 10 mins but the actual process of moving the site was quick, easy and painless. Clearly, to move a blog to a new domain you would have to own your own server and for the majority of you reading this you will not have this and will instead be on a Virtual Hosting Account (Usually known as a VPS = Virtual Private Server).

So for most of you out there you will need to do it the old fashioned way ie. you need to upload all files to the new domain and then sort out the database so that all your posts etc is transferred. Again, make sure that file permissions are set correctly and make sure the config file has the correct details for your new url and database.

Now different blog scripts work in different ways when it comes to restoring a database. With some blogs you just need to upload the files and the new database and your good to go. Not all blog scripts work in this way. With some blog scripts you need to do a fresh install and then import the entries. If this is the case, you should backup the files using the export method of your blog script and then import the entries to the fresh installation. Check the documentation for the blog script you use for more details (again, please start a thread in our forums if your struggling with it)

Setting up the redirect
Note : if you are just moving to a new server you do not need to setup a redirect

The 301 redirect is the search engine friendly way to tell search engines that a page or pages has moved permanently to new place on the internet. All you need to do is place a .htaccess file on your server to forward pages. Make sure you place the file in the directory where pages need to be redirected. For example, i had to place the file in the root directory but Leeroy would have to place the file in the /blog/ directory.

Please note that your host needs to be on apache for this to work. You can also do redirects using php, asp etc however htaccess is the search engine friendly way of doing it.

Here is the code i placed in the .htaccess file to redirect bloggingtips.org to bloggingtips.com :
Options +FollowSymLinks RewriteEngine on RewriteRule (.*) http://www.bloggingtips.com/$1 [R=301,L]

I hope this guide has helped the process of moving host or moving your blog less daunting. However, i stress that different blog scripts work in different ways so please consult the documentation on the home site of the script you use.

If you need any tips or help with this kind of thing please leave a comment or start a thread in our forums and ill do my best to help.

Good luck

Written by Kevin Muldoon

How to create a favicon

2010-02-02T17:33:00.000-08:00

A favicon (short for “favorite icon”) is that small icon displayed on the browser URL bar, on the bookmark lists and, for certain browsers, on the navigation tabs. While a favicon will not drastically change your traffic it will certainly improve the look of your blog, adding a unique icon and making sure that readers are able to individuate your site inside bookmark lists easily. Below you will find a step by step guide to create a favicon.

1) General Guidelines

A favicon is nothing more than a 16 pixels by 16 pixels icon, and the file has a .ico extension. As you can imagine it is pretty difficult to put complex graphics in such a small frame. When designing your favicon, therefore, you should concentrate on simple images or letters. Make sure that the color of the favicon reflects the color of your website, so that readers will be able to associate the icon with the site.

2) Using Photoshop (skip this point if you are not using Photoshop)

Adobe Photoshop is probably the best alternative for a well-designed favicon. The standard Photoshop can not handle .ico, so the first thing to do is to download a Windows Icon Photoshop Plugin (you can download it here).

Once you have the Plugin installed you should create a 64 x 64 pixels canvas and start playing with it. After you are done designing the favicon you will need to resize the image. Go to the Image Size menu and click Resample Image. This process will make sure that the image will not blur as you scale it down. Finally just save the 16 x 16 image as “favicon.ico”.

3) Using MS Paint and web tools

Favicons are very simple image icons, meaning that even Microsoft Paint should be enough to create a good looking one. The easiest way is to create a 32 x 32 pixels JPEG image with Paint and then use the online service “Favicon from Pics“ to convert the JPEG image into a favicon.ico file.

4) Uploading the favicon.ico file

Once you are done with the favicon.ico file you should upload it to your site. Just make sure you place it in the root directory, which is the directory where the index file is located.

5) Changing your header

The final step is to change your header, which is the code that goes between the <head> and </head> tags. All you need to do is to add the following line:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />

Notice that this code will only work if the favicon.ico is located in the root directory.

6) Testing

Everything should be in place now, just open your browser and point to your site to check whether the favicon is appearing or not. Bookmark the site and open a couple of tabs to see how the icon is looking, if you do not like it just go back to the drawing board.

by Daniel Scocco

Linking Inside a Page

2010-02-01T17:27:00.000-08:00

Most bloggers aren’t trained webmasters, but manage to pick up enough HTML to be dangerous along the way. Occasionally, though, this haphazard approach leaves a gap in our expertise that needs filling. For example, not all bloggers are aware of HTML fragments.

A fragment is a name that you apply to an element of a web page. For example, you might identify a heading as a fragment named “heading1″. Doing this is useful because you can then link to that section of the page, allowing your users to instantly jump to that spot. You’ve probably seen this sort of thing in tables of contents on long articles or in “Return to the Top” links. These are examples of fragments in action.

To create a fragment, all you do is add id=”fragment-name” to the HTML enclosing the element to be identified. This could be a heading, a paragraph, an arbitrary span, or whatever else is used to identify that spot. Suppose you want to create a fragment around a specific paragraph. The code would look like this:

<p id="fragment-name">Text of the paragraph...</p>

To link to a fragment, you create a normal link to the web page and add #fragment-name to the end of the link.

<a href="http://www.domain-name.com/page-name.php#fragment-name"> link text</a>

The W3C’s article on links in HTML documents is both a perfect example and a handy resource for fragment use. If you view the source code, you can see how they take a systematic approach to naming the headings of page sections and linking those sections in their table of contents.

This may or may not be useful for blog posts, which are rarely long enough to require additional navigation. However, it certainly can be useful for a blog’s larger static pages, such as (in Daniel’s case) an “About Us” page featuring multiple authors.

by Adam

Dress Your Blog for Success

2010-01-31T17:12:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard the saying, “You should dress for the job you want, not for the one you have?” Obviously the point of this familiar line is that you need to prepare yourself and present yourself for the future that you want.

In a way, this saying should apply to your blog as well. Of course we’re not talking about a suit and tie, but rather the appearance of your blog that visitors are presented with the moment they arrive. This first impression can help readers to see you as the successful blogger you aim to be, or it can set you back if they see an unattractive look.

Dressing appropriately for a job shows that you are aware of your appearance, that you take your job seriously, and that you’re intending to go places. If you were starting a new job and your goal was to eventually be an executive of the company, you wouldn’t show up to work in jeans and a t-shirt. In order for others to see you for who you want to be, you have to present yourself as if you’re already there.

Go with the Flow: The Top Blogs

Take a look at some of the top blogs in your niche, and then look at some that get very little traffic and have few readers. You’re almost guaranteed to see some major differences. Sure, the more successful blogs may be able to spend more money on their appearance, but that’s not likely to be the most significant difference. In fact, with all of the blog themes available and resources for learning how to customize your own blog theme, money really doesn’t need to be a factor.

Now, take an objective look at your own blog. Does its appearance belong in the category of a successful blog or an unsuccessful blog?

If you could improve the appearance how would it affect your level of success? Obviously, blog success is far more dependent on content than on design and appearance, but the visitor’s first impression is more likely to be based on the attractiveness of your blog. Just like your ability to perform a job is determined by other factors than your appearance, but a sloppy presentation will kill your chances.

If your goal is to be among the top blogs in your niche, looking like you belong is a great start. Visitors are likely to immediately classify you according to your look. Yes, you can overcome a bad first impression with great content, but why not take advantage of the first impression? An attractive, professional-looking blog design will give you the look of a blog that’s on its way to success, and visitors are more likely to want to be a part of that.

The top blogs almost always have a very clean, professional look. The design of the blog should enhance the content, not distract the visitor’s attention away from it. Even the advertisements on successful blogs are chosen and placed strategically.

Free themes with no customization are rarely used by top tier blogs. Having a unique look is crucial to standing out to new visitors. The design doesn’t need to jump out and grab visitors; in fact, most good blog designs are subtly stylish. But it helps if your visitors are not seeing hundreds of other blogs with the same theme.

If a visitor arrives at a new blog for the first time and their initial impression is “amateur,” that blogger will have a hard time convincing the visitor that the blog itself is high quality.

So, what factors can help a blogger to create a great first impression? As most of us know by now, flashy ads that distract attention are an unwelcome sight for most readers. Harsh color combinations are also rarely used by successful blogs. Choose your ads and color combinations wisely when choosing a design.

Images and Theme Customization

Images can also be important, although many blogs don’t even need the use of photos to accomplish a good look. If you’re looking for free stock photos, try stock.xchng, FreePhotosBank, or FreeImages.co.uk. There are also a number of places to get very affordable, quality stock photos including Stock Xpert, iStockPhoto, and Big Stock Photo.

If you’re using a free theme (particularly WordPress users), try learning about themes from the WordPress Codex and forums. You’ll find plenty of information and help for making changes to a free theme. In many cases even small changes will help to make your blog more distinct.

If you’re not interested in doing the coding yourself, you may be able to find help for less money than you may expect by checking places like Craigslist and Elance. These services may cost you a little bit now, but how much will a new look help you in your journey to being a more successful blogger?

Take a look at your blog and see how you might be able to “dress it” for the level of success that you want to achieve. Focus on providing a clean look that that tells your readers you’re serious about your appearance and you’re ready to take your blog to the next level.

Not just anyone can be an executive at a large company. Likewise, not just anyone can be a successful blogger in a crowded market. Give yourself the appearance of success and you’ll be one step closer to achieving it.

by Steven Snell

How to Start a Blog Partnership

2010-01-03T16:03:00.001-08:00

Here are 10 questions that I’d be pondering before entering into working too deeply with any other bloggers:

1. How long have they been blogging? – While I don’t want to be a blog snob and say that only long term bloggers have potential as partners – I would say that longevity in blogging is a good indicator. Most blog partnerships will be long term and I’d want to see some evidence of the person having stuck to something (even if it’s not blogging related) long term before. There are many people that blow in and out of blogging with lofty ideas – but many of them just don’t have stick-ability. Longevity of blogging should also bring a few web smarts with it which will be handy.

2. What have they done before? How has it gone? - Similarly, take a look at their previous and current projects and ask yourself if it’s the type of work that you’d be satisfied with. Do they have an attention to detail? Do they have talent? Can they communicate well? What skills do they have?

3. Are they consistent? – The more I think about this one the more vital I think it is. People have a way of being on their best behavior when they need to – but over time their true colors generally shine through. If they have a blog, surf through their archives and see what they’ve written previously. Of course all of us probably have something in our archives that we wrote on a bad hair day – but over time have they been consistent not only with the frequency of their writing (which can say something about their commitment levels) but also in the tone and focus of their writing?

4. Do they follow through on what they say? – ‘I’m Going too ((insert idea here))… ‘. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone pitched me an idea by telling me what they are ‘going to do’ in the future. It’s easy to make claims about what you will do – but perhaps a better indicator of whether someone is worth working with is to see what they are actually doing about their dreams. I’ve been pitched a few ideas in the past few months by bloggers who I’ve suspected thought up the idea minutes before IM’ing me. My usual response is to send them away to do a bit more work on the idea, or to go start it and then to come talk to me. In doing this I find out who is a ‘gunna do it’ type person and who is a ‘did it’ type person. Big dreams are great – but they don’t just eventuate without work.

5. What do others say about them? - I read The Wisdom of Crowds (aff) a few months back and think there is definitely some applications/illustrations of the main point of the book in the blogosphere – this is one of them. You can often get a good picture of what someone is like by seeing what others think. You can do this directly by approaching their previous partners, or other bloggers who know them, or simply by Googling them to find what comes out in the SE. Of course you’ll want to respect privacy and not get too stalker-like – but at least on some level see what other people have experienced of the person you’re considering working with.

6. What are their skills? – I’m very aware of the areas that I am lacking in as a blogger and seem to seek out and connect with those who have these skills. It makes sense to collaborate with people who will complement your strengths and weaknesses rather than people who duplicate them.

7. Do they have time? – Entrepreneurial blogging types are notorious for coming up with many more ideas than they have time to carry out. Ask a prospective partner what else they are working on and how much time it takes. I’m saying this because I’m too busy myself and I ask it of myself before each new project (as a result I’ve not launched new things for a while).

8. Do you have a relationship with them already? – This is probably the ultimate question that I ask. It’s not that I don’t think strangers might be good to work with – it’s just that I’d rather a partnership to grow out of relationship. If someone pitches me an idea out of the blue I almost always say no simply because I want to know something of the character of the person before making that type of commitment. On the few times that I haven’t said no I’ve only moved forward very slowly (more on this below).

9. Do you know others who know them? – There is something very powerful about networks of people who are interconnected. I’d much rather work with someone who has connections with others that I know simply because I feel there is a little more accountability in those type of relationships because of the wider community of relationships that we have. I know that if Andy does something bad by me in our partnership that it will have potential repercussions for him because we have other mutual friends in the wider blogosphere (and it goes both ways). If these mutual relationships did not exist the accountability levels might be lowered.

10. What does your Gut say? – I’m a big believer in following your instincts and intuition. I’ve had a few occasions in the last year where all the above questions seemed to line up with very positive answers. Logic said that things should have worked out – however something inside me had warning bells ringing. On each occasion I let the opportunity pass. Listen to your heart (isn’t that a song?).

Two final pieces of Advice:

Get Verbal - While I like the written word for communication (IM or email) there is something about actually speaking (verbally) with a person that adds a new dimension to a relationship. I’ve seen this on many occasions – you really get to see (or hear) a different side of a person when you do it. Even better is face to face meetings in real life.

Take it slow – Good partnerships grow out of relationships and good relationships take time.

While I know it’s tempting to rush into business with people when you first meet them, this can be a recipe for disaster. I’d advise that if you do want to move ahead with a partnership that you break it down into smaller parts or projects and take them one at a time.

Start with a small one to see how you both go, to see how you get along and to learn how to work with one another. Then as you finish the smaller things you might want to ramp it up and take on some bigger things together. Out of this process comes trust, respect, communication skills and an understanding of how you work together – all things that will lead to a fruitful partnership in the future.

37 Ways to Make Blogging Easier

2009-12-31T17:30:00.001-08:00

Plan out content with pen and paper.
Dedicate time each week to think of ideas.
Make it easy to record ideas.
Build a life of unique experiences.
Use WriteRoom for typing.
Set limits on the time allowed for writing.
Always have a large backlog of content.
Follow a lower frequency of posts.
Capture interesting tid bits you find with Evernote.
Be passionate.
Write about a broader niche.
Take extended breaks.
Don’t write till you drop – stop writing when you’re on a roll.
Follow clear structures in your content (headings, sub-headings, bullet points etc).
Pick a predominant medium.
Ask visitors what they want.
Make every piece of content count.
Never stop reading and learning.
Set higher standards for yourself as motivation.
Forget word count – say more with less.
Identify the time when brainstorming for you is most effective and stick with that.
The moment it’s not fun: STOP! (and come back to it later)
Experiment with different mediums.
Clear your head with exercise, good food and a glass of water.
Write down EVERY idea, no matter how silly it may seem.
Clear off other items from your to-do list.
Ask visitors to help with research – have them send in quotes etc.
Believe in what you’re saying.
Be both topical and non-topical.
Don’t overthink it – your content is not set in stone.
Think in lists.
Always be creating content (if only in your mind).
Trust that what you have to say is important.
Plug your niche(s) into the Adwords keyword tool.
Monitor what related blogs are saying.
Add variety to your workflow.
Be ruthless. If you’re not feeling an article, delete it.

Get Paid To Blog By Guest Blogging

2009-12-31T17:11:00.001-08:00

Guest posting is a good way to get your blog and your skills noticed, but it’s even better if you can land a regular, paid blogging gig. Not everyone pays for guest posts, of course, but many do. Here are some techniques for attracting their attention and making sure you get past that first post.

Let Them Know You’re Available

No-one’s going to hire you as a blogger unless they know this is something that you do. Include the fact that you blog, guest blog or ghost blog on your LinkedIn profile, Twitter and Facebook pages, forum signature, portfolio site and blog. Better yet, include a call to action (hire me to blog for you) at the end of your best and most trafficked posts.

Give A Little

Go to all the blogs you read where you think you can make a contribution and offer to write a guest post for them. Before you make the approach, check the blogs to see what’s likely to appeal to readers or show off your blogging expertise – or hopefully both. At this point, you’re not looking for payment, but trying to build a profile. As long as the post has a byline or a link to your site, you will get some benefit from it. Craft your bio to include the fact that you’re a professional blogger and make it link to somewhere where people can find out more and contact you.

Follow The Guidelines

Once someone agrees to publish a post, do your best work. Although it’s always tempting to save the best for our own blogs, publishing to a new audience will bring more benefit in the long run. When the post is written, proofread it forwards, backwards and sideways to make sure there are no errors before sending it in. Look for a suitable image to accompany the post so that you can save the blog owner the trouble.

Promote Like Crazy

When the post is published, let everyone in all you networks know about it. Of course, you don’t want to spam anyone, but you do want to show that you can put some promotional muscle behind any post you publish. If you bring in a few new readers the blog owner will be happy and may well ask you to post again.

Be Responsive

It’s a (sometimes) unwritten rule that you should reply to comments on your posts. This is your chance to show even more of your personality and to make another favorable impression on the blog owner. Make your responses quick and interesting and you will earn some kudos.

Rinse And Repeat

Repeat this on as many influential blogs as you can manage in the niche you want to target. I know that this works because I’ve done it myself. I started my first blog in 2005. For the first few months, I concentrated on learning how to blog as it was different from the journalism I’d been used to. In 2006, I started doing occasional guest posts. Those landed me four paid blogging gigs between 2006 and 2007, and I’ve added a few more in the last couple of years. Dozens of bloggers have started like this before moving on to more permanent, paid blogging gigs. You can too.

Written by Sharon Hurley Hall

Happy New Year

2009-12-31T16:00:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to wish a happy new year to all our readers. One of the cool things about blogging is that you get to make friends and meet some terrific people along the way, and that is exactly how I feel about you guys.

I am sure 2010 will be an awesome year for everyone.

Blog on!

Tintin

Take Control of Automated Twitter Spam with TrueTwit:

2009-09-13T18:27:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed the amount of spam on Twitter lately? It seems to increase everyday and is really getting out of control. If you want to save yourself the trouble of having to self-analyze every Twitter user, then you should give TrueTwit a try. It’s a validation service for Twitter that separates the humans from the robots. It saves you time and trouble by helping you weed out automated Twitter spammers.

When you sign up for free, all of your new followers will receive a DM asking them to validate themselves. If you want to send your existing followers a validation DM you’ll have to do that manually after signing up. TrueTwit uses Twitter OAuth, so there’s no need to give out your password. They suggest that you go to your Twitter settings and uncheck the “email when someone starts following me” box, so that you only receive notifications from TrueTwit.

Once you sign up and sync TrueTwit with your Twitter account, you can now login and start managing your current followers. Here you can view and manage validation request and replies. You’ll be able to see how many validation request were sent on the current day and how many followers were verified. All of your followers will be listed and you’ll see 4 columns (pictured below) that will show you if that user is verified, if a message was sent to them, if you’re following them and if they’re blocked.

As you can see, you can choose to manually send a validation DM to any follower you choose. Plus you can follow and block followers as well right from TrueTwit. There are also a few settings that you can enable/disable. One great things is that you can actually customize the text for the DM that is sent to each new follower. If you want to auto-follow those who validate and are verified, you can do that as well.

Even though TrueTwit can’t get rid of human spammers, it definitely does a great job of getting rid of robots and automated spammers. Now is a better time than any to go through your followers and weed out the junk. Have you used or do you plan on using TwueTwit to combat spam? I know I definitely plan on going through and sending validation DMs to those users without pictures.

How To Display Your Twitter Status On A WordPress Blog

2009-09-02T18:23:00.001-07:00

Twitter is a great service that most of us use to let our friends and family know what we are doing. But as a blogger you may have also wanted to let your readers know what you are doing. I have been displaying my Twitter status on this blog for some time now. It’s a great way to keep readers updated on what we are doing as well as to put up something short that you don’t want to write a post on (like to ask your readers to vote for your blog post on Digg or when you want to share an interesting post on another blog with your readers).

There are many Twitter tools for WordPress blogs, but the one I use is a modified version of twitterRSS that you can download from here .

Plugin Installation

download the ‘twitterrss.txt’ to your computer and rename it to twitterrss.php
edit the file to add your Twitter RSS URL, home URL, username, number of twitters to display, etc (your Twitter RSS link can be found at the bottom of your Twitter page)
Upload the file to your WordPress Plugins folder and activate it
Add <?php get_twitterRSS(); ?> in your theme where you want it displayed

That’s it. You should be able to immediately see your Twitter status displayed on your blog.

By the way, this is my Twitter page incase you would like to follow me

8 Simple SEO Tips For Blogs

2009-09-02T18:17:00.001-07:00

Follow these simple rules for search engine optimization and your blog will rank much higher in Search Engines.

Use your primary keyword in your blog domain

The first thing to do is to ensure that your blogs URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for. Using the targeted keyword in subdomains also helps.

For example, if you want to start a HTML tutorial site then the primary keyword you want your URL to contain is html. So choose a URL like www.htmlhelp.com.

You can also use the keyword in subdomains like www.web-design.com/htmlhelp
Use your primary keyphrase in the title of your posts

If your primary key phrase is html help make sure that the word html and help appear in your blog headers such as H1 and H2 tags as well as the title of each of your posts.
Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post

If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post. The theory is that the more times a keyword appears within a Webpage, the more relevant the page is likely to be for someone searching those keywords.

But do not overdo this by repeating the same keywords over and over again. Google bots can find out if a keyword is too frequent on a page and might just remove your site from their index.
Use your keywords in the anchor text of links

Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages of your blog. Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.
Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily

Make sure your navigation bar is present on all pages of your blog. Your previous posts or atleast the popular ones should be linked to all pages so they get spidered easily.
Get backlinks from other blogs

You need as many links as possible to link back to your posts or blog because it will help you build pagerank and get your blog to rank higher in search engines. The more links you have the higher your blog is ranked in Technorati helping your blog to be found easily.

So how do you get backlinks?
- The first thing to do to get high-quality links is to submit your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories.
  
  Start by submitting your blog to all the directories listed on this page:
  http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
- Link exchanging with other similarly-themed blogs will help you to form richly interlinked networks or communities.
- If you find an interesting article on another blog, link to it generously. The trackback will become a link back to your blog.
- Lastly posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs will help you get backlinks. Regularly post legitimate comments in similarly-themed blogs with high traffic to get many backlinks.
Update your blog frequently

Update your blog frequently using all the rules mentioned above and your blog will surely get top rankings in a short time.
Stick with your blog

Once you start posting on your blog, stick with the same domain or you could end up losing a lot of your traffic and regular readers.

Also stick with the topic you selected for your blog. If it’s about pets don’t suddenly switch to another topic such as Gadget’s because you will loose traffic.

For tips on building traffic to your blog, read the series- How to increase your blogs traffic

All About “BLOG” & “BLOGGING”

2009-09-02T18:10:00.001-07:00

What is a "blog"?

"Blog" is an abbreviated version of "weblog," which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog is a frequently updated, personal website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.

Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all types of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting the author's daily life and thoughts.

Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common:

A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories.
An archive of older articles.
A way for people to leave comments about the articles.
A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a "blogroll".
One or more "feeds" like RSS, Atom or RDF files.

Some blogs may have additional features beyond these. Watch this short video for a simple explanation for what a blog is.

The Blog Content

Content is the raison d'être for any web site. Retail sites feature a catalog of products. University sites contain information about their campuses, curriculum, and faculty. News sites show the latest news stories. For a personal blog, you might have a bunch of observations, or reviews. Without some sort of updated content, there is little reason to visit a web site more than once.

On a blog, the content consists of articles (also sometimes called "posts" or "entries") that the author(s) writes. Yes, some blogs have multiple authors, each writing his/her own articles. Typically, blog authors compose their articles in a web-based interface, built into the blogging system itself. Some blogging systems also support the ability to use stand-alone "weblog client" software, which allows authors to write articles offline and upload them at a later time.

Comments

Want an interactive website? Wouldn't it be nice if the readers of a website could leave comments, tips or impressions about the site or a specific article? With blogs, they can! Posting comments is one of the most exciting features of blogs.

Most blogs have a method to allow visitors to leave comments. There are also nifty ways for authors of other blogs to leave comments without even visiting the blog! Called "pingbacks" or "trackbacks", they can inform other bloggers whenever they cite an article from another site in their own articles. All this ensures that online conversations can be maintained painlessly among various site users and websites.

The Difference Between a Blog and CMS?

Software that provides a method of managing your website is commonly called a CMS or "Content Management System". Many blogging software programs are considered a specific type of CMS. They provide the features required to create and maintain a blog, and can make publishing on the internet as simple as writing an article, giving it a title, and organizing it under (one or more) categories. While some CMS programs offer vast and sophisticated features, a basic blogging tool provides an interface where you can work in an easy and, to some degree, intuitive manner while it handles the logistics involved in making your composition presentable and publicly available. In other words, you get to focus on what you want to write, and the blogging tool takes care of the rest of the site management.

WordPress is one such advanced blogging tool and it provides a rich set of features. Through its Administration Panels, you can set options for the behavior and presentation of your weblog. Via these Administration Panels, you can easily compose a blog post, push a button, and be published on the internet, instantly! WordPress goes to great pains to see that your blog posts look good, the text looks beautiful, and the html code it generates conforms to web standards.

If you're just starting out, read Getting Started with WordPress, which contains information on how to get WordPress set up quickly and effectively, as well as information on performing basic tasks within WordPress, like creating new posts or editing existing ones.

Things Bloggers Need to Know

In addition to understanding how your specific blogging software works, such as WordPress, there are some terms and concepts you need to know.

Feeds

A Feed is a function of special software that allows "Feedreaders" to access a site automatically looking for new content and then post updates about that new content to another site. This provides a way for users to keep up with the latest and hottest information posted on different blogging sites. Some Feeds include RSS (alternately defined as "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication"), Atom or RDF files. Dave Shea, author of the web design weblog Mezzoblue has written a comprehensive summary of feeds.

Syndication

A feed is a machine readable (usually XML) content publication that is updated regularly. Many weblogs publish a feed (usually RSS, but also possibly Atom and RDF and so on, as described above). There are tools out there that call themselves "feedreaders". What they do is they keep checking specified blogs to see if they have been updated, and when the blogs are updated, they display the new post, and a link to it, with an excerpt (or the whole contents) of the post. Each feed contains items that are published over time. When checking a feed, the feedreader is actually looking for new items. New items are automatically discovered and downloaded for you to read. Just so you don't have to visit all the blogs you are interested in. All you have to do with these feedreaders is to add the link to the RSS feed of all the blogs you are interested in. The feedreader will then inform you when any of the blogs have new posts in them. Most blogs have these "Syndication" feeds available for the readers to use.

Managing Comments

One of the most exciting features of blogging tools are the comments. This highly interactive feature allows users to comment upon article posts and link to your posts and comment on and recommend them. These are known as trackbacks and pingbacks . We'll also discuss how to moderate and manage comments and how to deal with the annoying trend in "comment spam", when unwanted comments are posted to your blog.

Trackbacks
Pingbacks
Verifying Pingbacks and Trackbacks
Comment Moderation
Comment Spam

Trackbacks

Trackbacks were originally developed by SixApart, creators of the MovableType blog package. SixApart has a good introduction to trackbacks:

In a nutshell, TrackBack was designed to provide a method of notification between websites: it is a method of person A saying to person B, "This is something you may be interested in." To do that, person A sends a TrackBack ping to person B.

A better explanation is this:

Person A writes something on their blog.
Person B wants to comment on Person A's blog, but wants her own readers to see what she had to say, and be able to comment on her own blog
Person B posts on her own blog and sends a trackback to Person A's blog
Person A's blog receives the trackback, and displays it as a comment to the original post. This comment contains a link to Person B's post

The idea here is that more people are introduced to the conversation (both Person A's and Person B's readers can follow links to the other's post), and that there is a level of authenticity to the trackback comments because they originated from another weblog. Unfortunately, there is no actual verification performed on the incoming trackback, and indeed they can even be faked.

Most trackbacks send to Person A only a small portion (called an "excerpt") of what Person B had to say. This is meant to act as a "teaser", letting Person A (and his readers) see some of what Person B had to say, and encouraging them all to click over to Person B's site to read the rest (and possibly comment).

Person B's trackback to Person A's blog generally gets posted along with all the comments. This means that Person A can edit the contents of the trackback on his own server, which means that the whole idea of "authenticity" isn't really solved. (Note: Person A can only edit the contents of the trackback on his own site. He cannot edit the post on Person B's site that sent the trackback.)

SixApart has published an official trackback specification.

Pingbacks

Pingbacks were designed to solve some of the problems that people saw with trackbacks. The official pingback documentation makes pingbacks sound an awful lot like trackbacks:

For example, Yvonne writes an interesting article on her Web log. Kathleen reads Yvonne's article and comments about it, linking back to Yvonne's original post. Using pingback, Kathleen's software can automatically notify Yvonne that her post has been linked to, and Yvonne's software can then include this information on her site.

There are three significant differences between pingbacks and trackbacks, though.

Pingbacks and trackbacks use drastically different communication technologies (XML-RPC and HTTP POST, respectively).
Pingbacks support auto-discovery where the software automatically finds out the links in a post, and automatically tries to pingback those URLs, while trackbacks must be done manually by entering the trackback URL that the trackback should be sent to.
Pingbacks do not send any content.

The best way to think about pingbacks is as remote comments:

Person A posts something on his blog.
Person B posts on her own blog, linking to Person A's post. This automatically sends a pingback to Person A when both have pingback enabled blogs.
Person A's blog receives the pingback, then automatically goes to Person B's post to confirm that the pingback did, in fact, originate there.

The pingback is generally displayed on Person A's blog as simply a link to Person B's post. In this way, all editorial control over posts rests exclusively with the individual authors (unlike the trackback excerpt, which can be edited by the trackback recipient). The automatic verification process introduces a level of authenticity, making it harder to fake a pingback.

Some feel that trackbacks are superior because readers of Person A's blog can at least see some of what Person B has to say, and then decide if they want to read more (and therefore click over to Person B's blog). Others feel that pingbacks are superior because they create a verifiable connection between posts.

Verifying Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Comments on blogs are often criticized as lacking authority, since anyone can post anything using any name they like: there's no verification process to ensure that the person is who they claim to be. Trackbacks and Pingbacks both aim to provide some verification to blog commenting.

Comment Moderation

Comment Moderation is a feature which allows the website owner and author to monitor and control the comments on the different article posts, and can help in tackling comment spam. It lets you moderate comments, & you can delete unwanted comments, approve cool comments and make other decisions about the comments.

Comment Spam

Comment Spam refers to useless comments (or trackbacks, or pingbacks) to posts on a blog. These are often irrelevant to the context value of the post. They can contain one or more links to other websites or domains. Spammers use Comment Spam as a medium to get higher page rank for their domains in Google, so that they can sell those domains at a higher price sometime in future or to obtain a high ranking in search results for an existing website.

Spammers are relentless; because there can be substantial money involved, they work hard at their "job." They even build automated tools (robots) to rapidly submit their spam to the same or multiple weblogs. Many webloggers, especially beginners, sometimes feel overwhelmed by Comment Spam.

There are solutions, though, to avoiding Comment Spam. WordPress includes many tools for combating Comment Spam. With a little up front effort, Comment Spam can be manageable, and certainly no reason to give up weblogging.

Pretty Permalinks

Permalinks are the permanent URLs to your individual weblog posts, as well as categories and other lists of weblog postings. A permalink is what another weblogger will use to refer to your article (or section), or how you might send a link to your story in an e-mail message. Because others may link to your individual postings, the URL to that article shouldn't change. Permalinks are intended to be permanent (valid for a long time).

"Pretty" Permalinks is the idea that URLs are frequently visible to the people who click them, and should therefore be crafted in such a way that they make sense, and not be filled with incomprehensible parameters. The best Permalinks are "hackable," meaning a user might modify the link text in their browser to navigate to another section or listing of the weblog. For example, this is how the default Permalink to a story might look in a default WordPress installation:

/index.php?p=423

How is a user to know what "p" represents? Where did the number 423 come from?

In contrast, here is a well-structured, "Pretty" Permalink which could link to the same article, once the installation is configured to modify permalinks:

/archives/2003/05/23/my-cheese-sandwich/

One can easily guess that the Permalink includes the date of the posting, and the title, just by looking at the URL. One might also guess that hacking the URL to be /archives/2003/05/ would get a list of all the postings from May of 2003. Pretty (cool). For more information on possible Permalink patterns in WordPress, see Using Permalinks.

Blog by email

Some blogging tools offer the ability to email your posts directly to your blog, all without direct interaction through the blogging tool interface. WordPress offers this cool feature. Using email, you can now send in your post content to a pre-determined email address & voila! Your post is published!

Post Slugs

If you're using Pretty Permalinks, the Post Slug is the title of your article post within the link. The blogging tool software may simplify or truncate your title into a more appropriate form for using as a link. A title such as "I'll Make A Wish" might be truncated to "ill-make-a-wish". In WordPress, you can change the Post Slug to something else, like "make-a-wish", which sounds better than a wish made when sick.

Excerpt

Excerpts are condensed summaries of your blog posts, with blogging tools being able to handle these in various ways. In WordPress, Excerpts can be specifically written to summarize the post, or generated automatically by using the first few paragraphs of a post or using the post up to a specific point, assigned by you.

Plugins

Plugins are cool bits of programming scripts that add additional functionality to your blog. These are often features which either enhance already available features or add them to your site.

WordPress offers simple and easy ways of adding Plugins to your blog. From the Administraton Panel, there is a Plugin Page. Once you have uploaded a Plugin to your WordPress plugin directory, activate it from the Plugins Management SubPanel, and sit back and watch your Plugin work. Not all Plugins are so easily installed, but WordPress Plugin authors and developers make the process as easy as possible.

Basics-A Few Blogging Tips

Starting a new blog is difficult and this can put many people off, there are then other people who have blogs with no comments or visits. You want to stand out from this crowd of millions of bloggers, you want to be one of the few hundred thousand blogs that are actually visited. So here are some simple tips to help you on your way to blogging mastery:

Post regularly, but don't post if you have nothing worth posting about.
Stick with only a few specific genres to talk about.
Don't put 'subscribe' and 'vote me' links all over the front page until you have people that like your blog enough to ignore them (they're usually just in the way).
Use a clean and simple theme if at all possible.
Enjoy, blog for fun, comment on other peoples' blogs (as they normally visit back).

(Waiting for your comments)

Resources Tools that you must have to optimize your blog

2009-08-31T18:41:00.001-07:00

This is my old post but i decided to re-post them because my brother ask me about SEO and i thought he already knew about this because he's been blogging for quite a while -- so, i hope this help you aswell. We value our blog so much we ask question on how to optimize, how to get link, how to get more visibility from search engine and follow some tips about search engine optimization. No matter what the purpose of our blog either personal blog, share our interest, or we want to earn easy money, we still need to go more deeper and understanding is the big part of blogging. We need to know the in and out of our own blog site. I have

here a must interactive tools that help you understand more the needs of your blog site, this tools don't provide you an optimization per se, but this will check on the results of your optimization efforts. Marketleap - provides an integrated set of optimization check, this is free to use and you will be able to check the three below: Link Popularity - which checks the number of incoming links to your blog/site. As we know this is one of the major key to get higher page rank. Search Engine Saturation - simply refers to the number of pages a given search engine has in its index for your website domain. This show you a graph pf how much is your search engine saturation...mostly can be used for search engine marketing campaigns. Keyword Verification - You can verify your site placement with the top search engines and directories, It's important to be in the top 3 pages of a search result because most people using search engines don't go past the 3rd page.....Make sure to use the keyword for checking is something you want to be found for (One of the keyword you put on your meta tag example: make money, earn easy money etc....). Link Popularity Checker - This is an alternative to the marketleap. It going to show you the 5 search engines which is Google, MSN, AllTheWeb, Altavista and Teoma (Instead of Hotbot -- compare to the market leap). Other resources which you can use to learn about optimization are forums to where the webmasters hang out and helping each other, tackle some issues and which much more focused on SEO and give more information. Sites where you can get more tips and read an articles where can help you learn more about optimization. Webmasterworld and SearchEngineWorld- News and discussion and articles. SEOConsultants - You will find various information about SEO including tips and tricks, Tutorials. Understanding SEO is much more better than know nothing at all. When we blog we "DIY" our blog especially when we just start learning about blogging until the time that you are making enough money to pay for consultancy and professionals to Optimize you blog this resources are great tool to understand more and work more to get the high page rank and increase your site visibility. I hope this help you in many way ... it does for me, i now know what particular keyword really put me at the first page of the SERP (Search Engine Result Page) when i use "make money" it did not put me in the search result but when i used the earn easy money this brings me at the first page of top 4 search engine results. Now i need to work on the other part of my optimization such as page saturation.

Tips for New Bloggers

2009-08-31T18:32:00.001-07:00

Difference - HTML and XHTML

When inserting codes into the Blogger template, page element, or blog post, you may have seen error messages that the code could not be parsed, was not well-formed, was broken, or that the elements were not closed properly. These errors can be corrected if you understand the rules that must be adhered to in XHTML documents. Blogger templates use the XHTML 1.0 Strict Document Type. In this article, we shall explain some of the XHTML syntax or rules, so that you may troubleshoot and resolve the problems if these error messages should occur.

XML, HTML and XHTML

We shall keep this short. Just so as you understand what we said about document type, view the Page Source or Source of your Blogger blog. You should see this document type declaration at the very top:-

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

The terms – XML, HTML and XHTML - refer to the markup language used to write the web pages. Many of us would have heard of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), invented by Tim Berners-Lee, and used since the early days of internet. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a meta-language, used to create other markup languages. The traditional HTML was later recast to use the rules of XML and that resulted in a new XML application, called XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language). Because XHTML rules are strict and unforgiving, not conforming to them when attempting to modify the template would result in error messages. So, what are these rules that Bloggers like us should take note of?

Basic Rules of XHTML

1. Codes to be in lowercase

Since XML is case sensitive, all the element keywords and attribute names used in XHTML should be in the lowercase. For example, the template code is not this:-

<TITLE>Tips for New Bloggers</TITLE>

but this:-

<title>Tips for New Bloggers</title>

If you have noticed, the elements and attribute names between the lesser than (<) and greater than (>) signs have to be in the lowercase. However, the value, which in this case is “Tips for New Bloggers”, can be in the uppercase, lowercase, or mixed case.

2. Attribute values to be in quotation marks

All the attribute values have to be enclosed either in single or double quotation marks. The following examples are not accepted by XHTML:-

<div id=header-wrapper> <a href=http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com>Text Link</a> <img src=photo.jpg/> <table width=200 border=0 cellpadding=2>

Instead, they should be written as such:-

<div id='header-wrapper'> <a href="http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com">Text Link</a> <img src="photo.jpg"/> <table width="200" border="0" cellpadding="2">

3. Container elements must have closing tags

This is not correct:-

<p>A paragraph.

In XHTML, there must be a closing tag with a forward slash (/) at the end:-

<p>A paragraph.</p>

Examples of the many non-empty elements that have opening and corresponding closing tags are:-

<ul> ... </ul> <li> ... </li> <table> ... </table> <h2> ... </h2> <div> ... </div> <span> ... </span> <dt> ... </dt> <dd> ... </dd> <a href> ... </a>

4. Standalone elements to be closed

Some of the elements are empty or standalone. They do not have associated closing tags. Common examples are:-

<br> <img> <input> <frame> <hr> <meta> <link>

Nonetheless, in XHTML, these elements must be terminated or closed. There are two ways to do that. One way to terminate the element is to put a forward slash (/) at the end like this:-

<br/> <img/> <input/> <frame/> <hr/> <meta/> <link/>

The second way is to add a corresponding closing tag like this:-

<br> ... </br> <img> ... </img> <input> ... </input> <frame> ... </frame> <hr> ... </hr> <meta> ... </meta> <link> ... </link>

5. Elements to be properly nested

This means that elements must be closed in the reverse order. For example, this code is not accepted in XHTML:-

<form><table> ... </form></table>

It is improperly nested because the form was created first followed by the table. To close them in the proper order, the table must be closed before the form, like this:-

<form><table> ... </table></form>

6. Document to have only one root element

In the XHTML document, you will see that except for the document type declaration, all the codes are nested between <html> and </html>. This is the root element and all other elements or sub elements are in between. The document structure will look like this:-

<html> <head> ... </head> <body> ... </body> </html>

7. Attribute minimization is not allowed

In XHTML, all attributes should be in the form name="value". Even if the value is the same as the name, it cannot be minimized to one word. Hence, in our Add Text Box and Textarea article, the textarea code is not this:-

<textarea readonly>Hyperlink Code</textarea>

but this:-

<textarea readonly="readonly">Hyperlink Code</textarea>

XHTML Character Entities

Quite a number of readers had asked why they were unable to display HTML codes in their blog posts or why their codes were not well-parsed when inserted into the template. If you have noticed by now, the codes are wrapped in the lesser than (<) and greater than (>) signs. The moment these are posted, they will be interpreted as codes and will trigger an action by the browser. Should you want to display these as part of the text, use their character entities instead.

"	"
&	&
<	<
>	>

The next time you see an error message to the effect that the code is not well formed, not well parsed, not properly closed, etc., take a look at this guide, troubleshoot the problem and try out the possible solutions.

Blog Carnivals and Group Writing Projects: 5 Tips to Increase Blog Traffic Using Them

2009-08-25T17:06:00.001-07:00

For the uninitiated, a blog carnival is a collection of links of various blogs dealing with a certain topic while a group writing project is an activity wherein a blogger requests others bloggers to submit their blog posts regarding a certain topic. One of the differences between the two is that a blogger hosting a group writing project is the only one who will ever host that project, while a blog carnival may be hosted by different bloggers depending on the discretion of the person who started that blog carnival. Another is that usually, a group writing project will give a prize to the blogger who has met certain criteria upon joining the project.

So let’s get down to business and learn how to definitely make the most out of these blog traffic building activities.

1. Write Your Best Blog Post

Although this tip is similar to just having your visitors enjoy the best meal, it’s only logical that you write your most impressive and most informative blog post ever or just search through your archives and look for that one that has gained the most comments.

It may be harder to gain more backlinks from blog carnivals since only the host is obliged to link back to your post. But if you come up with a definitely unique post, things can become rosier. Group writing projects may help you gain more backlinks since most of these group writing projects such as Problogger’s and DailyBlogTips‘ require or encourage other participants to link to other blogs that they deem worthy of link love.

2. Use SEO Techniques

If you are just about to write a blog post for a group writing project or a blog carnival, make sure that you use some SEO techniques. One is using keywords that you’d like your blog to be associated with, say for JMMO - Make Money Online at Home: The Do’s and Don’ts.

The backlinks that you’ll earn will definitely make use of that title which will be the blog post’s anchor text. It’s important to optimize your post’s title because like article marketing, some SEO can go a long way. No matter how few backlinks that your blog will get will still count as votes to your blog for the anchor text that you used. I tried this for my work-from-home blog for certain keywords and I’ve noticed considerable increase of traffic from searches for the keywords I used when I participated once in a group writing project.

3. Participate to Blog Carnivals that Cater to Your Niche

Relevance is the name of the game. You don’t want to spam blog carnivals with blog post submissions that are not related to your blog’s topic. For JMMO, business and money and finance blog carnivals will suit it just fine. But it won’t hurt to dig into other categories, too.

4. Research about the Readers of the Group Writing Project’s Host

No you don’t have to directly write about online dating if your blog is about making money online just because the group writing project’s host blog is about online dating. But you may want to write about something like how to make money online through online dating (referral programs). The key is to be creative in striking the fancy of the target market of the host blog.

5. Host a Group Writing Project or a Blog Carnival Yourself.

The great thing about hosting these blogging activities is that you get better chance of getting more eyeballs for your blog. However, one should take note that it is more likely that you’ll get the most out of it if your blog already has some great content up before hosting one. This is to improve the chances of making visitors subscribe to your blog’s feed.

How To Build Lasting Relationships With Your Readers

2009-08-25T16:57:00.001-07:00

How do you create a community that will inspire you, build lasting relationships with your readers?

Fortunate, blessed, grateful, awed, reverent…. That’s what I feel when I think about readers of Inspiration Bit. What did I do to deserve all those hundreds of subscribers and fans who favourited this blog on Technorati? Sure, there are hundreds of other blogs who have thousands of subscribers. But there’s only a handful of blogs that managed to build a loyal community of readers and friends, not a fanatic following nor the eager crowd to imitate the success of others.

The community of readers plays an essential role in shaping up a blog. It often gives the blog a direction it never had before, it makes the blogger to be responsible for the quality and the content of the articles posted on the site. Many bloggers confess that they draw inspiration from their readers.

So how do you create a community that will inspire you, how do you build lasting relationships with your readers that can evolve into something bigger than a formal blogger-reader connection?

1. Get To Know Your Readers

I was going through the archives on my blog, trying to determine when did I start getting all those insightful comments and regular readers of Inspiration Bit. As soon as I started getting some interaction on my blog (within the first couple weeks of blogging), I immediately wanted to know more about my readers and connect with them. There are many different ways to do so, you don’t have to do them all at once, or with every reader, find the way that you feel comfortable with and go for it:

write a post and ask your readers to tell a little bit about themselves
Spend more than just a few seconds on your commentor’s website
Comment on your new reader’s site after moderating his/her first comment on your blog. You may not become their regular reader, but that first connection, a simple Hello, can be very important.
Send an email, with something more than a ‘Thank you’ note. Perhaps, ask some questions about their site or the topics that they cover, or compliment on their site’s layout.
No matter what you choose to learn more about your readers, be absolutely sincere with them in your comments, your posts, your emails. Remember, if you can sense a fake tone in your words and actions, they can “smell” it too.

2. Engage Your Readers

You don’t have to do it with every article you write, but from time to time pose questions to your readers, ask their opinion about the topics you write about, engage them into conversations. Sometimes readers are too shy to comment, but you can encourage them to do so with your sincere questions and interest in their opinion.

It should be a common sense by now, that you should try your best to reply to as many comments on your blog, as you can. Don’t you like when other bloggers reply to your comments? It’s that simple: treat your readers the way you want and like to be treated as a reader.

However, don’t just reply to your readers’ comments with a plain Thank you. They’ve already initiated a conversation by expressing their opinion on your post’s subject matter. Carry on with that conversation, interact with them.

3. Accept and even invite a constructive criticism

You can’t expect everyone to agree with you, your likes or dislikes. Sometimes you would get some not-so-flattering comments. You can agree or disagree with your readers, but never insult nor attack them personally. You can argue with what has been said, but not who said it.

4. Be confident, but Be humble

You must be confident in your skills (blogging, writing, designing, coding), be convincing about the topics you write about, but don’t be obnoxious. You might be expert in one field, but fail in others, don’t assume that you know everything there is to know about topics you specialize in. Don’t think that readers owe you their comments or time simply because you spend time writing for them, perhaps teaching them. Don’t preach your readers, but guide them.

Be humble. There’s no need in drilling into your readers how smart or funny you are, they can judge themselves.

5. Show your human side

Don’t be afraid to show your human side. We are all still humans in this limitless blogiverse, not some blogorobots. If you have doubts in anything, feel free to ask your readers for help or advice.

Do not hesitate to show your funny side, but don’t try being funny either. Everyone appreciates a good sense of humour if you have one. Inject a bit of humour not only to your articles but to the comments you leave on other blogs. One of my readers started reading my blogs and later became my friend because he found my comments on his blog amusing, and he emailed me personally to thank for not being afraid to add some humour to my comments.

6. Give back to your readers

Everyone loves contests and competitions. When I participated in the Reader Appreciation Week organized by RA Project I had no idea what a hard work it is to run different contests every day of the week, but how much fun it is for everyone, especially for your readers. Don’t limit your interaction with readers only to contests. Organize competitions, launch group writing projects. Everyone wins in the end, there are no losers when people are getting together to share their experience, compete and take on challenges.

I’m entering this post to Daniel’s group writing project. If I win, I’ll monetize my next group writing project as well, and share the money with you all. However, there is still time left to participate in my group writing project: Time Management. What you’ll get is something that money can’t buy – time management tips from real life gurus.

Talk about your readers in your posts, link to your readers’ sites. Introduce your loyal readers to regular visitors of your site, promote their sites, their projects. Contribute to the discussions on your readers’ blogs. If the Internet is a network of computers, the blogiverse is the network of people. By building your network, you’ll be expanding your blog’s community.

7. Inspire Your Readers

You don’t have to name your blog Inspiration Bit to inspire your readers. Inspire them with your writing, excite them with your topics, motivate them with your conversations, talk about what inspires you and share your excitement with them.

8. Be irresistible

I remember back in school there was this guy in my class who had the most contagious laughter I’ve ever heard in my life. You just couldn’t resist him when he was laughing out loud, he would make you not just smile, but laugh with him.

That’s the secret ingredient in the successful recipe for building a loyal following – be irresistible, find what makes you enticing and different, what is your magnet in luring people to you. Make your readers to want more from you – more stories, more humour, more arguments, more help, more of You.

I’ve probably missed out on some other important pieces in the relationships puzzle, but I’ll let my readers to fill in for me. What do you think are the essential blocks in building lasting relationships with your blog’s readers?

Five ways to become an expert online…and make money!

2009-08-23T18:02:00.001-07:00

So you think you know your stuff? Well, that’s important, but it is much more important for other people to think that you know your stuff. You may be as smart as Einstein, but without the right marketing and well-directed communication you don’t stand a chance of getting the money you deserve on the internet.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re an already established real-world professional or whether you’re a university student looking to start a side project. The internet is a new place where you have to earn your respect just like you would have to do anywhere else.

The World Wide Web is a great place to make money. If you already own a company there are numerous benefits to adding your products and services to cyberspace. By bringing your business online, you open up your market from being limited by regional distribution to being an unlimited international corporation.

While the potential is there to make big money, there is still the need to put in big effort. In this way, it is a lot like starting a new company. You might already be well known in you region for being one of the best in the business, but now you’ve got to earn that reputation online as well.

Here are five tips to becoming an expert online. If you follow these, you are sure to gain a reputation that will allow you to expand your business and bring in new sources of revenue.

1. Website – First off, you need to have a website that describes who you are, what you do, and what sets you apart from your competition. Your website is the main ingredient to your online success. Not only do you need to present yourself in a professional manner, but you also need to have it set up for easy navigation, ordering, and communication.

What to do: Hire a professional to build a website for you that not only allows you to sell your product, but also enables you to sell yourself.

What not to do: Slap together a website in a hurry just to get your name online.

2. Social Networking – Sure, everybody already has a social networking profile – and they aren’t raking in the dough. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t make money through this extremely popular method of communication. If you haven’t used Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, or another social networking site for business purposes then you’re missing out.

What to do: Create a business profile and build up a network of friends. Try to stay active so that you’ll build relationships that will eventually turn into business down the road. Not everybody needs to be a customer, but if they like you then they might just recommend you to friends who could use your services.

What not to do: Don’t mix your personal profile with your business profile, especially if you’re bound to have pictures and comments put up about your weekend of partying. Keep it professional!

3. Press Releases – The internet is packed with information about other companies like your own. If there isn’t any information about you out there already, make sure to use press releases to build awareness of any of your business news. Internet users won’t see you as an online expert unless you are actually, well, online!

What to do: If you have a communications officer, get him or her to write up articles about newsworthy events going on in your business. Release these articles using PR Leap, PR Zoom, or another press release service. If you don’t have a communications specialist, then hire a professional freelance writer.

What not to do: Don’t get your kid brother to write up a report that has fifteen spelling errors and a newly created grammatical structure.

4. Message Boards/Forums – Participate in message boards that are centered on the topic of your expertise. By becoming a key figure in this community, you will gain the respect of other online users and eventually earn some business. If you’re already active in several online communities, this will come more easily than if you’re a brand new internet user.

What to do: Post thoughtful messages that demonstrate your knowledge of the subject matter. Focus on building relationships and learning from other experts in the field.

What not to do: Don’t spam message boards advertising your new company website. Not only will people never use your products or services, but they will also be turned off by your approach. The purpose of participating in message boards is to build relationships and let the business trickle in. People want to know you, like you, and trust you before they start buying from you.

5. Write – In order to be recognized as a true expert, you need to get articles published on the internet. It’s a good idea to run your own blog to provide tips and tricks that people could use. However, a better idea is to write advice articles published through numerous websites that can guide your readers through simple problems that your company deals with. When they learn to trust you with the little things, they will come to you for the bigger things!

What to do: Write, write, and write some more. You can never write enough online content. The more advice you give to others, the more they will see you as an expert (if you give good advice). With every article you publish, you are bound to be reaching new readers that can potentially turn into future customers.

What not to do: Don’t throw out as much content as possible for the simple purpose of Search Engine Optimization. While the bots might like your stuff, it won’t appeal to the people that really matter – your readers.

Those five tips will help you become better recognized as an online expert. There are many other ways to build your reputation on the internet. The main thing, however, is to gain visibility and build new relationships every day. While this isn’t a get rich quick scheme, it is sure to grow your business dramatically in the long run!

5 Tips To Increase Comments

2009-08-23T17:48:00.001-07:00

Comments are one of the things that make blogging worth while but, in the age of feed readers, how do you convince people to click over and leave one?

That's what we're going to discuss and, no, I'm not going to tell you to end every post with a question.

If you follow these five steps, within two weeks you will be well on your way to developing a community around your blog.

Show Some Link Love - This is one of my personal weaknesses. Take the time to acknowledge other bloggers. Make a special folder in your bookmarks for those posts you read and find interesting then, once a week, put together a post featuring the best articles you read that week.

Offering a little praise and linking to a post will almost always bring a positive response from the author and put you on their radar.

Comment On Other Blogs - I know you've heard this before but it really does matter. Why would you expect someone to go to the effort of rewarding you with a comment if you wont take the time to do it for them?

The most important things to remember about commenting are; make your comments relevant, be polite and do not include a link inside the comment body. (Be sure to fill out your email and URL in the author box.)

Give Something Away - It may seem like simple bribery and it is but, it works. many blogs have had great luck giving away prizes in contests where the only way to enter was by leaving a comment.

This blog has had so much success with "Submission For A Comment" promotions (StumbleUpon & Reddit) that I have seriously considered making them a regular event.

Write Compelling Content - If all you write are "Tips & Tricks" and "How-To" posts, you're going to have a hard time getting beyond the "Great Post" and "Thanks for this info." comments.

Write one or two posts a week where you express your opinion about something. Don't be afraid to take a position and back it up. Your posts don't have to be argumentative, just passionate. Write about something you care about, a favorite charity or a touching experience.

Answer Every Comment - I saved this point for last because I feel it is the most important. Your response to a reader's comment is your opportunity to encourage a conversation.

Imagine being at a party and an attractive guy or girl compliments you on your outfit. If you say "Thanks" and keep walking, do you think they will make an effort to talk to you again? Imagine, however, if you stopped for a moment, acknowledged their presence and gave them a compliment back. You have now encouraged them to talk to you again.

Always make your new commentators feel welcome and encourage them to comment again. It never hurts to end your response to a new comment with a question, but only once. Don't make them feel obligated to keep answering repeated questions, you'll run them off.

Take care of your regular commentators by encouraging continuing conversations. You must remember also, this is not a one way street. You should, at least, visit your commentators blogs and become a regular reader and commentator on the ones you like.

Summation

If you write about topics you are passionate about as well as knowledgeable of, it will show in your content. If you care about your readers and treat them that way, they will appreciate it and show you.

If, however, all you want out of blogging is for people to click your ads, just hit the delete button and walk away. Turning off your computer will save you more money on electricity in a year than you will make blogging.

Is Your Blog Easy To Read?

2009-08-23T17:39:00.001-07:00

Do you want people to stick around and read your blog? Then you should ask yourself, “Is my blog easy to read?”

Here are some things to check for:

1. Are your colors easy on the eyes?

People are not going to stick around to read a blog that strains their eyes. Pick some easy-to-read colors, like dark gray or black text on a white or off-white background. If that is too plain, at least use dark colored text on a very light background.

You can always dress up the look by putting more color in your heading and sidebar, or add some images.

2. Is your font easy to read?

Take a good look at your font. It may be cool, but is it easy to read? The best fonts for the web are Verdana, Georgia and Lucida Grande, according to Jim Whimpey.

3. Can people figure out your navigation?

I have visited many blogs where I would gladly read more, but after the front page, I have no idea how to find more content.

You might think your blog is easy to navigate, but you are used to it. Ask a friend to see if they can figure it out. You might be surprised. (Especially if that friend is not very web-savvy.)

4. Does it look spammy, with ads plastered everywhere?

You should see more content than ads!

5. Do the links stand out?

On some blogs, the links are only subtly different from the rest of the text. If I have to squint to figure out if it is a link, do you think I am going to click on it?

6. Do your pages take a long time to load?

Check your actual page load time here. People will not stick around long if navigation is slow. Try to get your page to load more quickly. Maybe you have too many widgets, or maybe your images are too large or too numerous. Adding width and height attributes to images makes them load faster too. This page will give you ideas on how to improve your load time.

7. Is your page messed up in other browsers?

If you have Internet Explorer already, download Firefox and test there too. If you always use Firefox, test in Explorer. Those should be the minimum you test, but test more if you can.

Also, change your screen resolution (can be done in your Control Panel in Windows) to see how your site looks in different resolutions.

You can also visit Browsershots to get screenshots of your site in different browsers. It takes quite a while, but you don’t have to do this often – just when you make big changes to your template.

Your visitors should feel welcome, no matter what browser or resolution they are using.

8. Are you using too many acronymns, jargon, or slang?

Think about the audience for your site. Will they understand you, or is it going right over their heads? If you want beginners to read your blog, you might not want to use too many technical terms, or, if you do, then define them.

Also keep in mind that you might have readers from other countries. They may understand English, but they may not know a lot of slang terms.

If your site targets a different generation from your own, you might need to adjust your language and even the look of your site. This could happen if you are writing for a niche audience that is “not you”. Keep your audience in mind.

Conclusion:

I hope this checklist will help you look at your blog with new eyes and think about whether you are scaring away any visitors. It might be helpful to get some friends or family members to look at your site and give their opinion as well.

Once you are sure you are not scaring visitors away, then it is time to work on getting more visitors. See my book, Blog Traffic Jump Start, for more information about how to get traffic to your blog.

Easy monetizing of your blog with AdSense

2009-08-22T10:37:00.001-07:00

Why should I monetize my website?

The more success you have with your blog / website, the more time and money you're going to invest to update it and host it properly.

At some point you may think: wouldn't it just be nice to have my site pay for itself?

Well, that is actually easier to achieve than it sounds! A decent hosting plan should cost you no more than $6.95/month. However, that's quite a low figure here and most people make many many times more than that in ad revenue...

By properly monetizing your blog site it is actually possible to have it pay, not only for the hosting, but also for the time you spend working on it.

Why AdSense?

First, because AdSense is a very simple and proven solution that already pays for hundreds of thousands of blogs/websites accross the world!

Also, AdSense is provided to you by Google which not only makes it reliable but also trustworthy. Once you have earned money from Google, you can actually trust them to pay it to you!

Finally, because the ads will be contexual, i-e they will be relevant to the content of your blog/site. This way, your visitors will not be offended for seeing the ads on your site.

How do I get started?

It's as simple as that:

Sign up with Google AdSense. (It's totally free!) Then follow the provided instructions to put a little javascript snippet onto your blog skin or any web page you like. You may use our b2evolution AdSense plugin to make this even easier.
When visitors view your site they see contextual text ads that automatically adjust to the contents of each page / blog post so that they are always relevant. No flashing images, just relevant text links! :)
When a visitor clicks on an ad link, Google records the click and you get paid for it. Get ready for a monthly check from Google ;)

Will it ruin my blog design?

You can choose the exact position and colors of the text ad blocks you place on your site.

Below are two examples of blogs that incorporate text ads and successfully pay for themselves. Judge for yourself:

Example 1: Ad links at the end of the blog post.
Example 2: Ad links at the top of the page.
Note: as you can see, AdSense is not limited to English!

Mini FAQ

Google has an extensive FAQ about this program. Here's our additional mini FAQ about integrating AdSense with your blog. Feel free to contact François for further information.

How do I integrate AdSense into my blog?

Try the AdSense plugin for b2evolution!

How do I integrate AdSense into my blog without the plugin?

You just copy/paste the AdSense code from Google into your blog template.

The short answer is that the template is located in /skins/skin-name/_main.php (b2evo 1.x) or /skins/skin-name/index.main.php (b2evo 2.x)

9 Ways To Run Your Blog Like A Small Business

2009-08-20T10:53:00.001-07:00

It’s always about ‘how blogging would help in a small business’ rather than the other way around. Ever since I started my intense blogging in February 2009, I’ve noticed how much my four and a half years of working background in product and customer service for a small company had taught me much about blogging. Whether or not your aim is to monetize, most of us bloggers are hoping for the same thing: traffic and productivity – which in a small business scenario translates to customers and revenue.

Here’s a basic flow of how a small business usually runs:

Starting & Planning:

1. Deciding the Service/Merchandise

Merchandise is the revenue generator for small business. It depends much on the current market and the types of needs your business could fulfill. Small business conductors will carry out brief market research, identify and test upon the targeted market with several prototypes in a considerable amount. They never sit and wait for business to come knocking on their doors.

Deciding your blog niche is essential. Even if you have no idea which niche that best fits you, tryout several writings for your preferred topics. You will then able to decide which will bring you the most satisfactions and success, while pinpoint your weakness and strength along the way. Actions lead to outcomes. Whether good or bad, gain experience from it.

2. Maximize Your Resources

Are you financially equipped? Knowledge and experience wise? Small business conductors will maximize the use of their assets to help in the business, innovatively turn every idea into action.

Some bloggers are well adapted with knowledge of programming, web designs and SEO. By all means, apply these to optimize your blogging results. Even if you don’t have much to offer, take up a self-learning course on the how-tos, joining forums to get familiarize with the blogosphere, get help or necessary advices from the specialists. Make an effort to build your resources via knowledge database because what you gain is invaluable, and will be a major asset for your blogging career in future.

3. Planning and Precautions; Expect the Unexpected

Yes, we heard a lot about the benefits of owning a business plan. However, un-expectancies are bound to happen during the process, such as product shortage on promised date, warranty issues, customer complaints etc. Such experiences taught our company to be constantly alert and have backup plans whenever an issue comes up.

In blogging, it’s advisable to have yourself prepared for situations like burnt outs, data-lost, commenting issues or a sudden server breakdown. Preparation is always better than regretting later. Try to be ahead of your problems if possible. Trust me, you’re gonna thank yourself for initiating the backup plans.

Actions:

4. Publicity & Promotional Methods

Being the sole distributor for a particular merchandise helps to gain popularity fast. Otherwise, you need to work extra hard for publicity, such as offering special discounts or free gifts for loyal customers. Educate your new customers: what’s the main attraction of your product? Why should they come to you instead of your competitors? Sometimes it requires patience, but quality is what ensures business reputations and longevity.

Same as blogging, to stand out from the saturated market, you need to start building your own audiences with quality content. Originality will win you backlinks from other sites while ensures sustainability. You could have exposures done effectively via blog commenting, taking parts in forums, initiate promotions via blogging campaigns, guest postings and participate in social media sites. Another great way is to reward your readers with free subscription gifts or link love for their continuous supports.

5. Quality Product & Customer Service

Nowadays, many small businesses overlook the importance of ‘after sell service’, which sometimes one of the reasons that drive the customers away. Word of mouth can either build you, or destroy you. Thus, be attentive to our customers is always our utmost policy.

In blogging, what defines quality content? Subjective as it is, but not running far from solving a problem, generating ideas and creating good vibe for those who read it. Consider about your readers at all times. Unless you’re super busy with reasons not able to give an instant feedback, otherwise, you need to cater their needs asap.

Reviews:

6. Feedbacks

We do monthly reviews on our merchandises. Such action helps to decide whether our business will continue to benefit from it, or should we move on to other alternatives? It takes into account every customer’s feedback, call of complaints, solutions provided by the vendor, and ROI after considering all the aspects.

Likewise, we are concern about blog visitors and their reactions to our writings. We cannot please everyone, but we still need to take in all the feedbacks, good or bad, and improvise them. Knowing the importance of reviewing your blog will ensure acceptance from your visitors. It could be done by observing your blog comments, emails, and monitoring via Google Alert regarding your personal branding on various sites.

7. Follow Ups

In small business, it’s easier to follow up on customers in a regular basis. Whether it is via phone calls, surveys or a casual conversation during their visits to our premise. This is to build up a marketing relationship with our customers, having them to come back regularly for our services or products.

By utilizing the same concept, we can try to get in touch with our readers, not only through comments, but through emailing as well. Make use of the social media sites available for effective follow-ups. Form an author-reader relationship. Bear in mind your readers could always go to other similar blogs but they’ve chosen yours instead. With this simple reason they deserved your pamper and attention at all times.

Research & Development

8. Quality Control

We are always told to deliver more than what we promised and never the other way around. A well manageable small business is never negligent of quality control.

Blogging is always about quality control for that matter. Besides writing skills, try to minimize the spelling mistakes, and have a clean blog layout that is easy to navigate. Make sure the content is well structured and not losing your personal touch. Maybe a new input would be good for your blog? Try occasional use of vodcast or radio show for your blogging presentations. But don’t over doing it, or risk yourself without a proper training at first.

9. Outsourcing & Future Planning

A small business will find ways to survive, for example outsourcing for possible ventures. Most small business conductors are risk takers and willing to expand their business to the next level.

Try to figure the next possible step for your blog. Could it be collaboration with like-minded bloggers for a webinar? Building a fan site in Facebook? An ebook? If you’re all about gaining knowledge on how to monetize your blog, it’s important to know how and when it’s the time to make it happen.

It is said that blogging market is saturated. But we need to be optimistic if we wish to go headstrong in this blogging business. Small business runners are risk takers, opportunists, and customer-oriented, something we could learn much about and benefit from. However, it’s important to never lose touch of our own selves. Be honest, sincere, and a positive attitude will help us go a long way, while running our blog successfully like a small business.

37 Ways to Make Blogging Easier

2009-08-20T10:20:00.001-07:00

Plan out content with pen and paper.
Dedicate time each week to think of ideas.
Make it easy to record ideas.
Build a life of unique experiences.
Use WriteRoom for typing.
Set limits on the time allowed for writing.
Always have a large backlog of content.
Follow a lower frequency of posts.
Capture interesting tid bits you find with Evernote.
Be passionate.
Write about a broader niche.
Take extended breaks.
Don’t write till you drop – stop writing when you’re on a roll.
Follow clear structures in your content (headings, sub-headings, bullet points etc).
Pick a predominant medium.
Ask visitors what they want.
Make every piece of content count.
Never stop reading and learning.
Set higher standards for yourself as motivation.
Forget word count – say more with less.
Identify the time when brainstorming for you is most effective and stick with that.
The moment it’s not fun: STOP! (and come back to it later)
Experiment with different mediums.
Clear your head with exercise, good food and a glass of water.
Write down EVERY idea, no matter how silly it may seem.
Clear off other items from your to-do list.
Ask visitors to help with research – have them send in quotes etc.
Believe in what you’re saying.
Be both topical and non-topical.
Don’t overthink it – your content is not set in stone.
Think in lists.
Always be creating content (if only in your mind).
Trust that what you have to say is important.
Plug your niche(s) into the Adwords keyword tool.
Monitor what related blogs are saying.
Add variety to your workflow.
Be ruthless. If you’re not feeling an article, delete it.

The Blogging World is Coming to an End!

2009-08-20T09:42:00.001-07:00

Life as a blogger is coming to an end! What will we do?

Just kidding. Blogging will be around forever just like this global warming stuff has been. But your blog can come to an end and you need to be prepared!

Sometimes when you update WordPress, or a theme onto your site because the all knowing world wide web knows more than you do, you lose your data. Dang it! You’ve done all of this hard work, you’ve written beautiful words that have inspired readers to call you a hero among men, but somehow a terrible fate befalls your site and everything is gone.

You have backups right? One of the easiest ways to not get trapped in this scenario is to have files of all of your posts on your computer, or better yet, on an external hard drive. Or maybe you should backup your site stuff with an online database. No matter which way you go, it’s important to save your stuff on multiple avenues. It may seem like a hassle, but it will save your blog from hazardous “error” messages or you screaming “Ohhhhh, what a world, what a world. Who would have thought that some little [evil virus] like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness.”

The Internet can be tricky at times, so it’s better to be safe than sorry. A best scenario is that your site is in wonderful working order, but suddenly your computer crashes because those evil Trojan creating master minds have tapped into another important Microsoft document. This is just a “A plague a’ both your houses!”

All of your hard work has been dashed into a million pieces. This can even happen to Linux users, or at least I had a nasty dream that a Trojan got on my Linux running machine and I wanted to kill myself, so backup, backup, backup!

Some people swear by emailing important literary works of art, err or silly blogging topics, to themselves. This is also a good idea, but if you can just save your data on a thumb drive or something else that’s very convenient, then you won’t have to worry about finding a computer that still works to retrieve your awe inspiring words.

No matter which strategy you use, make sure it’s something that works for you and that your world changing prose are safe from technological idiosyncrasies.

Written by Patricia Vennes from Writer's Rants.

(Waiting For Your Comments)

Dealing with Negative Comments on Your Blog

2009-08-20T09:13:00.001-07:00

Negative comments left on your blog articles just come with the territory, especially as your blog gets increasingly popular. They are a fact of life. It’s up to you as a blogger to determine the best way to handle these negative comments, but read on for a few pointers I’m offering up based on my personal experience.

Before I list the pointers, it’s important for you to keep in mind the message you want to convey with your blog as you moderate and deal with negative comments. Comments are still a reflection of your bog, to a certain extent. Determining how you will deal with them is a matter of preference, and will ultimately set the precedence for how you as a blogger are perceived by your readers.

Spam Comments

Generally these are easy to deal with. if you use a blogging platform like Wordpress or Blogger, spam comments are readily kept at bay with the spam blockers that come standard on your blog. Go through some of these spam comments every so often to ensure that they all are in fact spam comments. Rest easy, though, knowing that you don’t have to do a lot of manual work in order to go through every single comment to make sure it’s not spam.

Random Negativity

Some people leave negative comments just to get attention, or because they don’t have much else to do. Comments that merely say “you suck” or other random words of negativity or profanity are usually not directed at you, so don’t take them personally. Simply delete them and keep it moving.

Direct Negativity

Some people leave negative comments to spark a little discussion. These commenters mean what they’re saying, they’re just not using the social norms of common courtesy when sharing their personal opinion. Read these with care, and try to dig down to their main point instead of letting your emotions run away from you. There may be a useful point buried in the depths of their negative comment.

Regardless of whether or not the negative comment had a trace of usefulness, you need to decide how you will respond to the comment, if at all. There is the option of deleting it, but this may be considered a cop out and other readers as well as the commenter may notice that you’re simply ignoring a comment.

If it’s completely invalid, don’t feel badly about deleting it. Should you choose to respond to the comment, you could try being nice. Sometimes responding to negativity with positivity will solve the problem, and the negative commenter will realize that they were initially over the top.

Sometimes responding to a negative comment with an equal amount of negativity is the way to go. It’s not in my personality to do so, but I do realize that some bloggers can in fact leverage negative comments to their advantage. Spurring a negative commenter can get other commnters to participate in the discussion taking place in your comments thread and increase your site traffic.

Every once in a while, the entertainment of such a comment thread can be worth the woes of dealing with that negative commenter. Who knows? Discussions with them on your blog may become a welcome extension of your blog, giving readers a reason to return to your site on a regular basis.

(Waiting For Your Comments)

How to change the template

2009-08-18T18:47:00.001-07:00

t this opportunity, I will discuss about how to change template in blogger.com. First matter to be in considering in changing template is you have to make a backing up your old template, this good for if you feeling not match with your newly template. if you not yet known the way to back up template, please read at the post how to backup template, and also don't forget to back up your widgets (this is very important). For back up your widgets, please read at the post how to backup your widgets.

To change the template, of course you must had a new template to uploaded. If still not yet had, you can download for free template at uniQue Template or at other sites. Have ready for changing your old template with newly template? Please follow the steps below :

Login to blogger with your ID
After entering the dasboard page , click Layout. Please saw the picture :
Then click edit HTML tab. Please saw the picture :
Click the Download full template link. Save your template:
Click browse... button. Choose your new template. and then click Upload button.
Usually go out commemoration that your data in your widgets will be delete forever (so don't forget to backup your widgets).
For example, the image will show like this :
Click at Convirm & Save button.
Finish. Please look he result.

Now you have had the new face. However of course your template is still empty, So next step is inserting your widgets manually through page element menu.
Enjoy your new blog face.

(Waiting for your comments)

Making a Blog at Blogspot

2009-08-18T18:10:00.001-07:00

Maybe, there're some of you who still don't understand about blog, and still wondering about blog. As my kindness, I’ll try to review a little about blog. (Based on my version),

1. Blog, What it is?

Blog (abbreviation from Web log) is sites which more dominant in private characteristic. This means, most of the content will be affected (realize or not) by the characteristic of the Blogger (Blog user) himself.

Blog was made by the designers of the blog provider in order to work automatically and easily to be operated on, so for we that still was confused with the programming language to make one website still not the problem.If you could have made an email account in the internet, then in made blog then I was convinced you could.

2. How to make a blog?

As if when we start to make an ordinary e-mail, we’ll need an account first, to make a blog. Because of that reason, feel please to register yourself in free blog provider. We can find a lot of free blog provider in internet, and some blog provider which really famous nowadays, are http://www.blogger.com, http://www.wordpress.com or http://www.blogsome.com.

In this chance, I’m going to review about make a blog in http://www.blogger.com Click the picture below to register.

Saw the picture below:

After we arrive in Blogger.com, you will see picture like shown above. Now, follow my instruction.

Click an arrow sign, inscribed with “CREATE YOUR BLOG NOW”
Complete the ‘e-mail address’ form, with your own e-mail address (of course with the valid one).
Rewrite your e-mail address in form ‘retype e-mail address’
Type the password as you wanted to. Type it in form, ‘enter a password’
Retype your password in form ‘type password again’
Type the password as you wanted to. Type it in form, ‘enter a password’
Retype your password in form ‘type password again’
Type the word which has shown, in form ‘word verification’. Click the white little square beside the sentence, ‘I accept the Terms of Service’.
Click an arrow sign inscribed with “CONTINUE”
Write the title of your blog that you desire (you can change it later) in form ‘Blog Title’
Type the name of your site in form ‘Blog Address (URL)’ .
Type verification word which shown in form ‘word verification’. After that, click an arrow image inscribed with word, ‘CONTINUE’.
Choose one template that you wanted to (You can change it later, if you want), then click again an arrow sign inscribed with word ‘CONTINUE’.
Wait a moment. After you meet a sentence ‘Your blog has been created’. Click an arrow sign (again) which inscribed with “BEGIN POSTING’. Feel please to fill up your blog with everything you want to. After you finish with your first posting, just click the sentence, ‘PUBLISH YOUR POSTING’, Please write What you want, if being finished then click of the publish button.
It's Done.

How to backup your "Widgets"

2009-08-18T18:07:00.001-07:00

Be like my promise at my previous post that is i will posting how to backup the data in the widget / page element.
If emerging question do we require to back up the data in page element? the answer is very require to. Because if you change your old template with new template, hence the data in page element will follow to be vanished, and you'd lose all data be like : guest book, blog accessory, blog tool, and also all which have been attached in your blog forever.

Many the way to back up the data in Widgets / page element, but i'm limitation of time to comment it in detail, hence I will try explain just two way, that is backing up directly from Page element and also backup from template source code.

Back up widgets From Page Element
Back up widgets in this way be in fact very disturbing, however than we lose various accessory and also tool which have been attached, wiser likely to do so.
Please follow the steps below :

Login to blogger with your ID
Click Layout.
Click menu Page Elemet, you will see the page be like this ( just example):
At representative of above seen the article edit which I give red circle, You must click at Edit in each the page element, hence will emerge popup window figuring in the code have in input to that. Pay attention the picture below :
Copy the code inside there, and paste to Notepad.
Repeat the step above at all the elements.
Finish.

There is the step how to back the data inside page element. This is the other way to backup your widgets.

Back up widget through Template Source Code
I think this way is more quickly and efisian, you need a few time to do this. This is the steps :

Visit your blog address.
After you at your self blog, click the menu View at the bar menu. See the picture below :
After click the menu View, will be out the sub menu, then click Source.
if your browser is Internet Explorer, so there is automatically will out the notepad with your template source code. If your browser is Mozilla Firefox or Opera, so there is out the new page with your template source code For example, see the picture below :
Save your template source code.
Finish.

If your question, where is the widgets code? there is always begin with :
<div class='widget-content'>
And in terminating with code :
</div>
For example, in my template source code. there are code be like this :

<h2 class='title'>Buku Tamu</h2> 
<div class='widget-content'> 

<iframe scrolling="auto" width="170" frameborder="0" src="http://www.shoutmix.com/?jaya" height="500" title="jaya">
<a href="http://www.shoutmix.com/?jaya">View shoutbox</a>
</iframe>
<br/><a href="http://www.shoutmix.com" title="Get your own free shoutbox at ShoutMix!"></a><br/>

</div>

So, my widget code is like this :

 <iframe scrolling="auto" width="170" frameborder="0" src="http://www.shoutmix.com/?jaya" height="500" title="jaya"> <a href="http://www.shoutmix.com/?jaya">View shoutbox</a> </iframe> <br/><a href="http://www.shoutmix.com" title="Get your own free shoutbox at ShoutMix!"></a><br/> 

I hope with this post you become know how to backup your widget template. So, if you want change your template with a new template. Please don't forget to backup your template and your widgets too.
In my next post, i will discuss about How to change the template/theme.
See you in my next post.

How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs

2009-08-17T11:41:00.001-07:00

’ve been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to make money from blogging.

I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.

The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to make money through blogs.

Income Streams for Bloggers - How to Make Money Blogging

Advertising Programs - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google - Adsense. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks, Text Link Ads.

Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick and Value Click (to name just some of the options) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (YPN is only available to US publishers).

Lastly there’s BlogAds - one of the first blog specific ad networks.

RSS Advertising - The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.

Sponsorship - In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month - one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies - either in one off or a regular fashion - and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing so.

Affiliate Programs - There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.

Digital Assets - Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.

Blog Network Opportunities - with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks - bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.

Business Blog Writing Opportunities - as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.

Non Blogging Writing Opportunities - Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors - this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!

Donations - Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fund raising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.

Flipping Blogs - Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ - or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).

Merchandising - My recent attempt to sell ProBlogger.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress. While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising - quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details - but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.

Consulting and Speaking - While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work - his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago - but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.

As time rolls on there are more and more ways that bloggers make money from their blogs opening up. Feel free to suggest your own ideas and experiences in comments below.

Creating A Blogging Maintenance Routine That Isn’t A Chore

2009-08-17T10:52:00.001-07:00

Running a blog isn’t simple. Besides the obvious challenges of regularly writing great content and making sure plenty of people get to read it, there are so many elements of a blog that need regular attention. You could ignore things like spam comments, out of date posts and broken links and just about get by, but if you really want to keep your blog healthy and running smoothly you need a maintenance routine.

Many people I know don’t have a regular or organized routine, they just deal with situations as and when they feel like it. The problem with this approach is it quickly becomes a big time-consuming chore. They might get fed up of all the spam comments one day and decide to do a massive deletion session which takes several hours. Alternatively they might decide to shake up their categories in one go which again takes lots of time.

What I personally do is break down my maintance sessions into small chunks and focus on it every week. It’s much easier to take little steps regularly than large strides occassionally. Rather than editing dozens of comments in one session, for instance, you can do just ten comments in each weekly setting. Similarly with links, rather than trying to get on top of them all in one go, you might set a target of fixing twenty links each week. This approach allows me to keep on top of maintaining my blog without it becoming a time-consuming chore.

With that in mind, below are the things I focus on during my weekly routine.

Comments
If you do only one thing in this category clean up your spam comments. You should have Akismet or some similar anti-spam plugin in place which will capture most of it, but a little involvement on your part may be required. You may also want to edit and clean up some comments, particularly older ones. I personally check over all new comments from the week, plus a page of older comments.
Old posts
There are a couple of things you can do here. If you’re like me, you’re writing skills and blogging knowledge will have improved over the years and many of your older posts will be lacking. It’s never too late to freshen them up - improve the grammar, expand it, add extra links, etc. If you think that’s a waste of time, see if it’s worth just updating the post title/permalink to make it more SEO friendly (remember to redirect properly). I’m slowly working through each post each week, right from the beginning of my archive.
Wordpress/plugin updates
What better time to get the latest release of Wordpress downloaded or get all those plugins finally up to date than during your maintainance routine?
Categories and tags
This is perhaps a minor area to maintain but if you have a lot of categories or you’re quite liberal with your tagging, it may be worth giving this some attention. If you have dozens of categories or have a mish-mash of unorganized tags they’re no use to anybody. Delete or consolidate!
Broken links
Linking to dead content is bad for obvious reasons but it’s inevitable that over time link rot will occur. That’s why it’s useful to keep them all up to date, especially if you’re changing categories, titles, etc. Download the broken link checker for this. You may be surprised at just how many dead links you have. Don’t forget to check old pingbacks and author URL’s too (while editing your comments). I update or delete ten broken links each week.
Backup
The last and most obvious step. After all your hard work providing great content and maintaining it all, it would be a shame if you lost it all due to some mishap, hack or general disaster. Make sure you backup regularly!

Inject Yourself into Your Content

2009-08-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

As I look back on the posts that have connected most with my readers it is often posts in which I’ve shared something of my own personal story and experience that seem to draw readers into a deeper engagement.

Sometimes it’s not what you write but who you are and the stories that you tell that seem to make content compelling.

Many readers don’t just want information - they want an emotional connection and they want to know that someone real is on the other end of what they’re writing.

To put it another way - Compelling content often is produced by compelling people.

Unfortunately many blogs can be faceless and anonymous ‘pages of content’ that fail to go beyond the conveying of information to creating connections.

Be Yourself

This doesn’t mean you necessarily have to be the most interesting person in the world - just be real - just be authentic. Tell your readers about your experiences, share your successes and failures, give them a glimpse into who you are when you’re not doing what they normally see you do, consider using photos and video of you that help you tell your stories.

Be Relevant

Of course you don’t want to throw in personal stories just for the sake of it - work at finding ways to share yourself in your content in ways that are relevant to the topic you’re writing about. Tell about your experiences and opinions on your topic rather than just reporting on the topic in a detached kind of way.

Should I Quit Blogging?

2009-08-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

“Should I quit my blog and start Lifestreaming, Videocasting, Social Messaging/Networking etc?”

There’s been another round of ‘blogging is dead’ posts doing the rounds of late and as a result I’ve had a number of emails hitting my inbox over the last week from bloggers asking if they should stop blogging.

Here’s some of the advice I’ve been sharing:

Blogging is not dead - it’s evolving.
You should be evolving too.
Keep being useful, keep solving problems and keep meeting needs - whatever the medium this is key.
Keep producing content - people continue to search the web for content in huge numbers. It’s not all about networking and bookmarking - whether it be text, video or audio - keep producing content.
Experiment with different mediums - to the best of your ability keep abreast of the ‘new’ mediums that are emerging.
Build a ‘Home Base’ - many people flit from one medium to another and end up with nothing of their own .
Build a Brand - the mediums are tools. They’ll come and go in time - the key is to build something that lasts beyond them.
Don’t be Precious about your ‘Blog’ and be open to change - there’s no one ‘right’ way to blog. Blogs can have comments or not have comments, have full RSS feeds or partial ones, look like a traditional blog or act and look more like a lifestream or portal. The key is to know what you want to achieve and let that shape what you do with your blog.
Don’t abandon your blog too quickly - your primary efforts may move into a different medium but blogs can be an important part of the mix of what you do online. Don’t abandon your blog - build upon it, let it evolve, leverage what you’ve already built and use it where appropriate in the mix of what you do.

My last piece of advice is particularly for those with limited time or capacity to fully engage with all of the mediums and tools that are currently at our fingertips.

I get the sense from a lot of bloggers that they feel that they’re being left behind - that all this new stuff that is emerging is beyond them - that it’s hopeless to keep on blogging. My message to you if you’re feeling this way is to keep at it. Even as a full time blogger/web entrepreneur I don’t have time to fully engage with all of the new technologies that are currently emerging. I too feel some of those ‘overwhelming’ feelings.

I think the key is to engage with the new technologies to the point that you’re able but to know when to stop and focus upon what you already have in front of you.

The problem as I see it is that whether it be a blog, a Twitter presence, a podcast or some other kind of website or presence - it takes time to build these things up to successful levels. If you only give a medium a short time before moving to the next one you’ll just end up with a trail of abandoned accounts and sites behind you.

I see a lot of people running from one thing to the next and not really achieving anything. They live in a constant state of distraction and experimentation. There’s nothing wrong with new things and testing them out - but unless you’re fortunate enough to have a lot of spare time or an amazing capacity not to sleep there comes a time where you need to choose a handful of things to do (or even just one) and to do it to the best of your ability.

For me - this means focusing mainly upon building blogs. My blogs are evolving and looking less and less like blogs as I experiment with different ways of presenting the information on them and play with different technologies on them - but I try to keep my focus steady upon the long term goals that I have. As a result I’ve managed to build them into profitable properties.

Yes I’ll continue to experiment with other technologies but for me they are only about adding value to my primary web properties.

What do you think? How are you approaching what you do in this ever changing web?

How to Hide Your Post Date, Time and/or Author

2009-08-05T18:02:00.000-07:00

There are some reason for blogger to hide Post date, time and author. May be they want to see their blog looks clear or everything. Now I will show you the trick to "hide your post date, time and or author". the methods is very simple, just find the code that I pointed to you and delete it. You can chose which part want to delete, date only, time only, author only or it all. Ok, if you decided to do it lets begin the hack.

1. Login to blogger the go to "Layout --> Edit HTML"

2. Click on the "Download Full Template" to back up your template first.

3. Check on the "Expand Widget Templates" check box.

Hide Post Date

find this code and delete it.

<data:post.dateHeader/>

Hide Post Time

find this code and delete it.

<span class='post-timestamp'>
<b:if cond='data:top.showTimestamp'>
<data:top.timestampLabel/>
<b:if cond='data:post.url'>
<a class='timestamp-link' expr:href='data:post.url' rel='bookmark'
title='permanent link'><abbr class='published'
expr:title='data:post.timestampISO8601'><data:post.timestamp/></abbr></a>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</span>.

Hide Post Author

find this code and delete it.

<span class='post-author vcard'>
<b:if cond='data:top.showAuthor'>
<data:top.authorLabel/>
<span class='fn'><data:post.author/></span>
</b:if>
</span>

4. Save your editting

How to Hide/Remove Label Count in Blogger Blogs

2009-07-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

Some people prefer not to display the label count in their blogs as it looks a bit unprofessional. Lets say if you have a label 'Funny sms' with 50 label count and another one ' Good morning sms' with 2 as label count... less people will show interest on clicking the second one.

So, let’s see how to hide or remove the Label count in your blogger blog(s)...

1. Sign into Blogger dashboard » Layout » Edit html

Tick the expand widget templates and remove this line from the template..

<span dir='ltr'>(<data:label.count/>)</span>

2. Save the Changes and done!

Some Useful Adsense and Traffic Tips for Beginners

2009-07-23T18:38:00.000-07:00

Adsense, Adsense , Adsense...! I'm sure most of you might have read numerous articles or posts about Adsense and Traffic Tips like Adsense Optimization Tips, Increase your Adsense Earnings, I made XXXXX bucks and so on. You might be fed up with those articles because of its 'lengthiness' or 'boring' explanations. I'm not putting you under 'boredom' conditions! Anyway let me start like this:

Adsense alone won't bring money into your pocket. You must get Good amount of Traffic for that.The success formula is:
Traffic + Adsense = Money..!

Here are some 'simple traffic generation tips' for Google Adsense users. Though some of these tips may be familiar to you, you can get some more useful 'tips' while reading..! Read, understand and please make it practice if you want to be a Successful Adsense Publisher:

Submit some of your blog articles to various Article directories such as Articles Factory, Articles Hub, Article Base, Article Biz etc...

Use Technorati Tags

Submit your best articles to Digg, Yahoo Buzz and Del.icio.us

Frequently Comment on other Niche blogs(Blogs with similar topics)

Submit Sitemaps to Google Webmasters and Yahoo Site Explorer

Use a Blogroll containing your favourite related Blogs/Websites

Try to Post at least one article/content per day

Make your content unique and useful

Update the Blog with breaking news, new informations and make it a Valuable Content

DO NOT click Your Adsense Ads Yourself, your Adsense Account will be banned

Match your Adsense Ads with your site's theme and color

Place Ads on TOP(468x60, 728x90 etc) and between blog posts(300x250,200x200 etc)

These are just 'very simple' tips which might be 'useful' for the 'Beginners' and also for others. So Try to Build a Good, Quality Contented, Unique and Frequently updated Blog to get More Traffic to your Blog.

6 Tips How to Write Effective PPC Ads

2009-06-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

Nowadays, it became quite easy to start and maintain Pay per Click (PPC) campaigns. Looking from the dull side, there is a lot of money being wasted given that these Ads are appealing to the visitor, thus reducing the Click through Rate.

Writing effective PPC Ads can be quite easy. The most important thing to remember is that the one and only goal of your PPC Ad is to get clicked. There is no room for branding and no time to sell. You can do all that on the landing page, but only if you get the visitor to your landing page.

Keep in Mind: The Headline

Just as in all advertising, the headline is the most important part of your PPC Ad. In fact, studies show that Ads with powerful headlines get clicked even if the rest of the ad copy is below average. The number one tip is to include your keyword in your headline. And whenever possible, include active words and speak to your target market. Avoid exclamation points or other symbols which only take up space.

Keep in Mind: The Benefits

Again, writing a PPC ad is not much different than writing a display ad - except of course you have much less words to work with. Emphasize the benefits to your visitors, not the features of your products. In other words, what will your customer get when he uses your product or service?

Keep in Mind: Your Target Market

Display Ads work best when the reader believes the Ad is meant for him - and the same goes for your PPC Ad. While you might not have enough space to use "Attention: Small Business Owners" you can probably fit the word "you" into your Ad.

Keep in Mind: The Action

You don't want to waste your precious Ad space with the obvious "click here" but you can refer to what action the visitor will take on your landing page. How about "take the quiz" or "request and instant quote" or whatever fits your particular situation.

Keep in Mind: Your Secondary Goal

The number one goal is to get a click, but what do you hope to accomplish once the visitor gets to your landing page? Do you want to capture names, or do you want to make a sale? If you want as many names as possible, offer something free in your Ad.

Keep in Mind: The Competition

Before writing your Ads look at current Ads for your keywords. Next, do the exact opposite of what the industry norm is. Why? PPC is similar to the yellow pages with all your competitors lumped into one space, looking almost identical. Do something different so you will stand out from the crowd.

Tips to Improve Visitors Bounce Rate

2009-06-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

Bounce rate is the percentage or amount of visitors who leave your website after arriving at the entry page. These are visitors who ‘bounce away’ after arriving without viewing other pages on your website. You can easily find your website’s bounce rate by using statistics tools like Google Analytics.

A low bounce rate means that visitors are exploring your website in greater detail meaning that they are more engaged with your content. High bounce rates of over 60% require immediate attention. Below find some tips to help you reduce your bounce rate and increase visitors’ loyalty.

Page Headline

Most times a wrong page headline can make your visitors quickly click the back button. Your headline should make visitors want to continue reading. Typically when you visit a website you begin by reading the headline. If the headline connects with you then you begin reading the contents of the page.

Add Photos, Videos or Screen Shots to Catch Attention

Adding a nice screen shot of your product or a photo will cause visitors to give a second look. Use a good caption below the picture to grab their attention and make them interested. Embedded videos are a great way to reduce bounce rate since it takes time to view a video.

Improve the Web Page Loading Time

Visitors tend to click the back button if the page takes long to load. Optimize your HTML code, remove unwanted images and optimize your images. Consider a new website design. Go for a simple, practical but decent looking design.

Improve Navigation

Assume that your visitor knows nothing about your site. Assume that they want more information. Make navigation points easy to access, position links around content. There are many ways to orient your visitors and the most important principle is to make the links highly visible and relevant to the current page.

Test your Web Pages

Test your website with a group of users. Ask them to enter your site from specific pages. Get feedback based on their experiences. This will give you ways to improve.

To best achieve this, you should regularly analyze and study your bounce rate. After collecting data, implement changes to your website and see if the bounce rate improves. Also, determine how it affects your goals. Finally, make changes if necessary.

If you’ve not paid any attention to your bounce rate before, try starting today. It might help you to dramatically improve your website.

Give Your Website a Global Appeal

2009-06-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

A research has found that not less than 85% people rely on search engines when it comes to finding relevant information online. While organic search is used predominantly - as many as 70% of the search engine users according to reliable source, Paid or Sponsored links also help users extensively as an alternative but dominant search method. So, for getting a good rank for a site on any search engine, like Google, Yahoo and others, search engine optimization plays a real trick. Various tactics are used in the process of search engine optimization ranging from Domain Name Registration to aggressive PPC campaigning. First is the selection of a domain name that should contain the main keyword and obviously no hyphens. It is advised to use easy and simple keywords, which are used widely. The keyword density comes close second.

Many people think that high keyword density will lead the site to get a good ranking, but always remember that high density of keywords are mostly taken as spamming, which may leave the site blacklisted. So, be careful while using keywords in your writing. Apart from these, link exchanging, directory submission, social media optimization, article submission, blogging and so on are the most common constituents of any standard SEO packages under the search engine optimization periphery.

A number of Search Engine Optimization Australia companies offer search engines optimization services. All these companies offer various attractive SEO packages, easy on pocket and high on expectations. According to your budget and business necessity, you can choose any of these packages. Even more, if you are looking for Google Adwords packages, many of these companies will help you strategically.

Especially, if you are keener about web marketing, these companies will provide you with intelligent PPC campaigns and related services. It is true that of late, 80% expenses pertaining to web marketing are spent on PPC marketing only. No matter whether you want sponsored match PPC campaign or content match PPC campaign, with a wide range of PPC services, these Search Engine Optimization Australia companies will definitely meet your needs. Whatever you do before selecting a company, you must first check how proficient they are in using various search engine techniques, their packages, rates on offer and then only go for the best option. Search engine optimization not only steps up your web presence, but also allows you to reach out to a wide extent and give your business a new high. Finding a suitable SEO service is necessary by having an analytical look at company profiles and their clientele.

Why The Hell My Blogs Revenue are So Low?

2009-06-07T19:56:00.000-07:00

I think I might have caught your attention with that Title which was my plan :-/

Those who do not blog completely because they want to earn some extra money often thinks: “Why the hell my blogs revenue so low?” Many people who think that blogs simply can not generate much money. They are absolutely wrong! Blog can generate you the same amount of money if not more compared to any other website. Now I am talking about PPC (Pay per click) sources of revenue such as Google-Adsense here.

The main thing I have noticed is that people tend to concentrate on wider markets. If you are running a personal diary kind of blog in which you talk about your dreams and other gossips around the world; the chances are that there are thousands of similar blogs around. The more competition you have, the harder it will be for you to make some cash.

Instead try concentrating on smaller markets also known as niche markets. Not only it will be easier for you to develop the traffic, the CPC (Cost per click) should also be higher due to advertisers demand exceeding publishers supply.

Secondly you need to have a unique selling point. You need to give your readers something that nobody else does. This should really help you get returning visitors.

Finally it’s the ads themselves. You should channel your ads. By this you will be able to measure your various ad block’s performance. One of the most important things is to Keep experimenting. Try different ad formats, colors and positioning. Run your setup for a few weeks, note the performance and try something different. Even if you think you have found the optimum ad setup keep on trying to improve it. In most cases you can always tweak something to make your ad performance much better than earlier.

I hope you might have got your answer whenever you think like “Why the hell my blogs revenue so low?

100+ Do Follow Forums To Increase Backlinks

2009-06-07T19:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a DO-Follow Forums list by where you can reply with your blog name n get enormous backlinks.They all are 100% Verified,there is no doubt in it.So Enjoy this huge list.

http://www.webmaster-forum.net

http://www.geekvillage.com/forums

http://www.zymic.com/forum

http://www.webmastershelp.com

http://www.webmasterdesk.org

http://www.webmasterground.com

http://developers.evrsoft.com/forum

http://www.websitebabble.com

http://www.elancetalk.com

http://www.talkingcity.com

http://www.australianwebmaster.com

http://www.wtricks.com

http://www.forums.webzonetalk.com

http://www.htmlforums.com

http://www.searchbliss.com/forum

http://www.webmasterize.com

http://www.webmasterserve.com

http://www.freehostforum.com

http://www.seorefugee.com/forums

http://www.cre8asiteforums.com/forums

http://forums.seo.ph

http://forums.delphiforums.com

http://www.web-mastery.net

http://www.webworkshop.net/seoforum/index.php

http://www.webproworld.com

http://www.bzimage.org

http://www.v7n.com/forums

http://www.dnforum.com

http://www.webcosmoforums.com

http://forums.webicy.com

http://forum.hittail.com/phpbb2/index.php

http://www.affiliateseeking.com/forums

http://siteownersforums.com/index.php

http://www.webmaster-forums.net

http://www.geekpoint.net

http://www.smallbusinessforums.org

http://forums.ukwebmasterworld.com

http://www.experienceadvertising.com/forum

http://opensourcephoto.net/forum

http://forums.seochat.com

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com

http://www.ihelpyou.com/forums

http://dishnews.medianetwork.co.in/yabb2/YaBB.pl

http://www.businesss-forum.com

http://www.9mb.com

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/forums

http://forums.seroundtable.com

http://www.submitexpress.com/bbs

http://www.startups.co.uk/6678842908486596004/forums.html

http://www.webmaster-talk.com

http://forums.comicbookresources.com

http://www.clicks.ws/forum/index.php

http://www.acorndomains.co.uk

http://forums.onlinebookclub.org

http://www.ableton.com/forum

http://www.davidcastle.org/BB

http://www.webtalkforums.com

http://www.bloggapedia.com/forum

http://www.bloggertalk.com/forum.php

http://paymentprocessing.cc

http://www.directoryjunction.com/forums

http://www.internetmarketingforums.net

http://www.lex224.com/forums/index.php

http://forum.joomla.org

http://forum.mambo-foundation.org/index.php

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php

http://www.namepros.com/index.php

http://loanofficerforum.com/forum

http://iq69.com/forums

http://forum.hot4s.com.au

http://forums.mysql.com

http://forums.amd.com/forum

http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/isn/Community/en-us/Forums

http://forums.cnet.com

http://seotalk.medianetwork.co.in

https://www.computerbb.org

http://forum.vbulletinsetup.com

http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com

http://www.app-developers.com

http://forums.stuffdaily.com

http://forums.seo.com

http://www.webdigity.com

http://www.inboundlinksforum.com

http://forums.gentoo.org

http://ubuntuforums.org

http://forum.textpattern.com

http://talk.iwebtool.com

http://www.frogengine.com/forum

http://www.capitaltheory.com

http://www.smsbucket.com/forums/

http://www.seoin.info

http://vidberry.com

http://www.teamaguilar.com/forum/

http://www.discuss4fun.com

http://www.fightagainstrecession.com

Bad Google Adsense Words That Will Not Make You Money

2009-06-07T07:24:00.000-07:00

Adsense is the most popular advertisement application that most of webmasters and bloggers use to make money. So I will try to help you not to fail if you use Adsense. Well, there are many articles about the words that Google pay most however there are many words that shouldn’t be used at all. Just imagine that there are many or several words you can’t say on TV. The situation with Adsense is the same but there are many more words that can’t be used. Using bad words may get you a penalty.

If you wonder what the penalty is I can say that these bad words may prevent normal Adsense ads from being shown. Public service ads (PSA) will be shown on your blog and I want to notice that PSA do not pay any money. It means that you will not get paid but impressions will be counted.

If you really want to use these bad words try to use numbers instead of letters. So have you ever noticed that you have number of clicks in your Adsense account but no amount of money ? Look at the words below that will not help you make money. By the way, some of these words may be good because nobody knows all the bad words. These words shouldn’t be used in any form.

6 Tricks to Make Your Blogs Load Faster

2009-06-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

If you keep your blog loading slowly, you lose visitors. To make your blogs load faster, you can increase your internet connection, but it only works for you. It does not work for your visitors. Thus the best way to fix this is to have your blogs clean. That is the only way, but how? This is a good question anyway. There are many factors that make your blogs load slowly, so there are many ways to fix it.

1.Coding: if you see any code that is un-necessary, you can delete it or if you see any similar code that they write twice, you could delete it and combine then into one function. For example, if you write style for each tag, and those styles are the same, you should write one class in CSS and connect to it.

2. Comments: If you already understood the code, you should delete the comments in your code because it is not necessary anymore.

3. Create thumbnail for picture: If you have a big picture, and you put it on your blogs. That makes your blogs load really slowly because it takes time to load the full picture. You should create a thumbnail for that picture and link it to original picture. If that picture is not necessary for your post, you can only have a link to it. By doing it, your blogs become lighter and faster.

4. Widget, function: As I mention in previous post, widgets can become a main reason for blogs loading slowly, so if it is not very useful for your blogs, you should remove it from your blogs.

5.JavaScript: You can write all your JavaScript code in to 1 or 2 files and connect to them by using src link.

6.Flash: As I said, you should not use flash for your blogs. It usually takes too much time to load.

Free Domain Names

2009-06-05T10:03:00.000-07:00

1. www.1and1.com/free-domains

Up to 5 Free Domains w/ Hosting. Private Registration Incl

2.OfficeLive.com/Free-Domain-Name

MS Office Live Small Business: Free Website, Domain Name, Email & More

3.www.free-webhosts.com/free-domain-names.php

directory with comparison table of websites offering top-level domain names for free, such as Dot.tk.

4. www.domjax.com/

Domjax is combination of free seo tools, page rank checks, html validity, free domain name search, traffic information tools and many more.

5.www.freedomain.co.nr

Register a free subdomain of .co.nr free domain name! No ads, plus free URL redirection (free URL forwarding), free URL cloaking & masking, path forwarding, ...

6.www.register.com

One free domain name registration per package. Offer does not apply to Premium domains. Your domain name will automatically renew after one year at our low ...

How to follow a Blogger blog without Follower Gadget

2009-06-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

Recently, Blogger introduced the Followers Gadget. It is a very useful tool. This gadget is used to build a community network for your blog. This gadget is similar to feed. It can help you get new information on other Blogger blogs quickly. Unlike feed, you can only get their updates on the feed readers. With Follower Gadget, when you subscribe, you can get their updates on the Blogger dashboard and in Google reader. So, when you log in your blogs in Blogger dashboard, you can easily see the update on other blogs. However, most bloggers do not use this gadget on their blogs. When you see an interesting blog, you want to subscribe to their follower, but their do not have one. You may not feel good. There is a solution to this problem.

To follow a blog that does not use Follower Gadget, you need their blogID. You can find this ID in their blog source code. Open their blog source, and search for blogID number

Then replace this number with blognumber in the following link:

http://www.blogger.com/follow-blog.g?blogID=blognumber

Copy this link and past it in the browser address, then it will ask you to choose to subscribe privately or publicly.

Creating Blog Entries

2009-06-03T10:22:00.000-07:00

When it comes to running a blog, the owner needs to be able to regularly generate content. This task comes easy to some, but for many, it can occasionally happen that the ideas stop coming. Failing to post for a little while can be detrimental to a blog’s traffic, so the site owner needs to be sure to have a steady flow of traffic. There are a number of ways in which the site owner can generate content, below are a few ways to do so.

Learn from others -

Watch blogs that are similar to yours, finding out what they are posting about and learning more about what is interesting and worth are relating to the constituents of your blogs. There is a lot that you can learn from other blogs, so look to industry experts and other bloggers and see what you can glean from them when it comes to creating blog content for your own endeavor.

Subscribe to RSS Feeds -

By subscribing to RSS feeds you can come up with plenty of new blog topics and subjects to write about. Read other blogs and find out about current news, events and other hot topics that will allow you to get a better feel for what needs to be discussed in your blog.

Talk with other Bloggers -

Ask questions to other bloggers as to job information, how they come up with ideas and other similar subjects. Talk with other bloggers and you will get an excellent idea of what is going on out there, and even more importantly, how you can generate more content for your blog. Open yourself up to conversations with other bloggers in your niche or industry and you are bound to come with all kinds of ideas for content.

Visit your past and read your blog history -

The best way to know what to write is to look back in time at what you have already talked about. You can also find entries which are in need of revisions or that you can update. If you have written about something in the past that could be touched on again, reference the old blog post with a link and update your readers with new relevant information.

Invite a Guest Blogger -

It can be a good this to invite a blogger who is an expert in the same or related field as your own. Inviting a guest blogger will allow you to add content to your blog without necessarily having to write it yourself. Expand your blog with content from other bloggers and attract more traffic to your site.

Hire a Professional -

Sometimes, you just need the article written and the best way to accomplish this is to hire a blogger. If you are having trouble coming up with content for your blog, are not sure what to write next, or simply need assistance getting content written on demand, don’t be afraid to hire a professional to assist you.

Keep Readers Coming Back to Your Blog

2009-06-03T10:18:00.000-07:00

If you have a blog, you want to keep readers coming back. You can attract readers in a variety of ways, but keeping them is a little harder. You may end up high in the search engines for tons of keywords and pull in tons of unique page views. But how do you keep these new blog readers interested enough to come back again?

Many bloggers don’t. They do all the right things to get people there, but fail at engaging people enough that they’ll come back to read some more. What are the tricks, then, to keep readers coming back to your blog?

There are no tricks, which is a good thing. Tricks are hard. The techniques to get people coming back are instead just common sense that many people seem to forget when they’re writing their blogs. The main technique is to actually write something someone wants to read.

Obviously, your blog has to be interesting. If you get tons of unique page views and no comments at all, then the people reading your posts don’t find them interesting enough to comment on, and they’re probably not coming back.

If you’re using SEO in your posts, then you’re blogging correctly for the search engines. But don’t forget to actually make the posts about something, too. A post about shoes that simply goes on to say that you could pick a red shoe, or blue shoes, and there are 800,000 different kinds of shoes without ever offering anything but that kind of fluff won’t get people to come back. If you explain the benefits of choosing the red shoe over the blue one, then you have actual content.

Make sure that your content is actually something people need to know. Really bad SEO writing about those shoes, for example, might manage to get the keywords in a good number of times and still be about more than listing types of shoes. That doesn’t mean it’s good.

A really unimaginative person who doesn’t have anything to say about shoes might write a post about how you could choose red shoes over blue shoes because you like red better. Or that red shoes are different from blue shoes because one is dyed red . . . and the other, blue. This kind of SEO writing is all over the Internet. It might pull in keyword-related traffic, but who will come back for more of that?

To keep readers coming back to your blog you have to engage them somehow. Don’t use a keyword-stuffed post about nothing, making it interesting at the same time-it’s not that hard to do. How-to posts are very popular, as are posts with useful lists like “Top 10 Reasons Red Shoes are Better than Blue.”

Just don’t stop at a catchy title. Actually deliver what you said you would. Give the reader something interesting enough that they’ll want to check back later to see what else you might be writing about in your blog and you’ll keep the reader coming back.

Blog Plug-Ins to Get More Readers

2009-06-03T10:06:00.000-07:00

Wordpress specifically has a number of plug-ins for blogging that will allow you to attract more readers to your blog. Some of the best blog plug-ins for increasing traffic to come in three main categories:

Social networking and bookmarking
Posting across many different platforms
RSS feed helpers

BTE Related Websites: For WordPress users the best way to get traffic is to use the plugin called Related Websites. The more bloggers that use this plugin, the stronger the whole system is. To get your links to show up on relevant posts, you must join and become a full member. This quality control is completely humanized so that the system is never compromised. You get strong related links for your site and in addition are linked to from other sites. What are you waiting for?

RSS Feeds: Lots of people prefer to read blogs in feeds rather than having to visit several different blog sites per day. This doesn’t actually get them coming through as traffic, but they read the post and will follow links and other such information. If you don’t have your blog available as a feed, then you’re missing out on those readers who prefer feeds over surfing to your blog regularly.

Some of the more popular Wordpress plug-ins for RSS feeds do different things. Some are designed to allow you to add a copyright to your posts like ©Feed, which also “fingerprints” your feed so you can search for plagiarists who are duplicating your content. Feed Footer lets you copyright as well, and also lets you add advertising in the footer of your feeds.

The type of plug-in that lets you use ads is great for those into monetizing their blogs and can help offset the loss of clicks or advertiser revenue by adding it to the feed. Feedvertiser lets you place ads in your feed, as well. Feed Control lets you exclude certain posts from the feed, while Better Feed lets you ad the © notice, a del.icio.us link and a “read more” link to lead people to your blog.

Feedstats lets you see the stats on your feeds, and SlashComment adds a little note to the end of the feeds about the number of comments on the post.

Social Bookmarking: For social bookmarking and networking within your blog, the one of the best plug-ins is called Share This. Unlike many other plug-ins that will let you social bookmark at Digg, Reddit or del.icio.us, Share This create a drop-down box where the reader can choose from about 14 of the most popular Social Bookmarking sites online. The Social plug-in, however, has the record for offering 61 social bookmarking links to your reader.

The RSS Flashfeeder to MySpace combines the RSS feed help with social networking, by letting you send the last two posts of your feed directly to your MySpace page.

Crossposting: These plug-ins let you make a post in your Wordpress blog and recreate in your other blogs without having to copy and paste. One plug-in, Dj-Email-Publish, sends your new post by email to many or your other blogs, like those on MSN.

For those with blogs at popular sites LiveJournal, Vox and Xanga, each has a separate crossover plug-in that allows the content in your Wordpress blog to be automatically cross-posted to that other blog. Live Space Sync lets you send your content to all the contacts you have in Microsoft Live.

Getting the word out about your new post is made much easier by using these handy blog plug-ins.

How to Make a Follow Link on the Blogger Comments?

2009-05-28T18:40:00.000-07:00

As default, any links that you have on the Blogger comment section have attribute nofollow. It does not affect anything on the targeted websites or your website. Once, you change it to follow link. It will help the targeted website to increase the pagerank, and your site has negative effect on pagerank. Would you make a follow link on the Blogger comments? If the answer is yes, this post is for you. Making a follow link in the comments section would encourage readers to post a comment. In return, it helps their websites in the long run.

In order to change from nofollow link to follow link, you follow these simple steps:

Backup your template. It is not necessary, just in case you do something wrong.
Open your blogger template and search for the following code.

<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl'  rel='nofollow'><data:comment.author/></a>

In the above code, you see the attribute rel='nofollow', you just have to change it to rel='follow'. After doing it, you have the following code:

<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel='follow'><data:comment.author/></a>

You are done; click on save your template. It is simple, right? What do you think about this change?

Top 10 Backlink Strategies

2009-05-27T13:55:00.000-07:00

One of the most important aspects of increasing your Google Page Rank
The search engines still believe that back-links are an important factor in assessing your site, so until that changes, we still have to work at generating valuable back-links.Fortunately we are no longer stuck with boring directory submissions as the only alternative.

The methods shown underneath are becoming popular as alternatives to plain directory submissions.
Allow the steps below to inspire you to think of other ways to generate back-links.

* URL directories
As old as the stars (almost) but still definitely important in any back-linking strategy.As there are thousands of these directories on the internet, you really need to use directory submission software to save yourself some time.

* Natural back-links
As your site’s stature grows, you will automatically receive organic back-links from other web masters.
This will take time as your site grows and the content becomes more valuable.

* Forums, guest books and comment boxes
By leaving comments in forums, guest books or blog comment fields, you can generate back-links in an instant.
Remember to put your URL in your signature.

* Article Marketing
These have become intensely popular recently and are widely touted as the most efficient way to build back-links to your site.

* Blogging
By creating a free account with one of the blog hosting providers, you can set up your own blog in 5 minutes.
By creating related content in your blog, you can sprinkle in links back to your main site as often as you wish.

* Creating free software
This is an exciting idea: you can create free software yourself.
You do not even need to be a programmer, you can achieve this using software tools available on the internet.Once you have made the software available for download on your site, you can submit to hundreds of software directories who will then link back to your download page.Any niche can make use of a good little piece of software !

* Social bookmarks
Shared bookmarks allow other users to see which links are valuable. Create accounts on the most popular Bookmarking sites and share your site’s URL together with other bookmarks.

* Google knol
You own the knol and no-one else can edit your entry, so this is a great opportunity for creating your own back-links legitimately.

* RSS marketing
Create an RSS feed for your site or blog and use Feedburner to publish it to hundreds of RSS aggregators.

* Video marketing back-links
By creating a video, you have opened up another method of generating back-links: submit to YouTube and post your hot URL in the description box.
These strategies make up a killer back-link arsenal, now you need to spend some time investigating each topic.

Implement your back-link marketing strategy, and follow your own guidelines religiously to avoid becoming distracted by the Internet’s overload of SEO information.
Make sure your back-links are relevant to your site and you will succeed.

The search engines will show your more love and you will watch your traffic grow.

Advantages of Using Wordpress to Publish a Newspaper Blog

2009-05-27T13:50:00.000-07:00

If you want to have a blog or website that’s in newspaper format, Wordpress is the ideal medium. There are many other services you could use, but because Wordpress is so user friendly it’s easy to set up your blog to look like a newspaper (or a website, or whatever you want).

Why is Wordpress so good for setting up a newspaper?

First of all, you can start a Wordpress blog for free. You can also pay, of course, but if you’re just experimenting and trying to figure out what you want and how you want to do it, then it doesn’t cost anything. If you choose, later you can have your own domain and a variety of other paid features.

But even if you don’t want those things, you can completely lift your content from Wordpress and put it somewhere else. They claim no ownership on anything you’ve published through their service. You really need to read the fine print on many other “free” services and even paid ones. Now and then you’ll find a clause in the fine print that gives them actual ownership of whatever you put up. It’s doubtful they’d try to take to the content from you, but why let them stake a claim on your content, just in case?

Wordpress is also perfect for a newspaper because of the tons of free templates that are available. So you sign up for free and you can browse a variety of blog templates until you find the free one you want. They have some designed just for that newspaper look which makes them perfect.

And because Wordpress is so popular, if you wanted to purchase a layout or pay to have one designed just the way you wanted, it would be easy to find a developer who could do that for you. Yet, you will most likely be able to get started with a free theme, if that’s what you want. You can even design your own. There are tutorials all over the web about how to design your own Wordpress theme, so you have several options.

Wordpress is so easy to use that with only the smallest time learning how you can easily update your newspaper blog and fill it with great content. You can add content and preview it, save it as a draft and tinker as much as you want before anyone else sees it, so you have the ability to get it just the way you want before it goes live.

It’s easy to go back and change a post in your Wordpress newspaper blog, too. You just edit the post and go in to add or change something with very little hassle. If you know HTML you can enhance your content with it manually, or use their rich text editor which makes it easy to add formatting like different fonts, italics, bold, images and other great additions. All these add up to make Wordpress a great place for a newspaper blog.

Social Media! What Is It? How Does It Work?

2009-05-27T13:21:00.000-07:00

So I was talking to a business partner of mine the other day and he was asking me about how I was approaching social media or web 2.0 and that it was a little hard to find the line between business and pleasure. He asked me what is social media or web 2.0 and how does it work? Here is the deal. Social media or web 2.0 is like a really big party or get together that you have to be invited to. It is all about who you know and how popular you are….kind of like in High School except for all age brackets.

Now lets put this into perspective. Lets say you meet someone in a coffee shop and they invite you to a welcome party for a friend who just moved into town. You accept and plan on seeing them there at the party. So you walk into the party and the first thing you do is walk up to 20 different people and say, “HEY, DO YOU WANT TO JOIN MY BUSINESS..I HAVE SOME GREAT IDEAS. YOU COULD MAKE 200,000.00 THIS YEAR FROM HOME…WHAT DO YOU THINK…HUH..HUH…HUH!

Do you think you would ever be invited to that party again. NO, NOT A CHANCE. In fact they would all label you as the weird guy who was trying to get everyone to join there business.

Social media or web 2.0 can be a great marketing tool but it can also be a great way to meet amazing people and friends for life. I know that we all have en devours and new business ideas and some of us genuinely want to see people succeed and live the life of their dreams so don’t think that you have to change who you are or what you are passionate about. Let’s try not to forget the origins of social media or web 2.0 when people used myspace and facebook to connect with friends and not for business. Just remember to always be yourself no matter what and you will always attract people like you. Try to branch out and meet some new people. Reconnect with old friends and who knows. If you are single you might even find the perfect mate in this crazy thing called social media.

Some Interesting Styles of Blogging

2009-05-26T23:03:00.000-07:00

Here are some unique styles of blogging that you may find interesting.

1. Techcrunch – If there’s news about company X launching a new product called Y, most tech blogs would simply publish that news with their own commentary but it’s not that easy for Arrington. His interns will first create new entries for both company X and product Y on CrunchBase and then the news would go live on the main TechCrunch site with the company or person’s name often linking back to the CrunchBase entry instead of the official website.

2. Jason Calacanis – Most people think that Mahalo founder Jason has quit blogging but it’s not true. The only difference is that Jason now uses an email editor to write his blog post instead of some blog editor – his email messages still get published as blog entries (see example) and can be read via feeds.

3. Daring Fireball – Apple guru John Gruber has an extremely unique blogging style. The title of his blog articles do not point to the permalink of that post but instead they link to the main story that John is commenting upon. Subscribe to his feed and you’ll definitely fall in love with this style of linking.

4. John Battelle - While most bloggers (A-list crowd included) worry about writing attention grabbing headlines, John knows how to convey his message using one liners. See some examples from John’s search blog here, here and here - you get the picture without having to read an essay.

5. Philipp Lenssen – Philipp’s blog is an interesting mix of a blog and an online forum where anyone can post messages without having to register. When something interesting or newsworthy is posted in the forums, Philip “promotes” that thread to turn it into a blog post and also attributes the person who originally started that thread.

6. Matt Drudge - The design may look ugly but Drudge Report, a site that first broke news about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, is clearly the most "selfless" blog on the web. This one page blog consists only of links to other news websites and columnists.

7. Dave Winer – Ask any “blogging guru” about their secret recipes and they’ll always recommend one thing – add good quality photographs (or even screenshots) in blog posts to make them look more “appealing”. Dave is more creative and prefers using clip-art images to illustrate his ideas - see examples here or here. Another unique feature of Dave’s blog is that you can directly link to any paragraph in the blog – just get the URL from the # sign.

8. Engadget – Look at any Engadget article and you’ll find that all links but one are internal and point to one of their own articles. The source (if any) is attributed at the end and the anchor text reads the same for all external links – READ. Here’s an example.

9. Mivox - Mivox doesn’t use a computer keyboard to write blogs. Instead he writes articles on a piece of paper using ink and then puts a photograph of this paper on to his blog. PostSecret would also classify as a handwritten blog though none of the postcards are written by Frank Warren himself.

How to publish your blog as a Twitter feed

2009-05-25T21:15:00.000-07:00

A common way of reading blogs is to suscribe to their RSS feeds, so you read all new content via your chosen RSS Aggregator (eg Google Reader) rather than having to visit each of your favourite blogs in turn to check for new posts.

But wouldn’t it be better still if blog-readers could subscribe to (i.e. follow) a Twitter account, associated with each blog, that will tweet each time there is a new post to read on that blog and provide a link to it? People are increasingly living in Twitter, so your Twitter stream is a good place to get alerts about new blog-posts.

This is actually pretty easy to set up, at least if you only follow a few blogs. You need to create a Twitter account for each blog you want to follow, to act as a conduit. There is an example here. bbcnickrobinson is not Nick Robinson’s Twitter account. It was actually created by ChannelFlip’s Wil Harris for his own use. Wil used a web application called twitterfeed to connect the RSS feed from Nick Robinson’s blog on the BBC website to bbcnickrobinson. Then, every time Nick Robinson puts up a new post on his BBC blog, it appears in the associated RSS feed, gets picked up by twitterfeed and is regurgitated as a tweet on bbcnickrobinson. Wil follows bbcnickrobinson (from his own proper Twitter account) so sees the tweet in his Twitter stream, and can follow a link from there to read Nick’s new blogpost.

Anyone can use this arrangement to follow any number of blogs via Twitter, but it gets impractical to create lots of these conduit Twitter accounts and connect them all up via twitterfeed. For one thing you will run out of email addresses. You need a different one for each Twitter account you set up.

Far better if each blogger creates a conduit Twitter account themselves, and connects it to their blog via twitterfeed, for all their readers to follow.

I have done this with my two main blogs. The Twitter account for this blog is here. The account for my photography blog, exposures, is here.

If you’re a blogger, give this idea a go. And no, I don’t work for or have shares in twitterfeed.

Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging

2009-05-25T01:44:00.000-07:00

Review
Ok, we finally figured out why blog, now John Cass tells us how to do it----successfully! This comprehensive approach to developing a corporate blog program covers everything from A- 6 Apart to Y - YouTube. I particularly found the blog audit section (chapter 2) for sizing the market particularly helpful. By following John's strategies, you are sure to have a high ranking blog that resonates with your customers. I wish I had the benefit of this book when I started a corporate blog last year.
-- Warren Sukernek, Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Cruise West
John Cass provides a great wake up call for corporations. He highlights not only how blogging can improve a company's relationship with its customers, but also 'the recipe for success,' such as the mechanics of blogging, how it fits into the marketing mix, how to develop guidelines for employees, and more. He describes real examples of what companies have done in the past and what they can do moving forward to get on the blogging bandwagon. This is a must-read for anyone who is thinking about implementing blogs.
--Scott K. Wilder, Group Manager, Intuit Small Business Online Communities
In the old days, you only had two ways to reach audiences: Buy expensive advertising or convince the media to write about you. Today, the Web allows any organization to be just in time and just right publishers. John Cass delivers everything you need to know to harness the amazing power of blogs and blogger relations to reach your buyers directly.
--David Meerman Scott, Author, The New Rules of Marketing and PR

Book Description
Introduces consumer-generated media to PR and search optimization

Product Description
If advertising and public relations were the best ways to connect with a company's audience through traditional media, and blogs are the best way to connect with millions of customers through the medium of online consumer generated media, then how can companies best use blogs to connect with their audience through the medium of consumer-generated media?
The answer is through blogger relations, the process of interacting with bloggers and blog readers to get a company's message to an audience. This book targets business people, marketing professionals, public relations firms, search engine optimization and online marketing agency staff with a primer on the importance of corporate blogging and how to conduct a successful blogger relations ongoing campaign.
* Provides tools for companies to interact with customers through blogging communities
* Shows how to transform public relations and search marketing through consumer-generated media, RSS feeds and comment interaction strategies
* Describes how to optimize blog articles for blog search engines and provides content strategies
* Provides companies the planning tools to evaluate its blogging community and company resources for effective blogging

About the Author
Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR), President of the AMA Boston 2005-2006. He blogs at PR Communications: pr.typepad.com.

Improve ( Increase ) Alexa Traffic Rank

2009-05-25T00:58:00.000-07:00

A collection of methods which can improve your Alexa Traffic Rank What is the Alexa Rank? In simple terms, the Alexa Rank is a ranking system of your website which bases its ranking on the level of traffic each website receives from the number of people who visit a website with the Alexa toolbar installed. The most important element of any website is content - good quality informative content cannot be beaten when trying to get a good page rank. The more people who visit your website and return or recommend it, the more your traffic will naturally increase. Below are a few methods that can help to improve your alexa rank :

1) Install the Alexa toolbar on your computer and request that anyone who knows you do the same.

2) Put an Alexa rank widget on your website. Each click can count as a visit even if the toolbar is not used by the visitor.

3) Write an article or blog on Alexa. Webmasters love searching methods to improve their sites. Webmasters are also very likely to have the Alexa toolbar installed. Each visit will increase your alexa rank.

4) Use forums to post messages that include your url. Try and make your post interesting to encourage readers to visit your site.

5) Make use of social networking sites. Get your website Dugg and you could increase traffic. Make sure anything that is Dugg is note worthy.

Why Blog? I’ll Tell You Why!

2009-05-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

The word “blog” is one of the most popular words on the internet today. This buzz word is one of the most popularly searched terms on the net because increasing numbers of people are trying to figure out what blogging is all about. A blog is a web log, or an online public diary or journal that is written for others to read. You can create blogs for personal reasons, educational and informational reasons, business and corporate reasons or a multitude of other uses and purposes depending on what suits your fancy.

As a marketing tool, blogs are full of all kinds of potential. Blogs have some truly unique characteristics as a marketing tool. First of all, they are much easier than newsletters when it comes to getting your idea across. They can be added to, and they can be updated at any time and from virtually anywhere. Blogs also have long lasting shelf lives, as they exist on the internet until you decide to remove them. This contrasts well to newsletters which have extremely short shelf lives, because once you send it out, it’s sent, then trashed, and gone. Unless you are just posting marketing materials that are deglossed, most blogs offer a large amount of credibility. Whether your blog is a personal blog or a business blog, viewers come to blogs expecting to find frank and personal perspectives on a topic that you are passionate about.

If you maintain your viewers and you respect the idea that you should be passionate about the content of your blog, then your credibility will go up, and this is what blogging is truly all about. Blogs are easy to syndicate, meaning that you can get your information and opinions out there, and can allow them to spread like wildfire. If you have an opinion to share, a product to sell, a brand to market or something else to say on the internet, and you think that people are going to want to read what it is that you have to say, then blogging is an excellent option for you to consider.

If you do not already have a blog that is associated with your business or your website, then now may very well be an excellent time for you to start blogging. You should not think that blogging is unnecessary simply because you are employing other strategies for marketing or communicating online. There are completely different dynamics when it comes to e-mail communication and blogging. Nothing facilitates conversation, communication and community the way that blogging does. There is no confusion about blogging being spam the way e-mails can be looked at as spam. Blogs have a long shelf life, meaning they last longer than e-mail correspondence and blogs work very well in conjunction with other forms of communication and methods of marketing as well.

So the answer to “Why Blog?” is “Why Not?”

2009-05-22T16:22:00.000-07:00

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Tips for avoiding PPC mistakes

2009-05-20T17:55:00.000-07:00

An internet marketing expert has offered some top tips for companies looking to make the most of their online pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

Writing for the internet marketing news website Marketing Pilgrim, Ann Stanley says companies often make fundamental mistakes when it comes to PPC as they lack basic online advertising knowledge.

These include lumping all their PPC key phrases into one ad group or campaign and setting their maximum cost per click too high or too low.

Making the first mistake could result in a low quality score and click through rate as the landing page may not match the many key phrases in the PPC add.

And making the second could mean that ads are only shown intermittently, which means it will be more difficult for internet users to find them.

Ms Stanley suggests that companies conduct some thorough research before opening their first PPC account as lack of knowledge and experience means they are more likely to make basic errors that will drain their internet marketing budgets.

Meanwhile a recent survey carried out by the Online Marketing and Media Show has revealed that over a third of companies plan to dedicate up to 25 per cent of their marketing budget to online marketing this year.

Principles of Good SEO for Your Blog

2009-05-17T15:05:00.000-07:00

Regardless of whether you are writing a blog simply because you enjoy having a lot of people reading your thoughts, or if you are writing a blog because you are looking to generate income, one of the most important things that you need to do is maximize the SEO or search engine optimization potential for your blog so that you can maximize the return on your investment, where the return is anything you want it to be, and the investment is the time and effort that you are putting into keeping your blog going. Without the right amount of search engine optimization, your blog is going to be doomed to simply float around without ever gaining the number of hits that you are hoping to achieve.

What blog SEO is, is the maximization of your blog’s positioning in the results for search engines. Let us say that you are writing a blog about mystery novels. If someone types “mystery novel blog” into the search engine search bar, you are going to want to be one of the first few results, maximizing the chance that the visitor will come to your blog rather than visiting someone else’s. Thousands of blogs may come up, though, so how do you ensure that yours will be at the top of the list and not buried deep in the limbo known as everything following page 2?

Most people never go past the first 30 entries or so when searching, so if your results are not coming up on pages one through three, nobody is ever going to find your blog. If your mystery novel blog is result number 3,493, then nobody is going to be able to find you.

The most important thing that you need to know about good SEO for your blog is link building. You need to improve upon the number of links that are floating around on the internet and pointing back to your blog. You can trade links, submit links on website directories, purchase links or add links to your forum and message board signatures. Over time, you will create enough solid one way links to your blog that your website will go up in the search engine rankings. But using the right link name is vital if you want all of this hard work to go to good use.

The links that you should be using in the example above are things like “top mystery novels” and “mystery novel reviews” or “hot mystery novels”, because these are the things that people will actually be searching for. Make sure that the links to your blog are being named after how people will actually search for you, otherwise your links will not be effective.

With a solid effort on the search engine optimization front, your blog will be able to garner the kind of traffic that you were hoping for, and link building is going to play a truly vital role in this process.

How To Play MP3 Music on Blogs/Websites Using Del.icio.us

2009-05-14T18:32:00.000-07:00

I am sure you are very familiar with del.icio.us as a social bookmarking website. Have you heard about playing music on your blogs by using del.icio.us?
In this post, I’ll show you how to embed mp3 music onto your websites from del.icio.us

Here is examples which I use this method to embed music from del.icio.us.

First, you need to put the following code into your websites.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://images.del.icio.us/static/js/playtagger.js"></script>

For blogger, you can put this code before the </body> tag in the edit HTML.

Second, you use the following code to embed music

<a href="link_to_music_file.mp3">Music title</a>

Note: you must bookmark the mp3 file to del.icio.us before using it.

Have fun

Top Blogging Strategies

2009-05-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

Whether your blog is about general interest topics like how you washed a crayon in your son’s pocket and there’s a new bank going up in town, or you have a niche blog designed to make money, the same basic blogging strategies apply if you want to be a top blogger.

Post Regularly: You don’t have to post every day. But if you can, do it. Post every other day or 3 or 4 times a week. The more regularly you post (especially if you have good SEO optimized titles) the better your blog will look to the search engines.

Post In-Depth: If you post every day and you’re not fond of writing, this might be difficult. But maybe you can do it twice a week, or even once, and have shorter posts the rest of the time. If your post is long and full of information that almost always makes it better than a short post. First, it’ll contain more keywords and probably help your search engine listings. Second, it’ll contain more information that might lead others to different parts of your blog if you’re linking correctly. And finally, a long post just gives you more space in which to connect with your reader.

Post for the Readers: Search engine optimization is important if you want people to be able to find you through search engines. But if your blog post reads like it was written for a keyword-searching bot, the reader will know it. Make sure you write for those real people who will be reading the post, not just for the search engine spiders.

Connect with your Readers: While it’s important to write for them by including actual content and not just sentence after sentence stuffed with keywords, you still have to engage them. If the contest interesting but written in a wholly uninteresting way, readers aren’t going to be that thrilled. If you’re worked up about the idea of writing, just decide to write like you speak. This isn’t a legal document or a literary publication submission. If your language is pompous sounding, you’ll put people off. Just write in a manner like you speak, and leave the formal language to lawyers and people from the 18^th century.

Rein in Your Sales Message: If you’re using a blog to sell something, it’s okay to sell it. You can point it out to people, talk about it, hype it up a little. But you can’t do that all the time. If every post is touting the benefits of your new product, then there’s not much point in people coming back unless they’re already interesting in your product. People interested in your general subject will go elsewhere.

Don’t fill your posts with fluff and then try to sell to people on your blog. If you’re selling an e-book about 100 rainmaking techniques, offer up 3 in a blog post and then lead them to your ebook.

Keeping the readers and their needs in your mind is the key in all the best and most successful blogging strategies.

Favicon Generator

2009-05-07T15:16:00.000-07:00

Use this free tool to generate favicons from your favorite JPEG images.

Create your faviconUpload a .jpg file to convert it to a favicon!

Instructions

Favicons feature in the address bar before your address, and also beside the name of a site you have bookmarked in your browser's favorites menu.

In most cases, the favicon will appear if you simply upload this to the root of your hosting provider, and name this "favicon.ico" (most browsers will look to this address to find a site's favicon, and will generate the favicon site-wide).

If you are unable to upload the favicon to your hosting root (eg: if you use Blopgger or another hosted blogging interface), you can upload the favicon to a different location and link to this from the head section of your blog template/web page (just before the closing </head> tag) like this:

<link href='http://imagehost.com/yourfavicon.ico' rel='shortcut icon'/> <link href='http://imagehost.com/yourfavicon.ico' rel='icon'/> </head>

Be sure that the address of your favicon is exact address of your favicon online.

Please note: in Internet Explorer, a favicon will not display until you have bookmarked the page in your Favorites. You may also need to close the browser and re-open it before the favicon begins to show. In all other browsers (eg: Firefox, Opera), the favicon should display immedietly.

Search Engine Optimization Keyword Analysis

2009-05-07T14:15:00.000-07:00

Keyword analysis is an important part of search engine optimization or SEO, because your keywords will play a vital role in numerous different facets of your website design, creation and ongoing development. Before going into the details about what keyword analysis is, you should first understand a little bit about the SEO process, or how it is that SEO works. The main steps that are involved in the search engine optimization process are to map out a keyword strategy, to optimize the structure of the website, to develop the optimized content and web pages, to launch the link building and advertising or promotional campaign, to analyze the results, and then to refine those results to create even better results.

You should understand at this point that the first step in any good SEO campaign is the keyword analysis step, as this helps to map out what your plans are for the entire search engine optimization campaign. You want to analyze your keywords and then map them out in relation to your website theme and website content. There are a number of different tools available on the internet that will make this process infinitely easier, and Google offers several for you to choose from. Some keyword analysis tools cost more than others, so make sure that you shop around and choose an answer that will suit you not only in capabilities but also in price as well.

You can start off by using free tools for keyword analyzation on your website. Two of the best tools to begin with for this purpose are the external keyword tool from Google, and the free Word Tracker tool. Any time that you are planning a new website you should use these tools to come up with a main keyword phrase that represents the entire theme of your website, and then you should break it down into sub keywords and keyword phrases that come with less competition attached to them. This is possible with the external keyword tool from Google. When you load up the web application, you just have to enter your main keyword phrase into the box and click a button and you will get a whole host of different keyword ideas that you can play around with.

You should be brainstorming in order to find out what keywords and keyword phrases best suit the main keyword phrase for your website, coming up with a sizable list in the process. Next you should discover the core keywords that relate the most closely to the theme of your website. Next you are going to want to create a cluster of keywords, using some low profile keywords to dilute them. Finally, you should be adding this cluster in to your articles and web pages in order to improve the keyword ranking for your web site and in order to improve the search engine optimization for each individual web page.

How to Remove Blogger Navbar

2009-05-05T11:16:00.000-07:00

That’s the thing which everyone want to remove from his blog. Now it’s time to do it and I will help you.

But first of all I want to tell you what exactly is the blogger navbar. It gives a few options:

- to search in the blog

- to go to random chosen blog

- to mark the blog as spam

If you don’t want to have this navbar on your blog anymore just login in your blogger account, then to Layout, then to Edit HTML and after that you should put this code somewhere in before the end of HEAD tag:

#navbar-iframe {
display: none !important;
}

Google SEO for WordPress Blogging

2009-05-05T06:02:00.000-07:00

If you have been in the internet marketing scene at all, even just for a short time, then you are already probably aware of the fact that blogs that are search engine optimized properly tend to achieve greater and faster rankings in search engines like Google than other websites and blogs. The question remains, though, how can your blog best be optimized for Google?

The best blogging platform that is out there right now is called WordPress. It is completely free to use, simple to install, and Google tends to really love it. Here are some of the things that you can do to optimize your WordPress blog in order to achieve high rankings in Google.

1 - First and foremost, do your keyword research.

If you are not doing proper keyword research, then you are going to stand a very small chance of ever ranking high in any search engine, let alone Google. Developing a working list full of viable keywords is absolutely a must. The best tool that you can use to optimize your keywords for your WordPress blog is the free keyword tool that Google offers. While conducting your keyword research, there are some things that you need to consider including the number of monthly searches, the number of optimized websites that are already using that keyword, and how much competition you will be facing.

2 - Next what you are going to want to do is to customize your WordPress blog specifically for search engine optimization in Google.

You can log in to your dashboard, for example, and change the default permalink structure to something that Google much prefers to see. Click on the radio button for “custom”, and type in /%postname%/ — What this will do is change the default structure for the addresses for your posts so that the name of the post will be in the URL rather than the post date or post number. This allows you to optimize your blog posts by putting keywords in your titles, and having those keywords appear in your URLs, which Google pays attention to when determining how to rank you. This structure is definitely much better when it comes to SEO purposes, so if you are not following this permalink structure already, then you need to change it as soon as possible.

3 - The next thing that you need to do is to download and install the “All in One SEO Pack”, which can be found on Google and uploaded to your Plugins folder in your blog.

Activate it from the dashboard, and you will begin to see new ways to improve your rank in Google. This is a neat plugin that can really help out your SEO endeavor if you are willing to download and install it. Make sure that you go to your Settings area and update the ping list under Writing so that every time a new blog entry is posted, the blogging services will be automatically notified.

Advertising on Facebook

2009-05-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

If you are not already making use of Facebook as a method of marketing your business or niche, then you are absolutely missing out on a great opportunity to reach out to hundreds of millions of active users. Today, Facebook has become one of the most popular online social networking websites, making it a veritable untapped network for traffic and business. People spend a great amount of time online on the Facebook website looking to make new friends, interact with people, play games and interact within interest groups. When you make it possible for your advertising message to travel to these people through Facebook, you will absolutely see a spike in the amount of website traffic that you attract, and you will also see more members, more subscriptions, more sales and more inquiries as well.

One of the biggest questions that people ask is how it could be possible for a business to leverage Facebook for the purpose of marketing a product or a service. Here are three of the possible ways for you to advertise your business, product or service through Facebook social networking.

1 - Social Ads on Facebook -

This is one of the most straight forward ways that you can promote yourself on Facebook. You can use social ads to target people based on a number of different functions including age group, gender and interest for example. By targeting your ads in this manner, you can increase your CTR, which is your click through rate. This will give you more visitors to your site and also an increase in the number of customers that you are able to attract. Make sure to throw a picture up in your ads because ads with images capture more attention and tend to attract more clicks as well.

2 - Groups and Pages on Facebook -

You can create groups and pages for your business, company or website on Facebook, and then you can get people to become a fan of your page or to join your group. Use the invite function for groups to get all of your friends to join, or tell your friends about your page so that they can become a fan. Both pages and groups are two excellent channels that you can use to gather more potential customers as well as to build more brand awareness on Facebook.

3 - Facebook Word of Mouth -

Selling to a friend is always going to be easier than selling the same thing to a stranger. You should try to get to know more friends simply because there are so many active users on the Facebook site. Join groups with some kind of relation to your product or your business and socialize with the members of those groups to make new friends and acquaintances. When people get to know your business and begin to really trust it, they will be much more likely to buy from you.

Best SEO Sites for Increased Traffic Tips

2009-04-25T16:03:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, Search Engines are the most substantial source of traffic for almost any blog on the web. The blogs without any traffic from Google will never have the chance to be shared with the world. In order to increase your traffic, you must optimize your blog so that Search Engines are attracted to it. Which is also known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

So here is a list of useful SEO sites :

Daily Blog Tips
Improve your blog with Daily Blog Tips. A fast paced blog featuring articles on blog design, SEO, promotion, menotization and more

Search Engine Land
Search Engine Land is a hub for news and information about search engine marketing, optimization and how search engines work for searchers.

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
talk about Google, SEO, and Gadgets. But mostly Google.

SEOmoz
Search Engine Marketing News & Tips

Search Engine Journal

Pronet Advertising
Pronet Advertising is a weblog about Neil Patel's personal experiences in online marketing.

Search Engine Guide
The small business guide to search engine marketing. Articles from the top names in the industry cover topics including SEO, PPC, SEM, blogging, social media, adsense, adwords, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Internet marketing.

Online Marketing Blog
All about the intersection of search engine & social media marketing

Marketing Pilgrim
Andy Beal discusses news from the search engine industry, blogging, rss and other internet marketing.

Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Watch provides news and tips about search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), and searching the Web. We offer daily news & analysis of the search industry, including the latest on Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.

Get Elastic
Ecommerce articles on internet retail, online marketing, social media, SEO, and killer ecommerce tips from Elastic Path Software; Featuring the Get Elastic ecommerce podcast - conversations with ecommerce industry insiders.

Web Analytics World
Manoj Jasra's insight on Web Analytics and the Search Marketing Industry. Also including Interviews, Technology Reviews and Podcasts

BlogStorm
Search engine optimisation & internet marketing blog

Small Business SEM
Small Business SEM by Matt McGee | SEO and Marketing Discussion for Small Businesses

SEO Scoop
SEO Scoop is a popular search engine optimization blog that focuses on SEO tips, theories and news.

Search Engine Roundtable
Search engine optimization news and resources.

Best time of the day for blogging

2009-04-18T22:49:00.000-07:00

Many bloggers, especially those who only to leave a large number of questions about their new businesses. It is overwhelming, and sometimes stressful to your own blog, but there are many resources to help you. A common question that the Blogger, when the best time to the content of your website, it is when you try to cash on the Internet.

It is not really a good general answer to this question, because there are not. Every blog is different there, regardless of the market niche to which they belong. There is a slightly different guidelines and things to think when you really need the best time to write.

Always on your readers

If you think that your motivation to the company, you remember that your goal is to please your readers. Then, before your calendar and begin to examine the data and the hour, take a moment to think about, and your readers. Try to know what the time zone to which they belong and go directly from there.

Once you understand, you know what time that is more for them. The majority of people, when new e-blog in the morning, so could be the ideal time to your messages. But the May does not apply to all blogs. Their market niche and what kind of readers that you attract May, a lot to do with. Discover what time your readers want to see new messages.

Trial and Error

Once you decided to establish a calendar, your e-mails that attempt, and then about a week and see where he is. May you have things a little bit earlier or a little later, but you get it. If you still secondment, watch out for your readers are waiting for your contributions.

Once your system developed for the posting, your readers not begin, be sure to ask your time. Just think about the kind of blogs you read and constantly think about how often their functions and, if they are on a regular basis. Those who are more and more regularly usually easy to follow and stay on this.

The choice of timing is important

There are so many things that you learn everything, but if you are not a matter of this item, the choice is the perfect time and they remain. You will be surprised by the way these can help you, more training and readers to help you make money on the Internet. It shows the other, you are easy to calculate, and there is a good picture of your location.

If you are still problems in trying to find the right moment for you and your blog, and then simply ask your readers to receive the optimal time hope that by new messages. He never bad to ask!

Driving Traffic to Your Blog

2009-04-18T22:20:00.000-07:00

Many blog owners spend a good portion of their time trying to figure out how to generate traffic to their blog. This is especially true when it comes to a brand new blog that is not yet really rich in meaningful and effective content. Generating visitor traffic to your blog is an endeavor that is going to take some basic effort on your part. Thankfully due to modern technology, the task of attracting interested people to your blog is a lot easier now than in the past.

The most common online blogging platforms are Wordpress and Blogger. Both have hosted blog solutions, but Wordpress also has an open source solution for installing the Wordpress platform onto your own domain name. If you put the following tips into practice, it is more than possible for you to begin attracting traffic to your blog as early as on the first day. Within 24 hours of creating a blog you can begin to generate traffic, and if the purpose of your blog is to sell a product, you could be making sales just as quickly.

1 - Every blog has an RSS feed.

By submitting your RSS feed to the most popular online feed services, you will be able to attract website traffic very quickly, especially if you are focusing your blog content on specific keywords that have lower competition in search engine ranks. All that you need to be able to do is to submit the URL for your feed to a wide range of different free services as soon as you actually have a live site to promote. Some of the most widely recognized feed sites are:

- Feedage.com
- Feedagg.com
- Feedraider.com
- Feedfury.com
- Feedsubmitter.com
- Feedest.com
- Search4rss.com

2 - Social bookmarking involves creating bookmarks for your blog.

Additionally social bookmarking is meant for displaying information about what your blog centers on and what it has to offer. It is important that you use social bookmarking responsibly rather than spamming these websites. Simply write a short post that explains in a little bit of detail why your site or product will interest the people that you want to visit it. There are a myriad of different social bookmarking websites out there, including but not limited to:

- Digg.com
- YahooBuzz
- Technorati.com
- Del.icio.us
- Propeller
- StumbleUpon
- Reddit
- Mixx
- Fark
- MyBlogLog

3 - Social networking, on the other hand, is a little different.

When you create an account on a social networking website, you put together a profile that allows you to connect with other people, creating powerful partnerships and even a fan following in the right circumstances. These networks and relationships will facilitate the capability for you to promote your sites and protects, although much more subtlety than through other sources. Here are a few of the most popular social networking websites:

- FaceBook
- MySpace
- Classmates Online
- MSN Groups
- Yahoo Groups
- Xanga

Drive Traffic with Twitter

2009-04-18T21:40:00.000-07:00

Twitter is viewed as just another social networking tool that you can utilize in order to better promote your website or your blog. You can use Twitter to promote your blog quickly and easily, and this is a truly effective way to drive more traffic without much effort. First, you need to set up your Twitter account.

If you are going to write on Twitter.com, the first thing that you need to do is to set up an account and then to get started. This will include creating an account with the username you wish to have represent you, and then completing your profile and setting up any specific settings in your Twitter preferences. For good marketing, you should set up a picture in your profile because it is important to let people get to know you.

The next step in the process is to write the content that you have in mind. You can use twitter to reference content that you post on article submission sites, so you may want to begin by writing such an article. Create a profile on the submission directory site if you have not done so already. This is just another way to get your name out there.

Now that you have an account created on both websites, and a bio or profile under each of the sites, the next step is to get everything linked together. If you have a Twitter account, you can set things up to automatically update your status when sites like ezinearticles.com approve your content. What that means is that as soon as an article you write is posted on EzineArticles, it will be automatically posted to your Twitter feed at the same time. Considering how simple both of these endeavors truly are, this is a two for one kind of marketing effect. Not only will it get your name out there in the article submission sites for better article syndication marketing, but it feeds your Twitter.

This is one of the best ways to use your Twitter account to advertise your blog or other website endeavors that you are looking to attract traffic to. This is a really hands free process that everyone can get use of because it only requires membership to two sites for absolutely free, and a little bit of content in order to get the ball rolling. If you want to use Twitter to advertise your blog or website, this is a good way to set everything up, because your Twitter account is “fed” hands free, and you can work on writing good content and letting article syndication as well as Twitter accomplish the rest of the work for you.

SEO Principles for WordPress Blogs

2009-04-18T20:49:00.000-07:00

WordPress is a relatively SEO friendly blogging tool to begin with. It offers a linking structure that makes it relatively easy for spiders to crawl your pages, and the code contains very little validation errors if any at all. However, there are a few additional steps that you can follow in order to make your WordPress blog even more SEO friendly, and most are so simple to implement that there is absolutely no reason not to.

1 - You need to make sure that the URLs on your pages contain your blog’s post name, rather than simply a post number.

This can be easily accomplished by using the permalinks page in your WordPress settings, typing “/index.php/%postname%” when asked about custom structure. Alternatively, you can write a rewrite rule directly into your .htaccess file in order to have an increase in control over the syntax of your URLs.

2 - Change your page title order so that your blog post name appears before the name of your blog or the date of your blog.

The first words in your title are always given more weight than anything else, and they will also catch the attention of your readers more effectively. This can be done by editing the header.php file, swapping the order of the PHP tags so that wp_title appears before bloginfo.

3 - Make excellent use of your heading tags.

You may find that your blog entry title is insert automatically into a tag, or that your blog name is in a tag. You can edit these tags in single.php as well as header.php in most WordPress templates. You can choose a format that suits you, but the best solution is typically to put your blog entry title in, swapping your blog name for an image instead. Also make sure that you make good use of other heading tags, using a good heading structure any time that it is suitable.

4 - Avoid duplicate content issues by using “index, nofollow” tags on your tag pages, archive pages and category pages, allowing search engine spiders to follow the links on these pages but not to list them in the index.

There are a number of plugins that can make this a really simple process, and one of the best is called robotsmeta.

5 - Pay attention to the linking structure in your blog, making sure that all of your blog entries can be properly accessed with as few clicks as is possible.

Remove unnecessary links from your blog pages and remove unnecessary pages from your blog as well. You are going to want to consider using a pagination plugin to help you remove unnecessary clutter from your blog for ease of use and increased access.

There are a number of other techniques that you can use to maximize your SEO for WordPress, but this is certainly a good place to begin.

How To Increase Earning Potential of Google AdSense

2009-04-18T20:42:00.000-07:00

When you include Google AdSense ads on your blog, there is certainly potential to make money, but how? Many beginner bloggers have Google AdSense ads running, but the earnings aren't coming. Follow the steps below to give your blog's Google AdSense program the greatest chance for success & start making money now.

Difficulty: N/A

Time Required: Ongoing

Here's How:

1. Determine your blog's primary focus

Google AdSense ads are most effective when they are served to people who are interested in the products & services those ads offer. With that in mind, Google AdSense tends to work best on blogs that are about niche topics such as a specific product/hobby. Consider how you can make your blog's topic more focused to better attract specific types of readers & specific types of ads.

2. Write consistent & focused content

Google serves ads based on the content on each of your pages. The more focused your content is on each page, the better Google can determine which ads are the most relevant to your readers. Write consistently & stay focused on a specific topic to increase the likelihood that Google will display ads on your blog that your readers are apt to click on.

3. Work to increase your blog's traffic

The more visitors to your blog, the more potential for clicks on your Google AdSense ads. Work to increase your blog's traffic to boost your chances for ad click-throughs. However, keep in mind that if you write focused content, the ads on your blog will be relevant to that content. The traffic that comes to your blog needs to be interested in your blog's topic & your content/they are not likely to be interested in your corresponding Google AdSense ads. Work to drive traffic but make a concerted effort to find traffic that adds value to your blog.

4. Research & test keywords

Google serves ads through its AdSense program based on keywords. Advertisers bid on keywords relevant to their businesses. Some keywords are more popular than others & therefore, drive higher bids. Higher paying keywords also mean higher payouts to you when your readers click on them. The ads served on your site are determined by the content on your site. If you're writing about topics related to higher paying keywords, then you're likely to earn more money from your Google AdSense program than if you wrote about topics related to lower paying keywords.

5. Test Google AdSense ad positions on your blog

You can display Google AdSense ads just about anywhere on your blog. Test a variety of positions on your blog to determine which work best for you in terms of generating click-throughs & maximum revenue.

Tips:

Check with your blogging software provider & blog host to ensure your blogging package allows you to place Google AdSense ads on your blog. For example, Wordpress.com doesn’t allow Google AdSense ads.

2. Don't fall victim to the allure of covering your blog in ads to generate income. Blogs that are cluttered with ads are difficult to read & readers typically don't return to blogs where the meaningful content is hidden in between ads.

Track your results to see what's working, particularly as you test keywords & ad positions. This will allow you to develop the best advertising mix to maximize your blog's income while staying consistent to your blog's brand image & overall message to readers at the same time.

About Affiliate Advertising

2009-04-18T20:32:00.000-07:00

Many bloggers are eager to find revenue streams to help monetize their blogs. Once your blog is established & receiving some traffic, you may want to begin researching affiliate programs that could allow your blog to put money in your pocket.

What is Affiliate Advertising?

Affiliate advertising is basically an online marketing channel. An advertiser pays a blogger to promote the advertiser’s products/services on the blogger’s site.

There’re 3 main types of affiliate ads: pay-per-click, pay-per-lead & pay-per-sale. Each of these affiliate ad types has 1 thing in common. They’re all performance based meaning you don’t earn money until your readers perform an action such as clicking on a link/clicking on a link then purchasing the product on the page to which the link brings them.

There are several large & well-known companies that offer affiliate programs which you can set up on your blog within minutes regardless of how well established your blog is.

Examples of Companies Offering Affiliate Advertising Programs to Bloggers:

Amazon: You can choose from a wide variety of ads such as text links, banner ads & more. If you’d like, you can also select the exact Amazon products you’d like to feature on your blog.
eBay: You can choose from eBay’s auctions & find the specific products you want to advertise on your site.
AllPosters: You can choose from 400,000 products to advertise on your blog.

What is an Affiliate Directory?

You could sign-up to monetize your blog through an affiliate directory where various online merchants post their affiliate ad opportunities. You can review the ad opportunities and apply to host a specific ad on your blog.

Most advertisers on these sites will have restrictions related to the blogs they will work with. Typically those restrictions are related to how long the blog has been active & the amount of traffic the blog receives. For those reasons, an affiliate directory is most helpful if your blog is well established.

Take some time to research each affiliate directory to find the right one for you and your blog. Different affiliate programs offer different payments & credibility. Take your time & investigate your options before you jump into anything.

Examples of Popular Affiliate Advertising Directories:

Factors to Consider When You Select an Affiliate Advertising Program to Monetize Your Blog

Read all the details about the opportunity including the pay, the terms, etc.
Select affiliate program ads that are consistent with your blog’s content. Ads that don’t match your content will undoubtedly be clicked on less frequently (meaning less revenue for you) & can decrease the credibility of your blog (meaning fewer readers will return to your blog because it's cluttered with irrelevant ads).
Don’t go overboard with affiliate ads. Too many ads not only make your blog look suspiciously like spam to readers, but search engines will think so, too. Sites that are covered with affiliate ads & little additional original content will be marked as spam by Google & other search engines which will hurt your traffic & page rank overall.
Don’t expect big profits (at least not at first). While many bloggers can generate a decent ancillary income from affiliate advertising, most bloggers can’t boast those kinds of results. Boosting your income through affiliate advertising takes time & practice. Don’t be afraid to test new ads, placement, programs & more until you find the best mix to meet your goals for your blog.

What is eCPM? How it is Calculated?

2009-04-18T19:58:00.000-07:00

ePCM means "effective cost per thousand ad impressions".
It is calculated by the below equation:

eCPM = [earnings/ad impressions] * 1000

I give you an example:

If your ad is shown 500 times and your earning is $3.50, then your eCPM is

[3.50/500]*1000 = 7

So, for thousand ad impressions, you will get $7.

The equation is simple, the more eCPM you have, the more $$ you will get.

There are a few tips which will increase your eCPM very well. I will reveal them in my next posts.

If you want to increase your adsense CTR, placing ads inside or between blog posts will definitely increase your revenue.

Kinds of Blog Advertising

2009-04-18T19:38:00.000-07:00

The Main Types of Blog Advertising Opportunities:

Online advertising offers three primary types of ads bloggers can use to make money from their blogs.

Pay-per-click: The advertiser pays the blogger each time someone clicks on the advertiser's ad.
Pay-per-impression: The advertiser pays the blogger each time the ad appears on the blog's page.
Pay-per-action: The advertiser pays the blogger each time someone clicks on the ad and performs an action such as making a purchase.

Contextual Ads:

Contextual ads are typically pay-per-click ads. The ads are delivered based on the content of the page on the blog where the ads will be displayed. In theory, the ads shown on the page should be relevant to the content of the page thereby increasing the chance that someone will click on them. Google AdSense & Kontera are examples of contextual advertising opportunities.

Text Link Ads:

Ads that are not served based on the content of a blog's page but rather are placed based on specific text in the posts of a blog are called text link ads. Text Link Brokers & Text-Link-Ads are examples of text link advertising opportunities.

Impression-Based Ads:

Ads that pay bloggers based on the number of times the ad appears on the blog are called impression-based ads. FastClick & Tribal Fusion are examples of impression-based advertising opportunities.

Affiliate Ads:

Affiliate ads give bloggers a choice of programs to provide links to products. Bloggers are paid when someone purchases the advertised product. Amazon Associates & eBay Affiliates are examples of affiliate advertising programs.

Direct Ads:

Many bloggers offer an option for visitors to purchase advertising space on their blogs. Direct ads are typically shown in the form of banner ads or similar display ads provided directly to the blogger by the advertiser to be uploaded to the blog. Pricing and payment methods vary from blogger to blogger (often dependent on the amount of traffic the blog receives). Direct advertisers on blogs are sometimes called sponsors of that blog.

Reviews:

Reviews (often called sponsored reviews) are an indirect form of advertising on blogs. A company might contact a blogger directly asking them to write a review for a product, business, website, etc. If the blogger is paid to write the review, then it is a form of advertising revenue. Some companies offer forms of review advertising such as PayPerPost.

Make Money from Blog (Other Than Using Ads)

2009-04-18T19:22:00.000-07:00

The Value of Monetizing Your Blog Through Nonadvertising Opportunities:

By displaying ads on your blog is certainly a simple way to try to generate an income from it. However, ads aren’t a guaranteed money-maker. For 1 reason, they are often dependent on the actions of your blog's readers. For another reason, generating a significant amount of money through advertising on your blog is unlikely (possible but unlikely) unless your blog receives a very large amount of traffic each day.

By diversifying your income-generating opportunities, you'll have a greater chance of successfully monetizing your blog. Following are a variety of nonadvertising methods to earn money from your blog.

Sell Merchandise:

Many bloggers have success selling branded and non-branded merchandise on their blogs through CafePress.

Ask for Donations:

It can't hurt to ask your readers to donate to your blog. Some of them just might do it. You can add a donation button to your blog through PayPal.

Sell Your Guest Posting Services:

Most bloggers write guest posts for other blogs for free as a way to promote their own blogs. However, you can also offer your guest posting services for a fee.

Write & Sell an Ebook:

If your blog has loyal readers then they must like what you have to say. Similarly, if you've established yourself as an expert in your blog's topic, then there is a good chance people will want to read more from you outside of your blog. Leverage that position by writing an ebook & offering it for sale on your blog.

Write a Book:

If you've established yourself as an expert in your blog's topic & developed a strong following, you could write a book & either try to have it published or self-publish.

Become a Professional Blogger:

Many blogs and blog networks look for talented & knowledgeable writers to author blogs & many of those blogging jobs are paying. Apply to blogging jobs to boost your blogging income.

Apply for Other Writing Jobs:

Blogging can help you polish your writing skills, which can help you land other freelance writing jobs online & offline. Transitioning into freelance writing from blogging is not unusual & can be very lucrative.

Become a Public Speaker:

If you've successfully established yourself as an expert in your blog's topic & generated a decent amount of traffic to your blog, you could offer your services as a public speaker at events related to your area of expertise.

Become a Consultant:

If you've established yourself as an expert in your blog's topic, you can offer consulting services to other people or business' who could use the help of your expertise. Alternatively, you could offer consulting services related to developing & writing a successful blog.

Blogging Arena

Flash Animated Label Tags Cloud Widget For Blogger

How to add Big Xmas Social Buttons to your Wordpress Blog

Recent Comments and Recent Posts in Blogger

Add Meta Tag in Blogger

Create Go to Top of Page Link in Blogger

"Horizontal Scrolling Recent Posts" for Your Blog

Change Your Blog’s Hosting, Domain Name or Directory

How to create a favicon

Linking Inside a Page

Dress Your Blog for Success

Go with the Flow: The Top Blogs

Images and Theme Customization

How to Start a Blog Partnership

37 Ways to Make Blogging Easier

Get Paid To Blog By Guest Blogging

Let Them Know You’re Available

Give A Little

Follow The Guidelines

Promote Like Crazy

Be Responsive

Rinse And Repeat

Happy New Year

Take Control of Automated Twitter Spam with TrueTwit:

How To Display Your Twitter Status On A WordPress Blog

8 Simple SEO Tips For Blogs

All About “BLOG” & “BLOGGING”

What is a "blog"?

The Blog Content

Comments

The Difference Between a Blog and CMS?

Things Bloggers Need to Know

Archives

Feeds

Blogrolls

Syndication

Managing Comments

Trackbacks

Pingbacks

Verifying Pingbacks and Trackbacks

Comment Moderation

Comment Spam

Pretty Permalinks

Blog by email

Post Slugs

Excerpt

Plugins

Basics-A Few Blogging Tips

Resources Tools that you must have to optimize your blog

Tips for New Bloggers

Difference - HTML and XHTML

Blog Carnivals and Group Writing Projects: 5 Tips to Increase Blog Traffic Using Them

How To Build Lasting Relationships With Your Readers

1. Get To Know Your Readers

2. Engage Your Readers

3. Accept and even invite a constructive criticism

4. Be confident, but Be humble

5. Show your human side

6. Give back to your readers

7. Inspire Your Readers

8. Be irresistible

Five ways to become an expert online…and make money!

5 Tips To Increase Comments

Is Your Blog Easy To Read?

1. Are your colors easy on the eyes?

2. Is your font easy to read?

3. Can people figure out your navigation?

4. Does it look spammy, with ads plastered everywhere?

5. Do the links stand out?

6. Do your pages take a long time to load?

7. Is your page messed up in other browsers?

8. Are you using too many acronymns, jargon, or slang?

Conclusion:

Easy monetizing of your blog with AdSense

Why should I monetize my website?

Why AdSense?

How do I get started?

Will it ruin my blog design?

Mini FAQ

9 Ways To Run Your Blog Like A Small Business