Ads For Blog

Web Hosting Solutions from Eglueweb

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:11:00 +0000

We usually rate and value web hosting providers on the basis of the tangible details like disk space and bandwidth provided by them. But we miss out on things that are less easy to review—like the customer support provided by them, the earnestness with which they deal with you etc. And that really counts!

The giants in the industry like MyDaddy are providing real cheap domain registration and web hosting (ya they do provide that too) service, but when I sent them a ticket on a domain registration query, I got the reply a full week later.

That’s when I went with eglueweb, the new guys who provide affordable web hosting. (you guessed it wrong, that’s NOT an affiliate link). You do feel like being that fabled customer king when you deal with them. I had some billing issues, so I messaged them; and sure enough they called me within 15 minutes. That’s customer service!

I haven’t used their web hosting services as of now, just some domain names for the time being. Their basic (Rookie) web hosting plan is bit overkill with 2000mb space, and 40GB bandwidth, but with daily backups, at least now you forget that nightmare where you wake up to see that your site has just disappeared!

The Easy Way to Make Gifs

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 02:04:00 +0000

I used to make animated Gifs using the layers in GIMP. But that was real cumbersome and time consuming. Yesterday, I used this small software called UnFREEz 2.1, which does an excellent job of making animated Gifs in a pretty fast way. UnFREEz makes animated gifs by stitching together many independent gif images. This is excellent if you want to make an animated gif from multiburst images (the continuous set of images taken in a single click). Now, I tried out UnFREEz. You can download it here
To make the animated Gif’s, you just have to drag and drop images (gif format) to the dialog box and then set the loop option and frame delay and then hit ‘make animated gif’.

This software is very small (just 19.5 KB) and you don’t have to install it in your computer. You don’t even have to extract it from the zip folder. Just download and there you have it! It is a freeware, so don’t worry about the cost involved. Thirdly, the whole thing is so easy to understand, I just downloaded it and used it-just like that!

On the negative side of things: the software does not convert jpg images to gifs, so you have to convert it using MS paint or any other simple image editing tool. Then the images have to be of the same size. This also can be done in the same way. But that’s a small cost to pay if you need a really quick gif making tool.

Here I just created a very simple, even crude animated gif, using just UnFREEz and MSPaint. The whole thing took me less than 5 minutes.

Effective Education Site for Teenagers

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 15:02:00 +0000

As an English Teacher, I know that effective education occurs only when the learner is engrossed in the learning activity. This can be done by stimulating the student's mind through visual cues like charts, graphs, etc. Now, the same principle is being used by Brightstorm to create visually appealing teaching video courses that will help the students to grasp difficult concepts in subjects ranging from algebra to creative writing. These courses are highly effective since students will be able to remember the videos better than their drab textbooks. Therefore, they are of great value to the students.

The site gives us the chance to sample their content by giving us free access to some of their videos. So, I decided to check them out. The first thing that you will notice is the amazing clarity of the videos. The videos are not jumpy, home videos. They are made professionally and have good sound quality too. The videos are of durations that range from 10-20 minutes. Each of these videos has animation and other fun elements that make the viewing experience pleasurable. The lessons are of the high school standard, and the teachers are real experts in their subjects.

I checked out the video on geometry called “geometric journeys”, (I used to dread these classes in school). The geometry session starts from the very basic and takes you through different concepts in an easy to understand format. Innovation is the name of the game and the teacher uses some familiar objects to describe geometric figures.

I like the overall presentation of Brightstorm and that makes me go back to learning those lessons I skipped at school. So, why don’t you Sign up for a free brightstorm acocunt and grab a free video lesson under each course?

Volvo Ocean Race Photos

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:18:00 +0000

The Volvo Ocean Race had reached Kochi, India on December, and I thought of checking it out. Take a look at some of its pictures. Most of these pictures are of the exhibition that was tagged along with the race. There were a few concept cars, take a look at some of these:
Volvo concept cars:

Photo of the Volvo Ocean Exhibition:

Welcome: the Kerala style:

The Beginning of a New Year

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:45:00 +0000

Have you ever shown a summary of all of your blog posts to readers? The new year is the best time to do that. A reflection on the previous years posts will help your readers to read more posts of your blog, so your blog's 'stickyness' will improve and your posts will be better indexed by Googlebot. So why not write one? My next post is going to be just that.

Best Posts of 2008

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 02:16:00 +0000

This is the list of some of the best posts of 2008. Note that some of the info given in these posts are a bit outdated. This isn't the list of all posts. I have eliminated many minor posts.

January:

Submit your site to Google and Yahoo

Review of Sitemeter

A list of nightmares for bloggers and how you can overcome them.

Continuation of what can happen to your blog

Generate content for your blog

A review of Clicktale

A review of Widgetbucks

Fine-tuning Blogger template

Internet Glossaries for Beginners

Getting traffic from MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog

What to do when Google Bans Your site

February:

Some Easy Ways To Gain Traffic

A four part series of posts on the art of keyword stuffing

The series also includes these posts:

March:

A Tip on Tweaking of Templates

The Art of Keyword Stuffing, post five

Review of Wordtracker

A series of articles on our attitude to blogging:

The first one is on changing your attitude to traffic
The second one is on enjoying blogging
The third post is on commenting

Two post on Blogging and Ethics written by Sherene Tan

Part One:Blogging and Ethics
and Part Two on Blogging and Ethics

A Critical View of Entrecard

April:

April was my most difficult as well as the most prolific month. So the posts themselves show how desperate I was at that time:

The first post was on internet fraud

Adding Page Elements to Blog Header

A post on having Page like Effect on a Blogger Blog. This was one of the best posts of mine and gave me unprecedented traffic. I still use the technique given in it in this blog.

A review of Bidvertiser

A review of Entrecash

Entrecard and how beginners can use it effectively

Disclosure Policy of This Blog

Review of Social Spark

A negative review of Reviewstream

A Negative Review of Widgetbucks

What Makes Your Blog Click

Six Months of Earning from Your Blog

May:

Boost Your New Blog

A Simple Way to Improve Links to Your Site

The Make Money Pyramid

The Make Money Pyramid-II

Ten Blogging Ideas to Use When Your Mind is Blank

The Human Element

June

The Human Element-2

Creating Favicon

Tips on Avoiding Scams

July

Review of Project Wonderful

Google Pages

Chat Widgets and Form Tools

Tips on using Entrecard Credits

Making Money through Vizu Power Polls

Google Knol and Wikipedia

Google Knol

AUGUST

Entrecard Toolbar

Ways to Speedup Your Blog

How to make 125X125 cards

Online Paypal Store

Is internet a level playing field?

Reevaluating Project Wonderful

Reevaluating Project Wonderful-2

September

Faster Ways to Blog

Blogging at the Speed of Light-2

Review of WOT

Make a Free Website with Weebly

Avoid scams with the website Rip-off Report

Recession in American Economy

What makes your blog click?

October

Lessons Learnt from Entrecard

Lessons Learnt from Entrecard-2

Embedding Comments in Blogger

Commonsense Approach to Plagiarism

How to Display Raw HTML in your Blog

Wasteful Widgets

Two Sidebar Free Blogger Template

Review of Addthis

Gmail Notifier

November

Choosing Free Web Host

Choosing Free Webhost-2

A Simple Way to Improve SEO of Blogspot Blogs

How Online Ad agency Rips You Off

Why I quit Digging

December

Catch Plagiarism Without Spending a Dime

More on Chat Widgets

Why I Removed the Email Subscription Link

Blogging Ideas for Free

Web hosting Solutions from EglueWeb

Easy Way to make Gif’s

Volvo Ocean Race Photos

Triond Review

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:17:00 +0000

Recently I used Triond, the service that helps you to make money out of any media that you upload, and in any language. It allows you to send text, pictures, audio and even videos. Triond uses these items in several of their websites and in their partner networks. You receive money based on the online ads revenue that is displayed along with your articles, pictures and videos. The money made by these articles is divided equally among you and Triond. You get the revenues for your material for lifetime. Another benefit of Triond is that you can make yourself an expert in the field of your choice. You get credit for your work. What makes Triond interesting is the fact the minimum payout using PayPal is just $0.50! The money is sent by the fifteenth of every month. The also send payment through Western Union and through check. If you like to earn more, then you need articles that are well written and keyword dense. Pictures, audio and video wont be that profitable.

But one problem with Triond is that it does not allow you to have direct links from your articles to your blog/websites, or even your profile. The link in the articles just point out to more of your articles. So its best to view Triond as money making venture and not as a credibility building exercise. And even then, don't expect to be even a thousandaire overnight!

Ted’s Rantings

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:30:00 +0000

Check out this cool blog from ted. Ted calls himself a “Creative superfreak. Serial entrepreneur. Social media lover. Apple fan boy. Global traveler. Likes to stick tongue out in pictures.”

His cool new template looks something like SocialSpark’s template. Well, Ted just happens to be the head of Izea.

Some of his posts are about putting logos on T-shirts. The others are about shaving and some random hair!

Catch Plagiarism without Spending a Dime-2

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:21:00 +0000

Read the part 1 of Catch Plagiarism without Spending a Dime

After receiving a comment from one of the blog readers, about copygator, I decided to check them out. Copygator allows you to have a badge that will change its color to red if it detects copies of your site. You can also opt to receiving warning messages through email and through RSS.

If you don’t like to add the badge to your blog, you have another option, just submit valid rss feed of your blog and copygator will do the rest for you. The best part of it is the fact that the whole service is entirely free.

Thanking My Entrecard Droppers

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 22:42:00 +0000

Hi! I just want to send some to my regular droppers. Here is the top droppers list.
My Tangible Wealth Blog Sharing the keys to six figure incomes even part time!
Category: Bussiness

Discomfort Zone The Buwau98 Chronicles:Just an ordinary Joe who is fascinated and always curious about things and events which occurs in the discomfort zone.Without curiosity life is dull and boring.Spice it up with things you must know. Category: Environment

Art JoolreeIt's all about jewellery, fashion, the glitterati and all other things that sparkle. Category:Fashion

Bass Nation Blogging All Things Bass
Category:Music

A girl's besfriend ONLINEThis is a compilation of what girls should know, in terms of skin care, watching our body and health. It's all about just being a girl.
Category: Fashion

Wonderful place in Philippines
tourist site of the Philippines,the tradition of the Filipino, and the beauty of the Pearl of the rising sun Category: Travel

Folk Art by Campbell JaneWhimsical Works & Whatever Category: Art

The best is yet to come!Discover your passion, dreams, and life today! Category: Computers and Internet

Apaya Gaming ZoneGames for all Gamers. Category: Gaming

Sexy Old BroadAn irreverent blog full of information about relationships, sexuality, flirting and intimacy. Category: Romance

If you have some grudges, please let out the steam in the comments section!

I am Planning a Massive Revamp Of This Blog

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:39:00 +0000

Yea, I was planning a massive revamp of this blog including changing of the temple, the content of this blog (reducing the traditional kind of make money posts and increasing some ramblign like posts) adding video posts, etc..This is gonna take some time, so please be patient.

Ghost Car?

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:18:00 +0000

Hey, just check this out! Ghost car? Some kind of cheap trick? A video I think is worth a thousand words.

Entrecard alternatives?

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:57:00 +0000

Are there any alternatives to Entrecard. Here are some of the other services that I have seen.
1)CMF: similar to the Entrecard, this one also uses a credit system. But on the flip side of it, the site has far less number of blogs and most of them are plain crap.
2)Blog Explosion: Similar to CMF ads, Blog Explosion has too many junk blogs.

Finally, we have the banner exchange schemes like 25exchange, spott and blogup. I tested 125exchange and Spott. But traffic from these schemes are far less compared to EC.

So, as much as I know the only alternative to EC is Entrecard itself. Do you have any alternatives???

SezWho is Now Dead

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 16:17:00 +0000

Recession has taken its toll. One more service have now gone bust. This time it is SezWho. Last year it was blogrush and Sitehoppin. But can you really blame recession for that? Or was it based sound business practices.

Let me ask this: How was sezWho planning to earn something out of their service? And what about Blogrush? Its just they the owners had some lightbulbs flashing in their minds when they are in the middle of their sleep and the next day their out to make their 'dream come true' without assessing their income potential. And then, when the first signs of storm is seen, these ideas sink like a stone. Well what do you think of it?

That Old Blogger v/s Wordpress Debate

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 16:31:00 +0000

This blog has many posts that compare Blogger with Wordpress. But until recently, I have not really used the paid service of Wordpress (I have used the free service provided by wordpress.com. So how do they really stack up against each other?

Many Wordpress fans have boasted about the use of plugins. But to be frank, most of the pluggins that I found was plain junk. There are lots of pluggins and there pluggins to control those pluggins. But most of the pluggins, I soon found out, had either some compatibility issues, or they just did not work as fine as I thought. The one pluggin that I saw was the most useful was Askimet, the spam capturing thing. But again spam comments are so few in Blogger that you don't need a pluggin for that. I agree Wordpress has lots of pluggins that rocks. But I just prefer a plain blog with very little bells and whistles.

Finally the one thing that I missed the most in Wordpress is the ease with which you can change the colours of particular parts of the Blogger blogs. All you have to do is click the layout tab and change the colour. I searched for a pluggin in WP that could easily change the colour of the blog. But to my dismay none of the pluggin was efficient as the blogger when it comes to changing colours.

Blogger loses on one count. Its inability to have pages. I tried a hack for it in this blog, but even then I prefer to have some real pages. Moreover, you stand to loose some money if you are using Blogger since some ad agencies do not allow Blogger blogs into their system.

So who wins the debate? I think Blogger is still in the lead. What about you?

How to earn money online through ebegging?

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:22:00 +0000

While going browsing blogs through Entrecard, I saw these two blogs earning money (do they really earn anything, I doubt)by virtually begging(pun intended!). Just visit these blogs: stentorized and the asphalt blooger to see the begging in action. Here the two pics I have taken of these sites:

Well is there any better methods at this?

Get FREE REPORT on Sponsored Conversations

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:28:00 +0000

If still haven’t used Sponsored Conversations to increase your brand awareness and then you are probably living under some rock or something. In a sponsored conversation, you pay a blogger to write conversations about the service/products offered by you. Now, I am not spilling the whole beans out, since, you can learn more about Sponsored Conversations and their importance in building your business empire through a FREE REPORT made by Forrester Research (an independent group). But here is the gist of it:
--> These conversations are GENUINE opinion of bloggers. When someone speaks the language of truth instead of a sales language, well the readers sit up and take notice.
--> It is the cheaper form of advertising. Even small bloggers and one man companies can afford them, since you don’t need tons of blogs to create a buzz.
--> It increases brand awareness, since many more people read a blog than gaze around the sidebars of a blog. So it is the most visible stuff on a blog.
--> Its also good for the blogger since the views given in his blog need not be laced with falsehood or the sales letter lingo.
So why not give it a try. Just learn more about Sponsored Conversations and grab the FREE REPORT.

Well do you use Sponsored Conversations in your blog? If so what do you think about it?

Why do people curse Entrecard so much?

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:56:00 +0000

Ans: Because they cannot game the system.

Detailed Answer: You cannot use any automatic programs to click and generate traffic. So you have to slough it out, just like others. No shortcuts here. Those who hate Entrecard always criticizes this click-the-widget-thing. But they miss the point. Entrecard is not just for traffic, it is for social interaction too, which can only happen if you visit other peoples blogs.

Do, you have a better answer???

I joined Twitter

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:28:00 +0000

Last week, I joined Twitter. Just after going live with my first update, not less than 23 people became my followers and I followed almost all of them. Then it happened. SPAM! I think spamming is legal here in Twitter. By next day my followers had grown to a hundred. The direct messages to me now reached almost 50. Each of them a spam. Then I noticed the pattern. None of them where sent to me by real humans. All of them where automated messages. As of now, only one message that I received was written by a real human being.
You know you cannot win much through this system since others are using automated ways to add followers and you are sloughing through it the hard way.

Anyway, I will be writing a few posts on optimizing Twitter.

But tell me is it really worth it?

Hack out a living for yourself!

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:05:00 +0000

There is always something glamorous about hacking into a site and stealing info out of it. But that is illegal, right? Wrong! Now, you can hack into a website, and get paid for it-without being caught! Yes! That is true!

Have you heard of Ethical Hacking? That is what you do if the company that owns a website, asks you to hack into their own site. This will help them to understand the security loophole that exists in their websites. This process is called the Hacking Cycle.

See, many of the large companies now have their businesses done through e-commerce. Even money transactions occur online. This forces them to seek IT Security professionals who can understand the threats involved and find solutions to mitigate that threat. Your job as a security analyst will be a secure one, since none of the big companies can afford serious lapses in their security system.

Now EC-Council is providing the training, which will train you to be a security analyst. They equip you with industry skills using their online courses. You can learn these courses online through teleconferencing. So, the course modules can be learned part by part, led by a real tutor, live! A good thing about these courses is that they are scheduled in such a way that you do not need to take your time off from work. The courses are split into four hour blocks that are spread over five weeks. These courses deal with: Security Fundamentals, Ethical Hacking, Penetration Testing, Computer Forensics (recovery of corrupt files and databases), Disaster Recovery and Secure Programming.

So why not aim to be a Certified Ethical Hacker now itself?

So why not aim to become a Certified Ethical Hacker now itself?

Embeddable Forum for Your Website

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Thu, 14 May 2009 02:24:00 +0000

I was searching for a good forum for your website. I tried vbulletin and but they proved to be too tough for me to handle. What I wanted was a simple forum that was easy to implement, and I did not want to get messed up with the codes. So a simple Google search led me to Nabble which is a free embeddable forum. All you have to do here is to register an account, create the proper settings for the forum, and then copy and paste the codes in your website just like the way you add widgets to your site. The whole process will not take more than three minutes. On the downside , I do not think that this is a proper solution for a high traffic forum. It is best kept as a tool for the support part of your main website. Moreover, it takes around 2-3 seconds for the forum to be displayed when a visitor first enters it. You can check the forum that I had developed here:mytravelia forum.

Another Easy-to-use Free Forum

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:18:00 +0000

In the previous post, I talked about the free forum from Nabble. As I researched more into having a simple forum, I got to Lefora. Nabble if free but it doesn't support some basic features like uploading of photos etc. To create a new forum, you will have to give your specifications through a form supplied by them. In Lefora, you get to choose some cool themes, which will make your forum look professional.

Its not only easier for you, but also for your members. The site has WYSWIG editor which makes adding threads, a breeze. Plus, it allows you to easily add youtube and other videos to the site. The site allows you to stick widgets to the forum much like the blogger blog. This improves the user experience greatly.

The best thing with this forum is that it is seo friendly, although I am not able to verify that claim now.

Although free, the forums carry small links on the top and bottom which discloses that the forum is a free service. But like they say: "Do not carry the gift horses's mouth.

Smush It!

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Tue, 26 May 2009 18:11:00 +0000

One of my websites were taking long time to load. So, I wanted to increase its loading speed by decreasing the size of the image files. I tried using MS paint but it usually crunches the images too much and so the resulting images was blurred. Then I have irfan view and GIMP.Irfan view is good for batch resizing. But I was looking for a software that could automate the process of reducing JPEG file sizes. Something that is meant exclusively for web pictures.

Now after some nosing around, I came up with smush_it. Smush is really easy to use. You can either upload photos manually, or just enter the url of the image (ideal for shrinking already existing websites. It also has a firefox plug in just for this purpose. Using smush_it, you can crunch the file size without tinkering with any of the variables. Just upload images and get the result. Just like that. And the great thing is that there is hardly any reduction in the clarity of the image.

I tried the same thing, with animated gifs, and it still works! (you can't do that same thing with MS paint). My animated gif image shrunk by almost 60% and there was no noticeable difference between the real image and the compressed image. As of now the service is completely free with no file size limit.

Online Screen-Resolution and Cross Browser Compatibility Tools

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:13:00 +0000

So you have finished creating a website and is ready to show it to the world. Wait a minute. The site may look cool to you, but can you be sure that the site looks exactly like that in a different browser or with a different screen resolution? You cannot, and that is why you need to check up your site in different browsers and screen resolutions. But its very difficult for you to view a website in different conditions manually. And that is where the following online tools and websites come into play. While this can surely, help you a lot to correct problems with your websites, please do not entirely depend upon them. Go to a net cafe and check it up just to be doubly sure.

Ipinfo, allows you to view your website in different versions of Internet Explorer: IE 8, 7, 6, 5.5 etc. They do not show the full page of the site, just the part that is seen ‘above the fold’. You can also see the difference between the two versions (IE 7 and 6) with a cool feature that juxtaposes the two renderings on the same page, allowing you to easily note the differences. Unlike many other similar online tools their result is almost instant. But this site does not allow cross browser testing, you can only get the result for Internet Explorer.

Browsercam contains many options with a wide range of browsers and resolutions. They also allow you to render your site according to the way websites are handled in different types of PDA’s and iphone. Their services are paid ones. But the free trial, after registration will enable you to use their services for one day.

Browsrcamp allows for testing in Mac computers and its browsers. Images are obtained using Safari 3 version. You can obtain images of the website in different screen width and then download the screenshots as jpg or png files.

Litmusapp allows you to do the same at lightning speed. You can test sites in a wide range of browsers like Explorer 8.0, Explorer 7.0, Explorer 6.0, Explorer 5.5, Explorer 5.0, Firefox 3.5, Firefox 2.0, Firefox 1.5, Firefox 1.0, Flock 2.0 Flock 1.2, Google Chrome 2.0, Netscape 9.0, Opera 10.0, Opera 9.6, Safari 4.0, Sea Monkey 1.1, Mac OS X browsers and many other obscure browsers. They require a free registration. The clarity of images obtained are of average clarity. It requires free registration.

Browsershots is the best of its kind. It Supports almost all major browser and screen resolutions from 640px to 1680px width. Another feature is its support of screen color depth which ranges from 8bits/pixel to 32 bits. Users can see screen shots in a variety of environment, not just the operating system but also factors like the disabling of JavaScript, Java and Flash. According to the website, the screen shots are taken from real computers set in different configurations. The only problem is the slow turn around. Once you submit your website, it might take up to 30 minutes to see the screen shots. The wait is worth it!

Webmaster Cavern allows you to see your website in different screen resolutions. You get to see the website with the screen resolutions: 640X480, 800X600, 1024 X768, 1152 X 864, and 1280 X 1024. The whole page is rendered completely. The screen is highly accurate, but full view is hindered by the floating ads and the navigation menu of the website. Another good thing is that you can click the urls given in the screenshots and proceed to the next page so you dont have to type the urls of the inner pages.

Besides this Adobe has come up with a webmaster's solution called Meer Meer which uses adobe flashes to show multiple browser shots side by side. The screenshots can also be superimposed one on top of another. But, I could not test it, since, it requires adobe, flash player10 and I am having some trouble in installing it.

Seven ways to get free news for your website

jimsvarkey@gmail.com (Jims Varkey) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:30:00 +0000

A news based blog can be a great way to get good traffic and improve SEO visibility. But the problem is the constant effort required from your part to get the fresh news flowing through your blog. Well there are lots of sources like BBC and CNN. But they have strict copyright laws attached. So where do you get some free news that can shown in your blog? Here are some of it:

1) Wikinews All the news articles from this site is free for your use. Sometimes they may use pictures from other sources but often their content is free. You can edit and paste all the content provided you give proper attribution to the source. The copyright notice should also be included in the artilce.

2) voanews: Articles from Voice of America is also free for use in websites provided you provide adequate info regarding the source.

3)newsnorthamerica and newscanada. These two sister sites have a relaxed copyright statement. Their copyright notice reads:

Articles are provided free of charge. Credit of usage must be attributed to News North America with (NNA) at beginning of an article or – News North America at the end. Any source/sponsor of the information quoted in the text must also be identified as presented. Images are only to be used with corresponding editorial copy. Usage of News North America articles constitutes your acceptance of these terms and an agreement between you and News North America.

4)Another great free source for new sites are press releases. Many of these press releases are plain advertisements and many others are just not newsworthy. Moreover, it is a good idea to rewrite a press release before putting it up in your website.

5)Press Information Bureaus of government and large corporations offer good quality news along with photographs. Although many of their news items are highly twisted.

6)Many official government websites also do not have a copyright tags attached to them. Moreover, many of them just don't bother about such issues.

7)Besides these, there are many sites that offer syndicated content, or news tickers. Remember that these sites are not keen on incresing traffic to your blog/website. They are more interested in building traffic to their own sites. So avoid syndicated content from most of these sites.

Do you know any particular site?