The element behind all this interactivity is Flash.  Flash websites do have an upper edge over other type of websites because it has many applications and it can be used to ramp up the website design in more than one way.

Understanding Flash. Not a piece of cake

Though Flash looks really impressive. Creating a Flash website on your own, requires knowledge of Flash and basic web programming, and to achieve better results, you need to learn advanced concepts of Flash programming. This can takes days, weeks or months (depending on how fast you can learn). As a blogger, I think I will be wasting lot of time in creating such a website and that is why I would not like to create a Flash Website.

Wix has the solution

All the programming is not required if you use Wix’s free website builder. I was completely taken aback by the ease and simplicity with which you can create a website. Creating a website of your own could not be simpler. Also, a major problem faced by Flash websites is that they are not SEO friendly. But Wix websites are search engine friendly and therefore, you don’t have to worry about losing search engine traffic.

In order to start a new website, you have to click on Start Creating to get started.

After that you can choose a huge list of previously designed Flash templates categorized according to different needs. Alternatively, you could also start the design from scratch and start designing the way you want without the necessary programming (Wix is doing that for you )

The Wix Editor is similar to blogger editor in terms of it’s simplicity, but fully loaded with features that will truly amaze you.

In the editor you have options of adding a Flash gallery to showcase some of your great works. Plus you can animate any part of the website and make it more interactive by adding media to it (music,videos, etc.). Also, the best part is that you could add any number of functions to your website with a few clicks –which shows how simple it is to create a website from Wix.

You can also take a look at some great websites made by Wix by clicking at the Explore Tab on the homepage.

You might argue that HTML design is better than Flash, but:

Although, an HTML website is good for a minimalistic website which has a small purpose, but for a broader and more niche audience, it is always better to have a website that focuses on a magnificent design which leaves a lasting impression on the reader.

I have listed the pros and cons of a Flash design for you:

Pros

Feature Addition

Whenever you are looking for a good gadget, your main focus is on the various features it has to offer. You always go for one which has more features available at lower cost. Similarly, a feature-rich website is always preferred over feature-less website. The feature I am talking about here is the ability to integrate media in to your website. With the help of Flash you can embed videos, sounds and animations into your website in a way that converts it into an interactive website.

The major benefit of having an interactive website is to increase the engagement with your readers. If you have more things on your website, then obviously readers will spend more time on your site and this will help in increasing conversions from visitor to reader.

The Interactive Fair Design Website

Example: The Fair Design Website has an interesting feature, when hovering on the concentric circles, you hear a sound.

Ease of use

It can be really irritating to load pages every time when you want to browse through the website. The best part of Flash is that you don’t have to reload your pages, the Flash object does the changing of the pages without reloading. Also, it levels up the type of website navigation you can get from a design. The look of the navigation can be completely changed by adding Flash object to it. These capabilities helps in an easy and pain-free browsing.

Simple and Elegant Design of Michele Motta Photography website

A good example of this is the Michelle Motta Photography Website which has a very impressive navigation and you can scroll through all the main navigation links without even reloading a single page.

Stunning Design

An essential part of a 5D Blog Experience is a design that catches hold of the reader’s attention. I agree with the fact that a normal website can achieve that. But a Flash website can do a lot better – it can glue the readers to your site. Wouldn’t that be great? The design can now include animated  texts and images.

Style Hub About Page

You can see that with the added animation effects, the design of a website named Style Hub looks really fabulous

Cons

Where there are pros, there are cons as well.

Flash Plugin

The problem is that a Flash website works only if you have the Flash plugin installed on your browser. Most of your visitors have Flash installed on their browsers, but some visitors won’t have it and hence they will not be able to view your website properly. And this will mean loss of traffic.

Slow Loading

There is always a side effect of being feature-rich. As more and more features are added to your site, they take more space and hence lead to a slower loading website which is not good for the users.

Now it is totally upto you. You have to weigh the pros and cons and decide whether Flash is good for you.

But if you chose Flash over HTML, then you should give a try to Wix’s Free Website Builder. I am sure that it will not disappoint you.

How to Create a Flash Website from Scratch is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. How to create a Facebook Page for your Blog/Website
2. Pros and Cons of Do It Yourself Web Design
3. The 21 Worst Things To Have On Your Blog or Website

In this guest article by Nitin Aggarwal, owner of

Outsourcing: Is it a four letter word for your online company, or is it a valid choice to increase your productivity? This is a question that so many online businesses are asking themselves as they create a business plan to include article marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization, and the ultimate management of their company online. How can you do it all and still stay within your budget?

Outsourcing is a delicate topic because you must walk the fine line between outsourcing the more menial tasks and saving the important projects for those qualified within your staff. As an example, many people have begun outsourcing their social media work to have freelancers manage their profiles on Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn. All of the aforementioned websites are imperative and incredibly valuable when it comes to marketing your company online, but should they be outsourced entirely? There is a twofold answer because it is helpful to employ someone who knows what they are doing to manage your social media profiles. Still, it is better if this individual is a trusted member of your staff because all of your social media profiles should be represented with the voice of your company so that your brand is best showcased to your customers online.

If you are able to outsource your social media management to a trusted individual that can accurately represent your company, all the better, but this project should be monitored until the freelancer that you have outsourced to is entirely trusted in their work.

This being said, what should outsourcing be used for? Many of the more basic tasks that will take up your time and are not worth the effort as the owner or manager of an online business include:

• Directory submission
• Article submission
• Link building
• Web programming
• Web design
• Virtual assistant/administration

Some of the things I don’t advise to outsource are:

• Guest blogging – It’s all about building relationships and networking.
• Market Research – Unless you are somebody who wants to setup multiple websites, you should do niche/keyword research yourself. This will help you gain a lot of insight into what your customers think and are looking for. This is especially important if you plan to get deep into a niche.

Even better, here are some of the ideal online tools to use for the most effective outsourcing:

• Wikidot: This is a social networking service that provides valuable information in graphs, lists, reports, and summaries, and it can also be used to create chat rooms, calendars, blogs, and issue trackers.
• Basecamp: This is a top project management tool that allows you to set up text documents online, milestones, file sharing, to-do lists, time tracking, and messaging for a complete outsourcing project.
• Clockingit: This is a free project management tool to keep track of how much time and resources are spent on each project and client, and it allows you to plan projects, create a schedule, track time, communicate with employees, and create reports.

As you can see, outsourcing is entirely useful when done in the best interest of your company. When you outsource many of these everyday tasks, you can dramatically increase your productivity by saving your time for the more important things: cultivating your business. Still, the mistake that so many online business owners make is in outsourcing everything or the wrong things so that it cheapens the marketing of their company and even misrepresents their brand to their customers online.

Here are some important things not to outsource when marketing your company:

• Creating your business plan
• Building and creating social media profiles
• Planning viral content
• Building relationships with bloggers/marketers in your niche
• Customer research/interaction

The point is that the mistake that many people make is substituting outsourcing for creating relationships with their customers. No matter which way you slice it, there is no way to promote your company online without legitimately reaching out to people who are interested in your brand. Outsourcing any of the tasks listed above will weaken the representation of your company and create potential problems in your customer base.

The most successful online businesses that have started from the ground up have put in the necessary blood, sweat, and tears regarding their marketing campaign.

There is no easy answer or quick fix in social media and Internet marketing, which is precisely why outsourcing should not be used for the more valuable tasks of growing your company. That being said, outsourcing is not something to be overlooked if you want to increase your productivity because you should not be expected to do it all yourself when it comes to article marketing, directory submissions, building links, and even writing web copy for your website.

The key as an online business is finding the perfect balance between the two so that you preserve the integrity of your company and leave yourself the time you need to continue to promote your online business the right way.

Find the Perfect Balance in Outsourcing for Your Blogging Venture is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. 5 Tips for Creating a Perfect Business Website
2. No Instant Success In Blogging And The Solutions
3. Strategic Blogging Is the Only Way to Succeed in Blogging

The problem with the #Followfriday used nowadays is that people don’t care whom to give recommendation or not. They list a bunch of people and they add a #FF hashtag, so that people could follow them. As these #ff tags are usually devoid of any information and careful reasoning, the total value of a followfriday recommendation gets nullified.

Recommend Selectively

Your recommendations should be selected by careful thought and reasoning. These recommendations should include people you actually like and the ones that deserve your recommendation

If you recommend people just for the sake of it or if you have an ulterior motive of making a bond with that person, then you would not be doing the right thing. If the person you recommend is not good, then the people who follow him/her will also have to suffer, which in turn will decrease your reputation in twitterville.

Also, try to use one tweet for one person. As there are only 140 characters in each tweet, there is huge scarcity of space for recommendations. And if you add more and more people to the recommendation, then there will be very little space left for your reasoning.

If you want to give followfriday recommendations to many people, then you can use your website as a medium to do that. Below is an example of one such recommendation:

33 super engagers to follow

Be Precise and Effective

Your followfriday recommendation should be constructed in such a way that you are able to convince your readers to follow them. The words used should be similar to that in a text ad.

In text ads published in newspapers and magazines, you are literally paying per character. Each character occupies a definite amount of space and if the number of characters is more, then the space required for it will be more and therefore, the cost of ad will increase proportionally.

Professionals who create these ads, use methods to convey their point in minimum words. Your recommendation should be made on the same lines. In 140 character space, you should be able to give a compelling reason to your followers, so that they are convinced to follow the people you are recommending.

The best method to do that is by listing the qualities of the person and also the type of tweets. For eg. if somebody recommends me as a good blogger on twitter. Then, some bloggers might get interested in following me for networking and knowledge sharing purposes.

Some Good Examples of FollowFriday Recommendations:

1. #FF @2morrowknight: An Opinionated Blogger, A social media champ. A very kind hearted person and a very engaging tweeter
2. #FF @TweetSmarter: Originally @Twitter_Tips. The ultimate destination to find the best tweets related to twitter and other social media
3. #FF @2cre8 Kathy’s stream is full of informative tweets. She is a technology enthusiast and a great blogger.
4. #FF @anddjournal Aditya is one of the young gunes. Full of enthusiasm, his tweets speak of his youth and love for technology
5. #FF @arkarthick: Karthick’s tweets are the like the summary of best tweets. They are loaded with info and mixed with a little bit of humor
6. #FF @AskAaronLee: If you are not following Lee, you are missing out on something. Lee is an influential blogger and a truly interesting tweeter.
7. #FF @v_shakthi: Shakthi is a awesome blogger and a great writer. A positive personality with an infectious charm
8. #FF @HowellMarketing: Amy is a loving person. She spreads happiness around her. Also she is one of the social media-holics
9. #FF @douglasi: Douglas is a thought provoking blogger. His articles and tweets have a twist to the conventional social media
10. #FF @xanpearson: She promotes happiness and Joy. Her optimism makes you want to engage in more and more conversations with her.

Now you might have got an idea of how to use #FollowFriday recomendations effectively. So, go ahead and try it and share your experiences and opinions on it. (P.S. All these 10 twitter users are a must follow)

The Art of using #FollowFriday Effectively is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. The Great Social Media Debate : Scheduling Tweets, Good or Bad
2. 4 Easy Ways to Engage Your Followers On Twitter
3. Twitter Is Like A Sadie Hawkins Dance – Somebody Has to Follow 1st

This is a guest article by Amanda. You should voice your opinions by taking a look at our guest blogging guidelines.

Everyone is writing their own blog today, and it is a great opportunity to have the world view your opinions, tips, art and stories. A blog can quickly make someone into a thought leader in their industry, but it does not come easily. If you want your blog to be taken seriously, you will need to know how to optimize your blog.

Optimizing your blog is not as easy as clicking a button and hoping everyone will arrive to your site. There are multiple actions most Internet marketing companies would recommend you can take to make your blog more accessible and user friendly. Your blog should bring readers in, keep them interested while they are there, and keep them coming back in the future. Here are several ways you can begin to optimize your blog.

Keywords

One of the only ways people are going to find your blog is by searching for keywords. Each blog post needs to be focused on a small set of keywords. Those keywords also need to show up in the title tags, meta description, custom URL, and even alt text for any images in the post. When you help a search engine like Google identify that your blog post is relevant to the keyword, you will increase your ranking in the search results. A good rule of thumb is to use 1-2 keywords per post and repeat them each 2-3 times within the body of your post.

URL Structure

A lot of people will not realize that they can customize exactly how their blog’s URL’s are formed. In order to optimize your blog, you will need to change the structure to include the title of your blog post in the URL itself. Additionally, it may be a good idea on some blogs to include the category of your blog post in the custom URL.

Sitemaps

Search engine bots will crawl all over your blog, trying to decipher what you offer the world. A lot of times, the bots can get lost and leave your site without reading every page. In order to prevent that, and make it easier on the bots, create a sitemap that tells them exactly what pages you have on your site and where they are. This is also helpful for users who are looking for a specific page on your blog.

Snippets

Most blog services offer a place for you to enter a compelling snippet that describes the content of your post. This snippet will show up in the search engines rather than simply the first 3 lines of text on your post. A user will know ahead of time exactly what your post is about if you write strong descriptions.

RSS Feed

Many blogs today do not offer their visitors an easy option to subscribe to their blog via RSS feed. RSS allows people to easily digest all of their favorite blogs’ content on their own reader such as Google Reader. This is a very important step to help bring your visitors back to your site and stay updated with your content. Without an RSS feed, there is no way for your visitors to know when you post something new. Many RSS services also offer a tool to allow your visitors to subscribe by email, delivering your content directly to their inbox.

When you know how to search engine optimize your blog, search engines will begin to value your content more and visitors will come more often and stay longer. There are multiple other tips you can use to optimize your blog, and each blog service can be different. Simply search for exactly what you are trying to do on your blog and someone likely posted a guide on how to do it. Optimizing your blog is an important step to grow your web presence.

How to Optimize Your Blog is a post from: Blog Godown

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1. Great SEO tips for Everybody
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3. Add Blogger Blog to Google Webmaster Tools

Let's start experimenting!

In this guest article by Roderick Coleman, the owner of Queryads explains the importance of split testing for websites and businesses. For a website, it can help in identifying the design that is most liked by the user and which leads to more engagement. On the other hand, businesses can figure out a design which drives more sales and as a result help in making more money for their business. You can voice your own opinion by taking a look at our guest blogging guidelines.

How does split testing work

Split testing is a useful and confirmed tactic to boost web based offers. Testing it takes a lot of time and effort and by means of the right tools for the job

What is split testing?

Split testing is fundamentally testing two unlike variables on your sales page to know what gets the most value out of your page by detail, as in every detail of your page whether it is your fonts or font size, the size of your headline, the wording of your headlines, the pictures you use, the price of each product, text in every paragraph and so on.

Split testing is what differentiates the beginners looking just about from those who make money out of the World Wide Web market. The people that earn a lot of money out of this are those who are good and know how to split test. It should be done to make more and more sales while separating themselves from others as the cream of the crop of the internet market.

Why bother with split testing?

Split testing is what detaches the most excellent of web designers from all the others. It is because of the fact that they basically know what are the proper and accepted combination of variations to use, like the use of different combination of headlines, colors, backgrounds, etc. It eventually results in attracting more personalities to check the site and they can ask for a higher rate as a result split testing can help:

• Make the viewers stay longer
• Make the viewers to interact with site
• Make the viewers buy from the site
• Makes the viewers more interested to browse the site

Who should be split testing?

Web designers are more often than not the targets because of their environment settings and their creativity of running tasks on web sites to catch the attention of more customers to visit the site, build a bond with your customers and make them come back. Just keep your mind set that split testing establishes traffic flow because you need people to visit your site.

How do you split test?

Mainly, the trouble-free way is to split test the whole sales page at once this way makes it more rapidly and without ease is usually known as an A/B split test but the thing to take into consideration is the fact that it is not that efficient as compared to testing entity variables but it is free of charge to set up and is downloadable. You can create a free A/B split test with the use of different software that are available in the internet.

There you can start on purely by creating as many different types of pages you like for instance, you can take into consideration the 5 basic variations

• Your personal default sales page
• Default sales page with images
• Default pages with different font styles
• Default pages with different headlines
• Default page with different amounts

Here is a piece of advice for all the beginners out there who are interested to make it big in the internet market. It is important to maintain and keep an eye on your page. Try to modify only one variable on each discrepancy or else you’ll lose track of what is going on. From there you can direct each distinction evenly and see which gets more profit and that’s the fundamentals of split testing and it is ok if you don’t have the money to invest on it yet.

On the other hand by spending a little of your chump change would not hurt to because in return you can have vast list of software that will automate all your testing for you and you would have the supremacy to test as many dissimilar combinations as you would want and it gets improved and enhanced that you don’t even have to know how to split test for the fact that it does all the dirty and information work for you.

This great software is also known as multivariate testing software and is a replacement for getting mixed up with all the unlike types of webpage which are detectable and you can straightforwardly identify the unusual versions of each variable and let the software do the job for you. You also can never find out that it can guess out what types or variety of combinations to use on your page to make you more income.

Variation in Split Testing

There are three major contenders in the multivariate split testing manufacturing business. There is the kaizen track, split test accelerator and conversion chicken. The kaizen track is about $197 while the split accelerator costs about $891. The conversion chicken on the other hand is free for a basic account and is considered the best among the three. Let us know and understand what does conversion chicken provides us with.

Conversion chicken is cheap mainly with no included reason at all although it could be priced at approximately the same value as kaizen track. The main reason that makes split test accelerator and kaizen track for programmers and not for new ones because the known software targets the programmers who have deeper knowledge so that they can play around the configuration files and make good use of the software to anything they aspire to do and achieve.

Conclusion

But after all that was said, the fundamental standpoint and the fact that they produce identical output are important in split testing. You have the supremacy and the will to choose whatever software that you want to make use of. You have to meet the terms of your needs and go with what is best fit for you.

After all it is your own money investing on it and the option is yours alone but if you’re a beginner, it is very much advisable for you to use conversion chicken and work with it for the time being until you get your income.

Split Testing 101 – The Beginner’s Guide is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Blogging – The Do It All Guide

The outcome of the contest was really good. There were many participants, the contest had a total of 54 entries and out of them 1 was to be chosen as the winner.

Before I announce about the winner, I would like to thank our contest sponsor:

The contest was sponsored by BookItNow which is an online travel resource site where you can book your holidays with ease. Also, you can get great deals on major tourist spots which can save you some money while you travel and enjoy.

The Team behind BookItNow is organizing a World Wild Travel Blog Party 2010 where you can participate and win an additional 200$ cash prize. The contest will end on 1st September 2010, so if you haven’t won a prize here, you can try this contest and maybe you get to win the 200$ cash prize for yourself.

How Did you pick the Winner?

As I mentioned earlier, I had used random.org to pick a winner randomly from the list of participants. As it was a random process, so you had to be lucky to win the contest.

The Winner

And the winner is:

A.R.Karthick

Congratulaions! Karthick

You need to send me your paypal email id, so that I’m able to transfer the cash prize to you.

I hope all of you guys, who missed the chance of winning this prize are still happy with the quality of content published at Blog Godown and I hope that similar contests like these become a regular feature at Blog Godown so that everybody gets a chance to win something

Cash Blogging Contest Winner Announced! is a post from: Blog Godown

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2. How to Make your Contest a Success!
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One of the amazing things about blogging is that there is so much information that different bloggers are willing to give away in order to help someone. The sad side to all this is that people don’t take blogging seriously as a great source of knowledge and information. It is something that, although used by millions of companies and people worldwide, is not seen as something trustworthy and so therefore lost amongst the other millions of web sites providing information. Here are some of the best tips and ways towards using blogging as the ultimate guide and source of information on the internet. Forget using conventional means of finding information, blogging offers heaps and is great because it comes directly from real people and not just organizations trying to sell things.

Blogging as a wealth of news:

Although i still use Google as my search provider in Firefox, i changed my home page in my browser to Google blog search. Information that comes from static websites are often old and outdated so using Google blog search I can get information on the exact news that is taking place at the time through the eyes of real people. Because of this, blogging is a great tool for finding out what is happening in the world at the current time.

Blogging as a source for schooling:

The amazing thing about blogging and its web 2.0 nature is the ability to have comments below each post. Because of this, for example if you are doing a research assignment then you can see what is being discussed about the topic at that time and also the readers opinions on it. Blogging can also mean you can get in direct contact with the author and find out more about what they have to say about a topic, which can provide more insight on a topic than an unbiased newspaper article.

Using blogging for work:

Blogging offers endless possibilities when it comes to finding work. Because of blogging being constantly refreshed with new articles you can subscribe to their rss feed and keep updated with new jobs and work now on offer. Because blogging has the ability to leave comments, you may get the readers opinions on what a good job may be or what the job is all about. This can save you heaps of time and it can avoid you the trouble because you can have it directly accessible through the Rss feed and you can get comments directly from the readers and also the author.

Using blogging for money:

Blogging has the ability to allow you to make money in itself. Making money through blogging, although not particularly easy is a great  way to do a work at home Job. Even better, there is so much information and people willing to help you throughout your blogging career. A wealth of information when it comes to other bloggers willing to help you.

Blogging for holidays:

It you have decided to go on holidays then blogging is the ultimate wealth of information. Unlike other websites which rather try to sell you their holidays by saying they are so amazing, if you go and read the blogs people have written then you will get a good idea of the experiences other people have had and whether the trip was worth it or not.

Blogging for training:

Because blogging is organized into separate posts from different dates. It is such a great way to get training or guides towards something. For example, when I started learning Japanese, I found heaps about learning the language a great way because they were written by good people and the posts where organized into specific dates.

Conclusion:

Blogging is the ultimate Source and wealth of information: there is so much knowledge you can gain From it. Move aside static websites, blogging is the better way of the web. Blogging’s social and regularly updated content means that we can find out exactly what people think of things.

Blogging – The Do It All Guide is a post from: Blog Godown

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1. Find the Perfect Balance in Outsourcing for Your Blogging Venture
2. Split Testing 101 – The Beginner’s Guide
3. 12 Things to do when you are not Blogging

After all we were just looking at a bit of color, a few pictures, some content and fancy fonts, right? Boy it sure didn’t take long before reality set in. Although doing your own web site is entirely possible, and there are many new businesses on the web that have self built web designs that are pretty impressive. It has its pros and cons. Here are a few of pros and cons and a few things to avoid thrown in for good measure.

PROS:

You save a ton of money:

Having a website professionally designed is certainly not cheap especially if you are going to be establishing an ecommerce site. If you are a computer novice and feel that you are a fast learner, then setting up a basic business site may be a good start, however it would not be wise to tackle a complicated website as a starting point.

You keep the control:

When you build and design your own website you have total control over it. This means anytime you want to change or add to it then you are capable of doing it. It is always wise to keep your website fresh by constantly adding new material  and features. You have the freedom to do this when the keys are in your hands.

Grow when you want:

You have the opportunity to have your website expand. If you are doing well in a specific product for example, then you can do the expansion yourself and not have to put out money for a professional web designer every time you want to add more features and pages.

Change your mind:

If something is not working then by having designed your own site, you can totally restructure it. If you were in a maintenance program with a web designer you would be facing extra costs for this and might be waiting few days for the designer to be available for you.

CONS:

Patience:

You need a whole bunch of patience. Building and designing a website is a learning process that never ends. If it were as easy as what one first thinks then there wouldn’t be so much web design companies on the web.

Experience:

Going it on your own is a trial and error experience. Relying on professional web designers means that you are benefiting from their past mistakes. All the mistakes you would be facing on your own, they have already made and learned from. They have gained a great deal of experience of what to do and what not to do. In addition to this they have also learned what works and what doesn’t.

Rankings:

Most important though, professional web designers and developers usually know a bit about what it is going to take to get your site up in the search engine rankings, and this is critically important to you. Perhaps in time you too would be able to do this with your own site building. You have to remember though, time is money in business, and can you afford the time?

A few extras…
If you do decide to design your own web site, then at least try and follow the lead of the Pros. What you may think looks great as far as graphics, colors and fonts, just may not cut it in the world of the web 2.0.

The same applies for your content, what may be interesting to you just may not be what someone else wants to hear. A mixture of professional web design and SEO Companies can make the difference between a business succeeding or failing in the world of online businesses.

Pros and Cons of Do It Yourself Web Design is a post from: Blog Godown

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2. Can You Create Your Brand Identity by Starting a Logo Design Competition?
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The way we watch movies have tremendously changed in the past decades due to rapid innovation in technology. At first, we could only watch 2D movies which were focused on the script, acting and direction. Next came 3D movies which had a focus on  a great visual experience (near reality experience), you would feel that you are actually a part of the movie and which made it even more exciting. But that’s not all, after 3D came 4D and 5D, where not only do you have a great visual experience, but an environment is created that you actually feel that you are part of that movie. For eg. if it is raining in the movie, then they will splash water on you, which will make it more believable.

I recently watched a 5D movie and the experience was out of the world. The fact that i was sensing everything around me as i was in the movie was something that i didn’t consider was possible. It was very exciting and i was totally blown away.

Similarly, if we could provide readers with a 5D experience in our blog, then the readers will be blown away, similar, to what happened to me. As 5D has five different dimensions to it. I will explain the main 5 dimensions of the blog.

1. Great Concept

The importance of a great concept can be compared to the script of the movie. If the script of the movie is not good, then you can’t expect it to be successful. Brilliant acting and excellent direction can’t salvage such a movie. therefore, the idea of a blog article has the maximum importance. An easy technique to get many relevant ideas in small period of time  is to practice mind mapping. Then you can filter out ideas, which you think are good enough for your readers. Remember, even if it takes 1 or 2 hours to conceptualize your articles, it is still worth the effort, because the quality of the article highly depends on it.

2. Remarkable Content

You all might know, that character without substance is nothing. Similarly, an article with content that does not provide value makes an article completely useless. Maintaining a decent quality of articles is important if you want to come near the point of delighting your readers. You can compare quality content with brilliant acting and excellent direction in movies. These two things can make a movie from a hit to a bumper hit. Quality content can do the same by converting an average looking article into a brilliant post.

3. Design

Creating a magnificent visual appearance for your blog has become a prerequisite for the blogs of today. In the race of standing out from others, you have to brand your website and also improve the overall user experience. All this helps in creating a better first impression which can increase the visitor to reader conversion ratio. Also a great design can convert your satisfied readers into happy readers.

4. Discussion

All the three dimensions i have mentioned above have become a common thing in blogs of today, but you have to be one step ahead and that is where the next two dimension come into picture.

A blog can become a great place for learning if it is followed by and intense debate and discussion. The discussion solves many of your reader’s problems and it also helps in your broadening your horizon. As you are exposed to different minds, you gain a broader perspective about a particular situation.

5. Inspiration

Delivering Content just for the sake of it, is not good if you want to become a pro blogger. The content should take your readers by surprise. They should be awestruck. They should be inspired by you to improve something in their own life, which might lead to a great development in the reader’s life. The purpose of blogging in my view is to share knowledge which then can be employed by others in their life. If the concepts you write, cannot be implemented, then they are of no use to your readers.

Now, you are aware  of all the five dimensions of a blog. It is upto you to decide whether you want your blog experience to be 2D, 3D or 5D. The more the diomensions you are able to provide to your readers, the more readers you will get on your blog.

Creating a 5D Blog Experience is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. The Secret For Creating a Successful Blog
2. Creating Top Quality Blog Reader Relationships
3. 5 Tips for Creating a Perfect Business Website

1. Get out of your chair

2.Browse the web with intention.

3. Utilize GTD systems.

4. Take a moment to reorganize.

5. Set a limit on how often you check your social sites each day.

6. Check and answer your email in batches.

7. Use tools like hosted exchange to synchronize your tasks.

8. Create filters to take advantage of free productivity.

Stuck? Turn Wasteful Time into Productive Time is a post from: Blog Godown

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1. How College Taught me to be a Better Blogger
2. 5 Tips to Increase Productivity while Blogging
3. Preparing Posts – Advanced Planning

But, reader satisfaction can be achieved only if you are aware of the reader’s expectations. If you don’t know what your readers are looking for, then your blog will fail terribly on this front.

In order to gather some information about reader’s expectations, we can use certain metrics explained below:

Comments : Blog’s Discussion Forums

I have always said that comments are much more than just a thank you, they act as a big podium to discuss and put forth your queries and questions. They can act as feedback forms and you can judge your blog’s reputation by the comments it gets. If people are satisfied with the blog, they will be more interactive and the comments will convey reader’s satisfaction quotient.

Search Engines

As a niche blogger, you are always targeting a specific set of keywords for your blog. You can use the google adwords tool to find out related keyword searches to have a little information on what readers are expecting from bloggers in your niche. And then you can base your articles based on these keyword titles.

Forums

Forums are the places where people interested in the same topic discuss their experiences and get their queries and problems solved by others. If you are an attentive forum member, you can find out what questions are asked by them (you can also see the frequency of these questions) and you can note it down on a piece of paper, as these questions will be the ones that will be asked by your readers as well. So, once you have all the questions, you just have to find an appropriate solution to it.

Polls and Surveys

If you are still not sure what you reader’s expect from your blog, why not conduct a survey/poll to find what your readers really think of your blog. Make a detailed questionnaire for your readers that will help you get a 360 degree overview of what readers think about the blog, what they would like to be improved and what all new ideas can be incorporated into it. This will ease out the process of finding the reader’s expectations.

Post Ratings

Post Ratings are anonymous ratings where readers can rate the quality of the post based on their discretion. These type of post ratings can help you find out which are articles are liked and which are not. Based on the number of likes, you can figure out what articles will be the most suitable for your blog.

After establishing what your reader’s expectations are, now you have to think about your reader.

What do a majority of bloggers focus on?

Reader’s satisfaction – matching with reader’s expectations. But, I want to ask this question, is that enough? If you are looking for a blog which is growing at a steady pace then reader’s satisfaction would be the way to go. But, if you are targeting exponential growth, then you can’t just stop at reader’s satisfaction. You have to take one more step and give readers something more than their expectations. Something that has a “Wow” effect on your readers. You want readers that stay as your readers for a long time and that can happen if you make them happy.

How are you supposed to do that?

That’s a simple question: Give them what they expect plus one. So, you have to come up with something that has the desired “Wow” effect on your readers. This “Wow” effect is reached when you aim at delighting your readers.

Also, by giving something more than expected, you are raising the bar. The next time the reader’s expectations will also grow by plus one and you would have to come up with something that adds a 1 to these new expectations and this process is a continuous one. So, the most difficult task is to  come up with this plus one everytime.

Here’s how you can give your readers the plus one:

Out of the Box Thinking

You have to think different. New and unique ideas for your articles will pump up your readers and boost their mood. Out of the Box thinking is thought provoking and sometimes the one that amazes people. This amazement leads to the massive popularity of the blog. Building an out of box thinking requires you to sharpen your mind. Games that require you to use your mind to it’s full potential are games you should play. Puzzles and Sudoku are some of the tools which can help you keep your mind sharp and active.

Innovate

People try really hard to do the conventional. But, who wants conventional articles, there are plenty of them already available on the internet. You have to change the scenario by being unconventional and innovating with your posts. By innovation, I don’t mean that you have to completely change the course of your blog, but you can make slight changes and bring something new to the table, something that your readers will cherish for atleast some years.

What is your focus?

Are you targeting reader’s satisfaction or reader’s delight? if you targeting reader’s satisfaction, you need to step up and target reader’s delight in order to be good at blogging arena.

How to Achieve Reader’s Delight is a post from: Blog Godown

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1. How to Write Quality Blog Posts That Engage Your Readers
2. 5 Reasons why Readers are Obsessed with Numbered Headlines
3. 5 Ways to Make Your Readers Return

If you think of your website as an online business, you have take care of the design, because it is an important part of branding and increasing visibility. This is a guest article by Ben of logoinn. You can be a part of this amazing community by following our guest blogging guidelines.

When you run an online business, you come across different types of designs that work together to make your business a success. However, if you lack in creativity and originality, the same designs will cause extreme damage to your business. These designs are: Logo Design, Web Design, Brochure Design and Banner Design.

Each design plays a significant role in enhancing your brand image and, thus, each design is crucial to your business success. You may not need all of them initially. However, whenever you create any, ensure that it depicts professionalism and creativity.

So, let’s now discuss how these designs can make or break your online business.

Logo Design

Logo Design is also known as brand identity design and, thus, it helps you create your brand identity. In simple words, it gives your business a face through which your business gets recognition. If you create a low quality design, you will make your business look unprofessional. If you create a high quality logo design, then you will make your business look credible, trustworthy and professional. Thus, it is crucial that you get this design right, because it’s not something that gets changed often.

Web Design

If you own an offline business, then you will work hard to organize your office or decorate your shop to attract visitors and win their trust. The same approach should be adopted when you create your business web design. It’s your web design that represents your online office as well as depicts your taste for quality. If you don’t create your web design professionally, then you will only make your visitors leave your website and go to your competitors. So, ensure that your web design clearly depicts your business model and builds your credibility.

Brochure Design

Brochure Design is the best way to share your business story with your market. You can create one design and use it both online and offline. However, to make your story look effective, you need to make the design look elegant and professional. If your brochure is sitting on a rack with a bunch of other brochures, then it’s the role of the design to attract your market and have them pick it up. Only a high quality brochure gets picked up and read. So, ensure that you don’t take quality lightly.

Banner Design

In today’s world of marketing, we mainly hear about SEM and SMO. Even though banner advertisement doesn’t get much coverage nowadays, it is still a powerful way of bringing traffic to you site. Find a relevant portal and ask them to display your banner there. However, people will click it only if they will think that your banner looks professional. If you don’t design your banner professionally, it will be hard to win the trust of your market and make them click your banner.

So…How Can You Create A Top-Notch Design?

If you want your business to look professional, then you must hire a professional designer. An amateur designer won’t be able to give a professional look to your business. Thus, don’t take any risk. Hire a professional designer, always.

How Can Different Designs Affect Your Online Business? is a post from: Blog Godown

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1. 5 Tips for Creating a Perfect Business Website
2. Can You Create Your Brand Identity by Starting a Logo Design Competition?
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This is a guest post from Gary Kohler from the free life insurance quote. Be part of this engaging community by following the guest blogging guidelines.

There are lots of ways to find writing ideas and inspiration from your daily life. Translating that into great blog posts is another story but lets look at the basics first.

Start by carrying around a notepad or have a file saved on your smart phone that you can use to save good ideas that you get during the day.

Finding inspiration in real life is the key so here is a list of places in the offline world where you can get ideas for your blog.

The newspaper

• They write short headlines that are supposed to catch your attention.
• They write 200-500 descriptions of current events and things that are interesting to lots of people.
• They need to continually entertain and inform, otherwise people will stop reading it.

Bingo! The newspaper is a great place to start and find ideas for things to write about and stories that will interest others.

Your friends

What are you and your friends always talking about? What movie are you excited about seeing? What hobby are you interested in that you know a lot about and that you like to share with others?

These are all real world examples of things that you enjoy. If you can get excited about them in conversation then that can likely translate to your blog.

Write about something that you’re passionate about and your readers will be passionate about your writing.

Television

People that watch a lot of television share a trait with people that spend a lot of time on the internet: a short attention span. Just like television commercials and clips for TV shows, you need to catch your reader’s attention right away.

You can also use TV to catch up on news and events that you can write about on your blog. You can also use video elements in your blog posts… so study up on what makes a good video and then give it a try!

Your job

This is likely an indirect inspiration but your job can be a great idea factory too. Many jobs leave people with some free time during the day. You should be jotting down ideas for blog posts and articles during this time.

If your employer is pretty relaxed you can probably write down ideas all day in your note pad. Perfect, you can get paid and work on your blog at the same time.

Nature

Sometimes being inspired and coming up with new ideas requires an empty mind and this is where nature can come in handy. Get out of that house and into the great outdoors.

A weekend away from your computer can be great for your health and for your creative juices too. You might even find that at the end of a weekend of camping, you want to start a blog about camping!

How to Find Blogging Inspiration from Real Life is a post from: Blog Godown

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1. How To Deal With Blogging Failures
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3. Mind Mapping Exercise for High Speed Blogging

Today I want to introduce you to Andew Rondeau of

The Interview

Gautam: Andrew, I would like to know about your blogging journey. What inspired you to start blogging? Which was your first blog?

Andrew: For the first 30 years of my career I worked for large corporate companies. The corporate world allowed you to work hard and get well rewarded – which I was. I ended up managing large IT departments.

But I’ve always thought about making it on my own. Over the years I was always looking for something that would make me more money!

I thought that if I worked as hard on my own business as I did in the corporate world – I could make it work.

Then, ‘out of the blue’, someone said to me, why don’t you write a book on Management and sell it on-line?

I started to investigate and quickly got excited. I knew I could write the book due to my experience and I naively believed the hype and thought I’ll make millions on-line by selling the book and retire!

This was 3 years ago.

I found a mentor, online, (I knew nothing about being on-line), and he helped me. He told me exactly what to do, and I invested my earnings from the corporate world into it.

I created a website and a free management guide to start building my own customer list, and then my management book. I did all this in the evenings while staying away from home in the hotels and while traveling in the corporate role.

I finished the sales page and launched, expecting hundreds to sell. I sold about five in the first week, but I was expecting 5,000!

I quickly sucked the mentor dry – he couldn’t help me anymore – I had all his knowledge now, so I found a more experienced mentor, and he helped me in the marketing and we created two more products to sell.

Then I got into blogging and created several blogs and more products.

So now I had a variety of products to sell and my knowledge of making money on-line was growing. I invested thousands of dollars in my education, and it was taking over – I really enjoyed the excitement.

Eighteen months ago, I decided to leave the corporate world and decided to take the plunge and work for myself, full-time.

Since then I have created my own course helping others to build their on-line business.

Gautam: As I can see from your experience, though, you had a great product to sell, you weren’t able to make that much money in the start. Many bloggers and online entrepreneurs think big, but they are not able to reach their expectations. What major mistake do they make?

Andrew: Major mistakes they make include believing all the hype about ‘how easy it is to make money on-line”.

It isn’t easy. It takes hard work, passion and knowledge.

They create products that they THINK will sell rather than do some thorough research and what people want.

They try and do it all themselves. You can’t. Find someone to help you who are better than you and more knowledgeable than you.

Gautam: Andrew, you recently came up with the “The Income Blogging Guide“. Before I ask about the blogging course, I would like to know whether you are generating a good income from blogging?

Andrew: I suppose that depends upon your views of ‘good’!

I generate enough income to live comfortably but it is not just about the money…it’s about the freedom. I love the fact that if it is sunny outside I can choose to go and enjoy the sun – play Tennis or whatever. I work when I want to. Sometimes that might be late at night or 5 am in the morning. That freedom is worth a lot more than a huge amount of income…for me anyway.

Gautam: The best thing I like about your guide is the sales page of your guide. It is simple and crisp with all the information that is required. Could you tell me, who all would benefit from your income blogging guide? What can they expect from blogging guide?

Your Income Blogging Guide is a blogging course, but how do you think it is better than other blogging courses already available in the market?

Andrew: In my experience many of the other course include these types of problems:

They take certain things for granted…like your ability to create a blog or generate traffic. You need to have to be technical savvy in order to follow their “steps”. If you’ve never built a web site before, or have very limited experience, this can be one of the most daunting parts of starting a blog.

Many of the courses say, do this, do that – which is all well and good but our course tells you the ‘how to’ as well.

You may be told to “set up the pages for you to sell your products”. What you are not told is the “how to”. We show you’re the ‘How to’ via videos and screen shots.

Very often you buy the product and then you’re on your own with the information. If you don’t understand a part of it, you can usually submit questions, but there’s not a “go to” resource for figuring out part of the process.

Many e-course designers or marketers are more than happy to help…to a degree…but don’t have mechanisms built in for very involved technical help.

At times, you may even be referred to alternative courses designed to help you tp complete these steps. Who wants to spend even more money when the course was supposed to be step by step?

BEFORE, we created the course, we asked our visitors and customer lists what they wanted from such a course.

51% wanted the course to be easy to follow and use. We provide everything you need to build your own on-line business built around blogging. It’s not just about blogging…it’s about getting traffic, building your own customer lists, creating your own products, copywriting and outsourcing.

You don’t have to buy any other course.

Plus, 26% of the people who completed the survey wanted support mechanisms in place. As my business partner, Joel is the technical blogging mentor to some of the most famous bloggers in the world, we decided to go over-board with the support.

So we have a weekly live teleconference, a private members forum AND members can write to us directly (in case they want to keep things private).

77% of our members have stated that the course far exceeded their expectations and our refund rate is very, very low.

Why? It’s all about customer service. If the member gets really stuck, we go in and make the changes for them or have a one on one skype chat with them.

We want our members to succeed on-line and therefore we help as much as we can.

Gautam: Thanks Andrew for taking your precious time out to participate in this Interview and I think Bloggers would find your Income Blogging Guide Really Useful.

Andrew: Gautam

It was a pleasure. Thanks.

If you are interested in the Income Blogging Guide by Andrew, Take a look at it.

Learn how to increase the profitability of your Website with Andrew Rondeau is a post from: Blog Godown

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One of the most effective uses of engaging Internet content is in an email campaign. Since emails are short in length, they are typically cheap to have produced by a content company. In addition, their length allows the do-it-yourself content marketer the ability to launch a full scale email campaign in as little as a week. However, emails are notoriously associated with spam – it can be difficult to sell products or services unless your emails are absolutely solid. Provided here are 3 tips for writing converting email campaigns.

Planning Your Content for an Email Campaign

When you begin planning your content for an email campaign, consider your target audience first. Ask yourself what their common needs, goals and ideals might be. Once you have decided what your target audiences are, you can begin planning how you will get your emails to those people. For example, if you find that your key demographic is mostly elderly people, remember that many might not have access to a traditional email address due to generational concerns. Are you certain that email should be the best method to reach them?

As a general rule, your content email campaign should consist of at least 10 different emails that target different types of people at different points in your campaign. For example, you might have an email for people that have not yet utilized your services and an email for those that have not yet ordered but have expressed interest. Use the later emails in your campaign to up sell or secure further or long term orders.

Engaging Your Reader With Your Words

It is very important, especially with emails, to avoid sales pitches as much as possible. Emails have a very unfortunate reputation for being spam. If the title of your email is something like “Buy [product name] now!” you will fail. Think about which emails people will likely read. For example, use a title like “7 Myths About ______” or “Why You’re Wrong About _______.” People tend to love controversy. If you can create some, you will be much more likely to secure readers.

Using the Slippery Slope Approach

The slippery slope approach is a technique used to create urgency in product orders. When you think about the phrase – being on a slippery slope – you likely think of being in big trouble. You should design your content to address a problem that your audience has that your product or service can solve. Any number of problems can be identified that you can use to craft your emails. By creating urgency in your content, you can increase the chances that your readers will view you as, if not the only solution to their problem, the best solution to their problem.

If you are having trouble with your email campaigns, then you might want to consider hiring content writers to help you write more powerful emails. This is often a good choice, as most companies charge per word, and the content needed for email campaigns is typically short. In other words, outsourcing is usually very cost effective.

3 Tips for Writing Converting Email Campaigns is a post from: Blog Godown

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1. How To Use Email Marketing To Draw More People To Your Website
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Then came the social media marketers who wanted to maximize their traffic with minimum efforts. This resulted in apps that could automate twitter status updates and also gain many followers in a few minutes time. You could update using twitterfeed and you could also schedule updates. (Using Scheduling tweets or not is a debatable concept).

New apps can automate a host of things but they still can’t automate some things which makes twitter such a nice and warm place to be a part of. Here are some I think are the most awesome things that you can’t automate on twitter:

Amazing Conversation

Twitter is all about conversation and if you don’t follow a regime to talk to your followers on twitter, you will not be known. Replying to your followers can result in some of the most amazing conversations. I have had many debates with my twitter followers on various different subjects.
Even if our opinions were different, we were still able to broaden our horizon by presenting our thoughts in front of each other.

If you are not replying, then you are not tweeting! If you feel that you don’t have enough time to engage, there are always techniques that will be able to cut down on your time to engage.

Learning

When I first started tweeting, I had little knowledge on many subjects like social media marketing, internet marketing, etc. I thought twitter was totally useless and it was a total time waste. But, when I started using it like a pro tweeter, I was able to grasp many topics in a small period of time. This knowledge helped me in improving my blogging and writing skills and it also gave me many ideas which I could blog about. Now, if you are automating, then you are not reading the tweets and hence, you are losing on an amazing learning opportunity.

Reputation

Reputation is not built in minutes. It takes months of hard work to build a high reputation twitter account where people love what you tweet. So, automation cannot build reputation as you are not spending enough time to build good relationships with people.

Also, a myth among many twitter users is that a high twitter following equals a higher reputation. This is not at all true. A person who got 20000 followers may have zero reputation because he got all the followers using automated methods. Whereas a person with 1000 followers can have a very high reputation if he had worked hard for it.

Influence

Becoming a twitter champ is not a piece of cake. You have to do a lot more than just following people. You have to make really good relationships with twitter users who have a high influence. Once you become a part of their influence circle, your influence will increase on its own.

A high influence can be achieved with the lower follower count if you are able to develop great relationships with other highly influential twitter champions.

Friends

This is the part that I cherish the most. On twitter, I have made really good friends who I am able to interact with freely and also I am able to share my thoughts with. Friends are needed for moral and emotional support. When you have hit rock bottom, these friends will be there for you. I wouldn’t have made any twitter friends if I hadn’t interacted with them in the first place.

So, if you are planning to automate twitter, then you are missing out on making some really amazing friends.

Business Opportunity

Twitter has many opportunities for the growth of your business. But, customers will believe in your product if you are genuine on twitter and you treat your followers in the right way.

Building a business starts with building trust and that too cannot be automated!

Can you think of any other things that cannot be automated on twitter?

What you can’t Automate on Twitter is a post from: Blog Godown

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3. Twitter Etiquette | Do you have any?

This is a guest article by Hadley of

Are you knee-deep in the blogging world and want to talk to some like-minded individuals? Check out some of these fantastic conferences around the world. Not only will you learn a plethora of new information to improve your blog, but you’ll get the chance to talk to individuals with the same passion as you.

BlogHer Conference: BlogHer runs a blogging conference August 6-7 in New York City. It focuses on helping female bloggers gain a presence on the Internet, as well as how to turn blogging into a paid career. It also has a focus on political and social blogging.

BlogWorld and New Media Expo: Running October 15-16 in Las Vegas, this conference focuses on general blogging and Internet businesses.

Blog Indiana: Blog Indiana runs from August 20^th to the 21^st, and focuses primarily on how to gain viewers and use a blog to promote non-blogging interests, as well as on general social media.

Netroots Nation: Running July 22-25 in Las Vegas, this blogging conference promotes using the Internet, including blogging, in order to foster liberal and progressive causes. This year, Senator Al Franken will be speaking.

Blissdom: Blissdom already had its 2010 conference in February, but it is usually a yearly event so be sure to check back in later. Like BlogHer, this blogging conference is primarily for female bloggers. Blissdom also specializes on supportive, positive help for female bloggers looking to follow their “bliss,” or passion. It also has a Canadian conference.

Wine Bloggers’ Conference: This organization actually runs two conferences: one, in Virginia, on July 22-24 in 2011, and one in 2010 in Vienna, Austria, October 22-24. The conference seeks “to discuss the convergence between the culture of wine and the web.” If you blog about wine, this is definitely a must for you.

South by South West: South by South West, which also goes by the acronym SXSW, is a general new-media conference that will be meeting next during the week of March 11-20 2011 in Austin, Texas. However, it does have some blogging-relating content, like “The Broke Diaries: Using Blogs and Twitter to Live Cheaply”. This conference would be fantastic for any current bloggers looking to expand outside of the blogging world.

Northern Voice: This conference is held in spring in Vancouver, British Columbia, and specializes in personal blogging and social media, rather than blogging for profit. Its 2010 convention has already happened, but it will be back in 2011.

Type-A Mom Conference: This conference, held September 24-26 in Asheville, North Carolina, has a focus on “mom bloggers”. It also emphasizes using blogging and social media to make money. People willing to volunteer may get free or reduced-price entrance into the conference.

Latin American Bloggers’ Convention: Held November 12-14 in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, this conference focuses on, as its name implies, bloggers from Latin America. It also has general information for beginning bloggers and is a great first step for anybody looking to break into the blogging world.

The Best Blogging Conferences in the World is a post from: Blog Godown

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I get a lot of questions asking how I am able to get so many awesome sponsors to my contest and so, this article will focus on how you can get great sponsors for your contest.

Prepare a Sales Pitch

Once you have you have come up with a good idea for a contest, you need to prepare a sales pitch. A sales pitch in layman terms, is a small piece of text that lists out the benefits to the sponsors. After all, sponsors are willing to advertise at your contest, if they are able to get something in return.

Preparing a sales pitch is similar to making a good CV (curriculum vitae). You have to focus on the good points. You can list out the benefits like exposure, seo benefits. You can also say that you will market it really hard through social media or advertising. There are plenty of points that you can add and you have to think of some good ones in order to attract those awesome sponsors.

Note : Embellishing your points is not bad, but don’t try to fake anything. Sponsors are not dumb people, they will easily figure it out.

Go Advertiser Hunting

As you have your sales pitch ready, it’s time to do some advertiser hunting and it’s the most fun part. Broadly you can classify advertisers into 3 categories:

1. Product Owners – These advertisers have a product that they have created and they want more exposure on blogs to make more sales.
2. Website Owners – These website owners want to advertise in order to improve the traffic that their website gets. They would be interested in websites of same or similar niches.
3. SEO Hunters -  These are people who are more interested in the seo value they get from the contest in the form of backlinks.

Depending on your contest, you can target a specific category of advertisers or the whole group. You can use the following methods to target advertisers:

Contact Via Website

You can do a little bit search on the websites that would interested in advertising in your niche. The best method is to interact with these advertisers would be via email. You can get access to their email contact via the contact page present on their websites.

Forums

Forums usually have contest sections where webmasters can advertise their contests and also look for advertisers. If advertisers see you thread, they might contact and show interest.

Social media Websites

People who are following you on social media are aware of your social media power and they might be interested in sponsoring your contest. If you ask for sponsorship in social media sites, there are chances that you might get some advertisers.

Take a Glance at Other Contests

A sneaky trick is to approach those people who have already sponsored other contests. Take a look at the sponsors of the contest that have been organized recently and try to contact them. The chance of conversion is good, because most of these advertisers are always on the lookout for good sites to sponsor. You just have to direct them to your website .

Keep the Window Open for Advertisers

Even if your contest has started, don’t close the windows for advertisers. Some advertisers might not be aware of the contest before being launched. But, after the contest, they may show interest in sponsoring it. If you close the doors, you will lose out on some good sponsors.

In totality, the contest can get huge sponsors, only if you have worked hard on getting advertisers for it. It is the only mantra to a rocking contest.

Share Your Experiences

Have you organized a blogging contest? What was your experience with it?

How to get Awesome Sponsors for your Contest is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. How to Make your Contest a Success!
2. The Guest Blogging Contest So Far and Blog Godown Newsletter
3. Guest Blogging Contest

Before I explain the contest details, please take a look at our sponsor

If you are looking for the best destinations to travel or if you need to read reviews of places you want to visit, you can do so by subscribing to Book It Now Travel Website. BookItNow is an online travel resource site where you can book your holiday with ease. Also, you can get great deals on major tourist spots which can save you some money while you travel and enjoy.

The Team behind BookItNow is organizing a World Wild Travel Blog Party 2010 where you can participate and win an additional 200$ cash prize. The contest will end on 1st September 2010, so hurry and participate there too!

How To Enter

As I said, this contest is pretty simple. You just have to do two things

1. You have to subscribe to this blog by email. To make this simpler, I have added a signup form below:

Note: Make sure that you confirm your subscription via email

1. You have to tweet the following

Subscribe and Tweet to Win 100$ in Cash #Blogging #Contest

http://bit.ly/dCeFw7

After you have subscribed and tweeted, please comment with your twitter status to confirm your participation

That’s it.

How Will The Winners Be Decided.

A person will be selected randomly using random.org from the contest participants who will be awarded the cash prize via paypal.

Prize

The Prize is a whopping 100$. 100$ just for subscribing and tweeting. So, why not try your luck and you might take home a grand prize.

Contest Deadline

The contest is a month long and so, the contest will end on 20th August 2010.

Subscribe and Tweet to Win 100$ in Cash Blogging Contest is a post from: Blog Godown

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First of all, what do you think a perfect business website is? Well, to me, if your business website takes your financial worries away, then it’s a perfect business website. This way you don’t have to work for anyone, you don’t have to worry about attending office everyday and you don’t have to worry about being punctual either. A perfect business website helps you earn bread and butter and gives you complete peace of mind.

Having said that, now we need to discuss that which vital elements ought to be incorporated in your business website to make it perfect.

It Must Be Appealing As Well As Relevant:

This is a misconception that you just create a website and it will start making you money. It’s a completely false notion. You have got to make your website attractive if you seriously want to win the trust of your market. Secondly, ensure that your website design is relevant to your business model.

It’s the quality of your web design that tells your market that your products will be of high quality as well. If your design is of low quality, you won’t be able to win the trust of your market. So, ensure that you make it attractive as well as relevant.

You Must Provide User-Friendly Navigation:

How much time would you spend on a site where you will see hundreds of confusing links all over the page? Well, you won’t spend more than a few seconds. The same thing will happen to you if you don’t create user-friendly navigation. Your website visitors or potential buyers won’t spend any time on your website and will most likely leave in less than 10 seconds.

Ensure that Your Copy is Benefit-Oriented:

What converts your visitors into customers is your copy. Your copy must highlight  all the benefits clearly and concisely. It should tell your market why you should be trusted. It should entice your market to prefer you. So, you will need to take some time to write a compelling copy or hire a professional copywriter to do the job for you.

Choose a Readable Font Size and Style:

A lot of websites don’t care about their font-size. They make it really small. Small font-size is not easily readable. If you visit a website and find it difficult to read, then you will leave immediately. Your visitors will do the same thing if you don’t select a readable font size and style. Also, try avoiding grey font. Black is the best in terms of readability.

Strategically Organize the Content and Graphics:

Don’t make your website look like an unorganized place by having text and graphics everywhere. Organize everything in a nice and professional manner. Ensure that your website doesn’t look messy at all. Once you create the site, look at it and determine if it gives you a refreshing feeling or not. If it doesn’t, then you need to analyze your site and end the flaws.

So, these are some powerful tips that will empower you to create a perfect business website…for your business!

If you have any tips, please do share.

5 Tips for Creating a Perfect Business Website is a post from: Blog Godown

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Working Offline can be Really Productive

In this guest article, Michael Collins explains a method which you can employ to blog which can make your blogging highly productive. If you want get in front of readers, take a look at our guest blogging guidelines.

When you first start a blog, you might be able to stay committed, and designate a specific amount of time each day to work on your blog. In the beginning, at least, blogs require a large amount of time before they gain a steady flow of traffic. Because of this, many people get burnt out before their blog really takes off. Most people manage their blogs online. Although that might sound like the only way to manage a blog, the internet has millions of potential distractions. How many times have you been writing a post, only to be distracted by a social networking site, or a flash ad? All these distractions add up, and prevent you from working as efficiently as you can.

You might think it will be nearly impossible to run a blog offline. A blog is hosted online, and most blogging platforms have the dashboard set up in a way that allows you to do everything in one place. However, almost all of these things can be done offline, as well. For example, writing posts takes a lot of time, and with distractions, it can take hours to get a decent post done. However, if you just set your mind to it, and use a word processing application to write your post, it will be done much faster. If you’ve never tried to write a post offline before, try it. You’ll be able to see exactly how productive you can be, and how quickly you can pump out a quality article.

If you use SEO for your blog, you can also do most of the major planning offline. That way, when you go online, you’ll have a plan ready, and you can accomplish it as quickly as possible. If you plan on messaging web masters, you can type all the emails out before you go online. You can plan out a link building strategy, and execute it once you get online.

Working offline can greatly increase your productivity. If you’ve never tried it, give it a shot. For starters, write posts offline, and plan everything out before you get online. This way, once you start using the internet, you know exactly what to do. You can copy and paste the posts in, and you can send all the emails. This way, you will become much more efficient, and be able to accomplish much more in every work day.

How Working Offline Can Help Your Blog is a post from: Blog Godown

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Are you not making any money from your blog?

“Making money online is an art” and I would totally agree with this statement. People who think that effort equals money are totally wrong. If effort is not applied in the right direction, then, it is of no use, as it will not bring in any money. But, if effort is used in the right amounts in the right places, it can really bear fruit and make you some money. So, the right mantra is “directed effort equals money”.

Many bloggers have a goal of a six figure income from their blogs. They try really hard to make a buck, but they fail miserably because they are using a bad monetization strategy. This is because they don’t know about directed effort.

Here, I would like to discuss on the 5 reasons why bloggers are not making money from their blogs.

Focus on Quantity

Bloggers who are money centric (i.e people whose main focus is on money), don’t care about their content. what they really care about is the quantity of their articles. Because more articles will get more traffic and which will increase the chance of making more money. But the problem is that if you don’t concentrate on quality, then you will not able to earn money from it. Quality content builds a reputation which will further help in building a community. Once you build a community, then you can think of making money from it.

Too Many Ads

Too many Ads on your website is a complete no-no for any blog. Too many ads decrease the appeal of a website and they also deteriorate the design. The result is: Readers are unhappy and they have an impression of the blogger as a really greedy person who doesn’t care about his readers. And, instead of making more money, the blog doesn’t make any money!

You would not like this to happen to your blog, right?

So, you should try to have an optimum number of ad spots targeted in a fashion that they really blend well with the design and they don’t become eye sores. Once you have that established, you will be all set to make money from your ads.

No Traffic

You’re wishing that somebody would click on your ad and you will make money. But, that will not happen if you don’t have traffic. Sometimes, bloggers think only of content and forget about marketing it. This is a big mistake on their part. Marketing is really important to get traffic. The number of clicks is dependent on the amount traffic. So, if you get more traffic, then your chances of making money are higher.

Sponsored Reviews

Sponsored Reviews are a great way to make money, but at what cost? Sponsored reviews that are completely off-topic and have no use for your readers can be really harmful for your community. You would be making money on your first oppurtunity, but you will be losing out on your reputation.

It would be far better if you write sponsored reviews on topics related to your niche and add your honest opinion to it. By that technique, you would be writing a sponsored post without hurting your reader’s sentiments.

No Email Newsletter

I was not aware of the power of email newsletters and so do many bloggers. Most internet money makers like Shoemoney and Darren Rowse believe that email newsletter services like Aweber are a must have, if you want to make money from affiliate networks. Chances of conversions increase if you have an email list. Not having an email list will limit the money making potential of your blog.

These are some of the most common mistakes made by bloggers. But, there are ought to be many others.

If you have something to add to this list then please comment.

5 Reasons Why You are Not Making any Money is a post from: Blog Godown

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Think of Blog Writing as a Continous Process

Good Blog Writing is one of the essential attributes of a great blogger. You can take any A-list bloggers for that matter and you will see that there style of writing might be unique but the quality of writing is up to the mark.

It doesn’t mean that an average or poor writer cannot be good blogger. This is a fact, some good bloggers were not good writers, but they improved in their blogging journey. Blogging is a process which evolves us as human beings. If you are an experienced blogger, you might have noticed that blogging teaches you many lessons. These can be life lessons as well. Blog Writing is one among the many lessons you learn from blogging.

I know I am not a very good writer, but the scenario 3 years back was grimmer than it is now. I had to waste a day to write a 100-200 word article and that was the best output I was able to get out of myself. Also, my writing was not good and at that point of time I didn’t care about any grammatical and typographical mistakes. But, now the situation has completely changed and I am able to write long blog posts in a matter of few hours and which are almost free from errors.

Now, you can see that I have evolved as a writer from blogging and I am still evolving. This can happen to you too!

Similarly, blog writing is a process and each and every person is capable of becoming a good writer if he or she takes the right direction. If bloggers follow the right techniques, they will become better writers in a short period of time.

Improve Your Vocabulary

Most bloggers have a very limited set of words that they employ in their writing. This is because they have poor vocabulary. A great way to increase your vocabulary is to perform a simple technique while reading. Whenever you find a word that you haven’t seen before, note it down on a piece of paper. Once you have a list of some of these words in the end of the day, you can refer to the dictionary and find the meanings of each word. I personally use Oxford Dictionary for English vocabulary, but you can also use refer to Merriam Webster’s Dictionary which is equally good. Also, you can note down the words and their respective meanings in a workbook which you can refer each day and then memorize each word. This daily habit will help you build your vocabulary.

Correcting your grammar

Learning grammar is really important for conveying your message. Grammar helps to create a flow of writing. An error in the placement of a full stop or any punctuation can entirely change the meaning of the sentence. I don’t mean that you have to become a master of grammar, but you should try to learn the basics. If you are able to manage that, you will be assured that you are able to convey your message properly. You can refer any good online resources for improving your grammar.

Read Other Blogs, News and Magazines

Learn how to write by analyzing how other renowned writers write. The first place to find great pieces of writings are newspapers and magazines. These articles are free from any errors (They are edited before they are published) and they can teach you how to structure your thoughts and convert it into a presentable piece that is understood by your readers.

Also, you should refer to other blogs and analyze their writing. Compare it with yours and see what you are doing wrong and you have to make sure that you take a corrective action.

Experiment with your Writing

I know it might sound a little odd, but experimentation is really important to find the writing that works for your readers. Each blogger has a unique style because each of them has a different audience. You have a different reader base too, so you should try to vary your writing and monitor their responses. The ones that work best for you, should be your permanent style of writing.

Following each and every step of this writing process is equally important, if you really want to become a good writer.

What do you think about your writing? Self-Inspect and tell me about your positives and negatives.

The Process of Becoming a Good Blog Writer is a post from: Blog Godown

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Is your blog social media ready?

Are you taking social media marketing seriously? If your answer is yes, then you need to make a move to make it social media ready and get your blog in the limelight. Social media has a lot of traffic potential for your blog. The quality of traffic depends on the type of social media, but it is definitely lower than search engines. By quality, I mean the visitor/subscriber is low compared to guest blogging. But there is way to increase the conversion rate by optimizing your blog. Social media users are always bombarded with more information than they can actually handle. Therefore, to avoid wasting a lot of time, the users don’t read the entire article but scan through it. If they don’t like the article, they move on and if they like it, they usually share it with others. If your blog articles have a bad first impression, then chances are, that there will be a poor conversion of visitors to subscribers It doesn’t mean that social media marketing is a waste of time. It only means that you have to try to increase the conversion rate by optimizing your blogs and make it social media ready.

Readable Design

Before you kick off and write an article or perform any other type of optimization on your blog, make sure that your design is readable (Although, an impressive design will always be a better option). If you are not a designer, you can always buy a premium theme from a good theme club like WooThemes. A readable design does not strain the reader’s eyes and hence, it facilities fast and strain free reading by having an appropriate line size, font size and type and also a readable theme. It makes it simpler for the readers to judge the article in the little time they have. Some More Tips on Creating a Readable Design:

1. Don’t Ruin Your Smashing Web Design with Poor Navigation
2. 5 Conversion Rate Optimization Tips for Bloggers

Sparky Title & Hypnotic Beginnings

In any social media website, the first thing that shows is the title of the article and after that is the beginning of the article. Hence, the title along with the beginning paragraph is of utmost importance, as it decides whether your article is worth taking a look or not. It is the part of the article, which has to grab maximum attention. A catchy title can bring more attention than the old boring way of writing articles. You need to play with your titles and add adjectives that are catchy and are able to grab more eyeballs. Also, you need to write a hypnotic beginning which is able to glue the readers to your blog. You can try quotes or questions in the beginning so that you are able to generate more interest in the reader. More Tips:

1. Smashing Tricks to Writing Eye Catching Titles
2. Hypnotic Beginnings

Structured Content

As these social media enthusiasts are always in a hurry, they prefer blog articles that are structured i.e. the content is formatted in such a manner that a reader can get a brief idea of the article by scanning through it. The article should be formatted into various paragraphs and also have different heading sizes to have a hierarchical structure. More Tips:

1. How to Write Structured Articles

Add a Vote Button

Many of your blog readers are a bit on the lazy side. They don’t want to strain themselves by taking an initiative and sharing your articles. If you don’t add a social media website vote button, chances are, that number of social media shares is very low and hence, it will not be able to drive as much social media traffic as it should. You will see your results change dramatically, if you add a vote button (A vote button saves a lot of time, when you are sharing an article on social media website). A vote button can start a chain of social media shares. People see the number of social media shares on the social media button. If they think that the number of social media shares is high, they might be motivated to share the article, themeselves which converts into a chain reaction. A simple retweet button can increase the number of retweets by ten times.

Be Controversial

Adding an element of controversy to your articles is always a great technique get massive social media traffic . Controversy can be straight out, burning a person or company’s image which can lead to many positive and negative comments. If you can handle this type of controversy, then it is best, you do it more often. But if you want lesser bad effects of controversy (negative comments) and more good effects (Traffic), try subtle controversy. Add your opinion but don’t criticize somebody and participate in healthy debates rather intensive name calling. I, personally prefer subtle controversy than straight out controversy. Which type of controversy you would like to use is your personal choice.

Branding

Branding your website is essential to have a higher conversion rate. When you present your website as a brand, people start identifying your websites with it. Hence, when your website articles are shared again and again and they see your brand, the reputation of the website increases. The improved reputation leads to more sharing and this becomes a exponentially increasing trend. Take an example of twitip or mashable, they have become renowned on social media due to massive sharing on social media and also because these websites are properly branded. If you follow these 6 steps, you would be able to create a social media ready blog which will attain a higher conversion rate from social media traffic.

How to Create a Social Media Ready Blog is a post from: Blog Godown

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Hypnotic Beginnings - A method to attract your readers like magnets

Living in a metro city has its advantages and disadvantages. The major advantage is that you get plenty of choices on each and every product.  You, as a customer have an upper hand i.e. you have the power to choose. As there is intense competition in the market, each competitor is trying their best to grab the consumer’s attention. You see billboards everywhere around you. Some are good, some are bad and some are really out of the world.

You don’t give attention to each and every advertisement. There are some ads that really stand out and make an impact on you. This impact converts you into a  potential customer.

Magnetic Headlines along with Hypnotic beginnings, if combined together, work the same way and they act as an advertisement for your articles. Visitors are busy people and they might be following many blogs. They are not interested in reading each and every article (they don’t have that much time). They are actually flicking through all the articles. What they read is the first paragraph. If they like the idea, they will read further. If not, then they will move to another blog.

Whether you are able to make it or break it – It all depends on how well you are able to send the message across. If you are able to make an impact from the Title and the Beginning Paragraph, then you have a chance of converting many visitors into loyal readers.

Hypnotic Beginnings are an opening to your articles. Bloggers can use it as a tool to generate interest in the reader.

Have you seen an opening ceremony in a global level competition like Olympics? Isn’t it grand. A big celebrity line-up and many fantastic performances. You should keep that in mind when you are constructing an introduction to an article. Don’t think of good, think of Grand.

Questions

Questions are really intriguing and they can manage to generate lots of traffic. Questions are trying to cater to the inquisitive side of a human’s brain. If the reader is able to relate to the issue, then he will surely read the rest of the article. Questions are basically intended to enquire whether the reader has experienced the same thing. Whether it is a burning issue or a major problem. Questions can help establish the connect between the reader and the content.

If I had to start this article with a question, it would have been something like this:

Have you skipped an article just because the beginning was not convincing?

Quote

Starting with a quote or saying is a good way to give weight to what you are trying to say. If a famous person has said anything relevant about the same issue – that you are trying to write, then it can help you prove that your article is about an important issue.

Alternatively, quotes are there to inspire readers so that they are set in the right direction when they are reading the rest of the article and they actually follow what is actually been said on those articles.

Summary

Yes, summaries are usually at the end of the article. Here, i am trying to say that articles can start with brief points and ideas which will be described in the later stages. It is basically used to familiarise readers with the concept, so that they are able to understand the rest of the article and they don’t end up confused.

Also, readers can make a decision on whether they want to read it or not, based on the summary provided in the beginning paragraph.

These three techniques can be used by the blogger according to his choice. But, bloggers should ensure that whatever technique they use,  they should make it a point of using it appropriately and make an impression which is Grand

Hypnotic Beginnings is a post from: Blog Godown

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