Blogging Tips Guidance

BIO ENERGIZER

2009-12-18T04:17:00.000-08:00

Bio Energy Pendant
Improve blood circulation
Improves stamina, endurance and strength
Alleviates soreness, aches and pains, and improves flexibility
Calms the mind and improves focus / concentration
Energizes blood cells and reduces “stickiness”
Strengthens the body’s bio-energy field to protect from harmful electromagnetic waves.
Restores balance and harmony to the body.

Bio Energy pendant turns the water in your body into healthy, energized, small-clustered water!
Energy pendant does more than just break down the water molecules and energizing your drinking water. When you wear it, it keeps the water in your body grouped into small cell-penetrating clusters, thus improving your circulation and energizing your body!

Energizing the Body and Prolonging Youthfulness for Better Heath and Robust Energy.
The human body is 70% water, so the quality of our body water really matters! Clustered and energized water in the body ensures proper cell hydration, and makes you feel better, younger and more vigorous. Since “dehydration” is linked to ailments ranging from acne, fuzzy memory, indigestion, arthritis and obesity, to more serious conditions such as heart problems, hypertension, and more; proper rehydration can really improve your health.

When we’re young , the trillions of young cells in our bodies are filled with small clustered and beautifully hexagonal-shaped water. These tiny clusters of water easily pass through cell membranes, carrying nutrients and oxygen into our cells and waster and toxins out. This easy passage of water into and out of our cells is what keeps the cells clean young and healthy. However, as we age and after years of drinking “dead” water, coupled with stress and pollution, the water molecules in our body get distorted and enlarge, hampering their movement across cell membranes. This cause cells to be deprived of oxygen and nutrients toxic wastes to accumulate in the cells. The cells can become toxic and “dehydrated” ( eve if they’re surrounded by large clusters of “dead” water molecule). Metabolism plummets and energy levels decline!

Improve circulation and balancing the body’s bio-energy field
Our bodies are made of energy.
To achieve and maintain vibrant health, we must protect our energy frequency and flow (or circulation) though out the body.
The principles of energy medicine originate from quantum physics. Everything in the universe is made of energy. Like all matter, the human body is not just known ads bio-energy. We continuously radiate, absorb and conduct frequency waves of energy. Bio-energy is crucial to life and is sometimes called “the biofield”, “vital energy”, “aura”, “Qi”( Chinese), “prana” (Indian), “Mana“ (Polynesian), “Barraka” (Islamic), “Ki”(Japanese), etc. To attain and maintain vibrant health, we must protect the vital bio-energy flow throughout our body. It must be free-flowing, and in perfect vibration or frequency. Any disruption or imbalance to the bio-energy pathways or “vibrations” can lead to disharmony ill health and diseases.

Unfortunately, many factors such as stress, pollution, increasing radiation from electromagnetic waves( mobile phone, radio, computer, television, microwave oven, wireless etc), sedentary lifestyle, poor water quality and poor diet, can weaken body’s bio-energy or disrupt its flow and circulation.

FIR: Improve Circulation and Energizes Body Fluid
The total length of the blood vessels in human body is 60,000km long! Imangine blood has to travel instance every 1-2 minute to deliver oxygen and nutrients to all the cells and to remove waste material from them. Numerous studies have shown the FIR dilates capillary vessels, thus facilitating blood circulation for better oxygen and nutrient deliver, and for more effective toxin removal.

Some toxic gasses, including carbon dioxide or heavy metals like mercury and chlorine are easily trapped in large water clusters in the body. FIR causes the water molecules to vibrate, resulting in the breakdown of their cluster size. Consequently, trapped toxic waste gases and other toxic materials are released and ultimately flushed out of the body. Together with the improved circulation, reduced water cluster size in the body will result in improve cellular function, better energy and vitality. For people who suffer from aches and pains, FIR offers the welcome relief of improved flexibility and mobility, and the disappearance of pain and stiffness.

Scalar Energy: Strengthens and restores balance to the body’s bio-energy
First discovered by James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century, and proven by Nikola Tesla, scalar energy existence is also acknowledge by Nobel Prize winner, Albert Einstein. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute Germany, found the scalar energy unclumps and activates living cells. Scalar energy also increases cellular energy for trillions of cells and overall body energy levels, and nullifies the harmful effects of man made frequencies. Together, this helps to balance and strengthen the body’s bio-energy.

Germanium: Facilitates The Conductivity and Flow of Bio-Energy
Since 1858, In Lourdes, a small town in south-western France, many purportedly found that their pain, aches and illnesses miraculously disappeared after dipping into a spring, now known as the famous “Holy Spring of Lourdes”. Scientist later attributed the spring’s healing properties to its high content of Germanium.

One of the most fundamental properties of Germanium is its semi conductivity.

Germanium able to donate and receive electrons easily. Many of Germanium’s healing properties many be due to this intrinsic electronic quality. Coupled with its ability to neutralize the effects of positive ions can impede the smooth flow of energy, Germanium able to “correct” and facilitate the flow of the body’s bio-energy, increasing energy levels, and relieving pain and stiffness.

Negative Ions: Invigorate and Refresh The Mind and Body.
Ever wondered why the air feels more invigorating and you feel fresher when you are at a waterfall or in the mountains? This is due to the abundance of “feel good” negative ions in the air. Research has confirmed the beneficial effects of negative ions on living things – plants grow faster and healthier, animals are calmer and perform tasks better and humans become less stressed and more alert. Negative ions have been found of facilitate the delivery of oxygen to cells, which stimulate bodily functions and rejuvenation. They also increase the flow of oxygen to the brain; resulting in higher alertness, decreased drowsiness and more mental energy. Studies have also shown that negative ions help to lift mood, alleviate depression and stimulate body’s reticuloendothelial system : a group of defense cells in our bodies which marshal our resistance to disease.

Unfortunately, air-conditioning, exhaust fumes, cigarette smoke, fluorescent lighting, cellular phone, electrical and electronic equipment, TV and computer screens – all these adversely deplete negative ions from our surroundings and instead increase positive ions, which have been linked to muscle and joint aches, irritablility mood swings, headaches, insomnia, lethargy, lessened efficiency and general lack of health.
MY EMAIL : putri_silvi_felix@yahoo.com

Combustion chamber treatment for all gasoline & diesel powered engines

2009-03-12T05:34:00.000-07:00

Hello my friends, let's take and join with us. The MPG-CAP™ is a revolutionary combustion chamber treatment that increases fuel economy and reduces harmful exhaust emissions. MPG-CAPS™ consist of 100% active ingredients , with no dilutents or ﬁllers, and are safe to use and handle. They are manufactured as a convenient, easy to use, solid caplet which you simply drop in your fuel tank prior to ﬁll-up. Emissions testing with the use of MPG-CAPS™ has shown reductions of smog producing emissions such as hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides. These emissions are harmful to the earth’s atmosphere and contribute to global warming.

The benefits of using MPG-CAPS™ and MPG-MEGA-CRUMBS™

Improved fuel economy and increased power
Protection of valves and reduction of carbon buildup
Reduction of greenhouse gases
Elimination of ping and dieseling
Increased octane in lower grade fuels
Prolonged life of spark plugs, glow plugs and valves

Winning Ways to Promote Your Blog Contest

2009-02-02T08:42:00.001-08:00

Blog contests and giveaways are a popular way to increase traffic. The most common blog giveaway is to simply announce it on one’s site and ask people to enter by posting a comment. You can build an audience this way, but wouldn’t you like to expand your reach even further? Increase not only the readers of your blog, but your followers on Twitter and other social networks? Let’s talk about ways we can do that.

The key to promoting your contest is to give your readers incentives to spread the word about your contest. This can either take the form of additional entries in the sweepstakes or earning points toward being the ultimate winner in the contest.

Before we go any further, let’s clarify some terms. Technically speaking, a contest is a judged competition. If you ask readers to leave a comment with a holiday horror story and you choose the best one as the winner, that’s a contest. If you choose one at random, it’s called a sweepstakes. If the first ten commenters win, it’s a giveaway. For brevity’s sake, though, I’ll just refer to all these as contests.

Blogs

Accepting comments as contest entries is the easiest way to run a contest. Most blog software requires an email address to comment, which gives you a way to contact the winner. You should also accept trackbacks/pingbacks as entries — it may be a little more difficult to contact the winner, but having other blogs link to your contest will draw a bigger audience than just comments. Also consider designing a small image that bloggers can put in the sidebar of their site that links back to your contest. Give the blogger an extra entry for every click through from their site, which you can track through Google Analytics or another website statistics package.

Twitter

Twitter can be a great way to promote your blog — and in particular your blog contest — as long as you don’t overdue it. Most people don’t mind the occasional tweet about your blog, but if that’s all you ever post they may go elsewhere. Be sure to announce the contest when it starts, and maybe remind folks once more before it ends.

Also, offer additional entries for people that tweet about your contest. Give specific text (or a #hashtag) for people to use when they tweet, so you can search for the entries at the end of the contest. It’s best if you set a limit on the number of entries that can be earned this way, though. Otherwise, some people might abuse it.

Social Networking

In a similar way, you can extend your contest into other social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook. By accepting comments there as entries, you encourage people to become your friend, and it’s another avenue to reach those people later.

Sweepstakes Sites

There are many sites (Online Sweepstakes, SweepsGoat, Sweepstakes Advantage, to name a few) that list online sweepstakes. Some allow you to suggest a sweepstakes, but may or may not add it to their directory. Others will post any legitimate contest someone submits. Be sure to follow the rules for submission on each site. If the site accepts comments, monitor the ones about your contest so you can answer any questions that come up. (Full disclosure: My wife and I operate SweepsGoat.)

If you do offer multiple ways for people to enter, I recommend tracking all your entries in a spreadsheet, so that at the end of the contest you can more easily choose a winner. Also, be sure to post rules for your contest, including start and end dates, how often visitors can enter, and how and when a winner will be chosen.

Have you run a blog contest? How did you promote it? Let us know in the comments.

How to Use Blogs to Increase Your Online Income

2009-02-02T08:41:00.001-08:00

In spite of the fact that I have my own blog and blog for clients, there are very few blogs that I read on a regular basis. As a busy freelance writer, I simply don’t have the time.

When I visit some blogs and they have a long list of “favorited” blogs, I think to myself, “How in the world can they keep up with all those blogs?” Even trying to keep up with a few is time-consuming for me.

So, what does all this have to do with using blogs to grow your online income? Quite simply this: information overload. I read a few blogs – and implement as much of what those blogs tell me – as I possibly can.

You see, it’s not in the reading of information that grows your income, it’s the implementation of the ideas you read about on blogs that increases your online income.

How to Choose Blogs That Will Increase Your Online Income

There are a few blogs that come to mind immediately when you think of making money online – especially with blogs — eg, ProBlogger.net, JohnChow.com and ShoeMoney.com. Blogs like these are what I call “foundational blogs,” for they are good sources of honest, hard-hitting information from those who have actually – well, made money online from their blogs.

A lot of bloggers will try to tell you how to make money blogging, but many of them have never actually succeeded beyond a certain point.

Rule #1 How to Choose Blogs That Will Increase Your Online Income

So rule number one in choosing blogs that will increase your online income is read the blogs of those who’ve actually done what you want to do. If they haven’t done it themselves, how can they tell you how to? I’m amazed at the number of blogs like this.

Rule #2 How to Choose Blogs That Will Increase Your Online Income

Rule number two is – where possible – choose blogs written by those who are in your niche. This is important because while there are some fundamental rules for making money online that cut across niches, there are some tweaks that certain niches may call for.

Rule #3 How to Choose Blogs That Will Increase Your Online Income

Rule number three is choose blogs that have an active community – eg, lots of comments, a forum, etc. This is important because many times, it’s the comments left by others that give you golden nuggets of information that may not have been covered in the actual post.

Conclusion to How to Choose Blogs That Will Increase Your Online Income

There are only so many hours in a day. And, I find that many who want to make money online spend so much time surfing, reading and interacting on social media sites that they never get around to the number one rule of making money – online or off – ACTION!

You can talk about it, research it and plan for it until the cows come home. BUT, you will never make money online until you actually start doing it. And that means knowing when to turn off the information faucet, and turn on the entrepreneurial faucet (ie, take action).

Preparing For an Extended Absence From Your Blog

2009-02-02T08:39:00.001-08:00

Any day now, my wife will give birth to our first child. We’re doing our best to be prepared, even though we realize this is an event for which we can never fully prepare. I think we’ve gone through just about every “new parent check list” there is. Something none of these lists cover, though, is what to do with your blog while dealing with a new baby.

Whether it’s a birth, a house guest, or just a vacation, there will always be events in life that interrupt your normal publishing schedule. By doing a little planning ahead of time, you can enjoy those moments and not lose your readership during your down time. If you know you’ve got a situation coming up that will cut into your normal blogging time, here are a few ways to keep readers coming back.

The best thing you can do is write content ahead of time and schedule it to post. Many blogging platforms — including Wordpress, Movable Type, and Blogger — allow you to set a time and date when a post will be published. Write as many posts as you can before your absence, and schedule them to publish at regular intervals during your time off. This can be a good habit to get into, anyway, so you are prepared for unplanned absences.

While you’re preparing your scheduled posts, consider writing some “best of” posts. These can be great for introducing new readers to your site and reminding loyal readers about some of their favorite content. Try not to do a lot of these, but one or two scheduled to appear while you’re gone can help keep your site looking fresh.

If you can, bring in some guest bloggers. Guest posts can be a great way to drive traffic in general, and when you’ll be away from your blog they can be a life saver. Be sure your guest blogger is familiar with your blog platform so you can give them access to post and they can publish without bothering you at all. And don’t forget to return the favor when your guests want to take time off from their own sites.

Can’t find anybody to guest post? Try looking for Creative Commons-licensed content to republish. Just be very sure you read the CC license for the work you want to use and meet the requirements for redistributing the work.

If you’re just going to be busy but not completely off the grid, you could pull in content from other services. If you’re still going to be posting to Twitter, Delicious, Flickr, or another service, you may be able to connect those to your blog and route that content to your site. Flickr, for example, can post directly to your blog. And there are multiple plugins that will pull your Twitter and Delicious content into posts on your site.

Finally, no matter what you do, let your readers know. Post a message that will stay at the top of your home page during your absence. In it, tell visitors what to expect while you’re gone and when to expect you back. Point them to your archives and your content on other sites so that hopefully they don’t leave your site before finding something of interest.

For my wife and I, the next few weeks are going to turn our lives upside-down. We’ll lose a lot of sleep, but with a little prep-work it won’t be over what’s happening with our blogs.

What do you do when you take a break from your site? Let us know in the comments.

Blogger Tip: How to add a welcome message above your posts

2009-02-02T08:33:00.000-08:00

An increasing trend in blog design is the “welcome message” which appears on the home page, explaining to new readers what the blog is about, and possibly with links to subscription/about pages which offer more incentive for return visits.

If you are using Blogger to publish your blog, you could add an extra widget above the main posts section in which such a welcome message may be added and edited with ease. Once this section is added to your blog template, no further editing of the HTML code is required to change the message or it’s content: instead you can edit this section through the Page Elements section of your dashboard.

In this article, I’ll explain how to add an extra widget to your Blogger template which will appear above your blog posts and will only be visible on your blog’s home-page. I will also offer some suggestions for how to create an effective and successful welcome message for your blog, along with other possible uses for this simple Blogger hack.

What you will achieve using this tutorial

By default, your Blogger template will only display posts on your home page. While your blog title and the thematic content of your posts may go some way towards explaining what your blog is about, a welcome message adds more impact and encourages new readers to return again.

To illustrate this, compare the following screenshots:

: Blogger home page without a welcome message

: Blogger Homepage with welcome message

Of the two, do you think the second homepage is more welcoming and enticing for a return visit?

Following this tutorial will help you create a similar welcome message to appear above your blog posts on the home page of your blog. Although I have used the Minima template as the basis for this tutorial, the code examples given should also work smoothly for any Blogger template: both the default designs and customized themes supplied by third party providers.

Adding an extra widget section above your posts

To add our welcome message to our Blogger template, we need to add a widgetized area above the main posts section which will only appear on the blog home page.

This is achieved in just a few short steps:

Go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard. Do not check the “Expand widget templates” box!
Locate the following section of code:
Immediately before this section, paste the following few lines of code:
```
        
```
Then save your template.

Now when you go to the Page Elements tab of your Blogger dashboard, you will notice a new widgetized section appears above your blog posts widget, that currently contains a blank HTML/JavaScript widget:

Now we could simply add some content to this widget which would take on the same style as your blog posts, like this:

But since this doesn’t really make the welcome message stand out, we’re going to add some inline style to the content of the widget instead.

Adding stylish content to your welcome message

To ensure you can easily change the style and content of your welcome message through the Page Elements section of your Blogger dashboard, we are going to use “inline” css to make the welcome message stand out.

This is achieved by adding raw HTML code to the content of your widget; simply click on the “Edit” link for your widget, and ensure you use the “Edit HTML” editor rather than “Rich Text”.

Wrap your content in a DIV where styling is explicitly stated, like this:


Your content here

A working example

In the example pictured above, I used a soft yellow background, a little padding and added an image to ensure the welcome message is eye-catching and evocative of the content from my blog:

Here is the HTML code I used to make my welcome message appear in this way:


Welcome to my blog!


Here I can explain a little about my blog, and why you may want to read it.

I could encourage you to subscribe by providing a subscription link like this, or highlight one or two of my best posts.

You could use this example as the basis for your own “Welcome” message by changing the hex color, wording and image location as required. Then save the content of your HTML/JavaScript widget to see these changes appear in your actual blog home page.

Final Thoughts

I hope this tutorial has helped you understand how to add a simple welcome message to your Blogger home page which can assist the recognition of your blog’s thematic content and possibly encourage return visits from new readers.

Please feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below.

The Festive Toolbox: decorate your blog for Christmas!

2008-12-06T19:43:00.000-08:00

As Christmas approaches, many bloggers choose to decorate not only their homes but their websites in anticipation of the festive season.

From decorative blog templates to simple icons and snow effects, there are many ways our blogs can generate some festive spirit. In this post, I’ll share some of the best resources and methods I have found which you can use to enhance your blog design to celebrate Christmas with your readers.

Christmas Blog Templates

The most dramatic way you could update your blog for the Christmas season is to adopt (at least temporarily) a festive blog theme.

Here are some of the best free Christmas blog themes (organized by platform) for you to download:

Wordpress themes

Merry Christmas (Blog oh Blog)

A simple, wide theme with colored sections in the footer

Christmas Days by Design Disease

A two column theme with integrated Flickr feed (perfect for sharing your visual memories of the season!)

Read more and download

Christmas Gifts Theme by Amazing Christmas Ideas

A simple yet elegant two column theme which is widget ready.

Read more and download

Vermillion Theme for Wordpress

This elegant theme uses unusual festive colors yet appears stylish and well organized.

Read more and download

TMZ Winter by Acosmin.com

A bright three column theme with widgetized sidebars

Learn more and download

Blogger Templates

Snowman Blogger Template by SkinCorner

A two column theme with feative header and sidebar headings

Learn more and download

Birdie’s Enchanted Christmas by Gisele Jaquenod

A beautiful theme from Gisele’s “Birdie” template series

Read more and download

Merry Christmas Night by Pyzam

A simple festive template for Blogger blogs

Read more and download

Joomla Templates

Merry Christmas by Design for Joomla.com

Learn more and download

FNB Christmas by Free Net Builders

A candy-cane theme in festive colors for Joomla

Details and download

Traditional Christmas Joomla Theme by Invision Graphics

Here is a traditiona, Santa Claus inspired theme to decorate your Joomla CMS for the festive season. Note: registration is required to download this theme.

Learn more and download

More free Christmas templates for you to download

For those of you using a different CMS, here are some festive CSS based templates which you could convert for your own platform:

Santa Claus CSS Template by CSS Creme

Seasons Greetings by Karen Blundell

Christmas Template by Karen Blundell

Merry Christmas by Greystatic

Christmas 02 by Wfielder

Christmas 01 by Wfielder

Festive icon sets

If changing your whole template for the holidays is a bit too drastic, why not decorate with some free festive icons and images instead?

Here is a selection of free icon sets for you to download and use to decorate your blog:

Christmas icons from CleverIcons

This icon set is free to use, even for commercial projects!

Christmas Holiday Icons from N-Design Studio

These cute icons are delivered in PNG, GIF, EPS and ICO format for free use in your personal and commercial projects.

Christmas Surprise by DryIcons

This is free for personal use only (license fee required for commercial license)

Christmas Set by FreeIconsWeb

19 icons, each measuring 128px square for free personal use

VistaICO Christmas Icons from Vista Icons

Contains 25 high quality icons

Christmas RSS Icons by Sudilkovsky Denis

Christmas Social Bookmark icons by Dirceu Viega

Includes 17 social bookmark icons with a festive theme.

Santa Claus Hat Icons by Dirceu Veiga

Festive JavaScripts and Effects

Here are a selection of JavaScripts and effects which you can add to your blog for festive decoration. All of these scripts are free to use, though you may be required to credit the author (particularly if you write about the scripts you are using) so please be sure to check the usage notices for each site.

Simple falling snow effect by Dynamic Drive

This simple script creates a falling snow effect using the image of a snowflake. The flakes fall down the page and then disappear (as though they fall off the screen).

You can configure the speed and number of snowflakes directly within the script, and could even use a different image instead of the snowflake offered. [View/Download this script]

Snow effect without images by Kurt Grigg

This JavaScript based snow effect uses no images for the “snowflakes” and is a much more subtle way of adding a snowy effect to your blog pages.

It is best used against a dark background so the tiny snowflakes can be easily seen.

[Learn more and download this script]

DHTML Snowstorm (with wind effect) by Scott Schiller

This interesting script allows you to change the direction and speed of the wind to affect the snowstorm effect on your web pages.

It works in almost all browsers, and requires only one line of code in your blog pages to generate the snowstorm effect.

[Learn more and download script]

Annual Occasions Countdown by JavaScript Kit

This simple script allows you to countdown to any date (eg: Christmas, New Year) and is easily configured for your needs. [Learn more and download script]

Countdown to Christmas Clock from EmailSanta.com

This script will add a festive Christmas countdown clock to your web pages which can be seen in action on the Email Santa website. You should be able to configure the images and styling of the clock to better suit the needs of your own blog design.

[Read more and download this script]

JavaScript Advent Calendar

Here is a cute advent calendar which you could offer to your blog readers. Each number on the calendar opens a pop-up window to which you can add an image, message or even a festive download!

This script would take some time to configure for your own requirements, but as a daily reward for yoru readers it could prove a worthwhile addition to your blog

[Read more and download this script]

Last clicks…

If you still cannot find the festive resources you need to decorate your blog this Christmas, why not check out some of the design and Christmas resources below:

I hope this article has provided you with some useful

How to Get Noticed Online by “Big Name” Bloggers

2008-12-06T19:42:00.000-08:00

In the post, How to Use MicroBlogging to Grow Your Business, I talked about how a special report I wrote went viral because a big-name blogger “tweeted” about it. A commentor on the post wrote:

“A lot of it (getting a piece to go viral) seems to be based on “big time bloggers” tweeting for you…..what happens to those of us that aren’t already known by the big timers?”

That comment inspired this post.

There’s no mystery to getting noticed online by big name bloggers. It’s simple hard work and some luck. Remember though, luck comes by way of hard work. If you want to get noticed by a big name blogger online, following are three things you can do to heighten your chances.

3 Ways to Get Noticed by Famous Bloggers

1. Give a Solution to a Problem: The whole reason I wrote the report that went viral was because, since the economy has been in the tank here in the U. S., I’d received quite a few emails from freelancers asking about how to land more writing gigs.

Hence, the impetus for the report was to offer advice and help. I offered a solution to a problem.

2. Speak to the Blogger’s Audience: This kinda goes without saying, but it needs to be mentioned. Big name/famous bloggers receive a lot of requests from many who are trying to get attention for their product/service. A lot of the time, it has nothing to do with their audience.

I don’t care how good your product/service is, if it’s not relevant to the blogger’s audience (ie, their business), it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to get their attention.

Bloggers are niche business owners. And, there are “famous” ones in every niche. So don’t just approach a blogger because they’re famous. Do your due diligence and approach the right ones, ie, the one whose audience can benefit from your product/service.

3. Make Contact Consistently: I’m not talking about cyberstalking here. What I mean is to make approaching established bloggers a part of your marketing routine. For example, write and send one post a week to a well-trafficked blog. If you do this, eventually you will get published, mentioned, tweeted, etc.

I’ve sent posts to probably 20 or so famous bloggers. I’ve been lucky enough to have been published a half dozen times or so on highly trafficked blogs in my niche (freelance writing). Like anything that you put consistent effort into – it pays off over time.

Note: Always send original content that you don’t publish anyplace else.

How to Become a Famous Blogger

The final thing I want to say on this is — work towards getting famous/established in your own right. Many are so focused on getting noticed by big name bloggers that they forget to focus on establishing themselves.

Famous bloggers started off just like you – from ground zero. If you consistently write, publish and market your blog, you’ll start to gain a following.

Who knows, one day you could be the “famous blogger” that everybody starts approaching.

How to Choose a Domain Name for Your Blog That Will Generate the Most Traffic

2008-11-11T17:00:00.000-08:00

Years ago, the conventional wisdom when it came to selecting a domain name was to keep it simple, short and ended with a .com. Think Pets.com, Cars.com, Shopping.com, etc. The idea was to give web searchers something easy to remember that also said what the site was all about.

However, domain names like this have long been registered. So, how do you name a blog or website for maximum profit? Thankfully search engine optimization (SEO) has changed what is considered a “good” domain name.

How SEO Has Changed Domain Name Registration

SEO has changed domain name registration principally because most surfers find information via organic searches, instead of heading to a specific site, for example.

Search Engine Optimization Definition: What is Organic Search?

People use the internet to find information. Organic search is when web surfers type in a search terms (ie, keyword phrases) and sites pop up. As most surfers have no specific site in mind when they use the internet to find information, they type in search terms and head to the sites that pop up in their search results. Most keep doing this until they find what they want.

Hence, it’s important for sites to be optimized well (eg, have lots of SEO content populated with relevant keyword phrases) so that surfers looking for the type of information they provide will to be able to find them.

It helps to have a domain name that clues surfers into what the site is all about.

Yesterday, I received an email from a reader of one of my past posts here about using dashes/hyphens in a domain name. She wanted to know how the search engines treat them. I wrote her the following:

These days, a site’s domain name doesn’t matter as much as how it’s optimized for SEO. This is because most surfers find a site via organic search, not by specific site name. . . . In fact, some SEO experts say that it’s better to have the subject matter of your site as part of its domain name because it makes it easer to find. For example, if someone typed in the keyword phrase “buy organic oranges”, they would land on your site (eg, buy-organic-oranges.com) faster than one that’s named, “buyorganicoranges.com” for example.

*Note: Domain names buy-organic-oranges.com and buyorganicoranges.com used for illustrative purposes only.

Now, you don’t want to go crazy and have a domain name with five, six or seven hyphens, but don’t shy away from using hyphenated domain names. They can actually boost your search engine rankings, particularly if it’s a commonly searched term.

Search Engine Optimization Tip: Which Is Better — .com, .biz. .info, etc.?

Domain names don’t have to end in .com anymore either. Again, a site that’s optimized well will rank high in search engines, even if it ends in a .info, .biz or any other kind of “dot”.

Remember, search engines spider content. If you have relevant content on your site that incorporates well-researched, popular keyword phrases as it relates to your niche, your blog/website will get good search engine ranking – no matter what its named, or what dot it ends in.

Credit your Authors in your Feed

2008-11-11T16:53:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago we were looking into how to modify the feed on Blogging Tips to include the author’s URL in with their post. There are plenty of plugins that allow you to add additional comments to the end or beginning of the content, but no obvious way to edit the author line that appears under the post title.

Most bloggers on a multi author blog often have their own individual blog, so being able to not just credit them but also provide a link direct to their site from the feed is a great way to give more exposure to the blogger.

Select the Feed File

So first of all we need to know the correct template tag to use to get the author’s website link. This is the link provided in their profile. To get the direct link we can use

Next we need to edit the appropriate core file (for this example I’ll be using the RSS 2.0 file). The only downside to this is that when WordPress upgrades you’ll have to edit the file again (I will continue to search and see if there’s a way to do this via a plugin). The file we need to edit can be found under wp-includes/feed-rss2.php.

If you open this file up and navigate to about line 40 you should see the following code:

We need to simply edit this to include the author’s site link i.e.

from

You can see this in action on the Blogging Tips Feed.

Authors without a Link?

The only problem here is that maybe not every blogger will have a website link in their profile. We don’t really want it to appear as

“By Sarah from “

As it looks a bit unprofessional. So instead we need to check that the author has added a link to their profile, and if they have then we can add it. We use a simple if statement for this along with the tag get_the_author_url() as this will return a url rather than just printing it out on screen. To do this we use

$authorurl = get_the_author_url(); if (!empty($authorurl)) : echo "from ".$authorurl; endif; ?>

The above assigned the value of the get_the_author_url() function to the variable $authorurl. Then it checks to see if the $authorurl has a value, if it does then it will proceed with the if statement and echo out the ‘from sitelink’, otherwise it continues without adding anything. So to add this all together we now have

$authorurl = get_the_author_url(); if (!empty($authorurl)) : echo " from ".$authorurl; endif; ?>

This will now give you either

“by Sarah”

for authors without a site link, or

“by Sarah from http://www.stuffbysarah.net”

for authors with a site link.

3 Steps Recipe To Give Readers What They Want And Still Make Sales

2008-11-11T16:39:00.000-08:00

I have always wondered if one could give readers what they wanted and still make sales. As a result, I have been observing some of the top affiliate marketers and have also been asking them their secrets to selling more and making a passive income from their blog. Most of the successful marketers have their own way or they modify a basic technique to make it look unique.

From what I have experienced, learned and heard from affiliate marketers, they all follow a basic recipe which I’m sharing with you in this post. It is simple, doesn’t take much time and will get you more traffic. As we know more traffic will equal more sales. If you can increase your conversion rate, you can make more money within less time. I have tripled my conversion rates for my freelance writing service and I have also explained in the previous post on how you can do it.

By following the 3 steps recipe that I’m sharing below, you could be making giving your readers what they want and still make sales.

1. Find a Problem
You may have heard many bloggers say this. ‘Go out there now and find a problem’. But how do I find a problem which I have not faced before? To answer your question, I could write a whole new blog post about it. But let me share some of the best ways using which you can find a problem. I’m going to let you know the two ways which I use and one of them is quite new. Let’s start with the old one. You can find what people want, in forums that are in your niche. If you are in the health niche, type “health niche” without quotes in google to find some of the top health related forums. Join in one of them and you can see people posting their problems. Note down these questions. Now we’ll move on to the new one. Wordtracker, a site which helps in finding keywords, has a new feature for getting the questions that people type in search engines, for your keyword. Say, I’m typing “make money” in it. I’ll get results with questions like “how kids can make money”, “how to make money fast” and so on. Note down these questions along with the questions you found in the forums.

2. Provide a Solution
Now that you have a big list of problems that people are facing, you should try to solve them in your blog. Separate the questions you have into two lists. The ones for which you know the answer and the ones for which you don’t. First, start with the questions for which you know the answers. Provide solutions to those problems in your blog. Once you are finished with all these, you can move to the second list. How to find answers to the questions you don’t know? Read quality books, read other quality blogs, interview the experts in your niche or come up with your own unique idea for getting the answers for the questions. Once you have found them, start posting the solutions in the blog. You are done with providing solutions.

3. Recommend a Product
Recommend a product at the end of the post or even in the middle of the post, if you can do it well. To select the product that you want to promote, you can either select a product that has good reviews or you can ask the owner of the product to give a review copy. If you have a good readership, they will be more than happy to provide you with one. Now that you have the product, you can start recommending (note that you are not selling but recommending). Make sure that the product is related to the problem. I always had this doubt few days ago: When you have already provided a solution, why should they buy the product? It’s because they trust you. You have solved a problem for them. You are pointing to a product that will make it easy for them to achieve their goal. There is nothing wrong in recommending a product after you have helped your reader.

What method do you follow to make sales and still keep your readers happy? Please share your opinion in the comments.

Tools for publishing blog posts on micro-blogging services

2008-07-27T17:49:00.000-07:00

Twitter and other micro-blogging have a huge potential to boost your blog’s traffic. It can be used as a tool for gaining popularity and bringing new users to the site. The most important thing is to make sure that you are active on social media sites and have a decent (relative term) amount of followers/friends/subscribers to take advantage of these joints and get traffic to your blog.

I’ve put together a list of tools that can be used to spread your blogs content on such sites or on Twitter mainly.

TwitterFeeds.com

This is an easy, simple and straight forward service which works with the feeds to publish to Twitter. Login to TwitterFeeds.com with an Open ID, add your twitter account details and add feeds which will be published on Twitter.

You can also set the frequency of publishing your articles to Twitter. e.g. Every One Hour, Every Day, etc..

Link

Twitter Updater (WP-Plugin)

Twitter Updater is a Wordpress plugin which connects the blog with your Twitter account. Once installed you an choose to

Update Twitter when a new post is created (saved but not published)
Update Twitter when the new post is edited (re-saved but not published)
Update Twitter when the new post is published
Update Twitter when the an old post has been edited

Download Link

Microblog Updater (WP-Plugin)

Microblog Updater is built on Twitter Updater plugin. In addition to updates on just Twitter this offers updates on more services like Jaiku, Pownce and Tumblr. Microblog Updater also lets you send custom messages to all of these services from within the plugin admin page.

Download Link

Twitter Tools (WP-Plugin)

This plugin does not only send twitter updates when the blog is update but it also does it the other way round, it adds a new post to your blog every time there is a new Twitter Update.

Download Link

TweetPress (WP-Plugin)

This plugin is not any different from other WP plugins. Stores your Twitter details and updates Twitter every time a new post is published on your blog.

Download Link

Please feel free to add me to your Twitter list: http://twitter.com/abbassyed

Traffic Generating Tips I’ve Learned from Working with SEO Firms

2008-07-27T17:48:00.000-07:00

If you’re a regular reader of my posts on this blog, then you’ve probably read at one time or another that I’m an SEO writer. Most of my clients are SEO firms, aka Internet Marketing Firms and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) Firms. I’ve learned some great traffic-generating tips from working with them. Following are three:

1. Double-duty Blog Posts: Blog posts can do double-duty. What do I mean? One client of mine contracts with me to do nine posts a week for three separate blogs. Why nine?

I write one post for each blog — three different ways. This gives him three unique posts for each blog. He uses two of the posts to list in article marketing directories, and the other one to post on his blog.

In this way, he avoids the possibility of the duplicate content penalty, and has fresh content to market with in a couple of different ways.

2. Abstracts of Industry-Leading Publications: Another internet marketing firm I work with contracted me for a year to write abstracts of industry-leading publication articles for their site.

It works like this: they send me links to articles in these publications and I write up an abstract of that article (300-400 words) for their site. I write it around a keyword phrase that they gave me.

What purpose does this serve? It’s two-fold. One, it provides fresh keyworded content for their site. And two, it sets them up as an authority site because instead of reading long articles in various publications, readers can just get the main points from their site. How genius is that!

As a side note, it keeps me up to date on everything that has to do with internet marketing – from newly introduced technology, to technology mergers and acquisitions, to the demographics and psychographics of web users.

3. Focus on Keywords: Keywords drive content. I’d say 75-80% of my clients order keyword-driven text. Eg, I want a press release about this mold remover; the keyword phrase for the piece is toxic mold remover.

Can I have 20 articles on limousine services in Denver? Following are the keyword phrases; one for each article.

For my blog posts, the keyword phrases for this week are credit repair, used routers and beach condo.

Conclusion: I don’t know if you’ve picked up on it, but the common thread in all of this is fresh, unique content. This is because the foundation of traffic generation is unique, relevant content. Search engines feed of off it like piranha.

So, if you have a website or blog that you’re trying to drive traffic to, the first thing you have to do is update your web presence regularly. Do it with excellent, informative content as I pointed out in a post here on article marketing a couple of weeks ago, and you’ll be well ahead of most of your competition on the web.

Think about it this way: if the traffic generation experts (ie, Internet Marketing Firms) are using these methods to drive traffic to client sites, shouldn’t you be doing the same for your site?

How to combat WordPress TrackBack Spam

2008-07-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

At the end of last year BloggingTips was getting a lot of comment spam. Comment spam has thankfully reduced since then however in the last few weeks I have seen a big increase in the amount of trackback spam here (more than 30+ a day!). Trackback spam is a little more difficult to control than regular comment spam. Most are created automatically via bots and the links they use to promote their sex or prescription drugs website usually has offensive language in it so it’s important to delete it if you want to keep trackbacks on your blog (which I do).

From what I have gathered so far, the best way to do this is to rename your wp-comments-post.php file to something else as this is the file which most bots are programmed to look for. There are one or two good trackback spam plugins available, most notably Software Guides Simple Trackback Validation Plugin, however manually changing the name of your comments post file is the quickest, easiest and most effective way of dealing with this problem.

Thankfully, Everton Blair from Connected Internet wrote a very good guide on this a year or so ago. Here is what Everton did :

He made a copy of my wp-comments-post.php file, which is in the the root of all Wordpress installations
He renamed this file wp-nospamcomments-post.php and uploaded it to the Wordpress root directory
He then removed all the content from wp-comments-post.php and left a message for spammers
He then opened comments.php in my theme folder (wp-content/THEME FOLDER) and changed the following line:
view plain copy to clipboard print ?
1. < form id=”commentform” method=”post” action=”/wp-comments-post.php”>
```
   < id="”commentform”" method="”post”" action="”/wp-comments-post.php”"> 
```
to:
view plain copy to clipboard print ?
1. < form id=”commentform” method=”post” action=”/wp-nospamcomments-post.php”>
```
< id="”commentform”" method="”post”" action="”/wp-nospamcomments-post.php”"> 
```

Everton decided to leave a message to spammers who try and use the original wp-comments-post.php file however I don’t think this is necessary as the bots are automated so no one will ever see the message. All I did was rename my wp-comments-post.php to something else and then change the reference to it in my comments.php template.

If your blog is getting a lot of trackback spam then I recommend doing this. Just remember that you will need to rename the wp-comments-post.php again when you update your blog to the latest version of WordPress.

Why you should always use Digg

2008-06-18T01:21:00.001-07:00

There are alot of Social Bookmarking sites available today which all provide bloggers with benefits, but today I am going to focus on Digg.com.

There are two main reasons why you should use Digg to bookmark your posts and they are:

To drive more traffic to your site; and
To give your posts a boost in PR (PageRank)

How does Digg.com drive more traffic to my blog?
When you Digg a blog post it appears on the upcoming pages at Digg.com where a lot of users will see it. Write a catchy title to make users curious enough to click on it, and make sure you Digg it in the appropriate category (nobody is going to click on a link about fishing tackle in the Television category - unless they really like fishing! )

When someone has been to your site and read your post, if they like what they see chances are they’ll Digg your post. The posts that a user has Dugg will appear on their profile page for all of their friends to see - and if their friends like what they see chances are they’ll Digg your post too! And so on and so forth!

When someone has dugg your post be sure to add them as a friend so that when you create new blog posts you can share them with them. The more friends you have, the more people you have to shout your new blog posts to!

How can Digg.com help my PR?
Page Rank is determined by good quality links to your site. Everytime someone Diggs your post a link is created to the page from the users profile page. It isn’t a direct link to your post on your blog, but it is a link to the Digg page where your link lies.

You may think that this is invaluable, but it isn’t. Any PR that goes to the Digg page where your link lies, gives the PR of your blog post a huge boost.

I was looking back at some posts on one of my blogs that were written a few months ago (before Googles Page Rank Update), and I was surprised to see some of my posts had a PR of 4! Given that the main page only has a PR of 3, and that I hadn’t done any link building on specific blog posts other than using Digg.com, I knew for sure that using Digg.com had 99% to do with the PR increase.

Conclusion
So there you have it: two valuable reasons why you should always use Digg. I’m sure there are more benefits to using this great tool - but I think those two reasons are convincing enough… what more could you want?

A Quick Note
This is my first post here after being approached by Kevin and would like to say I feel very honoured to be here. I have no idea if my posts will be useful to anyone, but it feels great to have the opportunity to write here and I hope, if this article is a success, to write a couple more posts in the future. Thank you!

FireFox 3 released

2008-06-18T01:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, June 17th 2008, is the official launch of FireFox 3, the latest FireFox client which has been in development for a whopping 34 months!

To coincide with the release Mozilla are trying to set a Guiness World Record for the most downloads in 24 hours. I used Opera for years but switched my main browser to FireFox a year or two ago and haven’t looked back.

You can make a pledge to download the browser tomorrow if you like but it’s so near the release date I’m not sure if there’s much point! Can’t wait to see the improvements they have made and all the new features!

Link : Spread FireFox

A Beginners Guide to Using RSS

2008-05-27T17:24:00.000-07:00

You’ve just started your blog, and heard of some new phenomena called RSS. What’s it all about and how can you use it to benefit your blog?

An excellent definition of RSS from the ever so controversial Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rss):

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a “feed” or “web feed” or “channel”) contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.
Today, the popularity of most blog’s is measured through how many RSS subscribers it has. This seems to be an accurate way of analyzing your blog’s popularity because it tends to even out traffic between the quality of your posts. You may get a lot of hits, but that says nothing about the quality of your writing. If people like the content of your blog, they will most likely subscribe to your blog’s feed.

How to offer your feed:

Most blogging platforms have a built in content feed publishing system which displays the most recent posts on your blog but how do you advertise this link on your blog? Most bloggers have a section in their sidebar or header where people can click to subscribe via RSS or via email. When putting up your RSS feed, you probably want to display the RSS icon. There are tons of places to get fancy (and simple) icons. Make sure that you integrate them nicely into your website. They should not obstruct your design. The most standard icons can be found at feedicons.com. You can also find some more interesting ones on the list here.

So you’ve set up your blog, you have your feed on display, now what?

There is no way to analyze who is subscribing to your blog just yet. So the next step, a very important one in the development of your blog, is to sign up with a service such as feedburner. Feedburner and other similar services offer advanced tools which allow you to analyze and work with your RSS feed. For example, you may offer an email subscription to your blog’s feed, and you can also publish ads within your feed subscription. Feedburner makes working with your feed much easier. You can also show off how many subscribers your blog has (sometimes it will attract/defer people to subscribe. If you have more readers, more people may be inclined to subscribe through “peer pressure”. However if you have very few readers, some people may be inclined not to subscribe to your feed. For now, if your blog doesn’t have many subscribers, wait before showing off your feed count). Once done, replace the feed that you are currently displaying with your feedburner feed.

Analyzing your subscribers - how many readers is good?

Now, you should probably begin looking through the history of your feed. Find out when people subscribed, where were they referred from, how did they subscribe, etc. One of my favorite free services which analyzes your feedburner feed very well is a project over at blogperfume.com. This powerful analyzer will look back at the history of your feed and generate some stunning charts and graphs to help you understand your feeds history. This is a great, free way to understand your feed data. Web analytics service Clicky also has a nice feedburner subscription tracker. However, you need to purchase the web analytic services too (highly recommended for bloggers - very cheap and effective).

So how many subscribers is a good amount? Frankly, as many as possible. If this is the best way to measure the popularity of a blog, then you probably want as many subscribers as possible (For example, ProBlogger.net has over forty-eight thousand subscribers).

Displaying and offering your blog’s RSS feed to readers is a very effective practice used throughout the blogsphere on many renowned blogs. It will help your own grow very quickly, and if you are unsure about how to use RSS or set anything up, research is very much suggested. Check out these links for further reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/12/18/dive-into-xml.html

http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Feeds

Display More Than 5 Recent Posts in Blogger Sidebar

2008-05-27T17:21:00.000-07:00

One method of helping new readers read more content from your blog is to add a “recent posts” widget to the sidebar. Blogger users can do this easily by adding a “feed widget” using the default feed URL (eg: http://yourblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default). However, this will only return the 5 most recent posts at most; Blogger doesn’t (yet) support the ability to display a greater number of entries.

Many Blogger users would prefer to display more than 5 recent posts in their sidebar, and indeed there have been requests for an article explaining how to do this on Blogging Tips and my own Blogger site.

So in this post I’ll outline three different methods you could use to display more than 5 recent posts in your Blogger sidebar, so you can choose the method which seems most suitable for you.

Use Feedburner’s BuzzBoost

If you burn your blog feeds through Feedburner, you can easily republish entries from your blog feed as HTML which can be displayed in a widget in your sidebar, like this:

Using BuzzBoost, you can choose to add any number of recent posts to your widget, include the favicon of your blog, a snippet of each post (a post summary), and also alter the date format.

To use BuzzBoost to add a recent posts widget to your Blogger sidebar, you must already use Feedburner to syndicate your Blogger feeds (here are four great reasons why Blogger users should do this). Then log into your Feedburner dashboard and select the blog for which you would like to activate BuzzBoost.

On this page, click on the “Publicize” tab which is near the top of the page, then look in the left sidebar to find the BuzzBoost link:

On the BuzzBoost page, you will see the many options you can use to configure your recent posts widget. These options are pretty self-explanatory, but the most important thing for you to do is activate your BuzzBoost widget by clicking on the appropriate button at the bottom of the page.

Once you have activated (or saved) the settings for your widget, you will notice a new code box appears which contains the JavaScript code used to display your recent posts; to use this, simply copy the code and paste this into an HTML/JavaScript widget in your Blogger layout page.

You could also choose to add this as a new widget in Blogger, which generates a simple widget installer and adds this automatically to your Blogger layout. This is by far the simplest method: simply choose Blogger from the options in the drop-down menu, and follow the prompts to add this to your layout.

In either case, the widget will display your recent posts widget to match any other list elements in your sidebar.

For example, if you use a dark background and pale text, your BuzzBoost widget will be styled accordingly.

Use Beautiful Beta’s Recent Posts Widget

Hans of Beautiful Beta has developed “recent posts” widget which is easy to both configure and set-up.

Using this method, you can add a recent posts widget which features a short summary of your post, and can choose how many entries you would like to display.

To install the Beautiful Beta recent posts widget, head over to the widget installation page and click on the “Add Recent Posts” button.

A pop-up page will appear which includes all of the options you can choose to configure for your widget.

Alter the widget title and add your blog URL in the appropriate boxes. Then choose of you would prefer to display a summary of your posts (if so, the length in characters of the summary you wish to display).

Once you have finished setting your options, click on the “Customize” button (which saves your settings) then the “Add to my blog” button will be highlighted, which takes you to the widget installation page for your Blogger blog.

From here it’s simply a matter of following the prompts, which will install this widget to your Blogger sidebar in literally seconds!

Make a Widgetbox Blidget

While “Blidget” may seem a rather silly name for a blog feature, this is actually a very useful tool!

A “Blidget” is similar to the above two methods as it republishes your Blogger feed as HTML and allows you to display recent entries within a sidebar widget, like this:

Of course, not many of you will choose to use a funky leopard-print background for your Blidget, but you can choose to add your blog’s logo, customize the appearance and also include a summary of you choose…

To create your free Blidget, simply visit the Blidget creation page over at Widgetbox and enter your blog’s URL (this doesn’t need to be your feed URL). Then press “continue”.

On the following page, Widgetbox will have parsed your blog page to discover the feed URL automatically. Then you can choose how you would like your widget to display, including the size, number of posts, and even whether to display the first image of each post inside the entry (which is craftily scaled to fit the width of your Blidget).

Once all the settings are to your preference, click on the Continue link near the bottom of the page. If you are already a member of Widgetbox, you will be prompted for your username and password. If you are not a member, here you can sign up for a free account there and then.

Once you’re signed in, you will be able to click on the “Get Widget” link in the left sidebar. This will open up a pop-up page which contains JavaScript code you could add to an HTML/JavaScript widget in your Blogger layout.

Even simpler, you could simply click on the Blogger button on this page, which will take you through Blogger’s simple widget installation system to add your Blidget automatically to your sidebar:

Using any of these three different methods you can add more than 5 recent posts to your Blogger sidebar, which may encourage new readers to read other articles you have written.

There are many other methods you could use to add a list of recent posts to your Blogger sidebar, but for me these are the most useful three. Do you use a different service to display a list of your most recent posts? If so, please let us know about this by leaving your comments below.

Want Your Blog Reviewed? Drop a Comment

2008-05-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

The first video blog review went pretty well, and the feedback was positive, so there will be more to come. I will release them weekly, covering the different aspects of a blog (e.g., layout & design, search engine optimization, monetization, content).

Once in a while I will also try to create a tutorial or how-to video explaining specific tasks or techniques. If you have a suggestion for those tutorials, let me know and I will try to cover it (for example, if you are having trouble installing WordPress let me know and I can try to create a video tutorial for that).

If you would like to have your blog reviewed, just leave a comment below. I can’t guarantee that all of them will be reviewed, and the topic of the review will vary from blog to blog, but if the videos keep going sooner or later we will arrive at your blog. You can specify the area where you would like to get reviewed also.

We Should Have Known Better: Exchanging Credibility for a Few Bucks

2008-05-14T09:04:00.000-07:00

Looking back I feel kind ashamed that I promoted AGLOCO and BlogRush. The first revealed itself to be a complete flop and never saw the light of the day. The second is operative, but most established bloggers that were using the widget dropped it after realizing there was very little value coming out of it.

Both worked with a pyramid scheme, and both had a particular smell coming out, if you know what I mean. I knew it, but I went on and promoted them anyway. Why? Because I thought that perhaps I would be able to gain something out of the deal. Not by actually using the products, but by getting people signed under my referral.

AGLOCO was promising money, while BlogRush was promising traffic.

Sure, my readers would be able to sign up and refer other people in turn as well, possibly reaping some benefits as well. But overall it was a selfish motivation, I won’t deny. Here is what I wrote about AGLOCO:

Overall I can say that I am a little bit skeptical about the real opportunities behind this deal. I decided to join nonetheless because it is free and because I was curious. Also since the Viewbar has not been released yet this could be good time to build your referral network. If you want to try it out and join my network, click here.

I did mention that I was a bit skeptical, but I encouraged people to try it out anyway. Have I had more cojones (and less greed) back in the day, I would just have said that the whole deal looked like a scam.

It did teach me a lesson nonetheless: do not put the possibility to earn some bucks, traffic or links above your real opinion and thoughts about things. If you think something is not really useful, do not promote it on your blog just because it has an affiliate scheme and because you could gain something out of it.

It is not easy to follow such path, and I am not here to preach anyone. Regardless, I think it is worth to try it. Your credibility is at the stake, after all.

Update: Sorry if I gave a wrong idea about BlogRush. I don’t think it is at the same level as AGLOCO in any way, which was almost a scam. BlogRush is an actual product, and works for some people. I don’t have anything against traffic exchange widgets, my only issue with it back then was the fact that it was structured under a pyramid scheme.

7 Ways to Ensure Your Readers Feel Welcome

2008-04-26T23:00:00.000-07:00

Regular readers are the soul of a successful blog: besides the steady stream of page views and subscribers provided by regular readers, you are also assured of more backlinks, recommendations and commentary through building a loyal audience.

But how can you convert a casual visitor into a loyal reader? Make them feel welcome!

By making even the casual reader feel welcomed to your blog, you offer them an important incentive to return; they are more likely to remember your URL for future reference, subscribe to your feed or become another loyal reader of your work.

Here are seven subtle yet effective techniques which will ensure even the casual search-engine referral feels welcome when they visit your home on the web:

1. Help your readers find their way around

Your blog may have many posts and pages. To help your readers find the information they need, you should ensure they can easily navigate through your site.

Make sure links to your important pages are visible and easy to locate; provide links to popular articles and if possible add a search box near the top of the page (where a reader is most likely to look for it). Easy navigation makes your content easier to find and ensures visitors will stay on your site for longer. Poor navigation can drive visitors away: if they cannot easily find the content they are looking for, what point is there staying on your site any longer?

2. Ensure your blog has all the right pages

When new readers visit your blog, they may look for an “About” page to learn more about the site. If readers have questions or would like to offer feedback to the author, they would usually seek a “Contact” page.

A page for new visitors is a wonderful way of explaining your blog’s distinguishing features to those visiting for the first time and is a sure-fire way of making them feel welcome.

Even Blogger powered blogs can feature such pages by backdating a post and providing a link to this post from the header or sidebar section.

Such pages convince the casual reader that a blog’s author has made the effort to consider their needs. Does your blog feature all the right pages (and make them easy to find)?

3. Offer an easy means of contacting you!

While most blogs have comments enabled, there will be many times when a reader would like to contact you directly. This may be to offer feedback, point out a broken link or simply ask a question which is not covered in your posts.

Many blog authors use a visual representation of their email address to thwart email spam-bots. This is perfectly understandable: after all, who wants dozens of emails presenting unwanted pharmaceuticals landing in their inbox each day?

But unfortunately, this can present an obstacle to your readers. Not all readers will go the extra mile to open up their email client and type in the address they see on the screen. It’s far more welcoming to offer a contact form for readers to email you directly from your site, and in providing this, you needn’t give away your actual email address!

There are many free services which you could use to add a simple contact form to your blog. My personal favorite is Kontactr, which offers different form styles and has no limits of how many emails can be processed each month.

Wordpress bloggers may prefer to use a plugin to create a contact form which is run from their own domain and features different customization options. In either case, your readers will feel more inclined to contact you directly if they don’t need to visit an external page or program to do so!

4. Reply to your comments and emails!

When readers take the time to leave a comment or send you an email, they will feel so much more welcomed (and inclined to return to your blog) if you offer them a reply!

As your blog develops and grows, it may become more difficult to offer a personal response to each and every comment and email you receive, though even a few words or a simple “Thank you” can go a long way and shows that you appreciate their interaction.

5. Satisfy your readers’ interests

Many new visitors will discover your blog through search engines or backlinks and land on a post page. After they have read this initial article, these visitors will likely do one of two things:

Look for other articles of interest to them

>Leave your blog and browse elsewhere

It goes without saying that we would prefer visitors to stay on our own blogs, so how can we make them feel welcome and encourage them to stay?

The most effective way I have found is to offer links to related articles at the base of each post. One method is to write these links manually after the body of each post, though this can be quite time consuming.

If you use Wordpress, you may want to try the Wasabi “Related Posts Plugin” which prints a list of related posts based on keywords and categories. Blogger users can use Hoctro’s Related Articles script which can be added directly to your Blogger template and returns entries based on the same label category.

Over time, it may be helpful to observe the search engine keywords which lead visitors to your site, and cater to these keyword searches in future posts.

6. Be Positive!

In my personal experience, I find that a positive attitude can have a great effect on making me feel welcome. I prefer to read blogs which are fun and enjoyable to read, offering content in a positive light.

One thing which really puts me off a blog is negativity. I’ve previously subscribed to some extremely well written blogs which over time have become increasingly negative and made me feel less and less inclined to continue reading. Criticism is fine and often needed, but should always be balanced with positivity. As the old saying goes, every dark cloud has a silver lining.

If you find yourself becoming more and more negative or critical in your blog posts, you will likely notice a drop in subscribers and daily readers. Instead, think of a way to turn this around: if you see a problem, don’t simply criticize it! Think of a way you can turn it around: try to see this in a new light, post a solution to the problem or write about a better alternative. Your readers will appreciate your for it, and you will undoubtedly gain a better reputation as a positive and welcoming author!

7. Be Yourself!

I love to read blogs where the author’s personality shines through the writing style. Even the most boring, technically orientated post can become a welcoming and interesting read with an infusion of personality!

Offer your personal opinion, share your experiences and enlighten your readers with your own unique perspective on your chosen subject. This technique will ensure each and every post you write is unique and stands out from the crowd; through your writing, readers will get to know you better and feel more like a welcomed friend than a stranger on the other end of a tangled web of wires!

Blog Away your Fears: Your First Month of Blogging

2008-04-26T22:56:00.000-07:00

If you’re hesitant about starting your blog - you tell yourself you’ll start a blog when you find the perfect topic, or the perfect WordPress theme - or (fill in your own excuse here) - this article will help you to get started.

Once you’ve been blogging for a month, you’ll be a much more confident blogger. So here are six tips for sailing through your first month of blogging:

1. Keep your blog’s focus in mind

It’s easy to lose focus on a blog. Perhaps your blog’s topic is “golf”. You write a couple of posts about golf, but then you write a post about a trip you took on the weekend, and don’t mention golf at all.

On an established blog that’s a year or two old, the occasional off-topic post doesn’t matter, because you’re established in the search engines, and you have readers. On a new blog however, stick to your topic: meet your readers’ expectations, so that they’ll subscribe to your RSS feed.

2. Write your first ten posts before you start marketing your blog

A new blog is like an empty house. There’s nothing to see or read. Write at least ten posts before you start promoting your blog.

3. Get your readers involved - write posts which invite comments

Write a post which asks your readers to leave comments - to share their story. This gets your readers involved.

4. Share yourself and your blogging inspiration

Your first few posts are “getting to know you” posts. You can leap right into your topic, or you can share some information about yourself, and why you’re blogging.

You still need an “About” page, however. Write your About page so that readers can orient themselves.

5. Write a series

Series of blog posts on a topic help you to write, because you know what you’re going to write about. Outline the series in a post first, then write each post in the series. Wrap up the series with a post which links to each individual post.

6. Get subscribers to your RSS feed

Encourage your readers to subscribe. The more subscribers you have the better. Since many of your readers won’t know how to subscribe, write a post showing them how to do it.

So there you have five tips for your first month of blogging. Since you now have no excuse, get started!

How to Create Dynamic Web Content for Your Blog in Five Easy Steps!

2008-04-26T22:53:00.000-07:00

By Keeping Your Headlines and Subject Headers Extremely Simple and Concise, You Will Generate Dynamic Web Content for Every Visitor to Your Site

KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID!
Your website or blog content area should be designed with simplicity in mind at all times. The navigation bar should be so easy to use that a blind person should have no problem with getting around your web pages with ease. Your main content text should be black, with a background that is as light as possible so your readers can easily see all the text on all of your web pages. When you use underlined text, you should only use it for hyper-links that will take your web reader to another page that gives them more details on a particular subject or topic.

The way to conjure up dynamic web content is by keeping your writing tone very informal, such as the way you talk to a good friend or a close neighbor. Always write in a vibrant tone that conjures up explicit images of whatever your subject matter is. Leave the passive and meek writing tones to your competitors who are not ever going to have the amount of website visitors that you will when you develop the skill of bringing dynamic web content to your website.

BORING WEB CONTENT EQUALS NO WEB VISITORS
No matter what subject matter you are writing about, if your writing style is too wordy, no one will ever be compelled to read any other article written by you ever again. To avoid that, you should describe your subject matter with the least amount of verbiage possible. For example, this sentence structure is far too long: “For a complete listing of all of our products, please go to our website at www.postalservice.com and hit on the “letters” page to see more of what the USPS system can bring to your company and satisfy all of your postal service needs.” Before you scan to the next paragraph what are the exact words you should remove from this boring sentence to bring out the dynamic web content in the sentence that will make compel the web reader to actually go to that website?

How does this sound instead? “At www.postalservice.com, your postal needs will be satisfied by clicking on the “letters” category on our main page listing.” You see how that simple phrase is far more compelling than that previous sentence? By examining every single sentence on your web pages and deleting monotonous words and phrases, you will achieve that goal of having dynamic web content in every web page on your main site.

MAKE YOUR POINT NOW!
Reader fatigue is a huge problem for web readers when it comes to reading small content text on every site they come across, so make sure your text is as large as possible to avoid this issue. Another way to alleviate reader fatigue is by making your subject headings in every paragraph extremely bold and to the point.

1. GENERATE COLUMNS
When you have a text-heavy series of paragraphs in your web pages, you should consider using columns for that article because the viewer’s eyes are just focused on the downward text style in a thin column area instead of having to read the entire length of the web page.

2. SHORT PARAGRAPHS
By giving the reader most of the pertinent information involving your main topic in the first sentence, you reduce the amount of total words used to convey your main argument of your article. Try to keep a five line maximum for any paragraph in all of your web pages.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION SHOULD ALWAYS BE HIGHLIGHTED

This should come as no surprise to most web content writers out there because most of you use this writing technique on a daily basis. It is essential that you highlight your paragraph headers every time your write a new article or blog as this allows your document to be organized into different sections. When you also include your keyword phrases in the headers, you are also increasing your chances on getting a much higher search engine ranking.

A great way to generate dynamic web content is by breaking out important information into a bulleted list that is easy to read by your many web viewers. Your site visitor’s eyes will gravitate towards these bullet lists in a natural manner which will guarantee that they will read all of your relevant web content you want them to.

AVOID ALL SPELLING ERRORS TO ENSURE DYNAMIC WEB CONTENT

The final and most important way to keep all of your new website visitors from leaving your site within a few minutes is by checking and re-checking all of your web content for spelling errors. The best way to do this is by using Spell Check first, and then go back in to your web pages and examine your web content for grammatical errors as well.

Always put yourself into the mind of a new visitor to your web pages. Will he be turned off by your many spelling errors and overall shoddy web page design? If so, you need to finish reading this article and thoroughly edit every web page on your site until they are free of any spelling and grammatical errors.

What I Learned From Blogging

2008-04-18T11:12:00.001-07:00

There are moments in a blogger’s life when one gets reflective of their achievements in blogging as well as their future goals and aspirations for it. As I’ve mentioned in my profile, I have been blogging since the year 2005 and how different was blogging then! Anyway, here are some of the things which I’ve learned from blogging from the serious to the most unbelievable ones.

a. Blogging is a serious profession - I admit, one of the reasons why I blogged before was just for me to express myself and have my “personal journal” published online. Of course, those reasons have evolved mainly because of the success in niche blogging. Though I don’t have a personal blog of my own, I realize that having a personal journal would be more suitable to my secrets.

b. Wordpress, Blogger, Plug-ins and all that jazz - I never considered myself as a web programmer/developer but thanks to blogging, I know the basics in improving my own blog. Of course, complicated things could leave me spacing out for 1 hour straight but I could say that I have improved as compared to before. Can you say the same as your skills in this?

c. Spam means good - As I have mentioned before, receiving spam means only one good thing-you have traffic (albeit small). There is also a downside to it-100 comments are spam while your legitimate comment numbers only to one. If you find yourself in this position then its time to re-evaluate.

d. Blogging means community - As opposed to the notion that bloggers are geeks which lives in their own bubble, bloggers are very friendly and community-inclined. They always participate in discussions and forums and they are also the most honest persons I know especially for those who view blogging in a professional level. Interaction is the key to success in blogging and I am happy to say that most blogger do practice this.

Well, these are just some of things which I wanted to share with you fellow bloggers. Care to share as well?

Do You Blog Out of Fear?

2008-04-18T11:11:00.000-07:00

I think many blog out of fear. What do I mean?

Like all other online fads, many jump on the bandwagon because it’s what everybody else is doing. Take social bookmarking. There are so many sites dedicated to it that it would be impossible to use every one of them continuously and effectively.

I started my blog just over three years ago (February 2005). I did it out of a bit of pressure, I admit. I felt left behind. While I agree that particularly as a freelance writer I must stay on top of certain trends, there comes a time when each of us should ask, “Is this something I need to do right now?”

Following are a few guidelines for deciding, “Is this a trend I need to hop on right now?”

How to Decide if a New Trend is Right for Your Business

1. Industry Relevance: You must first decide if it is relevant to the success of your business. As mentioned above, I’m a freelance writer. So, blogging was something I needed be aware of. And now, with the proliferation of blogging jobs, it’s a revenue stream I would have been missing out on if I hadn’t started to blog.

2. Time: Consider the time investment of getting familiar with a new trend. A primary question I always consider is “How will this impact my day-to-day operations, and will it add to my bottom line?”

I have very little, if any, extra time in my day to just fiddle around. If a new technology (fad, trend) is not going to add to my bottom line on the front- or back end, then it’s not one I’m likely to fool around with.

For example, I just queried a contact today about doing an interview on podcasting. I’ve been familiar with podcasting for almost three years now, but have yet to implement into my marketing mix because I just don’t see how it can add more to my bottom line right now – at least not with some marketing muscle behind it (which I don’t have time for right now).

3. Money: Thank goodness a lot of the new technology to come along online is free (eg, blogging, videos, social bookmarking), but some of it isn’t.

Especially before you spend money on a new technology, trend or fad, ask how it’s going to pay for itself over time. If it’s not going to for a few more years, then you might want to wait a few more years to get involved with it.

4. What’s Working Now: If the marketing methods you’re employing now are meeting your sales targets, then don’t jump on a new wagon because it’s the newest, brightest, shiniest one to come along in a while.

That’s why I’m a big believer in having long and short-term income goals. If you want to increase your income by 50% over the next year and a half, then that new fad might be just the thing to get you there.

BUT, if you can just increase what you’re already doing to get you there, then why not?

Staying on top of new trends is one thing; implementing them is another altogether. Doing what’s best for you and your business does not mean jumping on every fad to come along. It means implementing only when you’re truly ready.