DIGITAL GUPSHUP

HOW TO VERIFY BLOGGER "SITE FEED"?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 21:53:00 -0700

f your feed is used for a podcast, you will need to make sure you're publishing a "full content" feed in order for FeedBurner's SmartCast service to pick up links to your audio files and generate enclosures for them. To verify your original Blogger site feed format is correct, follow these steps:

1. In a new browser window, sign in to your Blogger account.

2. From the Blogger Dashboard, click the Settings link for the blog you want to promote.

The Settings page for your selected blog should appear.

3. Click the Site Feed link under the Settings tab.

4. Set Allow Blog Feed to Full, if it isn't set to this value already.

5. Click Save Settings.

You should see the message "Settings Were Saved Successfully".

HOW TO BLOOGER FEED TO FEEDBURNER, CHANGE BLOG'S FEED CHICKLET LINKS ?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 21:45:00 -0700

If you are a Blogger publisher and you've decided to use its new redirection feature to tightly connect your Blogger blog and your FeedBurner feed, you may want to change the link to the FeedBurner feed you provide on your site when using features like Chicklet Chooser and FeedCount. Why? Portability. Let us explain:

Once you redirect 100% of your feed traffic to your FeedBurner feed, you get a very complete picture of your feed-consuming audience, including where it's coming from and what content it's finding most popular in your feed. That's great. But if this audience is almost entirely subscribing to feeds.feedburner.com/myexcellentcontent, they will be stranded if, for some reason, you should choose to leave FeedBurner and revert back to your original feed address or some other service.

Since we believe publishers always should be in control of their content and how it's promoted, we think you should know you have the option of promoting your own original feed address instead of the FeedBurner feed if you use redirection. For example, let's say you used the Google subscription chicklet:

The HTML our ChickletChooser service would provide you is the following example:

"<p><a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://feeds.feedburner.com/MYFEEDADDRESS"><img src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif" width="104" height="17" alt="Add to Google Reader or Homepage"></a></p>"

Assume your Blogger blog's address is http://myexcellentblog.blogspot.com. You would change the chicklet link code above to read as follows:

"<p><a href="http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://myexcellentblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default"><img src="http://buttons.googlesyndication.com/fusion/add.gif" width="104" height="17" alt="Add to Google Reader or Homepage"></a></p>"

But wait, you say. I thought this was the point - promote my feed so it gets used and I get all those lovely stats! (You said this with considerable urgency.) It still is the point, but since you're redirecting 100% of your traffic to FeedBurner, the FeedBurner feed will be used at all times. The thing is, if you ever decide to leave us, there will be no hard feelings, but more importantly none of your subscribers will be left high and dry, subscribed to a FeedBurner feed address you no longer use or possibly even deleted. By promoting your original feed link only, you make use of all of FeedBurner's features but make sure your subscribers stay with you, even if you leave FeedBurner.

To summarize: Redirect your feed, but retain your original address for the links you promote.

HOW TO Adding FeedBurner Email to your TypePad or Blogger blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 21:39:00 -0700

Once you have activated FeedBurner's Email Subscriptions service for your feed, you can easily incorporate the code to display a subscription form (or link) on your website if you use Blogger or TypePad.

To most easily add the form or link to your site, look for the following menu below the subscription form or link code box on the Email Subscriptions setup form for your feed:

Choose Blogger or TypePad, then click Go, and you will be taken to the appropriate site to complete the code widget installation process automatically.

Note: This widget feature will only work properly if you are using a standard Blogger Layout with your Blogger blog, or are using Standard Templates (not Advanced Templates) with TypePad. In both of those cases, you must manually edit your template code to insert the subscription link or form code FeedBurner provides you.

HOW TO PROMOTE FEEDBURNER FEED ON BLOGGER SITE ?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 21:34:00 -0700

One of the ways to promote your FeedBurner feed on your Blogger site is by using FeedBurner's Publicity Tools to select a "chicklet" image to display a link to your FeedBurner feed from your blog's homepage.

1. Click the Publicize tab.

A list of publicity-related services appears.

2. Locate and click the Chicklet Chooser service.

The form shown below loads into the right side of the screen:

This form contains several options for buttons that promote (and link to) your FeedBurner feed.

3. Click the radio button next to the button you want to display on your site.

4. From the drop-down select "Blogger", then click Go! to add the chicklet as a widget.

5. Blogger will open in a new window. Follow the prompts there to continue to add the new widget

HOW TO CREATE A BLOGGER FEEDS ?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 21:28:00 -0700

1. Enter your blog's web address in the "Ready to Burn?" form found on FeedBurner's homepage and at the bottom of the pages in the Blog and Podcast sections. If you plan to publish a podcast with your Blogger feed, check the "I am a podcaster" box. Click Next ».

The Identify Feed Source page should appear.

2. On "Welcome", make sure the title and FeedBurner address (URL) of your new feed are values you prefer.

The Create or Sign In To Your FeedBurner Account page should appear.

3. Also on this page, create a FeedBurner account by picking a username and password and supplying your email address.

When you've supplied all the required information on this page, click Activate Feed ». A "Congrats" page should appear.

4. Read all of the information on "Congrats", then click Next » to continue with the setup process.

5. If you selected "I am a podcaster" on the homepage, configuration options for our SmartCast service will appear. Here you can supply categories and other information for iTunes, append a copyright message, and submit your podcast to Yahoo! Search.

When you are finished, click Next ». Configuration options for FeedBurner stats services should appear.

6. On the stats configuration page, select the level of feed stats detail you want.

Click Next » to finish the setup process and enter our feed management interface.

You're now ready to make your FeedBurner feed available on your Blogger site!

Tracking 100% of your feed traffic: Redirecting your Blogger feed to your FeedBurner feed

Blogger can make sure all feed traffic for your blog content goes to your FeedBurner feed. This ensures your FeedBurner stats are comprehensive and accurate; even subscribers to the 'Original Feed' are routed through FeedBurner. To redirect your feed:

1. In a new browser window, sign in to your Blogger account.

2. From the Blogger Dashboard, click the Settings link for the blog you want to promote.

The Settings page for your selected blog should appear.

3. Click the Site Feed link under the Settings tab.

4. Type your complete FeedBurner feed address into the Post Feed Redirect URL text field. Make sure you type in your entire feed address including the "http://" portion.

5. Click Save Settings.

You should see the message "Settings were Saved Successfully".

6. Blogger will now redirect all feed traffic for your blog to your FeedBurner feed.

Getting Started with Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:49:00 -0700

So you’re interested in making money with AdSense? Well join the club. But before we get to the good stuff, we have to build the foundation. Chances are good that if you’re reading this you know what blogs are and how to create them. Good for you! You’re on the fast track to getting started with AdSense. But patience grasshoppa, we must help those who don’t even know what blogging is.

Here’s the definition of a blog from Wikipedia:

“A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.”

A blog is basically an online diary - A journal written by an author, about the author and/or the author’s interests. The great thing about a blog is there are no boundaries whatsoever. You can blog about your dog, cat, career, relationships, car, favorite ice cream, etc, etc. You have total control to be as creative as your heart desires!

The important thing about this journey is that you blog about something that matters to you. Different people have different interests and you’re no exception. Chances are good that others just like you are ready to delve into your material because they have similar tastes. Don’t hesitate to write about something you’re passionate about - just do it! (like Nike)

If you interested in learning more about blogs and blogging, check out the wikipedia page.

Creating a Blog Site

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:47:00 -0700

Google's AdSense sounds interesting to you. You like the idea of legitimately making money online with advertisements. You even went so far as to read my last post: Getting Started with Blogging! But you have no idea how to get setup - until now.

I do Web Consulting for a living (no, I'm not a full-time blogger… yet). I'd say on a scale of 1-10 of web knowledge I'm probably near a 9, maybe a 9.1. But guess what? You don't have to know squat about web design or web programming. Of course you'll have to learn some web terminology along the way but you can start at ground zero today. The great thing about blogging and potentially earning money with AdSense is that you don't have to be a web guru.

I repeat: you do not have to be a web guru to start a blog and use AdSense.

There is a wide range of blogging tools out there. Some free, some not. If you haven't noticed, I'm using a tool called: Blogger. Before this I had experimented with Typepad and even created my own (this was a few years ago when the term “Blog” wasn't exactly a household name).

Why Blogger? Well for a few reasons: 1.) It's Free! 2.) It's a breeze to setup and 3.) Google owns it. Yeah, the same Google that's helping us earn money through their AdSense program - A perfect marriage indeed.

Ok, so you have your blog topic (or maybe not but you will soon…right?) I'm going to get you hooked up to the service in no more than 10 minutes (times will vary for animals and small children). At the end of this you'll be ready to start writing up some content, free of charge.

1.) Go to Blogger and sign in with your Google account. If you don't use any Google services like Gmail you can create a new account here.

2.) Click on the “Create Your Blog Now” button arrow on the bottom right and fill in the information.

3.) Name your blog and give it an address. Make sure the name is meaningful and not too long.

4.) Choose from one of the many templates available.

5.) Your blog has been created!

Now wasn't that painless? In a matter of minutes you have reserved some real estate on the Internet.

I would suggest doing some exploring on your own at this point. Get a sense of the tools available to you and I'll go into further detail in the near future. Have fun!

Google AdSense Account Setup

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:39:00 -0700

If you've been following along, you have a good idea what AdSense is. You're also familiar with blogging and have setup your very own at Blogger. It's time to get signed up with Google's Adsense and hopefully start making some money!

Like everything up to this point (minus your personal time) AdSense is 100% free. So head on over to the Google AdSense home page.

Now simply fill out the fields provided and voila!

Google states that they can take anywhere from 2 days to a week for approval, but my experience was quite quick - a couple of hours. Google's AdSense Help Center does a great job of answering all frequently asked questions. Now that we have an account we'll be able to put the ads on our blog page!

Google AdSense Terms and Conditions (abridged version)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:34:00 -0700

In my last article you learned how easy it was to sign up for Google AdSense so we can try and generate some money from our blog. But before we go haphazardly placing our Google AdSense ads, it’s important that we understand their TOS.

Generally Terms and Conditions are quite boring. We often scroll down the long page and hit “Yeah I accept, sure I read your blah blah blah”. If that’s you (like most) then this post is for you – it’s important we understand the TOS so we don’t get our AdSense accounts banned.

Invalid Clicks

Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT click on your own ads. Do NOT encourage others to click on your ads. If your intentions were to setup your blog so your Aunt Peggy can sit on your site all day and click your ads – forget it! You’re going to get your account terminated.

Do NOT encourage your audience to click on your ads. Attempting to be slick with your ad links and say, “click these ads” or “support us” is a good way to get the boot.

Ad Placement

There are several types of ads that Google AdSense allows you to place on your site. We’ll learn more about these as we go but for now, remember these guidelines:

1.) Up to three ad units may be displayed on each page.
2.) A maximum of two Google AdSense for search boxes on a page.
3.) Up to three link units per page.
4.) Up to three referral units per page, in addition to the options above.

This site is dedicated to generating money from our blog legitimately. This is a great program and the fact that it’s free really presents an excellent opportunity for everyone. Let’s keep it that way.

Remember, this is an abridged version that touches on the highlights so you don’t fall asleep while drinking your coffee. But I encourage you to read the Terms and Conditons and the Program Policies in their entirety so you’re equipped with the proper knowledge. Heck, I’ll even provide the links on my sidebar in addition to this blog so we can all stay informed!

Google AdSense Program Policies
Google AdSense Online Standard Terms and Conditions

Placing AdSense on Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:29:00 -0700

If you answered no to any of those questions, simply follow the link to my post explaining in more detail before you continue on. Otherwise, it's time to put AdSense on our blog and start making money (with some patience, of course)!

The great thing about Blogger is it makes it dead simple to get started. First, head over to Blogger and log into your account. When you do that, it should automatically bring you to your “Dashboard”. Here's a picture of my current dashboard:

To get started, simply click on the “Layout” link on the bottom right of your Dashboard summary and you'll see something similar to this:

What you're seeing here is a high level breakdown of your web design. Most sites (like my own) are composed of a header, menu, content, and a footer (not shown in my picture). To get AdSense up and running on your blog, click any of the dotted areas that are labeled: “Add a Page Element”

Once you do that, you'll get a pop up (make sure any anti-pop up software is disabled) with many options to choose from. From here, click on the AdSense section button: “Add To Blog”. The icon is marked with dollar bills (Oh yeah!).

We're almost home...

Now you have a screen that let's you choose format options and colors. It even gives us a nice little preview to save us time later on! We'll dissect these options more in future articles, but for now keep the defaults.

Hit the “Save Changes” on the AdSense window - it should close automatically. At this point you are all set! You can click on the “Preview” button on the original page to view your changes or simply refresh your blog. You also have the ability to move the AdSense up or down - or move it to a completely different page element altogether! (Just make sure you preview your changes before you save)

I wasn't lying when I said you don't have to be a web guru to get this setup, was I? Now you have the tools setup to pull in some extra revenue (hopefully a steady stream). Well, not quite. This isn't a get-rich-quick-scheme. It's going to take some time, patience and hard work (I saw you roll your eyes). Nothing comes easy, but if you stick around we can get there together.

Blog, Blogging, Blogger, and Google AdSense

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:17:00 -0700

This is the week in review – a busy one for sure. If you’ve been following along we learned quite a lot. But the nice thing is that it didn’t take long at all. So let’s do a quick walk through, shall we?

1.) We learned a little about Google AdSense and what it can do for us.
2.) Some of us have been hiding under a rock and didn’t even know what the term: Blog meant! (hey, you have to start somewhere, right?)
3.) Next, we figured out just how easy (and FREE!) it was to setup our own blog for the world to see, with Blogger.
4.) We were excited to own a piece of cyberspace, but we wanted to start making money with AdSense. Luckily, the account setup was a breeze.
5.) Armed with a lethal blog of our own and an AdSense account was dangerous stuff! We couldn’t just go into this with our eyes close so I broke down Google’s Terms and Conditions so you wouldn’t fall asleep.
6.) After we felt comfortable with Google’s program policies, we decided to put AdSense on our blogs. And boy was that easy!
7.) Last but not least, we wanted a sound strategy for laying out our ads. We didn’t want it to look like your finger-painting-themed birthday party when you were nine – so we followed Google’s advice and put our ads where the readers can see them.

Congratulations! You are on your way to earning money with your blog. It’s not going to be an overnight success but stick around and we’ll get there. We have a lot more ground to cover such as: AdSense optimization, site content, traffic, etc. We’ll hit those next week but for now I’ll let you digest all of this.

What is AdSense?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 20:15:00 -0700

In the Getting Started series of articles (links on the right side of this page, if you missed them - shame on you), we learned a little bit about AdSense. We learned that Google AdSense could help us earn money from blogging. You probably saw the words money and blogging and feverishly read on to other articles, but hold on cowboy (or cowgirl)! This isn't a get rich quick scheme. We need to educate ourselves and today we're going to do just that.

AdSense is a free Google program that allows site owners to earn money from ads. What's great about these ads is that they're targeted to your content. The AdSense actually "crawls" your text and from there determines what ads are best suited for your website. How cool is that? So if you have a blog about cars, well you're going to get ads targeting car subjects.

Well that's fine and dandy but how do we generate money off of these ads?

I'm glad you asked. The answer is both simple and complex. I'll keep this article simple and save the complex for the future. But in a nutshell - you make money from people who click on your AdSense ads. That's it! Really!

But users have to purchase something on the advertising site before we make money, right?

No! That's what makes this program wonderful. Google's business model is brilliant - they help people make money, while making more money in the process. In layman terms: the advertisers pay Google to promote; when a user from your site clicks their ad the advertiser wins (they get additional traffic, possibly more business), Google wins (they get a big piece of the advertisers money they used to promote), and we win (we get a small piece but it's a piece that will add up over time... more on that in future articles).

There's a reason why Google is the Internet giant and AdSense is a perfect example. It's a snowball effect that helps all participants involved: Google, the advertiser, and most importantly

AdSense Options with Blogger: Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:57:00 -0700

In AdSense Options with Blogger: Part 1, we learned that Blogger gives us AdSense for Content options: ad units (text only) and link units (yep, you guessed it - links). But just as important as the ads themselves are the colors.

If you're a fan of the Boston Red Sox (sorry Yankee fans) you're not going to Fenway Park dressed in hot pink. Chances are you'll show up in the team colors - white, red, and blue. Your AdSense ads are no different - They should seamlessly blend in with the rest of your site, and lucky for us, Blogger makes that really simple.

Ok, head back on over to your layout screen, click the trusty ol' Add a Page element and click on the AdSense section. You'll see the familiar Configure AdSense screen.

Have a look at the Colors section. You'll notice a drop down list of options and ways to customize the colors.

Right off the bat - I would suggest the “Blend Template” option

In just seconds Blogger will help us blend our AdSense ads into our page. This nice option will get us 90% of the way there… we just need to do some tweaking to the colors.

Look closely at the colors presented and watch as you make changes - the preview will automatically update for you. This is a great way to fiddle around with the color scheme and get it just right. Off to the right there are a bunch of funky looking numbers and letters. Don't get scared - this hexadecimal, and is a color combination to tweak your ad just right.

So how do you know what hexadecimal values to put in there? I'm glad you asked. Head on over to: Hex colors where you can find every color imaginable (even hot pink!).

There you have it! Configuring AdSense color combinations with Blogger is easier than knocking the Yankees out of the playoffs (sorry, I couldn't resist).

That wraps up this two-part series on AdSense Options with Blogger. Now go earn yourself some money!

AdSense Options with Blogger: Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:54:00 -0700

Blogger offers some simple “out of the box” solutions for placing AdSense on our sites. We'll learn eventually that these aren't the only options, and that's what makes Blogger so incredibly flexibile (dare I say… sexy!). Today though, we're going to look at some of the simple built in options that Blogger provides so we can start making money with AdSense.

After you log into your Blogger account, head on over to the Layout screen and select the “Add a Page Element”. If you have no idea what I'm talking about (I get that look sometimes), you can easily catch up by heading over to my prior article: Placing AdSense on Your Blog.

Once you have the layout options open, go ahead and click on the “Add to Blog” under the Adsense section.

You're presented with the all-mighty AdSense Configuration screen.

When you pull down the Format list, we're given many AdSense options with all sorts of size configurations.

Out of the box, Blogger gives us three main AdSense options. In the Google AdSense world these are better known as: AdSense for Content. In a nutshell - they're ads that are text and link driven (There are actually images too. Those don't come out of the box but we'll see how we can do that in the near future). They allow us to put ads on our site that will target the content we have written about. (Don't know much about AdSense? No problem, check out: What is AdSense?)

Here's what a sample ad unit (300 x 250) looks like:

And here is a sample link unit (160 x 90):

It's important to note that Google's Program and Policy states we can put up to three ad units and three link units on any page. Besides, we wouldn't want to bombard our audience with ads everywhere. We want to make money from our blog but we also want to create an enjoyable experience with quality content.

Play around with the different format options. Get a feel for the different shapes and sizes that Blogger AdSense options have to offer. We'll take a closer look at the color options for our AdSense in the next article.

Using a Custom Header Image with Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:47:00 -0700

Today we're going to take a break from our money making talk to discuss an important issue I found with Blogger. Yesterday I attempted to use my spiffy new logo (shameless self-promotion coming up) for Earn
Money to Blog.

Well long story short, there seems to be a known issue when uploading your header image for people using a custom domain. What does that mean exactly? Well, instead of something like: http://earnmoneytoblog.blogspot.com, I purchased a custom domain name: http://digitalgupshupallinone.blogspot.in. Anyway, today I'm going to show you a way to get around this annoying issue so you can use a custom image for your header too!

First things first - You're going to need a hosting service where you can upload your custom image. Here at Earn Money to Blog, we use free tools to get our work done. My suggestion for image hosting is Photobucket.

Head on over there and sign up for your free account and then upload your custom image.

Next, go to your Blogger account and into your layout (click the Template tab). Once you're at the layout screen, go ahead and click on Add a Page Element. Instead of clicking on the AdSense options like we have in the past - we're going to add an HTML/Javascript module to our layout.

Before you pass out like Marie Osmond did on Dancing with the Stars last night (my girlfriend makes me watch it - I swear!) And here's a YouTube link in case you missed it: Marie Osmond Passes Out on Dancing with the Stars.

Oh hi there! Welcome back... let's continue.

You don't have to know a lick of HTML to get this done, I promise. I'll tell you exactly what needs to be done!

Now open up a new tab (or window) in your browser. Go to the Photobucket site and login with your account if you aren't there already. Scroll down a little ways and you should see the image you uploaded.

Go ahead and copy the text box that's labeled: HTML Tag. Once that's done, paste it into the Configure HTML/Javascript form on Blogger. Your form will look like this

We're almost done. Stay strong here, because I'm going to have you edit some HTML. It's going to be dead simple - just watch.

Three quick tweaks that needs to be made to our HTML:

1.) The section that starts: “a href=http://blahblahblah” … remove everything starting with http all the way to the .com, and replace that with a link to your home page. This will allow users to easily navigate back home by clicking on your header.
2.) Remove the “target=”_blank” completely. This will prevent your page from popping up a new window.
3.) Change the “alt=”Photo Sharing blah blah” to something descriptive about your site. Mine is simply: Earn Money to Blog.

Save your changes, position your custom header image in the layout to the desired position… and you're done!!

Blogger is an awesome service, but it's not without it's flaws. But hey, it's going to help us earn money blogging so we'll deal with the hiccups along the way. Until next time - go earn yourself some money!

Creating a Custom Domain for Your Blogger Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:38:00 -0700

There are a lot of factors involved that will help us monetize our blogs. If you registered with the free Blogger service (check this out if you don't know how), creating a custom domain name is a snap. And doing so will help you in the long run with: branding and ease of use. We don't want our readers to type in:

First off - you're going to need a domain name. Here at Earn Money to Blog, I like to preach about our free tools. But I have some bad news for you - this is going to cost you - and big… $9.99/yr (can you sense my sarcasm?) Definitely not a requirement for earning money with our blogs but a small investment that's well worth it.

Head on over to Go Daddy and sign up for an account.

For this article, let's just assume you created the domain name: superapplepies.com. You just can't wait to take the shinny wrapping paper off your new domain name and apply it to your Blogger blog! Let's go log into our Blogger accounts and at the dashboard, click on Settings. You'll see the familiar tabs and menu options - We're interested in the Publishing link.

Your picture may differ than mine, but here is what my Publishing page looks like:

f it looks a bit different, try poking around for an “Advanced” link. That should do the trick.

Notice to the right there is a “Need a domain?” option from Blogger. Google has actually “tried” to make life easier for you by allowing you to purchase one right here (they actually partnered with the Go Daddy service that this very article talks about!). This may not be a bad idea (if you didn't already sign up at Go Daddy yourself), however, I had mixed results with this in the past. And besides, signing up at Go Daddy ourselves will give us more flexibility.

Before you go typing your new domain name in there… WAIT! We need to make some quick configurations over at our Go Daddy account to point the name to the Blogger service first.

Log into your Go Daddy account if you aren't already, and click on the My Domain Names option.

You should see your new domain listed there. In this example you would see superapplepies listed. Simply click on the link to drill down into your domain options (note: If you don't see your domain name right away, don't panic. Sometimes this process can take a few minutes).

You're now at the Domain Control Center. It all seems pretty overwhelming for some of us, but I'm going to point out the option you need to select called - Total DNS:

Again, if you don't see that option there - relax… go talk to your loved ones for a little while, they miss you.

Back Already?

Now you're sitting at the Total DNS Control Panel. Here we're going to make one simple change - we need to edit the “www” in the “Host” column, in the “CNAMES” table.

Change your “Points To” value to match the picture above: ghs.google.com, by hitting the edit button.

Save your changes and switch back over to your Blogger account. We left off on the Publishing screen and now we're going to wrap up the process. Under the Advanced Settings, in the Your Domain section, enter your new domain name.

Save your settings and you're done! Now the only downside (what? I have to give it to you straight) is that your domain name changes won't happen automatically. In some cases it can take up to 48 hours, but my experience has been less than a couple (yours may vary).

Congratulations - you now own a piece of the pie (pun intended) with your custom domain name. Well, we did have our space before but now it's more personal. And earning money with our blogs is all about our personal touch on the World Wide Web.

Microsoft Announces Surface Tablet Running Windows 8

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:29:00 -0700

At the recent press event at Los Angeles, Microsoft confirmed its own line of tablets running windows 8 RT and pro versions under the badge name of ‘surface’. As of now Microsoft plans to enter the tablet market led by Apple’s ipad and a flood of android tablets with two separate 10.6 in models, one sporting an ARM based processor by NVIDIA and the other one with the old x86 architecture rocking an i5 processor.

For those of you who have been in the dark, windows RT is the version of windows 8 designed to run specifically on ARM SoC’s. Windows RT will not have any backward compatibility, supporting only apps from the Microsoft store designed for the metro interface. On the other hand windows 8 pro is a full fledged OS supporting both metro apps and will be compatible with x86 based software for which the market already exist.

Windows RT surface tablet measures just 9.3 mm thick and weighs under 1.3 pounds. The remarkable feature that makes it stand out of the crowd is the magnetically attached cover which unlike Apple’s counterparts is just not a protector but more. Turns out its a full multi touch keyboard and a trackpad. As for expansion you can treat yourself with a HDMI port, a USB 2.0 and a microSD port. Storage the surface comes standard with 32 or 64 gb internal storage and a 31.5 Wh battery.

If you are looking for something with more woof, you can have the intel based surface for windows 8 pro tablet, which packs a larger 42 W-h battery, an Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor , USB 3.0 ports instead of 2.0, and a choice of 64GB or 128GB of storage (double the standard offerings of the RT Surface). You will also be treated with a 1080i display but comes wrapped in a package that’s 13.5 mm thick and weighs 903 grams and it all comes optional with a pen input.

The pricing and availability on both these tablets has been kept in the dark for now.

Those looking for a complete Windows experience in the form of a tablet will obviously head to the Windows 8 Pro model and those content with new, Metro-style apps engineered for Windows on ARM will likely save a few bucks by selecting that Surface. A lot of quarries remain unanswered like the RAM and specs of the processors. That and more will have to wait for now.

What Exactly Was “I Am Rich” Application?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:26:00 -0700

A controversial $999.99 app called “I am rich” was added by a developer and then was removed after eight people bought it. Well this sounds insane but yes it did happen.”I Am Rich” application was created by developer Armin Heinrich, who said that eight people had purchased it before it was taken off iTunes. The
buyers include six people from the United States and one each from France and Germany.

The app does nothing apart from displaying a glowing red gem on a user’s iPhone screen for the sole purpose of proving to onlookers one is of the moneyed class and that they have enormous heaps of cash. Various blogs were able to get the official description, however, which reads in part:

“The red icon on your iPhone or iPod Touch always reminds you that you were able to afford this. It’s a work of art with no hidden function at all.”

On February 23, 2009, CNET Asia reported a “conceptually similar” application, I Am Richer for Google’s Android smartphone operating system. The app was released on the Android Market for the cost of US$200 which is the maximum limit of any application present on the Android Market.

With the same name, the I Am Rich that was released on the Windows Phone Marketplace on December 22, 2010 was developed by DotNetNuzzi. An application which is equally useless as the original, costs US$499.99 which is the maximum for any application available in the Microsoft application store or market.

We just thought that we always report applications that you can download and that help you make things better, but there are also equally useless things out there which cost alot. We hope this has been an interesting read. If you also know such trivia do let us know.

Google Soon To Introduce A Competitor For Siri?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:25:00 -0700

Siri is probably the best assistant anyone has, and only God can foresee how many proposals it would get. Jokes aside, it seems like only yesterday that we saw Tim Cooks introduce us to this lovely feature. Since then it has become almost a fashion quote to be talking to your phone. However, since then we have
discovered about a million other voice assistants, none more than the fancy S-voice in the Galaxy S III. Yet Siri has been the undisputed king so far.

However, according to The Wallstreet Journal, Google are working on its own Voice assistant. there is no reported release date or what exactly is this assistant but we do feel that it could be announced as early as the Google I/O in the coming week. However, for S-Voice we know that Samsung had a tie up with Vlingo, but this planned assistant may well work on just about every phone and may have its servers with Google only. This indeed maybe much better than having to download various third party applications such as Vlingo, Iris or Voice Commands which either are ad supported or just not that good. However, there are also suggestions that theis voice assistant maybe only available for those who will be running the next Android OS expected to be named as JellyBean.

How To Convert Your Facebook Profile Into Pinterest

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:24:00 -0700

Pinterest is a virtual pin board styled social networking site which is mostly used for sharing photos of interior design, fancy dishes and elegant designs. It is basically a place where you put up stuff that u think would be praised by the others. The well ornate houses or the extraordinarily garnished dishes are frequently put up on
this website.It has garnered a lot of popularity and recently has more than 80% women users in it which is staggering looking at the overall ratio on all social networking sites. Pinterest has left behind LinkedIn and StumbleUpon in terms of traffic (Alexa traffic rank). Theme-based image collections can also be created and managed by using Pinterest which is again an amazing thing and would interest the women a lot.

Friendsheet is a Facebook app through which your Facebook will look alike as a Pinterest account. It combines the layout and design of Pinterest with the photos of facebook friends. This application shows all public Facebook photos in a compact panel. This is extremely similar to how your experience would be like watching Pinterest board of your own pictures on Facebook.

Each photo is displayed with Captions and comments and the photos can be uploaded using Friendsheet. Facebook CEO who recently married Priscilla Chan liked the Friendsheet facebook application, which was launched in January 2012. So it does seem like that the application has full support of the Facebook hierarchy and we could look forward to the development of this application over a period of time. Also for all those who use Facebook just to browse through pictures of their contacts will find this application rally intuitive, useful and fun to use.

All About The Widget-y Nokia Belle Update

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:21:00 -0700

The early 2011 triggered the start of Symbian Belle with a video showing leaked version running for N8. Since then Symbian Belle has been synonymous with the name Nokia. On August 24 2011, it was officially launched for three smartphones namely Nokia 603, Nokia 700 and Nokia 701. The Symbian Belle had various advanced features of Symbian Anna which was the earlier update. Some of the changes were free
form resizable home-screen widgets, replacing the previous 3 home-screens with 6 home-screens, pull-down notification bar similar to Android and few likely ones. So now with this update pretty much rolled out for all the supported phones, what exactly is new here and if you should go ahead and download the update, let’s find out.

The new range of Nokia Belle (renamed from Symbian Belle) gives users an eye-catchy design and high-performance experience with virtual keyboard and flexibility. The latest leap with Belle was made with the launch of Nokia PureView 808 (yes that’s the phone with 41megapixel camera). The Feature Pack-1 was made public in March and then Nokia Belle update was availed to the Nokia 603, 700 and 701, thereafter launching PureView 808.

The Feature Pack 1 proffers improved entertainment, and personalization options. Boosting the entertainment feel with Dolby Headphones and Dolby Digital plus, the user gets the best of music, games and movies. A great pack of widgets transform the personalized experience with almost 20 new widgets. No, this doesn’t make your phone slow rather you have a faster speed. With the newer Nokia Maps version and HTML 5 support your browsing experience is escalated. The more you look for the more you find. Nokia Belle is here to surprise you with many new things.

The list of widgets includes a multiple variety of clock widgets, analogue and digital clocks in big and small sizes transparent and semi-transparent patterns. A big analogue clock is a main widget within them. There is also a new classy Tribal pattern with the clock widget. There is a Mechanical clock with a stunning look. With the clock widgets utility widgets are also available. There is the Visual Bookmark widget which bookmarks your previously visited links. There is an RSS feed widget to let you read and see all your followed RSS feeds from BBC news. Also it gives you a widget which records you mobile data and is called as the Mobile Tracker Widget. Drop down notification calendars, date-time widgets, Contacts, different sized music widgets and weather widgets are also counted among them. With the newer version of Nokia maps the new updated Nokia Maps widget is also found with this Nokia belle Update. There is a setting to make widgets go offline and save the battery power.

I hope all the new features have motivated you to get this update on your device since it most definitely worth it. Not only it makes the UI a lot more interesting but also user friendly. Do let us know if you have any queries or suggestions regarding the Belle update, we would be glad to help.

Watch Microsoft Unveil It’s Tablet Surface Online Now

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:17:00 -0700

We recently covered the newly launched Microsoft’s extremely hyped series of tablets called the Surface. You can read our entire report on the tablet here. However, if you happened to miss out on the unveiling last night
and would like to watch Microsoft show off their latest venture in the tech world, you can watch the entire re run of the event online now.The video features our all time favorite Steve Ballmer too who is very well known for his rather energetic stage performance especially since the ‘developer developer’ fiasco.

Here is the entire keynote of Microsoft’s launch of the Surface. It is definitely worth a watch:

What Exactly Happens On Facebook After You Click Report

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 18:15:00 -0700

We all have at one point or another have encountered some stuff on facebook that was not suppose to be there. Could be someone pretending to be a friend or just posting random bullshit about your best friend. The point is that the Report button on facebook is probably used just as much as the like or share button. But privacy has always been a concern for people on Facebook, i mean you are sharing some of the most intimate information with the internet through facebook so the chances of things going awry is very real. So what
exactly happens when you click the report button?

Well Facebook has been pretty transparent about its working, and staying true to their ways, they have published a detailed guide to what exactly happens when you press the report button and where exactly and who registers your report. This is what Facebook published for its viewers:

“There are dedicated teams throughout Facebook working 24 hours a day, seven days a week to handle the reports made to Facebook. Hundreds of Facebook employees are in offices throughout the world to ensure that a team of Facebookers are handling reports at all times. For instance, when the User Operations team in Menlo Park is finishing up for the day, their counterparts in Hyderabad are just beginning their work keeping our site and users safe. And don’t forget, with users all over the world, Facebook handles reports in over 24 languages. Structuring the teams in this manner allows us to maintain constant coverage of our support queues for all our users, no matter where they are.

In order to effectively review reports, User Operations (UO) is separated into four specific teams that review certain report types – the Safety team, the Hate and Harassment team, the Access team, and the Abusive Content team. When a person reports a piece of content, depending on the reason for their report, it will go to one of these teams. For example, if you are reporting content that you believe contains graphic violence, the Safety Team will review and assess the report. And don’t forget, we recently launched our Support Dashboard which will allow you to keep track of some these reports.

If one of these teams determines that a reported piece of content violates our policies or ourStatement of Rights and Responsibilities, we will remove it and warn the person who posted it. In addition, we may also revoke a user’s ability to share particular types of content or use certain features, disable a user’s account, or if need be, refer issues to law enforcement. We also have special teams just to handle user appeals for the instances when we might have made a mistake.

Content that violates our Community Standards is removed. However there are situations in which something does not violate our terms, but the person still may want it removed. In the past, people reporting such content would see no action when it didn’t violate our terms. Starting last year, we launched systems to allow people to directly engage with one another to better resolve their issues beyond simply blocking or unfriending another user. Of particular note, is our social reporting tool that allows people to reach out to other users or trusted friends to help resolve the conflict or open a dialog about a piece of content.

It is not only our User Operations Team that provides support to the people who use our service but also our engineers who build tools and flows to help you deal with common problems and help you get back into your account faster. On some rare occasions, users may lose access to their accounts by forgetting their password, losing access to their email or by having their account compromised, to help these people we have built extensive online checkpoints to help these people regain access. By using online checkpoints we can authenticate your identity both securely and quickly, this means there’s no need to wait to exchange emails with a Facebook representative before you can restore access to your account or receive a new password. Be sure to visit www.facebook.com/hacked if you believe your account has been compromised or use the Report links to let us know about an impostor Timeline.

And it is not only the people who work at Facebook that focus on keeping our users safe, we also work closely with a wide variety of experts and outside groups. Because, even though we like to think of ourselves as pros at building great social products that let you share with your friends, we partner with outside experts to ensure the best possible support for our users regardless of their issue. These partnerships include our Safety Advisory Board that helps advise us on keeping our users safe to the National CyberSecurity Alliance that helps us educate people on keeping their data and accounts secure. Beyond our education and advisory partners we lean on the expertise and resources of over 20 suicide prevention agencies throughout the world including Lifeline (US/Australia), the Samaritans (UK/Hong Kong), Facebook’s Network of Support for LGBT users, and our newest partner AASARA in India to provide assistance to those who reach out for help on our site.

The safety and security of the people who use our site is of paramount importance to everyone here at Facebook. We are all working tirelessly at iterating our reporting system to provide the best possible support for the people who use our site. While the complexity of our system may be bewildering we hope that this note and infographic have increased your understanding of our processes. And, even though we hope you don’t ever need to report content on Facebook, you will now know exactly what happened to that report and how it was routed.”

You can also view the entire detailed infographic here.

Promoting Your Blog with StumbleUpon

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 05:21:00 -0700

We have learned that monetizing our blogs involves: 1.) Creating a blog with the Blogger service and 2.) Learning how to implement Google AdSense to earn money. However, these are just the first steps in the overall process. Making money to blog takes time, but I'll show you how to speed up the process and start driving traffic to your blog in just a matter of minutes.

Arnold Schwarzenegger once said:

You can have the best product in the world, but if you don't know how to sell it, and if you don't, if you don't have anybody who can sell it for you or tell the public, it's a waste of time, the whole thing.

We can't argue that point Arnold (by the way, I loved your role in Kindergarten Cop) - and that's why today I'm here to talk about one of the many, many ways you can promote your blog and its content with a great service called: StumbleUpon.

I first stumbled upon (no pun intended) the service a few years ago and I was instantly hooked. In short, the service allows you to browse great websites with ease, which is specific to your tastes. So if you like technology, you're going to get pages about: hardware, software, etc. It's a brilliant concept, and eliminates those times (we all have) when we want to surf the Internet for topics we like, but don't know where to go - StumbleUpon does that for us!

So how does StumbleUpon help promote our blogs?

The answer is simple really - you connect with other stumblers through your StumbleUpon home page. Here's mine as of today (As you can tell, I love Borat!)

If they are interested in the content that you stumble, they'll add you as a friend and in turn will pass the word on. This networking will help promote your blog by adding your website into the stumble rotation. So now all of your friends and your friends, friends will be exposed to your blog content!

StumbleUpon makes the process of using its service to promote our blogs super simple with some great tools. For one, if you're using Firefox or Internet explorer, you can't live without the toolbar.

The integration of StumbleUpon into your browser is what makes it so popular. The options here (which I'll leave for you to explore) allow visitors to easily add your blog as a favorite to their StumbleUpon home page. This seamless integration helps to increase your blog network, promotion, traffic, and - generate more money from your blog at the end of the day.

Another must have for bloggers is the Link to Your Profile button. They come in many different flavors and it's just a simple copy and paste of the html into your blog post or blog navigation menu.

What these buttons do is make the experience for those who stumble your page much more enjoyable. If they like your article or site in general, they can simply click on the StumbleUpon button to add it into their rotation. Piece of cake, eh?

Making money from our blogs is a lot of fun. Promotion tools like StumbleUpon just make the experience so much better. So what are you waiting for? Get Stumbling!

Oh, and here's my handy StumbleUpon button incase you want to add me to your rotation today!

Link Your StumbleUpon Profile to Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 05:14:00 -0700

In Promoting Your Blog with StumbleUpon we learned how the StumbleUpon service can help drive traffic to our blogs. While the word traffic makes most of us cringe in our every day, offline lives. We know that traffic in the online world is our friend - and ultimately one of the most important keys to making money with our blogs.

Today I want to show you how easy it is to create a link on your Blogger blog that will direct your reader to your StumbleUpon profile. This will increase the value of your blog experience with your readers and will help promote, and generate more money from your blogs content down the road.

Navigate over to StumbleUpon and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Click on the Tools & Buttons option in the footer menu

The StumbleUpon Buttons & Tools page gives you access to some really nifty features. But today we're most interested in linking our blogs to our StumbleUpon profiles to help spread the word. Go ahead and click on the Link to Your Profile.

On the Link to Your Profile page, you're presented with several options. Choose one and copy and paste the HTML inside the text box directly to the right. Experiment with a few and see which one you like best -- You can always come back to this page and select another if your first choice isn't ideal.

Now that you have copied the HTML, log into Blogger and head to the Layout page. Here we're going to Add a Page Element and select the HTML/JavaScript option.

Simply paste the HTML you got from StumbleUpon into the form and save your changes. That's it!

From here you can easily move around the element in your layout until you're satisfied. My personal recommendation is that you keep the StumbleUpon link near the top so it's visible to your readers.

In just a matter of minutes we were able to link our Blogger blogs to our StumbleUpon profiles. This process is going to go a long way in helping us: 1.) Network with other bloggers, 2.) Drive traffic to our blog, and 3.) Help us make money from blogging by pulling in readers.

Hope you enjoyed this article. Until next time… go earn yourself some money with your blog!