Wednesday, June 30, 2010

New Share Buttons For Blogger Users

Blogger.com just released a new feature on blogger users. The new Share Buttons of blogger are just so simple that can make article sharing a lot easier than you think.

If you are a Google user, you will certainly love this set of share buttons.

Gmail - Easily share blog articles and send it to your friends using Gmail.

Blogger - If you want to blog more and expand a particular article a little further, you can just simply click the blogger button.

Read more...

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Blogger Buzz: Make Money With Your Blog and Google AdSense-Tips on Effective Adsense Monetization

Adsense is one of the best way to make money with your Blogger blog.

However, I have to make it clear that not all adsense ad can effectively generate income. There are some techniques that you need to do in order to maximize your adsense income.

Here are some effective ways in making Adsense monetization effective:

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Monday, June 28, 2010

How Can SEO Kill Your Content

Undoubtedly, search engine optimization or what we call SEO is really helpful in making a huge amount of traffic.  There is no successful blog that was not search engine optimized. 

But what is the limitation of optimizing your post?

A post can become a turn off when a blogger starts applying all he knows about search engine optimization in one single post.

We all know that Search Engine Optimization is about putting meta tags, keywords, using the right title, repetitive keywords, etc. A Blogger kills his own blog when he is tempted to place all kinds of meta tags and reuse unnecessary keywords in just a single post. Doing this can definitely lose the voice of your writing.

Voice is one of the most important elements of a successful blog. Period.  - Joy Tanksley

To understand the voice of your writing, try to do this very simple activity.

Go to your room and get a recorder (maybe a MP3 recorder). Get someone to listen to you. It can be your younger brother or someone else.  Start talking to him as if you are teaching him while you are recording it. Don’t let him interrupt you as you try to become a teacher to him in as short as 10-15 minutes. Tell him to just listen to you. And just go on with the flow.

Did your younger brother listen to you? Are you getting his attention? After 10-15 minutes, stop and go back to your recorder. Listen to it. If your younger brother is listening to you, it is most probably because he understands what you are saying and he believes that it is important. Furthermore, he recognizes your voice and he know he needs to respect that. 

This is exactly what we want to do in blogging. Your voice needs to be heard. Though there is no literal voice that can be heard, your writing must be compelling enough for your visitors to stay.

Here are some tips in putting a voice in your blog.

1.    Try to talk normally.
Use almost the same words just as you physically and literally talked to your younger brother.
2.    Use the lingua franca. Use words that are normally understood by most of your readers. While conventional writing is important, you have to remember that blogging is communicating to your readers. It is important that you use the same language, a language that is understandable.
3.    Just go on with the flow. Do it normally. Imagine yourself to be talking to literal people. Don’t be over-acting. Just let it flow.

But why SEO freaks loses the game?


They will lose the game simply because too much SEO’ing can affect the grammar, form and voice of your article. Those who are trying to fool search engines will never be successful in blogging. Blogging is not all about money making nor SEO’ing, it is about delivering a high-quality useful content.

Just come to think of this, why would someone stay in your blog when all he is reading are repetitive and unnecessary keywords that do not make any sense?

People use and search the net for information.

They did not arrive to your website by accident. They made the click believing that you have their information that they are looking. So what if they have found your blog? Was it useful to them?

Remember this, most of your blog-visitors arrive in your blog because they are looking for information, they want to learn something, they want to listen to you. Giving them bunch of useless information does not only destroy your integrity and credibility as a problogger, but also gives them the reason to unsubscribe and forget everything about your blog.

If you want them to stay, give them the reason to stay.

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Friday, June 25, 2010

Helping Your Audience: The Key To Blogging

Undeniably, many bloggers blog in order to have a decent source of income which is not bad.

However, the idea of earning something from blogging has become the source of all hypes. Yes, there is evil in blogging.

The Bible clearly said,

The love of money, is the root of all evils.  - 1Timothy 6:10

There is really nothing wrong in earning something through blogging. There should be a return to your efforts. You spend time, effort and money. You don’t want it to be an outright expense. Monetizing your blog is just fair.

However, if you just blog all because of money, I believe that you are in the wrong track. It just won’t work. Go and try to read the posts of successful bloggers, there you will see that there is no such thing as a “get rich quick scheme” in blogging. If you see some promises like this on certain bloggers, then most probably it is one of the internet hypes.

If you really want to earn money, first, you need to forget all about money. Think about what topics that your audience will love because it helps them.

You gain more subscribers when they trust you. When they know that you deliver the things they need. They will love you by being someone that helps. Remember that having a good number of subscribers is very essential for successful monetization in the future. And to do this, you need to attract them to subscribe by giving them the reason why should they subscribe.

Most successful blogs that I know were blogs that really delivers what their audience need.


Let me give you an example. I already considered myself to be a blogger and I considered it to be a profession and not just a hobby. And so I need some good copywriting tips. I need to improve my writings; I need help to make me a better writer.

As I try to search it over the net, I found the blog named “copyblogger.com”. It has a very simple theme yet because this blog delivers what I need, I bookmarked it, subscribed to their updates, and even post questions and comments once in a while. To make things clear, I became a part of the community of probloggers.

Though I struggle a lot in writing, this blog just have the power to keep me going. It uplifts my inner being to show what’s inside me. To share what I know by putting it in words. And this is exactly what your blog should deliver, helping your audience, helping your niche.

I listed below four things that you can do to make your blog a blog that helps.

1.    Know your audience – First and foremost you need to know your audience. You must know what they need. You must know what they want. For example, if your target audience is bloggers, then blog about blogs, write things that will help them like giving them some tips in effective blogging. If your audience is Christian leaders, then write something about becoming an effective leader. Or something that will help them in their ministry.

2.    Be the expert of the niche -
You are the blogger; you are the so-called expert of that particular niche. If you talk about planting, then you are supposed to know more things about planting compared to ordinary people. You have to be the guru of the niche. Even if you do not know everything, but at least you should be more knowledgeable than the rest.

3.    Recommend what you have tried – One of the most common pitfalls in blogging is recommending something they haven’t tried themselves. It is important that when you recommend a certain product, first you should have tried it yourself. This is the way

4.    Answer your audience’s inquiries –
Granted that you have delivered what they need but they have some inquiries about it, and so they emailed you or left a comment on your blog. Try to answer them back. Tell them what they need to know.

Blogging isn’t just about money. It should be helping your audience. It should be delivering what it is about. You need to make a good content that helps.  

Read more...

Thursday, June 24, 2010

How to Stop Spam Comments

I am running my religious blog The Disciplers on a self-hosted Wordpress. My blog has been gaining a good momentum of traffic for the past three months. Most of my visitors came from organic searches. But as it gain a good amount of traffic, it is also gaining a good amount of spams.

Before, I used to delete and monitor about 4-15 spams a day, but now, I used to review about 30 spams a day. I hate to see these spams flooding my spam comment section. I am tired and frustrated of deleting them, and reviewing them one by one.


Why do people spam and how they do it?

Some bloggers who spam wants to gain one way links from other blogs. One way links are very essential in gaining page rank from search engines. Most of these frustrated bloggers places a mediocre (sometimes it’s still related) comment containing the link going to their blogs.

They do this with the hope of gaining popularity believing that those websites and blogs where they comment were set in “dofollow”. While in reality, many of professional bloggers and web masters nowadays apply the “nofollow” code on their blog and website.

Frustrated Internet Marketers spam to market their products. Many of them were really bad spammers. They use software bots to automatically detect blogs and automatically leave spam comments. Most of these spams were about Viagra, sex products, dating sites, etc. There are hundreds of them. And this is what I hated the most, my blog is a religious blog and they post comments all about sex.

How to Stop Spam?


There is no 100% solution of stopping these spam comments especially if spammers enter the comments manually. However, there is a good way of minimizing it for more than 90%. As I try this method, I almost get rid of spam especially those nasty spams from auto bots.

The solution that I am talking about is using a “Captcha” plugin or script or whatever you call it. What I installed in my blog is “reCaptcha”. A Captcha is a small program that identifies to whether the commentator is a real human or a computer (bots). Captcha uses (most of the time) a distorted images of characters where bots cannot read while humans can.

I personally used reCaptcha on my blog. It is owned by Google and is completely free just like all other Captcha plugins that you can see in Wordpress.

I know that this process of protecting your blog and website is not new. In fact, Blogger.com has been using this as a built in feature on their blog platform. And as you can see, most blogspot rarely get spam. But let us accept it, most bloggers don’t use Captcha so that they won’t hinder people to put comments on their blogs which love interactivity.

The only downside that I am seeing from Captcha is the interactivity of blog commentators. Most commentators don’t like to have any difficulty in commenting. They want to have a smooth way of commenting.

However as a blog owner, you will have to choose between securing your site from unwanted and unrelated spams and links which can definitely drag you to the bottom of page rankings or getting some real commentators who really value what they read? The choice is definitely yours.

But as for my personal opinion, placing a Captcha plugin is one of the best ways to protect and value your blog and website. Furthermore, it can also help you get real valuable links that can really help your blog. From about 30 spam comments a day, I rarely get 1 spam comment now.

Read more...

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Wordpress 3.0 Thelonious Released

I just want to keep this post short and simple. Wordpress 3.0 was finally released a few days ago. This release is one of the historical releases of Wordpress. The old default theme was already retired and here comes the new Twenty Ten default theme. This release was named after Thelonious Monk.

Those who are new to Wordpress will surely like this because the default theme Twenty Ten comes with some customizable feature without touching the codes.

It comes with a lighter interface, 1217 bug fixes and feature enhancements. There are more features in it than you ever know. It also includes some security feature enhancements.  Why don’t you go ahead and watch this video for more information.



If you are hosting your own Wordpress blog, don’t forget to update it because there won’t be a new release for a while. For those who are on free hosting with wordpress.com, Twenty Ten is already available for your use and test.

You can see the whole release here.

Read more...

Monday, June 21, 2010

Reasons Why Blog Fail

In 2007, there are already 70 million blogs out there in the World Wide Web. Today, there could be more out there. But more than half of those blogs failed to deliver what is expected from them.  What do I mean by the word fail here?

Failed to have a good amount of traffic. Most blogs barely have 50 visitors a day. Blogs, just like websites, their life blood lies on its traffic. I know that there are lots of bloggers who blog for personal use only. But let’s face it, we blog and post it in World Wide Web to share it to other people, and all other reasons follow like having extra income, establishing credibility, making a name, building a brand etc.

Without traffic, our blog is useless.

Failed to give its intended purpose. Blogs has its intended purpose. All bloggers think of sharing what he knows to the world. His purpose is to be the expert on that certain topic. But when there is no traffic, the very purpose of its existence has failed. The blog is useless.

Here’s 5 reasons why blogs fail.

Lack of Focus. One of the main issues that a blogger should resolve first is the focus. Just like all other websites, it needs a theme, a topic, the central thought of the blog. It is what you are going to deliver, it is what you want your readers to know about you, to be the expert of that topic. If it is blogging, then talk about blogging and all other things that surrounds it. If it is about faith, talk all about that faith. If it is about being a father, then talk about fatherhood.

Avoid diverting yourself to other topics unless it is related. If you are after of monetization, don’t worry, there are ways that you can best monetize your blog without getting off topic. For example if you talk about faith, something about spirituality, don’t sell your readers about money making ebooks. Sell them something that will enhance their faith.

Getting off topic is not only bad for the search engine but also for your monetization process. It is a turn off for your readers whenever you offer them something that is totally unrelated with the topic they subscribed for.

Lack of Consistency. Blogging needs consistency especially when you are just starting. Consistency means having a good average rate of posting every day, every week, or every month. It has to be on a regular basis. It’s difficult; we all know that, but “no pain, no gain.”

Blogging is not an automatic income generating machine that you just set it up and that’s it. It is not an overnight process to get a good reputation in the World Wide Web. It takes time. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a good number of posts.

Give your readers a good deal of information they are expecting from you. Just as they regularly read newspaper or watch news on TV on a regular basis, the same thing that you need to apply for your readers. It needs consistency. Blogging once every blue moon will never lead you to a profitable blogging.

Lack of Strategy. Just like any other profession, blogging needs some strategy. Different niche may have different strategy. Successful bloggers apply strategy which depends to their goal. Strategy usually guides the blogger to what course of actions has to be taken.

One of the first strategies that have to be implemented in blogging is to know your readers. Simply ask the question to yourself, who will be my readers? Get that picture in mind and place yourself in their place. Imagine yourself not as a blogger, but a reader of your blog. What are your expectations? What are the things you want to read from your blog?

Monetization also needs strategy. What monetization models are you going to apply to your blog? Identify it and weigh it carefully. Some monetization process can definitely hurt your blog if you are not careful enough.

These are just a couple of topics on strategy. I suggest that you read and study some more. Read outstanding blogs like: www.copyblogger.com and www.blogussion.com.

Lack of Quality Content. Just like all other professional bloggers, we will definitely agree on this one. We need to produce good quality content.

SEO is good, but it will not make your blog popular by itself. It needs to be meaty, it needs to be something of value.

“SEO can’t, by itself, make a popular blog. First, you need remarkable content, and then you optimize it for search engines. Skip the remarkable part, and all the optimization in the world won’t help you. –Jonathan Marrow “

SEO can bring a good amount of traffic to your blog. But what’s the use if your visitors do not stay? Give your visitors a reason to stay.

Now this is just an observation, simply try to visit some of the most popular blogs. Try to observe how long is their content? How meaty are they? Are you convinced that you need to follow their blog?

Lack of Long Term Plans. One of the best advices that I’ve got through reading other blogs is this: “Write TIMELESS content.” Well of course blog is originally a “web log” a sort of diary that you update from time to time. But just like in any other book, write something that will last for a life time. That even if we die, the truths of what we wrote will continue live.

It is like asking yourself, who will be reading your blog for the next 3-4 years? Who will continue to stick with you and follow what you are saying?

For about 3 years now observing the whole blog world, I seldom follow a blog. I only bookmark and follow those that I believe have excellent content. And I can feel it in myself that I need to follow them because they are the reliable gurus on this matter and I am their disciple. In the same way, your articles and your content will be a summary of something what you have learned from them. And if possible, develop it into a more reputable post.

Try to work on these main points and you will see a huge difference on your blog in comparison to other blogs

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Friday, June 18, 2010

7 Reasons Why I Blog

Since from childhood I always want to write. I don’t have the skills in writing and I struggle in English a little bit. But I really want to become a writer someday. I want to express myself through writing. I want to let the world know what I feel, what I think.

Then a few years ago, finally, I had a constant access to the internet and I became interested in website making.  At first, I was really busy trying to discover on how to make a website.  While having my own self study, I found out the latest trend on web development, Blogging.

Yes, blogging. I was more than happy to know that there is now a way for me to express myself. To give myself a freedom to write sharing all my interests in life. Sharing something that I know, something where I am the expert.

And that’s not it. I also found out that I can even monetize my blog which gave me deeper interest into it.  This tells me that I can earn more than the royalties that I can get from writing a book.

You don’t have to be a professional writer to be a blogger. After all, blog was designed to be an online diary. But nowadays, this online diary is being used to boost both online and offline businesses.

Here are few things that you can do in blogging:

1.    Express yourself. There are probably thousands of bloggers out there that use blogging to simply express themselves.
2.    Practice writing. Probably you are not a born writer just like me. So what? You can still write as long as you understand it. And why not practice writing by blogging?
3.    Help you make a book. As time goes by, as you write and express yourself consistently, you will find out one day that you can actually print and author your own book.
4.    Source of extra income. Why not make your personal journaling an extra source of income. It’s like hitting two birds with one bullet. You journal and get some income.
5.    Establish yourself to be an expert of something. Blogging can reveal where you are an expert. It can build you up as a person.
6.    Build a business. If you can have extra income out of it, you can definitely build a full blown business out of it. Talk about your business on your blog. You can build a good list of prospective customer out of it.
7.    Increase your knowledge. Blogging can definitely increase your knowledge on things that you write. As you blog, you will build your own community that has the same interest and as they contribute their own knowledge through commenting, you yourself is increasing your own expertise on that particular thing.

I don’t know if you love blogging. As for me, I already became addicted to it. It’s just so fun writing everything you know while other people read and thank you for sharing it. Blogging did not only fulfill my dream to be a writer, it also builds me up to be a better person.

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Thursday, June 17, 2010

How To Increase Your Readership

The readership of your blog is one of the measures your blog on how important and meaningful it is. Marketing aside, you will see the importance of a blog literally on the number of comments that is being generated.

Statistically, you will see how long your visitor stays through Google Analytics. The bounce rate is the statistical data that tells how long your visitors stayed. The higher it is, the shorter your visitors stay on your blog. This means that you will have to decrease that high rate.

How?

Here are some ways to do it:

1.    High Quality Content –
High quality content does not only increase traffic, but also encourages your visitors to read more. The more information you provide the more reason for them to stay.

2.    Plugins That Promotes Commenting – There are several plugins that you may want to install which are very effective in encouraging your readers to leave a comment.

  • Yet Another Related Post (YARPP) – This displays the most relevant posts in your blog based on your post tags.
  • Subscribe To Comments – Enables the one who commented to simply follow the comment thread in a certain post via email.
  • CommentLuv – My favorite. You can read the whole article that I have made for this great plugin here: Why Install a CommentLuv Plugin

3.    Internal Linking – This is done by simply quoting and linking to some of your previously written posts. This is very effective especially if your content is highly relevant.

4.    Comment to Other Blogs –
Commenting to other blogs is also exposing yourself to the whole blogging world. Try to leave comments to blogs that has CommentLuv plugins and those blogs with high commenting rate. In this way, more fellow bloggers will be able to see you with a link going to your blog. This will be a win-Win situation for you and to the blog where you commented.

These are just simple ways that you can do to increase the readership of your blog. Remember, the more repeat visitors you have, the more encouraging it is to write and blog.

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Wednesday, June 16, 2010

The Technical Thought Of You: How To Customize Your Blogger CommentLuv's Skin

CommentLuv was originally created for Wordpress users. When this is still new, I think I'm probably one of the first 2,000 users of this plugin. I installed it in my blog The Disciplers. This one might not be too important for those who really do not know the main use of this plugin. So here's the four main reasons why you need to install CommentLuv plugin to your blogger.

1. Encourage your readers to comment more. Why not? This plugin automatically place a link to the latest post on your visitor's blog. He just need to be sure that he filled up the website form for him to take advantage of this one.

2. It gives more discussion among the commentators. CommentLuv encourages to comment more. More comments, more discussion.

3. It widens your network as a blogger. As you see the links in the comments of your visitors, you will  probably be inclined to follow that blog. And there is nothing wrong in contacting the owner of the blog that you followed if you like his posts too especially if it is directly related to your site.

4. Increases Your Blog's Page Rank. If the blog being commented to is a "dofollow" blogs, then this will take out all the hustles in typing your link in this blog.

So? What are you waiting for? The link below will direct you to the instructions on how can your integrate CommentLuv with Blogger.

The Technical Thought Of You: How To Customize Your Blogger CommentLuv's Skin

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Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Blogussion Give Away

Just a quick line here, I just want to inform everybody that there is an ongoing contest until June 30, 2010. The prize is the licensed theme of Blogussion for Wordpress.

As we all know, Thesis is just an awesome Wordpress add-on integration which is being used by thousands of professional bloggers around the world. But you might wonder how in the world this young kid blogger was able to improve the designing capability of this awesome software.

Blogussion Theme is $44.95. But how about getting it for FREE???

I know a contest that you might want to join.

You can CLICK HERE if you want to join!

Now to give you a picture of what's inside this theme, here are some snapshots:


Practically, since it is based on the Thesis Framework, this theme is similarly awesome.

Again, this cost $44.95. But you can get for free if you will win the contest. But for easy access and without much-a-do, you can simply click the button below:

blogussion

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Monday, June 14, 2010

Measurement of a Good Hosting Company

efore you start your blog, it is very important that you host your blog in a reliable hosting company. There are basically hundreds of hosting companies out there, but only a few offers a satisfactory service. Barely a handful of these companies can satisfy your need as a web master.


When I first started on pro blogging, I decided to go to the cheapest webhost that I know in the Philippines. To my dismay, I landed on one of those poor hosting companies who does not even mind emailing their clients for trouble shooting. Believe me, it caused me more troubles to salvage my 3 month old blog than starting a brand new one.

So what's the measurement of a good webhosting company? I already made a detailed lecture on this in one of my ebooks that I guess will be helpful for you to read. But here's a short list of the things that you may want to consider before deciding.

Client Support

This is the most important factor that you may want to consider. This is because client support will be the back bone of your blog or website when something goes wrong. Keep in mind that there is no blog or website that is exempted from crashes, errors, virus, and all other threats. Your client support will be your help line when something goes wrong.

As for my experience, my first webhost responds to my questions after 3 days. I usually have problem with my website especially when they started to transfer my files to another hardware. My website is usually down for a week every other week. It is was indeed a nightmare for any webmaster.


So I decided to move to another webhost. This time, I got a far better one. Even during holidays, the owner of the company himself will replies to my inquiry if his employees are not available.

Here's the tip that you don't want to miss. This is worth trying if you find a hosting company and is planning to work in it. Try this; try to send a technical question concerning webhosting in relation with the services they offer. If that hosting company replies within 24 hours, try it again for the second time. If he replies again within 24 hours, you probably have scouted a good hosting company. On the other hand, if that hosting company responded beyond 24 hours, then that company is probably a owned by only one person, or have a very poor service.

Important Technical Features to Consider
Capacity – Let us put this in this way, any file that is made by the computer or through the computer consumes a portion of memory and stored in your hard drive. Similarly, websites are composed of files which uses hard drives. The only difference is that, if you are hosting your website using a hosting company, these hosting companies provides a limited portion of the hosting company's harddrive.

Bandwidth – Bandwidth is the amount of data being downloaded every time a visitor access your blog. Usually hosting companies measure it by month. For example, the hosting company says that you have about 2 Gigabite bandwidth a month. It simply means that when you have tons of visitors visiting your website and your bandwidth already exceeded what was required, other visitors will no longer able to access your website until the next month. Therefore, as time goes by and your website gaining readers, you would likely need to consider upgrading your hosting account.

Platform Supported – There are many kinds of platforms out there. There is Wordpress, Blogger, Drupal, Typepad, etc. Not all hosting companies support all platforms. But most webhosting companies support almost all of these platforms. You have to remember that platform is not actually necessary to make a website, but platforms does help a lot in making your life easier in making your blog and website beautiful and easier to use.

As for my experience, I strongly suggest Wordpress since it is the one that I have been using. There are more platforms out there. So simply just choose what seems best for you.

On the other hand, there are hosting companies that do not use the regular platform, instead, they provide their own platform and gives their clients real good deal of tools in website making especially in SEO tools which is very essential for every website.

Here are my highly recommended Web Hosts:

Hostgator Hostgator is probably the most well known cheap Web Host in the net. It supports a wide variety of platforms including Wordpress. There are hundreds of professional bloggers who uses Hostgator.

Site Built ItI ONLY recommend this if you are working on a Website other than a blog alone. Site Build It is easier for you to use if you are building a Website. But it will be a very technical job for you if you only want a blog and want to install Wordpress.

The advantage of this however is that, once you have set up your Website (which is far better than just a blog) you can also set up a blog using its own platform. Please note that they do not support Wordpress.

Aside from that, Site Build It literally provides EVERYTHING you need to have a website. It maybe a little expensive at the first look, but believe me, it is actually the CHEAPEST for it has all the things you need for a website. Such include Autoresponder, platform, email sign up, auto url submission, etc.

You get more than just a "site builder." You don't need to worry about looking for separate hosting, paying for a separate keyword research tool, handling site submissions, integrating autoresponders, etc., etc. See the full list of features here -- pick the most relevant ones for you and your reader.

Read more...

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Official Google Blog: Blogger Template Designer now available to everyone

Good news to Blogger / blogspot users. The template designer that was first used in draft.blogger.com has now been fully integrated in Blogger.com. You can now fully customize your blog the way you want it.

You can choose from several blog designs plus you can customize 2 or 3 columns the way you want it. There are lots of customization choices that you will really like. For years, this has been a great set back from Blogger users. They have boring designs and a very minimal customizations. But this one is a great leap of Blogger.com.

All I can say is congratulations to Google for doing this. I think all is lacking is a more SE Optimization options similar to Wordpress.

Official Google Blog: Blogger Template Designer now available to everyone

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Saturday, June 12, 2010

My Blog Extreme Ezine

If you love reading my blog, I’m sure you will also love reading my Ezine. This is basically the best way to get the latest tips and tricks in blogging and website making.

This is where I share all the things that I know and learned from 2 years of blogging and studying how the internet works and how can it change our lives. No hype included, I will be sharing here tips on how can you best optimize your blog may it be a Wordpress or a Blogger. I will also share some few tips about money making and how can you best use your blog for it.

  • Receive the best tips and updates on blogging.
  • Be updated and increase your knowledge about Web 2.0.
  • Know how you can make money online using your blog.
  • Make a full time job out of your part time job.

These are the goals of blog Extreme.

Subscribe now to Blog Extreme and see first hand just how much the “Real Deal” is. This is how you witness how powerful the FREE can actually be!

Simply enter your email at the Form below!!!

Enter your email address:


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Friday, June 11, 2010

How to Add Adsense Within a Post In Blogger

Blogger made it easier to embed Adsense using the gadgets. But they don’t have the automatic feature in embedding Adsense within the post. What I don’t like with this method is that, your blog really looks like a “NEWBIE” blog. We want our blogs to look like a professional blog while earning a good deal of income with the most effective monetization model.

It’s easy to add Adsense on the sidebar, in between posts, and even above the posts. But we want more than that. We want to ad Adsense within each post pages. Not in the archives, not in the home page, but within the post pages.

Fact: Most blogs who have used Adsense effectively places Adsense within the top and side portion of the posts below the header line.

With this, I tried my best to have a little research on embedding Adsense within the post matched with the text wrapping of the content of the post. Now, this is very tricky because not all methods of embedding Adsense worked for me. This is why I am very eager to make a post on this so that you can try it for yourself if this can work for your template.

Disclaimer: This method worked for me. If you follow this, it’s completely up to you but I don’t have any responsibility on your blog.

Step 1. Log to Your Blogger Account and Back Up Your Template.
First things first; back up your existing blog. You can do this by simply following these instructions:

1.    Log-in to your blogger account.
2.    Click  Design
3.    Click Edit HTML
4.    Click Download Full Template

The Download will automatically start and save it to your PC. Please note that it is just an xml code. It’s not a virus, but it is composed of codes containing the template of your blog. After downloading you can simply check it by using Notepad or Gedit.

Step 2 Get the Ad Codes and Parse It
. Open a new window and go to www.google.com/adsense. Login to your account and set up the best Ad that you want. I recommend that you use 300 x 250 px Ad within the content. Once you set it up, copy paste the codes to Notepad or Gedit (which I highly recommend than Notepad)

Now you need to parse the Ad codes. You will have to open a new window and Google it. But here’s the link that I used for parsing:  http://www.blogcrowds.com/resources/parse_html.php
Copy paste your Ad code to the space provided and click “Parse”. Your new code will look like this: 




Step 3. Add some codes. What I mean is, you will have to add a div tag codes to wrap it within the post. But if you don’t want to wrap it, leave it as it is. But I love to wrap Ads within the post. It gives more beauty and have a more professional look.  So your new code will look like this:


Note: Some blogs recommend other methods like modifying the CSS codes. But this one works for me.

Step 4. Embed the codes to your blog. Go back to “Edit HTML” (DON’T FORGET TO TICK THE EXPAND WIDGET TEMPLATE) then follow the instructions below:

1.    Ctrl-F. This will open the “Find Bar”
2.    Type in:   data:post.body
3.    Press Enter
4.    Click Next, until you find the “last”  data:post.body
5.    Once you find it, copy paste the code that you have parsed with the div tags just before the

In my case I have this code:

 Therefore you need to copy paste the parsed Adsense code in between to look like this:



Click “Save Template”

That’s it. You will be able to see your Adsense wrapped within the post.

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Thursday, June 10, 2010

Characteristics Of a Good Blog

After browsing and having my own little research, here are the things that I found as the characteristics of a good blog. May you find this helpful.

Search Engine Friendly

A good blog should be search engine friendly. Though Site Build It would say that blogging is less than a website due to some reasons, and one of those reasons is about Search Engine ranking, I would say that time have probably changed.

Today, there are hundreds of blogs now that ranks well on Search Engines. Some are even better than websites. It is because many blogs now looks like a website, and some are even more highly optimized than websites. So I believe that Search Engines now have respected blogs as well as they respect the real websites.

Easily Navigated

Have you seen a blog that is hard to follow due to poor navigation system within the blog? Visitors should easily see what to browse. Navigation bars should invite your blog visitor to click more, not just the ads but the content itself.

I find this a challenge especially in my early years of blogging. I was torn between the two; whether or not to place an ad, or navigation bar. Now I finally understand that between a nav bar or an ad, nav bar would turn out to be a more important one because it encourages the visitor to stay a little longer within your blog.

Open For All Commenting System
Perhaps this one depends on really on the purpose of the blog. There are blogs that were really intended for members only, while there are blogs that are open for general public.

If you have a blogspot.com blog, I would recommend that you go to Settings and Click Comments, and make sure that you highlight beside “Who can comment?” the “Anyone”. This will encourage your visitor to place some comments on it freely and without a hassle. And before I forget, also check that it was set to “Always” beside the “Comment moderation”. This is to guard safe your blog against SPAM.

Possess the Real Good Content
As the old blog gurus said, “Content is the King”. Good content accompanied by SEO means more visitors. Having the real good content means repeat visitors and more subscribers. There are thousands of blogs out there that were mainly made for their own selves and not for anybody else.

Some were made out of one purpose, “MONEY”. Well, blogs can be made for that, but real good content can produce more of that. If your content is helpful to people, it attracts more readers, subscribers, and Search Engines.

Monetized

I added this one because I believe that there should be a payback for all your labor. It’s tiring to work on something that does not pay you back. It’s hard to pursue a business that does not have any profit and all the more if it did not even produced a single cent. Why should you continue blogging if it can’t even pay your hosting and domain bills?

The idea of blogging is, enjoying your life writing about things that you love the most, while at the same time earning for it.

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Monday, June 7, 2010

How To Install Sexy Bookmark Plugin On Blogger

Sexy Bookmark plugin was originally created for Wordpress. And many Blogger users find this as a better social bookmark plugin than Sociable plugin. So, as a reslt, Blogger users made a way to install this. But it requires little technical skill.


 It is challenging to install this in Blogger since you will be dealing with codes… AGAIN… But you don’t have to worry because it is doable.

But just a note, not all themes are compatible with this process. Especially that some themes does not use the code:  


Here's the link for the detailed instruction: CLICK HERE

Hoping that you will be successful in installing this great Social Bookmarking plugin.

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Friday, June 4, 2010

How to Make Blogger Template

Blogger is probably one of the most popular blog platforms out there. For so long, I was puzzled how do Blogger users customize it or make a new theme. I find it more difficult to work on the codes of Blogger compared to that of the Wordpress. However, with the help of some good tools online,  I finally able to customize and make a whole new template out of it.  

For quite some time, I really envy some real good blogger templates. Unfortunately, before I find it hard to customize my blog the way I wanted because codes are not for everybody.

If you really desire to monetize your blog and make a whole new template where you seem best for your blog, I strongly recommend that you use Draft Blogger (www.draft.blogger.com).

What’s new with this tool?

Instead of working with the codes, you will now be working with WYSIWYG platform. All you have to do is to login in www.draft.blogger.com with your Blogger login details that you use in accessing your Google account. Then click “Design”, then click “Template Designer”.

The next thing you do is to customize everything from the main theme of your blog, to the arrangement of your Page Elements. You can also choose the how many columns and its arrangement on your blog. Now to give you an overview, here’s the list of the things that you can do with draft blogger:

•    Choose from 15 main designs.
•    Customize how many columns should your blog be.
•    Delete and add Page Element sections on the columns.
•    Choose backgrounds.
•    Customize the look and feel of your blog.
•    Do exactly what you can do with Blogger platform like posting posts, customizing page elements, monetizing etc. plus more.



Literally speaking, what was added from the Blogger platform was the ability to customize and even change the template to something that you really want. And I believe this is one of the most exciting things that have been developed for years. Now, you really don’t have to worry anymore if you want to customize your Blogger blog the way you want it.

With this new tool, you will definitely have new heights of your blogging experience.

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About This Blog

This blog is a portfolio of knowledge about Money Making Online and Blogging. It is full of tutorials and helpful tips on successful blogging and making money online.

To start with, I highly recommend that you read 31 Days To Make A Better Blog.

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