A blog review

There are a lot of good blogs on how to make money online? While browsing I stumbled upon a blog which truly belongs to that league. Ja Kel Daily posts all about how to make money on the web. The best thing about his blog is the consistency he blogs with. Keep it going Ja Kel, I hope you make money all the time.

Just Keep Blogging!

Today's Tips for new bloggers #2

• Netvibes
• 3-D effect with photoshop
• How Google ranks Blogs?
• Add picture link to blogger header and remove head tag
  

• Netvibes

A great great application for all bloggers. Delicious can bring together your bookmarks, mail clients can gather mails, feed readers gather feeds, video or picture search gives pictures, NetVibes incorporates them all :), very smartly and elegantly indeed. You can keep notes of the posts you want to make, contests you want to start on your blog. Their are many other features which can be added to your tabbed pages, provided by many other sites. Here, have a look at my pages and if you want them to be yours, take My Netvibes Page here.

• 3-D effect with photoshop:

Want to create these pictures:

This is pretty neat and simple. These images have been created by people applying this trick for the first time. You can also use GIMP. I am working on 3D buttons myself for the competitions I will be launching shortly. Hope you find it useful.

• How Google ranks Blogs
  

Hasn't SEO and thus Google been the centre of your interest since you started your blogs. They provide you with all the tools to setup your blog and drive traffic to your site. If you want to know how to be Google's favorites this is just right. I don't agree with some of the points like post frequency being a negative factor, but you cant always be right.

"Positive Factors:
Popularity of the blog (RSS subscriptions)
Implied popularity (how many clicks search results get)
Inclusion in blogrolls
Inclusion in “high quality” blogrolls
Tagging of posts (also from users)
References to the blog by sources other than blogs
Pagerank

Negative Factors:
Predictable frequency of posts (short bursts of posts might indicate spam)
Content of the blog does not match content of the feed
Content includes spam keywords
Duplicated content
Posts have all the same size
Link distribution of the blog
Posts primarily link to one page or site"

• Add picture link to blogger header and remove head tag:

If you designed a graphics header for your blog recently and were facing the problem of cluttering at the top of your blog, read this tips which even monkeys can apply (no offense, I did apply it :)). See my blogger header for a demo. Just a couple of steps and you would be done. You can also add GIF images which are dynamic. Also, your title header is still there for the search engines, so don't worry about the SEO.

Keep Blogging!

Today's Tips for new bloggers

I learn new things as a blogger everyday. In this basket I provide tips for new bloggers like me, as I try out new things regularly.

• Link Referral
• Blog Explosion
• MyBlogLog
• Labpixies
• Gain ranks by linking to other blogs
  
• Avoid Blogging Burnout

• Link Referral

If you are a new blogger looking for more traffic, this might do the trick. After registring you get points to review or visit a site which is converted into daily traffic. The best part is your site being displayed at the top of this site which has over 90000 members. If you login regularly your site will be in top half and if you write good reviews, you can get ranking boost. You can also get traffic through your referrals. I found it pretty useful. Please join linkreferral through my referral. Also, the search engine traffic increases, because the search engine crwals the link referral site and your site is listed there.

• Blog Explosion

Its similar to link referral, but doesnt have many members and you will find yourself visiting a familiar blog again and again, sometimes. It has some games which can help you earn points=visits. Their is no harm in joining, if you have the time. You can join Blogexplosion here.

• MyBlogLog

If you havent joined it, join now! The best blogging community I have found till now. It gives traffic instantly, as you visit new blogs and make friends. You leave your trail on others blogs when you visit their blog. Almost all the time they visit back. Also, its a great way to know your readers. Join it, its the best.

• Labpixies

I found this cool site today. It adds crosswords,news,games, clock,calculator and many other widgets to your blog in a single click. The look of the widgets is especially cool. See my sidebar for the block game widget. Its best for bloggers who have issues with Javascript. Its important that you entertain your readers while they are visitng.

• Gain ranks by linking to other blogs

Its not always the inbound links that get you ranked highr on Search Engines.
"I’m no SEO expert but all I can really say on this is that some SEOs that I know and respect argue good cases for this and that when I’ve launched blogs it is something that I’ve always done. I don’t know how much of an impact that it has had on those sites - but they do tend to do well in search engines."
Remember to use highly searched words whenever you link to something. Read the complete article "Do Outbound Links Matter for SEO".

• Avoid Blogging Burnout

Every now and then you keep publishing quality content. When you see no increase in your traffic, you lose interest and motivation. Its pretty easy to start doubting your skills when you dont see any results for your efforts. I was going through a damp patch yesterday when I came about a handy article which helps you aviod the negativity. Here are tips to aviod blogging burnout.

I will leave you with a note which helps me persist with my cause.

Tyler: Keep writing. Build up a body of work and the traffic will come. I know it’s hard to be patient but in a years time when you have a large body of writing under your belt, and the experience to go with it you’ll thank yourself.

Keep blogging. I love the idea :The best way to make yourself successful is to help others be successful. So help me in the cause.

Get a linkback to your blog

Fair or unfair? You must be knowing about White and Black SEO if you have your own blog. While surfing, I stumbled upon a blog of John Chow, a guy who got to rank 3 from 158 odd in just four days(for the phrase "make money online"). I certainly think its just grey Hat SEO. In short, I had to write a review of his blog but I just couldnt find enough of that on his site which should be the case with a number three ranked blog.
I am noone to judge whats fair and whats not. DO you think it is kind of a trickery, and is bad for the blog readers. His review, from a newspaper might look like:

John Chow dot Com is a blog that helps you make money online. He is offering to link to your blog if you review his blog.

Try Google Adsense Beta referral

Google has launched the “Adsense referrals beta program”. It is like the associate programs which are available for advertising but not exactly. Here is the announcement made:

You may already be using AdSense referrals to direct your users to Google products like Google Pack or Google AdWords. Now, you can expand the earning potential of your website even further by directing users to products and services from our base of AdWords advertisers.

See this picture from Technospot which essentially shows how this Adsense referrals beta program works:

• Whats new?

You can choose the ads you want to display by selecting the keywords.

• Advantages:

Their might be a higher payout for this program since the user is clicking the item which he wants to. This way he wont close the browser window before looking at what the content of the Ad is.

• How does it work?

See the picture above and go to the link mentioned later in this article. In three easy steps the program can be summed as:

Step 1 of 3: Select the products and keywords you want to refer.
Step 2 of 3: Customize your ad unit.
Step 3 of 3: Copy and paste the code to your pages.

The working is pretty similar and familiar if you have been using the Google Adsense referrals.

• How do I get one?

It is a beta. The invitation mails are sent to some people. You can also try to apply by going to the following link:

1. Referrals Beta Start-Up Guide

The number of trials are limited so rush to the link if you want to try it.

• How is it?

I got it today itself.

1. From the first look, it is like an associate program that gives you control over what ads or products you want to refer to unlike the previous version which just had Firefoz and some Google products.
2. It is from Google. I love Google. So, I guess its best to have an advantage of moving early and gaining some valuable experience. Go get it is what I say.
3. Google must have thought about the following things so you need not worry, I guess: Money the advertisers are willing topay, what action(s) are expected from the site readers.

Give it a try and if you have any problems, feel free to drop ina comment. Also, I would like you to share your experience with this product, making it useful for others.

Apology to the readers

I have been redesigning the blog interface to make it more user friendly and pleasant. Also, things like power cut and LAN ban in IIT Bombay haven't been a help. I apologise for the lack of posts today. As soon as(hopefully tomorrow), I am done, I will get back to finding useful content for the readers.

Thanks for the support

Basketer.

Naruto plot speculation 2

This is the second post of the naruto plot speculations series
SPOILER ALERT

At the beginning of the quest to recover gaara after he was kidnapped, ero-sennin (jiraiya) warns naruto against using a certain jutsu...it isn't anything related to the nine-tails form obviously because naruto has no control over his slipping into the nine-tails and it isn't the rasenshuriken which comes later...just wondering what it is...maybe naruto has the potential to be the next "yellow flash" like the fourth

RSS Tools for your blog - Part 2

Also, read the first part of this mini series.

In the first part of this mini series I had described how to publish and validate the feed of your blog. In this section I will discuss feed readers and how to use these data to generate autodata for your blogs.

(3) Feed Readers
If you want to generate quality content for your blogs you must get into a habbit of reading others' blogs. The best way to do that on the fly is to subscribe to many blogs' feeds. This is where the feedreaders come into picture. These provide you with a search option to find new feeds ; if you have a feed its really easy to subscribe to that field in these readers. Newsgator and Google Reader are the most popular ones. You can also use offline readers like FeedDemon.

(4) Generating data from your RSS
You can generate HTML/JavaScript to add widgets to your blog using the feeds of others or even your own feeds. The data will be updated automatically so you dont need to do any work for the data being generated. In blogger, their is an option to do this automatically( Go to Templates-->Edit Layout--> use a feed-->enter feed URL). If you are using other platforms use your feedburner accounts to convert it to html.(see feedburner instructions in part 1)
Some useful feeds for this purpose can be:

• Del.icio.us feed: If you have your bookmarks or material which you want to share on delicious; its pretty easy to generate a feed for it. See this page for more details. Now this feed can generate data for you :).
• Google Reader feed: By selecting share in google reader for some of the subscribed feed items, you can get a feed from Google. This can be used as the same way above. The Google feed has some problem with certain services. If you have faced a similar problem, do write back.

Look at the Blogger Tips-Hacks-Resources Basket for more tips