Dec | 16 | 2007

Blog Themes: Examining Your Capabilities and Motives

Posted by Guru as Design and Themes, Monetization, Writing One of the main considerations when choosing your blog theme is your motive. If your motive for blogging is your own pleasure and don't care whether your blog becomes popular or not, whether your blog earns you profit or not, and whether people will love what you write or not, then choosing a theme is not a problem. You can choose whatever theme you like or not even stick to anything at all and you will still have accomplished your goal - blogging and enjoying it. However, if you are conscious about the numbers or blogging for monetization purposes then ...

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Dec | 14 | 2007

What Should I (Not) Write About: Topics in an Oversaturated Market

Posted by Guru as Design and Themes, Monetization, Writing Last time I mentioned how important choosing a topic is. I also mentioned that on my next post, which is this one, I'll be discussing how to find a blog theme that suits you. However, after having reread an old blog post on Blogging in an Oversaturated Market I realized that summarizing the flowchart he gave on whether you have what it takes to blog about certain topics will be more useful. According to Randfish of SEOmoz there are certain topics that your should NOT even consider blogging unless you pass certain requirements. So before I start explaining ...

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Nov | 28 | 2007

Get Read: Flaunt Your Best Posts

Posted by Guru as Blog Tutorial, Design, Templates, Tips Regular bloggers know that even if you might consider yourself a relatively good writer most days you'll be churning out pretty ordinary pieces - good but not spectacular. The are days though when you find yourself in the groove and come up with something that readers absolutely love. It doesn't matter what your blog is about. This happens to all writers, whether you write a gadget blog or are into poetry. The question now is not whether you have great posts in your archive but if they're easily searchable. When it comes to blogs the common format doesn't take into ...

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Oct | 30 | 2007

Why A Good Blog Template is Crucial

Posted by Jaren as Blog Tutorials News, Design and Themes, Templates Blog Templates make or break us plus aside from the fact our content, but a good blog theme is crucial. I recently did a post on the QuickStop titled"Blogging Sarcasm" and the number 2 of my list is this : 2. Pick the most weirdest templates with the weirdest colors or better yet make your own â€œWeirdâ€ blog template, less experience you have the better. Yes that was a joke, I was just try to make fun. After all blogging is supposed to be fun.. right? But to redeem myself, I'm telling you that a good blog template is crucial, a well designed ...

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Oct | 16 | 2007

Is Your Blog W3C Compliant?

Posted by Guru as Design, Design Features Last night I checked my personal blog's code hoping I can proudly display the W3C Validated Button. Since I use Blogger and do not really do anything to clean up the code (beyond adding Alt-tags to the images I embed) I wasn't surprised at all to find that my blog contained lots of errors - 851 Errors to be exact. Of course it was still a bit disappointing but as I said, it wasn't a big surprise. Since I do not employ any web designer after all and Blogger offers a really easy to use and free service than ...

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Oct | 05 | 2007

Alt-Tags: For Spiders and the Visually Impaired

Posted by Guru as Design Features, Images, Marketing and Search Optimization, SEO Features Lots of people underestimate the importance of Alt-Tags. Even though SEO experts time and again stress the importance of Alt-Tags many still do not bother with it at all, or if they use it, do not consistently do so. To be honest, I belong to the inconsistent group. Alt-tags ARE very important. SEO-wise the absence of alt-tags will ensure that your images and other embedded media will NOT be indexed by spiders since they will be unable to determine the actual content of each embedded element. Being a parent of a child with special needs though, I am very sensitive about ...

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Aug | 22 | 2007

Add pictures to your Blog

Posted by Jaren as Blog Tutorial, Creating a Blog, Images, Tips, Writing Here's a cool blog tip. Try add pictures relevant to your post to make it more appealing and more attractive to other readers. If you can add you own homemade video the better. Pictures add dept to your posts makes it more exciting and more true. Although an overload of pictures on your post may seem overkill so limit it to just 2-3 pictures. But you can still go as many as 5-10 pictures If it's about photography. Also add your own personalized logo or your picture and tell something about yourself. Advertise yourself : state your strengths, hobbies or anything ...

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Aug | 16 | 2007

Marketing Your Blog: The 4 Ps Continued (Pricing and Placement)

Posted by Guru as Design and Themes, Marketing and Search Optimization, Monetization, Promotion Pricing - Pricing is not an issue when it comes to blogs. We all know that blogs can be read by anyone for free, which is one of the reasons why they are so popular. What you can do though is offer value added services to those interested. You can offer special articles that tackle specialized topics in depth and make it accessible to subscribers for a fee. Make sure though that you always price everything reasonably and give your subscribers their money's worth. Placement/Distribution - Placement, in the traditional sense, is not really pertinent when it comes to marketing blogs. ...

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Aug | 10 | 2007

Marketing Your Blog: The 4 Ps (Product)

Posted by Guru as Creating a Blog, Design and Themes, Marketing and Search Optimization The use of blogs as a marketing tool is increasing in popularity. The funny thing about blogs though is that whether you are using it to simply promote a product, service or company or are promoting the blog itself it is still very important to market the blog properly to get lots of traffic. In short, the marketing tool needs to be marketed! There are so many ways to market a blog. However, to simplify things let us go back to the basics of marketing and tackle the 4 Ps one at a time. If you do not know the ...

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Jul | 26 | 2007

Where to Get “Supporting Blog Content”

Posted by Phillip as Blog Tutorial, Images, Tips As bloggers, it's our responsibility to come up with original and informative articles. However, our pen (or keyboard, that is) do fail us from time to time, and we need inspiration for our blog posts. A good answer to this problem would be the earlier Blog Tutorial on where to get more blog topic ideas. So, youâ€™ve pinned down the core concept of your blog post, which built upon your very own sentences, opinions, and experiences. Now, you just need that piece of quotation, that descriptive photo, that matching video â€“ blog content that supports your core idea and words. ...

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Design and Themes

Is Your Blog W3C Compliant?

Last night I checked my personal blog’s code hoping I can proudly display the W3C Validated Button. Since I use Blogger and do not really do anything to clean up the code (beyond adding Alt-tags to the images I embed) I wasn’t surprised at all to find that my blog contained lots of errors - [...]
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Software and Widgets

Wordpress Plug-ins

If you blog using Wordpress and can’t do something that you want done like adding Sphere-related content at the end of your blog posts you might be surprised to find out that there are already plug-ins available that make it happen.
To find good Wordpress plug-ins all you need to do is search for â€œwordpress [...]
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Reviews

A Friend In Need

I’m helping out my friends from the UA&P - IShareHappiness Blog Team.
Whenever you feel pessimistic, angry, troubled, frustrated, and depressed â€“ what have you â€“ you need someone to talk to. Someone who could help you be more optimistic and help make you feel that there is hope. Sometimes itâ€™s hard to talk to someone [...]
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Monetization

Making Money Through Consumer Generated Ads

As I mentioned in my previous post today I will be suggesting some ways you can still profit by joining programs such as Pay Per Post and yet ensure that your readers don’t get turned off.
In my opinion the only way to really do this is by making sure that your blog entries stay [...]
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Marketing and Search Optimization

Building your blog brand step by step

Building your blog’s brand does not need to be difficult. However, when it comes to branding you should always remember to exert effort to be consistent with the image you wish to portray or you’ll end up with confused, turned-off, and/or skeptical readers. Branding inconsistencies will make it obvious that the image you’re putting up [...]
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