How to Make Your Blog Load Faster

The speed at which your blog loads is critical to attracting more readers to your blog. If your blog takes a long time to load, many readers may leave your blog before they have the chance to read it. Here are a few tips and tricks that will help your blog load faster and attract more users:

Posts
Your blog's load time can be affected by the number of posts you display on your main page. You can easily edit the number of posts displayed of the main page from the Settings | Formatting tab. You can then select the number of posts you want to display on the main page. We recommend displaying 10 or fewer posts on the main page.

Third Party JavaScript and Links
For optimal blog load speed, we recommend using Google/Blogger widgets, JavaScipt and links. However, if you need to use third party JavaScipt and links, your blog will load much faster if you put all JavaScript at the bottom of your blog. If you have third party JavaScript and links in your sidebar, put them in at the bottom of the sidebar.

Images and Media
The more images, videos and other multi-media you have on your blog the longer it will take to load. However, images and other multimedia are important to attracting users to your blog, so it is important to optimize the load speed of your images and media. Here are a few tips to increase the load speed of your media:

• Decrease the size of your images or use thumbnails that link to the full-size image.
• If you use third party images, consider uploading them to Picasa Web Albums via the Blogger post editor.
• If you have a large number of images to display, you can upload all your images (from a vacation or event) to a Picasa Web Album and link to the album in your post or sidebar.

Suggestions :

• If you've added any custom CSS to your blog, make sure you put it at the top of the page.
• The most important content of your blog that catches readers attention should load the quickest. To help you identify which items are taking the longest to load you can use Stopwatch. To use Stopwatch, enter your blog's URL into the text box and click "Start StopWatch". Stopwatch will then open your blog in a frame and will record the time it takes for everything on your blog to load, including images, videos, widgets, etc. Take note of the items that take the longest to load and modify them appropriately using our suggestions.

Source : Google Support

No Script Security Addon Moxilla Firefox

The best security you can get in a web browser! Allow active content to run only from sites you trust, and protect yourself against XSS and Clickjacking attacks. NoScript Firefox extension provides extra protection for Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey and other mozilla-based browsers: this free, open source add-on allows JavaScript, Java and Flash and other plugins to be executed only by trusted web sites of your choice (e.g. your online bank), and provides the most powerful Anti-XSS protection available in a browser.



NoScript's unique whitelist based pre-emptive script blocking approach prevents exploitation of security vulnerabilities (known and even not known yet!) with no loss of functionality.

Choosing the Right Social Bookmarking Widget for your Website

Social bookmarking widgets have really helped reduce clutter on web pages.

Not long ago, it was not uncommon to find bloggers putting a dozen different icons under their blog posts hoping that people would click these buttons to spread their content on the web. But as the number of social sites grew on the Internet, these numerous buttons were replaced with all-in-one widgets that not only offered more features but were easy to maintain as well.

share icon The idea is that instead of confusing your site visitors with icons of 16 different social bookmarking sites, you show them a single Share icon and they can choose the social service they want to use to save, share or bookmark your content.

The three most popular social bookmarking and sharing widgets on Internet are from Share This, Add This and Add to Any. Another service that’s relatively new but worth a mention is Tell a Friend.

Before we actually compare the features of these services, take a look at the graphic above to get some idea about the appearance of these widgets. Or you may visit this dummy page and try out any of these social sharing services.

AddThis.com

AddThis gives you complete control over the appearance and layout of the widget. You can arrange the icons in a single vertical column or put them in a horizontal strip or, if you are comfortable with CSS, you can even go for more complex hover animations.

In addition to sharing your web pages on social networks, your site visitors can also use the AddThis widget to print content or for adding the page to their browser bookmarks.

AddThis provides several analytics reports so you know what content is getting shared and what social services are most popular among your visitors. And there’s an option to add your brand name to the widget as well.

Almost every US government website (include the Whitehouse blog) uses AddThis for social sharing.

ShareThis.com

One of the unique points about the ShareThis widget is that remembers what you share. That means if you vote for a story on Digg or share a link on Twitter or stumble some page, the service will auto-save a log of all this activity into your ShareThis account. The sharing widget is available as a bookmarklet as well and this is handy for browsers like Google Chrome that don’t support add-ons.

On the publisher side, ShareThis is the only service that will allow you site visitors to share content through SMS text messages in addition to email and AIM. Though the default look of the ShareThis widget cannot be changed, you can choose which social services should be available inside the widget and their display order.

Like AddThis, ShareThis too provides detailed analytics so you can find out what people are sharing and how.

AddToAny.com

There are at least 50 different social networks and bookmarking websites on the Internet so how do you decide services that should be included in the sharing widget on your website? For instance, delicious is the most popular bookmarking service but some of your visitors could also be using Diigo or Mister-Wong so what do you do in this case? Show them both or toss a coin and pick one?

Well, the AddToAny button provides an excellent solution to this very problem. The service automatically detects social services that your visitors use and places them first in the widget. The detection mechanism is pretty good and I guess it does this by reading the browser history of visitors.

Another advantage of AddToAny is that it automatically uses your Google Analytics account for reporting. That means if you have the Google Analytics code on a page that also uses the Add To Any widget, the sharing statistics of that page will be collected just like your other Analytics data.

The layout of the Add To Any widget isn’t customizable though advanced users can hide individual tabs or even change the color scheme using CSS hacks.

Tell-A-Friend.com

With Tell-a-Friend, your site visitors can share your content with their IM buddies on Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL and MSN/Windows Live Messenger. You can rearrange the tab order in the widget and also choose which social services should be part of the individual tabs. The service also offers a paid option incase you like to brand the widget and email message with a custom logo.

For some reason, the TAF widget on the dummy page isn’t working in IE 8 or Firefox 3.5 but I used the one on NDTV.com and their email sharing feature is pretty impressive.

Here’s what I would suggest:

If you are looking to customize the widget heavily or plan to use your own social bookmarking icons so that the widget on your site looks a bit different from the rest, AddThis is a perfect choice.

If you want to offer readers an option to share content via text messages or need a widget that is extremely easy to setup and also looks elegant, go with ShareThis.

The Add To Any widget is again a good choice because site visitors get to see the service they frequently use right on top but the email sharing feature in this widget will open in another window.

Tell-A-Friend is the only service that offers sharing via popular instant messaging clients, the widget also includes a rich HTML email client so visitors can add notes to their shares but the free version of TAF doesn’t offer analytics and the widget UI can be a bit confusing for new users.

Source : www.labnol.org

Firefox 3.5 makes browsing faster, easier and more fun

The just-released version 3.5 of Firefox is a winner, offering significantly faster Web browsing, better tab handling, a host of interface tweaks and, like just about every other browser on the planet, a "porn mode." If you already use Firefox you'll want to upgrade right away. If you're not a Firefox user, this version represents a very good opportunity to give the browser a test run.

For many people, the browser wars are all about one thing: speed. There's no doubt that version 3.5 of Firefox is significantly faster than version 3. Pages load noticeably more quickly for a number of reasons, not least because Mozilla built a new JavaScript engine called TraceMonkey for this version of Firefox.

How much faster is open to debate. Mozilla says it ran the industry-standard SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, which measures how quickly browsers render JavaScript, on versions 2, 3 and 3.5 of Firefox, and asserts that the newest version is more than twice as fast as Firefox 3 and more than ten times as fast as Firefox 2 on the test. Other testers have reported similar results.

Of course, rendering JavaScript quickly doesn't necessarily mean that all Web pages load faster. Microsoft, for example, argues that for most Web pages, other kinds of speed-ups are more important than rendering JavaScript quickly. I'll leave that debate to Microsoft, Mozilla and other browser makers. But putting aside any speeds-and-feeds specs, I can tell you that from the user experience, Firefox 3.5 is lightning fast -- it seems to me about comparable to the recently-released Safari 4.0 for the Mac.

Fast Browsing with Aple Safari 4.0

Safari is now a serious browser for serious Windows users, and its position on Macs has been bolstered.Users of Safari 3 will be hard-pressed to not notice that the interface is completely new, with a look and feel much more in-line with the other major Webkit-based browser, Google Chrome. The browser launches with the menu bar, tab bar and status bar all hidden, presenting you with the location bar, bookmark bar and the slick Top Sites interface. Top Sites is essentially Opera's Speed Dial feature, presenting your most commonly-visited websites, with a Cover Flow-style skin. The black background, curvature and reflective window bottom make this the most professional-looking web browser around. A blue star and an upturned corner indicate that a site has been updated since your last visit to it. Tap the Edit button in the bottom left corner to remove a site or pin a site permanently to Top Sites.

Apple's big claim with Safari is that it's the fastest browser on the market, and they just might be right on that count. On an Intel Core Duo T400 ThinkPad, with 3GB of RAM and a 2.53GHz processor, we ran both Webkit's SunSpider JavaScript test and Mozilla's Dromaeo test on Firefox 3.5 Preview, Google Chrome 2 and Safari 4. Safari came out on top in Dromaeo by a long shot, but Chrome eked by in SunSpider.

Keeping in mind that although these tests are affected by background computer processes, your hardware, and other factors, Safari is definitely one of the fastest browsers out there. However, it still lacks extensions, and for many Firefox users that's enough to keep them from switching. Even Internet Explorer supports some form of extensibility with its Web Slices and Accelerators.

Safari is still a RAM-devouring beast, too. With two tabs open, one to Dromaeo and one to SunSpider, it was using a shocking amount of RAM — more than 500MB after running both tests. Google Chrome consumed about 75MB of RAM across the same two sites under the same circumstances, while Firefox required 120MB.

With about 8.5 per cent of the browser market, it's clear that Apple is positioning Safari as more than a developer's tool on Windows, and that its successes at building a faster JavaScript engine should be taken seriously even with its other drawbacks.

How to Browse The Internet More Faster

If your current Internet speed is very slow and you are living in an area where broadband connections are still not available, here are some ideas to help you download web pages faster on your computer. You may use the same tips to improve your web browsing experience on a sluggish USB modem.

1. Turn off web images, the Adobe Flash plug-in, Java Applets and JavaScript from your browser settings as these files are often the bulkiest elements of any web page.

2. Increase the size of your browser cache. If the static parts of a site (like background graphics, CSS, etc) are stored in the local cache, your browser can safely skip downloading these files when you re-visit the site in future thus improving speed.

3. Sometimes the slow DNS server of your ISP can be a bottleneck so switch to OpenDNS as it can resolve website URLs into IP addresses more quickly. If you aren’t too happy about OpenDNS redirecting your Google queries, follow this simple hack.

4. Finch can serve a light-weight version of any website in real-time that is free of all bells and whistles. For instance, the New York Times homepage with all external resources can weigh more than a MB but Finch trims down the size by 90% so the site loads more quickly on a slow web connection.

5. Flinch (mentioned at #4) is good for reading regular websites but if you just need to check the latest articles published on your favorite blogs, use BareSite. This service will automatically detect the associated feed of a website and render content quickly inside a minimalist interface.

6. The Google Transcoder service at google.com/gwt/n can split large web pages into smaller chunks that will download more quickly on your computer (or mobile phone).

7. Monitor your Internet speed to determine hours when you get the maximum download speed from the ISP. Maybe you can then change your surfing schedule a bit and browse more during these "off peak" hours.

8. You can use a text browser like Lynx or Elinks for even faster browsing. It downloads only the HTML version of web pages thus reducing the overall bandwidth required to render websites.

9. When searching for web pages on Google, you can click the "Cache" link to view the text version of a web page stored in the Google Cache. Alternatively, install this GM script as it adds a "cached text only" link near every "Cached" link on Google Search pages.

10. Move your web activities offline as far as possible. You can send & receive emails, write blogs and even read feeds in an offline environment. Also see: Save Web Pages for offline reading.

11. You can interact with websites like Flickr, Google Docs, Slideshare, etc. using simple email messages. Uploading a new document to Google Docs via email would require less bandwidth than doing it in the browser because you are avoiding a trip to the Google Docs website.

12. Applying the same logic, you may also consider using tools like Web In Mail or Email The Web as they help you browse websites via email. Just put the URL of a page (e.g., cnn.com) in the subject field of your email message and these services will send you the actual page in the reply.

13. Bookmarklets are like shortcuts to your favorite web services. You neither have to open the Gmail Inbox for composing a new email message nor do you have to visit Google Translate for translating a paragraph of text. Add relevant bookmarklets to your browser bar and reduce the number of steps required to accomplish a task.

14. Use the netstat command to determine processes, other than web browsers, that may be secretly connecting to Internet in the background. Some of these processes could be consuming precious bandwidth but you can block them using the Firewall.

15. Use URL Snooper to determine non-essential host names that a website is trying to connect while downloading a web page. You may block them in future via the hosts file or use Adblock Plus to filter out advertising banners on web pages.

16. If you don’t want to spoil your web surfing experience by stripping images and other graphic elements from a web page, get Opera Turbo. It will first fetch the requested web page on to its own server and then send it to your machine in a compressed format. Opera Turbo won’t change the layout of a web site but can lower the image resolution so that they load faster on slow Internet.

17. Change the user agent of your desktop browser to that of a mobile phone like Apple’s iPhone or Windows Mobile. This will help you browse certain web sites like Google News, WSJ, etc. much faster because they’ll serve you a light-weight and less cluttered mobile version of their sites thinking you’re on a mobile phone.

How to Make Money Blogging

Making money blogging requires a certain level of seriousness. Many 'opportunities' discovered on the internet guarantee a simple way of making money. Making money blogging is excluded. The objective of this article is to give you a basic understanding - not a full tutorial - on how to make money blogging. Please keep that in mind as you continue on.

Making it simple to gain money from your blog by adding automated income streams to it is the first step in how to make money blogging. That means adding things to it (mainly ads) that readers of your blog may click on thereby establishing an income for you. Many blog services help you with this by making it easy to place Google Adsense on your blog. The great thing about Adsense is that the ads match the keywords of your blog. Therefore if your blog is about roses the adsense ads will not be about toy trucks. Another great strategy is to utilize Paypal and ask for contributions from your compassionate readers to assist you in sustaining your blog.

Establishing a nice flow of visitors is the most essential step. The only way you'll ever make money blogging is if you have a constant flow of traffic consisting of ad-clicking readers. So how do you get traffic to your blog? Use 'blog carnivals' as a place to submit your greatest blog posts. Blog carnivals are collections of quality posts on a special topic collected together on one site. Another great way to generate traffic (and to improve your ranking on Google-leading to even more traffic) is to submit articles to article directories such as Ezine Articles. Your article should be a lengthier variation of your blog post (assuming your blog post is short) and contain a link to your blog. To avoid looking like a spammer or a self-promotor, refuse talking about your blog as much as possible. You also want to make frequent contributions of original content to you blog in order to be identified by the major search engines. Keep in mind that content is king.

Do a quick search on this topic and you will find a plethora of resources that will provide guidance in your quest to make money blogging. You will find that many take you further in-depth however it's very crucial that you do not forget the fundamentals that you've acquired here.

Google Chrome, the new browser from google

Chrome is Google's attempt to make the browser disappear and to focus on the applications and pages users are viewing, rather than on the border with its tools. Some of Chrome's basic underpinnings are quite novel, but people will recognize other features as they exist in other, open-source browsers on the market today.

Currently only for Windows, Chrome is blazingly fast and is easily the quickest browser available. Based on Webkit, the same open-source engine that powers Apple Safari and Google's Android mobile platform, Chrome's interface is a drastic departure from other browsers. Instead of the traditional toolbar, Chrome puts its tabs on top. Moreover, the tabs are detachable: "tabs" and "windows" are interchangeable here. Detached tabs can be dragged and dropped into the browser, and tabs can be rearranged at any time. By isolating each tab's processes, when one site crashes, the browser does not.

Within each tab are individual controls, such as forward and back buttons. The search box and the address bar have been fused into a hybrid "Omnibox." The Omnibox includes not only suggestions for URLs culled from your browser's history, it also includes search suggestions from your search engine, and remembers site-specific search engine results. There's also Application Shortcuts, a feature that allows you to create desktop icons for Web-only applications, such as Gmail or Calendar. The stealth mode, Incognito, lets you surf without the history recording cookies.

Chrome lacks plug-ins, and there's the potential for high memory usage given that each tab is its own process. If you're addicted to Web apps and a need for speed, though, Chrome just might be the shine your browsing experience has been looking for.

Top Five Free Email Services

Free email services like, Gmail, Windows Live, Yahoo! and AOL are not just for email anymore, and many users find they want more than one account. An email account is a modern day necessity for not only emailing, but instant messaging as well. And, you are no longer tied to your computer. If you have a smart phone along with the data package, you can easily sync your email account with your phone. If you need to communicate, fast and free, you need a free email account.

Many free email services include the latest news, integration with social networking sites, instant messaging, calendars, and online storage.

In this site, you’ll find articles related to Email, as well as comprehensive reviews and a side–by–side comparison to help you make an informed decision on which Free Email Service is right for you.

Top five free email from www.toptenreviews.com :

1. Gmail
2. Windows Live
3. Yahoo!
4. AOL
5. Inbox

Below are the criteria TopTenREVIEWS used to evaluate Free Email Services :

Security
Free email services should provide exceptional security measures to keep your email safe from viruses, spam and phishing. This includes filters, virus cleaning and HTTPS secure login.

Features Set
Top email services should provide a wide variety of features to help organize and compose incoming and outgoing emails. This also includes if the email service offers POP or IMAP access.

Extras
Some services provide extra options in addition to email. These may include additional downloads like instant messengers or notifiers, a calendar, games, mobile access or online storage.

Support/ Ease of Use
Comprehensive information about email services should be easy to find on the provider’s website. They should also provide details about security and features through online help or FAQ’s.

Google Custom Search Engine on Your Blog

Google announced the global release of Google Custom Search. What is Google Custom Search? It's a way to make your own custom search engine. You could customize it to search only your own Web site, or you could customize it to search the Web for certain topics or items. This is what DiggTorrents does for Torrent files.

Google Custom Search Engine comes in two flavors, the free ad-sponsored variety and the not-so-free Business Edition, which allows you to remove all the Google branding and ads. The UK Parliament uses Google Custom Search Business Edition, and the only reason I know that is that Google pointed it out in their blog.

Using Google as your Web site's search engine is a pretty smart move. It's probably cheaper to pay for the Business Edition than it is to hire a programmer to write and maintain a search engine for a large Web site.

You can now add a custom search gadget to your Blogger blog. The Search Box gadget can be customized to search your blog, pages you've linked to from your blog, your blog roll, and the Web in general.

Why is this important? I've maintained many blogs over the years, but I'm not always consistent with tagging them, and the categories I use may not make sense to other people. Searching through entries is an obvious solution. Results from your Search Box searches appear inline with your blog entries and match your blog's color scheme.

How To Earn Money From Blogging

People who are victorious at earning income from blogging engage in many strategies which determine their success. One significant strategy they use is to add income streams to their blog. One way in which this can be accomplished is by including ads, such as Google Adsense. There are several blogging services who are happy to help you with this. Affiliate links are another method used to increase income. Some bloggers also trust upon donations from their readers, which brings up another important strategy: ensuring your blog has outstanding content.

Successful bloggers cling to the theory that content is king”. This is particularly true if you desire to earn income by blogging. The most important tip is to make sure that new content is supplied regularly. In the beginning, adding new content once every two weeks may do, but you are more than likely to be successful if you post new entries more frequently than this. Get in the habit of adhering to a schedule. This will be even more important once the traffic to your site has elevated. In addition, make sure that the blog posts are of good quality - no one wants to read a badly written post. Consider making use of an offline blogging client to help you write posts and verify they are professionally written.

Your blog will not earn money if no one finds your blog! Your ultimate goal should be to achieve a high ranking in the search engines. This is not always an easy task, and will require a lot of energy and time. One way to achieve this goal is to write articles based on your blog posts and submit them to article directories. You should include a link to your blog along with your article. You may also submit your best articles to Blog Carnivals”, sites that contain a collection of the best blog posts that pertain to a particular topic. Writing a blog is not difficult; what is difficult is to leave your reader wanting more. One way to prompt readers to visit your blog is to use Bloglet. Bloglet allows your readers to subscribe to your site and get email notification whenever you publish a new post.

Embed Youtube Video to Your Blog

YouTube has all sorts of interesting, funny, silly, and provocative content. You can easily embed any video on YouTube into your own blog. Here's how you do it.

First step is go to YouTube and find a video that you like. It doesn't have to be a video that you created.

Next, look for the box directly to the right of the video. Not only does this box let you subscribe to videos, it also gives you the code for embedding video. Go to the line marked Embed at the bottom of this box. Click inside the code box next to the word Embed. All of the code text should automatically be highlighted. If not, you'll need to select it. Copy this code. You can copy by right-clicking on your mouse and selecting copy from the drop-down menu.

Next, you need to paste this code into your blog. For this tutorial, I will use Blogger, which is a free blogging service from Google. Learn more about Blogger.

Log into your Blogger account and compose a new message for your blog. Select the edit HTML tab, and paste the code you copied from YouTube. It is important to make sure you have the HTML tab selected first. You can paste the code by right-clicking and selecting paste from the drop-down menu.

That's it. Press the post button and then preview your blog, to make sure everything works. When readers look at your blog, they'll see the embedded video, and they can click on the play button in the center to view the video.

It is possible to modify the HTML code so that the video automatically plays as soon as it is loaded, instead of making the reader click. However, I don't recommend this. It is rude to readers who don't expect video, and it can really drag on users who have slow connections.

Tips For Generating Big Traffic To Your Blog

Blogs (or weblogs) are getting incredibly popular amongst people with an internet connection due to the ease and practicality of setting one up. Despite this however, there is no value in having a blog if no one is visiting and reading it! Therefore, it is important to know exactly how to drive traffic to your blog if you desire to increase your readership or monetize it.

Here are 10 quick tips to generating more traffic to your blogs:

Tip 1: Reciprocal Linking

One of the most proven ways to gain targeted traffic is to exchange links with other bloggers or site owners. This is a task which requires a little work - by sending an email request for a link exchange with a few follow ups but the results are worth it. Another linking method is to simply write a testimonial for a product you have purchased. If your testimonial is good, product owners will usually publish it on their sales page with your blog URL included.
If you want to skip the traditional way of exchanging links and go for the easier way, you can automate the process with various software and services found on the net. Just do a search at Google.com and you will have a list of these.

Tip 2: Blog Commentaries

Do you know that your comments also have high potential in generating targeted traffic to your blog and is an effective linking strategy?
All you have to do is find a blog related to your niche and post your comments. At the end of your comments you can include a link back to your blog, this way people who are interested will be able to visit your blog as well. However you should never misuse this to spam other blogs.

Tip 3: Blog Directories

Blog directories are similar to search engines just that they cater only to searches for blogs. It is advisable to submit your blog to the major directories, some of which include feedster.com, technorati.com and blogstreet.com. Similarly, there are many blog services like pingomatic.com which you can use to ping your blog. Pinging your blog notifies the service that you have updated your blog. These services will then publish your new posts and you get traffic from interested readers and search engines.

Tip 4: Writing Articles

This is one of the best ways of pulling targeted, steady and long-term traffic to your blog. By writing your own articles and submitting them to article directories, you can invite a lot of targeted visitors to your blog. In order to generate traffic by writing articles, you need to include your resource box at the end of every article you have written. The resource box is where you promote and introduce your website or blog.
To truly maximize your results, you need a system to create, submit and leverage off your articles easily. One of the best available is seen at http://EzineArticle.com/aa.htm

Tip 5: Writing Press Releases

Press release is a very effective way of generating instant traffic to your blog. Although press releases only pull in short-term traffic, they can work very well if you continuously write and submit press releases regularly while monetizing the traffic received.
PRWeb.com is one of the oldest and most trusted sources for news distribution on the web. Or you can use an automated press release service like http://www.SubmitYourPressRelease.com to do the work for you quickly.

Tip 6: Start A Blog Mailing List

The phrase "the money is in the list" is true in all businesses. If you want to succeed online, you must start building your own list of targeted subscribers. You can send your subscribers to your blog anytime you have new posts.
By the same token, you can also get your blog readers to subscribe to a 'blog update' list which can be used to notify them when you have updated your blog. REPEAT traffic through returning visitors is a key traffic strategy and you can control that with this method.

Tip 7: Publishing Your Own Ezine

You can also provide your subscribers with useful information in several series with an autoresponder. An ezine is often called an online magazine. By publishing your own ezine, you are able to attract readership to your blog when you advertise it in your ezine.

Tip 8: Pay For Traffic

If you have a good monetization strategy for your blog through affiliate programs, Google Adsense and a mailing list, you should consider using paid advertising to drive traffic to your blog.
Recommended options include pay-per-click advertising, ezine advertising and huge banner exposures.

Tip 9: Giving Out Free Reports

Give out free viral reports to promote your blog. Providing useful information in your free reports can trigger readers' interest to know more about you and your websites. More information on this tactic can be found at http://www.MiniEbook.com.

Tip 10: Niche Discussion Boards

Discussions boards or forums can deliver targeted traffic to your blog. If you have a blog about gardening, try searching for a related niche forum with huge traffic to participate in.
Most forums will usually allow you to include a signature file where you can write a few sentences of words. You can invite people to visit your blog through the signature file by posting more regularly.
In conclusion, realize that getting traffic to your blog should not be viewed as a one time effort. Commit and focus on a long-term strategy in order to succeed. It is all about gaining the momentum.

Once you get a decent amount of traffic to your blog, you will attract more visitors to it everyday as you work on it. As time goes by, you will have an amazing amount of traffic to your blog which you never thought was possible!

The Importance of Blog Design

Blogs have increased popularity over this past months. Many people have started to create their personal blogs to express their thoughts and feelings. Internet companies have also started their blogs to inform consumers on the latest product news and reviews.

Because of this, blogs are also being used as internet marketing media. Before, internet marketing is done by placing banners and links on popular websites, such as news and information sites. Links were also included on newsletters and marketing letters sent to the members of their mailing lists.

Many people spend time reading blogs. People read their friend's blogs, their favorite author's blogs, blogs on topics that they are interested in, and blogs on product reviews. With the increasing popularity of blogging, it is even feared that people rely on blogs to get the latest news.

While getting news reports from blogs isn't reliable, some people look for product reviews through blogs. In some cases, this is more dependable. While it is true that some media persons are being paid to write good reviews about a certain product, blog writers write about their actual experiences on products and services from a company.

Since there are many people who read and start their own blogs, blogs are a good medium to market a product. With the increasing blog traffic means increase in product sales.

Blog traffic can be increased by joining affiliate programs and sites, which will list your blog under a certain search category or name. You can also have your blog advertised in popular websites. This, however, will cost some money and is not advisable if you have just started blogging.

A writer who has just launched his/her blog will want as much traffic as possible to increase advertisements on the site. Also, some advertisers pay every time their link is clicked or the page that has their link is viewed.

When you have increased traffic on your blog, you should try to keep you visitors coming back and recommending your blog to friends and colleagues.

This can be done by having informative or amusing content and good blog layout and design. You may develop your blog's content or you can also acquire the services of a web content writer to provide you with the blog articles.

The blog's layout and design also plays a big role. While most of the companies offering free blog hosting offer pre-selected templates, there are also some that allows customization that if you utilize this feature correctly can increase your blog's traffic.

Here are a few tips to make your blog stand out from the millions of blogs out there that have standard designs.

* Customize the banner

The banner usually has the most generic designs that are common to the blogs from a blogging company or service.

You can personalize this banner by having a graphic with the dimensions of the banner. You can also edit the graphic so that it will also include the title of your blog.

In this case, you can create your own graphic or you can purchase professional looking graphics online for less than $10.

* Personalizing photos

Of course, most of the photos that you will be posting will be your own. However, if you don't customize the photos before posting them, you may miss maximizing the enhancing benefits graphics can add to the page. Adding photo borders can help the photo stand out from the page.

It can also add to the design of your blog. You can choose a standard border or you can also create your own border which can be associated with your blog's templates.

* Add a favicon

Don't you think sites with icons on the address bar before the website's URL are cool? Many people do. These favicons add a professional look to the URL. These easy to do using photo or graphic editing softwares.

* Check out blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins from sites

There are sites that offer free blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins. You can make use of these so your blog will not look generic like most of the blogs hosted by the service provider.

* Include RSS feeds

This is a cool way to inform people with newsreaders about your blog headlines. Tutorials on RSS feeds are available on the internet.

* Audio makes your blog more personal

Not only does audio personalizes the blog; it can also keep your visitors coming back. You can try having streaming radio stations, mp3 file or playlists loading with your blog.

* Advertisements

If you have signed-up with Google Ad-Sense, which I am sure you would like to do, make sure that the ads are conveniently placed that these will not hinder your readers' ease in accessing the information on your blog.

Blogspot Top Tools

Although blogging and RSS seems to be a hot topic these days, only about five percent of American internet users actually use it.

From both a business and personal perspective though, blogs and RSS have a lot to offer for the average internet user.

The main reason is that by using RSS, you can cut down on the amount of email that you receive. You can receive a lot of your news in the form of headlines.

Blogs can tell you what people are thinking about, and what they're really interested in. This is an effective tool for marketers. If you're looking to meet new people, this can also be an excellent way to meet others who share common interests.

It's not really necessary to understand what blogging and RSS are.

Blogs are nothing more than online diaries. They can be used to talk about business trends or any other topic.

RSS is a form of website code that is search engine friendly and can be read in a special type of browser called an RSS reader. As I said before, this is a great way to receive news on just about anything you're interested in.

If the thought of keeping an online journal or using blogs to discuss your business interest you, then I have some great tools that will make your blogging experience a lot easier.

1. Blog building

Before you build a blog, you need to decide how you want to host it.

If you're not interested in the technical aspects involved, you can always sign up for a free account on a blogging site.

The most popular is Blogger - http://www.blogger.com

If you'd like to build your own, there are several different ones you can try including Word Press ande Nucleus.

Before you choose a blogging script, I recommend you try different ones to see which one you like best.

Open Source CMS - http://www.opensourcecms.com - offers several different types of scripts you can try to find the blog script that's the right fit for you.

The most important feature in a blog script is that it's search engine friendly.

2. Blog editing

This may not seem that important. After all, you can just go right to your site and post.

Sounds easy right? Maybe not if editing HTML is as alien to you as the notion of learning to build a blog in the first place.

Try this tool to help you post to your blog. It offers you a WYSIWYG editor, which means that you can write and edit at the same time, and it you'll see exactly how your blog post looks as you are writing.

Blog Editing Toolbar - http://www.aspmodules.com/at/bloginfo.asp - This tool will help you easily edit your blog without knowing HTML. All you need is IE 6, and the install is quick and easy.

3. Blog Posting

Maybe you don't find the idea of posting online very appealing. As a writer I can't imagine being without my word processor.

If you'd rather have a desktop tool, instead of writing your blog from the control panel, this tool is for you.

wBlogger - http://www.wblogger.com - is an excellent application for helping you create blog posts, and you don't have to be online to write posts for your blog.

You create your post and save it for when you are ready to post. This is especially convenient if you don't have time to write everyday.

4. Blog Subscriptions

Although RSS is slowly becoming popular, many still like to receive an email. The problem is that many of the autoresponder systems you can use either don't include RSS, or RSS autoresponders can be expensive.

Below are two tools where you can copy and paste a subscription box onto your site and visitors can subscribe for updates.

http://www.feedblitz.com/
http://www.bloglet.com

5. RSS Generators

If your blog application doesn't create a feed automatically, you may have to make one. It's really much easiser than it sounds.

With this application, you just enter your information and click submit. This is especially useful if you want to create a feed for your website.

RSS Feed Generator - http://www.rsstoolchest.com/rss-feed-generator/

6. Blog and Ping Applications

You use these applications to let the blog and RSS directories know that you've updated your blog. This is especially important if you own a business blog because it allows you to quickly and easily notify several sites at once.

One caveat though: you should only use these applications to update the directories of new posts to your blog. Don't use them to notify the directories that you have an RSS feed for your site. You'll get banned.

Pingomatic - http://www.pingomatic.com
Pingoat - http://www.pingoat.com

7. RSS Promotion

Although blog and ping is great for notifying the directories that you've updated your blog, you usually need to submit your RSS feed to the directories first before using the update tools.

Feedsubmitter - http://www.feedsubmitter.com - is a free tool you can use to help you get your feed indexed quickly. This will save you some time because you don't have to visit each site to get your site indexed.

Although I can't give you any ideas to write about (although I will if you want to pay my consulting fee :) blogs are a great way to meet new people and expand your business.

Make Your Blog More Rich with Google Gadget

Blogger lets you easily add all sorts of widgets and gadgets to your blog. You don't have to know any programming to add really nice features, like photo slide albums, games, and more.

• The first step is to log into Blogger with your Google account and click on the Layout link underneath the blog you want to change. You will now see a screen that represents all the elements on your blog.
• You can add a new element to the side or bottom of this blog by clicking on the Add a Gadget link in either of those areas.
• Google offers a large selection of gadgets written by both Google and third parties. The categories are on the left, and there's a search box on the top to search for a gadget by keyword. If you don't find what you need, you can also select HTML/JavaScript and paste in your own code.
• In this tutorial, we'll add the blogroll using the Blog List, so select it by pressing the blue plus sign next to the item.
• If your gadget needs any configuration or editing, you'll be prompted to do that now. The Blog List gadget needs blogs to list, of course. You'll also want to change the title if you don't like the default "My Blog List," and you can change the settings to customize how it displays.
• Click on the Add a blog to your list link to add blogs.
• Click SAVE when you're done.
• Now you'll see your layout view again. You can drag the elements around to rearrange them. You can click on the PREVIEW button to preview your changes in a new window.
• Once you have everything arranged, click the SAVE button to save your changes.

If you end up with a gadget you don't want, click on the Edit button and select REMOVE.

How to Change Your Blogger Template

When you create a blogger account for the first time, you initially pick one of several templates for Blogger. You can switch to a new template at any point. The template controls the look and feel of your blog, as well as the links on the side. You can also customize and create your own template, although this requires more advanced knowledge of CSS and web design.

There are many sites and individuals who also offer Blogger templates free for personal use. You can try to search free blogger template with google search enggine to change your blogger tenplate. As my recomendation you can try to open btemplates.com. There are many blogger templates that can download for free.

To chance your blogger template :

1. First of all login to your Blogger account and choose your blog (if you have more than one), than click on "Template" section.
2. Click on a HTML Edit tab.
3. On Backup/Restore Template, click Choose File button, and then search your downloaded template with xml format.
   
4. If you've choose a template file, click on upload botton beside.
   
5. A notification will viewed to confirm change of your blogger template, just click save botton.
   
6. Yor template has been changed, try to see your new template on you blog.
   

Note :
I recommend you to backup your old template codes before deleting them in this step. In order to backup your old template, click on "Download Full Template" button, choose a file name for your backup template, then "save".

Beginners in Blogging with Blogger.com

Blogs, short for web-logs, are a form of online journal.
Blogger is a free service that allows you to create your own customizable blog. Google will also host the blog for you or allow you to publish the blog on your own website.
It can be found on the web at http://www.blogger.com.

Blogger also name as Blogspot, since Blogger accounts are given a web address at blog_name.blogspot.com.

You can use blogs for everything from updating your friends and family about your life, giving your own advice column, discussing your political views, or relating your experience in a topic of interest. You can host blogs with multiple contributors, or you can run your own solo show.

1. Enter blogger.com in address field on your browser
2. Enter your Gmail account (email at gmail.com) in “Username (Email)” and password in “Password”.
(If you don’t have email yet, register first at gmail.com then come back here).
3. Click on “Create Your Blog Now”
4. On “Blog Title” -> enter the title of your blog (as you like). Example: "My First Blog"
5. On “Blog Address (URL) -> enter URL address as you like. Example: entecom (click the “Check Availability” to make sure it’s available).
6. Click “Continue”
7. On “Choose a Template” click “Continue”
8. And “Your Blog Has Been Created!” -> You’ve created a Blog
9. To write a content on your blog, click “Start Blogging!”
10. On “Title” enter a title as you like. Example: How to Write a Post in a Blog
11. Enter in the box below a paragraph or two about anything.
12. Then click “Publsih Post”
13. Congratulations! You’ve successfully write an article or a post.

To write anothe articles, just go to posting tag and create new post.

Gmail Account for Beginners

Gmail is the Google approach to email and chat. Practically unlimited free online storage allows you to collect all your messages, and Gmail's simple but very smart interface lets you find them precisely and see them in context without effort. POP and powerful IMAP access bring Gmail to any email program or device.

Gmail gives each user more than 2 gigs of storage space. That's a lot of space and more than most other web based email services. In fact, some third party software developers have created ways to use Gmail's storage for more than storing email and chat messages. The average user will never have to delete old messages to make room for new.

Gmail is one of the best, if not the best free email service out there. It is good enough that many users rely on their Gmail account as a primary email address. Gmail offers an amazing amount of options and features and the ads are barely noticeable compared to the intrusion of ads in some other free services. If you don't have a Gmail account, it is time to get one.

Gmail is available at mail.gmail.com