BloggerWiz

What People Use Twitter For

2011-07-02T06:44:00.000-07:00

Twitter first launched in 2006, also described as the SMS of the internet, is the worlds 10th most visited website according to Alexa. Well, if so many different people from around the world use it everyday, you might wonder how people use twitter in their everyday life. Twitter is used for everything possible with a service that lets users interact and exchange information, ranging from personal updates to arranging political oppositions and protests!

Many tweets often tend to go viral, when someone is interested in a tweet and re-tweets it, which provides additional exposure to your tweets. Re-tweeting helps share your favorite tweets with your followers. That is perhaps the prime reason why more businesses are creating their twitter account, realizing the power of twitter marketing.

Keeping Friends and Family Updated

This is the true use of twitter, and is the reason why twitter is so famous. Friends and family want to stay connected with you, they want to know what you are doing, where you are, what you are thinking. It would sound impractical to call up your friends and tell them that you are at university, or that you are eating sushi. Twitter let's you update your current activities, which can be seen by your friends and family, you can tweet even the smallest things, like the name of a book you are reading or the slight headache you had the last hour! The smallest thing are that which matter!

Creating a Website Profile

People use twitter everyday and almost every hour! So it only makes sense to send post updates through a twitter account representing your business website or blog. There are many services that auto tweet new articles from your blog, with a small description and a shortened link to your twitter profile.
Now big companies like CNN and Mashable have their own twitter accounts, where they post news linking to their website.

Making Money from Twitter

There have been established many Twitter advertising networks, where publishers can earn money from tweets. There is a minimum requirement of 50 followers, and once that is fulfilled you can browse the ads available and tweet! A lot of people have set up twitter accounts only for earning money, by acquiring high amounts of followers.

And Of-Course Spamming!

A certain percentage of tweets at twitter come under the category of spam. These tweets have some attractive text followed by a misleading link, which can lead to malware or a website they want to drive traffic to. Services like twitter tend to be misused because of the wide audience one tweet can be subjected to.

Give us your feedback! Tell us how you use twitter.

Designing a Blog Header - Blogging Essentials

2011-07-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

A Header is the top section of a website, and usually contains the logo, title and description. It is what people first see, and if they see a sloppy style that doesn't fit in with your website design, then you are bound to lose a certain percentage of readers that "Judge a book by it's cover". After all it is true that the first impression is the last. So how do you come up with a good design that blends in and looks professional too, that is what you are going to find out.

Few Start-up Tips

The design shouldn't be too distracting or flashy, keep it simple. It would be unwise to have a header that stands out more than your content section. This is really not a problem but it is best to keep it in contrast with your overall blog design.
Many a times you might see a header with various fonts in different colors stuffed in it, this gives it a very amateur look and you will want to avoid doing this. However, in some headers this looks perfectly fine, mostly on informal blogs.
Your header design should be unique, unlike any other in your niche. This will easily differentiate you from other websites that focus on similar topics to your content. It is recommended that you don't simply make a header out of text and a background image. But go one step further and make a logo, which you can use in many other places to represent your blog.

In short, your finished header design should have 3 qualities:
1) Simple yet Creative
2) Consistent
3) Unique

Using these guidelines you can now begin designing your header. Here are some examples of beautifully designed headers to get your brain working on your own design!

Click To Enlarge

Go open up Photoshop and do something creative!

Blog2Print - Get your Blog Printed

2011-06-15T07:42:00.000-07:00

Ever wanted to get your blog printed, but lacked the professional touch. Blog2Print is here to solve your problems. This efficient service will get your blog printed and shipped to your doorstep, you have complete control over the cover, images and the posts to be included in printing. It's great to store your Blog on your top shelf, you can also consider publishing it to earn money!

You can get a 20 page Hardcover Blog Book at a phenomenal price of just $24.95, with extra pages costing only 35 cents. A very low price to pay for such a great service. Blog2print has various beautiful cover designs to choose from.

Testimonials

"My books came today. They are beautiful! I am impressed with the fine quality of the paper and the picture clarity and everything. Thank you!"
- Karen Spain on Facebook

"I love Blog2print! I printed out my baby blog and it will make an awesome keepsake for my little girl."
- Savanna Fancher on Facebook

"This was the answer to my blogging prayers!"
- Ami Bunch on her blog

Visit Blog2Print, to view cover designs, sample books and detailed information about cost and shipping.

Most Innovative Social Network Icons

2011-06-14T17:07:00.000-07:00

Hand-picked, fresh and creative Icon packs. These will bring your blog to life with their breath taking yet simple design. Not your ordinary icon set, these ones stand out like fluorescent at night.

Web 2.0 Origami

Absolutely stunning, the kind of creativity which makes you wonder why you didn't think of it before.

FreeHand Color Stroked

Gives your blog a homely atmosphere, these should go well with personal blogs.

High Detail Social Icons

Web 2.0 look at it's best.

Glowing Social Icons

Social Networking Icons by Deleket

Reflection looks great, overall it is really simple but appealing.

Designs like these are hard to come by, so grab them when you can! Don't forget to shoot a word of thanks to the designers.

LinkBucks - Potential Income Stream from Links

2011-06-13T03:24:00.000-07:00

Linkbucks is a very widely known advertising network, unlike other networks it is not based on CPC or CPA, but you get paid for shortening links. When someone clicks that converted link, your account gets credited. This is a revolutionary network for publishers, as now all your outbound traffic can be monetized and unlike other networks you don't have to cling to the hope , that someone will be interested in your average text ad and click it

Here is how linkbucks describe how their system works:

Your new paying links will still point to the same page, but will have an ad type of your choosing that will earn you money. Each time one of your links is clicked -- you earn money. Payments are sent out twice per month like clockwork.

Now this arises several other questions. Don't let curiosity kill you and take a look below to get all the information you want to know.

What Ad Types Does Linkbucks Offer

There are 3 types of ads, and all of them have different RPC (rate-per-click):

Intermission: This has the highest RPC, but is also the most annoying and obtrusive.
Top Banner: RPC rate is relatively lower than the Intermission, but is great and doesn't interfere with your content.
Popup Ads: Lowest paying, not advised, may not comply with Adsense policies.

All about Types of Links

There are 3 types of links too, using the right type is important to your earnings. It also depends on where the paid link is going to be located.

Single Link: Your link will look something like this: http://2dfeab7d.linkbucks.com.
Multiple Links: Used for links contained in an Html code, best for mass link conversion
Full Page Script: This is the one Blogger-Wiz is using. Converts all the links in a website into linkbuck's links.

Referral Program

Linkbucks features an amazing 3 level referral program, that means not only that you earn a percentage of what your direct referrals earn, but also a percentage of what your referral's, referral's referral earn !!
The percentage rates are as follows:

1st Tier (Direct Referral): 20%
2nd Tier (Referral's referral): 10%
3rd Tier (Referral's referral's referral): 2%

Take a look at the people we managed to refer:

Looks like our direct referral, referred 17 members who didn't refer anyone! Perhaps they were 17 happy bloggers with high traffic blogs, that were way too content with their earnings to start referring other people. A bit too far-fetched, don't you think?

Payouts - How You Get Paid and When

You need to have a minimum account balance of 5$ to withdraw your earnings, earnings are paid out through Paypal, ePassporte and Moneybookers. If you choose to withdraw your earnings from Paypal, then you will receive them instantly, for all other options you receive earnings at the 1st or 15th of the month you requested the payment at.

Additional Tips

We personally recommend you to use the Full page script, with the ad type set to Top Banner. You can also control the number of times one reader (per unique IP address) sees the ad per 24 hours, called the Frequency cap. So set it to one, it often irritates visitors as the ad is floating and stays fixed above your header, I recommend you to set it to a maximum level of not more than two. This should maximize your earnings without intruding with your content or in-page ads.

So head over to Linkbucks and register an account now!

Linkbucks (Referral ID)
Linkbucks (Normal Sign-up)

Incorporate Social Bookmarks into Your Blog

2011-01-07T10:47:00.000-08:00

Now a tradition amongst most experienced bloggers, Social bookmarking widgets are often situated at post footers. These provide one click posting to your reader's preferred Social networking website, making it easier to share their favorite articles. Not only does this increase your chances of a wider audience, but also offers qualitative information on the posts that are most favorited on your website, which helps in the identification of niche topics.

With loads of new graphics designers, the booming icon industry has come up with endless varieties of Social bookmarking icons. Choosing the right type and size, depends on many factors, it is important that the icons are not over-sized as they can affect the overall look of your post footer, which in most cases is accompanied with many other widgets.

Alright, the following widget code is to be inserted just after <data:post.body/> , Be sure to tick the box which says "Expand Widget Templates".

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>

    <a expr:href='"http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' rel='external nofollow' target='_blank'><img alt='Stumble This!' src=' http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s3HYESWBX6k/TSTQjOpgXTI/AAAAAAAAAYw/DmVg99SVzUg/s1600/stumbleupon.png'/></a>

    <a expr:href='"http://twitter.com/home/?status=Chk Out-" + data:post.title + " " + data:post.url' target='_blank'><img alt='Tweet This!' src='http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s3HYESWBX6k/TSTQkAdOOkI/AAAAAAAAAY4/QcEO2KKZq7A/s1600/twitter.png '/></a>

    <a expr:href='"http://del.icio.us/post?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' rel='external nofollow' target='_blank'><img alt='Add to Your Bookmarks!' src='http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s3HYESWBX6k/TSTQkuTL5jI/AAAAAAAAAY8/2ZGHfITKUbY/s1600/delicious.png '/></a>

    <a expr:href='" http://digg.com/submit?url=" + data:post.url + "&title=" + data:post.title' target='_blank'><img alt='Digg This!' src='http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_s3HYESWBX6k/TSTQlIMqrDI/AAAAAAAAAZA/3KDq_5WxJxE/s1600/digg.png '/></a>

    <a expr:href='"http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=" + data:post.url + "&t=" + data:post.title' rel='external nofollow' target='_blank'><img alt='Share on Facebook!' src='http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s3HYESWBX6k/TSTQiqFETNI/AAAAAAAAAYs/ZUPJo6r--dw/s1600/facebook.png '/></a>

    <a expr:href='"http://technorati.com/faves?add=" + data:post.url' rel='external nofollow' target='_blank'><img alt='Favorite at Technorati!' src='http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_s3HYESWBX6k/TSTQjkYyK3I/AAAAAAAAAY0/GaAgxJaJUg4/s1600/technorati.png '/></a>

<a href="http://reddit.com/submit" onclick="window.location = 'http://reddit.com/submit?url=' + encodeURIComponent(window.location); return false"> <img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_s3HYESWBX6k/TSdcJ_BoCqI/AAAAAAAAAZ4/p3iPDveoNHw/s1600/reddit.png" alt="Submit to Reddit!" border="0" /> </a>
</b:if>

The first line is just the Html condition that stops the widget from appearing on the homepage, very handy for blogs using Jump links. The image links highlighted in Blue, can be changed by simply replacing them with the direct link of an alternative icon set that you would prefer over the default.

The above code is basically an assembly of the most widely used social networks, if your blog is Business oriented then you can add other networks like LinkedIn. The codes for other social networks can be easily found with a simple search.

Alternately, you can use Ready-made services to insert Social bookmarks. One of the most famous Bookmarking service is provided by AddThis, their widget is based on Javascript and recently they have introduced many new designs that come with counters too!

Meta Tags, Website Submission and Sitemaps - Google and SEO

2011-01-06T09:43:00.000-08:00

SEO (Search Engine Optimization), is the top priority for anyone aiming towards increasing blog traffic. Backed-up with quality content you can be sure that your blog gets a 5 digit figure in visitors. Many bloggers spend hours searching ways to increase traffic, but forget that writing unique content is the key to loyal readers that will re-visit constantly. Your blog will eventually gain recognition among search engines, SEO just speeds up the process.
In this post you will learn the procedures to be followed to tune your blog settings, so that Google - World's most sought Search Engine - indexes your pages faster and you achieve a higher page rank!

Before we go any further, you need to understand that Google is the market leader in the industry, which is why it is going to be the top priority in this article. For the people who love Bing and disagree, take a look at the Search engine industry's statistics:

Source: www.speedyseo.com

It is quite clear who the market leader is, Google with its efficient service and excessive popularity has dominated the European and US market. Judging from this data, you decide how much of your traffic comes through Google and how much through other sources. If you are currently monitoring you blog from an external service like Clicky, then you might have already discovered Google as your top referrer.

Now that you have realized how crucial Google is to the success of your blog, we can proceed towards getting the most out of it. There are 3 important steps to be followed:1) Inserting descriptive Meta tags
2) Submitting your blog URL
3) Using Google's Webmaster Central [submitting your site-map]

Google operates several bots, known as Crawlers. As the name suggests these bots scour the web looking for new pages, they do this by following links from one website to the other. A good example is the link provided under the statistical data above, when GoogleBot stumbles upon Blogger-Wiz, they will automatically discover the link-back, and index that link into their search engine. And then it will proceed to unearth links from there, thus forming a cycle. When your blog gets linked to from another website, then it increases your chances of a higher page rank.

Configure Your Meta Tags

These basically provide structured data about a website to GoogleBot, meta tags actually let you optimize the way your website appears in Google's search results. By providing basic details like a blog description, and a few related keywords, it provides a clearer picture of your blog to Google, resulting in faster indexes.
Meta tags have to be inserted in the Head section of your blog's html, the data won't show on your blog but it will discreetly aid GoogleBot, to achieve the SEO results you are looking for.
The following code is to be inserted directly after the <head> tag in your blog's Html:

<META NAME="author" CONTENT="Your name">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Brief description, favorably the one seen on your header">
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Keywords related to your blog, For example: designing, photoshop etc">
<META NAME="Language" CONTENT="English">
<META NAME="distribution" CONTENT="Global">
<META NAME="Robots" CONTENT="INDEX,FOLLOW">
<META NAME="city" CONTENT="Dubai">
<META NAME="country" CONTENT="United Arab Emirates">

Quite self-explanatory, replace the text in RED with your details.

Robots: These give directives to Google whether they should index links or not. However if the robots are not included in the meta tags, Google by default will index and follow all links. But it is recommended to insert them as other search engines might require strict directives. You can read more about Robots on Google's Webmaster Central Blog.

Sitelinks: These are completely automated and are shown only when Google thinks that it will be useful for users. Essentially it depends on the overall structure of your blog, and many other factors like oubound links, linkbacks, page rank and click through rates from Google's search result page.

Submit your blog to Google

This triggers page indexes, and from this point on Google's bots will start crawling all over your blog, so make sure your meta tags are properly configured before you do this. Google crawlers are efficient and they will start indexing your pages before you submit your blog address, but it is better to submit it manually too. Here is a list of places where you can submit your URL:

Google Add URL Service
Google Blog Search Ping Service
Yahoo!
Bing

Submitting your Sitemap

A sitemap is a handy list of pages contained in a website which is accessed by crawlers. Stored in XML, these can be accessed at http://www.YourBlogName.blogspot.com/atom.xml .
Sitemaps ensure that all the pages in your website are indexed in Google's search engine, think of it as each of your posts compacted into one page for easy access. Your post's link is displayed in search results when something concerning it's content is searched. Following these steps will enable you to submit your sitemap easily:

1) Log in to Google Webmaster Central with your Gmail account. Once logged in Click on "Add a site..."

Note: Do NOT insert www or http unless your blog is hosted on a external domain.

2) Now you will need to verify that you own the blog of whose URL you just submitted. Select the option which says "Add a meta tag to your site's home page"

Once you select this option, you will be shown a meta tag:

When you have done that, click on the verify button. It might take anywhere between instant to 5 minutes to get your blog verified. At times it can take up to an hour, so be patient.

3) Now that your blog is verified, you can go on to submit the sitemap. Select your blog from the homepage of Webmasters Central, and then scroll down and click on 'Submit a Sitemap"

In the blank space, paste this : atom.xml?redirect=false. Then click "Submit Sitemap".
Let it process for a few days, then visit Google Webmasters to view additional statistics about page indexes and errors, that is if any occur.

Phew, that was long, now that we have finally reached the finish-line, it's time to drop the bottom line. And it is that you can get nowhere without quality and unique content, so after completing these basic SEO steps, rush to your Post editor, double check your former posts for spelling mistakes etc. And then continue delivering quality content, that indeed is the best SEO formula.