January, 2009

Read, Reply, offline using GMail

Yes the title is true. You can now read, reply, star, access your mail Contacts, search etc using GMail.
You probably sitting there wondering how is it possible to send an email without internet connection?
Yes its not possible!
But whatever you write and whatever changes you make to your GMail when you are offline will be updated once you are connected to the internet using the same computer. And all the emails that you typed while you were offline will be sent automatically once you are online.
Thanks to Google GMail team.
Here is what GMail team has to say about it:

Once you turn on this feature, Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you’re connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail’s servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer’s hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you’re used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection. And if you’re on an unreliable or slow connection (like when you’re “borrowing” your neighbor’s wireless), you can choose to use “flaky connection mode,” which is somewhere in between: it uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background. Our goal is to provide nearly the same browser-based Gmail experience whether you’re using the data cached on your computer or talking directly to the server.

This feature is going to save millions of time. We really love this feature.
Yahoo and MSN had provided this feature previously, but they need a client software to be installed. But Google doesn’t need one, except GoogleGears, and you need not even install that small software, if you are using Google Chrome.

To use this feature:-
Goto labs inside your GMail.
Gmail_Labs_offline_enable_disable

Enable Offline and save it.

To enable Offline Gmail, click the Offline link at the top(“Offline0.1” link in the upper right-hand side corner of your account, next to your username).

Now you will get a prompt to inform you to download Google Gears.
Gmail_Labs_Offline_gears

Now synchronization starts. All your email till date will be downloaded to your local hard disk. And if you are having a slow internet connection then you can click on the Flaky Connection mode to handle it.
Gmail_Labs_Offline_sync
Google Gmail team has been using this feature from many days, so we hope that the feature is almost ready to public use without any problem.
Offline Gmail will be available to everyone who uses Gmail in US or UK English over the next couple of days, so if you don’t see it under the Labs tab yet, it should be there soon.

India a small review — A wonder

India was and is a very rich country. In olden days they use to sell gold in streets and now a days they don’t show it to the outside world! but India is still rich.

In case of population, India tops again. Has almost endless religion, language, type of people, culture, etc. And more over terrorist, nasals, etc are also residing in India. i sometimes wonder, how could it be possible?
This is one of the success in “Unity in Diversity” theory!

How a single person can inspire and lead people …

With all these India is recognized as one of the leading tech savvy country in the world.
We know that India have a long way to go before calling itself a developed country. Every citizen must be free from hungry and must have a smile on his face, this would be a real success.
There is still a lot to do and I am sure that every one can help India get to that good position.
As John F. Kennedy’s said :- “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what can you do for your country.”

So to add value and to celebrate the glory of India. And as a proud Indian, we are going to start blogging about issues related to India on our blog, separately in the category called India.
The articles written in this category will not be delivered to our main blog subscribers. If you are interested, then you need to subscribe to this category feed separately.

Subscribe to Technotip.org » India by Email

Thanks for reading. And hope for your support.

WordPress.tv launched, for all your WordPress needs!

If you are using WordPress, then you will be knowing the trouble of searching for video tutorials and the WordCamp videos all around the internet.

But WordPress has come to our rescue again! It has launched a new site called WordPress.Tv, which is a library of all the Useful WordPress tutorials[for both WordPress self-installs and WordPress.com], How-To’s, slideshows of presentations made by Automattic employees and other WordPress gurus, plus interviews done with the media and fellow bloggers. And there is a special section called “WordCampTv“, where you can get all the WordCamp videos.

https://videopress.com/v/DEesBAlR

All the videos are of high quality and for lower bandwidth or slower internet connection, you can always switch HD(High Definition) OFF.

If you want to learn anything about WordPress then, here is a great resource along with codex.
And do not forget to subscribe to WordPress.TV Blog, for latest updates.

An Interview with BuySellAds.com

BuySellAds.com [BSA] is an advertising marketplace for small to medium sized website owners/publishers. They want to help small to medium sized website publishers sell more ads and make more money from buysellads websites. They also want to help advertisers find better placements and streamline the process of dealing with small to medium sized publishers.
Interview-BuySellAds-Technotip
BuySellAds.com is a direct banner selling service. As a result you can charge as much as you want for an ad slot and you can move away from PPC or CPM etc adnetworks and start charging more, on monthly basis.

We could somehow get in contact with a nice guy called Todd of buysellads.com, and he was kind enough to answer some of our questions.

1. We are very much curious about all the guys behind BuySellAds.com, and we want to have a look at your office. If you have any video and photographs(of your employees and office) then please share it with our readers.

Hahaha, well, BuySellAds.com is run by me out of the second bedroom in my apartment. We have a programmer and an assistant site manager who also work from home and are remote. We’re a very small team, 100% bootstrapped, and trying to be as efficient as possible to make this thing work for everyone. I don’t think there’s any other way to do it.

2. How would you decide that BSA is matured enough to comeout of *BETA*?

Good question. I’ll make you a deal… as soon as Gmail comes out of beta, we will come out of beta. Cool?

3. Do you read blogs? If yes, then which are your favorite blogs?

There are only two blogs I read religiously: http://TechCrunch.com and http://OnStartups.com

4. There was a Buzz in the blogosphere, when BSA was launched. what do you think made “A” list bloggers write about your launch?

I think the idea behind BSA just rings true with many bloggers. The problem I was trying to solve is real and I wasn’t the only person with that problem: selling ads on my own was a pain, too time consuming, and distracted me from publishing more often. Buying ads was also troublesome – contacting multiple bloggers, making payment different ways, etc, it was just totally disorganized and inefficient.

5. What about the tool(suggestion tool based on real data) which would show us the value of our blogs ad space?

Yes, this is a good idea and one that we want to do. It’s one of those things that’s very hard to get *right*. For example, a site in our network CSSRemix is getting around 100K impressions per month. They are selling 7 ads across the top of their site at $350 each. That is a $3.50 CPM which is very high for our network. You will find many sites of similar caliber that cannot charge that much. Pricing ads is tricky and is not an equation – there are many many factors involved. That being said, it’s something we’re very interested in building because it is hard to build – which would make it a very valuable tool.

6. What goals do you have for BSA in coming years?

Same goals we have now, help publishers sell more ads, and help advertisers find quality niche placements from a central marketplace.

7. What was the major challenge you faced while launching BSA?

Having the guts to pull the trigger. I had the site ready to go for a few weeks before I actually launched.

8. What do you call, was a stepping stone for BSA?

Getting some of the first publishers signed up (Logopond, PSDTuts, FreelanceSwitch, etc).

9. Share a happiest moment about BSA(except the launch day)?

Seeing the first ads sold moments after the first publisher had installed the ad code 😉

10. How do you define success?

Success for me is about doing the right thing. Whether in business, family, etc., it’s important to always do the right thing and that’s how I sleep well at night.

11. What are the mistakes you see your publishers and advertisers are making, in using BSA

Changing price frequently and/or raising the price on an advertiser in their first month. It just doesn’t make any sense. The publishers who do the best with BSA raise pricing on their advertisers *maybe* once every 3-4 months. I think that it is important for publishers to find a price they are happy with for this period of time and stick with it. Even if you need to raise the price for new advertisers, you should let the existing advertisers stay at their current rate for roughly 3-4 months. As for advertisers, the common mistake I see with them is not giving a placement enough time. One month is a long time, but with some businesses advertising in this niche it can be more about branding and staying power (believe it or not) than anything else.

12. What repels you the most from a blog/website(animation at your face advertising etc)?

Poorly placed ads that don’t fit in well with the design of the site. Sites that have scripts for more than 2 ad networks. The biggest turn off, however, is seeing ads that are not targeted. If you look through all of the websites in BSA’s inventory and check out the ads BSA serves for those sites, you will see that 99.9% of them (had to give myself a little room for error) are very targeted placements.

13. Whats your view about PPC, CPM, CPA advertising?

Blah, Blah and blah. I like to keep things simple, fixed 30-day rates.

14. What are the new year resolutions for BSA?

The one is easy, get the new site launched!

15. Please tell something, that you would like all your
advertisers/publishers/ and others to know about you and BuySellAds.com

What you see is what you get. BSA is real.

We are using BuySellAds on some of our blog too, and it provides a reliable service. Once your blog is accepted into their network, your blog will be listed in their marketplace and you will get a lot of exposure. And the best part is – they pay on time!
BuySellAds is still in Beta, and we hope it will be available for all public shortly. And we recommend to try Beta Registration and see your luck with them.

Hope you enjoyed the interview

Join OnlineProfits.com to learn Internet Marketing and Online Business from Experts

OnlineProfits.com is officially launched today(12th Jan 2009).

This is the most complete Internet Marketing and Online Business training program on the web. Just don’t believe on my words, have a look at who would be involved in the training program.

There are many free online marketing and business resources available on the internet and usually from a single person, who may or may not be an expert in whatever he is giving it for free. But in case of OnlineProfits.com, they have a panel of experts who are well experienced and successful in whatever topic they are dealing with. So you need not worry about the quality of program.

Here is a list of experts who are responsible for producing materials for OnlineProfits.com

1. Michael Gray:- Search Engine Optimization (SEO) expert.

2. Neil Patel:- Founder of ACS SEO

3. Yaro Starak:- Authority on the Internet Marketing niche.

4. Daniel Scocco:- Graduated in International Economics and Business Administration.

5. Tamar Weinberg:- Most active and influential social media users.

6. Hamlet Batista:- Started working with SEO and affiliate marketing in the early 2000s. Today he has one of the most advanced SEO software tools on the market, called RankSense.

7. Zac Johnson:- Started working with affiliate marketing from his teenage.

8. Courtney Tuttle:- He is an expert with keyword research, and you can find his articles on this topic on CourtneyTuttle.com.

9. Nathan Rice:- A professional web designer, specialized in WordPress development. He co-founded a design company called iThemes.

10. Skellie Wag:- Editor and social media strategist of the Envato network.

Hope there will be some more people working for OnlineProfits.com, and its a sure thing that you get quality training.

There will be 21 training modules which include topics like basic web design, Pay-per-Click advertising, email marketing,social media branding etc.

Take a detailed look at the topics they cover in this training program:-

Module 1: Introduction and Business Principles

* Lesson 1: What Is Internet Marketing?
* Lesson 2: Business Principles
* Lesson 3: 7 Deadly Mistakes to Avoid

Module 2: Domain Names

i* Lesson 4: The Importance of the Domain
* Lesson 5: The Research Process
* Lesson 6: Tool And Resources

Module 3: Setting Up Your Website

* Lesson 7: Web Hosting Basics
* Lesson 8: How to Choose a Hosting Company and Use cPanel
* Lesson 9: Content Management Systems (CMS)

Module 4: WordPress

* Lesson 10: Basic Setup
* Lesson 11: Plugins and Resources
* Lesson 12: Advanced Optimization

Module 5: Web Design for Entrepreneurs

* Lesson 13: HTML and CSS
* Lesson 14: Designing for Profits and Accessibility
* Lesson 15: Outsourcing Your Web Design

Module 6: Business Models

* Lesson 16: What is a Business Model?
* Lesson 17: Online Business Models

Module 7: Selecting Your Niche

* Lesson 18: Passion and Profits
* Lesson 19: Market Research
* Lesson 20:100 Niches Analyzed – Part 1
* Lesson 21:100 Niches Analyzed – Part 2

Module 8: Blogs

* Lesson 22: Why Blogs?
* Lesson 23: Blogging Dos and Don’ts
* Lesson 24: Design Optmization
* Lesson 25: Promoting Your Blogs
* Lesson 26: Guest Bloggers and Staff Writers

Module 9: Other Types of Websites

* Lesson 27: Online Forums
* Lesson 28: Mini Websites
* Lesson 29: Online Stores

Module 10: Web Content and Copywriting

* Lesson 30: Copywriting Basics
* Lesson 31: Linkbairs, Socialbaits and Viral Content
* Lesson 32: Outsourcing Your Web Content

Module 11: Basic SEO

* Lesson 33: Understanding Search Engines
* Lesson 34: On-site Search Engine Optimization
* Lesson 35: Off-site Search Engine Optimization
* Lesson 36: Linkbuilding

Module 12: Advanced SEO

* Lesson 37: Keyword Research
* Lesson 38: Competition Analysis
* Lesson 39: Targeting Highly Competitive Terms

Module 13: Generating Traffic

* Lesson 40: Basic Traffic Generation Strategies
* Lesson 41: Advanced Traffic Generation Strategies

Module 14: Social Media

* Lesson 42: Social Networks
* Lesson 43: The Secrets of Social Bookmarking
* Lesson 44: How to Become a Social Media Power User
* Lesson 45: Branding Your Business with Social Media

Module 15: Web Metrics

* Lesson 46: Basic Concepts
* Lesson 47: Google Analytics
* Lesson 48: Analyzing the Numbers

Module 16: Selling Advertising

* Lesson 49: CPC Advertising
* Lesson 50: CPM Advertising
* Lesson 51: Direct Advertising Sales
* Lesson 52: Harvest vs. Growth Strategies

Module 17: Email Marketing

* Lesson 53: Email List Building
* Lesson 54: Relationships and Profits

Module 18: Affiliate Marketing

* Lesson 55: Affiliate Marketing Basics
* Lesson 56: Finding Opportunities and Resources
* Lesson 57: Driving Sales

Module 19: PPC (Pay-per-Click)

* Lesson 58: PPC Basics
* Lesson 59: PPC for Market Research
* Lesson 60: PPC Dos and Don’ts

Module 20: Landing Pages

* Lesson 61: Basics of Landing Pages
* Lesson 62: Landing Page Optimization

Module 21: Selling Your Products

* Lesson 63: The Sales Funnel
* Lesson 64: Creating Your Product
* Lesson 65: Pricing
* Lesson 66: Product Launch Strategies

Isn’t this a great list. We know that many of these things are already available online. But I bet you, OnlineProfits.com will surly have somethings new and valuable. As all the trainers are well-versed in their niche.

You need not have any technical skills to join this program, you will learn many things from basic. You just need to spend a few hours weekly to learn the contents and to interact with other members(in a private forum). The course materials include text and audio formats, a new material is provided every Monday and Thursday(for 12 months). And Upon completing the 6 months of the training program every member will receive an eBook with all the 66 lessons, interviews and case studies. That eBook will be yours to keep forever.

The Online Profits training program will be open for new members from January 12 until January 16 only. The launch price is $48 monthly, and the program has a duration of six months. After January 16 the program will close its doors to ensure and meet the expectations of all the registered members.

Late in 2009 the program will open again, but with a price of $98 monthly. If you join now, therefore, you will be able to attend the program for 50% of the price.
If you join the program and within 30 days find out that it is not what you were looking for, they will refund your first payment immediately. No questions asked. Additionally, even if you go past the first month, you won’t have an obligation whatsoever to pay for the 6 months of the program. You can quit at anytime and won’t be charged again.

So I hope this is one of the best and the safest online program I have seen so far, by looking at the successful people who are going to be part of OnlineProfits.com.

If you are really serious and want to learn from the people who have already learnt and have lot of experience, then OnlineProfits.com is for you.
I really admire the works of Daniel Scocco, and this one is his master piece work. He is always committed to provide value to his customers. So we highly recommend OnlineProfit.com for anyone who seriously want to learn Internet Marketing and Online Business.

Get Discount Coupon For Paid Advertising

This strategy involves investment of some money. This method will surly bring in more traffic, if done in a smarter way.
Target the right audience. If your blog is about Gadgets, then advertise on those websites which are popular in that niche. By doing so, you will get some quality traffic and some of the traffic may convert into loyal readers.

Now coming to the point, make use of some discount coupons available all over the internet, to advertise using Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Market, Bidvertiser, Text-Link-Ads etc.
By doing so, you will reduce the cost of advertising to almost 50 – 80%!
Yes you read it right. You can almost reduce the advertising cost by 50 – 80% or even more.
Google Adwords or its power users has previously given 150 to 200$ free advertising coupons. Recently I had found that there was maximum of 50$ off when you signup for adwords for the first time. — Search for the coupon code in Google.
Yahoo Search Market, provides frequent free advertising coupons to its existing customers. And the first time advertiser will get 25$ off[Offer might have expired. Again use search engine and you will most probably get one].
Bidvertiser gives 20$ free advertising for the first time advertiser.
Text-link-ads, has comeup with a new adverting system called InLink advertising, where they place dofollow links on the blogs where you purchase the advertising. As part of their public launch, TLA (InLinks) is offering $100 worth backlinks for just $1, for a limited time.
tla-inlinks-example By utilizing this opportunity you can get good Technorati authority and Google may rank you high!
To grab this big opportunity, signup an account with TLA, and click on the “BUY LINKS” -> InLinks.
Text-link-ads-inlink Now enter “Keyword or phrase” relevant to your blog topic, and pick as many links as you want so that the total adds up to $100.00. Usually PR4 links come at $25 a piece, PR3 at $20, PR2 at $12 and PR1 at $10 etc. Just use your common sense while selecting these links, so that you benefit more out of the deal. After selecting the links worth 100$, click on the add to chart button at the end. Now put the link of your blog which you want to advertise. After checking everything, press “Checkout”. Now you get the option to pay 1$ by using your credit card, after using the coupon code 100free. And a happy thing is, TLA also allow us to pay using paypal.
See for the link to paypal payment at the end of the same page. Click on it and follow the instruction.

Do not fear of penalty, as the link looks very natural and not like paid advertising.
And the links will be placed for 30 days.

Now please read on further without fail..
Many of the above offers are valid only for the first time advertisers. And these offers are given with the intention that you will continue to be their advertiser even after the expiry of the offer.
So most of these companies[This is written in general, and it do not pointout to any particular company] set a “Subscription” to your Credit Card and/or to your paypal account.
So be careful and cancel[if you are not sure to continue advertising for the next month] the authorization of them once you pay them the initial amount for the first time.
For example:-
When you pay for X adNetwork for the first time using paypal, it may set the authorization to X adNetwork for further automatic payment for the coming months.
[ Actually paypal will ask you for confirmation before setting the authorization, but most beginners will skip reading and may click Yes.]
To remove it:- Goto your paypal account, click on the “Transaction Details”(in Recent Transaction Section) and then on “View Billing Agreement Details” link. Now see the “Status:” and click on the Cancel button. Thats all, you will not be billed by X adNetwork without your permission.

So be careful while doing online transaction. And do not waste your money without making proper use of discount coupons!.

Actually many adnetworks provide such discount to attract customers and to make them use their service somehow and to show them that their adnetwork can bring them more benefits. But many people just use these discount coupons and get traffic to their blog and then discontinue using them. But I think, if any of these advertising programs seems to be bringing you high quality traffic, and if you are getting more returns to your investment, then why to stop paid advertising? Use the discount coupons, offers etc and experiment which one suits you the best and continue with them.

This also holds good for any kind of online purchase. You can look for a good discount for your first time hosting.

If its hard earned money, then use it wisely 🙂
Like this, you can do a quick google search before using any ad network for advertising purpose or directly contact the company people and ask them for a discount coupon.

Do you think a good title makes any difference in traffic?

Title is not important, but its crucial.

When you finish writing an article, its better to check whether the title of the post is actually what you have talked about in the post. And make sure that the Title is eye catching.

I would recommend spending more time in crafting the Title of the article. Once you finish writing the article, read the article completely and then again read the title of the article. Make sure that the title says whats in the article. If you just write the Title, to make it look interesting to your audience and forget to include proper keywords in it( or if you use the wrong keywords in it) then your article will not be shown in starting pages of search results of search engines, so again that article won’t receive traffic. So take care that, you make the title interesting as well as (relevant)keyword rich, so that you get long term benefits from search engines as well as from Social media, Social networking and Social bookmarking sites.

You can develop writing good Title skills by constantly practicing it on every blog post that you do.

Think of the benefits that you are going to get, from all around:-

1. Search engines will display your title in the search results, if its interesting then there will be more people visiting it.

2. If you promote your article in Social Media, Social Bookmarking and Social Networking sites, then title is almost the deciding factor, to get high traffic or to get almost negligible traffic.

3. Title makes your RSS/email subscribers to visit your blog and to involve/participate in the discussion going on in the comment section.

4. Attracts other bloggers to link to your article. And whenever people link to your article, they use your title as the anchor text and will usually use your title to point their readers to you.

5. Some people will tweet about the article and will share it with their friends and their friends will share it with their friends, if the article headline is really interesting. But I am sure that only 2 or 3 among 10 to 15 will really read the article!
Title-Traffic-Heading
So I could have used killer blog post titles or The secret to get heavy traffic for this article — But it isn’t a secret anymore. We all know it, but we are just a little bit lazy and/or forget to invest time to craft a better Title. And in some cases you might have tired by writing a long post and you are in a hurry to hit the publish button, to see the reaction of your readers. But remember, invest more time in crafting the Titles also, its worthwhile thing to do. You will have almost 4 times more success with that post, if you write compelling Title.

While we are clearing our emails, sometimes we don’t follow the order in which they have been received. We will sometimes pickup the interesting one, based upon its title. This fact was discovered by Spammers long back, so they started using titles like “You Won $100000 in lotto” etc. But in this case, the content of the email is not true, so people started not reading emails with such titles. Similarly, if you write an interesting Title and if the article doesn’t actually deliver the requirement then such (nice) titles will do much harm then any favor.

An offline, life example:
Here is a story of a blind Boy, who started getting good donation, after changing the sign board statement:
A blind boy sat on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet.
He held up a sign board which said: ‘I am blind, please help.’
There were only a few coins in the hat.

A man was walking by.
He took a few coins from his pocket and dropped them into the hat.
He then took the sign board, turned it around, and wrote some words.
He put the sign board back so that everyone who walked by would see the new words.

Soon the hat began to fill up.
A lot more people were giving money to the blind boy.
That afternoon the man who had changed the sign board came to see how things were.
The boy recognized his footsteps and asked, ‘Were you the one who changed my sign board this morning? What did you write?’

The man said, ‘I only wrote the truth. I said what you said but in a different way.’
What he had written was: ‘Today is a beautiful day and I cannot see it.‘

Do you think the first sign and the second sign were saying the same thing?

Of course both signs told people that the boy was blind.
But the first sign simply said the boy was blind.
The second sign told people they were so lucky that they were not blind.
Should we be surprised that the second sign was more effective?
This is an effective real world example of how the human brain works in its conscious or sub-conscious state.

Some times ago I wrote an article(it was a kind of breaking news, which was already broke by some bloggers!) i.e., I saw that Google Analytics and Adsense integration was officially announced on Analytics blog. So I hurried and wrote about it on my blog. After writing the post, I just felt that I need to do something extra, so I just invested a minute more and wrote an interesting Title, which had all the keywords(to rank in Search Engine) and to attract the people to click on the Title and read the post. The Title was, “Feature Rich Google Analytics Gets Richer By Integrating Adsense ($)”. It received a lot of traffic from social Media sites at that time, and it still receives some traffic from search engines. (It didn’t hit the front page, because the news was not totally unexpected).

And as a counter proof, most of us read news papers every morning. And almost 99.9% of people won’t read the news paper entirely without leaving any words! Most of us read the titles and read most interesting things completely. And read some part of the news which are less interesting. And some times, heading itself is enough to read, no need to read the entire story.

This ensures that Title of an article is not only important, but also crucial.

So lets concentrate more on writing compelling titles on our blog. I will first practice this on my blog and let me write an article about how to write a compelling title, in the future.

Over to readers, please share your thoughts about the importance of the Title of an article.