January, 2010 - Part 2

Sunday Series for Newbie Bloggers and nOobs

Being a blog concentrating on social media, blogging, it would be good to have some resources for newbie bloggers or people who are interested in knowing more about blogging, social media and online money making(basics).

Two years ago, I never knew the difference between a domain and hosting. Twitter and FaceBook were far from my thinking. Blogging was far from imagination. Never knew there will be so many people reading blogs more regularly than News Paper, and Tweet more often than they send a text message(SMS – texting) or Call to anyone!

Looking back those days, feels like great memories of ignorance 🙂 Unfortunately, I have many many and many friends who don’t know about blogs, Twitter, Facebook, web-publishing etc. They still think having a live website requires a great deal of knowledge, money and influence. Actually, a friend of mine asked me – how to get permission from BSNL to launch a website. hmm..I got confused for a while, so as to what he was asking. But soon realized, BSNL being a well known Internet service provider in India, many people think that the whole internet and all the websites and everything is controlled by them. Not a bad logic though. And some still think internet is owned by Google.
When I try to tell about the advantages of Twitter and tell them to start using it to their good – the last question they would ask me is, Is Twitter your website? lol…. how good, if it was 😉

Some years back, most news papers, tv News and some online publications tought us how internet is being used to scam people and for betrayal. It has so stuck in the minds of people that, they never dare to do an online transaction. And some people think Google too as a scam, because of various Google Cash Cow like scams. So I think writing about what to trust and what not to, would surly help many people in making right decision.

Not that I know many things. I am still learning and would love to share whatever I learn with like minded nOob friends!

So without hurting the regular readers, I have thought of writing about very basics of internet tools, blogging, Content Management System, how and why etc on this blog on Sundays.

So you got it — most of you may skip reading Technotip.org on Sunday and Saturday.

This post will be used as a document for later reference. Because I am sure, many people will ask what the hell I am writing on the blog. So I can point to this and can tell them that they can skip reading on Saturday and Sunday.

But it would be great, if you can come and help everyone with your valuable comments. Hope you remember your student days, where we learn a lot of complex things and we will be asked some questions related to basics of the subjects and we sometimes giggle to answer it. No one knows everything. So everyone’s comment will add value, even though its a basic thing.

And feel free to(actually I will be privileged) send any of your nOob friends to our blog.

Publish Guest Posts Under A Separate Username

Link back to the guest writer’s blog or twitter a/c is a good way to show that the article was written by a guest writer. But if you have your name on the homepage(where you show only post excerpts and show “published by yourname“), then showing “published by Guest” would make more sense..

Create a user called Guest and then publish all the guest posts under that user name. This approach may help in multiple ways.

1. You can get all the guest posts from few clicks(under dashboard) — See all the posts published under the username Guest.
2. Visitors can see all the guest posts by clicking on the link Guest(if its clickable and displays all the articles published under the username Guest).
3. Visitors/readers confusion as to who wrote the article would be reduced to a certain extent.
Link back to the guest writer’s blog or twitter a/c is a good way to show that the article was written by a guest writer. But if you have your name on the homepage(where you show only post excerpts and show “published by yourname“), then showing “published by Guest” would make more sense to your readers. This way you can eliminate a certain degree of confusion and add more clarity(and good usability). People will be knowing, whether its written by you or a guest writer – before clicking on the read more link.

Showing Authors Photo, Bio and a Link – using a smart plugin
Another nice way to show credit to guest writers is to show their bio, a small image and a link to their website/twitter a/c at the end of the article, in a well structured manner. Did you just say its a tedious job? No its not. There is a good plugin called Author Image, which can do the job for you. It creates a widget that you can insert in a sidebar, or much about anywhere and you can also add author’s description in addition to his/her image.

Who should care for it ?
If you are receiving 1 or 2 guest posts per month, then managing guest posts will not be a big challenge. But once your blog is out there for some more years and you blog consistently, you will start receiving a lot of guest post requests, so you will certainly need some strategy to manage them effectively. So keeping things organized from the beginning is smarter then messing up with things later.

What strategies do you follow to maintain/manage guest posts.

Take Your Site To Clinic – Dr. Google!

Note: This Clinic is provided by Google India and is only for Indian Webmasters.

There is no mention in the blog post by GoogleIndia that only Indian webmasters are allowed to submit their sites. But it can be clearly understood, because its announced on Google India Blog. And in the registration form, its clearly mentioned that the Clinic is open only for Indian webmasters.

What’s it all about ?
Search Quality team at Google will analyze websites submitted to the clinic and has planned to offer constructive advice on accessibility and improvements that can lead to better visibility for your website in Google’s search results.

So how do I submit my site and how much would it cost!
You can submit your website/blog to the clinic for free. And the submission will be open from Jan 6th to Jan 20th , 2010. Also not that, not all submitted sites will make it to the analysis list. This is quite obvious, as there could be lot of submissions and Google Team will even have some other works to do!

Eligibility Criteria
1. Your site must be registered at webmasters tool. This is to ensure that, you are the actual webmaster of the website that you are submitting.
If you have not registered to webmasters tool, don’t think it as a burden. You may ignore submitting your site to clinic, but do not ignore to register at webmasters tool. Its free and very useful tool for any webmaster.
2. Your website must meet all the quality guidelines of webmasters tool.

Also note that: By submitting your site you agree to the use of your website as an example in future blog posts under site clinic banner, by GoogleIndia.

Submit your website here.

A Humble Request
If you are submitting your website/blog to the clinic OR if you feel it will help your followers in Twitter, then please make sure you Tweet about this article. Thanks.

#Indian #webmasters #only Take Your Site To Clinic – Dr. Google! @ http://tinyurl.com/y875wcp (RT)

Source: GoogleIndia

Image Rollover Effect – using Simple HTML

When visitor roll mouse pointer over a image, s/he will see a different image, when s/he moves mouse pointer out of the image focus, s/he will see the previous image. This is called RollOver Effect. This method is mostly done using JaveScript. It is used mainly on images, while building menu etc.

Yesterday I had written an article about OnlineProfits re-lauch and I had used rollover effect to one of the images there, and some people asked me how I did it(Simple Ans: See the source code 😉 ).
So here is the simple code to achieve this design effect:

<a href="Destination Address" 
ONMOUSEOVER='thinkwithsatish.src="ImageURL-when-mouseover" ' 
ONMOUSEOUT='thinkwithsatish.src="ImageURL-when-mouseout" 
'><center><img src="ImageURL-to-be-shown-by-default" 
NAME="thinkwithsatish"/></center></a>

Explaination:
ONMOUSEOVER and ONMOUSEOUT are valid JS effects. Since all most all browsers support JS, this works fine.

Give a name to the actual image to be displayed:
<img src="URL-of-default-image" NAME="thinkwithsatish"/>
I have named above tag src as thinkwithsatish. Now Refer to this name by using ONMOUSEOVER and ONMOUSEOUT commands.

ONMOUSEOVER='thinkwithsatish.src="ImageURL-when-mouseover" '

ONMOUSEOUT='thinkwithsatish.src="ImageURL-when-mouseout" '

Hope the rest of the code is self explanatory.

Code in action!:

Now you can test it by taking your mouse pointer in and out of image area. If you don’t see any changes, place the mouse pointer over the image for some time – because in some cases, it takes some time to load.

I see that, it works perfectly in Mozilla FireFox, Internet Explorer and Chrome. I haven’t tested it in other browsers. And interestingly, I saw it working even in RSS feed!

Many people use content management system software like WordPress, to publish their content. So in order to include a RollOver effect using JavaScript means – editing the header part or installing a plugin which does the job etc. So instead we can incorporate this simple coding to get the design effect.

Design Tip: This is just the coding/programming part. To get the effect on the design, you must choose such images which will have good effect on users mind. So choose the images wisely.

I am not sure, how helpful it is to you. But it surly helps me sometime to get some minimal design effects on my WordPress blog posts.

OnlineProfits.com Re-launches, And This Time There Is Something For Everyone!

The report is all about “10 Deadly Business Mistakes You Should Avoid“. You may feel – ha again, the list! But I will reveal you a secret, which only Daniel and his first set of students know. i.e., The REPORT contains many key lessons(Modified to suit the REPORT format) that were tough in the first launch of OnlineProfits training program and now YOU are getting it for FREE. What are you doing? Stop reading and grab your copy of the REPORT.

Doors of OnlineProfits.com will be open again on January 18 (Monday), 2010 — by far the most complete Internet Marketing and Online Business training program on the web.

But we know that, most people are sick of watching different online programs launch, pre-launch, re-launch etc! But you must visit OnlineProfits this time — no excuse!!

The site is re-designed and looks good and it now has a section where we can read articles mainly related to internet marketing and online business. That’s not all, the main reason I told you to visit the website is to download the REPORT.

One of the main reasons to write about re-launch of OnlineProfits is its “REPORT“. I have gone through the entire report and its Gold. You can’t miss it – if you have or want to have a online business.

daniel-onlineprofits

The report is all about “10 Deadly Business Mistakes You Should Avoid“. You may feel – ha again, the list! But I will reveal you a secret, which only Daniel and his first set of students know. i.e., The REPORT contains many key lessons(Modified to suit the REPORT format) that were tough in the first launch of OnlineProfits training program and now YOU are getting it for FREE. What are you doing? Stop reading and grab your copy of the REPORT.

business-mistakes-free-report-onlineprofits

And as an added bonus – people who signup and download the report will receive some cool stuffs from Daniel via email. I am sure, we can learn a lot.

I know many people who are very sincere at downloading things, but they never get time to go through the content. So I would suggest you atleast go through the “action points” now, and you can read the rest of the report whenever you plan to read it.

I remember these lines, when someone says ” I don’t have time – while he/she is lying on the bed”:
1. Who says nothing is impossible ? – I have been doing nothing for years!
2. I’,m so busy doing nothing that, I dont have time to do anything else!

Hey, nothing related to this topic – just remembered it while talking about people not finding time to read a valuable thing related to their business.

Now back to reopening of OnlineProfits.com
The lessons of the Online Profits training program have been produced by top experts from different fields and specializations.

Mentors:
Daniel Scocco, Michael Gray, Neil Patel, Yaro Starak, Chris Garrett, Tamar Weinberg, Hamlet Batista, Zac Jonhson, Courtney Tuttle, Nathan Rice.

List of modules (each of which contains lessons, video tutorials, case studies and interviews):
1. Introduction and Business Principles
2. Domain Names
3. Setting Up Your Website
4. Markets and Niches
5. Business Models
6. WordPress
7. Web Design for Entrepreneurs
8. Blogging
9. Keyword Research and Mini Websites
10. Online Forums and Communities
11. Online Stores
12. Web Content and Linkbaiting
13. Basic SEO
14. Advanced SEO
15. Link Building
16. Traffic Generation
17. Web Metrics
18. Social Media
19. Selling Advertising
20. Email Marketing
21. Affiliate Marketing
22. Pay-per-Click (PPC)
23. Landing Page Optimization
24. Selling Your Own Products

I am not sure about the price of the training program yet, but you can have this as a rough figure and can look at the actual price at OnlineProfits:

This launch may cost 4 payments of $98 each (so $392 in the end). It will give the members who pay in full lifetime access to the program, including the lessons, exclusive resources, content library, social clubs and private forum.

And hey, they also have 30 days money back guarantee, so do not hesitate to join and check whether its a course for you or not in that 30 days period.

And don’t forget to download this valuable REPORT at OnlineProfits.com

Google Doodle Special – Apple falls!

If you observe Google.com today, you can find a falling Apple! indicating the invention of Gravitation. The Doodle marks 366th birthday of Sir Isaac Newton.
Does this Apple Doodle(shown in above video) has anything to do with this “Browser War?”

If you observe Google.com today, you can find a falling Apple! indicating the invention of Gravitation. The Doodle marks 366th birthday of Sir Isaac Newton.

You might have also noticed that, clicking on “I’m Feeling Lucky” button sparks some crackers(virtually!) and wishes Happy New Year.

Happy Google
Google Chrome Overtakes Apple’s Safari in market share.

safari v/s chrome

Does this Apple Doodle(shown in above video) has anything to do with this “Browser War?”

Image Source: TheAppleBlog

Are You Puzzling Your Visitors/Readers? Check List

It was completely different, if you were already a big brand or a celebrity. People will be mentally connected to you and will bare the inconvenience and do the things which you want them to do! But if you are like most of us, then you will have to think from users perspective.

This is exactly what comes to my mind when I visit a website/blog which is filled with many “call to action!” – Are You Trying To Puzzle ?

For example, there are many News websites and entertainment websites which are so confusing that, we bloggers can observe them and take advantage of it, by not doing such things on our blog.

Some of the puzzling things
1. Display half a page or so – ads!, and some dozens of sponsored links above the fold.
Displaying a lot of coupon codes/discount coupons of various products(which may be invalid), to gain search engine visitors to those keywords.

what-to-do

2. Some 15 to 20 social media widgets – for you, to inform your friends, family and their dog about the website.
And some more widgets to join their fan clubs – 1 fan club is a good idea. 2 is ok. Anything above 3 or 4 is a bad idea.

3. Some flash ads and animated .gif banners.

4. Few pop ups and pop under and not to forget text link ads(like kontera – which you may see on our blog too! , Infolinks etc).

5. And its quite common that, they will be having many CPM ads on their site, and so they need us to refresh the pages and visit various pages on their site – and its easy, break the single article into two(or even more) and link to it at the bottom of the first article, and link back to the 1st page from the 2nd page, so on.

6. Having a pop up, asking you to signup for a news letter – and the popup having no exit option!

7. Some audio/video(some time, sponsored audio/video), auto-playing! and the visitor searching all the open tabs for the possible culprit(to shut-it-down).

8. One or the other contest going on, and you participating in it with half a mind, because the prize is so valuable but you haven’t seen them announcing a winner. When announced, there will be no clue about the winners existence.

9. And a funny thing – I saw a Twitter widget integrated on one of the famous entertainment site, which shows the recent tweets of some one at their office. I thought, they want to give some real time entertainment news to their visitors. But when I observed it closely, all the previous tweets from almost months were tweeted by some bot(automatic tweets!), and most tweets were out of topic. Ex:- I increased my Twitter followers by using this service, check them out. bla bla bla.

10. And what else or what not ? ha…they also have some syndicated contents!

Innocent mistake:
Even though they have all these puzzling things around, not all News/Entertainment sites are useless. There are sites, which have good quality content. But the thing is, they forget their main product. The basic element that they wanted to sell you. That is their content or any of their own product, say a DVD or CD or their magazine.

But when the ad revenue or the other benefits get bigger then their main product they may get distracted and may start puzzling their readers with more of what makes them profitable, for the time being.

Smart Planning and Execution:
I have seen some people not displaying any ads or banners on their site for many years, and finally they release their own product – they take time to bring up a exclusive, quality product, while building a group of target audience. Once the product is launched, some people will surly talk about it on their websites, forums etc.
Similarly when a already messy site adds one more mess to its sidebar, who cares about it? And so the site owner will continue with the puzzling act of make money, instead of concentrating on their product.

Are You A Big Brand or a Celebrity?
It was completely different, if you were already a big brand or a celebrity. People will be mentally connected to you and will bare the inconvenience and do the things which you want them to do! But if you are like most of us, then you will have to think from users perspective.

But then, Some Facts..
Also know the fact that, many of these news/entertainment sites have got premium publisher accounts. That means they earn a major share in the total earnings they generate, unlike the usual 50 – 50 or 30 – 50 or 60 – 50 ratios. Some ad networks even pay 80% to their premium publishers. Because if they can retain some key players, they are sure to retain their loyal followers too. But such sites will have multiple posters and many many many posts in their archive.
Blogs with single author or 2 or 3 authors will have a hard time building such a site. Instead, you can concentrate on building a community around the blog, who can stick around longer. So, you may have to stop puzzling your readers and build the community, authority, trust around your blog/brand.

The final take from this post is:
1. If you have any widgets/banner on your sidebar, then take some time now itself and remove them.
2. I believe, you have some call to action to your visitors. Like news letter signup, buy this button for your product etc. Focus on the main thing(s), rather than wanting your visitors to do all the things which you expect them to do.
3. Avoid forcing your visitors to take certain actions. Let them choose what they want to do and what they don’t.
4. Teach your visitors whats on your blog. Ex:- Twitter had a video explaining what Twitter is all about. Similarly, some people write and educate their readers about things like – What is RSS. What are the bubble links that they are seeing when they hover over certain words – intext ads etc.
5. Label the things properly: Label the things like, subscription form, Search form, News letter form, recent links, popular links, Sponsored link, advertisements etc.
6. choose a good niche and try to be on topic as far as possible. Think, what if your favorite politics blog suddenly started writing only about entertainment and traveling!
7. Let the design of your blog be simple and well structured. And load before your visitor forgets, what he was looking for!
8. Do some testing and know which widgets your visitors use frequently to share the content on your blog. Retain such things and remove the rest.
9.
10.

You may earn a dollar more today by puzzling/confusing/misleading your visitor, but remember, with that intention, you might have already missed a big opportunity. Better late then not, you can take action now and never miss an opportunity in the future.

What do you think of sites which try to puzzle visitors/readers. I have left point, 9, 10 empty. Would love to know your experience, in the comment section.