Category: Blogging

This is a guest post by Usman Nasir. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.

VPS (Virtual private server) hosting plays a major role between shared hosting and dedicated hosting. The cost of VPS hosting is much low when compared with dedicated web hosting. Virtual private server is commonly used to illustrate the fundamental strategy which is meant for special use of customers. The main advantage of VPS hosting is it permits the users to build “sandboxes”. This option is only feasible when in a single physical server is contained two different VPS servers (virtual private servers).

The consumers are able to access another websites with the help of this sandbox without even directly affecting the same. The VPS web hosting best features include its quick access pace, all information and data safety as the servers don’t have to physically share, augmented server control and lot more. In business it plays a major role where stronger, accessible hosting services are required.

VPS fundamentally works by “virtual partitions” creation on the server. By this it allows each account to have its own server space without disturbing others who are hosted there.
The other advantages of the Virtual private server hosting include flexibility, stability, augmented performance, affordable price, and dedicated resources accessibility.

Flexibility of VPS:
With this benefit of VPS you can select your own operating system for server operation. Windows, Linux, are some of the “operating system” options which you can choose. In case you are not well versed in computer you must select the “managed VPS” solution. With this you can still handle all the technical features. More so for those who want to have complete power over their “virtual server” setting “unmanaged VPS” can be a great choice.

Stability of VPS:
Stability is one of the main benefits of VPS web hosting. The traffic and other activities from the other web-sites can badly affect your website performance in of case shared hosting, if it is on the same server. However in case of VPS hosting due to its stability it ensures that other accounts on the server don’t disturb your web-sites.

Augmented Functioning:
In comparison to shared hosting, the VPS hosting can help your web-site experience augmented functioning. This advantage can be used as users don’t have to share the resources of server with other several hosted accounts which will help your web-site viewers to benefit from quicker load-times. If your website doesn’t load fast then there is a chance of your prospective clients from changing to your competitor’s site.

VPS affordable prices:
VPS hosting offers good plans for all businesses at affordable prices. There are many web hosting service providers who offer great plans at much less price. Go through those plans carefully and select the one which best suits the hosting needs.

Dedicated Resources accessibility:
With Virtual private server you can get your own resources for your “own server”. With VPS hosting server you are able to get access to a quicker speed of CPU, more disk space for storage, and extra RAM capacity which is not feasible with shared hosting.

I am co-owner of Firsthosting, a company that provide cheap Shared, reseller hosting and alpha master reseller Hosting since 2007 and love to do their work. You can also join our web hosting forums !

This is a guest post by Michael Scottsdale. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.

If you’re planning a career in blog and article writing, learning to write content quickly helps you take in more assignments while giving yourself more time to spend for friends and family. The main problem with being a writer is that I found myself spending more time writing and less time for anything else. For those planning to take up writing as a full time profession or having difficulties balancing their writing profession with their personal lives, here are a few tips to help us become more efficient.

Keep a list of ideas
One of the first things that I noticed was that a great deal of the time I spent in front of my laptop was trying to come up with ideas for my blog. I found that having a pen and paper beside me all the time was a convenient way of writing these ideas down. Mental notes are discouraged as these ideas disappear as soon as easily as we come up with them.

Stay Focused
A simple sentence or phrase is all it takes to have a good idea or topic. Stay within the boundaries of your topic. Creativity will always be a must have for any writer but this could be distracting especially when your ideas are flying off the topic. If you’re trying to tell something, tell it at the first paragraph, the body and reinforce it at the last paragraph. Try to master this technique and you’ll be on your way to reaching that 30 minute blog. It helps you eliminate 60 percent of the writing workload.

Bullets
Bullets are an easy way of creating a basic outline for your article. These may represent points for starting out a new paragraph. You can then build on these to create content. It also helps you give a brief overview of the finished article and provides a solid anchor for building content.

Write before editing
Try to get the word count up as much as possible in as little time as possible. Checking your grammar and spelling could be done after accomplishing the article. Get those ideas down into writing before they escape your mind. Editing on the go could cost you some precious minutes and destroys the writing flow. It’s definitely easier to proof edit your writing than spend minutes coming up with content.

Short, Simple, Informative
Keep your blogs short and simple. Good blog posts are ideally around 300 to 500 words long. This is long enough for search engines to pick up while short enough to capture your reader’s attention. Longer content could be broken down into two articles which could be posted the following day. This makes you more efficient and gives you a much needed breather.

Use Photos and Images
Images help reinforce the content while providing some much needed color and life into your blogs. This is also an excellent way of “filling” in those spaces. Placing a photo or two stretches out your blog making it appear longer than it seems. Photos and images also have a story of their own and could increase the overall content of your blog.

Michael Scottsdale is a professional writer and currently works as a consultant for online businesses. When he’s not writing for Intermedia’s Hosted Exchange, he could be found blogging about simple tips on how people could take advantage of the internet’s numerous business opportunities.

This is a guest post by Lauren Bailey. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.

In some fields, the idea that it’s necessary to learn from your mistakes is a wonderful idea. In education, children learn from their mistakes in a safe environment. In flight simulators, pilots learn from their mistakes while safely planted on the ground. And athletes learn from their mistakes on the practice field in preparation for the big game.

But how can bloggers learn from mistakes without facing the consequences? Unfortunately, there’s really no way to make a mistake on a blog and have it go unnoticed. And in this competitive and fast-paced environment, a mistake can seriously hurt your traffic numbers, advertising revenue, and search engine results standings.

Instead of learning from our own mistakes, we can learn from the mistakes other beginning bloggers have made. Hopefully, this list can be extremely helpful to you; however, if you have made a mistake that’s not on this list, please share it with us! We could all learn from it.

1. Plagiarize Or Duplicate Your Content!
Whether they realize it or not, some bloggers plagiarize content. Maybe they don’t mean to cause any harm, but technically this is stealing other people’s work. Other bloggers do steal content on purpose in order to boost traffic!

In any case, it’s a good rule of thumb that if you do blog about someone else’s content or include portions of that content, then you should attribute that source and link back to the other person’s blog.

2. Forget About SEO
One of the basics of good blogging is to know about Search Engine Optimization strategies. New bloggers don’t often know about these, so they won’t include keywords or meta tags in their posts. They don’t realize the importance of backlinks. Then they wonder why they don’t get any traffic.

Avoid this mistake by looking up SEO strategies. Read about what SEO really means. Read Google’s official blog to understand how they manage search engine results and algorithms.

3. Write ‘All Over The Place’
Have you ever read posts by a blogger who can’t seem to make up his or her mind as to what to write about? The new blogger writes about his pets, the latest baseball score, some two-year old internet meme involving cats, and the occasional gadget. How frustrating was it to read? Very frustrating, I bet. This is a common mistake new bloggers make: they can’t seem to focus on a specific topic, and because of this, they’re writing is ‘all over the place.’

Avoid this mistake by knowing exactly what topics you’re going to cover in your blog and follow through on this commitment so that you’re readers know what to expect when they visit your blog.

4. Blog Once Every Blue Moon
Of course, new bloggers also get frustrated with how much work it takes to blog successfully. Because of this, they forget to blog. They get involved in other things. They blog once in a blue moon.

Avoid this mistake by following a regular blogging schedule. Even if you get blocked, you have to force yourself to blog every day. Blogging takes discipline.

5. Clutter Their Blog With Ads
These are perhaps some of the most annoying blogs out there. New bloggers think they can immediately monetize their blog, so they put up all these ads that take away from the content. They might see some profit initially, but once their traffic dries up, those profits will too.

Be careful in the kinds of ads you use and how you place them. The best blogs incorporate ads right into the template in such a way that they are not intrusive, but still manage to get good clicks.

6. Let Spam Dominate The Comments
New bloggers often don’t understand the concept of spam comments; I can’t count how many times I’ve seen a blogger respond to a spam comment! The terrible thing about spam comments is they get in the way of serious discussion. They may make a post appear popular, but really they just scare serious readers away.

Look up a great spam management application. Many blogging platforms have these built in, but you might find a third-party widget that gets the job done well. In any case, make sure you watch your comments section; even the best filters let some spam through.

7. Ignore Their Readers
New bloggers don’t often realize how important it is to use their blog as a way to communicate with others, especially their readers. Readers read blogs in order to get information and make connections with other bloggers. Sometimes new bloggers overlook this fact; they don’t realize that the blogging community is made up of all sorts of interesting people with whom they should interact.

Don’ t make this mistake! Respond to emails and comments. If you’d like, accept guest posts. Do everything you can to cultivate relationships with your readers! The connections you make will pay off, believe me.

Lauren Bailey is a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges.

This is a guest post by Kenneth McCall. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.

As a person who has worked in the self-storage industry for years, I’ve come to understand the importance of neatness and organization. I’ve seen my share of well-organized and well-maintained storage units. I’ve also seen units where I’ve opened up the storage unit door only to be overwhelmed by a room full of chaos.

Avoiding Blog Clutter
As an avid reader of blogs, I often get the same feeling when I read a blog as I do when I open up a storage unit door. Some blogs are a pleasure to read. The subject matter is clear, the points are thoughtful and concise, and the message is consistent. In other words, the blog is well organized and well written. However, others remind me very much of the cluttered storage unit. The message is disorganized, the flow is uneven, and the writer’s thoughts ramble all over the place.

Which type of blog would you rather read?

When people first open a door to any establishment, and the initial appearance is one of orderliness, they feel good about where they are and what they see. If they are able to find what they are looking for, they feel rewarded and are eager to return again and again. People react the same way to blogs. If the blog is well organized and a person finds what he is looking for, he is likely to jump on board…and then come back for more. So how exactly does a writer go about avoiding blog clutter? Here are five steps to keeping your blogs organized and clutter-free:

Step 1: Formulate your subject matter well. OK, so you know what you are going to write about, but how well do you know the topic? Do your research! Preparation is half the battle.
Formulate the exact question or questions you want your blog to answer. Then start writing down everything you know or learn about your topic that relates to these questions. Brainstorm if you must. Include everything that comes across your mind and everything you found in your research. You may not use all of it in your blog but that’s OK. You will have the information you need in front of you and you will have reviewed the topic in your mind. Now you are ready to organize that information.

Step 2: Construct the outline for your blog. Most blogs are like sandwiches: an introductory paragraph or two, the meat in the middle, and a wrap-up at the end. The introduction usually gives your readers the answer to the subject question(s) right away and then the “meat” explains the reasons for this answer. Most often, these reasons are in the form of bullet points (or a list). Jot down the titles of these bullet points. Let’s say there are five of them. Now you have the skeletal outline of your blog: an introduction, five bullet points, and a conclusion—seven sections in all. So take every piece of information you wrote down in step 1 and, one by one, place it in whichever of these sections it best fits. You will end up with seven sections, each one populated with several pieces of information that you can use to write about that section. Now, do the actual writing, or more precisely, let the blog write itself – one section at a time.

Step 3: Make it easy to read. One of the reasons you use bullet points or lists is because they catch the reader’s eye and are easy to scan. You should carry the same philosophy
throughout your blog – make it easy and pleasurable to read. Express your thoughts in a simple straightforward way. Inject the prose with humor and don’t be afraid to let your personality shine through. If your blog is interesting, people will read it!

Step 4: Don’t lose your focus. Sometimes it’s easy to get carried away and start to ramble. Don’t fall into this trap. Focus on your message and stay on point. Make sure that every sentence you write within a certain section of your post is fully related to the point you are trying to make in that section. Nobody wants to read a long-winded ramble. Get to the point and then move on!

Step 5: (When you think you are done) Read, re-read, and then re-read again! Proofreading is essential to anything you write and blogs are no exception. It works even better when you
step away from it for an hour or two and then go back and proofread. You will catch silly mistakes, faulty spelling, and grammatical errors. But even more importantly you will be putting yourself in the shoes of your readers. You can see if the content is clear, easy to read, and easy to understand. You will be able to see if the sequencing is logical and how smoothly each section flows into the next. And you can also tell whether your blog is interesting and captivating enough to hold a reader’s attention. If not, go back and keep tweaking until it looks just right.

Blog clutter is easy to avoid. The key is to not let the clutter build up in the first place. If you plan and organize your blog from the outset, your blog will be like a storage unit with neat shelves and a place where everything belongs. Make your readers feel good about your blogs. Avoid the clutter and you will get them coming back for more.

Kenneth McCall is director of IT for storage. In this role he builds the systems that help customers find the best self storage units for their needs.

This is a guest post by Deborah Dera. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.

Building a freelance business is hard work. Most freelancers work much longer than the average eight-hour day and often work seven days a week. Once you have built up a good client base and a steady flow of income, the last thing you want to see your business fall into financial ruin because of a few mistakes.

Don’t Mess With the IRS
Good financial records are always an asset you can fall back on in times of trouble. If the IRS hits you with an audit, it will make your life a lot easier if you have your paperwork in order. Likewise, make sure you declare all your income properly. Just because you don’t receive a 1099 form from a client doesn’t mean you’re not obligated to declare that income on your taxes. Playing games with the IRS is a quick way to land your business in serious trouble.

Keep Separate Accounts
Even if you decide not to form an LLC or file for a DBA license, you should still have separate personal and business accounts. Having different accounts makes it easier to track your business income and expenses. Many freelancers have a personal checking account and opt to use a system like PayPal to track their business expenses. You could also just have two different checking accounts. Either system works as long as you use your business account strictly for business related transactions.

Plan Your Time
Keep track of all your ongoing projects and completion dates. Don’t take on more work than you can reasonably handle. A freelancer who develops a reputation for missing deadlines and being unreliable will find it hard to hold onto clients and even harder to land new ones.

Keep Email Records
Freelancers should save every email they exchange with clients in case there is any dispute about a project. If you make an agreement verbally, send a follow up email confirming the agreement. In the event there is a disagreement, you can resend them the email and tactfully point out that they made a mistake or misunderstood. Many freelancers have lost payments or received less than they should have because they didn’t have anything in writing.

Don’t Spend Money You Don’t Have
When planning your expense budget, only count on the money you have on hand. Don’t count on future payments or projected income to make up for. Do not overspend with the idea, “I’ll just take on more work to make up for it.” Clients come and go; the work may or may not be there when you need the money.
Successful freelancers are ones who run their freelance business just like any other type of business. For a freelancer working without the benefit of an office staff, organization and self-management is critical. Not having a solid approach to managing your freelance business is the quickest way to see all your hard work go up in smoke.

Deborah Dera us a full-time professional writer specializing in personal finance, SEO, education, and more. She currently contributes to a number of sites involving education and careers in surgical technology, medical billing, sonography, and more.

Arvind,

Q: I have a problem where every time
I edit a post, 1 out of 2 times when
I save it, I get the message that
the page is not found!

This is strange and most annoying, if you had written a lengthy article and lost due to such weird behavior! If you encounter such a situation, then hit the back button on your browser and most of the time(if you are using Chrome and Firefox) your data will be safe. Thanks to browser cache.

Normal Reason For This Problem
The reason for such problem maybe the URL slug. Never have those weird characters in the URL slug. If you have double quotes or single quote or some special characters in the Title, make sure you remove those characters special code from the URL slug. Because some browsers may interpret these characters differently, hence behave in different manner.

The “slug” is the URL-friendly version of the name. It is usually all lowercase and contains only letters, numbers, and hyphens

SEO Wise
Best practice is to remove unwanted words and characters from your URL slug.
Ex: My Title is “Page Is Not Found Error While Trying To Edit And Save ?”

Here remove My, Is, While, To, And etc and retain only the main keywords which you think are most relevant to the article.
So my article’s URL looks : http://technotip.org/page-not-found-error-edit-save/
My title is still Page Not Found Error When Trying To Edit And Save ?

More sophisticated problem
If you don’t have any special characters in your URL slug and still have this problem, then your next suspect should be plugins.
Deactivate one plugin at a time and try to edit and save. By repeatedly doing this trial and error method you can detect what plugin might be in conflict.

Also make sure you have all latest plugins and have upgraded your WordPress installation to the latest version. Most of the times these bugs will be fixed, but we forget to update the software and face the consequences!

Lately I have started getting lot of spam comments on this blog. And yes, I use Akismet WordPress plugin. Surprisingly enough, these latest spams easily get through the Akismit plugin. And some times, these comments look valid too: so they are smart enough and even can fool a real human being!

I Love Automation!
Yesterday while surfing the web I stumbled upon a review about a software product. I usually look for such things, because I love the idea of automation. Not about auto-generation of content. I’m talking about using machines and programming in a smarter way to reduce human involvement and to acquire more reliability and faster accomplishment of tasks with less expense.

Idea’s and Logic
With that quest I looked at the review, and to my shock it was a software which once triggered comments on around 500 to 1000 blogs! It has a RSS like system, wherein it collects all the frequent updates and based on the keywords it posts the pre-templated comments with link back signature in it. Hence driving traffic.

Well, idea wise, it’s a good idea to generate loads of traffic to the blog. Because, the comments will be to the topic and most of the times seems like related and genuine. But the problem is, this software scraps the same comment across all the blogs which has published articles with similar keyword. You will be shocked to see, how many blogs with same niche get all word-to-word same comments.

Killing The Business
This approach dilutes the healthy conversation/discussion going on in the comment section. I’m not sure why these people develop such a software which isn’t healthy for their own long term success. If making as much money as possible in short period of time was the motto of every business, then we wouldn’t have heard of Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle etc. Business people should have ethics in making money and long term plans to nourish their business.

The Consequence
Increased activity of such software scripts has led to the shutdown of many blog’s comment system. Owners of big blogs can’t handle these floods of comments. And some other bloggers have turned off the linking system in their comment system. So, if someone wants to comment, then the only purpose should be to add more value and to involve in the discussion.

The problem with the above mentioned idea for scrapping comment is: many blogs will have same comments. The comment will be generic and not exactly to the point. So it will surly reduce the value of the overall conversation.

Disclaimer
I’m not writing this to harm any business. I want to keep webmasters informed about such a thing in market. And my 2 cents about Software Business.
[Well I’m in my final year MCA: Master of Computer Applications. So being a Software guy myself, I have my own work ethics and opinions. So please bear with me, if it doesn’t resonate with you!]

Comments should be to the topic and should add value..