Blogging - Part 2

Interview with Leo Babauta ( ZenHabits.net )

Leo Babauta is the author of the Book “The Power of Less” and the creator and blogger at Zen Habits, a Top 100 blog with 125,000 subscribers — one of the top productivity and simplicity blogs on the Internet.

Babauta is one of the leading experts on productivity and simplicity, and has also written the top-selling productivity e-book in history: Zen To Done: The Ultimate Simple Productivity System. It has sold thousands of copies and has reached tens of thousands of readers.

Babauta is a former journalist and freelance writer over 18 years, a husband and father of six children, and lives on the island of Guam where he leads a very simple life.

Its a great opportunity to interview him. So here we go:

Please introduce yourself to our readers.

Leo: Hi everyone! Nice to be here. I’m Leo Babauta of ZenHabits.net, a blog about simplicity and productivity with more than 125,000 readers … I’m also the author of The Power of Less, a best-selling print book about how to simplify and focus on the essential. I’m married and the father of six kids, a runner and a vegan, living a simple life on Guam.

How do you feel when lot of people recognize you these days as one of the most successful people? How was life just some years back, when you were in your day job? How do you feel and manage this “recognition” that you have earned?

Leo: It’s a bit strange, as I just feel like the same old Leo, not anything different, but there’s no doubt that people treat me differently. Still, my wife and kids and friends and other family still treat me the same — and if I start to brag a little, they will make fun of me, which reminds me not to get a big head. 🙂 Life is different now than when I had a day job, of course — it’s amazing being your own boss, being able to set your own hours and have all the freedom in the world. I love it. I recommend it for everyone!

What do you think of Twitter? Many people use it as marketing tool and someothers for timepass. How and why do you use Twitter?

Leo: I think Twitter is an amazing communication tool. I didn’t get it when I first used it. But I’ve found that just like with any communication tool — the phone, email, blogs, etc. — it can be used in an infinite number of ways. You can use it to stay in touch with friends, network with colleagues, follow celebrities, get information and news, market your product or website, anything. Today, I mostly use it as a way to connect with my readers. I share useful links and info with them, share a peek into my personal life, ask them questions, respond to questions, share inspirational or thought-provoking quotes or thoughts, and of course keep them updated by linking to my latest post. I’ve found it to be an invaluable tool for staying connected with my audience — I’m glad to spend 20 minutes a day or so using it. Also, I find a lot of useful links and info on Twitter.

How much time do you spend online?

Leo: More than I’d like to admit! I usually start by writing a post in the morning, and write other content later (like for my next book), and check email and Twitter and do some online reading. Sometimes I’ll get so absorbed in online reading, if I’m really getting into a topic, that I’ll spend 8 hours online altogether. But other days I might only be on for 4-6 hours — that’s my entire job, really.

I am a student and want your advice for my academics. How do you think we can apply “The Power of LESS” to our studies. Sometimes the assignments and the work load are heavy and we must multitask.

Leo: Pick the most important assignments and focus on them first. Put away all distractions — especially your online connection — and really focus on getting the task done, not on multitasking. Repeat with the next most important task, and so on. Limit your time to connect — perhaps 2-3 times a day, for 30-60 minutes, or something like that, so that you have time to focus.

I don’t have pets in my home. But I love them. After reading your book, I feel that I must do things that I love to do. But having a pet comes with commitments. I am already fixed in lot of commitments. What do you think I must choose … the thing that I love or stick on to my present commitments? Do you own a pet ?

Leo: I’m not much of a pet guy myself — kids are commitment enough for me! But if I were you, I’d simplify my current commitments first, and see if you can lead a simpler life, before adding another big commitment like a pet. Also think about what emotional need a pet is fulfilling — why do you need a pet to be happy? If you’ve simplified your commitments and have really thought about your emotional needs and how to be more content with life, I think you should pursue the things you truly love, whether that be owning a pet or creating something amazing or whatever makes you happy.

Tell us about the financial freedom that you are enjoying with your online ventures. And how was life when you had a day job.

Leo: Well, I’m not rich, but there’s no doubt I have much more financial freedom now than when I was receiving a paycheck. I couldn’t have imagined it back then, when I had a job — to me, there was nothing like the financial security of having a paycheck and a retirement plan, because I had a family to feed. But these days, I’ve learned that I can make more than I could with a day job, and have much, much more fun doing it. I highly recommend it to anyone — pursue your passion and your dreams, and see what comes of it.

Blogs that you recommend. Your recommendation for bloggers.

Leo: There are way too many to recommend — for every blog I name I would be leaving out 10. For blogs on changing your life, check out the Life Remix network of blogs (liferemix.net) — it has as great a collection of blogs as any out there. For blogs on blogging, I would recommend Problogger and Copyblogger and of course WriteToDone.com. Fitness blogs I’m into include Fitness Black Book, Mark’s Daily Apple, Zen to Fitness, and many more. Of course, Lifehacker is indispensable, and I love Seth Godin and Daring Fireball and Alex Payne. I could go on and on!

Books that you recommend.

Leo: Again, too many to name! I’m a huge book lover — my favorite fiction includes Vonnegut, Joyce, Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Ann Patchett, Douglas Adams, Jonathan Lethem, William Gibson, so many more. Non-fiction includes: Slow Down to the Speed of Life, anything by Thich Naht Hanh, The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama, Walden by Thoreau, the Life of Gandhi, Your Money or Your Life, Stephen Covey, simplifying books by Elaine St. James, and many many more.

Some words for all your fans and followers.

Leo: Just thank you. I’m extremely grateful to everyone who reads Zen Habits, who has commented or send kind emails of encouragement. It really means a lot, and honestly, I wouldn’t be living my dream if it weren’t for all of you. So again, thank you, for everything.

Thanks a lot to Leo Babauta for this interview. The Power of LESS has been extremely helpful for me. If you have not yet read the book, here is the link to get it – “The Power Of LESS“. Note for readers: As Leo Babauta is a “A” list blogger, you can find his interviews on many blogs and even main stream media. So I wanted to make sure to ask only those questions that were not asked before. Hope you all enjoyed.

Interview with BuddingBloggers + Contest

Today we have Satish Gandham, UG student from Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, a blogger @ GeniusHackers.com and the founder of BuddingBloggers, for the interview. Whats interesting about him is, through BuddingBloggers program, he is providing free domains and top class ad free hosting and lots of other freebies for able bloggers. He was kind enough to give us a interview. So we could ask more about his new service BuddingBloggers.

Here is the interview:-

1. What is BuddingBloggers service about ?

The common problem faced by many bloggers during the initial stages of their blogging career is not having a reliable hosting and a domain name. So we are going to provide able bloggers with free domain names, top class ad free hosting, and freebies like premium wordpress themes. We motivate them and keep them inspired.

2. What are the long term benefits for you, as a company? Because you do not even show ads on the websites that are hosted by buddingbloggers!

We place our badge and our sponsors badge on the participants’ blogs, that will help us build our brand. We also place 5 sponsored links (Like the blog rolls) on the blogs, that will help us pay the domain and the hosting fee. We will also place ads on your support blog, right now there isn’t enough traffic any, I prefer clean look over the few cents from adsense.

3. Under Whose name will the domain be registered?

I’m currently registering the domains under my name, later they will be transferred to w3mixx.Com, My future web solutions company.

4. If someone already have a website, and needs to terminate as he/she is not able to pay for his domain and hosting. In such case will you provide free hosting, for already existing domain and transfer the hosted files to buddingbloggers?

Yes, We will renew the domain and provide free hosting.

5. Is your program permitted only for bloggers?

Our program focuses primarily on bloggers, but we are also open to people who are keen to make their web presence felt.

6. Please share about your business model.

We just want to help upcoming bloggers, and build a strong community, where a member of BuddingBloggers gets a special respect among the bloggers community.

7. How are you different from your competitors? And what do you do to standout off the crowd?

We provide top class web hosting. We will never shut down. Our service is almost ads free, we provide guidance and technical support. We organize contests to keep the bloggers motivated. We have prizes for the best and innovative bloggers.
For every participant we accept, we set some reserve money which will back him up in case if we ever have to quit this project. (This is not to hint that we are going to quit some day,” Hope for the best, plan for the worst”)
Your blog is completely secured with BuddingBloggers, we will never let you down.

8. Do you place any ads on the sponsored blogs?

We don’t place any ads except for the small sponsorship badge and 5 unobtrusive text links.

9. Is BuddingBloggers affected by the “First mover advantage theory”. As I see that there were and still are some other services giving free domain and hosting.

We haven’t done full fledged advertising yet, so can’t comment on that.

10. Why do you think people will use your service?

One obvious reason for which i would have wanted to use this service 2 years ago.
“They either don’t have money or don’t have the credit card or paypal to pay for the domain and hosting”

11. What are the common mistakes that people do, after registering their domain/hosting from buddingbloggers?

The common mistake I see is when they apply, Most of the applications we get are incomplete, and we simply ignore them.
They can not expect us to give a free domain name if they don’t have the patience to fill the application.
Once they are in, its our mistake if they screw up or not active. We either have not selected the right participant or we haven’t provided the right support.

12. How big / small is your company?

Our company is very small at the moment, I work from my hostel. HackMinded @ HackersLane.com and Saurabh @ vlovers.com (participants of BuddingBloggers) help me in reviewing the applications and maintaining the forum.
We don’t have any physical office right now. We may have one after I get out of college next year.

13. Can we know about the configuration of the server you use to host the websites?

We are currently having a VPS at Doreo, we will soon be moving to a dedicated server. We are planning to setup our own data center next year.

14. What about the uptime records of the servers?

Doreo has literally 100% up time, they are pricey and they provide the value for the price.

15. Do you think, a serious blogger who want to earn his living from his blog should go with his own domain & hosting or he has to obtain it from BuddingBloggers?

I think they should join BuddingBloggers, we are providing all the services for free including the technical support, joining BuddingBloggers will give more exposure to their blog.
We have lots of contests and freebies to keep them motivated.

16. What are your advice for a person who is new to blogging and want to create an account with blogspot.com or wordpress.com ?

If you are serious about blogging, buy your domain and start with wordpress as you blogging platform. If you cannot afford to buy a domain or hosting, give us a try.

17. What are the strict rules(policies) that your customers should follow, in order to be your customer?

Have the passion for blogging and blog regularly.

18. Earning opportunity using your services?

Participants can monetize their blog in every possible way, we don’t place ads from any ad networks. So they can use adsense, adbrite, bidvertiser, chitika, clicksor etc..
They can also write some sponsored posts.

19. What are the future plans for BuddingBloggers?

We want to build a strong community and give it a status where people take pride in being a member of BuddingBloggers. In future people who can afford to buy own domain and hosting may join BuddingBloggers just to be a part of the community.

20. You are having a blog which is already popular, did this add to the popularity of buddingbloggers?

Yep, I blog at GeniusHackers.Com, I think it is popular 🙂

21. Is this your full time job?

No, this is not my full time job. I’m doing my final year of Bachelors in Chemical Science and Technology @ Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.

22. How do you define success?

Success is reaching the goals you set for yourself, at the end you should be happy with what you have done and be able to enjoy it.

23. Is there a story for the birth of BuddingBloggers. If so, then please share with our readers.

I started blogging for fun, my first blog was huntme.wordpress.com. I had no plan to monetize my blog initially, I started getting 1000+ page views per day within 10 days.
This traffic going useless bothered me, so I offered some downloads related to the posts on some free web hosting account and monetized that page with adsense. The results were quite good. When everything was going smoothly, one day my blog was suspended as i was diverting traffic from it to my downloads page with ads. After that i had to hang around with some free web hosts as I was not having a paypal account or credit card to pay. When this wordpress and other free posts kicked my blog out after getting established, all the time and effort I put in my blog for months was wasted.
Now I have an established blog and making enough money from it, so I wanted to prevent at least some bloggers from facing the problems I had in my early days of blogging career.

24. Please share the story of “your journey to blogging” and online world as a whole.

I started blogging just to improve my writing skills, I blogged for myself. Luckily people liked what i wrote and my blog was successful 🙂 , unfortunately that was banned. Then I had to hang around with some free webhosts, until I found a web hosting company accepting payment from online bank transfer. I bought a domain and hosting, from then there is no looking back 😀 .
I used to spend lot of my time on developing new content, tweaking the blog look and design. PHP and HTML/CSS that I learned as a hobby came in very handy in maintaining the blog. I won a premium theme in a contest at BlogOhBlog.Com, that premium theme gave a new look and authority to my blog. That’s the first tipping point of my blog. Then there was blogging idol contest @ DailyBlogTips.Com where we had to increase our feed count, I started a rapidshare give away. That kicked my feed count from 500 to 6000+ in 3 months (Unfortunately i couldnt win that contest as this idea stuck to me when the contest was about to close )

Hope you all enjoyed the interview. For more details and latest updates about the service visit BuddingBloggers. And please pass this interview link to all your friends to whom you think it will be of some use(ad free, Free hosting + Free Domain ). And please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Contest: Tweet this article and we will select one lucky winner and will give you a domain(of your choice) for free. The domain will be registered in your name for 1 year, and you are free to host it anywhere. I sponsored this contest to motivate people to spread the news about BuddingBloggers service, it will surly help many people.
Even though you are not in need of a domain, please make sure that you tweet about this article, it may help someone following you.

RT: Enter the chance to win a free domain. Follow @technotip, visit http://bit.ly/kM7dH and RT to help your followers

Somebody’s gain should not be your loss – atleast in blogging

This is a common perception in the minds of many amateur business people. They always concentrate on the loss and gains of others. This is a good practice if you are investing in share market. But it’s bad, if overly done in any other business. We must concentrate more on our loss or gain.

Loss and gain in Blogging:
It’s the beauty of blogging that, some one may think something as a loss but the same thing may seem to be a gain for the other. It’s all how we think.
For Example:-
If you are running a blog and one of your friend also starts a blog with the similar niche as yours. In such a case different people think differently. Some may think that his friend will be his competitor in the future. And some other may feel happy that you may get a business partner in the future.

Situations where someone’s gain is not and should not be your loss:
1. Linking to other bloggers: Be generous while linking to other bloggers. Do not hesitate. Just make sure that you are linking to the relevant content that your readers will be benefited with. There is a big SEO advantage in linking to the relevant content.
Never feel that, if you link to other blog, you will loose the visitors, to the linked blog! This is not true. Your visitors will surly comeback if you provide value orelse they will surly not, even if you don’t link to others.

2. One click on other blogs CPC ad, is not a click less on your blog:-
I have seen some people guiding wrongly about ad placement. They think that one click on others CPC ad will be a click less on his ads! It’s too foolish to think like that. If a visitor finds something interesting and useful in those ads, he will surly click on it, irrespective of the website he is in. And you may think, if he visited your site and saw the same ad before, he might have ended up clicking on your ad. This argument seems to be true, but remember everyone has an abandoned interests, needs and wants. Have you ever seen a normal person with no interest, needs and wants? Probably not. So I don’t think one click on others CPC ad, is one click less on yours.

3. A newbie gets more subscribers then yours:
If a visitor likes your site he will surly subscribe otherwise surly not. It has no connection with other blogs. If you are able to win the heart of your visitor by providing value or by solving certain problem, then you can surely expect to get some loyal readers. Now a days there are some simple, effective and powerful tools like Google Reader, where reading hundreds of blog contents is so easy and less time consuming. So need not feel any other blog as a threat to yours, as long as you provide value to readers.

4. Sharing your idea’s with others, will reduce your chances of success ? :
“If two people exchange 1$, both will have 1$ each. But if they exchange 1 idea, both will have 2 ideas each”.
By sharing ideas you become more accountable – Share your ideas liberally. The benefits from accountability and feedback outweigh the risk that someone steals your idea!
*But be careful with whom you are sharing your ideas with. Do not share with people who specially exist to harm you! Discuss your thoughts and ideas only with trusted people.
By sharing your ideas, you will get valuable feedbacks. Sometimes you may come to know that, what you thought as an innovative idea is infact a crappy idea and would lead you to failure and loss. More about benefits of sharing ideas @ Link Love for Commentators.

Blogging should always be enjoyable. If we do not enjoy blogging, then there is some problem to be addressed! All bloggers or the bloggers in similar niche should get united and support eachother in getting success.

Foot Steps of Marketing — Where Do You Stand ?

We have heard a lot about both Online as well as offline marketing.
Marketing strategies have been changing from the day it was invented. Its good to see many new and sophisticated techniques coming every now and then and solving many problems..and creating some!

First thing first..

What is Marketing ?

Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Ethical / Unethical Marketing ?

With increase in the population and user demands, many businesses started appearing and the competition obviously increased among businesses. It increased so much that its now the matter of survival to most companies. So the only way left on their part is aggressive marketing strategies, which brings them large number of conversions.
An example:-
We see in daily commercials showing, women with black colour skin complexion being harassed and the white women being respected, and the next thing is they show their cosmetics product and tell us to use it and to turn white! and to get the respect from the society. These kind of ads work magically and bring about many conversions.
On the other hand if they start showing ads with not so good looking women in the ad, people watching it, will take it easy and are less likely to purchase the product!
I don’t really have to tell you which ads would be more desirable to marketers.
But the question is..Do you think such ads are an ethical marketing?
Playing with the human emotions? Yes…No.
Answer varies from person to person, depending on their perspective.
Some people may say that this kind of marketing is not at all wrong, because we all see it almost daily and are used to it!. We are so used to it that we think that its not a big issue.

While some people say that this kind of marketing is completely unethical, as it plays with the emotions of people for meeting marketers selfish goals. There are many others who defend that this is a ethical marketing and the best way to get a conversion.
Its interesting to hear all your ideas and thoughts. So please please please share your thoughts in the comment section of this article.

Target Audience(Target marketing):-

Marketers target group of people who are more likely to purchase their products, hence making them more profits.

Some examples:-
1. Ads showing more imaginary adventures, cartoon etc may target children.
2. Quick Money making ads may attract more of business people.
3. Cosmetics ads for girls.
4. Body building ads for men.
5. Speaker systems for music lovers. etc.

As all these production industries have a lot of competition, they need to reduce the price inorder to sustain in the growing competition.

Desperate buyers:-
There are products like medicine which will be purchased by people as they are in a situation where they can’t give more importance to money(when compared to their health). They are in a position where purchasing the medicine becomes crucial. In these kind of situations marketers may take advantage of the situation of people and may try to mint more money. Making use of the desperate situation will get them more conversion and hence more money. But again the question arises in our mind..Whether its Ethical or unethical marketing ?

Obviously, I’m not speaking about all emotional marketing. Most of the marketing involves interaction with peoples emotions, but I am talking about the one’s which is too low in its purpose and aims only at the sale of their product(conversion).

Impatient Aspirers

Impatient Aspirers are a group of target customers who have some what same taste and status. Watch the funny video below. Please do not miss watching the video. Its funny as well as insightful, and worth thousand words.

Marketing and Blogging:-

There are many ways of monetizing a blog. One way is to write an ebook and sell it on your blog. This is a popular and proved to be efficient way of making money online. Now to get most money out of the ebook, you need to sell as many copies of ebook as possible. And to do so, you need to Market it properly(if you do not have an already well established blog).
Landing page should be more engaging and trust worthy. When someone lands on your landing page and reads about your product details, you need to arouse their interest first. You might not know every single person who reads your site, but that’s fine. Because you do know what they are generally familiar with. Use those references to bridge the gap and connect. Attention getting strategies and tactics can be helpful if the product, service or information lives up to the promise.

Rather than trying to sell an idea to the masses, you sell something desirable to people who already want and have a need for it. It’s much easier to fulfill a need than to create one.

So there are many many marketing strategies and as far as I know many people are trying and succeeding with newer marketing strategies each day. So, as a marketer we need to be innovative, creative and responsible. As a customer we need to be more cautious and clear about what we want and what we do not want.

Word of Mouth Marketing:-

Over years we have seen many MLM’s(Multi-Level Marketing) or Network Marketing coming, growing, glowing and going!
What makes people join MLM’s ?
Its the money. The easy way to start earning money, by referring other people to join under you.
So, from where do MLM companies get the money from?
Most MLM companies sell products. By purchasing which people become their members. These MLM companies remove the middle man between the product and the customers, hence saving a lot of money.
Another big saving comes from the marketing effort. There is no need to get a VIP or a celebrity to endorse the products. So a lot of money is again saved. These MLM companies then distribute the money saved, to all its members, by following some of their rules/policies.
So, how do these MLM companies do the marketing ?
Its done by the members of MLM. These members do the marketing on behalf of MLM company through WORD OF MOUTH, these products will be sold and new members keep joining(thus products are continuously sold), everybody(most of them) make good income.MLM is just an apt example for the WORD OF MOUTH marketing.

Here is a list of WORD OF MOUTH marketing, that you can choose, test and implement on your blogs, to increase the traffic and conversion rate significantly.

Word of mouth marketing:

* Buzz Marketing: Using high-profile entertainment or news to get people to talk about your brand.

* Viral Marketing: Creating entertaining or informative messages that are designed to be passed along in an exponential fashion, often electronically or by email.

* Community Marketing: Forming or supporting niche communities that are likely to share interests about the brand (such as user groups, fan clubs, and discussion forums); providing tools, content, and information to support those communities.

* Grassroots Marketing: Organizing and motivating volunteers to engage in personal or local outreach.

* Evangelist Marketing: Cultivating evangelists, advocates, or volunteers who are encouraged to take a leadership role in actively spreading the word on your behalf.

* Product Seeding: Placing the right product into the right hands at the right time, providing information or samples to influential individuals.

* Influence Marketing: Identifying key communities and opinion leaders who are likely to talk about products and have the ability to influence the opinions of others.

* Cause Marketing: Supporting social causes to earn respect and support from people who feel strongly about the cause.

* Conversation Creation: Interesting or fun advertising, emails, catch phrases, entertainment, or promotions designed to start word of mouth activity.

* Brand Blogging: Creating blogs and participating in the blogosphere, in the spirit of open, transparent communications; sharing information of value that the blog community may talk about.

* Referral Programs: Creating tools that enable satisfied customers to refer their friends, to your product or service.

More on Marketing Strategies(mainly to increase your blog traffic) coming soon..so please subscribe to our free email/rss updates and stay tuned.

Please do not forget to share your thoughts about current marketing trendz. What Marketing strategies you are following? What strategies worked and which did not work for you? Whats Ethical and Unethical about it? Please share your opinions in the comment section below and involve yourself in the conversation going on here.

Feeling Good Can Enhance Your Performance

Like many of you, I am also very much interested in blogging and I feel good while I am blogging or working for my blog. It gives me a kind of joy, even when I am working overtime or late nights.
All these years while I was undergraduate, I use to feel too bad while I had to write assignments(Homework’s). I use to hurryup and finish the works off, so that I can be free afterwards. But those things never helped me, as I never really understood what I was writing.

Day before yesterday as I was writing one of my first assignments in PG(Post Graduation — MCA[Master of Computer Application]), I just wanted to finish it off, and start blogging. But mean while I thought, let me try to enjoy writing the assignment and try to feel good, like I do when I am blogging. Guess what, I really started getting interest in my assignment writing work!
I just practiced this feeling good exercise for two days and now I am completely loving my assignments and trying to understand and write – Now its no more a burden.

Some times when I never got any idea for blogging, I use to feel bad and frustrated and at that time I was never able to comeup with any new article ideas. It was only after a deep relaxing sleep or some jolly long walks, I use to get some ideas for blogging. But when I started to fall in love with blogging completely and started feeling good, ideas for blogging started coming easily and now I don’t get frustrated even when there is no idea to write any thing, I just feel good and after a while some idea pops up in my mind.
blogging-late-night
To start feeling good in the beginning will be a bit of forceful thing – you need to remember some thing which makes you feel good, like remember the flower that you love, garden, your pet animal, baby etc. Practice this for some time and you will start feeling good automatically while doing any work, and this will surly enhance your performance in any of the fields.

And one more thing is, we need to stop underestimating ourselves. Underestimating ourselves will surly be a great hindrance in our progress.

Traffic strategies: PART 2(Add RSS feed signature to your emails)

We write emails to our friends, relatives, anonymous people around the world etc. Many of the people with whom we communicate may already be knowing about our blog and there is a high chance that they already are our subscribers.
But still adding RSS feed signature or adding the “Headline Animator, which displays rotating headlines” will bring some traffic to our blog, as it shows our old article titles and they might be interested to know more and they may endup clicking on the title and visiting your site. Anyway, adding a small piece of code doesn’t hurt or take a lot of time.

Feedburner has got this feature and you can integrate the small piece of basic HTML code to get the animated banner. But the limitation here is, you can see only five most recent items cycling through your feed’s. To over come this you can use some other RSS widgets, but while selecting see that these widgets are created only using basic HTML(for faster loading and user experience).

To use Feedburner animated banner feed as your email signature in Yahoomail, follow these simple steps:-

1. Log into your Yahoo! mail.
2. Click on Options.
3. In the “Management” section, click on the Signature option.
4. Drag and drop your Feedburner animated banner and click on “SAVE“.

If you want this email signature in Gmail, then you have to take some more steps:-
Gmail currently doesn’t allow us to add HTML codes directly into emails. But there are always some workarounds to get our work done!
Actually, you can over come the Gmail signature limitation by using Gmail’s POP3/SMTP features by making use of standard email program (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.), create a signature in that email program that has your Headline Animator in it, and send your emails through your Gmail account. This is an easy task for those who are already using Outlook etc software.

But for people who are not using such email programs and who are not willing to use such things, there are some other solutions:-
To use the animator in Gmail, all you need is the “Better Gmail” Firefox extension. It adds a check box in your gmail account settings to enable HTML. Remember you must be using “Mozilla Firefox” only to get this to work.
I think everyone needs to give this Firefox extension a try. It also adds many cool features to your gmail, like:- Add Google Calendar link, Add Google Reader “Feeds” link, Air Skin, All pages’ mailto: links compose in Gmail, Attachment Icons, Attachment Icons (Bigger!), Conversation Preview, Attachment Reminder(now integrated in Gmail by Google), Date Search, Filter Assistant, Fixed Font, Folders4Gmail(Great isn’t it?), Force encrypted Gmail connection (https), Forward Thread, GrandCentral Voicemail, Integrate Google Reader, Mail.app(Mac-like skin), Show disk usage as progress bar, Signature Settings: Float/HTML/No dashes, Smart Read Button, Super Clean Skins, TinyURL selected link (Cmd+Shift+T), Unlabeled Message Search etc etc etc etc… So here is the link to download “Better Gmail”.

Drag and Drop:-
One more option to use with Gmail, Yahoomail, hotmail or anyother mailing service is, just drag and drop the widget at the bottom of your email and it will be working fine. But it requires you to do it manually all the time you send an email. Many people follow this simple drag and drop work, as this would provide us with the option of when to add and when not to add the email signature(with feed banner).
Copy the HTML codes generated in Feedburner(animated banner creation) and paste it in a notepad and save it on your hard disk with file name ending with .html. Run it(by clicking on the html file) whenever you write an email. Now drag and drop the animated banner into your email. Its that simple..

It seems like- “this method will not bring any traffic”, and its partly true. As you will not get heavy traffic out of this method. To get more traffic, you must be active in mail groups like yahoogroups, gmail groups etc and you should be sending interesting emails to a group with large number of users. This will surly bring some traffic, as people may forward that email to their friends and then their friends may mail it to their friends…like this, your email(along with your email signature) will reach many people and you may get many visitors and they may even signup to your RSS/email feeds and may become your loyal visitors(but please keep your fingers crossed!). Do not expect a heavy traffic from this method, which dries up your blogs bandwidth.

And another thing I want to mention here before ending this article, is, never think that your emails are marked as SPAM because you are using some HTML codes in your email messages. This will not happen, as today’s email systems has gone far from the basic text, to a high multimedia messaging. So no email service provider is going to mark you as a SPAMMER, for using some basic HTML in your email.

25 Reasons to start a Blog

Here is a list of advantages of having a blog..

blogging-late-night 1. Share personal opinions more openly, with more freedom. We can learn to express ourselves freely.

2. Everyone’s voice has value.

3. We can share our knowledge.

4. Blogs…as its name suggests (logs), can be used to store the information that will be useful for yourself and others in the future.

For Example:-

We do lot of research while writing some of the articles. And as human nature, we may forget the things. So writing an article about whatever research we have down, will be accessible to ourselves and our readers any time. And this will also help for the further research works.

And sharing our research and results with our readers and getting their comments(interaction) and feed back will also help in improving the further research works.

5. We can also make money out of our blogs, to cover the hosting and other expenses. And if taken seriously, with dedication and consistency you can also make more money. The advantage is, you make money by doing what you love doing(blogging).

6. We can build good relationship with other people of similar interest.

7. We should keep in mind that…“Exchange one dollar, we both have one dollar each. Exchange one idea, and we will be having two ideas each.”

8. Our writing skills are improved very much after we indulge in blogging for atleast 6 months or 1 year. You can observe it yourself.

9. Thinking capacity will be high.

10. Knowledge in a wide variety of topics. Even though you may be blogging in a particular niche, but still you will surly be reading some of the posts of your favorite bloggers, which are totally about someother niche.

11. Ability to thinking about the pros and cons. Normally people think in one way, but the bloggers always think about both pros and cons. This may sometimes, be an advantage in your personal life also.

12. Willingness to help others. Before starting this blog, I was wondering, why would people be so eager to help others(in forums, blogs, social networking sites etc), by investing their time for no money in return!

13. You can learn different marketing strategies.

14. Having a blog, sometimes, makes us to be more active in forums, social networking sites etc. And more importantly, we will try to be more polite and more helpful. And we will become more interactive.

15. Having a blog makes us get hooked to internet more. And all most all of us will get inspired to think innovatively. And all most all the bloggers have some goals set for their life(outside blogging life also).

16. As our blog grows and as we start acquiring more and more feedburner readers, we will be having some more responsibility, as our articles will be read approximately by this much people. So we start acting and thinking more responsibly and professionally. This would also improve our social life.

17. Respecting others thoughts.

18. As time goes by, we will learn a lot of technical things about the internet, to maintain our blog, to troubleshoot some small problems ourselves.

19. Increases confidence about our opinion, when we see positive comments from others.

20. We can learn to take the negative feedback from our readers positively. This will help a lot in our daily life.

21. To go along the line of a blog can land you a job opportunity, especially if it attracts a wide readership and you become recognized as an expert in your niche.

22. We can learn more about ourselves. As we keep blogging, we can learn about our interests. Our point of view. And we can also realize, what we like and what we hate. Until starting a blog, many people even don’t have time to think about themselves, their interests etc. Now, while blogging, you do your job(blogging), and still you will be able to know all the thinks about yourself(over time).

23. And the amazing part is, we can get trustworthy friends from all over the world.

24. You can be busy always. You might have heard that, “Empty mind, is devils workshop”.

By starting a blog, I think you can be busy all the time, in a constructive work(blogging).

25. You will turn into a personal consultant for your friends and family.

Bloggers keep reading things in their RSS reader and emails newsletters, they will be helping people and getting help from others. In the journey they will accumulate lot of ability to take decision. Friends and family can notice that, by seeing the changes in your behaviour(you may not notice it). And finally they start calling you for some advice in buying something or to ask some solution for their problems or atleast to tell you their problems(as they think, you are the only one person on this earth, who will surly listen to their problem without interrupting them!).

25th point is my personal experience and this may be with wrong or quite opposite for many of you.

And all these depends on the niche and the reason for which you have started a blog.

These are my personal opinion and experiences. Please share some of your views and experiences in the comment section, and let all of us know, how blogging has influenced your life.

Google Guide for Bloggers

Each and every blogger on this earth should watch this video fully, to learn some of the best practices, which Google itself follows.

This is a video recording of Marissa Mayer’s keynote that she recently delivered at the Google I/O Developers Conference. You’ll learn some very interesting facts about Google in this video. But more importantly, you should observe and relate or compare every aspects followed by Google to that followed by you, on your blog.

This would give you some idea of where you are doing wrong and what you should do, so that, to be on right track.

Here are some of the points you should observe and learn from this video….
1. Google has employed designers, fashion designers, cartoonists, choreographers, developers etc mainly for its iGoogle project. So that, each and every aspect of their website is professional looking. So we should also give importance to every aspect of our blog, starting from the logo, design, content, layout, advertisements etc. It should be handled professionally.

2. Watch the video at 4min 55 sec, here Mayer is talking about the simple design of Google homepage. We should also make our website/blog as simple as possible, Without including more images, flash, etc, which increases the load time of our blog.

3. Get some friends and tell them to use your blog. Get some unbiased feedback. Take all the feed backs positively. Actually, negative feed back will help us a lot to improve our blog.

4. You have to know about how the data transfer takes place when a user visits your blog.
When a visitor visits your blog, all the http request is sent from the users computer to all the http objects present on your blog page. So if you have many objects displayed on your blog from different servers, then the load time would definitely be higher.
Its ideal to place all the objects like images, scripts etc inside one server and then link them on to your blog.
Also the speed of the server(where you have hosted your blog) is also important. And if you have frequent downtime means, you should think of changing your host. Technotip.org recommends Doreo host.

5. A/B split testing. Use some testing methods to determine the logo positioning, advertisement positioning etc.

6. Positioning of each thing on your blog will contribute to your success or failure. So be careful in A/B split testing.

7. “If you don’t listen to your customers, someone else will”. — Sam Walton.

8. “If I had asked people, what they wanted. They would have said, faster horses”. — Henry Ford.

9. Number of items displayed on your blog also play a vital role.
It is recommended that, you should remove all those widgets, badges, social networking link logos etc from your side bar, as it increase the load time and contributes for the bad user experience.
Social networking link logos can be displayed in your about me page or contact page.

10. Faster loading websites get more returning visitors over time.

11. Allow the comments to show on your blog, by making comment moderation quicker. And it will be good to see their comments live as soon as possible. And also reply for the comments quickly and aptly and promptly. This will show your commentators(who are the actual contributes of your blog) that, you value their voice(opinion).

12. Always welcome feedback.

13. Be upto date and blog according to the current trends of your niche.

14. Once you have implemented everything in your blog(after A/B slip testing), just don’t think its the perfect one. You need to run A/B slit testing again after a year or two. Because, the user requirements change along with time and you need to be quick to act accordingly.

15. Translating your blog to multiple languages would help to gain more visitors. But if you are not comfortable with that, then you can always make use of language translation tool, to give the option to read your blog in multiple languages.

16. Have “Healthy disrespect for the impossible”. — Larry page.

17. Nothing can be a perfect solution. We have to work constantly and keep moving nearer and nearer to perfection.

18. Imagination is muscle…We need to assume ourselves for What problems to work on, what products to develop etc.

19. Respond faster, for all those who report any bug on your blog.
If you can’t resolve the problem, just inform them that, you are working on it currently.
In some cases, the reporter of the bug himself/herself may even give the solution to the problem.

20. Watch from 45th min of the video to see a small Summary of this video.
Watch from 46th min for the question and answer session with Marissa Mayer.

These are some of the things that I could make out while watching this video. But this is not the end. Each person has his own ability to watch and understand. You may even get some more ideas after watching this video. If this is a case with you, then please share your thoughts in the below comment section..