Readers

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.

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.

Technotip.org completed 1 year – Happy Birth Day “SweetHeart”

I am excited. We couldn’t recognize how the time passed. A year back, I had started this blog to share whatever I have learnt about internet. Now with this blog and all you readers and commentators, I have learnt a lot. This motivates me to keep blogging, keep sharing.

I had the plan of starting a blog, and bought the hosting on June 1st[that’s the actual date our blog was live], but on 18th June, it officially got a new, professional design and I took the blog seriously, as a main place for me to stay online.

I am busy with my exams now a days, so we will not be having a blast party here, this time. I am writing this post to thank all the readers of our blog and would like to ask your support for coming years too.
We are committed to provide value to all our readers and we take all your feedback in a constructive manner and would like to improve constantly to make Technotip.org a better place.
thank-you
Please subscribe to our blogs free rss/email updates(if you are not already). And please spread the word about our blog.

Here are some of the articles from our blog with varied topic, which I like to share:-

There are yet many articles to share, but too much is too bad.
(We use to write about health and other non-blogging related topics mostly on Sundays and Saturdays for a change.)

Thanks for everyone who have been supporting us…. If you have any feedback, suggestion, comments, wishes, then please use the below comment section. I am eager to read all your comments.
You can follow me @technotip

Simple and effective way to get VOTES for your article: Web Traffic

We have seen many people struggling to get Diggs, Stumbles (or votes in general ), all over the web!
Most of the time its frustrating for both the parties, the one who asks for vote and the one who is been asked to vote. If you start asking for vote continuously 100 times on twitter, then I guess everyone will unfollow you. And if you try in IM quite frequently, then chances are you will be blocked by your friends.

And one more important thing which I have observed is, if you start asking for diggs or stumbles directly on your blog(giving some incentives or otherwise), and if you start getting lot of diggs or stumbles from that page, then there is a high possibility that your blog URL will be blocked by those services.

So the best way to get more votes with less effort is: Make use of RSS Signature plugin. And politely ask for a Digg or stumble.

Why is this effective?
If people have subscribed to your blog, it is most likely that they get some value out of it and they will be more generous to vote for you when compared to search engine visitors or random visitors.
And it does not take a lot of their time. Just click the link and then hit the thumbs up or digg button. But take care that, you ask votes for only those stories which deserves their time and that one click. And ask only when it is needed. Do not always have a message to vote for some story. This will surly make readers blind to that particular message. To avoid this, ask for the votes only when there is a high quality article and which is already getting good response from your readers.

Do you think it works?
Yes. And this works best with Stumbleupon, than with DIGG. If you have 1000 subscribers out of which 100 to 200 people have stumbleupon account and if 30 to 60 people like the article and hit the thumbs up button, then the story will become popular in stumble and many more other stumbleupon users will be presented with the same story. And there is more chances that they will also like it, as almost 30 to 60 people have already liked it, so I guess it would be a good article. So you may get even more thumbs up. Making the story even popular.

Using this technique may help with Digg stories, if you have more followers who are active in Digg.

Why will this footer message work?
If we have the same message in the article, then also it will be read by our regular readers, then whats the need of RSS signature message — This is a good point.
But to get votes of most of the regular readers you need to make the message more clear and personal. Make it clear to the subscribers that you are asking for votes only with subscribers. Make the message as personal as possible and you will get more votes.
If you ask for votes generally in the article, then chances are that it will generally be neglected.

One Silly commonsense tip 🙂
After activating the plugin and composing a good personalized message, just don’t sit and expect hell lot of votes. Instead write an article, so that it gets delivered to their inbox or RSS reader. So that they open your article there and notice your vote request 🙂

Do you think this technique is simple and effective to get votes from your regular readers? Please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Basic Things to do: To Convert Readers to Subscribers

Many bloggers keep trying to develop a loyal reader base for their blog, and will surly be willing to convert their visitors to subscribers.

Following some simple tweaks or optimizations will help us in increasing our blog subscribers:

First of all label the RSS and/or email subscription link as FREE RSS and FREE EMAIL SUBSCRIPTION. This will make some people curious to checkout and someothers will not have fear to click on it(as its free)!

We ran an experiment session with some of the people who use internet to read emails, Google for stuffs they want to know about – Not so geeky about internet. We could see that many of them clicked on an text ad or any related topic links, after they read any article ( that they got while Googling ) or they checked for things which are labeled FREE Gifts or just FREE !

And we also saw that many people never bothered to see the small subscription links. And they just book marked the URL of sites which they liked.

But some of them subscribed to some blogs[which had some interesting contents] which were showing email subscription form at the end of each article and many others gave their attention to the big email subscription form present in 300 x 250 or 250 x 250 space at the right side sidebar.

So we can say that, we need to show some really big, appealing subscription forms and links, for our visitors and make them aware that we do provide FREE RSS and email subscription options on our site.

So some of the things to remember is:

1. Show email subscription form below each article or in a place where there is high visibility. This would surly increase your subscribers.

and/or

Showing Big subscription forms in 300 x 250 space, in upper part of your blog would encourage them to subscribe.

2. Labeling it as FREE will attract some more non-geeky people to check it out.

3. Call for action: Ask your readers to subscribe to your blog. This is also an effective strategy.

4. Educate your readers about the RSS and email FEED of your blog. This would also bring in some more subscribers.

Also run some experiment session with friends(friends who are non-geeky, geeky), and take care that you don’t do experiments on your blog, with your friends, as they may click on your ads(PPC) and make loss to your advertisers 🙂

If you want to know about your blog/website, just ask your friends or online guys to give you feedback about your site.
5. Run contests or giveaways and attract some more people to subscribe to your email updates.
6. Provide value to your readers and they are more likely to subscribe to your blog updates.

These are some of the basic things which we can implement to get more subscribers to our blog updates.

Now we ask you to support us, in the effort of making this place ( Technotip.org ) as a place which provides value to all our readers. Please subscribe to our blog using RSS or email subscription options: