Technotip.org - Part 12

‘YOU’ Are A Big Deal

If you’re working on your own i.e., if you are your own boss, then you will have the risk of getting distracted or interrupted easily.

This new year, my resolution would be to focus on myself. i.e., You should start focusing on yourselves.

YOU
You are the highest leverage thing in your business/life.

If you are happy, healthy, strong and in good mood, you can perform better and you will have a better result; and at the end of the day you would feel satisfied and thus feel more happy, healthy and strong. Yes, it’s a recursive process. If things don’t work properly, you would feel sad, unhealthy and weak; and there is more chances of getting bad results inturn.

In order to balance our life, we need to take care of 2 things: Profession and Personal Life.

Measure Your Work:
If you are not digging ditches or manufacturing tires or any physical goods for that matter, you will be able to measure the exact amount of work you accomplished at the end of the day.
For example: If you are into information business or if you are into some work which is directly related to information and there is no physical product involved; Like a software: it’s not a physical product.

Tip: Fix the amount of work that you want to accomplish for the day.

Solution:
Fixing a goal and working daily in chunks of fixed blocks of time to achieve the goal. Ex: If you decide to do Yoga, to help yourself with maintaining your health, then do it daily on a fixed time, for a fixed block of time.

Kill Multitasking
All these days I was efficient with multitasking..now also I’m! But if I focus on one specific task alone, I will get better results and finish tasks soon, one at a time.

Do not keep sms’ing, emailing, Facebooking, Tweeting all day or whenever you get distracted by it’s thought. Fix time for most of these things. Yes being in touch with friends is as important, but it’s not the only thing on earth. You dint start your business to end it this way, right ?

Solution
Kill unwanted distractions. I’m going to kill most of it. I’ll sms, email, Facebook, Tweet only once in a day, and not more than 20min for all these things.

And I would make sure, I WILL NOT INTERRUPT OTHERS.

Stop Unhealthy Habit
I’ll not drink caffeine, beer, wine etc. Will stick to healthy diet.

Good Emotional Habits
Yoga, Meditation brings good health to body and mind. It would surly help in the long run to maintain health and good state of mind. With good health and good state of mind, we have more chances of succeeding at whatever that we are doing.
Imagine, if you have some illness and your mental status is out of focus and you are attending a meeting to decide about the future of your company :p How worst the situation can be?

Do’s and Dont:
From now on, we have to do things which brings us closer to our goal. We need to eliminate the useless things which we regularly do, which neither creates value to us nor to others.

Enjoy Life
Regularly Take Break’s. Yes I get satisfied while working. I enjoy my work. But there is a life outside it. We have people who love us. and there are people whom we love.
We need to spend as much time as possible with them. These are the only things that will remain in our heart till the end.
Spend time with your parents, children, wife, girlfriend, friends etc. Remember the last time you had spent time with them, how happy you were.

We need to take time and regularly spend time with loved ones and never ignore them for the sake of business and money.

Reading Books:
If you fall asleep while trying to read books, then, try doing it at the end of the day.
Try to finish reading one book, … two books, .. three books. Take interesting books; things you like to know about.

Slowly you’ll fall in love with books. I’ll end my day reading atleast one chapter from my favorite authors.

Summary:
1. Wake up early in the morning.
2. Start the day with Yoga, Meditation.
3. Eliminate doing things which do not bring any progress in what you want to achieve.
4. Focus on things you want to do: one at a time.
5. Kill multitasking.
6. Take care of yourself. You are the most important thing in your business/life, nothing else. If you stay fit/healthy, you could achieve anything.
7. Your priorities matter. Don’t prioritize wrong things; and don’t ignore the right things.
8. Life has it’s up and down: Know this in advance and continue focusing on your values and do not get distracted.
“Don’t swell when you are happy, don’t dwell when you are sad”

I wish you all the success. Happy New Year. Remember, for all the reasons quoted about and more, ‘YOU’ Are A Big Deal.

Testimonials: Goldmine For Your Business

Have you ever got satisfied with any services or products?
If you said ‘yes’, then make sure to send your testimonial to that company. I’m sure, every business love their customers positive feedback. Irrespective of the size of the company, your testimonial will usually be highlighted. Because ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing is still the number one marketing technique and testimonials help serve the purpose.

You’re Famous
Make sure you’re providing real testimonials and not a fake praising to get highlighted!

Most of the web service or product websites display your testimonial along with your photo and a linkback to your website or blog, to let their prospective clients/customers know that the testimonials are from real people and that their products/service has demand in the market.

Testimonials are Gold For Your Business
If you are a company, then make sure to ask for your customers/clients feedback. Testimonials are gold. Positive feedback provide social proof; Negative feedback provide the opportunity to recognize and fix the problems, which helps in improving the business/service.

Use Our Services!
If you are never satisfied with any product or service, then use ours and send us a testimonial 😉 Technotip Services

Real Personal Experience
Just some days back I had to goto a local client’s office to talk about a possible deal. I talked a bit about our company and tried my best to represent Technotip and tried all means to convey the quality of our work. Client was ok with whatever I said; but once he started navigating our official blog and spotted some testimonials – he was surprised and impressed immediately. He was sold out to our service by just looking at the genuine testimonials we had listed.

He handed over 6 projects immediately. and all without me taking the pain of trying to showcase the quality of our work. Let the testimonial do the work of impressing , you do your work which YOU ARE best at!

Testimonials are like sprinkling fairy dust from your magic wand..on your prospective clients/customers.

10 Truths You Should Know About Seasonal Depression

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

Do You Experience Seasonal Sadness?

‘Tis the Season to be…Melancholy?
Although the holidays are typically considered to be a joyous time period, the autumnal and winter months are not jolly for everyone. The arrival of long nights and cold weather causes many people to begin to feel increasingly sorrowful. When compounded with decreased sunlight, the weather changes can cause many folks to experience what is known as seasonal depression disorder.

What causes this increase in sorrow to occur?

Dr. Norman Rosenthal is a world renowned psychiatrist who specializes in this unfortunate phenomenon. In 1984, Dr. Rosenthal discovered that many people experienced similar depressive symptoms during specific months. By using a treatment called light therapy, the doctor was able to relieve many symptoms that patients experienced.

What is light therapy?

Light therapy can be administered either through ultra-violet exposure or suggested behavior management. The way in which the therapy works is by providing Vitamin D to the body and maintaining the proper amounts of this vital element.

Research conducted at the Harvard School of Public Health indicates that inhabitants of regions north of the 37th parallel are likely to not receive sufficient amounts of Vitamin D. Cities that are within this area include: San Francisco, Philadelphia, Athens, Beijing and any city between and to the north.

In the wake of Norman Rosenthal’s discovery, many other psychiatrists conducted extensive research concerning this condition; now, medically referred to as seasonal affective disorder, or simply S.A.D. By working with some of the unfortunate victims of this very real medical condition, new treatments have been found to work in conjunction with various light therapy treatments.

The 10 facts you need to know about S.A.D.

Seasonal affective disorder is a reality. Recognizing the causes and symptoms of the ailment can greatly increase treatment and prevention. Below is a list of the 10 most significant facts about S.A.D.

I. Learning the Causes

Fact #1: Vitamin D deficiency is a major contributor to winter sadness.

-Once thought to be the sole cause of what many people call “the winter blues”, decreased sunlight exposure is a major contributor to the disorder.

Fact #2: The quality of the air that you breathe on a constant basis is deteriorated in the winter months.

-When it is cold outside, it isn’t likely that you will open up your windows often. The air within any home is only re-circulated and loses its purity and freshness. Essentially, the air becomes full of contaminants.

Fact #3: Diminished exercise habits lead to poor health.

-The chilly weather can cause many people to reduce their exercise habits. Because of this fact, individuals may begin to feel lethargic and unmotivated.

Fact #4: Poor nutrition can make you more susceptible to health problems.

-It is no secret that improper eating habits lead to poor physical condition. Your mental state is highly influenced by your physical well-being.

II. Recognizing the Symptoms

Fact #5: Sufferers of seasonal sadness often do not realize the onset of the disorder.

-The seasonal transition is, obviously, not instantaneous. As the days become shorter and colder, people afflicted may slowly fall into a depression without even knowing that it is happening.

Fact #6: Many reports from those who have experienced the winter blues indicate increased eating, especially foods that contain carbohydrates.

-As depression sets in, an individual’s eating habits may change. Many case studies show an increase in carbohydrate intake. A diet of this nature generally promotes weight gain and increased depression and anxiety.

Fact #7: Reduced exercise due to the weather and depression symptoms can cause a “snowball” effect.

-The cold can deter people from continuing their typical workout routines. Coupled with poor nutrition, a lack of exercise can dramatically increase someone’s susceptibility to S.A.D. Being out of shape can be a catalyst for further sadness; making the condtion increasingly difficult to treat.

III. Implementing Treatment and Prevention

Fact #8: The best treatment to any ailment is taking preventive action.

-By noticing the emergence of depression symptoms, you can take preventive actions to stunt the development of the disorder. If you begin feeling tired or sore, take an inventory of your daily routine. Ask yourself: “What am I doing differently?”

Fact #9: Investing in an air purifier can substantially improve the air quality in your home.

-Many comparison sites can help you in deciding what the best room air filters are. Some air purifiers produce ozone emissions. Others use HEPA filters to remove harmful irritants from the air. Investigate the best rated HEPA filters to make an informed decision.

Fact #10: Ensuring that sunlight is received daily can reduce or eliminate the symptoms associated with S.A.D.

-Professionals that have researched this seasonal disorder agree that one of the best remedies is exposure to sunlight. It is recommended that for at least 15 minutes each day, individuals should make a point of getting some sun.

Taking preventive action can greatly reduce the prospect of being afflicted by the winter blues. Being aware of the causes, symptoms and available treatments is a great start to a happy and healthy holiday season.

AUTHOR BIO: Matthew Wainscott has a passion for writing. After finishing school, he pursued his career as a creative service provider. Matthew currently provides content to online organizations. He is well keened in promoting Healthy Lifestyle. He is also an expert in air filters particularly in best room air filters and best rated HEPA filters that can be found in the online market.

How To Migrate From Stand-alone bbPress to bbPress plugin

Hope you know about the latest buzz in the WordPress world!! They have released the stable version of bbpress WordPress plugin to the general public and it is called bbpress 2.0

The main advantage is, you do not have to worry about the WordPress integration anymore, because it’s now an extension of WordPress and it integrates with WordPress seamlessly.

What if you were using stand-alone versions of bbpress so far and now want to switch to the latest bbpress plugin without losing your valuable content.

There is a easy way to do this.

Goto WordPress Plugin Directory, download bbpress plugin and install it, as you install any other normal plugin.

Now inside your WordPress dashboard, under Tools, click on Import.
Now click on bbPress Standalone(Import your bbPress standalone board.)

Make sure to backup everything before proceeding further.

Now give the path to bb-config.php file of your old installation. and hit proceed.

Once the process is completed, you can check it by renaming the old forum installation folder to something else and check working of new forum by visiting yourdomainname.com/forums/

How To Double Your YouTube Partnership Earnings: Instantly

If you are a YouTube partner, you might have read a lot of advice articles in those early days of your vlogging(as it is called!) to increase your earnings. Some of them are:
1. Produce and upload videos consistently.
2. Get more subscribers.
3. Treat your YouTube page as landing page.
4. Get more and more traffic.
5. Have your own website.
6. Build your list etc etc..

and yes all these are still true. But how much time will it take to do all these things?

To Increase YouTube Partnership Earnings: just enable Instream ads on all your videos. After this, start with those website building, list building, body building etc!

Steps To Enable Instream Ads:
Step 1: Log into your YouTube account.
Step 2: Click on Videos under My Account.
Step 3: Now click on “Edit Info” under the video for which you want this Instream ads to be enabled.
Step 4: Under “Info and Settings” tab, broadcasting and sharing options -> Click on “Advertising Option”.
Now Enable:
Allow InVideo advertising for this video.
Allow AdSense overlay advertising for this video.
Allow Instream advertising for this video.
Instream Formats:
Enable Standard Instream for ads
Enable TrueView Instream for ads

Step 5: Now follow the same procedure for all the videos, individually.

For lengthy videos we can even enable: Pre-roll ads and Post-roll ads and can specify the time of appearance of these ads on our video. And this is treated as allocating the ad slot on our video time line.

Ad Slot:

Please enter the times at which natural breaks occur in the content of your video. Mid-roll ads will be shown at these times, subject to YouTube policy which limits their frequency. Ads must be spaced by at least 7 minutes, including the pre-roll.
Show pre-roll ads
Natural breaks in mm:ss OR hh:mm:ss (do NOT use mm:ss:ff):
Mid-roll ads will be shown at these breaks:
Show post-roll ads

CPC or CPM ads?
There are lot of confusion among YouTube partners about their earnings. I have seen people asking about the ad type and the match between their YouTube views and the number of impressions and earnings in their adsense account!

But I find it quite simple. The number of views in your YouTube account and the number of impressions in your adsense account need not be same. As most of the text based ads which are shown on your videos are not counted towards impressions. So these numbers usually vary a lot.

Instream ads and pre-roll, post-roll ads are basically CPM ads and you can expect very good returns if you have viral video or valuable videos that people are already watching.

Ads or No Ads
It depends on what kind of stuffs you are sharing. If you are uploading shit load of crap, then ofcourse the viewers will get even more pissed off by these Standard Instream ads, TrueView Instream ads, Pre-roll ads, post-roll ads and whatever. But if you are providing valuable content for free, then your viewers would surely be happy for you, as you earn while they learn from you.

And these ads may not be suitable if you are producing short videos. Imagine how it feels to watch ads for 15 seconds for a video of 30 to 50 seconds. Doesn’t quite look good, right?

Listen too much or too little, you would fail. Do your research, apply your mind:
People who usually say NO ADS are the once who have full ad in their video i.e., they might have a product and the video may be a pitch to it. So these people usually get on to YouTube trying to sell their shit, so they resist other ads and advice others also stay away from those silly looking cheap ads.
Having our own product is nice for income. But I still find ads as a good source of income. And I love the idea of sponsorship, wherein we give everything for free, help people, and these sponsors or advertisers pay us for our hard work, our viewers get value, advertisers get exposure, we get to make some money for our effort: and it helps us keep the service free. Win-Win-Win.

Haven’t seen Instream ads ?
These Instream ads won’t run in all countries all the time. My guess is, it does run most of the times in United States, United Kingdom, Australia etc. But when there are high paying advertisers in any country these Instream ads start showing up(geo-targeting), hence your earnings go up.

For Example, in India, Bollywood is a big industry. When there is big banner movie coming up, they highly invest in YouTube ads and hence we see these Instream ads show up often. We just have to enable this and watch for the increase in revenue $$

Even before I got into YouTube partnership program, I use to really enjoy watching these instream video ads. They are so creative and high definition ads which will surly catch your viewers attention and try to entertain them.

Over To You:
To enable Instream ads or not is left to individual choice. I’m just informing: How you can Double or even Triple Your YouTube Partnership Earnings….instantly, without almost doing anything.

Google’s +1 On Adsense Ads: Demo Video!

Well the +1 button has even made it’s way on Adsense ads.. yes starting from October 2011 Google’s +1 button along with the people(your friends) who pressed this +1 button will be shown at the bottom of Adsense for Content ads and Adsense for Mobile Ads.

Example on Google’s blog:

For example, take Susan, who sees an ad for a good deal on flights. She +1’s the ad, thinking her friends might value this deal. Now, when Susan’s friends and contacts are signed in to their Google accounts, they’ll be able to see Susan’s picture across the bottom of the ad, with a note saying she +1’d it.

Susan’s friends and contacts will also be more likely to see the ad. While the dynamics of our ad auction aren’t changing, the ad will now be included in the auction for the pages Susan’s friends visit, as we know recommendations from friends can be a strong signal of an ad’s relevance.

Source: Adsense blog

My question is: will Susan click on the ad first or the +1 button ? If Susan click on the ad, then how can she click on +1 ? On the other hand, if Susan clicks on +1, then “how does she know if it’s a better product without even first visiting the site?”

So, basically this +1 will help big brands build up their tribe with these creative ads and recommend others to view it too. So I guess, this feature will increase the click through rates of big brands or recognized ads more and the one’s with highly creative ad.

Google Adword Promotional Ad
Google has already started showing Adword ads featuring this +1 and giving $75 for the first time users! Below is a video of the ad which appeared on our blog today.

To Opt-out of this feature: For publishers
Step 1: Log into your Adsense account.
Step 2: Click on “Try the new AdSense interface” at the top right corner.
Step 3: “Allow & block ads” tab.
Step 4: In the left hand sidebar, “Advanced settings” under Blocking options.
Step 5: Click on the check box, to enable or disable:

i. Interest-based Ads Preference: Show ads based on user interest categories. Visitation information from my sites may be used to help create interest categories.
ii. Third Party Ads Preference: Allow advertisers to use their audience information to deliver more relevant ads to my site.
iii. Social Ads Preference: Allow the use of +1 related features and social annotations in ads.

Adsense for Mobile:
I’m particularly interested in seeing how this could work on Adsense for Mobile ads. I’m so much into using my Xperia Arc and hence many android Applications.
It would be nice to have +1 in the adsense ads which are shown in these applications.

On mobile, the +1 button will replace the existing ‘g’ logo and recommendations will appear for several seconds, then fade out.

And no, clicking on +1 button won’t generate any revenue in your adsense account directly. Google hopes, it would increase the CTR(Click Through Rate) of your ads and hence your revenue will be increased.

+1’s will be one additional signal that help determine an ad’s relevance. All eligible ads will continue to compete in the ad auction, and we’ll continue to show the ones that will generate the most revenue for you. +1 button clicks are not counted as clicks on ads. Although you won’t receive any revenue for +1 button clicks, +1’s will help AdSense to deliver more useful ads to your users, which we think will result in higher returns over time.

For adword users though, it would help get more exposure. But the normal auctioning will continue..
As publishers we get the option to opt-in or opt-out of these Social Ad Preferences, so no complaining around. Opt-in or Opt-out, it’s left to you.

Enhance your Blogging Experience with Select Bowser Add-ons and Plugins

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

Bloggers know that running a blog is not a simple task: it takes a lot of time and effort to ensure that your blog is constantly updated with valuable and unique content and that it’s aesthetically pleasing—aesthetics play a huge role in attracting a strong audience; and as many bloggers may already know, without a strong audience it’s very difficult to earn revenue from your blog(s). But there are certain web browser “add-ons” that can simplify the way you go about running your blog, can help you appear higher in search engine rankings so that you increase your traffic, and can even make the blogging experience more engaging for your readers—and the best part? They’re all free. To learn what these add-ons are, continue reading below.

1. ScribeFire Blog Editor:

This add-on, which is designed to “fire up your blogging,” acts as the ultimate organizational tool to maintain your blog(s)—it allows users to post, edit, add tags, write notes and save post drafts all from a designated central area. It even allows users to add photos to your blog(s) by simply dragging and dropping images from your desktop –no need to upload or copy and paste any links. The add-on is available for most of the major web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox and Safari and supports most major blog platforms, including WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Windows Live Spaces, and Tumblr just to name a few.

2. Zemanata:

One of the easiest ways to gain trust from your readers is to post content that is backed by authoritative and reliable sources. This add-on is a convenient tool that simultaneously formulates a list of relatable links, tags and spam-free news articles and supporting images as you type your posts—you can even filter the results to find copyright free content. This way you don’t have to waste precious time scouring search engines to find what you are looking for. This add-on also supports most major blog platforms, including WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr and works on most of the major web browsers, including Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

3. All-in-One SEO Pack (plugin):

If you decide to only download one add-on designed to improve search engine rankings, this is “the” add-on to have—this free extension helps you do pretty much everything: it automatically generates Meta descriptions and helps you generate keywords; it helps you create titles for the best optimization; it gives you suggestions so that you can create the best page navigation links and canonical URLs; and it even helps you avoid posting duplicate content which can get you in all sorts of trouble with search engines (your site can get suspended and you might just get sued for copyright infringement). And with more than 8 million downloads to date, the plug-in has proven to be effective time and time again. This add-on is unfortunately only available for WordPress users.

4. Tin Eye:

This add-on is the perfect addition for bloggers who want to improve the quality of their photos. This is how it works: the add-on uses “reverse image” software to locate either the original source of an image you found so that you can give proper credit or check its copyright; or you can upload a poor quality photo to find a higher resolution alternative. This add-on supports all major web browsers.

5. Broken Link Checker (plugin):

Ask any SEO expert and they will inform you that one of the major no-no’s is containing broken links in your blog posts. Not only will search engines not file and store pages with broken links (which ultimately harms and weakens your rankings), but your readers may lose trust in your site all together—how reliable do you seem linking to sources that lead to dead, 404 sites? But even if you’re careful about writing the correct HTML coding sometimes sites just expire. Here’s where this particular plug-in comes to the rescue: it monitors all of the content in your blog, including new and old, and regularly checks for broken links found in posts and comments so that you can immediately correct the issue. This add-on is only available for WordPress users.

6. Outbrain Ratings:

This add-on, which is technically more of a widget, is great because not only does it allow users to rate your posts as the title suggests (which can help your audience be more engaged with your blog), but it also can suggest other posts that are related to the one they are currently reading—this adds traffic and increases page views to both new and old articles/posts. Like all the others, this widget supports all major blog platforms and web browsers.

7. Translate Gadget:

An excellent way to increase your number of followers is to make yourself accessible to non-English speakers. In order to do this, all you need to do is simply download this add-on which allows your foreign readers to translate your blog content to their native tongue.

8. Google Analytics (plugin):

Lastly, there is no point in trying to make your blog the most recognizable blog the internet has to offer if you don’t even know if people are visiting your site. With this plug-in however, you will be able to monitor and keep track of all your web traffic so that you can know if all of your hard work is paying off. This plug-in will not only allow you to see outbound clicks and page views associated with each author and category, but it will also give you some great insight into your readers’ behavior—it can show you what kind of content your audience favors and is more likely to read so that you can cater to them. Available for WordPress users.

Author Bio:
This is a guest post by Nadia Jones who blogs at online college about education, college, student, teacher, money saving, movie related topics. You can reach her at nadia.jones5 @ gmail.com.