Technotip.org - Part 38

Photo or Gravatar next to comments on WP

For people who comment on other blogs:-
Its a simple thing for some advance internet users, but I am sure that most of the people are not yet sure about how to get a pic or gravatar next to their comments on some WordPress(which allows showing gravatar ofcourse!) blogs.

Here is the simplest way, which will take just 2 or 3 minutes(depending on your internet connection speed 🙂 ).

Goto Gravatar.com(acquired by automattic), Click on SignUp.
You will just need a valid email ID, as you will receive a confirmation email including a link that will activate your account and allow you to set your password. After activating your account, login and goto “Add an Image“, now you will be presented with some options to upload a photo to your account. Upload an image that you want to show beside your comment. People who want to create their brand awareness, will use their website logo. And some others who want to show their photo beside the comment can upload their photo.
You can even use the same account(therefore the same images) to multiple email IDs. Just click on “Add an Email Address” link and you can add another email ID.
Now while commenting on blogs which show gravatar next to the comments, use the email ID that you used to signup with Gravatar.com. You can use any of the email ID’s that you have added to your Gravatar.com account, this will automatically show your uploaded image beside your comments. WordPress will automatically retrieve the photo and show it on the blog.

For blog owners:-
If your theme does not have gravatar enabled by default, then here is a simple trick using which you can integrate it. Add below code in comment.php file

<?php if(function_exists('get_avatar')) { echo get_avatar($comment, '50'); } ?>

to show the gravatar wherever you want to show them. You can use styling by adding some css class.

Plugin for blog owners:-
If you don’t want to go through the hurdle, just use WP-Gravatar plugin upload and activate it and you will be ready with the gravatar enabled comment section instantly 🙂

There are many other services and methods to show gravatar, but this one is the best and the widely used one.
Please share your knowledge in the comment section. Do you know any tips, tricks, hacks or anything regarding gravatar ?

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.

Interview with InfoLinks — InText Advertising Service

Infolinks, Inc. established in 2007, is a leading provider of In-Text Advertising services, working with online content publishers worldwide.
Mission
Infolinks enables website owners and publishers to benefit from In-Text advertising directly while earning the highest revenue share.

Infolinks, Inc. established in 2007, is a leading provider of In-Text Advertising services, working with online content publishers worldwide.

Infolinks mission and vision as mentioned on their website:

Mission
Infolinks enables website owners and publishers to benefit from In-Text advertising directly while earning the highest revenue share.

Vision
Infolinks will integrate In-Text advertisements into a growing number of websites, bridging the gap between online publishers and advertisers and bringing premium, relevant content to Internet visitors worldwide.

There is a long going debate in the internet about the usage of InText advertising. Today we have the industries leading Company in our interview and it has provided very good results to many publishers who we know personally. So here is the interview..if you have any questions regarding InfoLinks, you can ask in the comment section.

Interview with Infolinks

1. Please introduce yourself and about InfoLinks to our readers.

A: Infolinks presents the next generation of In-Text Advertising. In-Text advertising inserts text link advertisements within the content of your website, usually in the form of double-underline hyperlinks. Upon a hover of the mouse, a floating informational bubble opens with content from an advertiser. If clicked, the visitor is directed to the advertiser’s landing page and you earn advertising revenue; otherwise, when the mouse is moved away from the hyperlink, the bubble disappears. Each time your website visitors click on an Infolinks In-Text ad, you get paid!

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

A: Infolinks leads the industry with the most relevant in-text advertising links, record high conversion rates, and the highest revenues. We are so confident that Infolinks will generate high revenues, that we actually guarantee the industry’s highest revenue share in your contract.
In addition, we welcome all legitimate websites – big and small – to experience the next generation of In-Text advertising. Unlike other in-text providers, joining Infolinks involves no sign up fees, hidden commitments or qualification minimums.
Finally, rather than paying only for clicks that are based in a limited number of countries, Infolinks will monetize all of your website’s traffic, including international.

3. Is InfoLinks affected by the “First mover advantage theory”. As I see that there were some other In-Text advertising networks already existing before InfoLink?

A: The “first mover advantage theory” has been disproved many times in several different IT fields . Since Infolinks joined the In-Text advertising market, we have proven again and again that our In-Text ads are superior and yield higher revenues than our competitors. If you look it up on any major search engine you will find that there are many articles and testimonials to support it. Infolinks provides the next generation of In-Text ads – our vast community of publishers and advertisers that is expanding everyday is the ultimate proof for that.

4. Did you ever got any complaint about “principles of web usability” due to Intext advertising? How do you defend it?

A: In-Text ads will enhance your published content with user triggered, less intrusive advertising that won’t distract from your site’s content. Every day, new publishers are discovering the benefits of generating an additional stream of revenues without taking up any real estate on their website. In fact, our in-text ads contribute to the experience of the viewer by linking the content to ads related to the text they are reading.

5. “I want to show InfoLinks ads only to my search engine traffic and not to my regular visitors”. How can I do this ?

A: Yes, of course you can, the Infolinks 1-minute integration is very easy, and then you can present it to search engine traffic only, just as you would do so to any other type of content.

6. What measures do you take to make the ads relevant to the content?

A: The Infolinks proprietary algorithm scans your pages and highlights words that will generate the highest possible revenues for you. The algorithm gives priority to words with ads that are related to your site’s category. You can set a general category for your account or even define specific categories for every page. If the algorithm can find valuable words in the text that are related to the category you chose – these words will be highlighted as In-text ads.

7. You claim to be the Industry’s best revenue sharing company. How much percentage do you actually share with your publishers? Do you pay for clicks from all around the world or are you targeting and paying for only specific country traffic clicks?

A: Infolinks leads the industry with the highest revenue share in the market. We are so confident that Infolinks will generate high revenues, that we actually guarantee the industry’s highest revenue share in your contract. The exact revenue share is set according to the sites characteristics and traffic data. Infolinks monetizes all of your traffic – Rather than paying only for clicks that are based in a limited number of countries, Infolinks will monetize all of your website’s traffic, including international.

9. We are very much curious about all the guys behind InfoLinks.com, and we want to have a look at your office. If you have any video and photographs(of your employees and office) then please share it with our readers.

InfoLinks-employees

10. How do you define success?

We aim to build a long and lasting successful partnership with each and every one of our publishers; A partnership that is based on trust and mutual benefits from In-text ads.
Our success is providing our publishers with high revenues along side with a great service, turning their success into our success.

11. What are the mistakes you see your publishers and advertisers are making, in using InfoLinks service properly?

A: The best advice we can give to our publishers is to take advantage of their customization options. Publishers can maximize their revenues by customizing Infolinks especially for their websites. Inside the publisher center, each publisher can control the look and feel of the links, including colors, number of links per page, and form of underlining.
Publishers should also be sure to integrate Infolinks onto the most content rich pages of their websites. The more text a page contains, the more opportunities there are for linking text to revenue.

12. Your advice for all those who are not yet using InfoLinks on their blog and are looking for a good Intext adnetwork.

A: We welcome any legitimate website with textual content to monetize text with Infolinks In-Text ads. With have no sign up fees or hidden commitments, come take advantage of the industry’s highest revenues for in-text ads. Just fill out our short online application and complete an effortless integration process to start linking your text to revenues now!

13. Please tell something, that you would like all your advertisers/publishers/ and others to know about InfoLinks.com

A: Infolinks is the highest paying in-text provider and can be a good source of revenues to every website. If you have a blog or website, it takes 1 minute and no commitments to start getting paid – so why not give it a try?

If you want to use InText advertising on your website, then why to use something then the industries leading InText advertisement provider. No minimum requirement needed. It just requires your website to be legitimate. You can fill the application to start using InfoLinks. Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

YouTube Logo Colour Scheme Changed? — Not Really

I got email from my friends who said me — “Hey YouTube logo has been changed, you write about it first on your blog, so that you rank well”. Thanks for their concern.

But actually the logo colour scheme has been changed only for one day. The green colour logo is to show its support to Saint Patrick’s Day. No official mention, but yet I am confirmed that YouTube have no intention to change its logo.

I am writing this post mainly to show my support for the Green and to share below screen shot with you people.

St. Paddy’s Day or simply Paddy’s Day, is an annual feast day which celebrates Saint Patrick, one of the patron saints of Ireland, and is generally celebrated on March 17.

The day is the national holiday of Ireland. It is a bank holiday in Northern Ireland and a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland and Montserrat. In Canada, Great Britain, Australia, the United States, and New Zealand, it is widely celebrated but is not an official holiday.

As part of celebration people wear green dress, eat Irish food and/or green food, take Irish drink (such as Irish stout, Irish Whiskey or Irish Cream). Don’t you think now a days people have started celebrating by eating, dressing and drinking rather than really helping to build the real green, the Nature. Just my wage thoughts 🙂
Anyway, Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

Free Domain and Hosting — Interview with HyperWebEnable

HyperWebEnable is a web 2.0 company offering reliable web services and online advertising based on the foundation of robust web techniques. HyperWebEnable is located in Bay area, California.
hyperwebenable-logo2
As far we know, hyperwebenable provides free domain(also free renewal) [www.yourdomainname.com] and free hosting. Seems to be unbelievable right? But its true. They have some innovative concepts, which enables them to give all these for free.. We were excited to talk to the CEO of the company Mr.Lakshman Kumar. And here is the interview with him. You can also ask him questions in the comment section, if you have any!

1. We are curious to know about your service. Please explain briefly.

Hyperwebenable.com is the service which provide users with complete
website for the blog rather than sub domain. We provide complete domain to the user like yoursitename.com; While most other blog services provide sub domains like
yourblogname.freeblogservice.com. We want to provide maximum service to the bloggers by providing email services and add on features for their blog.

2. Whats the long term benefits for you, as a company?

We are a fast growing business. With 500 domains currently registered
under our service and 4 million monthly impressions and growing, we foresee a bright future down the road.

3. What are the common mistakes that people do, after registering their domain from you?

The most common mistake they do is not updating there blog often and do not generate any traffic for there website.

4. How big / small is your company?

We have 3 team members in US and we have 3 developers in support center in Hyderabad in India.

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

All our servers are quad core Intel dedicated servers .

6. We see that you have partnership with Guruji. Ghost, VYEW, CPME2PLaY. Can we know whats the benefits of these partnerships for you as a company and for your customers?

We have partnerships with other companies to provide more services for the user like ghost for webOS service and vyew for web conference service and guruji for search service to the bloggers.

7. 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 HyperWebEnable?

We are providing all the services free and also we provide support if your blog has issues. Why pay money for services that we already provide for free?

8. What about the uptime records of your servers?

we are maintaining 99.6% uptime for our servers until now.

9. We can see that, there are some very good blogs using your services. And we have also seen them getting lot of traffic. And we have heard that, you provide lot of support, tips and tricks to get traffic and build the site. Can we know more about this?

When we provide the domain to our customer we also provide them with tutorials and optimization tips for SEO. For generating traffic the most important thing is to get link backs and the easiest way to get the linkback is by submitting links to blog directories and link share with other members.

10. Please share about your business model.

Our business model is, we provide complete services to the bloggers and in turn we place 2 banners in your website which generates revenue to provide the service.

11. Is this your full time job?

No I work full time in a company. I spend 3 hours for hyperwebenable and we have full time team of 3 people in Hyderabad .

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

Most blog service have very few features, compared to ours. They do not provide email and they do not provide ftp service and you can’t add more features like forum or cms for your blog. Most of all we provide the kind of support and flexibility that most bloggers miss.

13. Share some of the strict rules(policies) that your customers should follow, inorder to be your customer?

Only one simple rule is to be active and generate good traffic for the website provided by us.

14. Earning opportunity using your services?

User can earn money from the blog provided by us. May be by placing some Google ads or any other ads in their website. We do not have any restriction on the number of ads or type of ads they put on the website.

15. What are the future plans for HyperWebEnable?

We are planning to grow faster in coming days and reach 1000 websites in end of this year and also planning expand our services to wide range of people.

16. Why do you think people should use your service?

Our service is more flexible and transparent compared to other blog service and we provide more control to the users, on their website.

17. Is there any fixed number of ads served by you or is it fluctuating?

We usually place 2 banners in the website provided by us.

18. Under Whose name will the domain be registered?

The domain will be registered under HyperWebEnable.

19. If someone already have a website, and needs to terminate as he 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 hyperwebenable?

Yes we will provide free hosting service even in such cases. But the site will come under our terms and conditions of service.

20. Presently your Office is located at ?

We do not have physical office every one works at home its virtual
office every one is connected by Internet by VOIP services

21. Do you read blogs? Which are your favorite?

I do not have time to read blogs and I do not have blog of my own.

22. By your name, you seem to be an Indian. Can you please share about your past and present life with our readers?

I am Indian, I am from a village of Andhra Pradesh. I am presently in
silicon valley in california USA. I have done by computers engineering from SV university in Andhra Pradesh. Later I worked in Hyderabad for couple of companies like Orillion, ADP wilco and Wipro for 3 years.
I have moved 2 years back to USA and I started hyperwebenable.com
service on first quarter of 2008.

23. How does your day look like? You seem to be a busy man!

My day starts with going to my full time job and back by 7:00 at evening and at evening I start working on hyperwebenable.com for 3-4 hours and talking to Indian team.

24. Whats your opinion about Internet Business and the real world jobs? Which one do you prefer and why?

Running internet business takes more time to earn revenue to survive but once you get enough revenue to survive its always better then the normal job. You can work on your choice of time.
But normal job we have to travel to office and work on the office timings.

We had a nice time chatting with Lakshaman Kumar, CEO of hyperwebenable. For more details and latest updates about the service visit hypewebenable. Hope you enjoyed reading the interview. And please pass this interview link to all your friends whom you think it will be of some use(Free Domain & Hosting 🙂 ). And please share your thoughts in the comment section.

Battery problem with your Phone? Try this before purchasing new one

Battery problems are common with mobile phones these days. As the cost of the phone goes down the quality of some of the key components reduce significantly[Most of the times!]. Their one year warranty will be of great use most of the time!

Ok, today on our Sunday Mobile tips we have a simple but yet sometime a great money saving tip for you.
If your mobile phone starts showing battery weak suddenly and if it keeps popping the same message each time, even after hours of charging, then you must read this article till end 🙂
Mobile_Phone_Battery
Most of the time this is due to a software problem. Mainly the 3rd party software you use on your phone. And you believe it or not, some times the call dropping and other problems also start due to overloading of your phone memory.
As a quick solution for these kind of problem, just restore your phone to “factory settings”, and your phone will start working normally.

While this is not a case most of the time, but its better to check before going and purchasing a brand new, branded battery, which will cost you a lot.
Hope this tip helps atleast some of you. Please share your tips, tricks or any other things that you have experienced with your phone.

Free ebook download -“Tips, Tricks and Strategies to Make Money Online”

The ebook is finally out for Download.

Writing an eBook with collective effort:
Some time back Daniel scocco from DailyBlogTips cameup with an idea of writing an eBook with collective effort. The project was to group together the ideas and tips from different people, in a way that it would benefit both the collaborators and the end user (i.e. the readers).
People participating/contributing to the ebook were supposed to write about “Tips, Tricks and Strategies to Make Money Online” in not more than 200 to 300 words. This is indeed a good idea, which would bring value to the readers as well as to the participants, as we were assured of link backs to our blog.
I always admire Daniel’s work and the community he has build around his blog. I just wanted to be part of the community and wanted to take part in the group work. And ofcourse the traffic and the boost to our brand awareness was an additional reward.

What most of us had expected?
Daniel and most of the participants had expected that this ebook will bring in a lot of traffic, when it is released on DailyBlogTips.com. Thousands of internet users were expected to download it, and hundreds of visitors would be visiting to each blog, if things happen as Daniel had planned.

But what happened?
Fortunately quality of most entries was good, but unfortunately the tips and tricks were too broad to make sense under a single ebook.
And as usual, Daniel did not compromise, and so did not release the ebook on DailyBlogTips. He is committed to provide value to his readers, which is a very good commitment indeed, and very less people can actually deliver this commitment.

What’s the fate of the ebook ?
But as promised, Daniel took the pain with pleasure and spent some time to collect the entries and formatted, styled them under a simple ebook anyway. Now we are free to release the ebook on our(participants) blog.

What I feel is, this ebook gives us a chance to know what other people around the world think about Making Money Online. So I made my mind to give it to our readers.

So how can I download the ebook?
While announcing the ebook writing project it was made clear that the copyrights belong to everyone who participated, and that we can’t give away a direct download link to the ebook, we must require people to subscribe to our RSS feed or email list before they can download it. Its a rule of the project and I must follow it to keep the interest of other participants.
So please take a moment to subscribe to our email or RSS updates to get the download link for this ebook. You can always unsubscribe after downloading(Oops I shoot my own legs 🙂 ).

Finally, I would like to thank Daniel of DailyBlogTips.com for holding such an interesting and valuable project. Atleast the intention was good, outcome is not in anyone’s hand. And thanks to all the participants who have shared their knowledge and experience in the ebook, which may help our readers to gain some knowledge. And last, but not the least(actually the most important), the readers of the ebook, thanks to everyone who invested their time in reading this article and put their effort in downloading the ebook. You can freely distribute it to your friends, friends of friends and friends of friends friends, relatives and to whomever you want. Thanks again.