Increase Visitors

1.SEARCH ENGINE:

It brings lots of traffic to your blog.There are millions of people search in the search engines like Google,Yahoo,msn everyday.So,if your blog has so many good posts and is well indexed by Google,etc..you will get a good amount of traffic via search engines.There are a few steps to look at if you want a decent amount of traffic from the search engines like "submitting your blog site map to Google",yahoo to index you blog pages very quickly.And the other important one is adding meta tags to your blog.If you follow these two simple steps,then you will get a decent traffic.

2.Submitting your blog to Blog Directories:

You may know this before,submitting your blog to blog directories will bring you a good traffic.
Here is a good list of blog directories(there are so many directories,but the below one's will bring you a good traffic).Most of these blog directories ask you to register before you submit your blog.My suggestion is,create a new email address solely for this purpose so,your personal emails are not flooded with the emails sent by the blog administrators,etc.
You can find the Blog directories list here.

3.Participate in forums,groups,etc:

Just go to Google and enter your [major keyword + forum] or [keyword+groups] and search.Suppose,your blog is about blogging,then search 'Blogging forum'.You will find some forums,groups related to your site.Register in the forums and post articles,etc with a link back to your blog(as a signature).Answer questions,clarify doubts and provide a link to your blog.But,Don't SPAM.

4.Social Bookmarking:

Social Bookmarking is another way to build good traffic to your website/blog.If you don't know what Social Bookmarking is
"Social Bookmarking is a practise of saving Bookmarks,tagging the posts with keywords in a website".Bookmarking means saving a specific website URL(address) in your browser that you wish to visit later.There are so many Social Bookmarking sites like del.icio.us,digg,furl,technorati.
One good thing about these Social bookmarking sites is,you will get instant traffic.Just register with them,store your bookmarks,tags,.. and you are done,See your site meter blasting with traffic.

5.Submit Articles to Article Directories:

Submitting articles to article directories is another effective way to build more traffic.By submitting to them,your articles get massive exposure and gain you more traffic.
Some of the popular article directories are goarticles.com,ezinearticles.com,articlecity.com,etc.
There are hundreds of article directories,just Google it.

6.Leaving Comments on other blogs:Leaving comments with a link back to your blog is another good thing to do.Leaving comments in the related blogs is more useful and it also increases your PageRank.Always leave good comments and don't Spam.

You will get much of visitors if you have rich contents.I assure everyone.

50 Great Widgets

Widgets are a handy, easy and simple way to add some flare to your blog. Whether you’d like to display the number of currently online visitors to your site or simply the weather report for Los Angeles, you can do it with widgets. I have a list of my favourite widgets sites.Here is for you:

(1)MyBlogLog’s Recent Readers - This widget can easily be called a hit amongst blog owners; its popularity even managed to convince Yahoo into buying MyBlogLog. The widget lets you see the avatars of recent visitors to your blog, provided they’re also members of MyBlogLog.

(2)Mashable - Get the latest social networking news from this very site.

(3)Flickr Flash Photo Stream Badge - Display images from your Flickr profile with a handy Flash photo stream.

(4)Preview Anywhere - See a live preview of outgoing links in a small popup which activates on mouseover. Some find this annoying, while others might find it useful.

(5)Twitter Badge - If your life is so interesting that everyone must know what you’re up to all the time, then a Twitter badge is the ideal counterpart to your blog. It’ll proudly displays your recent tweets.

(6)Digg News - Display the latest Digg links on your blog. Themeable and fully customizable.

(7)FEEDJIT - Real time traffic data directly in your blog’s sidebar.

(8)LineBuzz - Inline comments for your blog. Very handy for blogs with frequent lively discussions.

(9)Flixn - Display a stream directly from your webcam, so your blog visitors can always see what you’re up to.

(10)3Jam - Lets your visitors send messages to your mobile phone, without them knowing your phone number.

(11)Jaxtr - With Jaxtr, your visitors can actually call you to your mobile phone; again, your number stays private.

(12)LinkedInABox - Show off your LinkedIn profile. Perfect for personal blogs.

(13)Box Widget - Enable visitors to use box.net’s online storage directly on your web site.

(14)Price of gas - Displaying gas prices on your blog might seem unnecessary to some, but it’s cool if you have a traffic/travel related blog.

(15)iBegin Weather Widget - Display weather information in your sidebar. Just like with Price of Gas, works great with travel-related blogs.

(16)ClockLink - Display time in various time zones with these nifty Flash clocks.

(17)Film Loops - Display the latest loops from your FilmLoops account.

(18)Daily Painters - Display paintings from famous painters on your blog.

(19)WhoLinked - Show your visitors which sites have recently linked to your web site. Works with all major blog platforms.

(20)Criteo AutoRoll - Displays links to blogs similar to your blog.

(21)Bitty Browser - Embed a cute, fully functional mini web browser to your blog.

(22)Leafletter - Create a mini website and embed it into your blog.

(23)WikiSeek - Search Wikipedia with this simple widget.

(24)FeedCount - Show off the number of visitors to your blog with this handy little button.

(25)Technorati Link Count - Display the number of links your website has from one of the biggest blog authorities - Technorati.

(26)MyPageRank - Another good way to show how “big” your blog is is to show off your Google PageRank.

(27)CheckPageRank - In addition to showing your PageRank, this widget also shows your Alexa ranking.

(28)BlinkxIt - Embed a link to related videos directly into your website.

(29)Skype button - Display your Skype online/offline status on your blog.

(30)RockYou Horoscope - Not something I would personally use, but some people are into horoscope. Hell, most people are into horoscope. Anyway, this widget shows horoscope (doh!) and does it in a nicely designed colorful box.

(31)del.icio.us Tagometer - Display how many times have del.icio.us users saved your page.

(32)del.icio.us Linkrolls - This badge shows your latest bookmarks from del.icio.us.

(33)Timelines - Need to create a timeline? Seek no further. This widget makes it really easy.

(34)PollDaddy - PollDaddy lets you create beautiful polls in no time, and display them at your blog.

(35)Vizu - Another poll-making widget, compatible with all major blog platforms.

(36)AnswerTips - Display definitions from Answers.com for various terms on your blog. The definitions are shown in bubbles which are activated on doubleclick.

(37)AnswerBoxes - Give your visitors a chance to enter a term themselves, and get a definition from Answers.com

(38)Now Playing - If you got to share your current playlist contents with the world, Sigamp will do the trick. Works with most popular music players, including Foobar, Winamp, iTunes and others.

(39)BuzzBoost - Display headlines from your RSS feed on any website.

(40)LibraryThing - Show off the latest books you’ve been reading.

(41)Plaxo Address Book - Let your most faithful visitors access their address books direclty from your site.

(42)AuctionAds - A widget that displays auctioned items on eBay, and gives you a percentage of the price paid when sometimes buys an item.

(43)aStore - Similar to AuctionAds, only for Amazon. Create a mini-store on your site and receive profit when someone buys an item through your store.

(44)Plazes - Show your current location on a Plazes map.

(45)Stockalicious - Track your portfolio with this widget, and share it with others. Let everyone know how much money you’ve lost.

(46)Yahoo! For Good - Create a charity badge and ask for donations for a worthy cause.

(47)Giftspace - Your friends never know what to buy you for birthday? Let them know what you really want with this nifty widget.

(48)MixMap - See where are the visitors to your MySpace profile from on a map.

(49)Google Map Widget - Display a searchable Google Map on your website.

(50)Google Video Search - Add a video search form and selected videos to your web site.

(51)Odeo player - Display an Odeo player for and podcast right there in your sidebar.

Keep blogging.

Blogger Templates Helpful Links


See these links for more help on Blogger templates:

10 TEMPLATES

WP-Polaroid
Click here to Download


Vibrant
Click here to Download

Template-outono
Click here to Download

Tecnoverde
Click here to Download

Sunset
Click here to Download

Selancer
Click here to Download

Darkworld
Click here to Download

Wp-Premium
Click here to Download

Pro lover
Click here to Download



Black and white Love
Click here to Download

post large images and photos in your Blogger blogspot?

Using the standard "Add Image" button in Blogger's text editor, you can only post photos or images with limited size, even if you choose the "Large Image" option.

Check out this test blog to see how the image fills up the entire post area. If you use the Blogger's Add Image button, the largest image you can post will be much smaller than this.


Follow these instructions to post large photos or images in your blog:

  • Store your photos in an online image hosting service. I would suggest the free Photobucket powered by Google.
  • Copy the direct link to the photo you want to post. In Photobucket, the direct link to your photo is located in the "Direct Link - Layout Pages" tab below your photo.
  • In your Blogger Create Post panel, click the Edit HTML in the text editor.
  • To post the photo or image, type the code below in the Blogger text Editor:
  • Change PhotoURL to the actual URL (the direct link) of the photo you want to post.
  • Set the width and height of your photos appropriately. If you want it to be the actual size, simply delete the red part. If you just want to set the width and let the height changes accordingly to scale, simply set the width only, not the height.

How to Change Background Opacity?


You can change the Blogger template opacity/transparency level easily by changing a few numbers in the code. Here's how to do it:

Click on the Layout: Edit HTML tab. Then, search for the code below:

#content-wrapper {
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding: 0px 0px 3px 3px;
width: 805px;
position: relative;
text-align: left;
background: $blogbgColor;
border-right: 1px solid $blogBorderColor;
filter:alpha(opacity=75);
-moz-opacity:0.75;
opacity:0.75;
}


Change the transparency level by changing the numbers highlighted in red. Vary the numbers between 0 to 100 for the line 1, or 0 to 1.0 for the lines 2 and 3. All the numbers must be at the same level, for example 75 for line 1 is equal to 0.75 for lines 2 and 3. The lower the number, the more transparent your blog is. If you don't want it to be transparent, set the values to 100, or 1.0.

Testing and Viewing in Other Browsers

Personally, I don't like the stage of testing in other browsers. It's annoying that other browsers might show your blog differently than the blogs you're designing it in. But if you want all to have access to your blog and see it as nicely as you've designed it, then you have to go through this process. As for my blog and my demo blogs, I designed them in Firefox and tested in IE7. I've received comments that people using IE6 have some trouble with the templates, but I didn't test them in IE6, and not about to trouble myself downloading IE6 and debugging the codes. The way I see it, if Firefox and IE7 get it right, then it's IE6 that's got the problem (not my templates) and it's IE6 that has to debug itself. Anyway, isn't that why IE7 is made in the first place?

Personally, I think Firefox is by far above all. If you're not using Firefox, I suggest you download them right now - it's free, fast, not too crowded with useless buttons, lightweight, and just plain great. And if you're using IE6 and don't want to upgrade to IE7 because your computer is not fit enough to take the load, but you know that viewing blogs is prone to bugs - then Firefox should be the way to go. Plus, the download is quick, the upgrading is efficient and fast, and there's a lot more to this - but I'll just let you see them on your own. So, if you want to get rid of IE and use Firefox instead, the download button is on the sidebar...

I don't really have a tip for debugging. You just have to be patient and solve the problems one by one. The way I avoid problems is by writing a stricter code so they won't have a chance to flip flop or get 'loose'. If you want, you can start designing a template starting from any of my own templates. That way, you can maintain the part of the CSS code that's there to avoid any bugs in different browsers. But I can't guarantee they're 100% bug-free!

Update:
I have tested all the templates in all browsers using Browsershots.org and labeled the ones compatible with all browsers (including IE6). There are also some templates compatible with IE6, but have their sidebars pushed down the Blog Posts because their content-box width is wider than the sidebar. So, please check if this is the case if you see your sidebar misaligned.

Tips and problems when installing templates

Here are some tips you can use to improve reliability on using these templates and some problems you might encounter when installing and how to solve them.

Tips on using background images:
The background images (images of the header, main background, content background, title bar, list background, etc) are stored in my flickr account. I can't guarantee the reliability on fetching these images all the time. So I suggest that you upload the images for a particular template that you're using and store them somewhere else. Simply get the image URLs from the xml code and change the URLs in the code (in red) to point to the new address of the images.

Example of code:
background: #000000 URL(http://...........) repeat left top;

Check all URLs in the CSS styling section and not just the first one you see in the code.

Caution with Header section alignment:
If your Header section look misaligned the first time you upload any template into your blog, that's probably because your Header Title and Description is too long and wrapped into a second line. If this is the case, shorten them or make them smaller. If not, it might be that your Linkbar is empty or your own uploaded header image size is wrong.

Caution with uploading your own Header image:
When you upload your own header image from the Header Layout page, the whole section or some part of it can be misaligned or cut off if your image is not compatible (having the right size) with the template. Read here for more details.

Caution with Linkbar: If you use any template with linkbar, the Header section might look weird and cutoff the first time you upload it into your blog. It's because your linkbar is empty (without any links yet). So fill up you links and the Header section will turn to normal again.

When Blogger can't save your new template:
If Blogger can't save the template because there are more than one IDs (for example ID for LinkList, HTML, Adsense, etc), simply go back to your old template and delete all widgets (also called page elements) except the basic ones (like About Me, Labels, and Blog Archives) and reinstall the template. You can later add the widgets back on.


Report your problems here:
If you face some new problems when installing my templates or if you want to share some tips, put your questions or tips in the Comment section. I'll try to answer them as soon as I can.

Tips and problems when installing templates

Here are some tips you can use to improve reliability on using these templates and some problems you might encounter when installing and how to solve them.

Tips on using background images:
The background images (images of the header, main background, content background, title bar, list background, etc) are stored in my flickr account. I can't guarantee the reliability on fetching these images all the time. So I suggest that you upload the images for a particular template that you're using and store them somewhere else. Simply get the image URLs from the xml code and change the URLs in the code (in red) to point to the new address of the images.

Example of code:
background: #000000 URL(http://...........) repeat left top;

Check all URLs in the CSS styling section and not just the first one you see in the code.

Caution with Header section alignment:
If your Header section look misaligned the first time you upload any template into your blog, that's probably because your Header Title and Description is too long and wrapped into a second line. If this is the case, shorten them or make them smaller. If not, it might be that your Linkbar is empty or your own uploaded header image size is wrong.

Caution with uploading your own Header image:
When you upload your own header image from the Header Layout page, the whole section or some part of it can be misaligned or cut off if your image is not compatible (having the right size) with the template. Read here for more details.

Caution with Linkbar: If you use any template with linkbar, the Header section might look weird and cutoff the first time you upload it into your blog. It's because your linkbar is empty (without any links yet). So fill up you links and the Header section will turn to normal again.

When Blogger can't save your new template:
If Blogger can't save the template because there are more than one IDs (for example ID for LinkList, HTML, Adsense, etc), simply go back to your old template and delete all widgets (also called page elements) except the basic ones (like About Me, Labels, and Blog Archives) and reinstall the template. You can later add the widgets back on.

Read also some other common template problems , fail to upload template.

Report your problems here:
If you face some new problems when installing my templates or if you want to share some tips, put your questions or tips in the Comment section. I'll try to answer them as soon as I can.

What is a Linkbar?

Linkbar is just a menu of links at the top of your blog, usually near your Blog Title. Come to think of it, it's better if I just call it Menubar. I don't know why I call it Linkbar in the first place, but I'll just stick to that name because I've used it so many times in my post and my templates.

Below are some example pictures of where the Linkbar is in the blog page, and how you can add links to the Linkbar in the Settings page.



Moving the 'Blog Title & Description' Location

This guide is meant to be used with the Ourblogtemplates.com designs.

You may see that you have to move the location of your Blog Title & Description (BTD), relative to the header borders or image. For example, if you're using a header image smaller that what was designed for the template and the BTD doesn't appear because it's way down at the bottom of the header border, you then have to move the BTD up. To do this, search for this code:

#header h1 {
display: block;
margin: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding: 130px 30px 0px 20px;
color: $blogTitleColor;
font: $blogTitleFont;
text-align: left;
}

To move the BTD up or down, change the number in red accordingly. The smaller the number, the higher the BTD location is on the header, relative to its borders and/or header image.

This is just a basic instruction to play around with the BTD location. If you're more familiar with CSS, than this obviously is just a piece of cake :)

How to Get Excellent Images for Your Blog Header?


To improve your blog design, you can place your own image in the header section, and add your own text to act as the blog title and description, instead of using the default Blog Title and Description provided in the template.


If you don't have any images to use as the header image, you can look at these websites that offer free excellent blog header images. You can follow this instruction on how to place an image on a Blogger's blog.

How to upload your own header image

This guide will show you how to upload a header image with Blog Title and Description as part of the graphic. For this to work, you have to hide the default Blog Title and Description texts.

*****

It's much better to use your own header image than the image already defined by the designer or just the simple plain background. For one thing, you can be sure to have a unique header compared to the rest of the blogs. The second reason is that you can write your blog Title and Description with much nicer fonts and color combinations.

Before that, you have to make sure that your image size will align well with the rest of the Header section. Turning the Title and Description text on or off can also mess up you alignment. For my templates, I've already given instructions for perfect alignment.


So, how to do this? Simple...

1. Go to the Layout > Template > Page Element. From there, click the Edit button for your Header. The screen below will pop up.

2. Upload an image from your computer. Make sure to that your image size is correct or otherwise your Header will be misaligned! Save your changes. (Don't forget to fill in your Title and Description in the text box above! You can turn the text off later.)

3. To hide the default Blog Title and Description text, click the Header Edit button again. Another screen will pop up, but with a slightly different option (see the screen below). Select the 'Placement: Instead of title and description'. This will hide your Title and Description from showing up on the blog (but still kept as your blog's information). If you don't want to hide your Title and Description text, simply click the other option.

4. That's it. All you really have to do is make sure that you've got a nice image to put up as your blog's header.

Installing the template in your blog

Before you start changing your template, make sure you save your old template file just in case you need to start again. And make sure you have a programming-based text editor installed on your computer (to make the codes easier to see. If you don't have one, there are many free programming text editors that you can download. I use Notepad++).

These are some instructions on how to put the template in your blog. There are some ways to do it; I'll explain some of them, starting from the simplest methods.

For tips to improve template usage and common problems faced when installing these templates, read this post, or here if you fail to upload template.


METHODS TO INSTALL BLOGGER TEMPLATES:

Method I. Simplest method - Uploading the xml file:

  1. Download the template that you want and save it in your computer (make sure it is saved as xml file).
  2. Go to your Layout > Template > Edit HTML page.
  3. Choose the file from the Browse... button, and then press the Upload button.
  4. It may ask you to delete some widgets - so just delete them. (Widgets are the extra page element added to the sidebars).
  5. You're done! View your new blog.
  6. If your contents doesn't look aligned, that's probably because you don't have any widget on one of the sidebars - so add your widgets.

Method II. Copy-paste the template codes into the Blogger text editor:

If you don't want to download the file first, or prefer to paste the code into your Blogger editor, this is how to do it.
  1. Open the template file that you want and copy all the codes.
  2. Got to your Layout > Template > Edit HTML page.
  3. Click the Expand Widget Templates (EWT) button. (If the EWT button is on or clicked, all template codes will be visible; if it's off or unclicked, then some codes related to Blogger Data are hidden so that the HTML codes look less messy - most of the time, you don't want to change or add codes inside the Blogger Data area).
  4. Select all the codes in your Blogger editor and delete them all. Then paste the codes for your new template.
  5. It may ask you to delete some widgets - so just delete them. (Widgets are the extra page element added to the sidebars).
  6. You're done! View your new blog.
  7. If your contents doesn't look aligned, that's probably because you don't have any widget on one of the sidebars - so add your widgets.

Method III. Copy-paste the CSS styling only into the template code:

The annoying part about using the two methods above is that you have to delete some widgets that you've made (maybe some Adsense codes, Text contents, HTML codes - usually the widgets About Me, Labels, and Blog Archives are not deleted). If you don't want this to happen, you must copy and paste the CSS styling part only. By changing the CSS part only, you don't change anything related to the Blogger Data including the data about the widgets that you've made.
CSS styling is the code that controls everything about the template style or appearance - the font size, colors, background images, header size, post layout, sidebar size and locations, etc.
But to do this is a bit tricky. You have to make sure the basic layout of your old template with the new one is the same. For example, if the old template has 3 columns (2 sidebars and 1 main), your new template has to be 3 columns too. The arrangement of columns will follow the old template; for example SMS or MSS or SSM. If the old and new templates don't have the same content layout, it won't work! If you're not sure about this, just use the first 2 methods above.

If you still want to change the CSS styling part only, read on below.

In the template, look for the code section in between the b:skin tags. In my templates, I've labeled the start and end of the CSS styling part. (In the code, the 'Page structure tweaks' code are actually part of the CSS styling too, but just leave it there.)

So, these are what you need to do to change the CSS part only:
  1. Open the template file that you want and copy the CSS styling code only.
  2. Got to your Layout > Template > Edit HTML page.
  3. Don't click the Expand Widget Templates (EWT) button because you don't have to change the Blogger Data code.
  4. Select the existing CSS styling codes in your Blogger editor and delete them. Then paste the codes for your new template.
  5. It may ask you to delete some widgets - so just delete them. (Widgets are the extra page element added to the sidebars).
  6. You're done! View your new blog.
  7. If it doesn't work, you can always use the first 2 methods above and add the widgets later.

Fail to Upload Template?

This happened to me just now when I tried to upload my own template using Firefox browser. I got an error message from Blogger.

But it worked fine when I uploaded the template using Internet Explorer browser. So if you have the same problem on Firefox when uploading these templates, try using the Internet Explorer. I don't really know why, but as long as it worked, that's all that matters.

How to Add the Language Translator Buttons?

Here's the code you can add to create the flag buttons (above) to translate your blog into different languages, depending on which country flag the visitors click. Simply copy all the code below and paste them into a widget (aka a Page Element) and all the 9 flag buttons will appear.



























click here to get the code

How to Add the Technorati Favorites Button?

Here's a few codes that you can implement to add the 'Add This Blog to My Technorati Favorites' button to your blog. The purpose for this button is to let your visitor s have an easier option to add your blog to their list of Technorati favorite blogs. This increases your blog popularity in Technorati listing.

I'll put down 3 codes for you to choose from, each with a different Technorati Fav buttons. Don't forget to change yourblogname.com to your own blog's URL.

Button 1:



Add to Technorati Favorites


Button 2:
The Technorati image is rounder for this button.


Add to Technorati Favorites


Button 3:



Add to Technorati Favorites

How to add META tags into your blog?

Do you want to improve your blog value, get more hits, and ranked high on search engines? Then you must optimize how your blog is indexed in a search engine.

While there are lots of factors involved in building quality blogs that can draw huge traffic in, having simple things right in the beginning is as important. One of this simple thing is getting your blog indexed properly with the right description & keywords to optimize search engine rankings (known as Search Engine Optimization or SEO).

To get information, search engines use automated software agents called spiders, crawlers, robots, or bots to collect the a few words from a site or blog (typically the URLs, blog name, and blog description, and maybe some words in the early part of sentences or paragraphs) that will later be used as keywords to index the blog.

Because you cannot be certain which words are taken as keywords pertaining to your blog, it's most likely that your blog won't be indexed properly in search engines - in the worst case, your highly relevant keywords might not even be used to index your blog. When this happen, searches on keywords relevant to your blog may have your blog buried at the far end of the list of thousands and millions of pages. What a waste!

To have a control of what is read by crawlers on your blog to be indexed, you have to build what is called a META tag - basically a bunch of words that makes up the most relevant description and keywords of your blog. If the META tag exist, this is what the crawlers will read and index and get displayed on any searches related to your keywords.

Here's what a search on my blog looks like on Google. The description is exactly the one I have written in the META tag. The 1st search on the list shows the new META tag description that was made a few seconds before the snap. The old META tag is shown beneath it (22 hours ago).


There are basically 2 parts to a META tag: first is the META description and second is the META keywords. The description are what appears on a search. As you can see, if the description is too long, it'll be cropped as search engines only uses a few lines to describe the blog. An optimum number of characters to use for META description is 150 (including spaces and dots).

For META keywords, you can use as many words as you want, but don't repeat the same word too many times (more than 5) to avoid keyword spam. Crawlers can identify keyword spamming easily - which won't make it good either for SEO.

To create a META tag, simply copy the code below and rewrite your META description and keywords (the red text):


Write your META description here. Keep it less than 150 characters.' name='description'/>
Write your META keywords here as many as you want separated with commas. Keep word repetition less than 5 to avoid keyword spamming.' name='keywords'/>

Then, place it in between the ..... section near the top part of your template XML code. It's best to put it just below the <data:blog.pagetitle/> code.

For more details:
Go to this Free META Tag Builder tool. It directs you easily to build a META tag, create the HTML or XHTML code, and guides to paste it into your blog template XML code.

Just for the fun of it, you can analyze your blog's original description and keywords by submitting your blog URL at the Free META TAG Analyzer before placing the new META tags in your blog - so that you can compare how it is indexed before and after the change.

Testing in different browsers using Browsershots.org

If you're a template designer or happen to redesign your blog on your own, you must want to know how it looks in other browsers than the one you're using.

It's easy enough to open up the few browsers you have installed in your computer and test your newly designed blog in it. But to know for sure that it works ok in all the browsers out there is next to impossible. Just to test in 2 different version of browsers, IE6 and IE7, are tough enough - as I've faced with previously.

I have the IE7 and can't have the IE6 installed in the same machine. There are options out there to install a virtual PC in your machine so that I can install IE6. But it requires quite a large space for the virtual PC alone, and there are some other things to get out of the way to get everything in place. So, thanks but no thanks!

Recently, a reader here mentioned about using Browsershots.org to test a new template in all the browsers out there. All of them! I tried it and basically this was where my testing problem ends. All the testing works beautifully.

Browsershots.org is an online free service that takes the URL of the blog to be tested and opens it up in all the different browsers on their machines. Screenshots, or snapshots, of the blog page in each one of the browsers are then taken and uploaded back within a a few minutes into the main page for your viewing pleasure/displeasure. From there, you can immediately see which browser works or not, and zoom in to a full page ( top to bottom of page) to see the details.

Here's the Browsershots.org main page:



Here're the screenshots (you can zoom each one to a full page):


There are limitations in that you can only have a number of screenshots (~300+) per day per IP, and ~60+ shots per website per day. Limitations can be lifted up by signing up into their service or paying for an extended period of priority processing.

At least for me, having only a few hundreds of screenshots is much better than not knowing how it looks in other browsers at all. My own experience is that almost all browsers work great with my templates - except IE5 and IE6. Since knowing this Browsershots service, all my new templates are good to go with IE5 or IE6.

In some cases, you may see that your new template doesn't open up well in one or two obscure browsers. Before you try to do more tweaking to solve the problem, check to see that browsers' usage statistics. It's not worth your effort to pull up your brain power just to make it look okay in a browser used by one person for every million internet users. W3schools can provide you a record of the current browser usage monthly statistics.

How to Get 2000+ Subscribers in 3 Months

Tina Su wrote a clear guide as a guest post at Problogger.net describing her strategy to get 2000+ subscribers within only 90 days of starting a new blog from scratch, without having any previous blogs or blogging experience.

She laid out 3 important things one should do, in proper order, to build a successful blog. This guide is based on her own strategy and experience building a successful blog in a short time. I have summarized the essence of her article below.


1. Creating Concrete Goals
Before starting a blog, you have to know why you are doing it. In her case, she wanted to share her knowledge and experience in the topics of self empowerment and well-being as well as to build financial independence. Having the right reasons to start a blog will become a powerful drive and motivation for you to continue making sure that your blog will succeed.

Once you are motivated with the right reasons, you have to create a set of clearly defined goals or targets that you can measure. An example of a clear goal is ‘I want to have 500 unique visitors within the first month’, rather than just saying ‘I want to have huge traffics for this blog’ which does not set any measurable quantities.

These targets have to be clearly defined so that in time you can look back and evaluate your progress. Having clear targets also help you to focus and put all effort in to plan and make sure they’re achieved within a set time frame. Tina herself writes her blog progress and evaluates her goals in a separate journal periodically. Clear targets, proper planning, and focused effort are keys to building a successful blog.

It is important that you build your blog on a specific niche and know what audience you want to target. The blog then have to be centered around this niche and target audience, not centered around what you want to write (if you want to build a successful blog with loyal readers). Having too many topics to write about would confuse people reading your blog, and won't make them stick around or come back to visit in the future.

2. Building Quality Content
The most important part of a blog is its content, so it’s crucial that you focus most of your effort building quality content. But this should be done only after your have set clear goals.

To know what content is quality content, you have to think back on blogs that you read regularly or subscribe and why do you like them. Most of the times, these popular blogs that people like have high value-package content, practical solutions to readers’ needs or problems, or that they simply entertain, inspire or motivate readers with their own unique content and writing style.

If you were to write your own blog, wouldn’t you want your blog to have these qualities? Observe good qualities in other blogs and try to model upon them. As a basic rule, one should write with the intention of creating work that have values and benefits to others.

Other tips from her blogging experience:

  • Bloggers must have total honesty and strong intention to produce the best content possible.
  • Using personal examples can add positively to readers’ experience as they can relate more realistically to you or to their own stories.
  • Using pictures appropriately can enhance your posts.
  • Exercise good writing techniques and habits, be concise rather than verbose, and edit your articles thoroughly before posting.

3. Promoting the Blog
The next stage is to expose and promote your blog to others - there’s no point of having quality content if others don’t know about it. The techniques that Tina used to promote are very much straight forward, starting from people closest to her. But again, without having quality content in your blog, promoting it doesn't make any sense.

  • Email & offline - telling families, friends, co-workers, new people she met, friends on social networking, and basically everybody she can, to subscribe to her blog.
  • Connecting with readers - responding to every comments and emails, treating each and every reader nicely and warmly, or visiting and participating in niche groups in social networking e.g. facebook.
  • Leaving your mark - giving thoughtful and relevant comments in other blogs especially with related topics, without spamming. It's very likely that people would want to know you (and your blog) more if you participate lively in other people's blogs.
  • Networking - reaching out to other bloggers and building a good network with online friends and new bloggers as well. Be genuine when introducing yourself to others without asking them directly to promote your blog. People in your network can have strong potential to promote your blog to others.
  • Linking - create link to other blogs genuinely without asking them for favors in return. In time, the favors will come by itself as others start noticing your 'kindness' in linking to them.
  • Social media & networks - become power users in social media sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, etc. by promoting other blogs’ quality posts. As your profile becomes more well known, others will start noticing you and have your quality posts promoted as well, as what you have done to other blogs’ posts. Network with others in these social media sites to build up your profile. She doesn’t recommend people changing their names or avatars as this confuses people and affect negatively to building a good network – in fact, she keeps the same profile and name across all media sites to help people recognize her easily.
My Comments
Having had some, but little, experience in blogging, I'd say the strategy of having the right reasons and goals is really the make-it or break-it point of building a monetizing blog. If this basic foundation doesn't exist, you'll just be dragging yourself trying to make it through, pointlessly. You might want to read her original post as she spiced it up with personal stories that make you aware of what you have to have to do well quickly, online at least.

Photo by .Tatiana..

How to get 1000+ Subscribers in 3 Months

Skellie at Skelliewag.org gave out the tips to get 1050 subscribers in just 3 months of blogging from scratch. She did it despite being the sole author of the blog and spent zero $$$ on marketing and promotion. And she said that it doesn’t matter what niche or audience you’re targeting; she did it although the niche has already matured and crowded with other blogs targeting the same audience. The gists of her tips are summarized here.

Know Your Target Audience
Most important of all is that you have to know who your audience is. You must write for your target readers and not just about the topics (because you may diverge away from the readers’ needs if you centered your content around topics to write).

Your target audience must be convinced that your content is written for their needs and unmissable. What they want is a 100% relevant content so that their times are not wasted. Even if your content is just 70% relevant, there’s a big chance that they won’t subscribe to it – because some of your content can be missed!

It’s a good trick to write clearly at the top of your blog to whom is it for so that they know right away without even reading the content yet.


Write Good Stuff, But How?

Content is the heart of your blog, so make it a great one. Write posts that give values to the readers, not just for the sake of making more posts. One post packed with values is worth so much more than many posts with little or no values.

If time is hard to come by, it’s okay to post less but make sure each piece have great values to offer. Make your readers’ time worthwhile. Readers will subscribe if they learn a lot from your content.

Expose Your Blog - To Your Target Audience!
There are two ways for people to get to your blogs – links or social media. These are the place to put your effort to build your blog’s exposure.

Links: There are two types of links:


1. Links you make in other blogs:

  • Links from your comments in other blogs.
  • Your forum or social media signature.
  • Your by-line as guest-posts.
2. Links you get from other blogs:
  • Write great articles that people will link to.
  • Ask them to link to you or exchange links with them.

The most powerful links that you can make or get are from popular blogs, sites, and forums related to your blogging niche. Not all links are equal - some links are better (in sending readers to your blog) than others. But it’s better to have all these links than to have none or just a few good ones. It’s unmistakable that if you have great and valuable content, links will come naturally.

Try also to write as guest-posts especially in popular blogs. But first, show that your content is worth it.

Social Media: The tip on social media (Digg, StumbleUpon, etc) is simply to be an active user. If you vote for other posts, they tend to vote for your article as this is naturally the easiest way to repay the favor. Once your article has been voted, other people will easily build it up the ladder on.

Some principles that guarantees her success are to be friendly, treat every person you interact with respect, always help out in the best way you can, focus on mutual benefit, and give more than you take.

Other Little Things
Without all of the above, the little things won't work. But once you have the essentials covered, consider putting some effort on the extras

  • Make your feed button easily visible (e.g. at the top part without scrolling)
  • Add the option to subscribe at the end of each post.
  • Put effort on blog design. Readers see that authors’ are more serious with their content if they are serious about their blog design.

Tips to Increase Your Blog's Traffic

Susan Gunelius at About.com shared 15 tips to increase your blog’s traffic. If your purpose in blogging is making money online, getting large traffic is a must. The problem with the blogosphere is that it has more than 100 million blogs. So, how can you make your blog visible? The essence of her tips is summarized here.
  1. Write often and write well with quality and meaningful content to keep readers interested.
  2. Submit blogs to search engines to make sure it is listed (it may take time for it to go up the list).
  3. Link to others using Blogroll. Owners of the blogs you link to will most likely link to you back and have their visitors use the links to go to your blog.
  4. Use comments efficiently. Increase your readers' loyalty by responding and interacting with your commenters. Leave thoughtful and relevant comments on other blogs to draw others to visit your blog.
  5. Syndicate your blog using a feed so that others can get updates to your blog easily. (Read more on how to increase your subscribers.)
  6. Use links and trackbacks. Links to your blogs are powerful 'vote of confidences' that are counted in ranking your blog. You can create internal links from your posts to your other posts too (works best when you use the right keywords to link). Trackbacks are links in other blogs’ comments that link back to your blog. They’re created when you link to these blogs' posts in your posts. Some blogs either don't have or don’t allow trackbacks to appear.
  7. Add tags to your posts. Tags increase the chance of others finding your content in search engines.
  8. Submit your posts to Social Bookmarking sites (Digg, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Reddit, etc). If your posts are excellent, others will vote for them as well and make them more visible to other millions of readers.
  9. Do Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Use the right and relevant keywords relevant that can draw large number of readers to your posts. Using keywords that’s not searched often will decrease visibility of your blogs in search engines.
  10. Use images with the right keywords. Other people don't just search for contents, they search for images too!
  11. Try to write posts in other blogs as a guest blogger. The more popular those blogs are, the more traffic they’ll send to your blog.
  12. Participate in forums and social networking with people of relevant interest.
  13. Promote your blog outside the blogosphere. Add your blog URL in your email signature or business cards. Basically, tell others about it.
  14. Nominate yourself (or other blogs) for blog awards to get more attention to your blog.
  15. Don't be shy to do all of the above.
My Comments
These tips are not explained in detail to give you the bigger picture of the overall strategy. It's important to understand them as a whole before going deep into details. You can dig(g) into each of these tips by Googling or Yahoo!ing more about them.

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