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. gas-prices-rise-to-new-national-record Apr-7-2008

(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. itunes-overtakes-wal-mart-in-music-sales Apr-4-2008

(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:

• How to install the template in your blog.
• How to use your own header image.
• How to get excellent images for your blog header?
• Try different browser if fail to upload template.
• Check out how to turn the Blogger navigation bar on/off.
• How to move the Blog Title & Description location?
• How to change the opacity level of your blog background?
  
• How to post large images and photos in your Blogger blogspot?

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..

Adsense vs. BidVertiser - Which is the Best?

Rafael Enriquez wrote the pros and cons about using BidVertiser and compares it with Adsense to see which one is the best money-making contextual advertisement program online. Because BidVertiser ads are similar to Adsense ads, both of them cannot be run at the same time on the same page.

Using BidVertiser: Pros

• Adsense pays using check but BidVertiser pays through Paypal, which is faster.
• Adsense’s minimum payout is $100 but BidVertiser’s minimum payout is $10, which is quicker.
• BidVertiser allows you to choose the ads to open in a new window, which lets your web/blog stays open and hopefully to have visitors come back easily to your site.
• You can approve ads manually with BidVertiser, not with Adsense.
• You can test to see the final ads template with BidVertiser, not with Adsense.
• You can choose to display eBay auction ads with BidVertiser, but not with Adsense.
• With BidVertiser, you can see the amount of money advertisers are bidding on the ads that will be displayed on your site. With Adsense, you have to use other system (e.g. AdWords) which is not as easy.

Using BidVertiser: Cons

• There are complaints of slow page loads using BidVertiser, not with Adsense. This creates major problems for users.
• Adsense ads are more relevant and thus get higher click-throughs. This is because Adsense has more advertisers in their pool to offer the right ads for any keywords.
• Because there are more advertisers competing in Adsense, chances are ads in Adsense pays more per click.
• There complaints that BidVertiser doesn’t pay on time after reaching the min payout of $10. Adsense reputation in payment is better.

The decision which is better to use is left for individuals to take.

Photo by Helico.

How to Reduce Ad-Blindness

Skellie gave out some tips to prevent ad-blindness – the tendency to overlook the ads after frequent visits. Reducing ad-blindness increases your click-through-rate (CTR) and brings more revenues to your blog. Here’s the gist of her tips.

We, the readers, don’t go through a blog’s page inch by inch. Things get bypassed including those ads. So how do we reduce this bypassing and to increase CTR?

Many people think that to get higher CTR, they need to:

• Put up more ads.
• Make ads bigger.

This is not true. It’s more likely to cause the ads look clustered and obstructive - and thus gets filtered away.

Here are tips to get more attention to your ads:

• Put elements of high interest nearer to the ads – your readers’ may stumble upon the ads too. But don’t put too close to trick your readers to accidentally click the ads. It's is simply irritating.
• Put fewer and smaller ads. Readers may actually look at the ads because they stand out more and not many of them to cluster the page.

The real key is to experiment with ad-placement, number of units, sizes, and colors as well for a week before making any changes to see real results.

The bottom line is, clickers are readers – they’ll click only when they mean to do it after thinking about it. To let them have the chance to think about it is to allow them proper attention, both to the content and to the ads – and the best way to do this is not to clutter the page by having too many ads covering too much space.

Photo by brtsergio.

Advice on Promoting Blog

To make money from blogging demands you to have large traffic, and to have large traffic demands you to work on promoting your blog early on. Here are some pointers on promoting your blog.

1. Search Engines Take Time
New blogs will take a few months to get significant traffic from search engines. Doing SEO is one way to improve on this. Other traffic sources, such as networking or social media, can boost up your visitor numbers quickly if you have the right strategy – so don’t focus on search engines only.

2. All Traffic Are Not Equal
Responses from visitors to your blog in terms of time spent, depth of pages, interest in content are best if they found what they’re looking for. Generally, these kinds of visitors arrive at your blog from either search engines, subscribers, and from recommendation from other blogs with similar niche. Traffic from social media has been commented to be less responsive and even unlikely to return back to their blogs. Try to consider what type of traffic is best for you when promoting your blog.

3. Post Consistently
Most successful bloggers post consistently and regularly even when they already have large search engines traffic drawn to their older posts. The reasons for posting new content consistently are to grow the number of subscribers, get new pages in search engines, and keep the blog fresh to get votes in social media. So why stop when you can get more?

4. Traffics Are Inconsistent
There are days that traffic goes up, and at times down. It’s natural. Be ready for anything or you might get upset. The most important thing is to get your mindset focused and not let down by a few hurdles.

5. Get More Repeat Visitors
The heart of successful blogs is repeat visitors. Unique visitors are great too, but nothing can guarantee they’ll be back. So, it’s good to really focus on getting more subscribers. They are also the most responsive in terms of giving comments, votes, etc.

6. Get Inbound Links
Having other blogs link to you helps in many ways. They bring visitors in, expose your blog more, and boost your search engine rankings. These links also signify that your content is valuable, trusted, and worthy to pay a visit to. Not only they help with search engine traffic but also build your credibility.

7. Get Traffic from Multiple Sources
Getting huge traffic from one type of traffic, say search engines, doesn’t guarantee it will always stay that way. For example, Google penalizes blogs that violated their guidelines. Likewise, other types of traffic can’t guarantee giving you consistent traffic all the time. So, diversify your traffic sources.

8. Don’t Ignore Small Traffic
Traffics that come from resources such as your comment or forum links are relatively small. But most of the time those visitors find your blog to be very relevant to what they’re searching for and are likely to become loyal readers. So, keep them coming.

9. Build Your Network
To be successful in blogging, you must have strong network. People in your network can provide you valuable advice, link to you, vote for your posts, inspire and encourage you, and even become partners in future projects. To build a strong network you must first be proactive and willing to meet and help others.

10. You Can Buy Traffic
You can buy advertisement to drive traffic to your blog quickly. PPC ads can be efficient and inexpensive if you bid on the right keywords. StumbleUpon also offers an advertising option where you buy traffic at $0.05 per visitor. Running these ads for a few months will drive significant traffic and give you good exposure at low costs.

Photo by mikebaird.

How to Produce Persuasive Writing?

If you're blogging with a serious goal in mind - building reputation, making money, selling products - you'll want to be heard and trusted. To achieve this you must first be able to persuade your readers. Telling them what your ideas are seems pretty straight forward, but making them believe what you're saying is a completely different thing. It is this ability of persuasion that will put you ahead.

Photo by SantaRosa OLD SKOOL.

In essence, people tend to agree with others when it benefits them more. The challenge to writers when persuading audience is to create a win-win situation and to present their case well and clear. Below are guides to improve yourself to become a more persuasive writer:

• Repeat your ideas - Not everybody gets it the first time. Repeat your ideas, again and again. But do it in different forms so that it doesn't get boring. Use examples, stories, analogies, or rewording to restate your ideas.
• Give reasons - People will ask 'Why?' to anything. Support your ideas or products with good reasons why they're so or why they're built. This isn't as easy as it sounds. Reasons that make sense convince people. The ones that don't invite debate and trouble. Think carefully before giving any reasons.
• Be consistent - Inconsistent thoughts show confusion, uncertainty, hesitation, and many other bad things. Being consistent shows that you have sound logic, rational thinking, and believable character. A powerful technique to show you're consistent is to present your case at the beginning. Then, convince your readers by supporting your case with evidence, examples, and proof throughout your writing consistently, while repeatedly referring back to the initial argument at the beginning of the article.
• Support with authority - An idea that has been well accepted socially, supported with scientific facts, or backed by prominent figures with strong credentials will easily get accepted by others. Your challenge is to convincingly show them how your case is supported.
• Compare with established ideas - Comparing or relating your case to the ones already established can help convince people. It helps to use metaphors, similes, and analogies. Readers are convinced more easily this way as they only need to see the connection between your ideas to those already established as true.
• Relate to your readers - When you're posting an article as a solution to a problem, don't just solve it. Present the problems clearly and make your readers know that you know well the stakes at hand and empathize with their trouble. Your readers will likely be reading your post because they're facing that problem. They'll trust you more if you can show them that you've dealt with the same situation before and know exactly how to solve it.
• Belong to a group - When you're writing on articles that target specific demographics (group of people), get into their heads and be (or try to be) part of them. You'll be more persuasive if you understand the specific needs and wants of your target group. Then focus your writing to fulfill those needs, rather than trying to generalize your writing to target the whole masses.
• Address disagreements - Not everyone will agree with your ideas. There'll be objections, counter-arguments, and debates. Assessing what those disagreements are and addressing them immediately will save you some trouble and improves people's perception towards your credibility on the subject matter, which increases your persuasive ability. Of course, you can't always think of everything that people will object.
• Tell stories - Unfolding your ideas gradually by telling stories first and relating them back to your core ideas is an effective technique. People believes in stories much easier than they do with dreary arguments. The challenge is for you to tell good stories and to relate them to your ideas. The better the stories you tell, the easier it is to get people to believe you. Hope that you're telling them the right thing then.

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This article is a shorter adaptation from a longer version Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques by Brian Clark at CopyBlogger.com (Alexa rank: 12,307). The original post of 1043 words has been reduced by 38% to 647 words.

Why Word press

Word press

Wordpress is a free blogging platform that anyone can use. A “blog” is an online journal, and is proven to be the most effective way of building a website from scratch with no experience.

But don’t let the words ‘journal’ fool you.

It’s not just a ‘diary’ to record your personal experience and daily ramblings.

With a Wordpress blog, you can build an entire website on a particular topic and dominate the entire industry. The gurus call this an ‘authority’ website.

Now the average joe like me actually has a chance to build a mega-site with hundreds of pages and thousands of visitors a day...

..and yet still have time for myself and my family.

The reason I’m yakking on about Wordpress is because hundreds of smart entrepreneurs are already using it and I don't want you to be left out!

Look at it this way...

By the time you create your first page they have already created an entire profit-pulling niche website and are making much more than you do now, while spending only a fraction of the time and money you’ve invested.

The good news is that you can catch up too, if you start taking action now.

Why not Blogger ?

Blogger is Easier? Maybe.Better? Definitely not !

Yes, it’s easy to set-up a blog with Blogspot.com and get your own Bloggger account. You can be done in 10 minutes flat. Blogger also has built-in functions to add Adsense codes directly into their platform.

In fact I started with Blogger and I won’t say that it’s bad. But after a while I started to get frustrated with Blogger, and here’s why:

1. Google Owns Your Content – Google has the authority to shut down your account without warning if they don’t like what you’re blogging about. You have no control over your own blog. With Wordpress, you own the domain name and the blog is hosted on your own account. You have full control over your content.
   
2. Lack of advanced options – Blogger doesn’t allow categories. You can’t sort your articles into different focuses. With Wordpress, not only can you add categories, you can also add as many plugins as you want easily and even add audio or video to your content.
3. Publishing with Blogger is a pain in the ass – It can take forever to post articles on the Blogger platform, especially if you’re making changes to the entire website.
4. You can't brand yourself – Of course with Blogger you can publish to your own domain, but you can’t do significant changes to it. I can identify Blogger sites immediately, but with Wordpress you can customize and brand almost anything you want. You can also install Wordpress on an existing website as a sub-domain or sub-directory if you want.
5. Limited promotion options – When you post in Blogger, you can only “ping” a limited amount of sites, whereas with Wordpress on your own domain you can ping as many blog directories as you want, and start getting more traffic.

In fact, there are other platforms like MSN Spaces, Typepad, and even MySpace. But these solutions are severely limited.