Blogging

At times you could be forgiven for thinking it is - if you read a lot of blogs on ‘how to blog’ that is. One of the first thing that most of us who write about blogging advise those starting out is to work on writing useful and unique content. Certainly at the core of most great blogs is useful and unique content that draws readers in and generates links from other blogs, builds the profile and reputation of the blog - however sometimes great content is simply not enough. The reality is that many bloggers write excellent content - however not all of them break through the clutter…

Who is Hosting This has put together a great little study into the blog hosts of the top 100 bloggers (according to Technorati). On top of the list is Media Temple, Datagram, BlogSpot and Six Apart. Yes you heard it, 8 of the top 100 blogs use Blogspot and 4 use Six Apart to host their blogs. It goes to show that while most (including me) would advise you set up your blog on your own hosting and with a platform like WordPress that you can actually grow a successful blog on a hosted platform like Blogspot. Of course keep in mind that many of the blogs in the top 100 are in networks so they…

Today I want to point out a useful tool for bloggers wanting to do a little research into topics to blog about (or even what topic to choose for your next overall new blog). The tool is a free one from Google - their AdWords Keyword Tool. This tool is one that Google offer their advertisers (looking to work out what keywords to target on Google) but is also useful for bloggers wanting to research how many people are searching for certain keywords. It will also give you information about how many potential advertisers there might be on a topic also. There are other tools that do similar things…

I opened my inbox this morning to find quite a bit of mail on the one topic - Yahoo Buzz which today opened up its doors to the public and started allowing other sites outside of it’s initial closed test to submit stories to it. Yahoo Buzz is a social bookmarking/voting site (quite similar to Digg) and some of it’s top stories even get to the front page of Yahoo. Sites that have been to the front page of Yahoo have reported more traffic than they’ve ever seen before - even when they are just on the front page for an hour. This lure of massive traffic has many bloggers…

Today I received an email from one of the advertisers on the ProBlogger Job Boards. They reflected back to me that they’d had a lot of ‘low quality’ job applications and made some suggestions for those looking to apply for a blogger job. I’ll include their suggestions below. Let me say that I get a variety of feedback from advertisers on the job boards. Most tell me that they get great applications and generally quickly fill jobs (some end up hiring more than one blogger because they get so many good applicants) - but mixed in with them are always blogger job…

Day 2 at SES I thought I would spice it up a bit and wear my “Seo Sucks” t-shirt as a bit of a social experiment to see what kind of reaction it would get. Being at the largest and most respected SEO gathering/conference I was curious to the reaction. Every female who stopped me and asked about the shirt had a very positive reaction. They all thought it was pretty funny. Most asked me what booth was handing them out…. lol… On the Males it was a very mixed reaction. I got a lot of double takes and weird looks. Most of the people who know me just wrote me off for the…

I am getting a ton of messages from people who want to meet up for dinner or lunch or what not. I am pretty easy to find and I like to just go with the flow of the conference. During the conference you will be able to find me either at the tables outside the conference hall or in the expo hall depending on the days. In the Expo hall I will most likely be near the Best Of The Web Booth as that is usually the hub of networking in the expo hall. I would love to chat with you about what you are doing if you see me feel free to introduce yourself and pull me a side for a bit. I don’t…

Just about to head down to the SES San Jose conference area but left 3$ on my bed for the maid. I remember the first time I found out about tipping maids…. back 4 years ago I kind of went nuts at my first conference scoring all the free shirts I could and had them all over the floor of my hotel room. When I got back to my hotel room later that night I noticed that all the shirts were super nicely folded on the dresser with a note that said thanks! Then I noticed the 40$ or so I had left on the bed was gone. A friend at the conference told me that you are supposed to tip the maid by…

Its hard to imagine 4 years ago I went to my first search conference called “Search Engine Strategies”. This post will probably make some of you laugh It was my goals in justifying the expenses. 1 month later I made this: Now while I was there I was earning that money but it was what I learned while there that taught me how to take my business to the next level and how to really start earning good money online. This will be the 4th SES San Jose event and I can’t wait. People always ask me if I still learn things at these events… Honestly do you think I would be there…

Here is the video from the Affiliate Crossfire Panel I was on at the CPA Empire Media Breakaway Event: This Post Is From ShoeMoney’s Internet Marketing Blog Affiliate Crossfire Panel At Media Breakaway

While not everyone feels comfortable pumping out a 700 word review of a product, most people feel inclined to rate just about everything. They’ll hop onto Facebook and rate movies using one of the applications. They’ll go to Amazon and have their say with a product that they just purchased. You ever wonder if you can offer the same functionality on a website of your own? As it turns out, all you need to convert your WordPress blog into a fully functional review site is the appropriately named WP Review Site WordPress plug-in. To make matters slightly more ironic, this is my review…

Being in Toronto and hanging out with family has made this trip really great. The one thing that it has reminded me of was all the fun times my family and I have gone through ever since I was a little boy. My relatives have always wondered what I do for a living and some times it was hard for them to understand. Until now! One of my relatives told me of a contest they’ve entered to blackmail one of their kids in the future (see, evilness runs rampant in my family). Actually, this contest is just a regular photo upload contest that is hosted by Family.com. It’s called "Mom!

I noticed today the blog hit a new milestone and broke pass the 29,000 RSS reader mark. Right now, the FeedBurner chicklet is showing 29,177 readers. At this rate of growth, I should pass the 30K reader mark next month. I’ve written many posts in the past on how to increase RSS subscriptions. Here’s a recap on my top four methods plus why RSS is important. Why RSS Is Important Building the RSS readership is my number one priority for the blog and it should be your number one priority as well. A RSS reader is far more important than a reader who drops by from a search engine or a…

Congrats goes out to ZK of WebTrafficROI.com for winning all the cash from the Market Leverage Cashinator. Thanks to Market Leverage and my ability to grab cash money, ZK is now $27 richer! A big thanks to everyone who entered the contest. I can’t believe I got over 170 comments for only $27. Now, if you want to win a lot more, Market Leverage and I still have the affiliate challenge happening. We’re giving away an iPod Touch and a $200 ML Amex Reward Card to the contestant who makes the most money using Market Leverage. If you haven’t entered yet, better do so now. You also…

Live With John Chow & Yaro Starak Join myself and fellow blogger Yaro Starak for our first Toronto meetup this Thursday, August 21 at the Live Organic Food Bar, 264 Dupont Street, Toronto, ON. The get together beings at at 7PM. Live is a raw organic food restaurant. There are some cooked meals too, but everything is vegetarian, which is kinda scary for a hardcore carnivore like myself. There is an Irish Pub down the road we are going to use in the event of rain or if too many people show up. We would love to see you join us for our Live meet up. Please RSVP here if you plan to come. Dot…

World Sports Beijing Olympics 2008 The Chinese and the wretched Beijing weather were no match for Misty May-Treanor and "Six Feet of Sunshine." May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh won their second consecutive gold medal in bea...

Sponkit Celebrity Blog Matt Damon's wife Luciana gave birth to a baby girl Wednesday, his spokeswoman said. The name of the baby is Gia Zavala Damon. The spokeswoman Jennifer Allen revealed: "Everyone is great and she is a healthy, beautiful baby girl." Unfo...

TG Daily Finding enough space for batteries in shrinking consumer electronics devices are one of the big challenges of hardware designers. But while the available space in today’s consumer elec...

Alpha Consumer Leaving high school or college and entering the "real world" is sometimes a lesson in reality for young adults. Up until that point, it's possible that you really haven't had to concern yourself much with your financial responsibilities.

Regretful Morning Every once in awhile a movie comes along where you bond with one of the characters in a completely heterosexual manner. Let me clarify by saying; this list correlates with the character played and not the actor. [Video]

I didn’t know Wordpress could cause such a headache, but it did today.  I got the white screen of death and was left with lots of admin side issues. What happens is you can’t login, or, if you were previously logged in, you can’t mange plugins. All you can do is get a blank white screen.  Even the WYSIWYG editor would not load. I think what it had to do with automatically updating pugins in Wordpress 2.6  I don’t know why, but it made Wordpress very unhappy. Lucky for me, I had all the plugins backed up and was able to delete all my plugin files and re-upload the…

Wordpress 2.6 comes with a feature that adds captions to images.  It looks really nice in the Wordpress editor, but if you don’t have the code, it won’t look as nice when you publish your post. The good news is, all you have to do is add the following lines of code to your theme’s CSS file. /* Captions */ .aligncenter, div.aligncenter { display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; } .wp-caption { border: 1px solid #ddd; text-align: center; background-color: #f3f3f3; padding-top: 4px; margin: 10px; -moz-border-radius: 3px; -khtml-border-radius: 3px;…

Every day hackers sit out there an pray on good sites for no good reason.  Some days they are even successful.  In the past few months I’ve worked with a few blogs to detect and remove hidden code that was causing various unwanted issues.  It happens to the best of blogs, and knowing how to find and remove it is just as important as trying to prevent it. Blog #1 - The iFrame - The first indicator that something was wrong here was the time it took the blog to load.  It seemed abnormally long.  I popped open Safari’s activity window and noticed it was connecting out to an IP…

Blogging is fun and rewarding. There are so many good things about it, but comment and trackback spam can tarnish the process. I know that going in and removing 15 different ‘prescription’ comments is not a good use of a bloggers time as they could use it towards creating new posts. But how does one control it? You can protect comments with a captcha plugin, Spam Karma or Askimet, but what about trackbacks? Lately I’ve been testing out the Simple Trackback Validation plugin. It checks two items to ensure that the trackback is legit. It checks the page that claims to be…

Upgrading to a newer version of Wordpress isn’t to complicated, however some precautions should be taken. The list below is a bit more detailed that Wordpress provides, but I’m just trying to line item out everything. Prerequisites: FTP access. Blog admin access. 10-30 minutes for most blogs. This is also dependent on how big the blog is and how many plugins the blog has. Webhosting and internet connection speed can also play a big part. Notes: No other authors should be in the blog during the upgrade. If they are, it probably won’t hurt anything, but they’ll be…

It's been a year since Australian real estate coach Karin Hanna posted an entry on her I Love My Agent blog. She's been travelling around the world, teaching real estate agents on three continents how to build their reputation. Today she engaged in a 12-minute Laser Blog Coaching session that rejuvenated her neglected blog. Listen to the session here. We will watch this blog closely as Karin accomplishes a general blog makeover next week. The next eight-week series of No Blogger Left Behind Webinars starts August 29, 2008.

Barbara Gaines is a well-known real estate CyberStar. She has a triblogular presence on Blogspot and profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook and ActiveRain. Until today she did not know that she is still a member of the RealTown community. (Time to update your profile, Barbara! ;-) Barbara is a superb REALTOR who remains upbeat in a tough Michigan real estate market. We spent 24 minutes today exploring an exit strategy from writer's block and a way to make social networking both FUN and profitable. You can listen here. Meet Barbara online: Sold Team USA Ann Arbor Real Estate Blog Milan Real Estate…

REALTOR and educator Sharon Koziel and I spent 16 minutes exploring ways to increase traffic to her blog, Dreaming of Real Estate. Whoops, Sharon, I did not notice that you attached a domain name to the blog. www.koziel.com needs to be uncloaked to let your readers send permanent links! When you uncloak (or unmask) your domain name, the domain name will "evaporate" when the page is launched and open the possibility for link sharing. Each blog post creates a separate URL and readers can click the Link or Permanent Link and send posts separately. That is one of the internal features of blog…

Join me for an all-day blog coaching marathon on Webex. I will be taking calls and sharing mouse controls with bloggers from 9 am - 9 pm EST all day on Wednesday, August 13, working in 10-minute segments, scheduling calls every 15 minutes through the course of the day. Calls and Webex sessions will be recorded and posted as an EXTREME VALUE offering of No Blogger Left Behind. Do you want to brainstorm abouit Content, news and topics? General design and a makeover? How to increase traffic to your blog? How to connect your blog to your web site? How to use social networking tools? How to choose…

Q. What tool can I use on Internet Explorer to check the keywords of another blog or web site? A. At the top right of the browser there is a toolbar. Click on Page, then click on View Source to discover the code that the site uses to attract the search engine spiders. Q. How do I add buttons and otherwise customize my RealTown blog? A. The Blog Manager offers configuration settings. You can customize your RealTown blog using the Edit Template button. Blog template settings are changed with HTML codes. Each RealTown template varies and it is not possible to provide a one-size-fits-all answer…

Photo by strawbleu The first Northern UK Bloggers Meet-up took place last friday at the Old Broadcasting House, Leeds. Well, half of it, the other half was in the Dry Dock pub (see a picture of the Dry Dock in daylight) - great venues, both! I think it is fair to say a good time was had by all. Jamie did an excellent talk about Woopra and gave out beta invites (which it seems we might not be able to legally use due to some UK/European privacy and data protection regulations, but I don’t think that is going to stop anyone). After we ooh’ed and aah’ed over Woopra and debated…

Testing, experimenting and tweaking are essential if you are going to be effective in your email efforts. In the previous entry of this Email Marketing Tips for Bloggers series we looked at email effectiveness tracking metrics. While looking at the stats tells you a lot, it is not going to give you the whole story and they will not make the improvements for you. You need to actively pursue and encourage the results you hope for. Our last look at emails was to work out which worked best and how. This article is all about trying to work out why. Before we get in to exactly how you do that, I…

Email Marketing advice usually targets attracting more new email subscribers and email copywriting, but there is an aspect of email marketing that is just as powerful but much overlooked. Email Marketing Metrics! Any decent email service like Aweber will give you a wealth of email metric reports. This is valuable information because it tells you how well you are doing, the health of your list. I know why it is overlooked, it feels like math, and not many of us are good at math. Good news though, it’s not really, in fact I can deal with these numbers without getting any nose bleeds at…

Growing an email list is a critical part of email marketing success. The more people you have to talk to, the more chance you have of getting a good number of people to do what you want them to do, be that click, comment or buy. In the previous article of this email marketing series we looked at getting started in email marketing, now we will look at how you can grow your list from a few to thousands of subscribers. Size Is Not Everything First a some caution is necessary. Size is not the main goal. Aim to build a good quality relationship with people who want to hear from you rather than…

Welcome to part 2 of the Email Marketing Tips series. In the introduction of this we looked at what email marketing is and the benefits of email marketing. Let’s now look at building an email list. Building your email list is perhaps the most compelling issue facing anyone looking to email marketing. It could be argued that building your list is not the most important issue, but it is certainly for most people the most pressing. After all, with no subscribers, it doesn’t matter how good your content, copywriting or offers are. So as I kick off this email marketing series for real,…

It’s almost time for the 2008 BlogWorld & New Media Expo. And yes, I will actually make it this year. Really. BlogWorld is happening September 20-21 (Executive and Entrepreneur option on the 19th) in wholesome Las Vegas, Nevada. You can check out the entire conference schedule here. I’ll be participating on two panels: Making Money Online with a Blog (9/21) I’ll be speaking alongside these fine gentlemen: Darren Rowse John Chow Zac Johnson Jim Kukral Search Engine Optimization, SEM & New Media (9/22) I’ll be trying to hold my own with: Michael Gray Lee Odden Stephan Spencer…

I think there should be a notice that appears when installing WordPress or setting up your shiny new account with Blogger. It would show up somewhere before you complete the final steps of setup, but before the long drawn out terms of use that nobody ever reads. “WARNING.” “Blogging is not easy. You may experience unexpected droughts of inspiration, difficultly maintaining a schedule, or succumb to the pressures of always needing fresh content.” Understandably, awash with the desire to share their great ideas and unique perspective with the world, most people would…

Now that’s an odd question, right? We all know that websites don’t smell (at least not literally). But if you’ll bear with me, I’d like to demonstrate the importance of emotion in your copy, and what types of emotional imagery your copy needs to conjure up. To understand why emotion matters so much when selling online, all you have to do is observe almost any shopper in a physical store. Watch what the person does and the behavior the individual has. On arriving inside the store, a person performs a lightening fast perception check. Within split seconds (so fast no one notices), the…

Does this sound familiar? You’ve picked a topic that your ideal readers are dying to know more about. You can write about the topic with authority. You’ve even chosen an interesting angle. In short, you’ve got a killer post that should bring your blog thousands of new readers. You’re also smart enough to realize that you need to tell other people about it. So, you send an email to all of the top bloggers in your niche, pointing them to the post. Then you sit back and wait for the links to come rolling in. But nothing happens. You don’t get any links. You…

If you’re trying to sell products and services online, you’re probably looking for that one magic key to make your business work. You buy CDs and DVDs that will tell you the secret. You subscribe to sites like Copyblogger to study the secret. You look at mega-successful sites in your market and try to reverse engineer the secret. After all of this searching, you may be tempted to believe there is no secret. But the secret is real. Actually, there are three secrets that work together. To be blunt, these three magic success secrets separate the winners from the losers. Master them and…

This is a guest post by Aseem Kishore. Recently, while browsing through MyBlogLog and other sites, I’ve seen a lot of people with multiple blogs, usually more than two. There is really no problem with having more than one blog, but I always ask myself that if someone has more than one blog, than it must mean their first blog is doing very well. Wrong! And that’s where I see a problem, at least in my opinion. When checking the stats on those multiple blogs, I found that in most cases all of the blogs were doing poorly to relatively OK, but nothing more. So, instead of having one poorly…

Today while reading my RSS feeds I came across a really interesting post from SEOMoz titled Examining The Internet’s Top Blogs: What We Can Learn From Their Success. They basically carried a research with the most popular blogs around the web, and presented the results on several charts like the following one: The cool thing is that they also made the raw spreadsheet available for download. I would recommend for anyone to grab a copy, I am sure it will be useful for you sooner or later. Thanks Rand and team for releasing this to the public. Copyright by Daily Blog Tips. Examining The…

Today I am officially launching PremiumThemesNow.com, a new member of the Daily Blog Tips network. That website will basically work as a showcase for our premium WordPress themes. I considered selling them via Daily Blog Tips, but I think that it would confuse things up. That is why I decided to create a separate website for that, while keeping the free themes here. We are also offering custom design services over there. I often design blogs and websites for my own projects and for friends, and I have many talented designers working with me, so it was a natural extension. MagLive Premium…

What kind of impact will a domain name have on the success of the website hosted there? There are basically two schools of thought around the web. a) “The domain is not a big deal” school: those people argue that while a good domain can help on the success of a website, it is not an important factor, because people are increasingly using browser bookmarks and subscription tools like RSS feeds, removing the need for them to remember the name of the website that they want to visit. b) “The domain is vital” school: those people argue that despite bookmarks and RSS feeds,…

Ever wondered who is hosting the most popular blogs in the world? The folks from WhoIsHostingThis.com did a small research to find that out, basing their list on the Technorati Top 100. You can find it out on the article Who Do Rockstar Bloggers Host With?. Media Temple is the clear leader, though I suspect that most of those blogs hosted there have a dedicated server. I am not sure how many are using the Grid solution. Curiously enough 6 out of 100 top blogs are hosted on Blogger! Daily Blog Tips is there as well, but our host is being displayed as CyberLynk. A couple of readers asked me if…

SES San Jose week is nearly over one might say we’ve saved some of the best internet marketing conference tips for last with the ever enthusiastic and insightful Heather Lloyd-Martin. Heather is Chair, DMA’s Search Engine Marketing Council and President of SuccessWorks. She also blogs about copywriting at SEO Copywriting. Attend all the “search marketing site labs” or “search marketing clinics” you can find. During a site lab, a panel of experts review Web sites on the fly and discuss how to improve them for search positioning and conversions. Here’s…

People love controversy, and that was clearly in evidence at this SES session covering the most controversial of SEO debates, White Hat versus Black Hat. Moderator Matthew Baily of SiteLogic and his crew of experts from both sides spoke to a standing-room only crowd. Panelists included: Greg Boser of 3 Dog Media Todd Friesen, Director of SEO at Range Online Bruce Clay, President of Bruce Clay, Inc. David Naylor, SEO of Bronco Jill Whalen, CEO of High Rankings The speakers were, for the most part, vague about what color their hats were, but each expert drew upon their own professional…

Another fine day of blogging is under the collective belt of the TopRank team. Google Dance offered a very nice distraction last night and you can see by a quick search on Flickr the fun that was had. Thank you Google. Here’s a wrap up of posts from the TopRank Blogging team for day three of Search Engine Strategies in San Jose: Successful Tactics for Social Media Optimization - Ashley News Search SEO - Jessica SEO Rehab & Intervention - Thomas Social Media Marketing - Jessica Ads in a Quality Score World - Ashley Search Behavior Update - Thomas Internet Marketing Conference Tips:…

Entering the realm of social media can be a bit like trying to enter an exclusive club. There are barriers to entry, codes of conduct, and unwelcome outsiders are quickly identified and ostracized. Yet, like an exclusive club, the benefits of membership can be great. Marketers looking to benefit from social media would do well to heed the advice of the three presenters in this SES session, moderated by Pauline Ore of IBM Corporation. As Kendall Allen, digital marketing and convergence media consultant, pointed out, social media has come a long way since the advent of the Internet. Listservs,…

News search engines offer a great way to receive targeted traffic related to breaking topics or to help with a public relations launch. In this session, industry experts Lee Odden, CEO of TopRank Online Marketing, Lisa Buyer, President & CEO of The Buyer Group and Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR look at how to make use of press releases and news content to tap into the power of news search. Lisa kicked off our session explaining that optimized press releases are a vital part of any news SEO strategy. The first step to defining the online PR opportunity is to define the media…

It's back! Blog World Expo debuted in Las Vegas last year and it was a fantastic event. If you missed it last year, you can attend this year. The line up of speakers is excellent and includes your's truly speaking on a panel about How to Plan, Build and Promote a Blog for Small Business. Like last year, this panel includes Rich Brooks of flyte blog (moderator), John T. Unger (TypePad Hacks) and Des Walsh. The schedule is impressive with tracks on audio/video, Bleeding Edge, Business of Blogging, Citizen Journalism, Community, Entrepreneur, Executive, Intro to New Media, Monetization, and Real…

As the Blog Squad, we proclaim that business blogs are “the best darn marketing tool on the Planet!” To us, a business blog that's optimized for branding and content marketing is the Ferrari of marketing tools. And just like a Ferrari shouldn't be left in the garage only to be driven on Sundays, you need to use your blog consistently in order to get the benefits. But let’s face it: it’s not about “THE BLOG,” is it? It’s about your results and your PROFITABILITY! It doesn’t matter if you have all the shiny marketing pieces in place, if you’re not profitable! If you’ve got…

Can bloggers change the world? Maybe. We'll only know if we make an effort. To that end, I'll be participating in Blog Action Day 08. Last year bloggers created conversations about the environment. This year the topic is POVERTY. So far over 900 bloggers have signed on to write about poverty on October 15, 2008. I will be writing from my perspective over on BizTipsBlog. If you're a blogger, about any subject, you can join Blog Action Day and create the conversation from your perspective. You have an audience and you can help bring awareness to a critical issue affecting our world. The…

A quick note to let you know we have recently updated the tutorial for mapping a domain to your TypePad blog.  You can get the new tutorial here. Not sure why you should map your domain? When you set up your blog on TypePad, the URL for your blog includes TypePad's domain:  www.yourblog.typepad.com For example, the underlying domain for this blog is nextlevelpartner.typepad.com/babb but the domain you see, that's mapped over the TypePad domain is www.buildabetterblog.com. Which is better? :-) Rather than promote TypePad, you really need to brand you, your company, your…

A 3-Prong Approach to Business Success: Tom Antion Reveals His Secrets to The Blog Squad What are the three keys that must be mastered for business success in today’s highly competitive small business world? According to Tom Antion, speaker and Internet millionaire, you must master professional speaking, Internet marketing, and timeless success principles. And he should know. Antion is in the top 1 percent of the world’s most highly paid speakers. He has made millions in Internet sales. He mentors other e-millionaires at his training center The Great Internet Marketing Retreat Center in…

Man this no follow crap really has people making serious mistakes in their marketing.  Despite the fact that “no follow” means absolutely SQUAT to anyone trying to market their website, people are not dropping comments and engaging in conversations the way they should. In my market, where the most damage has been done with false information and hyper-focus on follow vs. no follow links, people just aren’t commenting like they were this time last year. This not only leads to less traffic for them, but it also makes it harder for bloggers like me to know what content is…

Readers might have noticed I’ve gotten into podcasting more seriously in the last couple of months with Webside Chats. The reasons are many: To open new channels of communication To open new channels of traffic from podcast directories and communities To get content on iTunes - the largest of them all To give readers something to listen to and increase the value of my overall content range To give social proof that I can get anyone on the phone to talk about blogging, branding, marketing, success, and search engine stuff To get links and strengthen relationships with other bloggers and…

Guest Post By Michel Fortin I do believe what Dan Kennedy says, when he says clunky copy outsells clean copy. But not all the time. And recently, a university study proves this point. People have a tendency to forge not only a lasting opinion based on first impressions but also a blanket opinion that pervades all other areas as well. The adage, “a first impression is a lasting one,” is not only temporal (i.e., the initial opinion remains consistent and nearly impermeable for a long time) but also spatial. That is, a first impression is also a universal one. Illogical? Yes. But it’s…

Having trouble with a slow Flock or Firefox browser? Been looking at all the hack pages where they have you messing around in the about:config area? I have the answer for speeding up Flock and/or Firefox. And you’re not going to like it. First off, let me say that I have one of the most badass laptops on the market today. Power is not an issue here. Nor is memory. It might be for you, which would make the desperate need for Flock or Firefox to “go faster” even more desperate. Here’s how you speed up Firefox or Flock: 1. Turn off anything that says it is an…

Picture an authority blogger who doesn’t know what an Alexa ranking is. Someone who blogs professionally, yet her RSS subscriber badge is buried in the footer of her site. Picture someone who is an ultra popular, successful blogger with one of the the biggest followings on the web for a personal blog not knowing really what it means to be a PR 7 site. After all the times I’ve said that all that really matters is content that grabs people and leaves them wanting more, I’ve found the perfect example of a “pure blogger” who is reaping the rewards of cyber-stardom.

Are you are student blogger wanting to connect with other student bloggers while improving your blogging skills? Or are you teacher looking for an opportunity to guide your students through the process of learning to blog? Miss Wyatt has set up a blogging competition, starting in September, for students which will involve 10 weeks worth of activities, one challenge each week with some bonuses for those who want to go overboard. She is hoping each each school involved will award a small prize to the best blogger or most improved blogger in their school. If you’re interested in…

I absolutely love being given challenges. So was totally pleased when Alice Mercer sent me a message in twitter asking how to write blog posts to her Edublogs blog using her mobile phone. Fortunately I had lots of ideas on “how to” but I hadn’t gotten around to testing them. Posterous.com My first thought was posterous.com because it can be used with any mobile device provided you can write and send emails. All you have to do is: Set up an account at posterous.com Next link all the accounts you want to post to automatically when you send an email to posterous. For example…

I’ve been invited to work with second and third year students into their four year Bachelor of Education, Early Childhood and Primary degree. They are currently doing a unit called Using Computers in the Classroom where they will be investigating the use of technology such as blogs, Electronic Whiteboards, Google Document, Google Earth, iPods/MP3, Photo Sharing, SecondLife, Social Bookmarking, Turning Point (clickers), Video Conferencing, Wikis, My Sace/Face Book, YouTube, Podcasts etc. My role will be to mentor them on blogging and it’s use in education. As part of this I will be…

Taking your own photos to use as images in blog posts are an excellent idea. But uploading photos directly from your digital camera directly into your blog posts isn’t! The photo size our digital cameras produce are: Very large e.g. my 4.0 mega pixel digital camera photos are about 2272 x 1704 pixels and 700 KB in size whereas my 8.0 mega pixel camera are about 3264 x 2448 and 2.4 MB in size Designed for printing good quality photos not for uploading directly into blog posts Just because any image you upload to your blog is now automatically resized to a maximum width of 500 pixels…

Have you become addicted to Wordle like me? The Wordle addiction is definitely spreading but embedding Wordles you create to your blog post can be tricky. What is Wordle? Wordle is a free web site for easily creating beautiful word clouds from text, URLs, RSS feeds or del.icio.us account. They are a great way of visualizing the importance of particular word in text since the more frequently a word is used the larger it appears in the Wordle. You don’t need to sign up for an account — just go to the Wordle create page to get started! I used a Wordle recently in a conference…

When you self host your own WordPress blog you have access to the most basic of WordPress functionality. In order to get the same functionality, and more, for your blog as that provided by WordPress.com, you will need to install some of the many WordPress.org plugins. We have written a beginner’s guide to FTP for WordPress (1.39 MB PDF) which will show you how to: Configure FileZilla, an FTP client, to allow you to transfer files to and from your blog. Download a plugin. Install the plugin onto your blog using FileZilla. Activate the plugin. If you have never used an FTP client before,…

The aim of this post is to show you how easy it is to turn ordinary links into nofollow links; regardless of whether you know HTML or not. Note: This is a how-to post. If you’re interested in learning more about nofollow, there are many great posts about it on the Web; I’ll point to some at the end of this post. Step 1: Create a standard link The first thing you need to do is create a link. If you are using a visual editor that creates the HTML for you, you’ll need to edit the HTML at this point. In WordPress, this is a simple matter of moving from the visual tab to the HTML…

July brought with it many great posts to help new bloggers blog well. Here are my favorites, broken down by category - please enjoy! Attracting Visitors To Your Blog 21 Ways To Make Your Blog or Website Sticky A sticky website is one where a first time reader arrives and finds it difficult to leave - not because you hijack them and make them stay, but because you’ve created a place they want to get to know better. Darren describes what’s worked for him and encourages you to do the same. How To Kill Conversation and Suck the Life Out Of Your Blog New bloggers, sometimes even…

Thanks Remarkablogger via Twitter

If you’ve ever wanted to publish a specific post on a particular day in the future, it’s very simple to do if you’re using WordPress. Once you have written your post, instead of hitting the save or publish button, click the edit button next to publish immediately. This will open up other options (see image below).  Select the month, date, and time when you’d like your post published, and press the publish button. Don’t make the common mistake of pressing save.   While save seems to make more sense, it is in fact the incorrect button to press. Hit publish…

If you want to display an ordered list like for example: this is line 1 this is line 2 this is line 3 the HTML to display them is given below: <ol> <li>this is line 1</li> <li>this is line 2</li> <li>this is line 3</li> </ol>

Press Release, May 2008 Go Beyond the Basics of Blogger with New Book Blogger: Beyond the Basics is a new book from Packt, which will take users beyond the basics of Blogger. Written by Lee Jordan, this book will help users to take full advantage of the rich and powerful features of Blogger to transform their blog into a fresh and state-of-the-art blog as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Now generally, if you want to display blinking text, you would have to add something to your blog CSS (Cascading Style Script) and use Javascript. Further, this will only work with the Internet Explorer web browser. Now you can display any blinking text without tampering with the blog CSS or template and the blinking effect will be displayed in any browser. I have tested it at testing blinking

A frequent complaint of new bloggers is that they cannot find their blog when searching for their blog with search engines. First, your blog need to be indexed by search engines. To check if your blog or website is indexed by a search engine, type: site:URL of blog or website for example, type this: site:http://bloggerfordummies.blogspot.com into the search box and press the key ENTER. If you

I have intention to start my own Internet business - Blogger Dough which will be related to blogging. However, I need the service of an Australian IT firm and that will cost money. With regard to this respect, it is possible to seek Venture Capital. I had a look at that website and it looks interesting and may be what I am seeking as it is a website via which small startup business can post

I have been away from writing in the WordFrame blog for some time. I apologize to all our readers, customers and fans but we really had a lot to cover these past 4 weeks. We are just approaching major releases for two of our most important products / services – WordFrame Community Platform v1.5 and PageTypes CMS 2.0. The most important thing that is really changing the game for us is getting on board a couple of new and important communities fro...

I'm famous (in my own mind) for using an analogy to describe business use of social media which I refer to as "getting a table of their own." Looks like that is what's happening and will continue with great prevalence, according to a report from eMarketer titled Social Networks Get Down to Business. The article indicates that businesses will pay $40 million to buy ad space on social network sites this year, a figure that will grow to $210 mil.....

It was good to be invited to be a member of the Interim Advisory Board for the Social Media Club. And now we get serious. After a short burst of behind-the-scenes tossing around of ideas on priorities for our attention, Social Media Club Co-Founder Chris Heuer has posted a work program structured as 4 Missions, 4 Projects. As [...]

I was delighted with the announcement last week of the new Advisory Board for IBNMA - the International Blogging and New Media Association. Not just because I’m one of the people on the Board, although that is indeed an honour and a privilege, but because I see the appointment of the Board as evidence that [...]

I think we can take it as read that any contemporary senior executive has at some point considered the possibility of his or her company having to deal with criticism, even a concerted campaign of criticism, online. It would be interesting to know whether many of those executives have taken that thought to the next [...]

Vodafone has announced the price of Apple iPhone 3G in India. The 8GB iPhone and 16GB iPhone will be available for Rs 31000 and Rs 36100 respectively in Delhi and you have to pay extra for data and voice plans. Now that is expensive. Apple iPhone Pricing in India Apple iPhone is being released in India on August 22 and Vodafone and Airtel will officially sell iPhones in India. Vodafone has announced their iphone pricing plans, but Airtel is yet to officially do so. The data and voice plans rates have yet to be officially announced. Compare this with iPhone pricing plans in US on AT&T. The…

Blogging company Six Apart has launched Blogs.com, a new service that helps you discover the best in blogs. These blogs are organized by category and topic and you can read daily blog roundups of some of the best blog content around the Web. How does content feature on Blogs.com? There is no algorithm, but a team of editors is busy reading across the blogosphere, bringing you the best blogs and blog posts across a broad range of categories like Life, Entertainment, Technology, News & Politics and Business. Submit your blog today and you could also get featured. I really like the Top 10…

Yahoo! Buzz is now open to all website owners and publishers. Yahoo! Buzz is well known for sending the highest traffic ever, and is the best way to get featured on the Yahoo! homepage. The beta test was limited to a few popular websites (who could survive extraordinary spikes of traffic) and webmasters and bloggers kept joining the waiting list. After they kept reminding list members that “We can’t wait to bring you on board!“, its great that they have finally opened the doors to all. Anyone can now add Buzz buttons to their site which will allow readers to vote up the stories…

WordPress 2.6.1, the ‘maintenance release’ of WordPress 2.6 is released and this time you need not upgrade if all functions are working fine. Announcing the release, WP guys say “If you’re happy with 2.6, however, keep on using it. You need not upgrade to 2.6.1 if 2.6 is getting the job done.” WordPress 2.6.1 fixes over 60 bugs, but the major improvements are Styling of the admin for right-to-left languages is improved Gettext bug caused by certain PHP configurations is fixed. For IIS users, it fixes several permalink problems. Image insertion problems in the Press…

Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Blog Action Day 2008 focuses on Poverty and will be held on October 15, 2008 to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion. Launched on August 15, 2008, in the next two months they hope to get support of of bloggers, podcasters and videocasters who will participate in the event. Many top blogs are joining in and many have decided to donate the day’s earnings. As the promotional word spreads, over 1600 blogs have already…

The Christian newswires are abuzz today, because a big earthquake hit Melbourne with its epicentre down at Planetshakers. Michael Guglielmucci confessed that his battle with terminal cancer has all been a lie. Alun Davies immediately suspended his ministerial credentials. Now begins a long and painful exercise of self-examination. And I’m not talking about Michael… that goes without saying. I’m talking about Planetshakers and about the AOG. The obvious question is this: How could no-one have known? Not even family! What kind of “system” can promote someone to…

I started sponsoring a child in 1990, or maybe ‘89… I can’t remember. We can’t solve the world’s problems for everyone, but for what amounts to loose change, you can completely change the world for one child. I’m onto my second child now, after my first grew up and moved into full-time employment(!). Are you onto your first yet?

I’m one of three keynote speakers at this year’s One Sherpa Summit - a small business-focussed one-day event here in Melbourne. I’ll be speaking about innovative marketing strategies, looking especially at what is being done with social media marketing. I spent all day on Facebook yesterday for a major client, for example. What was I doing?? Come to the Summit to find out!

Hey corporate marketer… got your head around the latest social media buzzword yet? Brandstreaming!

When you’re feeling low… The Two Ronnies’ restaurant is the place to go! An old classic

WTD presents a conversation between Liz Strauss and Chief Editor Mary Jaksch. Liz is one of the heavy-weights of the blogosphere. Her Successful Blog is a magnet for a host of readers. Mary: Liz, you’ve been called “The most influential relational blogger on the Internet”. Your articles and your Ebook The Secret of Writing a Successful and Outstanding Blog (which I started reading at 1am and couldn’t put down) plonk building relationship with readers right into the centre of a blogger’s work. What’s your sense of how we grow as writers by fostering…

Photo courtesy of mawel Do you want to win a 5 bedroom mansion? Do you want writing to be your ticket to a life of affluence - not just for yourself, but with enough to spare to help your friends? If so, read on… But, stop! There is one thing you must do. You must learn to blow your own trumpet! Lorna Page’s life story tell us why: Lorna wrote passionately for more than 70 years without sharing her writing with others. Then, in her late eighties, she decided to write a raunchy novel called A Dangerous Weakness. But did she show it to anybody? No, she put it into a suitcase and…

Photo courtesy of Vibragiel Chief Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Jonathan Mead of Illuminated Mind, a rising star in the blogging world. In the endless sea of textbooks, essays and lectures, there are obviously more than enough pages about how to better your writing. Be concrete. Focus on the core message. Evoke emotion. Entertain, surprise, tell a story, omit needless words. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Despite all this useful advice, many aspiring writers fail to heed the most important rule of all: trust your material. There seems to be a trend where uninteresting ideas…

Photo courtesy of shaycam. If I am asked for my best advice for newer writers, I always respond with two things they absolutely must do: Write a lot. Read a lot. If you do those two things, you won’t be able to help getting better. Of course, there’s more to writing than that, but if you’re looking for a simple writing-improvement program, that’s it. I’d like to talk about the second point today — reading a lot. Why does it matter? Because by reading other writers, you start to gain a greater command of the language, of vocabulary, of the limits of writing…

Today WTD presents a conversation between Darren Rowse and WTD  Chief Editor Mary Jaksch. His blog Problogger is the number one info site for bloggers. Darren Rowse, together with Chris Garrett, recently published a successful book, called ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income Mary: Hi Darren!  I would like to ask you some questions about your career as a writer and hear what tips you have for us. When I look at your amazing success, it’s hard to imagine that you were once a beginner. How was the start of your career as a writer? Darren: Truth be known it…

This day could not have come any sooner. My wife, Bailey (the dog), and I are off to Duck, NC for a weeks vacation. If you've never been to Duck or the Outer Banks of North Carolina, let me tell you, its a real treat. You cannot find a more relaxing vacation. It is not built up or commercialized at all. Its just tall dunes, long beaches, and beautiful homes that are affordable to rent. Duck is a cute little town with a few small restaurants and quaint shops. The Outer Banks, in general, is the perfect spot to get away and completely relax. With all we have going on right now, we sure can…

image courtesy of dbang I am a firm believer that the right image can take your post to a whole new level. It can add a little flare, humor, or the eye-catching stickiness that is crucial in this medium where someone will decide whether to read your post in 2 seconds or less. I have been asked a number of times where I find images for my articles. In this post, I will not only give you a few good tips on where to find them, I will also show you were to go to learn how to make your own. Who wants to learn how to fish? Finding Relevant Images Writing a post for me is an incremental…

One thing you will find as your blog becomes more popular is that you will need to learn to deal with negative criticism. This is unavoidable. You might spend weeks perfecting the most brilliant post. Your blood, sweat, and tears go into something that you swear will be the greatest thing Digg ever saw. But no matter how great your work of art might be, rest assured...there are cretins out there that are just dying to rip it apart (seriously, check that dude out, he doesn't like a single thing). It sucks and it can be extremely disheartening. But unfortunately, some…

Why do you blog? Is it because you enjoy expressing yourself through writing? Maybe its to promote a business or service? Are you just trying to make a quick buck? Whatever the reason, it is important to have realistic expectations for what you plan to get out of your blog. In this post I will break down a number of different types of blogs and give my honest opinion about what you can expect from each type. Different Types of Blogs There are a million different types of blogs and it would be impossible to classify them all.  So in the post, I am not going to try and group them by…

Learn the art of penny pinching and save yourself a little money with the winner of this week's Weekly Buzz. Congratulations to Forest over at FrugalZeitgeist.com for being selected as this week's blog spotlight. Forest has won 500 EntreCard credits as this week's reward! FrugalZeitgeist.com is a pretty new blog but is already full of interesting content. Articles there touch on topics ranging from money saving tips and freebies to alternative health products, saving gas and articles discussing the impact on the environment. The site made a HUGE initial splash into the blogosphere…

Wow, could they screw it up any more?  This is a total peeve of mine:  Plan a web site, do the layout, fully design it, put all the bells and whistles on it, THEN try to jam banner advertising somewhere!  WHY?  Why is always done backwards?  Why can’t anyone build a site and incorporate the advertising spots in the planning process?  It is always an afterthought.  The site looks great. OK, where should we jam some banner ads to make some money??  And why are they using an old ad size??  120×600 is the OLD skyscraper size.  Most…

#1 You can blog more. #2 You don’t have to deal with constant questions about your ad rates. #3 You don’t have to invoice customers. #4 You can just sit back each month and collect a check. #5 You don’t have to worry about ad management software, running campaigns, putting up ads, tracking impressions and clicks. (Cheesy sales person photo) #6 You don’t have to listen to advertisers complain about results or poor performance. #7 The sales reps can usually get a higher dollar value than you can.  Because , that’s what they are trained to do. #8 The sales reps…

cuil off /kul/ [kool]: “To launch a site aimed at slaying a giant and instead get owned yourself” adjective, -er, -est, adverb, noun, verb   –adjective 1.moderately cold; neither warm nor cold: “that site is cuil, too bad it won’t load” 2.feeling comfortably or moderately cold: “I’m perfectly cuil, but let’s launch the site anyway, even if we can’t handle the traffic.” 3.imparting a sensation of moderate coldness or comfortable freedom from heat: “a cuil breeze is lofting over the valley tonight” 4.permitting such…

Step I: All Advertising networks have an unbridled desire to be able to claim the biggest reach and most unique visitors of any network in the world.  20 million, 50 million, 100 million, ONE BILLION! Step II:  They continue to pony for top spot and allow publisher after publisher to join their network, with very little emphasis on quality. Step III: Too many publishers competing for selling their ad space dilutes the market within that ad network. Step IV:  Advertisers have so many options to choose from they end up basing a lot of their decisions based on price and buy the lowest…

Below are some questions you should ask yourself before you start shopping around for advertisers. (We’re talking monthly flat fees of $500, $1000 or even $5000 here.) - Does my blog have a niche focus? A focus is very important. Take a look at your current blog and the tags or categories you are blogging about. If you are all over the map, you don’t have a clear enough focus. - What type of companies would want to advertise in this space? This is a question that you need to be really honest with yourself and think, why would any company want to advertise on this blog? If you are blogging…

Useful to read when writing web content.

A few days ago, I mentioned that Perfcast was coming back. In that post, I said our first episode would air on Wednesday, August 27th. This date has changed to Thursday, August 28th. This is to accommodate my schedule as well as Davids. Be sure to tune in live next week for our first live episode. If you would like to be on the show either as a special guest co-host or as an interviewee, don't hesitate to get in contact with me via email. jeffro at jeffro2pt0 dot com.

The topic for todays social media bootcamp was: The Secrets Of Digg Success. Till this day, I have yet to appear on the Digg frontpage. The closest I have been to the front page of Digg is an article which received 35 or so digs. In todays bootcamp, I learned that it is not just a matter of catering to the Digg crowd but that there is much more involved in a successful Digg post. Apparently, human psychology has a lot to do with many of the posts that are successful on Digg. There are two points which Ryan brought up during the bootcamp which I thought were points to keep in mind. 1) It's not…

Our most popular free theme releases of the past have been Brian Gardner designed themes (yes, the Brian Gardner of Revolution fame). So all WordPress theme conoisseurs will be glad to know that this month we're releasing Brian's latest theme, Nitrous. Besides it's ultra-clean look, perhaps the coolest feature of Nitrous is the way it can auto-generate drop-down navigational menus using your WordPress pages and sub-pages. This allows you to give your readers lots of navigational options, without cluttering up the nav bar. Nitrous comes with a built-in header image, but this can easily be…

That Buzz you hear is not coming from The Hive but instead, is the sound of Yahoo! Buzz opening up to the public. Yahoo! Buzz is a social news site like Digg where users can vote or in this case, Buzz items. Yahoo determines which topics people are searching for on their search engine and then they showcase the most popular stories within those topics on the buzz page where users can vote up or down. The way in which Yahoo! Buzz used to work is that, you needed to be a select publisher in order to submit your articles to the Buzz voting system. With Buzz now open to the public, anyone can…

Katy over at I'm Blogging That has published a great article that goes in depth on choosing a monetization strategy. Her post covers various monetization strategies such as banner advertising, choosing an ad service, ad placement, and much more. Of particular interest to me was Katy's thoughts on pricing. Everyone that comes to you for banner advertising will do so for different reasons. Because of this, there should be some things you take into consideration when choosing how to price out your banner advertising spots. How many banners will you have in one area? Will banners be rotating?

Seems the Securities Exchange Commission (which I'm now following on Twitter) has some new ideas:Washington, D.C., Aug. 19, 2008 — Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox today unveiled the successor to the agency’s 1980s-era EDGAR database, which will give investors far faster and easier access to key financial information about public companies and mutual funds. The new system is called IDEA, short for Interactive Data Electronic Applications. Based on a completely new architecture being built from the ground up, it will at first supplement and then eventually…

Last week I participated on a conference call with the founder of a tech startup in Tel Aviv. They're asking for a proposal to help promote a new product online.Within a few hours of the call I got a Facebook friend request from the company's CEO.I immediately accepted the request comfortable in the knowledge that no pictures exist in my profile or tagged with my name that portray me:DrunkPicking my noseWearing a thongDressed like an oompa-loompaShoving straws up my noseFlashing gang signsThis may all sound funny, but these are all specific examples of pictures I've found on Facebook or other…

from Professor Robert Farley. Great example of how bloggers are actually smart.

I'm catching up with Jeff McIntire-Strasburg today - he's one of the leaders in the sustainability community. I've sung his praises before. He's at the forefront of a movement that is helping all companies understand the upside of going green - and talking about it online. An example: people don't necessarily think of railroads as the most environmentally conscious way to transport goods over land - but they should. CSX (a client) is making some noise here. They're leveraging new technology and making a serious investment. This video is just a hint of things to come. Yeah, it's a plug, but…

The Russians have decided to "end" their activities in Georgia while the Georgians claim the attacks continue - so says CNN. I took a quick look at the reactions people have had to the crisis in particular communities - specifically US-based political liberals and US-based political conservatives. Not surprisingly, a discussion that could have been about Vladimir Putin, Dimitri Medvedev and Mikheil Saakashvili quickly became a discussion about George Bush, John McCain, and Barack Obama.More often than not these communities spend their time attacking the leader of the opposing world view. The…

The ever resourceful Joost de Valk has released a great little plugin for WordPress which automatically adds breadcrumbs to your blog. Breadcrumbs are those handy navigational links which you find at the top of many sites and forums. They make your blog more user friendly and help search engines map your blog more easily. Heres an example of the breadcrumb the plugin added to the BT Simplicity Theme page : Since the if statement for the plugin needs to be hard coded into your blog template, you can place the breadcrumbs anywhere in your blog design. As you can see from the screenshot below,…

I came across a few funny blogging pictures the other day whilst browsing Google Images. The pics have been posted on numerous blogs and websites so you may have come across them before (I’m unsure what site the pics originated from). Anyways, I thought I would share them with you all. Enjoy If you have any funny pics yourself, feel free to post them in the forums. Copyright © 2008 Blogging Tips. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please…

Yesterday on my blog, I posted about getting to the $100/article mark for my search engine optimization (SEO) writing. I received a few emails last week from fellow freelance writers that made me realize the need to explain why/how I can command these rates — and you can too! Emails from Fellow Freelance Writers About SEO Copywriting Rates I received the following email last Tuesday from a fellow SEO writer. It read in part: Query: Several times [in your writings] you mention SEO writers taking low paying jobs. I was just offered, and accepted, a large assignment from [company name]. .

Yahoo Buzz, the new social media site from Yahoo, is now online and looks very Digg like to say the least. It will be interesting to see how popular this new social site becomes. There are hundreds of digg clones on the net today (many using Pligg) but with the money and the traffic Yahoo has I’m sure it will become a popular site for bloggers in no time. Might be worth trying Yahoo Buzz out the next few weeks so add a few buttons to your posts and see what traffic the site brings your blog. At the moment they seem to be focusing on USA audiences only but as long as your post is not…

One of the biggest mistakes new bloggers make is that they add too much clutter to their blogs design. The sidebar is usually the place where a lot of this clutter is put, the area where the blogger adds banners, widgets and anything else which they feel has to be placed somewhere on their blog. It’s not uncommon to see a new blog list several banners for top ten lists on their sidebar or many widget