How Much Confident You Are About Your Blogging Success?

Matt Mullenweg at WCI Showing his picture when he was 17 and own a company

“Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed” Okay accepted. But whenever you endeavor your journey there is this imaginary glorified portrait that you have in your mind about the success you are wishing to achieve.

Can you sense that success now? Well you must make yourself able to do that.  It will make your journey easier and enjoyable.

I always knew I was going to be rich. I never doubted it for a minute.

- Rakesh Jhunjhunwala.

This super kid ranks somewhere around 1062 in forbes.com list of billionaires. Rakesh is a stock broker by profession and usually drops crap on his blog but I guess the confident that he is going to be rich has taken him there where he think he belong. This is the only thing I like about him.

Be Clear

If you are “blogging for success” there should not be any doubt in your mind about where you are heading and how you would proceed.  In my two years of blogging venture there were some really good moments to cherish. Love the way things are going and have earned some good friends along.

And Confident

Being very sure or positive about something. Your belief in yourself and your abilities. Your faith in yourself. It will definitely make your acts look smarter.

It will be interesting to know what success means to you and what’s your mantra to get on to it. and off course how much confident you are about your blogging Success?

Image Courtesy : Vivek

Winning of WordPress Feature Suggestion Contest

Matt Scanning Entries for WordPress Feature Contest

Matt and Priyanka with one of the contest Winner (thats me )

Let me tell you what happening in above pictures. Actually at India’s First WordCamp there was this WordPress Feature Suggestion Contest for WordPress future version releases. Many bloggers and web developers contested in this. Matt himself scanned each and every entry and look I feel so lucky that he chosen me as one of the winner of this contest.

Here is what I suggested to Matt:

Hey Matt,

Would you like to integrate BuddyPress and bbPress and if possible further integration of these services to our WordPress Blog?  I consider forums and these social media stuff as very useful tool for generating traffic to our blog. At present if we need these services with our blogs then we need to install it manually at a sub directory level and then link it to our blog home page. It will be great if you can provide a process opting for setting up these services with our WordPress blog. Mixing of BuddyPress with bbPress with WordPress blog would be a great idea.

He like this idea and then prized me for that.

So if you see these sorts of integration in future version of your WordPress blog then you can easily guess from where the idea is coming.

You can congratulate me in the comments below.

Pictures of India’s First WordCamp

So here are the pictures from India’s First WordCamp organized by Delhi Bloggers Bloc. It was pretty wonderful experience meeting Matt Mullenweg and Om Malik and all other big buys of Indian Blogsphere Scene.  I congratulate Priyanka, Mayank Gupta and and sanjay for hosting it successfully. Interactive talk session by Pawan Duggal, advocate supreme Court of India on India Copyright Act and bloggers was something I enjoyed most beside off course Matt’s  appraisal of “State of Word”  and keynote by Om Malik. Sad to say but there were few speakers not having absolute authority on their respective subjects, but the idea was to begin this moment which was fairly achieved. All said and done just reached the home sweet home after couple of days of learning and sharing ideas with buddy bloggers, enjoy these pictures.

Download Free SEO for Lead Generation Kit

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Image By : Melanie

Internet Is Not Just About Making Money

You probably would like to kill me for this, Niche of this blog is “Make Money Online” but today I’m telling you stories about two passionate web masters, who have earned a lot of name fame and respect in web and technology world but never intended to make huge money out it. These stories are not sort of “How I made – - – - – -$ in four months” these stories tells us how couple of ordinary guys come up with some extra ordinary achievements in current web 2.0 and that too for the sake of their passion and love for their work and not at all to pull dollars from somebody’s pockets and building lavishly designed offices. These two guys are;

1. Mr Jimmy Wales -Founder of Wikipedia.org
2. Mr. Craig Newmark -Founder of Craigslist.org

Wikipedia

Have you ever seen and advertisement sort of thing flashing at Wikipedia.org, yes you haven’t seen any, that’s because Wikipedia, the world Largest on line Encyclopedia dose not run any business model. Wikipedia.org has the total number of monthly unique visitors 42,880,000 and if Mr Wales he could earn millions of bucks by just placing a single Google AdSense Ad Inventory.

Jimmy Wales started it all in year 2001 which now has 12 millions articles written by Wikipedia volunteers around the world and still counting. Brainchild of Jimmy is still growing everyday in this cut throat competitive World Wide Web.

Let me tell you how Wikipedia Works

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by many of its readers. Many people are constantly improving Wikipedia, making thousands of changes per hour, all of which are recorded on article histories and recent changes. Inappropriate changes are usually removed quickly, and repeat offenders can be blocked from editing. Anyone can edit almost any page, whether content, grammar or formatting. So it’s a website created by one man Jimmy Wales and then developed by contribution of thousands of contributors from around the world.

Craigslist

Craigslist.org is an Online Classified Network and it is so big that it has almost die down big news papers classified ad business. You need job, house or pet just search for your term in Craigslist and you will find it right in there. And since these classified are free you can always add up your listing.

Craig Newmark manages it from a tiny home office in San Francisco. Craig Build this site to help community, the initial idea was to list local event which eventually build up later on as the biggest ever Online Classified ad Network.

Both Craig and Jimmy advocate that internet was never made to make money. The communication through internet should always be free. Instead of become Internet Millionaire Mogul these guys keep on working on their project and building a free communication system. Both has get many times some really huge tempting buyout price, they could have sell their projects and buy an island somewhere but then there are always few people who set examples -Its not all about money HONEY.

Jimmy Wales Founder of Wikipedia

Craig Newmark Founder of Craigslist.org

 

Om Malik Joins Matt in India’s First WordCamp

Surprise guest at India’s First World Camp now revealed, apart from Matt, the founder of WordPress, Om Malik of GigaOm fame will be joining him at this first WordPress Conference in India.

Om Malik is founder of Giga Omni Media, Inc. and executive editor for technology blog GigaOM. As well as a host on a former Revision3 weekly web-business centric podcast, The GigaOm Show. In 1997, Malik was on the original team at Forbes.com led by David Churbuck. In 1999 he left Forbes.com to work in the venture capital world. His website has a monthly global audience of 500,000, an he is among the top 50 blogs worldwide by Technorati Rank, and is part of CNet’s 100 Most Influential Blogs.

I am very excited about meeting with Om Malik. New Delhi was Om Malik’s home before leaving to New York in 1993. His blog is not among which I follow everyday but I’m very inspired the way Om has established his name and reputation in Web and Technology world.

So have you registered yourself for India’s First WorldCamp? If not yet then head over to this link here and book your ticket now. The event is schedule for 21st and 22nd Feb 2009 at Noida -India, I would suggest you must not miss out this one.

Hope to see you guys there.

Image Courtesy :Scott beale of Laughing Squid

There’s No Money In Blogs – Lyons Dan

In this post which I wrote back in April 2007 I talked about certain myth that people has about blogging. One of them is that lot of people think and believes that it is very easy to for them make money through blogging but the fact is that it’s not very simple for every one to start blogging and start making huge money.

Ask Dan Lyons, who just burnt his in this confusion. Look what he has to say after experiencing a failure in blogging. He was blogging since 2006 under the pseudonym as fake Steve Jobs of Apple.

For two years I was obsessed with trying to turn a blog into a business. I posted 10 or 20 items a day to my site, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, rarely taking a break. I blogged from cabs, using my BlackBerry. I blogged in the middle of the night, having awakened with an idea. I rationalized this insane behavior by telling myself that at the end of this rainbow I would find a huge pot of gold. But reality kept interfering with this fantasy.

My first epiphany occurred in August 2007, when The New York Times ran a story revealing my identity, which until then I’d kept secret. On that day more than 500,000 people hit my site-by far the biggest day I’d ever had-and through Google’s AdSense program I earned about a hundred bucks. Over the course of that entire month, in which my site was visited by 1.5 million people, I earned a whopping total of $1,039.81.

Soon after this I struck an advertising deal that paid better wages. But I never made enough to quit my day job. Eventually I shut down-not for financial reasons, but because Steve Jobs appeared to be in poor health.

I walked away feeling burned out and weighing 20 pounds more than when I started. I also came away with a sneaking suspicion that while blogs can do many wonderful things, generating huge amounts of money isn’t one of them.

(As stated to Newsweek, complete story HERE)

Dan Lyons aka Fake Steve Jobs now closed his “The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs” blog and come up with what he truly is “The Real Dan”.

The failure of Dan shows again that its not always easy to “generate” a living through blogging. Even writing 10 to 20 posts a day dose not guarantee that you will end up the day with bunch of dollars in your wallet.

Can you tell me why Dan failed and why people always follows fairy tales and riposte empty hands.

Picture Courtesy : WikiPedia

6 Things You Must Keep In Your Mind to Become a RockStar Blogger

There are so many things that you learn in your journey to become a successful blogger, But I try to figure out here things that you must keep in your mind initially to kick start this journey of yours to rule this blogsphere. Though I do not consider myself a RockStar Blogger or an A-lister but that dose not make any difference if I know what are the things that makes an average Joe to become a RockStar Blogger.

1. Your Blog design is your personality.
2. Your Unique Visitors are your friends in need.
3. Google is your GOD.
4. Social Media Site is your stage and its users your audience.
5. Your Advertisers are your Venture Capitalist.
6. Love your List.

Your blog design is your personality

It reflects your personality; it shows many things about you. One can have some idea about the person by looking at his blog design. It matters how neat and clean your blog design is or how much messy it looks. Even the color tone is a “reflector” of your nature, my spider man friend Zac johnson has this detail study on Judging a blogger’s personality through various color themes on their blog. And if you have blogroll in the sidebar it means you respect and reward your idols, friends and mentors. It also reflects how much and what sort of things you like to read on blogsphere. It says all, from where you belongs.

So you must care your blog speaks about you in true ways.

Your Unique Visitors are your friends in need.

SO what would you like to do in return, you must understand that they are the once keep on visiting your blogs regularly, wishes you on your success, console you when you are sad, and inspire you to achieve what you always dream. You must pay them visit to their blog, help them when they are in need and cultivate your friendship, encourage them for what they aspire, appreciate them and always response on their valuable comments on your posts. Keep them intact and along in that journey of yours to the top.

So you must identify your unique visitors and “pampered” them.

Google is your GOD.

Worship Google like you worship almighty,  Always wish that large amount of your visitor should be from search engines, specially Google, So you must write on your blog to to fetch some new readers from Google, ( read this post by buddy Neil Patel to know how you can optimize your blog for search engines).

So you must try to trap Google, please it, screw it, fool it, do whatever you want but make sure Google look at you with a smiling face.

Social Media Site is your stage and its users your audience.

Represent in various social media sites as “Key Note Speaker”. Rub shoulder with big boys of blogsphere, make new friends, impress them with what you have got, Help them if they need you, “Digg” their wish, stumble upon their writings, FaceBook their feed, tweet their stuff, Linkedin their contacts and YouTube their cooking. Build a list increase your followers and jump into discussions.

So you must participate actively in social media sites and convince some new friends to visit and look what you are doing in your blog.

Your Advertisers are your Venture Capitalist.

These are the guys pouring money into your PayPal account. It’s fueling you to blog. It’s very hard to make them “induced” to sell ads to you and keep renewing every month, but you got to manage it. Tell them what is in there if they advertise, sending reports about clicks would be a better idea. There are software help you manage this.

So you must try hard to sell private ads on your blog and make sure if some advertiser advertise then make sure he stay with you for the long time.

Love your List

In a recent post John Chow who has a strong subscription base of nearly 35K e-mails subscribers reveals that how he has made US$ 4000 in a single day with the help of e-mail marketing for promotion a blogging training program. Is there any need to quote any other example to show you how powerful are your e-mail subscription list? To help you here is one article which can help you build this list.

So you must build a strong subscriber base.

Picture Courtesy : Lloyd budd

Happy Valentine’s Day & Happy Birthday To Me

Registartion For WordPress Conference WordCamp India

So the stage is set and everything has been worked out. WordCamp India’s First WordPress Conference will come busy this 21^st and 22^nd Feb. 2009.

Registration is NOW OPEN. Reach to this page to book your seat.

Registration Fees: Individual day ticket: INR 250, Full event ticket: INR 400.

Venue: I-1A, Sector 25A, Noida, U.P. 201301, India, Tel: +91 120 244 4711

Few sessions that I’m specially looking for and advise you not to miss out:

• Keynote :  by Surprise guest – one of the top 100 influential bloggers by CNET
• How to get started after installing WordPress : Abhijeet Mukherjee
• Talk : State of the word : by Matt Mullenweg
• Optimising ads on your WP blog : Amit Agarwal, Digital Inspiration
• Best Feature suggestion for WordPress – Matt Mullenweg, with moderator
• Writing WordPress plugins – Mayank Gupta, Blog Design Studio
• Making WP lighter – Shreyas, from RadioVerve
• Session on podcasting - Aditya Mhatre, Indicast

For any info you can contact

Twilight Fairy (Priyanka) at 9811511719

Mayank Gupta at 9910786431

Sanjay Srivastava at 9873707071

13 Things I don’t like In Your Blog

This is the first time I’m writing a post like this; basically I hate criticizing and telling people their mistakes, but one of my friend asked me to visit his blog and advise him about the things which I want to amend on his blog or which are the things needs improvement.  Frankly speaking a good blog design speaks a lot about the blog and the blogger; this is the first impression which some time helps glue your visitor to invert little more articles on your blog.

I take this opportunity to pull this question further and try to explain which are the things irritate me while reading a blog and I hate to see them on any blog.

1. When it’s not easy to NAVIGATE on your blog because you don’t have a navigation bar. I need to hit the back button in order to go back to your homepage.

2. When there is one blog post on display and you don’t even have a RECENT POSTS widget installed.

3. When your ABOUT ME page says “this is sample page, you can edit or delete this page”. ( Don’t hide from me, I won’t bite)

4. When I make a COMMENT on your blog and a message appears “your comment awaits moderation by administrator”. Why awaits for moderation, haven’t you heard about Akismat Plugin, CAPTCHA or for god sake search for any other better option if you wish but don’t chuck me away from communicating with your blog.

5. When I literally struggle to find where is the post content as you filled it with flashy ADS around, there are only four lines of content fitted with 300×250 AdSense Ad below and above.

6. When I just arrived at your blog a few second back and a pop up window appears requesting me to sign up for your BLOG FEED SUBSCRIPTION BOX by e-mail, hey I don’t even haven’t read a single post on your blog yet, and you are begging , Please forgive me I close that window and wish to disappear with that.

7. When a hell lot of things going on your blog SIDEBAR, you don’t want me to concentrate on your main content, aren’t you? Its stuffed fully like a Hamburger

8. When you display your posts based on CATEGORY and I can’t figure out which is the latest one.

9. Are you seriously writing a blog post or you are an essay writer and by accident become a blogger (or trying your hands at blogging?). Means your BLOG POSTS ARE TOO LONG.

10. Your HEADER Tag line (still) says “Just another WordPress blog”.

11. When I can’t see a TOP COMMENTATOR WIDGET installed on your blog (it’s unfair but I’m helpless, I visit only those blogs which have top commentators widget in place. Sorry)

12. When I like post but can’t see any SOCIAL MEDIA Support Button to spread love.

13. When I can’t see a Blog ARCHIVE PAGE to see since when you are in blogsphere.

These are some basic things that a reader/blogger looks in a blog, so if you have any above bugs in your blog then I request you to please make it good.

Image Courtesy : fo.ol

Twitter Limits Following to 2000 People

One of the best things about Twitter is that it’s almost impossible for spammers to break the system. There are rules, restrictions and regulations that you must follow if you love Tweet Tweet J

Yesterday when I click to follow my 2001 twitter user suddenly I get this message from the system “You are unable to follow more people, please read about out following limits.” It means you can not keep following unlimited number of people; there is a ratio as to how many people follows you. I immediately refer to Following and update limits: Here is what they say;

We reveal some limits only when you reach them, and tell you about others in advance. Twitter currently applies limits to any person who reaches:

1. 1,000 total updates per day, on any and all devices through web, mobile web, phone, API, etc.

2. 1,000 total direct messages per day, on any and all devices.

3. 100 API requests per hour.

We’ve also placed limits on the number of people you can follow. The number is different for everyone, and is based on a ratio that changes as the account changes. If you hit a follow limit, you must balance your follower/following ratio in order to follow more people- basically, you can’t follow 50,000 people if only 23 people follow you. Based on current behavior in the Twitter community, we’ve concluded that this is both fair and reasonable.

I also ask my followers if they have any information about this system.

Here is what they tweet:

How Do Ideas Come To You?

So how you convert a modest request into an interesting idea and adapt it to build a website?

One day “this guy” got an MSN message from his colleague with a link to a YouTube Video, followed by a verbal request- “But don’t look at the description or comments, they’re spoilers”.

That was enough for “this guy” to convert this humble request into a website. He created nospoiler.com where you can watch YouTube Video without comments, Descriptions, ads or anything, just only the YouTube Video. Its not that he made something great but it’s something to be appreciated.

Like This Video Here.

4 Premium Themes For Free

There was so much noise when last time Woo themes given free downloading access to it Premium News  Theme, reason being it was sold once for US$70, so few bloggers who bought it felt cheated. Well, now you can download some more Woo Premium Themes for absolutely free. They have known for their uniqueness and quality.

Here are Woo Premium Themes available for free download. Just follow the link by clicking theme image below.