7 Killer Tips For Optimizing Your YouTube Videos

At present most difficult task you find in blogging is to send in lot of traffic toward your blog. There are many ways and technique that I discussed here on this blog from time to time to build up traffic and increase visitors to your blog. Today am sharing with you a new technique of using YouTube to get traffic. This is called YouTube Marketing. This techniques help us drive traffic from youtube to your blog.

Gideon Shalwick published one of his most powerful and practical training videos taken directly from inside the members-only area of Become a Blogger Premium 2.0. One of the most consistently effective techniques for driving traffic to a blog today is YouTube marketing.

In this video you will learn some of the “insider secrets” that Gideon has been using and teaching to our members on how to get the most out of YouTube. The video can be watched on our Become A Blogger blog here.

Join Become a Blogger Traning Program HERE

How to Become a Blogger?

Do you have a roadmap with you of your blogging journey? Do you exactly know where you are heading and what you will after a certain period of time? Okay let’s ask you this way, do you know how you could become a successful blogger, is there any way through which you can learn how far you are from your dream destination and how you can be there?

Lucky you, because now you can get answers of all these questions, Gideon and Yaro are back with their mastermind The Roadmap to Become a Blogger.

If you haven’t set up your blog yet, go to this site where Gideon Shalwick takes you through ten videos that show you how to set up an optimized WordPress blog

Become a Blogger -Videos

While you are there, make sure you opt-in for the ”Roadmap to Become a Blogger” report, which Gideon and Yaro Starak has created. It’s also free, but don’t let that fool you, it’s packed with great content starting with a guide to successful blogging based on blogging system. The second half of the Roadmap is particularly important as it takes you through a series of techniques we call the ”X-Factor”. X-Factor techniques combine multimedia with social media to help your blog stand out from the crowd.

It’s tough nowadays to build a blog that succeeds because you need to do more than the average person does. That’s why the X-Factor techniques are critical. Once you read the report you can ask yourself whether you are doing anything to give your blog an X-Factor. From the Roadmap report you will learn the two key concepts:

1. The step-by-step “formula” that Yaro Starak used to create his amazingly successful blog.
2. Thirteen X-Factor strategies that you can implement immediately to put your blog into super drive.

YOU CAN GRAB YOUR COPY OF THE REPORT HERE -Its FREE!!!

Learn How to Build a Better Blog in Just 31 Days?

They say it only takes five minutes to build a WordPress blog. It’s true, and with just clicking few button you can start your blog on so many free blog sites, yes its true you can start your own blog in just few minutes, and starts writing posts. But then these challenges come in your mind as how you can engage your readers, how to make it popular and how to establish your blog’s brand in blogsphere.

Well as I said you can build a blog in five minutes but how much time it will take to build a better blog. If you ask blogging guru Darren Rowse he will say in 31 days. You must have heard about his latest blogging training book “31 Days to Build a Better Blog“.

Darren needs no introduction; he is regarded in blogsphere as the “Godfather” of professional blogging. Darren runs several blogs and has created many in his long blogging career. In terms of fame, he’s most respected for his work teaching other people how to blog professionally from his Problogger.net blog. He’s got over 80,000 subscribers to his blog about blogging, the largest readership of any blog
in our industry. He’s a true pioneer and as anyone who has met the guy knows, he’s very humble and a ridiculously hard worker.

I’m following Problogger Darren Rowse’s blog Problogger.net since beginning of my blogging vogue and learned a lot from him. Lets se what you can learn from his latest book “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” :-

1.       Intense Training – bloggers setting aside days, weekends or weeks to go through multiple tasks at once

2.       1 Task a Day – the way we designed it – one day at a time

3.       1 Task a Week – bloggers taking their time with the challenge and making the tasks week long tasks

4.       Monthly Cycle – bloggers using the tasks again and again each month as a monthly routine for their blogging.

5.       Occasional Inspirational Resource – bloggers dipping into 31 Days to build a better blog on a more occasional basis – using it on days when they have time or lack inspiration.

Grab your copy of 31 days to build a better blog now.

It’s an action-focused workbook to improve your blog through a 31-day “bootcamp” style training
regime.  It’s not about making money from blogging, the focus is a lesson a day and action activities to go along with each lesson, to make a dramatic improvement to your blog’s overall performance.

Grab your copy HERE.

Blogging as Moonlighting

What is Moonlighting?

One out of every seventeen Americans working on more than one job. That’s comes to 7 to 8 Millions Americans. Working on more than one job called moonlighting. This word moonlighting sound pretty interesting but it is a helplessness rather than a charm. Well who want to do a job and who want to do more then one job?

Why Moonlighting?

You can come to me with so many reasons for moonlighting but I know most of us do a second job simply to increase the skill to pay the bill and meet out the living expenses.

Blogging as Moonlighting

Well people do blogging and now there are so many ways through which they can monetize their blog. There are people earning hell lot of money through blogging and affiliate marketing. Well this seems to be a better option then doing a second job. More over if you do it properly and succeed in establishing a small business enterprise it can also help you quit your day job.

What you say?

Given an option what you would like to do. A second job or try to set up your very own small Internet business venture through blogging and internet marketing which can further help you out to quit your day job?

Look like blogging as moonlighting is a better option but if you are poor at time management it can also create problem succeeding in your FIRST job. Give your opinion in comment below.

Image by : Edwin and Sybylle

Networking Tips To Make You A Better Blogger

 

No matter how much of an expert you are in a niche, you can never succeed alone as a blogger. All of the big names in the blogging community certainly did not succeed without friends. Here are a few networking tips to make you a better blogger.

You Are Not Better Than Anyone Else

If you are arrogant, and you know it, please drop the ego for once. If you always believe that you know everything, and that you are better than everyone, not many people would like to associate with you.

Maybe your blog can make a million dollars on your own, but can also collapse the next day. Don’t be afraid to seek help from your fellow bloggers. Let go of your pride for one day, and simply ask, “Hey, I’m doing something wrong here and don’t know what it is, could you help?” or “Hey, I know I can trust your opinion and advice on this issue…” By asking questions, you are showing people that you don’t know everything, and can be a bit flattering to the person you are asking for help.

E-mail

Bloggers these days are so in love with Web 2.0, such as Twitter and Digg, that some of these people tend to forget the good old method of e-mailing. You should get in touch with some of your readers through e-mail. A simple e-mail could be like this:

“Hey (name), I haven’t heard from you in awhile. I miss seeing your comments. I checked out your blog recently, and I enjoyed reading (name of that blog post). I recommended some of my friends to check it out. Let me know how things are going for you. Please keep in touch!”

That e-mail is short, yet effective. It is personal, and lets the person know you care. People know that you are busy, but if you take the time to e-mail them, you can be sure that they will remember you.

Visit Blogs

Some of you might only visit blogs that are only related to your niche. We can relate back to the e-mail message example above that you should check out blogs of people who are always commenting on your blog. Doesn’t matter if your blog talks about how to make money online, and the person you are visiting talks about flying pigs.

Take the time to read up on that person’s posts, especially if the person has a Popular Post section on the sidebar.  The posts that are popular might be interesting to you. Be sure to write a great comment. While “content is king” holds true to articles that you write, “content is king” still holds true when you write wonderful comments that are valuable to readers and the author. This is another great way to be remembered.

Apologizing

Sometimes, you can upset people or end up in a never ending argument. Not everyone might agree to what you say in your blog, and some people might be right when they say you are wrong. If someone says that you are wrong, carefully go do a bit more research to look for ways to backup what you have said. Do not give an attitude of “What I say is right because I say so.”

Regardless of being right or wrong, you can e-mail the person to say something like this:

“Hi (name), I just want to personally apologize to you. My tone was a bit condescending and unfriendly. I corrected the post, and I also gave you credit with a backlink to your blog. Please keep in touch.”

You are not perfect. Everyone makes mistakes every now and then. Learn to accept what others have to say. A lot of people read, but they don’t pay attention to what they read. There are a lot of times when I wanted to quit blogging, and I’m sure a lot of bloggers have gone through that phase. What keeps me motivated to blog is that people I network with support and cheer me up all the way. Make friends, and keep in touch with them. You cannot succeed alone.

This post is written by Kai Lo. He is a SEO enthusiast and has a passion to help others succeed. Be sure to check out his SEO Blog and Make Money Online Blog.

WP Super Cache Saved Me

So What You Do When a Big Blogger Links To Your Post?

Well, this morning bring big smile on my face. When I woke up this Sunday morning and checked my BlogLines feed as usual I felt like on cloud seven. I saw that John Chow has a complete post about one of my recent post on big bloggers offices. I’m very excited about it and the reason is very simple, I admire John a lot in fact I started my blogging after reading John chow’s top posts.  

Well John Chow is a big blogger. If you are a Make Money Online blogger and still don’t know who is John then please send me one of picture, I will use it in my post about Human Evolution. J. John has a strong RSS base of 47K readers, with 29k twitter follower, Technorati ranking of top 2k blog. Feedburner says his RSS circulation of 47k gets hits around 66k so you can imagine if he links to your blog/posts then how much heavy traffic you will receive towards your blog. Imagine the thing when your blog is not hosted on a dedicated server.  

So the first thing I need to do is to make my blog compatible to bear “The John Chow Effect”.

WP Super Cache

Well if you get a chance something like the one I explained above then the first thing you must do is to install this WordPress WP Super Cache Plugin to bear the immediate traffic load towards your blog.

This plugin generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After an html file is generated your web server will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts. The static html files will be served to the vast majority of your users, but because a user’s details are displayed in the comment form after they leave a comment those requests are handled by PHP.

So this plugin handle instantaneous traffic load terrifically. Moreover WP Super cache plugin makes your blog go faster. 

Time line your old popular post.

Lots of first time visitors would also like to check other posts you wrote recently on your blog, so I have seen most the blogger do this, they timeline their old popular posts to current dates so that they appear on front page chronically, if you ask me I don’t think it’s a better idea, specially when your permalink contain months and year and if you try this lots of links to your old posts will turn out to be broken.  So better you should not try this if your blog’s permalink is like mine.

Well that’s I can advise you, please share your story about linking of your blog by biggies in comment below and if also share if you have some other suggestions to implement in this situation. 

WordPress.com is now WP.com

Yahoo again treats Automattic by giving it much needed wp.com domain. Ma.tt is pretty excited about it.

He was keep playing with this domain the whole day long checking whether the redirection from wp.com pointing to WordPress.com is working fine or not.

Yes it’s true, Automattic is now the proud owner of WP.com, which we acquired from our buddies over at Yahoo! We’ve been using WP.com as internal shorthand for this site for years now, and ever since we figured out four or five years ago that Yahoo had that domain (as opposed to the Washington Post or something) we’ve been doing our best to get it, a journey that culminated in ultimate success a few days ago. (Ma.tt)

It also means bloggers who have their blogs hosted on WordPress.com and having URL like myblog.wordpress.com can now have much easy and simple URL like myblog.wp.com. ( Automattic has not yet confirmed it though)

What should he do with WP.com?

Matt has asked for your answer to put it into the Automattic idea machine and crunch something out at the end.

GeoCities Shut Down – Remembering The Life Before WordPress

Yahoo closes down it free web hosting site GeoCities.

Remember the days before WordPress?

Ahh, those days!

I remember I made my first website somewhere in March 2002.  It was on a free-hosted space platform. There was this website freehomepage.com which was (is) offering free space to create static web pages.

I made this site to put some cool pictures of mine, my family and my friends on the web. That was pretty exciting experience at that time.

Remember college going students, and Tech Freak (Geek) guys created those beautiful pages to share some stories about them on the net.

When I heard a couple of days back about Yahoo being decided to close down its free web-hosting service GeoCities, it gave me nostalgic feeling. Though my site was not on GeoCities but still I know how much people love GeoCities pages. I know many of you guys have their first web pages drafted on Geo. It was first free platform where you can create something like that. I’m talking about a time 15 years back.

I immediately head over to my first web site to check up am I still alive there. Fortunately I’m still very much there.

When I integrated Bravenet Guest book into that site I flashed this message from my site to all my friends.

Hey guys N Gals Plz sign up here to my guest book so that I can store it to my cherished memories.

Shanker Bakshi, March 18, 2002 06:10:55 (GMT Time)

I gone through my Guest book there again; there are really some touching messages.

Do you remember the first website you created?

You can share the link of your first website created in good old days in old fashion ways in comments below and also share your first hand experience of creating a website.

Here is the screen shot of my first website created on March 18, 2002.

Image courtesy : Robert The Noid

Offices of Some Big Bloggers and Your

Wonder how offices of these top shot bloggers look like? Well in my quest to become a successful blogger I always think about it. Most of the Tech Geek Bloggers  uses their laptop for blogging purpose but most of the top bloggers have their very own blogging headquarters, a very fine decked fully loaded and equipped office. I always wanted to have a workplace like this.

I’m giving here pictures of offices of my favorite bloggers for your delight. Hope you would like it.

Send in picture of your office

If you like to include your blog office picture here then send it across to me I will keep on updating this post with your office setup pictures in UPDATE just received section below.

Here is the Top Boss of world’s biggest corporate blog TechCrunch Mr. Michael Arrington at his home office in California.

Jeremy Schoemaker busy blogging about how he can help you to increase your skill to pay the bill. Have you seen his private beautiful swimming pool with big Shoemoney Dollar sign on its floor?

This is the office of Super Affiliate “Spiderman” Mr. Zac johnson. look at his collection of super hero toys.

Let’s have a close look at Zac’s office.

Chris Pirillio’s office. Well this guy as you know is great in “defining things”.

Chris in his den. You can catch him live HERE ( check if he is there right now )

Thats John Chow office. He calls it his Blogging station.

The root of all Make Money Online “evils’ Mr. john Chow at his Blogging Station.

That is Darren Rowse Blogging Head Quarter. He hasn’t posted any picture of his office on his blog (although he runs a digital photography school) only a video available showing his office setup from which I extracted this picture. Sorry for poor resolution.

Darren Rowse in his Blogging Head Quarter.

Great guy Yaro Starak at his office. Yaro is in this blogging and internet business from a decade now, and just back to his home country Australia after his around the world tour.

Yaro’s partner in his Road to  become a Blogger program Mr. Gideon Shalwick at his office desk.

Affiliate Marketer and Blogger Ian Fernando’s office. Ian blog about his success and failure in life and make money out of it.

The dream of any Internet Entrepreneur, any one would be jealous of Stefan Didak’s office equipped with multiple monitors.  I’m sure all of you would like have one such office, what say?

The man with the million dollar smile on his face. Our very own India’ s no. 1 blogger Mr. Amit Aggarwal at his home office  in beautiful city of Agra.

Now talk about those who uses only their laptop for blogging. Matt in the above picture seen with his Dell Laptop, as he has to travel a lot to attend WordCamp  around the world he uses this laptop for updating his blog.

Co

[NEW] Community and Social Media Expert Chris Brogan’s Office Space at Courtyard. He love to Blog from Book Stores.

This white beautiful laptop belongs to Megastar , Bollywood actor and now a active blogger Mr. Amitabh Bachchan. Mr. Bachchan’s blog is on a social networking site BigAdda.com  which runs on WordPress MU Platform. if you watch it closely you can see on Mr. Bachchan’s laptop WordPress Editor is open, he directly writes posts from WordPress Editor and surprisingly despite of his so busy schedule he update his blog everyday without fail.

Bollywood actor Aamir Khan used to blog a lot few months back but now he is not a very active blogger. aamir with his Dell.

I think i have seen this cute little boy somewhere. Thats my Son Aditya at my work station. 

YOURS IS HERE

SEND IN YOUR OFFICE PICS

Abhinav Sonkar’s Work Station. This qualified engineer from Nagpur  has some really cool latest Bollywood guitar codes and also lessons on how to play guitar on his blog.

Pinal Dave send it across this picture of his home office. Pinal is a principle database architect , developer and Project Manager, Expert in SQL Server Programming with 6+ years of hands on experience. Sound Cool. He writes mosty about SQL stuff on his blog.

The Chetan’s Work Station, Chetan is a blogger from nagpur, india and talks about on his blog about Technology, WordPress and other cool Technical aspects of Web. 

Here is Muhammad Azhar Qayyum in his office. Azhar writes on his corporate blog about blogging, hosting, website designing and other technical aspects of web devlopment. 

Professional Indian Blogger from Bhopal,  Afzal Khan at his home office.  Afzal writes on Search Engine Optimization and Online Marketing  at TopRank SEO Blog  and AfzalKhan.org . 

I Hate Akismet For This

Because someone had shown the “Spam Bin” way to my comment on his/her blog, Akismet consider me as bad guy and throwing all the comments I made thereafter on my favorite blogs.

I’m still trapped in Akismet Spam list; I don’t want to use any other e-mail ID or URL for my comments and off course I never tried to sell all those medicines and sites, never ever.

If this is the only criteria for Akismet to identify and mark Spammers then I must say

I HATE AKISMET.

Proud Moment for Indian Blogger’s Community

A really proud moment as Blogger Amit Varma has been included in the list of “50 most powerful People in India” released by esteem BusinessWeek Magazine yesterday. This is first time any blogger in India has been awarded at that high level. Blogging is still not very popular among Indians. Though it’s now getting its due space progressively.

Blogger Amit Varma brings a particular libertarian point of view to his columns and blog items, but also a risqué sense of humor that keeps readers hooked. He won the 2007 Bastiat Prize for his columns in Indian business paper Mint, and for a select group of Indians, he represents a libertarian, anti-tax and anti-government sensibility that is still quite rare in the country.

Another “blogging thing” to be mention today is that celebrity blogger Amitabh Bachchan’s has completed one year. It’s cool to see how jubilant he is on completing successfully one year of his new love blogging. He writes:

No one believed that this would last. No one believed that I would last. No one believed that any one would last. No one believed that the titles of the ‘DAY’ was right. No one believed that I wrote my blogs myself. No one believed that I was not paid to do this. No one believed that I do not moderate. No one believed that I find time to write. No one believed I would respond to comments. No one believed that I would tolerate abuse. No one believed that I would respond to criticism. No one believed that I would write this blog for other reasons than just to clarify and attack media. No one believed in me….

We love you Amit Jee and I believe in you.

So When You Will Start “Twittering” Keywords Instead of “Googling” it?

From last couple of months or so there has been much buzz about twitter as being strong alternative for search engine Google. We all know how big Google is, undoubtedly there are no close competitive as far as Internet search usage is concern Here are some data to prove my point:

But look there is one strong reason why people looking on twitter as new search alternative.

Real Time searches

The question of most relevant information still remains but twitter search tool places the most recent tweets on search phase. It will help you get updated answers for your quarries.

Twitter gives better results on current affair quarries.

In case of incident like Mumbai 26/11 massacre, I would definitely prefer to get updated information, pictures, and reports through Twitter search and not through conventional Google search, you know better why I’m saying this because you have already tested twitter search tool for this sort of information on current affair.

If you ask me I don’t find these feature makes twitter outclass Google from search engine business. Google will always remain first choice for all your search quarries and I don’t see any threat to its core search business activities. Couple of week back there was news of Google buying twitter, Twitter founder biz clear the air immediately stating there is no such deal executed between giant G and twitter.

Twitter Searching Tool

I’m giving you top shot Twitter Searching Tools for your delight.

Twazzup : Twazzup is a privately funded startup based in San Francisco, which searches relevant tweet.

Tweefind : another cool tool for your keyword searches.

SocialMention : Search results are aggregated from numerous popular social media sources, including Google blog search, Twitter, Delicious, FriendFeed, Flickr, Digg, YouTube etc. and remixed as a single stream of information. The data is fresh, which means you can track conversations as they are happening in real-time.

What Lessons a Blogger Can Learn From the Movie Slumdog Millionaire?

Eight Academy awards winner movie Slumdog Millionaire is adoption of Vikas Swaroop Best selling novel “Q & A”. Directed by Danny Boyle the story moves around the street boy Jamal who is a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (Kaun Banega Crorepati) hosted by Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor) in which he won 20 Million Rupees.

Well for me I think there is a lot that you can learn from this movie but if you wish to associate this movie with your blogging experience here are the three basic things that you can study from it.

[1] Get your answer from your experience:

The boy in the movie knows all the answer because he has already gone in his tough journey of life through various situations where he learned the answers to those questions.Life teaches us every moment, it’s all on us how we grab that knowledge and use it for our purpose to become a successful person.

So next time before you ask anyone any sort of question try to solve it or clutch the answer by yourself. There is nothing that you can’t do if somebody else is already doing it.

[2] You are required to know exactly what is needed at that time, it dose not matter if you don’t know about hundred other things.

There are four kinds of persons you can see in a society;

One who don’t know but he knows that he don’t know. (That’s a smart one)

One who don’t know but also don’t know that he don’t know (That’s a stupid guy)

One who knows and also know that he knows (That’s super smart)

One who knows but don’t know that he knows (That’s a careless freak)

SO better you first know what exactly you know and what you don’t, confusing, let’s say it in other words; that’s you must know what your strength and weaknesses are. Like the guy in the movie. Don’t mass-up with a thing on which you have low or little knowledge (lets phone a friend)

[3] Take the hard way to success

Though winning a quiz show and becoming a millionaire seems pretty easy way, but the boy struggle all his life to reach to that level. Unlike his brother he chooses the tough hard but honest way to the success.

There are no short cuts to success, don’t confuse yourself with those happy go lucky stories, there is only one thing which always pays and that’s hard work and nothing else.

Seven years back when I arrived in this beautiful city of India “chandigarh” there were only few bucks in my pocket, I was not even able to afford one meal per day but today after all these years of hardship I have every thing which is necessary to make a living, a happy family, a car, a cozy bed almost every luxury of life (owning a house is still big dream in India). The only thing in my mind was this faith that if I will work hard there is nothing that will stop me to reach where I am right now.

Question for you

Tell me how you like the movie Slumdog Millionaire and what lesson you learnt from the movie (if any)

Which Anti Spam Plugin You Use on Your WordPress Blog?

I’m very surprise to see that some anti spam comment Plugins treats me as a Spam  commentator. They  are “throwing” my recent comments that I made on my favorite blogs into Spam bin [see comment section 1, 2]. I don’t know why its happening because I never attempted Spamming through comments.

Even my very own Akismet Plugin on my blog treats me that way. The worse thing is that when I reply to your valuable comments on my blog, even in that case first I have to write down the reply comment and then to get it release for publishing on my blog I need to approve it from my back end Admin area.

Do you ave any idea why this happening ? Which WordPress Anti Spam Plugin you use on your blog?

7 Things a Newbie Blogger Should Avoid Doing

1. Don’t Google analysis your traffic data frequently

As a newbie blogger you will see a very little traffic to your blog, in this situation it will definitely be discouraging to analyze traffic data if you and your mom are the only two readers of your blog. Try to comprehend technical term used in Google Analytics and master all these analytical reports as soon as possible but for god shake don’t verify your traffic data every other minutes.

2. Don’t argue with your commentators.

Once I did it in my initial blogging days and I lost one of my valuable commentators. Respect their opinion and if you have any adverse opinion then try to shout out in modestly.

3. Write more (Read Less)

Are you a frequent visitor to Darren Rowse and Chris brogan? These guys write 3 to 4 articles per day. These are master blog article writers. If you keep on reading their blog posts you will find yourself a crap writer (Yes it happens with most of the guys). One of my close friends told me that he was quite happy writing blog posts every alternate days but since he started reading these master’s blog he felt that he should write exactly the same way as these super writers dose and life was never be the same again. Now he find it difficult to express his opinion in that fashion and ultimately distract his flow of writing. Make sure you admire them, don’t try to be exactly like them.

4. Don’t spend mush time tweaking your WordPress themes.

When you surf other blogger’s sites and see something “interesting” flashing over there; you try to incorporate the same in your blog. You start tweaking and end up messing up your CSS code and chaotic look of your blog. If you are not a webmaster then don’t spend all the time is fine-tuning things by yourself.

5. Don’t apply to paid review sites/affiliate network unless your blog is stuffed with articles.

If you have only two-three dozens of article blinking on your site then don’t just apply for paid review sites, affiliate network, there are more chances that your application will get rejected. Stuff your blog with some nice articles related to your niche; at least fifty of them and then start applying for affiliations.

6. Don’t mess up yourself with something you are not an expert of;

Try to write articles around your niche. A person visiting your site frequently must have some kind of idea what usually you serve for their eyes. Don’t mess up yourself on a subject about which you have very little knowledge, or you have just come to know about it.

7. Blog for your passion and not for making money.

Much has been said on this, I don’t really think I have anything fresh to call on this. Blogging is about passion money is a peripheral attached to it. Blog out your passion.

Image courtsy: inferis

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