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.

What a Waste of a Domain Name Yaar

Bloggers knows that how important it is to get a relevant domain name if you are into building and selling sites. It pays you extra if your website has a backing of a VIP domain name. But there are few guys out there who hold a real damn domain name but I’m sure you haven’t heard about their work. What a real waste of a domain name.

Just have a look

blogging.com : ad referral links only.

blog.net : The guys promises  he will be back. lets hope

blog.com : have you heard about this

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.

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

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

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

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.

How To Build A Google Freindly Site ?

Remember a few days back Google gave us a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) guide for webmasters. Now that guide helps us understanding the much hyped SEO stuff.

To help us developing a “Google friendly” site, google webmaster help Group has come up with a 30 slides presentation to show you how to host a better site.

You can download this presentation from HERE

Or Watch video presentation HERE.

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