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Saturday, July 28, 2012

Download Free Social Icons in 3D for Free – 6 icons in 3 sizes

Are you in need of pretty sets of social icons in 3D with names on it? We have the latest link to its resource so that you can get them, in different sizes for free!
Why social media icons important?
Instead of simply putting an anchor text or link of your social participation like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ on your blog sidebar or header, you actually put an art to them by using social icons. The problem is, if we have no enough knowledge about Adobe Photoshop, we cannot able to make a beautiful sets to impress our readers. But we got alternatives!  We can use icon generators, or icons search engines to search for downloadable sets that may suits the template of our blog. Below are my previous posts that will tell you how exactly a newbie can generate an amazing icons:
Aside from that, as I am so addicted to collecting some free fine-made icons to make our blog more alive and engaging, we can now have 6 popularly used icons in 3D, in 3 different sizes like 48, 64 and 128 pixels! So, if you feel the need of changing your old icons, or if you don’t have any – you can get this one anytime from one of my favorite blog since I started blogging – Spice Up Your Blog! Click the image to download! (Scroll down below to see how to use social icons properly.)
3d-social-icons-main-screenshot
How to Use Social Icons?
After downloading, unzipped it first! How?
Simply go to the download folder, right lick on the zipped file, then extract it to a specified location or folder.
You can now open all of them, choose what size you want and upload them to your image hosting sites, like Picasa, Flickr, etc.
How to Link the Icons to My Social Networks?
It’s like making a banner that works, please check this short tutorial!
What are you waiting for? Any question, feel free to ask.


See you!

Friday, July 27, 2012

Quality, Professionalism and Marketing Lead to a Successful Blogging

As early as stage one of blogging, you are doing every possible way to promote your newborn blog. What it takes though? Promotion is one of the biggest challenges that would test your determination and dedication. Sometimes, you tried to compare your blog to the established ones which receive high amount of traffic daily, yet the comparison would stumble you down. Do not try to compare, but instead, focus and concentrate in building a paved way.
Successful Blogging

Discover the happenings behind the scene.

You won't understand unless you know the true story. Ask yourself why they have gone that far. Have they traveled a long long way or have they taken the shortcut? The answer was revealed to me, if you are serious of what you are doing now, then it's a long trip ahead. There is no shortcut.

Fasten your seat-belt and get ready for the bumpy drive.

That's the first thing you can do. Are you dedicated enough? Then you are ready to bring it on. You might be looking for the secret formula to bring your blog to the next level, but the secret entails effort as there is no overnight success. If you are waiting for that to happen, you are then wasting your time. You are like driving in a hurry with a seat-belt off, a traffic officer caught you.

Focus. Do not be overwhelmed with so many secret formulas.

None of them would work if you skip the basic. This is the story behind the scene of those successful bloggers in the vast blogosphere.
Quality Content + Professional Template + Marketing = Successful Blogging
  • Quality is always the king - do not compromise the quality of your posts with quantity. If you want to post twice a day, make sure it would meet a certain standard. What's important, post or blog often. Strictly observe on your grammar, spelling, and of course the message of your post. Are you telling them something worth reading?
  • Professional Template - a professional looking template is a blog theme with a friendly interface. Observe cleanliness and orderliness, make sure it would accommodate your readers well. Give them a virtual home to stay with.

    One important factor is the load time, do not stuff your blog with so many third party applications or plug-ins, it would sacrifice its speed. And, not the least, apply basic SEO or get a free professional blog template.

  • Marketing - Do you have great and useful contents to market with? Is your blog can able to accommodate prospected readers already? Then you should take another extra step-- marketing! If your blog deserve promotion, why not? It's your time to shine.

    There are various media of marketing, and one of which is getting involved with the most flocked social networks nowadays like Twitter and Facebook. This is the time to participate well with social networking sites to get more visibility.

Are you ready to get more twitter followers?

Get More Twitter Followers
The counts of your twitter followers, for example, would help you spread the good news about your blog a bit faster. Spending some extra amount from your pocket won't hurt if you see that your blog is energetically participating the race. So, do not miss the opportunity in receiving 1000 Twitter followers or more in just a matter of a week. You are in the concentration of providing your readers with quality blog posts, let the promotion be done by an expert who offers reliable service with a cheap price! How is the idea of killing a mosquito one by one?

In fact, I get more than a thousand Twitter followers in a week. So, are you ready to Buy Twitter Followers? I am sure BuyRealMarketing can help you.

More about BuyRealMarketing.com at PRWeb.

Final Words:

Successful blogging is possible when you only post quality contents, and a provide your readers with a professional blog template or theme. BUT, you cannot press the equal sign, the formula is not yet complete. Remember: Quality Contents + Professional Template + Marketing = Successful Blogging.


Image credit from freedigitalphotos.net (edited)

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Rebuild Your Path - a Way to Better Blogging

Let me share to you what inspired me today - it's an article from my newly found mentor for blogging, Samantha Gluck, she will lead us the way to find inspiration in our broken paths.
It's motivational and inspiring. In the early days of blogging, what are the things that made us think it's impossible to get successful? Let me enumerate mine:
  • Content - Content and Quality is the king. How can I survive? How can I produce original and quality contents as often as possible?
  • Traffic - the most challenging ever. How can I grow my traffic? It's not an overnight task. It's tricky. It's hard... It's hard to befriend the search engines.
  • Authority - one of the hardest. It's synonymous to respect us well. Once blogger has it, it's not really hard for him to promote his contents.
  • Money - if I don't blog for money, I might have abandoned this blog. It's about patience and waiting for the "perfect" time. Can you wait?
Despite of that, am not broken really, she don't believe that dreams can be broken down into pieces - it's just lost for some reasons.

The factors I have mentioned sometimes steal my dreams and put it somewhere, but through looking at successful people, by observing how they thrive and fight to make their dreams come true... I guess I would spend time to search it from nowhere and possess it again.

Image source: thesolesearch

See you.

Monday, July 23, 2012

How to Get More Blog Traffic – Join Triberr

How is blogging after the Google Penguin Updates?  Well, I would say my traffic decreased. That’s the reality. Penguin wants “natural” – that means natural way of building authority and back links. How can we do that?

It’s when we learn how to use social networks, and blogging community to raise traffic and engagement to our blog (the best alternative). That’s my biggest mistake done early this year – I abandoned my community to write for the search engines.

Authority and back links can be built naturally, and readers, followers and friends will do that. Early today, I receive a long craved comment to SB, after I lost the sight of my old friends in the blogosphere. I checked it out and enjoyed commenting again to Lisa’s nice posts – and I learned how triberr increase and double her traffic.

If you are familiar with Bloggers.com, it sounds familiar – yet there is something you should check out!

Basically, to join triberr, you need to provide your email address and blog URL, then allow triberr to access your twitter account – that’s how you can automatically log-in and set the rest manually.

How to add your blog to your newly created account?

triberr

  1. Setting – click the down arrow next to your profile name and select settings.
  2. Choose blog settings.
  3. Blog URL is automatically added, so provide your feed URL.
How to Find Blog Valid Feed URL? (for Blogger blogs)

It’s simple, copy the address below and add it to your blog address.

/feeds/posts/default

It would look like this:

http://www.simplifiedblogging.com/feeds/posts/default
Then Discover More!

Tribes – to start browsing tribes, you need to add your interest and start connecting.

triberr2 Bonfires – or should I say it’s the “tweets” if we talk about twitter.

Bones – it’s  your fuel, or rights to make an invites… 15 bones per invites, upon joining you got 100 bones… let’s discover more – that’s my initial know-how!

So I guess we should give a try Lisa’s tips to increase traffic!

See you:)

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Find Most Popular Stories and Favorite Topics at Alltop

Overview

Googling. That’s the usual thing we do when we want to look for popular stories, or looking for hot blog topics of our interests.

Twoogling. I guess this would only happen when Google takes over Twitter (acquire), since many of us, including myself love tweet searching using hashtags. When the term twoogling created? Read Google Enter the Twitter Game.

Anyways, what else you do to find the hot stories of the day? Whether it’s about blogging, health, politics, etc? Well, to be honest, I don’t know what to do… I want to write new topics but it seemed what I have in mind may be to repetitive with my previous posts, so I search for fresh, hot or popular topics to “duplicate”… No, just kidding. Searching for topics to help write mine, that’s what I mean.

Alltopping. My Post editor lined this term read, so just added Alltopping to dictionary, same as Googling or Twoogling, you can easily find the most popular stories in a super clean interface – that’s Alltop!

Well … browse the homepage and see what’s hot! Or, find for the latest feeds by searching popular topics by keyword or interest – there you can find at the top! Or simply type it at the search bar!

alltop

What’s really awesome, you can select the latest, or popular topic in a clean sheet like this:

alltop1 After a couple of hours, trying to look for the most attractive title at the search results – I have found 1 or 2 blogs I read with interest, and I discovered new blogging ideas.

You know, sometimes, bloggers need to go out in the open! Sometimes, I don’t do that. When am to loaded with task, I just write, write and write. Well, it’s not bad, but, we must listen to the news. What others are craving to know? What others are saying? What’s going viral? Catch it up! Alltop can give you, in few clicks – all the top stories, from work to sports, from health to blogging!

See you.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Quick Blogging Tips for Inspired Bloggers

This post is a special contribution of livingsenior.
...go with your gut and take the first thing that pops into your mind.
While you’re thinking of what to write for your own blog post, pause a minute here to check out what others are saying about blog writing. There are a zillion tips and tricks – many of which would be helpful… if only you had the time to read them.

One thing that comes up time and again is the importance of writing fast. Face it, some people are agonizingly slow writers. They write down a thought and then reread it, rewrite it and delete it before they start the process all over again. Nothing is good enough. There’s nothing bad about being conscientious, but in blog writing, time is of the essence. This isn’t War and Peace. Your readers want advice, commentary and humor – not perfection.
So you pick up the pace. Then what? Well, it’s a great idea to get your thoughts on paper faster, but as every writer (and editor) knows, the writing still needs to be readable. Blogs are, by definition, a casual form of writing. That’s fine. It’s okay to abandon AP style. It’s even okay to start a sentence with an “and” or a “but.” But…you can’t misspell things or have long run-on, unreadable sentences that lose your readers after the first 10 words. So once you (quickly) get your thoughts down on paper, take a minute or two to read it over – and clean it up. Don’t be tempted to rewrite everything. Use the advice of teachers everywhere: go with your gut and take the first thing that pops into your mind. In blog writing, the same is true. Don’t rewrite what makes the writing yours.
Try using bullets to make your points.
  • Bullets attract the eye and set your thoughts apart.
  • It’s easy for readers to scan things that are in a paragraph set apart by bullets.
  • Bullets make it easy to find something you want to reread again later.
Every writer has their own style – that’s part of being a writer – but you also need to know your audience. If you’re writing for geeks, use tech-y terms (as long as you understand them). If you’re writing for business professionals, you’ll want to use a more serious tone.

Stay true to yourself. You started your blog because it meant something to you. Don’t let others pressure you to change your point of view. Mention both sides, yes. But cave? No. On the other hand, don’t present that point of view in a condescending, rude or patronizing tone. And if you printed incorrect information – or found other facts that cause you to change your mind -- well then, by all means say so. And say why. Readers won’t always agree with you, but you’ll want them to respect you. Write on.

Image Source: allvirtual.me

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

12 Effective Make Money Blogging Tips to Remember

Blogging is like planting a tree. At the early stage, you expect to exert your best effort to water, weed, and guard your little tree so that it will grow tall, fruit bearing one. Blogging is similar to that example, you need to build a better blog first, before you can expect a living from it, finally you can quit your job and work from home, right at your living room. But what it takes?
Here are 12 vital make money blogging tips to follow so that you can build a better foundation in your early blogging career.
  1. Use Professional Looking Template - (Blogging platform is based on your own preference.) Choose a neat looking template for your blog. It must be accommodating to the eyes of your readers. You can either use a default template from blogger or download free premium blogger templates available. Learn to customize the header, the post body and the sidebar. Consult COMPUTER HOPE for color complement for your template.
  2. Avoid too many Plug-ins and Widgets - aside changing the design of your template to your own taste, you can use free to embed plug-ins to add more engagement on your blog. But do not overuse it. There are many helpful blog tools around that includes feed burner for subscription, Google custom search, friend connect, sharing and bookmarking tools, etc. If you use third party applications, please consider reading bloggers’ review or feedback. Make sure it won’t affect the loading time of your blog and its browsing compatibility. Consider the major used browsers for making such decisions like Chrome, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.
  3. Write Original and Quality Contents - “Quality is the King”, it won’t change. You must be unique. All your contents must be owned by you and not someone else’s existing post from nowhere. Search engines are hungry for quality and fresh contents every day, so feed them with your informative and helpful posts.
  4. Use Searchable Keywords - Practice using Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Your title, headlines or post body must contain searchable keywords. Use “reasonable” number of keywords within your contents. Avoid keyword stuffing, the excessive use of keywords to deceive search engines. The keyword tool is very helpful if you “know” how to use the data from your query, so learn to use them to drive organic traffic to your blog.
  5. Write Persuasive Post - How would you convinced your readers to read your entire article? Use attractive title, and tempting headlines. You can either use essay style of writing, or a list post, or a combination of the two. Use visual aids such as pictures, graphics or videos. If you have original images, better use it. Make sure you are objective and precise. Make sure you tackle your subject matter well. Spoon feed, or leave a hanging ending, it must be of your reference.
  6. Write like a Pro - Do not tell them you are a total newbie. You might be a newbie in the blogosphere, but you are “not” a beginner in the topic you choose to blog about. You just started a blog about gardening, but you are a gardener for a long time before you decided to come out online for others to benefit your knowledge and techniques. You are here because you are expert in a certain matter, you want to share it free.
  7. Write Fast - Do you blog in between your offline job? You need to write fast. How to do that? Concentrate and believe in yourself. Write, and continue writing. Do not draft, and delete the entire paragraph you have written. Remember, you cannot be perfect, what’s important, the message you will be imparting to your readers.
  8. Write Often - Writing like a pro and fast are not enough. Blogger must blog often. It’s a “must” and not an option if you want to see a productive blog in the future. You need to provide fresh contents, and attract search engines of your scents. In my case, sometimes I may be hindered by our internet unstable connection, but if time is manageable – I don’t forget to post. If you work as a team, much better, I have known a blog that was launched last February 2012, and they have 50,000 estimated visitors as of today, with alexa traffic of about 32,000. Fact – they post 2 or 3 post daily following a good posting schedule as explained below.
  9. Set a Good Posting Schedule - I came from the million. That’s my alexa rank before, but upon following some good tips of successful bloggers, I see it going down gradually – so it’s an improvement. How posting schedule can affect your rank? It’s just that, alexa is an American Site (though am not sure of its ranking algorithm), but once you have posted your contents at their early working hours, say 8:00AM to 10:00AM, it will have a good effect of your rank.
  10. Use a Contact Form - Your blog might be silent for the time being, but you have followers, and if you provide some way to reach you in private – they will say “hello” and inspired you in that way. What are other purposes of blog contact form?
  11. Concentrate on your Niche - successful bloggers are focused on a niche they mastered for years, you can gradually build an authority by publishing helpful contents to your blog branded with your subject of interest. What are the cons of writing different topics? You will be destructed as to what your focus will be, just like me in the beginning. You cannot concentrate, jumping from one subject to another with no connection at all.
  12. Always Think Positive - This is the test. If you think the opposite way, you can’t run a blog longer. You might abandon it, or start new hoping to collect pennies. You will end up with nothing, just a time wasted. So, decide, act purposely, think straight forward, and do not quit. There are hard times, absolutely, but “quitters never win” and it’s so true here in the blogosphere.
  13. Well, it’s about building a great foundation. Once you do, you can enjoy blogging and making money out of it, together with the presence of you family at your living room.

Monday, July 16, 2012

How to Increase Traffic to Your Blog by Writing Guest Post

This is a good question for blog beginners who wish to get more traffic free, and aims to build a good reputation in the blogosphere. This is when you think of working with other pro bloggers who have a better reputation, high amount of blog traffic in their respective blogs daily.

Writing a guest post is another challenge in our blogging career. One should consider guest posting, but how? As I have read about experiences of several successful bloggers, one of their humble statements is "they never worked all alone in their blogging years", in fact they have contributed several articles in highly respected blogs in the web, and their contribution had helped them get the name "Pro Blogger".
When you asked, what is the most affordable method on how to increase blog traffic to your blog, the nearest answer to this question is writing and submitting guest post to blogs of your niche that are around for years and have a stable traffic and good reputation to readers.
How to write a guest post?
This subject "guest post" will run a series of posts here in the SB in the coming days, and I am starting this by writing some important tips on how to write one great guest post you will be proud of. Not all submitted guest posts are published. Blog editors will choose them carefully. You might consider my humble list:
  • Find Blogs which accepts guest post, it should be in your niche, or blogs of your interest.
  • Search forums about guest bloggers, consider their experiences and suggestions.
  • Follow the list of blogs which accepts guest post, and plan where you will submit your first contribution.
  • Scan their archives so that you will know if you will be submitting first heard or unique content.
  • Your post must be original, well written and informative.
  • Remember, this is like a contest, so make sure you will be chosen. Make a better plan for your subject, and come out with your best.
  • Your post will give you the chance to be heard by loyal readers of the blog you will be guest posting, and if you are deserving, you will receive a high amount of traffic (referrals) in return.
  • Importantly, this will give you powerful backlinks, not cheap! It will help you in alexa ranking and Google page rank update.
Have I tried guest posting already?
Well, it would be my first time as well. I have written my first draft, and by the end of this week I will be telling you if my post is accepted by the editor of my chosen blog.

So stay tuned for updates, I will be sharing more tips too.

Image Source: herecomesthesun-kelly.blogspot.com

See you.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Write Really Really Fast - An Effective Writing Exercise

Am here sitting in the net cafe, Sunday mid-afternoon, I still have too many pages left on my Law book for tomorrow's challenge with my professor. Am not done reading yet, the humid atmosphere at my room got me walking and slipping inside an air-conditioned net cafe. Way back on the late of 2011 and early 2012, I used to be here almost every night for SB, then here I am again.
Last night, I published my post about 5 Powerful Tips on How to Write Blog Post Fast During Break Time, today, this is a continuation to the tips that came out from my head as a fruits of my writing experiments over the months.
How to write really really fast?
Well, yes, if you are like me, you have the right to ask how can you really write in speed. Writing really fast is not bad, I told it and I emphasize it in my post - How to Write Faster Maintaining the Quality of Your Content. Indeed, this habit is productive in our blogging career, specially because the term "blog" means writing and posting fresh contents everyday. Anyway, you are not oblige to write, no one well told you "your blog is empty today". Rather, if you really think something good will happen in the future because of your "blog" then you must take the responsibility in writing.

This very moment, as you can notice it, am writing fast - yes.
Writing fast is about sitting and concentrating and putting all your thoughts on your post editor, not regarding if you got the good flow of words or spelling mistakes.
This is about "taking advantage" of the time where your mind is envelope with your passion in writing. This is about the work of your thoughts and "imagination" and fingers. Think, type until you got all the things you want to say.

You know, I believe that in a point of time, we have the ability to write one single post, or an ability to explain one single subject in "just a flow of thoughts". If we lost it, we will not find the trace or we might had a hard time finding it.

How to hold it from not passing by without documentation? It's "writing really really fast."
What you do when your terror professor dictates your assignment for the weekend?
All you have to do is scribble down words or keywords, or if you can really follow, his entire statement or instruction. That's what we do while we are writing. We don't give the chance that something would destruct us from loosing any precious ideas that are flowing in our bright imagination - they are fast like a flowing river, so be quick.

This post is different from the other one I made, obviously this is not a list post, but see? Did I write all the things I want to tell you write now? I do not stop because I forget the term I want to write, I do not stop because of the spelling mistakes I made, I only stop after am done catching all the things my mind dictates me to write - it's the time am going to edit my piece.

Should I sum up? If you want to write really fast, don't work many tabs on your browser, concentrate on your post editor, write everything you want to say, and rest and edit your work if you are done writing everything. It's catching the flows in your bright imagination.

This post is inspired from How to Write Fast @ Problogger.

Image Source: contentflicks

See you.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

5 Powerful Tips on How to Write Blog Post Fast During Break Time

I mean it; every new blogger must learn to write blog post fast during break time. While we are not earning a living through blogging yet, we need not to abandon our job. But we cannot stop blogging either. Working at your task serves your daily needs, getting a master’s degree, or building a better blog will serve you in the future. Both are important.
These 10 tips for writing fast are not the direct way of earning through blogging, but these will be the way so that new blogger can build a better foundation with his early blogging career, especially if he chooses to write a post during his free time. This is about producing more quality contents with the least possible time consumed.
  • Build a habit of reading and writing. This is the very secret. How can you write fast if you do not enjoy writing? How can you write fast if you don’t have enough idea to write? Let me tell you – my day is not complete without this stuff. I love to read and write; they are so intertwined with blogging. The whole thing is about frequency, the more you engage yourself in reading and writing, the more you can write in speed flawlessly.
  • Connect your post like a story. Write a post that will link to your recently published topics. Jumping to another subject needs time and research, but writing in connection to the last one you did will let your write with ease because you have more ideas to connect into. Linking your previous post is also a good SEO practice, that will make your blog united as a whole.
  • Build a habit of listing down ideas. There are good keywords that will passed by in your head, but you might forget it when you are already occupied with your task at work. This topic I am writing right now is so happened when I walked my way home. I quickly get my mobile phone and listed the idea “5 how to write fast tricks revealed” on a memo. So, today, I don’t need to think about a topic in nowhere, instead, modified and enhanced the topic I had last night.
  • Writing fast does not mean posting quickly. Writing is a process, though we want to write within 20 minutes or less, but not literally hitting the publish button of your post editor without checking if your content pass the quality requirements – you will know that if you follow the process with careful consideration. Quality content does not mean length, it means information. Is you post worth reading? Is your post free of typos and spelling mistakes?
  • Write in time interval. Writing fast does not mean again completing your post that very moment. That point in time is your drafting stage. It’s not the product yet. Your break time basically last 30 minutes, so you can spend half of that constructing your ideas; then work again or your boss will caught you blogging. The next break, read again your post, and adds additional information. The best way to edit typos in your post is reading it after finishing each paragraph. Just remember one important quality check before posting – editing. Do not hit publish until you are sure your post is good enough to be read by your valued readers.
The truth is - I wrote this post in 2 time intervals. During my lunch break, and break on the afternoon after am done collecting pictures for our company’s product catalog. I am resting, so I spend it here again. Since I edit each paragraph after I write it, I got a little thing to do this time. This post is almost good enough.

See you.

Friday, July 13, 2012

The Value of Time Management in Blogging Success

This is an update of a life of an office worker, student, and blogger. Well, yes, I able to manage serving several masters at the same time, yet, I could not say I manage them all well.

I got 24 hours a day, I worked 8 hours, I study 4 hours, how much time left for blogging? How much time left for my personal life? Well, you know, no one is a superhero, but there is a certain magic that could help anyone manages those everyday task, with 90% efficiency.

I called it – time management!
What is the value of time management in blogging success then? Anyway, recently, I have incorporated the value of patience in blogging success – if one can wait with patience, then it’s possible to reach the peak of his goal, in a certain time though the time of happening might be not certain, yet it will come.

Today, let’s focus on time management. If you choose to have a complex life, like me, then you need to learn to manage everything that you have right now. Make a proper schedule of your daily routine. How to do it?
  • Write your daily schedule, and separate things that are “must” to be done. Do you have upcoming deadlines? Work on it before starting another task. Do not leave it unfinished. If you leave important matter unfinished, see how it would stress you when it falls due.
  • Learn to say no. It’s doesn’t mean you become ineffective of your job. It’s about accepting responsibility if you are sure you can stand with it. It’s your liability if you accept a task even if you know you have no time for it. Be honest, and it will set you free.
  • Do you mean writing your schedule down? Well, the problem is, if you fail to follow what you have written. What you do is not conforming in your list, then you do not follow your guide and you might fail to manage your time well. Mean what you write, and see things falling into its proper place.
  • Make use of every minute you have. Instead of thinking to write, get a piece of paper and write, or instead of thinking about writing a new blog post, get your fingers on your keyboard and start typing one. If you have unfinished paperwork, do not worry of running out of time, instead be in a state of action. Do it, or you will be late.
  • Think positive, especially in writing a blog post. Think about SEO, but do not let it hinder you to do what you love. SEO is there, its part of blogging success, but “You” will the one who is the vital factor of your success. Be truthful to your real assumption, consider it first, say something about it – and you will have unique ideas. What I mean, do not be imprisoned of someone’s expert insights about the matter – experiment, do an enhancement!
Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Let me see you gain…

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

The Value of Patience in Blogging Success

Our words for the day is Patience and Blogging Success. These two terms are so common, yet, there are people who don't know the real meaning of it. I will tell you why is that patience is linked to blogging very closely.
Why the blogosphere needs patient bloggers?
  • The blogosphere loves competition - how can one competes if he gave up in the first place?
  • Blogging is a real challenge. You will have a downturns of your traffic anytime.
  • Would you give up if all your blog readers ran away somewhere?
  • Would you give up publishing contents seeing no comment on your posts? No. You should keep on blogging.
  • Time constraint. Your hectic schedule can seemingly grab your chance of writing new, but, you can continue blogging by considering a good time management.
  • The thinking to produce the greatest post ever. Well, a magic post comes anytime, just write, just share helpful thoughts in your head without worrying it would go viral.
  • Google Page Rank is 0 or going down. Alexa putting you at the last. Worry not. Keep away from them for a reasonable period, blog often and comeback. There would be some significant change for sure.
  • And - do not compare your blog to the well-established ones. They are there before you know what is blogging about. They knew the "thing" piece by piece. You are here to start your own, do your steps.
  • When answering your examinations, looking at your classmates, tracking what page of they are will make your worry, and you might answer less than the items given. In blogging, don't run out of time by looking at the other, checking where they are. Mind your own!
  • Listen to the expert, but do not set aside your ideas. There are to many "how to make money blogging" or "how to blog traffic" tutorials around, but you cannot apply all of them. Decide, and choose just few and work on it a little harder. Results might be delayed, so - be patient.
  • Patience? It's all that we have. Without it, we would give up, abandon or deactivate our blog, without any hope for success. Blog, just blog and success is waiting anytime. It's survival in the huge blogosphere!
Am writing this thoughts today, because sometimes, in my blogging career, like most of the beginners, am disappointed or thought of giving up for some reasons. But every end of the day, like my life offline, I must be patient or I would look forward for nothing. As an accountancy student, my professor told us: before we can reach the peak, there's a lot of sacrifices and headaches. That's true. I have do no doubt - so just keep on moving. There might be boring days, but do something to make it alive. We are on the same shoes. You are not alone. Stay positive!

See you:)

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Blogging Tools that Boost Your Blogging Experience

If you are a crazy blogger you must have come across various types of blogging tools and other blog supporting tools available online. You can make a try on various types of blogging tools to enhance your blog in terms of getting good visitors. There are tools that can help bloggers in optimizing their blog at the right level. We can also find several new blogging platforms and applications to support your blogging activity inviting blogger’s interest and it enhances the blogging performance and security at the same time.
Blog editor - Blog editor is found to be one of the best features that come along with the blogging platform. Its usage makes us more comfortable as they help to make your blog writing easier even when you are offline, which can be taken to a live online state when you login to your account page. This helps in adding pictures to your post by just drag drop option. Previously, I shared a technique about writing fast without internet connection using one of the best blog editors.

SEO Book -This is one of the blogging tools that provide you option to select free as well as payable SEO tools that are of best of your choice. This tool mainly used by most of the SEO Professionals, Bloggers and webmasters who are fully focused upon enhancing their blog. This tool can be installed to various types of web browsers and are easy to use tool that helps in optimizing and increasing your traffic ranking.

Shareaholic - Shareaholic is one of the best set of blogging tools that helps you in sharing your blog post over social circles which is suitable for any type of browser. Most of the bloggers make use of this type of tool to enjoy the services of saving your blog’s unique content and share among the web. You would also wish to try Sharebar/ sharebutton or AddThis which is a blogging tool that supports your blog.

Feed burner - Feedburner is said to be an RSS management service which helps in offering custom RSS feeds. It also acts as the best tool to manage your blogs. Traffic analysis on your blog can be checked with the help of this tool and find out the number of clicks on your blog. They also leave you chance to advertise your blog by introducing some ads to your RSS feeds. This earns you money as you optimize your RSS feeds with the right form of tool functionality. I also included Feed burner as one of the top 5 tools for building a great blog.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

5 Reasons for Building and Writing a Great Blog

How long are you blogging write now? Today, I want to update my previous list about the “reasons to blog” by not actually looking at them. Why? I want to know if I’ve got the same idea as before – not too long ago, but it was the time that I know “blogging” has been a part of me. You can read it here - Top 10 Reasons Why You Have to Nurture Your Skill in Writing.

I "blog", I "write" and “post” often for the following reasons:
  • Sharing of ideas. You need not to be the expert in that field. What you need is the heart. If you spice up your post with "passion", there are lot you can share.
  • To document your knowledge. Do not keep all things in your head. Human brain is like a USB. There are limitations, and there is a danger of corruption. You cannot remember all the you have learned, you might forget some. How if you will do the most significant ones?
  • A best form of leisure habit. What you do while you are free? Read? Scan notes? Play poker? Chat? A best activity during your free time is the one that give you something in return, a different feeling of achievement. Just look at your blog. Scan your archives. Amazed?
  • Blogging let your validate assumptions. There are useful and helpful techniques not just limited to our life online, but our life in general. Blog about it, and see if it works for yourself. There are times worth experimenting, it will gonna paid off later.
  • Build a foundation of a living online. Yes. I am saying it right. Blogging is like planting a tree, it will grow and eventually bear fruits, then you can harvest them. Same here, if you blog, it will grow and get huge traffic and let your "make money blogging". This topic written by Darren Rowse at Problogger will tell you how he makes money from several blogs he maintained. It is so possible for every blogger once reaching a milestone in his blogging career like this notable blogger.
Let's talk a little about "Make Money Blogging".
Most of us have invested our time, effort, expertise and money to yield something in return that would gonna equate to a good and decent living. Yes, that is true. I decided to go back to school, taking a course more difficult than I expected, but I cannot turn my head away from SB, because I know I have a future for it- a bright one.

It's about harvesting what I have planted, watered, and cultured. How can a tree not bear fruit in that case? Money blogging comes out after patience and effort - and the mission to provide quality and great contents.

Image Source: scottfitz.com

See you:)

Friday, July 6, 2012

How to Use Twitter Hashtags to Search for Blogging Tips and Tools

Twitter Hashtags are markers for important keywords and phrases. If you marked them with hashtag, it will be searchable, so people can see it and follow or click your link. Today, twitter is abundant with so many helpful tweets if you are looking for tips and tools for blogging. Twitter Search will lead you to blogs and sites you need to boost your blogging career!
How to use Twitter Hashtags?
Think of an important keyword or a key phrase. Type it on the search box, say #bloggingtips, phrase are typed without spaces.
Let me share my honest opinion about twitter before. I used to be there, but am not engaging to something. Am a total ghost. I hope you know what I mean. I have no interaction, my intention was to only get several followers for my blog. But not now. Recently, twitter and facebook integrated each other for better users' experience. Since then, I used to appreciate both social networks, until such time I learned to use hashtags to search helpful tweets and links to people who have same interests or activities with mine. I used to use the hashtags for search purposes.
Learn more about Hashtags secrets!
  • Firstly, Find useful blog tips and tools using hashtags. Search for your favorite topics with #keywords or #phrase. Aside from using Google to find for helpful topics and related blog or website, today you can enjoy querying twitter.
  • Secondly, Promote your tweets using hashtags. How can you promote your articles, tweets anyway? How can you make it searchable by some other users? By putting hashtags before a keyword or phrase without space/s, you make it searchable. Some people may find your tweets helpful.
Am using hashtags for my tweets now?
I want to be honest here. No, not yet. I have known this upon visiting my twitter account last time, so what I said about the promotion of your tweets is a mere assumption. Am going to find that out soon, hope you too. One of my future topics is about my experiment regarding this.

For the time being, we already know that we can search helpful blog tips and tools via twitter using hashtags, and, most likely, marking our tweet keywords or phrase with hashtags will send good traffic to our blog. See? Help me validate this.

See you:)

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Write Fast without Internet Connection Using Offline Blog Editors

What are offline blog editors? These are simply software intended for you to write, edit and publish post without an internet connection. Have you ever wonder drafting a post without the temptation of other social activities such as going to twitter or facebook instead?
What are the benefits of using blog editor?
Blogger has been a very good blogging platform, it's post editor is dynamic. Every now and then, it automatically saves your post without saving it manually, in a couple of seconds I guess. No way of worrying you will lost an entire paragraph, however, am here to give you some alternatives. There are still some benefits bloggers can get of using blog editors. Here are some important considerations:
  • When your offline. There are instances that you can't control it from ruining your online career. So wait for it to come back, or use offline editor.
  • When your internet connection is slow. Do you want to embed videos or upload images to your post? You can't do that easily with a slow connection, you have to wait.
  • Write without waiting. This is synonymous to a slow connection! Opening your online post editor, provided by your blog platform cost your time. Alternatively, use offline blog editor and write as fast as you can without loading time problem!
  • Copy and Paste Easily. This is one of the important features. Even at blogger post editor, if I copied a written post in a word document, it would give me text without line breaks. But with this alternative, no formatting change.
So what now? Well, you can try one of the best blog editors that can be downloaded for free and safely installed in your PC. Here are some recommendations:
    According to David Risley,
  • Windows Live Writer is the best for Windows, and
  • Marsedit for Mac.
What is Windows Live Writer?
Windows Live Writer is brought to us by Microsoft for Windows. If you are trusting Microsoft for a long time now, so am sure you can with this dynamic desktop application. You can create a compelling post and it would work best with the existing blogging platform you use including blogger, wordpress and more. You can download this for free via cnet or softonic.
What is Marsedit?
Marsedit, they say, is great for Mac users and integrates best with your blogging software or platform. It has a spell-checker, drafts and more features and functions. However, unlike the first one, you will only enjoy 30-day free trial. After that period, you are asked to get the license. But if it will help you grow your blogging career, why not? Download it at red-sweater.
See you:)

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Change Default Post Unordered List Style for Blogger in Few Steps

We are talking about css or html list style default in blogger template. Before, I was wondering how to actually customized list style specially for unordered list. Through some experiments, am able to customized list with an image marker. Today, I will gonna teach you a quick step by step tutorial on how customized blogger unordered list style type. I will introduce 3 commonly used:
circle, square, image list marker
  • How about changing your list into this type?
  • How about this one?
  • Or how about SB custom style? Like it? Use it.
Decided? Want to customize yours? Let's go...
In few steps, we will add a css style to your blogger template, and all your existing list post with unordered list style will be changed.
  1. Go to your blogger template, back up your current theme, and proceed!
  2. Search for ]]></b:skin> by CTRL+F.
  3. Above ]]></b:skin>, paste the code below, choose one.
  4. Save your template and you're done!
Code Choices
For Circle:
/* list style circle www.simplifiedblogging.com  */

.post ul {list-style:circle;

}

.post ul li {

line-height: 1.4em;

margin: 0.3em 0;

padding: 0 0 0.8em 10px;

}
For Square:
/* list style square www.simplifiedblogging.com  */

.post ul {list-style:square;

}

.post ul li {

line-height: 1.4em;

margin: 0.3em 0;

padding: 0 0 0.8em 10px;

}
For Image List Marker:
/* list style with backgroud image www.simplifiedblogging.com  */

.post ul {list-style:none;

}

.post ul {list-style:none;

}

.post ul li {

line-height: 1.4em;

background: transparent url(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-HAoD1LUp0wc/T1g1iqgrg9I/AAAAAAAAB6U/80v-pHB4BbQ/s16/bulletgreen1.png) no-repeat scroll 0px 4px;

margin: 0.3em 0;

padding: 0 0 0.8em 20px;

}
You can change the image source with another image you want. If you have on your PC, upload it to Picasa or your favorite photo hosting site and upload it. Right click on the uploaded image and copy the image location! Paste it instead the one I highlighted.

See you :)

Monday, July 2, 2012

The Easiest Way in Creating Permalink as Post Custom URL

Recently, I tried to help spread the good news about Permalink newly introduced by blogger. I assumed you have known it by now, and am sure you enjoyed creating your custom URL for your blog. This time, as I partly discussed this in my recent post, I want to share my technique in creating Permalink easily, without even adding extra task for writing your latest content. Somehow, some people are hesitant to try new, because they thought it's an additional labor, but this time, let's make it lighter.

Creating your Permalink as Post Custom URL for a better blog seo is as easy and instant like clicking the publish button of your blog. Here we go:
Custom URL = Post title = Permalink
That's the easiest formula. Write your title, then formulate your permalink by just replacing spaces to dash. I mentioned that already, this time I will give emphasis to it. You can either use Word document or Word counter tool, it's up to your choice, but I guess am more comfortable with Word document so I will use it.
Writing my title for this post:
The Easiest Way in Creating Permalink as Post Custom URL
That consist of 56 characters including spaces. Remember, our title should not exceed 70 characters.
Writing your Permalink:
The-Easiest-Way-in-Creating-Permalink-as-Post-Custom-URL
What I did is only replace spaces with dashes. The character count remains 56! So, it's ready.
Where to find the Permalink?
Please go to draft.blogger.com, then go to new post, then permalink and choose Custom URL. See image below (click to see the full size).

See you :)

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Custom Post URL Using Permalink by Blogger to Improve SEO

This post has
  • a. discussion/explanation, and
  • b. screen shots at the bottom.
Remember when blogger team updated the blogger platform, they made available for all users the upgraded blogger interface, a more friendly dashboard for blogging. Who can forget the new threaded comment? Or the search preferences options? Well, I guess those are highlights. Today, we got an important addition - it's the option for users or bloggers to create a custom post URL for their post with the new Permalink introduced by the team via draft.blogger.com
Autmatic URL vs. Custom URL
  • We can easily differentiate, automatic URL is chopped, not a complete one - or it cannot stand on it's one unlike a complete sentence. Not that good. e.g. /how-to-write-faster-maintaining-quality.html
  • Custom URL is an URL created by you. Be sure it's targeted, precise, and can tell readers what's your post all about. e.g. /Update-AddThis-Sharing-Tool-to-Include-Pinterest-Button-and-Google-Plus.html
  • Use at least 70 characters, just like you write your post title, that includes spaces.
  • Substitute spaces with dash - and do not use other special characters or punctuations.
Using Permalink surely adds the work - but this is an important seo updates, so you should mind this. This is not yet added to blogger, this is available for users for "testing" or sort of, it's the time to cooperate with the blogger team so that this would be added to blogger officially. For the time being, access Permalink via draft as provided above.
Quick Tips on How to Create a Custom URL
  • Always bear in mind that post title character limit is 70, though you can choose longer. That's the ideal anyway.
  • Your Custom post URL is your post title, create a targeted, precise title less or at least 70 characters, your Permalink must consist of text and dash only, though you can use other characters. Dash is used to separate words or text, e.g. Update-AddThis-Sharing-Tool-to-Include-Pinterest-Button-and-Google-Plus
  • One way to write your permalink is in an open word document. First, write your title and count characters by highlighting, write clicking on it and going to the bottom left corner of the document that say, e.g. Words:10/10, if you are not familiar, please refer to my post - The Uses and Importance of the Blogger Upgraded Interface Every Blogger Must Know, scroll down at the bottom, or;
  • Use a Word Counter Tool, I guess this is a lot quicker than the first option. Paste your entire post title here, and it automatically shows the counts of characters, and then replace spaces with dashes, as I shown in the screen shot below (that would be your instant permalink).

  • Make it a habit, every time you draft a post, open a word document and craft your title first, count the characters, and if you're convinced with it, in the next line, write your permalink ready for "copy paste" OR use the second option - the word counter tool!

  • How to write a good title? Well, precise, descriptive, and always consider using the keyword tool, please refer to my post - How to Find a Keyword for a Better Blog SEO!

  • Not the least, if you want to dig more about this, we have a comprehensive tutorial about Permalink, ideal character counts and so on at MBT - Blogger Introduced Permalink Option..., check it out!

Permalink Ready?
It's time to use it as your Custom URL... excited? See screen shot:
Click "Done" and you get the preview of your custom post URL - it is descriptive than the automatic ones:
So? Try it :)

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