Friday, October 30, 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009

FREE COMPUTER BOOKS


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SOCIAL NETWORK

SOCIAL NETWORK




ibibo.com is India’s first entertainment and talent based social network. It gives the youth of India a unique platform to showcase their talent, express themselves, create their own social network, audience and fan club and hence get recognition.

The youth of India, right across the length and breadth of the country have an inherent self confidence and a burning desire to express their talent to the rest of the world. It is this pressing need for recognition that ibibo understood and is meeting the same by providing a platform for the youth.

Talent could be modelling, singing, dancing, photography, blogging or more – ibibo is the canvas where it can be expressed and displayed to the world at large.

ibibo.com was launched in January 2007 and it has continually evolved by listening to and then meeting the intrinsic needs of the country’s young people. The core age group is 18-24, with a male, female ratio of 70:30. The ibibo community is currently more than 4 million strong, making it the largest India based social networking site in the country. And most importantly, 59% of user base is from tier 2 and tier 3 cities and towns of India.

The ibibo community uses a plethora of powerful communication tools to connect and share their expression, ranging from instant messaging, e-mail, blogging, photos, videos, asking and answering questions, exchanging free SMSs and chatting.

ibibo’s vision has been to provide a platform to the ibibo community to showcase their talent and get recognized. In line with this vision, ibibo has been incubating and unleashing numerous innovative talent applications for the youth. And it has been recognizing and rewarding individuals with immense talent.

ibibo’s baseline “i Build, i Bond” is the crux of its existence. It empowers a user to showcase his talent by expressing himself and thus, build and bond with an eager audience for his or her talent.

Access to the right kind of target audience is motivating corporate, brands and movie production houses to opt for ibibo as the most effective platform to engage with their consumers. ibibo.com enables them to leverage the viral power of the social network and to intimately interact and engage with their customers. ibibo creates customized branded applications for advertisers to target the right set of audience.

In a short span of time, ibibo.com has also received its due recognition from different quarters of the industry. The company has become one of the fastest growing Internet based social media businesses in India.

CLICK HERE TO JOIN

WAY2SMS


WAY2SMS



SMS communication totally cost free to mobile users,

at the same time, enables advertisers to reach out to millions of mobile users through the revolutionary concept of 'Mobitisement' (advertisement on mobile phone).

This pioneering effort has already captured the imagination of millions of mobile users across the globe. More than one lakh users visit Way2SMS every day, and they are just not from India alone, but come from as many as 126 countries globally!

Mobile users can register at absolutely no cost with Way2SMS.com, and start sending out text messages to their near and dear ones across the country. Receivers of the messages need not be registered Way2SMS users.

Each text message that is sent out has an advertisement appended to it, thus making it the revolutionary 'Mobitisement'.Way2SMS generates revenue through Mobitisements.

IF YOU WANT TO SEND MORE FREE SMS PLZ CLICK HERE

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

YOUTUBE

YOUTUBE

Founded in February 2005, YouTube is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.

Everyone can watch videos on YouTube. People can see first-hand accounts of current events, find videos about their hobbies and interests, and discover the quirky and unusual. As more people capture special moments on video, YouTube is empowering them to become the broadcasters of tomorrow.

YouTube received funding from Sequoia Capital in November 2005 and was officially launched one month later in December. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen proceeded to become the first members of the YouTube management team and currently serve as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer respectively.

In November 2006, within a year of its launch, YouTube was purchased by Google Inc. in one of the most talked-about acquisitions to date.



IF YOU WANT WATCH MORE VEDIO'S PLZ CLICK HERE

METACAFE


METACAFE

Metacafe is one of the world's largest video sites, attracting more than 40 million unique viewers each month (comScore Media Metrix). We specialize in short-form original content - from new, emerging talents and established Hollywood heavyweights alike. We're committed to delivering an exceptional entertainment experience, and we do so by engaging and empowering our audience every step of the way.

Since 2003 Metacafe has been one of the top independent online video sites, and we're a leader in the evolution of digital entertainment. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in Tel Aviv and New York. Metacafe is privately held and investors include Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.


IF YOU WANT TO MORE VEDIO'S PLZ CLICK HERE

ABOUT PC HELL


ABOUT PC HELL



Everyone has been to PC Hell at one time or another. It's that place you visit when your personal computer is driving you insane with problems, glitches, and so on. To try to soothe the frustration, we'll provide some tips, hints, and troubleshooting remedies to help you get out of PC Hell. Be warned however, sometimes there is no exit....

IF U WANT TO KNOW MORE INFORMATION ABOUT PC HELL PLZ CLICK HERE

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

BEST MOBILE STUFF


BEST MOBILE STUFF

M9 is an online destination to share and download FREE content for your mobile phone. Over 4 million wonderful members are sharing the fun and 7 billion free downloads served!

if u want to know more information plz click here

Free computer books

Free computer books



choose greatone consists of a huge collection of Free online Computer, Programming, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technical Books, Lecture Notes and Tutorials. It is very well categorized by topics, with 12 top level categories, and over 150 sub-categories. It has both pattern and keywords search engines for you to find the titles quickly. The keywors search engine is powered by freecomputer books

if u want more computer books plz click here

placement consultants

placement consultants

We are a executive search and recruitment company. Our excellence is in providing highly qualified and experienced professionals for Senior, Middle and Junior Management Level. Our specialization is in understanding company needs, and providing candidates with relevant experience and skills to meet your needs. Our mission is to recruit responsible people in respect of vacancy and company needs. Today's highly competitive world requires experienced, skilled and hardworking professionals to get an edge in the rat race. We partner you in this endeavour for providing professionals.


if u want know more plz click here

Monday, October 26, 2009

Govt jobs


GOvt jobs

If you want to get good govt job plz click here

Software jobs

Software ware

Software jobs India displays IT jobs in India. It is the premier hub, for cutting edge software positions in India. Software professionals looking for a change, click here !!. Our unique offline job and candidate matching system enhances us in maintaining confidentiality. Also our venture with top IT companies from India, boosts your software career.



if u want to get good job plz click here

Placement papers


Placement papers


many companies placement paper plz click here

Latest Scholarships

Latest Scholarships

A scholarship is an award of access to an institution or a financial aid award for an individual (a "scholar") for the purposes of furthering their education. A scholarship may be awarded based on range of criteria, which usually reflect the views or purposes of the donor or founder of the award.

Another meaning of “scholarship“ is the pursuit of a research subject, usually in arts or humanities (as opposed to science). In both scholarly and scientific fields, the word “scholarship“ is used to mean deep mastery of a research subject, often achieved through university studies.


know more information about scholarship plz clickhere


PREPARATION GRE

PREPARATION GRE

The Graduate Record Examination (GRE) is administered by the Educational Testing Services (ETS) for admission into all graduate academic programs (except management) in universities across USA and Canada and some selected universities across the world including India. The exam is a Computer Adaptive Test and is administered at any of the Sylvan testing centers in the country after prior registration.


IF U WANT TO KNOW MORE CLICK HERE

GATE PREPARATION


GATE PREPARATION

Many students may not be aware that there are several institutions in this country, offering specialized postgraduate programmes in various disciplines. Attractive scholarship / Assistantship for postgraduate courses in engineering / Technology? Architecture /Pharmacy at Engineering colleges / institutes in the country ,are available to those who qualify through GATE. Some Engineering colleges / institutes specify GATE as a mandatory qualification even for admission do students to post graduate programmes. The candidate is required to find the procedure of final selection and award of scholarship / Assistantship from the respective Institution to which the candidate seeks admission. GATE qualified candidates in Engineering subjects) will also be eligible for the award of junior research fellowship in CSIR Laboratories.

IF U WANT TO KNOW MORE INFORMATION ABOUT HOW PREPARE GATE PLZ CLICK HERE

RESUME

Build Resume

If you are a new entrant in the job market, you need to perfect your resume before applying for your 1st job

Since you are fresh out of college, use your education as your strong point. Aggregate %, CGPA, accolades, club participation, etc. will be your focus.

if u want to know more information about how to make resume click here

More Google Products

Google Alerts
Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:
monitoring a developing news story
keeping current on a competitor or industry
getting the latest on a celebrity or event
keeping tabs on your favorite sports teamsCreate an alert with the form on the right
click here to join
Blog Search
Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs. Google is a strong believer in the self-publishing phenomenon represented by blogging, and we hope Blog Search will help our users to explore the blogging universe more effectively, and perhaps inspire many to join the revolution themselves. Whether you're looking for Harry Potter reviews, political commentary, summer salad recipes or anything else, Blog Search enables you to find out what people are saying on any subject of your choice.
Your results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger; our blog index is continually updated, so you'll always get the most accurate and up-to-date results; and you can search not just for blogs written in English, but in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, Swedish, Malay, Polish, Thai, Indonesian, Tagalog, Turkish, Vietnamese and other languages as well.
click here to join
Books
Search the full text of books
click here to visit
Google Chrome
A browser built for speed, stability and security
Desktop
Search and personalise your computer
Directory
Browse the web by topic
Images
Search for images on the web
News
Search thousands of news stories
Scholar
Search scholarly papers
Toolbar
Add a search box to your browser
Web Search
Search billions of web pages

Friday, October 23, 2009

Blogger Features

Blogger Features

We created Blogger to give you an easy way to share your thoughts — about current events, what's going on in your life, or anything else you'd care to discuss — with the world. We've developed a host of features to make blogging as simple and effective as possible


Getting Started

Publishing your voice is easy and free

Creating your blog with Blogger takes just a few easy steps. In a matter of minutes you can start posting text, photos, videos, and more to your blog. Post as often as you want; it's free. Check out this article on How to get started or watch the How to create a blog with Blogger video.

Simple-to-use interface

Follow a few basic steps to start posting to your blog. Our simple-to-use interface lets you change fonts, bold or italicize your text, adjust text color and alignment, and more. As you compose each new blog post, Blogger saves it automatically, without interrupting your typing. There's also an easy-to-use spell-check feature and a simple way to add labels to your posts. In addition, Blogger includes an HTML editor that lets you fully customize the look and feel of your posts.

Your free website

When you create your blog, you can host it for free on Blog*Spot. Just choose an available URL and you're ready to go. If you change your mind and want a different URL later, making the change is easy. Blogger also includes a custom domain option; you can have a domain name, like example.com, and we'll still host your blog there, giving you all of Blogger's great features.

Customize your template

You can choose from many templates for your blog; simply pick the one that best fits your needs. In addition, you can customize your blog's design using our intuitive drag-and-drop interface. You can also add powerful gadgets such as slideshows, user polls, or even AdSense ads. Changing the fonts and colors on your blog is easy too. If you want more precise control over your blog's layout, you can also use the Edit HTML feature.

Add photos and videos to your post

You can easily add a photo to your blog post by clicking on the image icon in the post editor toolbar. Your photos are then hosted in your free Picasa Web Albums account, where you can order prints and organize photos into albums. Adding a video to your post is just as easy; just click on the film-strip icon on the post editor toolbar to get started. Videos uploaded through Blogger are hosted on Google Video.

More Features

New! Develop your community

Let your readers follow your blog by adding the Followers gadget to your layout. With this gadget, your readers can click the "Follow This Blog" link to add your blog to their Blogger Dashboard and Google Reader account. They also have the option to add their image and profile to your blog to tell the world that they're a fan.

New! Feedback from your readers

It's easy for readers to leave comments on any of your blog posts, giving you useful, timely feedback. They can leave comments right below the post, in a pop-up window, or on a separate page. You can also use Reactions to let your readers quickly provide feedback with just one click.

New post notifications

Your readers can choose to subscribe to your blog's feeds, so they're notified whenever you publish a new blog post. You can also customize what's shared in your blog's feed, and set up your blog to email new posts automatically to specific email addresses or mailing lists.

One simple ID

Because you can login to Blogger with your Google Account — which also gives you access to Gmail, iGoogle, orkut, etc. — you have one less username and password to remember. Your blog's address can also be used as an OpenID to give you a single digital identity across the web. Since your blog can accept comments from OpenID users in addition to registered Blogger members, it'll be easier for all your readers to leave feedback and participate in your conversations.

Languages of the world

Blogger is currently available in 41 languages including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian speakers can use Blogger with Right-to-Left display and formatting. And transliteration is available for five Indic languages.

Advanced Features

New! Posting on the go

Blogger has many additional ways for you to post to your blog. You can post to your blog from your mobile phone or through a secret Mail-to-Blogger email address. Or use the Blogger Post Gadget to edit and publish posts directly from your custom iGoogle homepage. With these options, it's easy to post to your blog whenever you want, from wherever you may be.

Group blogging

With Blogger, it's easy to create a team blog, allowing multiple bloggers to contribute to a single blog. You select which team members have administrative authority and those who are just authors. You can also choose to make your blog private and restrict who can view it. This puts you in full control of your blog.

Third-party applications

You can choose among a host of third-party applications that integrate with Blogger to make it even easier for you to blog. Be sure to check out code.blogger.com if you're a developer and want to create your own great app.

Even more features...

We're constantly developing new features for Blogger; check out Blogger Buzz to stay on top of all the latest additions and changes. If you want to try some of our experimental features, check out Blogger in draft. And if you need more information about any of Blogger's features, be sure to visit the Blogger Help site or discussion group. To see what others are posting, check out Blogs of Note and Blogger Play. We hope you like what we've created.

if u want to creat your own blog plz click here

Thursday, October 22, 2009

How to make website highrank in Google and Yahoo!

How to make website highrank in Google and Yahoo!


When a search is made on a crawler based search engine thousands of pages are found matching to the search terms but only 10 or 11 results are displayed on the first result page being the most relevant ones and every website owner wishes to see his/her website appearing on that page. Here are some tips compiled for webmasters to help you reach nearer to your goal both for the keywords you think are important and for phrases you may not even be anticipating.

Never use spamming techniques: All major search engines penalize sites that attempt to “spam” the engines in order to improve their position in the listings. One common technique is “stacking” or “stuffing” words on a page. In stacking process a word is repeated many times in a row with the color of the text to be the same as the background color of the page. If the search engines spot a spamming technique, they may downgrade a page’s search engine ranking or exclude it from listings altogether. Search engines are smart these days and they compare the background color of the page to the text color and detect bulk keywords used to mislead.

Keep meta refresh rate low: Some site owners create target pages that automatically take visitors to different pages within a web site. The meta refresh tag is one typical way of doing this. Some search engines will refuse to index a page with a high meta refresh rate so try using it less frequently.

Pick target keywords: Keywords are most crucial part to concentrate on for the ranking of a website must be very carefully selected and deployed. How do you think people will search for your web page? Make a list of them and finally use them in your title, heading text, description and plain text on your pages. Each page in your web site will have different target keywords that reflect the page’s content. Your target keywords should always be at least two or more words long. Go for key phrases too because same keywords can be used in many different ways. Too many sites will be relevant for a single word let us say ‘marketing’ but is it commodity marketing, services marketing, skills marketing, IT marketing or health marketing. So to reach towards your exact goal you must head towards using key phrases that will help a lot.

Position your keywords: Keyword positioning is placing your keywords and phrases in the title, description, heading and body text of your website. The title tag being the most important so build your titles around the top two or three phrases that you would like the page to be found for and the titles should be relatively short and attractive. Your pages titles can be compared to the headlines in the newspapers that induce the reader to read the full news, in other words concentrate on titles of your pages, keep them meaningful and short.

Go for more text links: Search engines can’t follow graphic button image links or image map links that most interactive sites use, in other words crawlers can’t get into the site and usually the most descriptive pages are inside the site and not the homepage. Use graphic links but be sure to place text links to the inner pages of your site at the bottom of your homepage as crawlers can find them and reach them.

Do have a sitemap: It is always a good practice to make a site map for your website and submitting that page to the search engine. It helps the engine to index all the pages on your site and thus show the most relevant page of your site when mapped to the search term relating to the topics of your website.

Frames are stumbling blocks: Frames links are not followed by some of the major search engines so try replacing them with smart design or through meta tags. A site map will definitely help in this case.

Dynamic pages alternative: Dynamic pages created through server technologies like CGI, PHP, ASP are not visible to the search engines consider creating static pages whenever possible, perhaps using the database to update the pages, not to generate them on the fly. Also reduce the usage of symbols that appear in the URL’s because search engines malfunction when faced with such symbols. Try making static alternate page copies of the dynamic ones so that search engines can index them.

Develop link popularity: Develop link popularity for your site. Link popularity can be defined as the number of “quality” links pointing to your website. Request more and more links from sites that are related to your subject and are placed high in the rankings by engines that will shoot up you ranking automatically. Your website will have a great boost at Google if you have 20 to 30 quality links pointing to your website, the pages that have a page rank above 5. Page rank is a special rank given by Google to every page according to the relevancy in between a scale of 1 to 10.

Having relevant content: Having a very nice title and description tag alone cannot make you rank high in result listings instead the pages should be rich in content. There is a term ‘keyword density’ and that should be high on your pages. Keyword density can be defined as the number of times the targeted keywords or keywords used in your title tag appear in the body text of your pages, be it the heading text or plain text. Try including keywords in the body text of the pages.

Avoid bulk tiny text: Tiny text is the technique of placing text on a page in a small font size. Pages that are predominantly heavy in tiny text may be dismissed as spam. Or, the tiny text may not be indexed. Avoid using very tiny text in bulk on your pages.

Follow search engine rules: Some search engines like Infoseek, Alta Vista, Hotbot ban web sites which break their rules (many of the ‘insider’ techniques most experts recommend will get you banned faster than you could imagine). Don’t indulge in insider techniques if you don’t want to remain in good for short, after all choice is yours.

Submit key pages: Submit pages that you think are the most vital in your website content wise and functionality wise. Submit the complete links of those pages is a good practice, this will ensure that each and every key page of your website is indexed by the engine. Don’t trust the submission process to automated programs and services. Some of them are excellent, but the major search engines are too important. There aren’t that many, so submit manually, so that you can see if there are any problems reported.

Maintain your listings: Once your pages are listed in a search engine, monitor your listing every week or two. Sometimes strange things happen. Pages disappear. Links go wrong. SEO is all about being alert and taking required action- a never ending process. Resubmit your site any time you make significant changes. Search engines should revisit on a regular schedule. Resubmitting after major changes will help ensure that your site’s content is kept current.
Conclusion
It is fruitful to make your website more search engine friendly, because some simple changes may output big results. Even if a top ten position is not achieved for your target keywords, you may find an improvement for target keywords you aren’t anticipating. Search engines are a primary way people look for web sites, but they are not the only way. People also find sites through word-of-mouth, advertising, the traditional media, newsgroup postings, web directories and links from other sites. Don’t over stress over your ranking. You can concentrate your efforts in other areas too.

Top Blogging Tools

Top Blogging Tools


Blogging tools are designed to be easy to use. They generally don’t provide all the advanced features of a complex content management system, but rather do one task — publishing a blog — very well. To this end, they can help you:

  • Create posts. Since the purpose of a blog is to be able to post new text or information to the site frequently, creating posts should be quick and easy.
  • Upload pictures and multimedia. Many blogs go beyond text to include photos, video, or audio.
  • Display posts to visitors. A blogging platform can make it easy for readers to view your posts and to comment on them.
  • Moderate. While it’s typical to allow visitors to post comments to a blog, different platforms provide varying levels of help to weed out inappropriate contributions.
  • Publish RSS feeds. RSS feeds allow more Internet-savvy users to subscribe to your blog.
  • Configure the appearance and layout. Tools vary widely in the degree to which they allow you to configure your blog, and the methods they offer to do this.
  • Find support. Not every blogging tool offers the same degree of support: while some offer personalized assistance, others have forums where you can find answers to your questions.
  • Host your blog. While some blogging software lives on your own server, others are hosted by the vendor.
  • Get stats on your blog. Reporting features will help you see how many people are visiting your blog, and which posts are most popular.
What type of functionality should you expect in each of these areas? Some features are fairly common to all blogging tools, while others are more specialized. Below, we’ll walk through the typical features, and then show you some criteria you can use to evaluate whether a particular blogging tool is right for your organization. For specifics on the seven blogging tools we reviewed,

The procedure for creating a blog post is fairly standard across blogging platforms: simply type in a title and the text you want to appear below it. Formatting options can vary from tool to tool, however; while many blogging platforms provide easy-to-use tools that allow you to create bold text, italics, larger font sizes, and more, not every tool offers these. In this case, you’ll need to use HTML to format your text.

Formatting tools themselves also vary — while some allow you to change text color and fonts as you like, others limit you to a particular set of styles defined for the site. When choosing a blogging tool, consider your needs: if you’ll be pasting text from Microsoft Word or another word-processing program, make sure that the blogging platform can strip out extra formatting that might otherwise interfere with online formatting and RSS feeds (more about RSS feeds in a moment).

Once you’ve written and formatted your post, the blogging software will add a date and publish it to a Web page with a click of a button. Some platforms also allow you to preview your post before you make it live, or to save a draft of it.

Uploading Pictures and Multimedia

While you can publish pictures to your blog using a variety of tools, some platforms make it easier than others. A few allow you to upload images easily in a single step, while others require you to upload images separately and then add them to a post afterwards.

Some tools also automatically size and optimize images, while others require that you do this using another tool (like Adobe Photoshop). If you don’t resize photos, you risk having huge image file sizes, creating long download times for your users and monopolizing your bandwidth. Even if a blogging tool automatically resizes images, find out if it allows you to specify the dimension and alignment of your pictures on a post.

Any blogging tool will allow you to link to video or audio files already posted on the Web. If you plan to use this type of multimedia frequently, however, look for a tool that will let you upload multimedia files or even embed multimedia in a post to let your users view or listen without leaving your site. Embedding is generally done by posting a chunk of code provided by a third-party tool (like YouTube ); if you’d like to do this, look for a tool that allows you to include JavaScript in posts.

Displaying Posts to Visitors

Blog layouts tend to be fairly standard, without much variation between platforms. There are a few factors to consider, though, when making a final selection:

  • Navigation. Organizing your posts into categories can help visitors find and sort through previous posts. Not all tools support this, however.
  • Excerpts. Some tools offer the option to show excerpts (rather than entire posts) on a blog’s landing page.
  • Front-end usability. If your blog is likely to be visited by people unfamiliar with blog conventions, the links on your blogs should be intuitive. What does the visitor need to click on to view comments? How can they find a permanent URL for a post? Is the permanent URL easy to understand, or just a mess of numbers? Can you tailor these features to your needs?

Moderating

Once your post is live, it’s common to allow your readers to comment on it. While most comments are likely to be relevant and thoughtful, there may be a few inappropriate ones. If you allow comments, you’ll want to be able to keep an eye on them and intervene when necessary: therefore, make sure your blogging tool allows you to approve comments before they appear on your blog and delete unwanted contributions when necessary.

It’s also helpful to require posters to register or to submit their email address with a post. If your blog gets a large volume of comments, you may want to look for a tool that allows you to search and filter all comments, ban posts that include a particular keyword, or ban a poster by IP address.

While it will take some time before your blog builds a large following, those who do eventually get a fair amount of traffic may also encounter problems with comment spam — completely off-topic comments (generally ads) that are automatically posted. While the previously mentioned features will help combat spam, additional tools will also require users to verify that they are humans and not spambots by transcribing a wiggly set of letters (also known as a CAPTCHA); others automatically filter out spam-like comments in a method similar to email spam filters.

Publishing RSS Feeds

One popular blog feature, particularly among more Web-savvy users, is the ability to “subscribe” to blog content via RSS. RSS allows people with the appropriate software to gather the content from many blogs so they can read it all together in one place. Providing RSS access to your blog will make it more useful — and appear more professional — to your audience.

All tools provide RSS support of some sort, but check to see if you can set it up without HTML ability. There are also a number of different types of RSS formats; if, however, you’d like to provide a specific one, or multiple, check on the formats that are supported.

Configuring the Appearance and Layout

The degree to which you can configure your blog’s appearance — and how you can do this — varies widely between blogging platforms. While some limit you to a few templates, others allow you to tailor everything to your exact needs.

Begin by considering the configuration method. While some tools allow you to set up a blog without HTML, a blogging platform that allows you to use it will give you more control. If you are versed in HTML — or can hire someone who is — check to see if straightforward knowledge of HTML will be enough to configure a given tool, or whether you’ll need PHP, Perl, or even to learn a whole new tool-specific coding language.

Once you have chosen a configuration method, evaluate how much control you need. There’s a lot to consider here:

  • Templates. If you can set up a blog quickly using a template that defines the layout and colors, how many choices do you have, and how professional are they?
  • Logos. Can you upload your organization’s logo? This is a surprisingly rare feature.
  • Vendor branding. Do you need to show vendor branding — and if so, how prominently is it displayed?
  • Sidebars. Most blogs have a sidebar that can include information about your organization and links to your Web site or to other blogs. To what degree — and how easily — can you edit sidebar content?
  • Fonts and colors. Can you tailor text and colors on your blog to match an existing Web site or organizational branding?
  • Domain. Can the blog use your organization’s domain (for example, www.eBOX99.com )?
  • Widgets. Can you add in widgets — pieces of code written by third parties that allow extra functionality — like polls or images from photo-sharing site flickr?
  • Layout updates. To what degree will the platform allow you to modify templates to create a custom layout or to match your Web site?
  • Customization. Can you customize every single page, message, and element to create a completely tailored blog?

Support

If you run into problems with configuration or posting, you’ll want to know where find help. The good news is that most tools have thorough and friendly documentation. Some offer technical-support phone lines or email support desks, while others have active user communities, where you can post your questions to user forums and find code to add functionality, known as plug-ins, to your site.

Hosting Services

Consider where the code for your blogging software will actually live. If you would like a lot of control over your blog, you may want a tool that you can install on your Web site’s server or hosting service via code files that you upload and configure.

If you’d like a less complicated option, you may opt for a hosted tool — software that sits on the vendor’s server but that you can access over the Web. If you’d like a fair amount of control without installing one of these tools yourself, another option is to find a host that has the blog tool you would like to use pre-installed. (Note that some tools are much more widely pre-installed than others.)

If you plan to upload a lot of multimedia files (images, video, or audio), or you expect a large readership, you will need to consider the amount of bandwidth you can use. Bandwidth is calculated by multiplying the size of each file by the number of times it is viewed. For instance, allowing 10,000 users to view a document that is 100 KB will require 1 GB of bandwidth. If you are using a hosted blog tool, it may have a maximum amount of bandwidth you are allowed to use without incurring extra charges. If you have installed a blog tool on your own server, the bandwidth will be defined by your Web site host.

Reporting

You’ll likely want to know how many people are visiting your blog, and which posts are the most popular. Reporting for most tools is surprisingly weak, but a few will tell you the most-visited pages and posts on your blog If you want detailed reports, look for a tool that will allow you to download your raw log files for analysis. If worse comes to worst, most blogging tools will allow you to use a third-party package, like Google Analytics or Site Meter, for stats.

What about Trackbacks?

Some blogs also come with a trackback feature, which allows other bloggers to automatically alert your site when they’ve linked to your post. This feature was not noted as a priority by any of our advisors, and therefore wasn’t included in our reviews. In our opinion, Trackbacks are better suited to individuals who are trying to become well-known bloggers than they are to nonprofit organizations.

How to Choose

There are many variables to consider when selecting your blogging tool. What are the key considerations?

Consider whether you need more than a simple blogging tool.

Are you looking for a tool that will help you manage a number of different blogs? Will an editor need to approve posts from multiple authors? Will your blog support a closed community where only a specific group of people can view and comment? Do you want to combine your blog with discussion groups, so that the comments have more structure than a simple list? Will the blog be an integrated part of a Web site built from scratch? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you’ll likely want to look at not just the straightforward tools included in this report, but also at more powerful blogging and community tools, such as Drupal, Joomla, and others.

Decide whether you need to tailor the blog’s appearance.

Should your blog display your logo or match your organization’s colors and fonts? Does it need to blend in seamlessly with the look of your Web site? Or are you just hoping to get something professional-looking up quickly? Can you choose the look of your blog from a selection of templates?

Determine if someone with technical skills will be available to set up the blog.

Do you have a staff member, consultant, or volunteer who can upload files via FTP? Get your blog up and running with HTML and CSS? If that’s just alphabet soup to you, and no external help is available, you’ll need to look for a vendor-hosted tool (like WordPress.com or TypePad) that can be set up without coding, rather than one that is installed on your own server.

Weigh control and integration versus ease of getting started.

If flexibility, control, and the ability to integrate your blog with an existing Web site are top priorities, you’ll likely want to use a tool that you can install on your own server, such as WordPress.org, ExpressionEngine, or Textpattern. If getting started quickly and easily is more important, you’ll likely want to use a hosted tool like WordPress.com or TypePad.

Consider the technical expertise of the people who will be posting.

Are the people who will be using the blog novices requiring something straightforward? If so, look for software that makes it easy to post and to upload pictures in one step. If your users are comfortable around technology and even around a little HTML, pretty much any of the blogging tools mentioned in this article will work for posting.

Decide on other critical features.

If you expect to have a high volume of comments, then you should seek out moderation functionality. Is it important to be able to display posts by category? To show only excerpts (rather than entire posts) on your blog’s main page? To be able to embed multimedia files via JavaScript?

Blogger
If you have some basic HTML skills and are looking for a free and user-friendly tool, Blogger is a great choice. It’s easy to create posts, upload photos in a single step, and customize the HTML to exactly match your Web site. It also offers an easy set-up process to show your blog at your own domain (www.yourorg.org/blog) rather than at Blogger’s (organization.blogspot.com). If you’re not able to muck around with at least a little technical stuff, however, there are better choices — by default, Blogger includes a prominent navigation bar that shows the Blogger logo and random links to other blogs, which you’ll need technical chops to remove. It also doesn’t support categories. LiveJournal
LiveJournal is, at its core, a community collaboration tool that allows you to form networks of “friends” and blogs online. While it’s often used to create simple blogs, the tool isn’t the best in its realm, especially in comparison to some of the free tools (LiveJournal costs about $2 a month). It’s not very intuitive to set up, and the less-than-professional-looking templates are difficult to modify, even with advanced coding skills. If you’re looking for a tool to create an organizational blog, there are better choices. TypePad
If you’re looking to get started quickly but flesh out your blog’s look and functionality over time, TypePad may be the tool for you. It’s also the only option among the tools reviewed that will allow you to display your organization’s logo without using HTML. Easy-to-use tools allow you to tailor all colors, fonts, and images through the site, or update the site HTML through a (rather complex) set of templates. Even technical novices will be able to post text and photos with ease. Starting at $4.95 a month and ranging up to $14.95 a month for complete customization, it’s the most expensive of the hosted tools we reviewed.
WordPress.com (Hosted)
The hosted version of WordPress offers a limited number of professional-looking templates that allow you to easily get your blog up and running in just a few minutes. While this version is free, you can’t customize anything beyond the template, meaning there’s no option available to tailor colors, fonts, domain name, or logo. The comment moderation functionality is great, however, the tool easily supports categories, and it allows you to show excerpts rather than full posts on the first page of your blog. WordPress.org (Installed)
Of all the tools we reviewed that require installation, WordPress was the easiest to get up and running, and is frequently offered pre-installed or as an easy install by hosting companies. This might make it worth a look for even those without experience installing software on a server. Those with HTML skills and a little PHP knowledge can completely customize their blog setup. Other than that, WordPress’s installed version is similar to the hosted version- both offer great comment moderation functionality and support for both categories and excerpts. Free and open source. Movable Type
Movable Type is a perfectly respectable blogging tool. However, at $199 or more (depending on the number of licenses needed) for a one-time purchase, it doesn’t compare well to its free brethren. It’s the most difficult to install, one of the more difficult ones to configure, and doesn’t have many extra features to make up for it’s cost. Its inability to toggle between HTML and rich text versions of posts is particularly annoying. ExpressionEngine
ExpressionEngine is a flexible, powerful tool that is targeted at more tech-savvy bloggers. It’s relatively easy to install and configure, and you can tailor settings at a very detailed level. You’ll need an understanding of HTML to format posts. Beyond the scope of this report, it offers sophisticated support for a community of bloggers. Both a free and paid version are available. The paid plan includes unlimited technical support for a one-time licensing fee of $99.95 (for nonprofits), plus $19.95 per year for access to the latest updates. TextPattern
Also targeted at more tech-savvy bloggers, and similar in concept to ExpressionEngine, TextPattern is a flexible, powerful blogging tool you install on your own servers. It’s particularly easy to configure the look of your blog via HTML, as TextPattern’s interface includes wizards to build all the custom syntax you’ll need to reference posts. Technical novices may be intimidated by the post formatting interface, which includes a set of simple but custom formatting tags (for example, you need to put asterisks around text to bold it). The tool is somewhat limited by its documentation, which is not as clear as other tools’. Free and open source.

Getting Started with AdSense Manager 3.x

Getting Started with AdSense Manager 3.x

AdSense Manager 3.x is the latest update to the popular WordPress ad management plugin. More than a normal gradual update, version 3.x represents an almost complete rewrite to support a number of changes in the Google AdSense service and the recent explosion in new blog-targeted ad networks. As of writing, AdSense Manager 3.x now also supports Adpinion, AdRoll, AdBrite, Commission Junction, HTML Code, ShoppingAds and WidgetBucks.

The instructions below will guide you through the first steps of configuring Adsense Manager 3.x. If you are upgrading from a previous version of AdSense Manager, you can skip these instructions.
Getting Ready
Before you can do anything else, you will first need to set yourself up with an AdSense account and install the AdSense Manager plugin.

1.
You can also use Adpinion, AdRoll, AdBrite, Commission Junction, HTML Code, ShoppingAds and WidgetBucks. Once you’ve created your account your provider will give you some “Ad Code” to paste into your site. Keep this window open for later: you’ll need to be able to paste this code into AdSense Manager once installed.
2. Download AdSense Manager v3.x
Take the downloaded file, unzip and copy the /adsense-manager/ directory into your WordPress plugins directory at /wp-content/plugins/. After this is done you should have a folder at /wp-content/plugins/adsense-manager/ containing all the plugin’s files. To activate the plugin, simply go to your WordPress dashboard » Plugins and click ‘Activate’.
Upgrading for Previous Versions
If you’re upgrading from a previous 1.x / 2.x version of AdSense Manager simply copy the /adsense-manager/ directory from the downloaded .zip file into /wp-content/plugins/. This will replace the previous version with the new files. AdSense Manager will handle the upgrade of settings/etc. automatically when you next access the WordPress dashboard and show a notice if it succeeds.
Setting Up Adsense Manager
Previously you had to input your Google AdSense ID manually when setting up AdSense Manager, but this is now updated automatically when you import code. If you go to Options » Adsense Manager, you will find the following instructions for importing your first Ad Unit:
1.
2. Create a new ad unit using your network’s ad online management system.
3. Copy the ad code generated (Edit » Copy, from within your browser)
4. Go to Manage » Ad Units and paste the code into the box
5. Click Import to New Ad Unit»
Below here are the settings for Be Nice! a method for supporting development by donating a % of your Ad space and Alternate Ads to raise funds for AdSense Manager. All ads are hand-selected and family friendly, and the income generated in this way allows me to dedicate time that would be otherwise spent on a bar job.
Just enter a % value indicating the proportion of ads you wish to use to support us. If you enter 0 only your own ads will be shown (no hard feelings but please consider donating instead).
Creating Ads
All creating and editing of Ad Units is done on the Manage » Ad Units page in your WordPress Dashboard.
The simplest way to ad new Ad Units to AdSense Manager is by importing Ad Code from your network. To do this simply go to your ad network’s management page, choose your ad settings, and copy the code that is generated. This can be pasted directly into the box at the bottom-left of the Manage » Ad Unit page.

Adsense Tips – The Basic Rules

Adsense Tips – The Basic Rules


Before I begin let’s clear something up right off the bat. For every thing I tell you to do there are exceptions to the rules depending on your niche/platform and your ability to modify and experiment. Nothing is set in stone but I am going to give you the basic guide to follow. Only you will know how your site is different and you will have to use some of your gray matter to figure out what works best in your situation. My tips will serve to get you started down the right path.

If you have questions – and I know you will – then please use the comments rather than emailing me. This will allow me to answer for everyone’s benefit and save me a lot of time. Also – please give me as much info as you can when asking questions. Don’t ask why your site is getting 2 cent clicks. I will need to know what the niche is, where your traffic is from, how much traffic, what your keywords are etc to make an informed opinion. Please try and include as much relevant info when asking for help.

Rule #1

If you are going to make money with Adsense then you build your site for that purpose. You don’t slap Adsense on an unoptimized site and expect to make much money with it.

Rule #2

Adsense works best when you drive targeted search engine traffic to your site and the visitor clicks an ad targeted to the term that the user found your site with. Or a related term.

ie. John is searching for “Adsense Tips” using a search on Google. He finds your site listed for that term. He visits and at some point he sees an Adsense ad on your site for “Adsense Tips” or “How to make money with Adsense” or “Adsense for beginners” and clicks one of the ads.

That is a targeted click. You will receive the best CPC. (cost per click or in simple terms this is the amount of money Google will pay you for the click) In this case let us say you get paid $0.50 for it.

Now Bob drops in on your site because someone (maybe you if you don’t know any better) stumbled your post on stumbleupon. Bob isn’t looking for anything – he’s just aimlessly surfing the stumble sites. He doesn’t see much that interests him but clicks on an Ad just out of curiosity. He doesn’t convert for the advertiser – why would he (but sometimes it can happen) as he is just checking things out. He spends two seconds on the advertiser’s landing page and leaves.

Bob is an untargeted click. Google will pay you $0.01 for the click.

Do not get hung up on all the variables at work here. Just understand that you want to drive as much targeted traffic to your site and avoid as much untargeted traffic as you can. You want to rank well in the search engines for as many keywords as you can that are related to your niche and you want to avoid driving traffic to your site from untargeted sources. No stumbling, digging, reddit, etc. If others do it you have no control so don’t get in a flap – it happens. Just don’t chase that traffic yourself.

Overall you will get both kinds of traffic – as long as the majority of your clicks come from targeted sources you will average a decent CPC. They will never all be perfect clicks. If the majority of your clicks end up coming from untargeted sources of traffic then eventually you will be smart priced and all you will see will be the 2 cent CPC. If that happens then pull Adsense off the site and leave it off until you can change the traffic source to more targeted visitors.

Now, before you all ask, yes you can get direct traffic from other blogs linking to you or from people bookmarking you. In general these people are interested in your site’s niche and probably have related niches. Whether they are targeted or not is usually not a concern as they will be readers and are not likely to click your ads anyway. You can have a million stumblers show up too as long as they don’t click your ads you will be fine. I am not telling you that you can’t have untargeted traffic – you can – you just don’t want them clicking ads. There are programs available that allow you the option to only show ads to search visitors. If your site has a lot of untargeted visitors then use them. I am too lazy to go find the links but I am sure some of my readers will supply them in the comments. If you are new here then you may as well learn this now – I yak a lot and my friends roll in to do the leg work. :-) I encourage it because it gives them a chance to introduce themselves and they are people you should get to know – they help me, I help them and they will help you. If you have no online friends then make friends with some of mine as they will be your best resource. Just be sure to give as much as you get.

(Don’t be shy – get involved. You will notice by the abundance of comments that I belong to a growing community of like minded folks who all help each other and are far more knowledgable than any other group you will meet online. We were all beginners at one time and we don’t mind passing along our knowledge to others – take advantage of it and pay it forward when you can.)

Rule #3

Do not click your friends ads and discourage them from clicking yours. You will get banned. Google can tell when multiple clicks come from the same IP. It is un-natural and sticks out like a sore thumb. Never ever get involved with click fraud. It is not worth it and yes – you will get caught! Yes you will… you beginners had better listen to me as you are all going to try and think of a way to inflate your clicks. DON”T!!!

Rule #4

A successful Adsense site is a site that doesn’t look like an Adsense site. No splogs. It must contain legit information and serve some purpose other than simply displaying Adsense. It is against the Adsense Terms of Service to create a site for the sole purpose of slapping Adsense on it.

How you create an Adsense site for the purpose of making money with Adsense without looking like you have just created an Adsense site for the sole purpose of making money with Adsense will be discussed in the next post. (say that 5 times fast)

Rule # 5

Everything you think you know about Adsense and SEO that you read about elsewhere is crap – even if it isn’t crap. Just because some dude wrote an ebook on either subject doesn’t mean they know jack. It just means they wrote an ebook. The people you want to listen to rank on top of the search engines and don’t write books about making money online.

They make money online.

They don’t need to make money writing an ebook.

And why should you listen to me?

Because I rank on top of the search engines for just about every “make money online” keyword you can think of. Go look.

and… I’m not selling you anything.

and… I’m just a swell guy! :-)

Why am I telling you this for free? Because I need content in order to rank on top of the search engines for even more terms and It is easy for me to write about stuff I know a lot about. I also know that only 1 in 10 of you will follow my instructions. Only 1 in 100 of you will become adept enough to knock me off my perch and when you can you won’t. You will become an ally and together we will kick more ass in more niches and make even more money. In short I want and need more friends who do what I do so that we can all help each other.

Rule # 6

The best business model I know online is to provide free information for any niche that is dominated by sites that sell the info. By providing free and legit info you will bury the competition – the traffic will come to you. And you pay for it all with… yup – Adsense.

Next post I will talk about how to set up a site, how to structure your posts, how to use adsense on the site and how to get people to click on your ads without violating Google’s terms of service.

In the meantime you should re-read rule number 6 and find a niche that meets that requirement. You can also observe how I structured this post. It is perfectly optimized for the keywords I want traffic for.

How to Get Traffic to your Website or Blog

How to Get Traffic to your Website or Blog


n general there are two free sources of traffic online. These sources are broadly defined as Social traffic and Search Engine traffic. 99% of all newcomers online set up a blog or website and proceed to try and obtain social traffic. They do this simply because everyone else does it.

Social traffic consists of using social networks like Stumbleupon, Digg, Reddit, Entrecard, Forums and hundreds of other services that allow you to sign up and promote your site on them. These services are the backbone of what is known as Web 2.0 and has evolved into a newer version centered around Facebook, MySpace and the current craze – Twitter.

The general idea is to get out there and make friends online using these networks, draw them in to your site, wow them with your content and wait for the links to come pouring in from your adoring fans. As the links increase your traffic increases as more and more people find your site and in turn tell more people through the use of more links and one day you will become famous just like Darren Rowse of Problogger or failing personal fame you may still develop a hugely popular site like Engadget or the Huffington Post.

There is a certain appeal to all this – becoming popular has many advantages aside from the most obvious monetary considerations. Many people blog because they have something to say and just want an outlet for their views. Others dream of being a writer and use the net to publish their stories. Get your work out there and get discovered. Musicians and filmmakers use the net in the same way. Whatever your reason for starting a blog or website there will come a day when you say to yourself, “what is the point if no one is reading or watching or listening to my creative output?”

It is at that point that you will begin your quest to find traffic and invariably you will turn to the social networks. You will discover quite quickly that you can get social traffic fairly easily using Stumbleupon or even easier using Entrecard. Twitter might be the easiest of all. You will join forums and work at becoming an “authority” in your niche. You will make friends. They will send links. All will be wonderful… for a while.

Six months to a year down the road two things will happen – it always happens and it happens whether you have achieved a large readership or not. You wake up one day and realize that you are working like a dog and there is little to no benefit from all that work. Driving social traffic is a constant grind. If you stop posting, twittering, digging, stumbling, dropping entrecards, leaving comments on other blogs or any of the other daily chores needed to keep your name out there the traffic dries up. Moreover your health deteriorates and your friends and family are neglected as you spend hours and hours sitting in front of your computer single mindedly developing your brand. Even if you have managed to develope a few thousand RSS subscribers – something most beginners think of as a successful blogger – you will still ask yourself “is all this work worth it?”

Why? Because at some point everyone wants to be compensated for all that work. You may say now that you are just doing it because you like to “write” or you just need an outlet to release your opinions and I believe you. The problem is that you will not be satisfied just writing or opinionating if no one is reading your output. You will get sucked into the social traffic cycle and find out that it is work. And when you work that hard you will eventually want a monetary reward for it – in one form or another. Having 10,000 readers coming and reading just wont cut it if a book deal doesn’t materialize. Or you can’t make money from advertisers. Or JV (joint venture) offers don’t show up. No matter what your reason for blogging at some point you are going to want a reward for it and the more work you put into it the more return on time invested will be expected.

And that is the problem – you wont get a return from social traffic. They don’t spend money – they don’t click ads and the advertisers are no longer supplying inventory to social sites as that fact has become known. Today.com claims 10 million page views a month. That is fairly significant traffic. So why don’t we see the big advertisers on this site? Where are the finance/credit/bank advertisements? The auto company ads? The big brand names? What we see are ads for dating sites. And Adsense.

The advertisers are not coming to this domain in spite of the traffic. Today.com has had to find a means to monetize this site using affiliate marketing platforms which they are currently rolling out. Adsense does not perform well as the sub-domains are not targeted for premium CPC (cost per click) and are smart priced. They get pennies per click from adsense and the CTR is dismal at best. Today.com is a successful domain based on traffic but like many others online they have found out that all traffic is not equal. The majority of this domains traffic comes from social networks and social traffic does not convert well – meaning they can’t make much profit from it.

If you are reading this then chances are you have a site yourself and you spend a fair amount of time reading blogs and surfing the net. You are social traffic. When was the last time you bought something on a friends site? Or clicked on an Ad? You don’t do it often if at all and neither do all the other social bloggers and social network users. You are here to read. You are online looking for information and not looking to buy something.

Search engine traffic is quite different. Most people use the search engines – Google by far – when they need to find something. You don’t go to Today.com when you want tickets to a Broadway musical or are looking for a hotel in New York. You use Google. You have a purpose in mind and that usually entails buying something or at the least you need specific information about a specific thing. Search traffic is targeted and whether you are trying to make money online or just want readers, search traffic is the traffic you want because it consists of people looking specifically for what you are offering.

If you have a humor blog for no other reason than just to entertain then why not target people looking for humor blogs? The easiest way to do that is to rank number 1 in Google for the term “humor blog”. On average 2400 people a month will find your site. If you rank for more related keywords like “humorous photos”, “Humor writer”, “humor”, “funny pics”, “funny stories” etc then you will eventually have thousands of daily visitors to your site. And this is the best part – you can post when you want or not at all and the same traffic will show up every day. Moreover you will never have to spend 1 minute commenting on other blogs or stumbling or dropping entrecards or doing any of the other chores involved in social marketing. And the icing on the cake – your search traffic will click your ads. They will read your humorous post and because they found you while searching for humor they are likely going to click on those ads that point them to other humorous sites. They don’t care if they make you money or not – they are not bloggers. They are civilians looking for something and will click anything that leads them to their goal.

The process for obtaining search traffic is actually very simple but it does take work and most of all patience. It can also be done in conjunction with social traffic. The problem is 99% of bloggers only chase social traffic and completely shut the door on search traffic right from the get go. This doesn’t have to be and I will show you how to optimize for the search engines using some basic SEO techniques that will pay off hugely by the time you wane on social traffic. You can use social networks for immediate traffic while building your site for long term search traffic. If you don’t achieve search traffic then you will eventually burn out and all the social traffic in the world will not change that fact.

SEO Basics that must be used in order to drive search traffic to your blog are as follows;

You must use your keyword in your URL.

You must use your keyword in your Blog Title.

You must use your keywords in your Post Titles.

keywords and related terms in your post content.

You will get the best search results by only posting one post per page unless all your posts are related to the same keywords.

If using Adsense then always stick to one post per page.

If using photos then your keywords should be used in the alt tags.

You must use html for the bulk of your pages content. (plain old text)

These simple little steps are all you need to do to optimize your site for the search engines. You will get indexed for your keywords and ranked well. How high you get ranked depends on the competition. If there is little competition you could achieve top ranking doing little else. (Many of you experience some Google traffic for long tail keywords. This is because you used a term in your content that has little competition and Google found your site when someone searched for that term – unfortunately these terms don’t often provide much traffic) If there is a lot of competition then you will need backlinks pointing to your site using your keyword in the anchored text of the link pointing to you. That is all that is required to dominate any keyword online. Simple yes. In practice the hard part will be obtaining all the anchored backlinks needed to dominate a competitive keyword but following my on-site advice will make this task much easier – especially if you use social networks.