How to Make your Mobile Screenshots Look Awesome

It’s easy to capture screenshots on mobile devices but let’s do a quick recap. If you have an iPhone, press the Home & Sleep buttons and the screenshot image will be saved instantly. On an Android device, press the Volume Down & Power button simultaneously to capture whatever is currently on your screen. And in the case of Windows Phone 8, press and hold the Start and Power buttons at the same time to take a screenshot.

That’s a raw screenshot saved in your camera roll but you also need to add the hardware frame around your screenshots so that the captured images appear more realistic and provides better context to the viewer.
Why is that important? A 768 pixels wide screenshot of a mobile app in portrait mode could have been captured on an Android device or an old iPad – now wrap that same image inside the Google Nexus frame and everyone is saved from playing a guessing game.



A layered photo editing tool like Adobe Photoshop makes it really easy for you to add hardware device frames to any screenshot image. Go to Dribbble and search for “freebies PSD <mobile name>” and you’ll find beautiful mockups for that mobile device.

Download and import the PSD file into Photoshop and then use the File -> Place command to place the screenshot image as a new layer over the mockup. Use the Save for Web option to export the screen capture in JPEG format.

[*] Dribbble users usually add the tag “freebies” or “free” to indicate that others can reuse their design(s) for personal and commercial use. Other than Dribbble, Deviant Art and Behance are also good places to discover high-quality mobile mockups.

A Price Tracker for Amazon and Flipkart, Built with Google Docs

Get daily price updates for your favorite products via email

The prices of products listed on online shopping site like Amazon or Flipkart may vary every single day and here’s a simple Google Docs based solution to help you keep track of these price fluctuations via email. This helps because if Amazon is offering some big discount on a product that you were planning to buy, you would never miss that deal again.

Track Prices with Google Docs

All you have to do is add the URLs of products that you wish to track inside a Google Spreadsheet. The tool can track prices of all products listed on various Amazon websites (all Amazon.* country domains are supported) and Flipkart.com (if you are shopping in India).

Here’s how you can setup the price tracker inside your Google Docs:

1. Open the Google Sheet and enter one or more URLs of product pages from Amazon or Flipkart in column B. The sheet has some dummy data to get you started.
2.  
3. From the Price Tracker menu, choose the Initialize menu and say “Accept” when asked for authorization. The script is open-source and no one else will have access to your data.
   
4. From the Price Tracker menu, choose Start Tracking and your price tracker is now active. You may close the Google Sheet.
   

Add products to this Google Sheet to begin tracking their prices

You’ll get an email within a minute or two listing the current prices of the products that you have added in the Google Sheet. The sheet will then send you a daily digest (see sample email) of the product prices with visual hints on how the prices have changed since the last update.

Also, you can add new URLs or delete existing ones from the Google sheet and the background script will automatically pick the changes. And if you ever wish to stop receiving those email alerts, just choose the Stop Tracking option from the Price Tracker menu.

Internally, the Google Script uses Amazon’s Product Advertising API to fetch the latest prices of Amazon products while in the case of Flipkart, the prices are extracted from the Meta and Open Graph tags of their pages. The tool cannot track prices of Kindle ebooks since Amazon’s API doesn’t offer pricing information for Kindle titles via their API.

Use Google Search as an Online Timer

Use Google as an Online Timer

 

 

Do you need a simple timer to remind you of upcoming tasks like picking up the laundary, making that phone call to your client or for sticking to the Pomodoro technique. There are good web apps, e.ggtimer.com for example, that let you create countdown timers in the browser quickly but you probably don’t need them anymore.

That’s because you can now setup online timers inside Google itself by entering the timer command in the search box in the following format (the word “set” is optional):

timer for <time> OR set timer for <time>

The <time> can use a combination of hours, minutes and seconds. For instance, you may use search commands like set timer for 20 seconds or timer for 1 hour 2 minutes and the timer will spring into action. When the time has passed, the browser plays a sound.

One more thing. Instead of setting the time in the search command, you can just use the search query “timer” inside Google and then manually set the timer.

Use any YouTube Video as your Page Background

You are probably using a single static image as the background for your website but it may offer a slightly more richer experience if you could consider placing moving images, like an animation or a self-playing video clip, in the background of your web pages.
The Bing homepage frequently uses video backgrounds, like those penguins jumping out of an ice hole one after another, and so can you on your own website.
There are several approaches here:

• Bing uses the standard HTML5 <video> tags to serve videos on the homepage. The embedded video has a fixed size and it doesn’t resize itself with the browser.
• There are ready-to-use jQuery plugins, Tubular and BigVideo.js for example, that let you easily use any video, or a series of videos, as page backgrounds.
• The other more simple approach, uses HTML and CSS tags (no JavaScript) to help you place any YouTube video in the page background.
•  

YouTube Video Backgrounds

To get started, simply paste the code below near the opening <body> tag of your web template. You should also replace the ID with the actual video ID of the YouTube video that you would like to use in the background.

<div style="position: fixed; z-index: -99; width: 100%; height: 100%">
  <iframe frameborder="0" height="100%" width="100%" 
    src="https://youtube.com/embed/ID?autoplay=1&controls=0&showinfo=0&autohide=1">
  </iframe>
</div>
 
// Replace ID with the actual ID of your YouTube video

Internally, we are using YouTube’s IFRAME tags to embed that video such that it occupies the entire page (both width and height are set to 100%). Also, the z-index is set to negative so the YouTube video layer will appear several levels below the main content of your page.
The downside is that your background video won’t work on mobile devices and it is not possible to mute the sound of a video without using JavaScript.

Bonus Tip: Embed Background Music with YouTube

 

Remember the Geocities era when websites would automatically play background music as soon as you opened them much to the embarrassment of office workers. They mostly used raw audio files, like MP3, WAV or even the MIDI format, to embed music but you can even use any of your favorite YouTube tracks for embedding background audio.
The trick is that you embed a regular YouTube video (with autoplay=1) and set the height & width of the video player to zero so it stays invisible. This can be achieved with a single line of code which you can add anywhere on your web page.

<embed height="0" width="0" 
  src="http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/VIDEO_ID&autoplay=1&loop=1" />

Convert Multiple Currencies at Once with Google

Google, as you know, has a built-in calculator that can solve complex maths equations and can also help you perform measurement and currency conversions. For instance, you could say “1 USD in JPY” to get the exchange rate of Japanese Yen or “1 ounce in grams” to quickly convert between imperial and metric units of mass.

Google can Convert Multiple Currencies

The more interesting part, that some of us aren’t probably aware of, is that Google’s calculator can even handle multiple currencies in the same conversion. To give you an example, if you were into numismatics, you could add your British Pounds and Yen and get the value of your currency collection in US Dollars in the one search query.
This “mix and match” can be done for measurement and time conversions too as illustrated in the following screenshots. Thank you Tasha Bergson for the tip.

How to Use Creative Commons Images from Flickr

Flickr is an excellent place to find images that are available under a Creative Commons License. You may embed these images on your own website as long as your intended use meets the conditions specified in the license* and that you give proper attribution and credits to the original author.
[*] Some Creative Commons images are licensed as “Attribution Non-Commercial” and thus they may not be used on websites that, say, carry advertising. For more, see this PDF report on defining non-commercial use.

Searching Creative Commons Images on Flickr
Flickr has a dedicated page to help you easily find images that are available under Creative Commons. Or you may use alternative tools like Flickr CC, Flickr Storm and Comp Fight that are in some ways better than Flickr’s own search interface.

Using Creative Commons Images from Flickr
If you are using an image from Flickr, all they require is that the image on the external site should link back to Flickr’s page where that image is originally hosted.
The problem is that Flickr’s current style of attribution doesn’t meet the Creative Commons guidelines for attribution which require that you:

• Cite the author’s screen name (link to the author’s profile page).
• Cite the work’s title or name (link the name directly to the original work).
• Cite the specific CC license the work is under (link to the license on the CC website).

The HTML code that Flickr provides for embedding Creative Commons images on to other sites satisfies only one of the three guidelines for attribution.
You can however use an online tool called ImageCodr to generate embed code that meets all the attribution guidelines of Creative Commons as well as Flickr. Just put the URL of any Flickr image into this tool and you get a code that satisfies all the requirements.

Here’s an example of a properly attributed image:





















by Paulo Brandão
There’s little scope for errors as the tool will throw up an error message if you try using an image that doesn’t have the CC license.
A small issue though. The author of the tool inserts an invisible link to his website in the generated HTML code which you may want to remove prior to using the code.

Generate Attribution Code via Bookmarklet

Flickr CC Bookmarklet (Drag this link to your bookmarks toolbar)

If you frequently use Flickr images on your site, use the above bookmarklet to quickly generate attribution code directly from any Flickr photo page.

Transfer Contacts from one Cell Phone to another

Did you just buy a new mobile phone? The first thing that you’ll probably is copy all the phone numbers and other contact information from the old phone to your new cell.

 

How to Transfer Contacts another Mobile Phone

 

The process may vary depending upon the phone support cloud but broadly, there are three options. I will discuss the most popular mobile platforms like BlackBerry, iPhone, HTC, Nokia, Windows Phone, Samsung and Android.

1. SIM based transfer

If the address book of your old phone is relatively small and you only want to copy the phone numbers to your new cell phone, simply use the SIM card.
Just copy the phone numbers from the old phone’s memory to your SIM card, insert this SIM card into your new phone and then copy the phone numbers in your new phone’s memory. Here’s a detailed guide on how to transfer contacts from the Nokia to an iPhone using the SIM.

2. Transfer Contacts via your Computer

The SIM card based approach is good only for transferring basic phone numbers but if your phone’s address book includes long names, email addresses, and other details of your contacts, you need some sort of software to help you with the transfer process.
For instance, if you have a Nokia phone but are shifting to a BlackBerry or an iPhone, you may use Nokia’s Ovi Suite application to copy your phone’s address book to Microsoft Outlook on your desktop computer. You can then use BlackBerry’s Desktop Manager software, or iTunes in the case of iPhone, or Kies for Samsung Galaxy, to transfer contacts from the PC (Outlook) to your new phone’s address book.
Windows Mobile users, like Samsung Omnia or HTC HD2, may again use Microsoft’s Device Center (or ActiveSync for XP) to copy their phone address book to the desktop via Outlook. If you are simply switching from one Windows Phone to another, you can transfer contacts via the cloud itself using Microsoft’s My Phone service.
If you have an old CDMA based mobile phone from, say Samsung or LG, you can use the free BitPim utility to copy the phone book to your computer. BitPim is available for Windows, Mac and Linux machines and it can export address books in standard vCard format (.vcf) that you can easily import into Outlook and other contact managers.

3. Transfer Phone book “Over the Air”

If you have an Internet enabled phone, you can easily copy contacts from your old phone to the new phone over-the-air without even requiring a computer.
An online service called Mobical is free and it works with most mobile phones from Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and so on. You first need to setup Mobical on the old phone and it will create a backup of your phone contacts in the cloud. Now setup Mobical on the new phone using the same credentials and it will automatically download all the contacts from the cloud to your new phone.
Then there’s Google Sync, a cloud based service that works with BlackBerry, iPhone, Nokia   and most other mobile phones that are SyncML capable. Google Sync keeps your phone’s address book in sync with your Google Contacts. Therefore, if you now install Google Sync on both your old and new phone, they’ll have the same phone book entries automatically.
Android based phones can sync with Google Contacts out of the box – you can then export Google Contacts out as a CSV file and copy it to any other phone manually via the desktop tools.  HTC even offers a desktop utility called HTC Sync that you may use to synchronize Outlook contacts with your Android phone. This will be handy when you want to copy your HTC’s phone book to another phone that is not web-enabled.

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Setting up robots.txt on Blogger

Blogger now allows custom robots.txt, this is very useful because we can set the visibility of our articles on search engines, we can determine whether the article will be indexed by search engines or not.

By default, every blog that uses the Blogger platform will have a robots.txt as follows:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow: 

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search
Allow: /

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

And has the following explanations:


Mediapartners-Google is a robot from Google Adsense, leave it as is because if you mistakenly change that than the ads served will not fit with your content.

The next line is for all the robots and marked with an asterisk (*). On the default configuration, it is clear that the label of our blog is not indexed Disallow: /search.

Keep in mind that a slash (/) is as your homepage, so for example if you want the label to get indexed, do not just fill up with a slash like this Disallow: / because that would be you do not allow the robot tracing your blog, but it should like the example below:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow: 

User-agent: *
Disallow:
Allow: /

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

With the configuration as above then all of the articles and the label will be indexed. And to block a robot for particular page (I take the example of my FAQ page) you can simply write as follows:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow: 

User-agent: *
Disallow: /p/faq.html
Allow: /

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

Update: To resolve the pagination problems on blogspot after we remove the Disallow: /search than we can use the following configuration to block the pagination page:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google
Disallow: 

User-agent: *
Disallow: /search?updated-min=
Disallow: /search?updated-max=
Disallow: /search/label/*?updated-min=
Disallow: /search/label/*?updated-max=
Allow: /

Sitemap: http://www.example.com/feeds/posts/default?orderby=updated

After the changes, make sure everything is fit like what we want by visiting www.example.com/robots.txt. Replace the Example.com with your domain name.

Warning! Use with caution. Incorrect use of these features can result in your blog being ignored by search engines.

Note: Last updated on March 5, 2013.

4 Ways to Build Traffic To Your Website!

Attracting website traffic is one of the most important parts of making money online. The more people you can get to visit your site, the more money you can potentially make.
The primary reason why people fail online is that they don’t generate enough traffic to their website. Many people just give up because of this. This is unfortunate because there are simple methods to attract large numbers of people to your site. It likely won’t happen overnight (though it can!) but if you invest the time working on the right method, it will reward you in the end.

These simple traffic attracting methods are great for new websites and even long running blogs. It lets you use your time wisely to advertise your presence without costing you any money!
The bottom line is all about saving money wherever you can!

If you are fortunate and have money that you can invest in advertising for your website then great, you will be able to attract traffic in many different ways.

If however, you are just starting out and need people to come and visit your site, then this strategy is perfect for you!

Make the most of Social Media, Free Marketing, Content & Videos!!!

1. Social Media Marketing

Twitter

I’m sure you have heard of Twitter! You may already have a personal twitter account that you are addicted to, perhaps you have never considered going on it before.

Twitter is a revolutionary social media application that allows people to communicate across the globe. Admittedly, a lot of this communication is idle chit-chat and gossip, but it can be utilised as a powerful tool. The recent democratic uprising in the middle-east is said to have been organised via twitter and other social media.

Now I’m sure that most of you won’t be planning anything on that revolutionary scale, but I hope this demonstrates the powerful reach that Twitter can have.

You can view twitter as an amazing marketing tool that can enable you to communicate with existing and new people that would be interested in your website.

So, for starters you need to set up a twitter account for your website. Find or create a great profile picture and write a short descriptive bio that explains what your website is about. With Twitter, you only have a limited amount of characters, so make them count!

For example, a website about gardening could promote themselves through twitter. They could create a new account under the name ‘amateurgardeners’. A photo of a flower could be used as the profile picture and the short bio could be “Teaching amateurs to be better gardeners and grow their own food!”. Something along those lines, so that anybody that stumbles upon the Twitter account is in no doubt what it is about.
The next step is to start following people. Don’t just jump in and start following anybody! You need to follow people that are relevant to your niche. Find some of the biggest names in your niche and follow them AND whoever they are following. This way you are easily targeting potential visitors of your website. They will see that ‘amateurgardeners’ is now following them and seeing that the two of you have a common interest, so they may follow you back. Don’t be disheartened if not everyone follows you back straight away, the ones that do will be interested in your niche.

Time to start tweeting! There are loads of people that have twitter accounts, but don’t tweet anything. They shouldn’t complain if they are not getting enough traffic because they are not putting in the effort to engage with their audience. The more often you tweet, the more traffic you will get. But it’s not just about frequency, its about quality. You need to tweet regularly about your niche, tweeting recommendations, tips, news and most importantly what’s happening on your website. There is no point in ‘amateurgardeners’ tweeting about celebrity gossip!

For more Twitter tips, read our post – ‘10 Twitter Tips To Drive Traffic To Your Site‘
For obvious reasons, most people tweet when they are awake. If you think about it, when you are asleep you are missing out on millions of people on the other side of the world that could be interested in what you have to say. Luckily, there is software available like MarketMeTweet & Tweet Adder that allows you to automate your tweets so that they can be broadcast 24 hours a day.
There are a variety of automated software on the market that allows you to manage your twitter account more economically. Programs like MarketMeTweet, Tweet Adder and HootSuite make it easier to manage your Twitter account, follow, un-follow and automate tweets, saving you time that you can spend working on your website and thus, making more things to tweet about!

Facebook

Facebook is another huge social media phenomenon that you can use to market your website. Just like twitter, many people have Facebook pages that they just don’t do anything with. They let them sit there not doing anything for them. They are missing out because Facebook can be used to attract huge numbers of traffic to their website. There is an estimated 600 million users worldwide, that’s almost 10% of the earth’s population! That is a lot of people that you could potential interact with.

To start with, you need to create a Fan page for your website. This is easy to do and takes minutes to set up. Just like Twitter, you need to assign a good quality profile picture and fill in some information about what your website is about. This is to help people know what your website is about and ultimately make them ‘Like’ you and follow links to your site.

Tell all your friends about your Fan page so that they will ‘Like’ your page. After that you will begin to see that your Facebook page starts to get a bit of notice.

To help increase this, you need to network with more people, preferably people who are interested in your niche. A good way to do this is to search for popular people that are related to your niche and become their ‘Friends’ and/or ‘Like’ their ‘Fan’ page. This way you are advertising your presence to people that you want to attract to your website. Some of these people will respond by becoming your friends and visiting your ‘Fan’ page to ‘Like’ it. You will begin to build a good following of people that are interested in what you have to say.

Once you have built yourself a bit of a reputation within your niche, you can try to attract more people. A good way to do this is to politely ask high profile people within your industry to become fans of your page. This way, when they do, all of their followers will see that they are friends with you, which will attract more people to you.

Obviously, just like Twitter, you need to be posting updates to your page regularly. Updates, news, upcoming events, workshop dates, etc. with links to your website. This will all help to drive traffic to your website.

Other Social Media Sites

 

There are countless other Social media and bookmarking sites that you can sign up to. Sites like Digg, LinkedIn, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Google+, etc., all have huge amounts of members. Creating your own profile/page on a number of these can help bring in more traffic to your site. Though the initial signing up process will take time, the benefits will be worth it.

You will need to add regular updates to these sites, linking back to your site, to make them worth it. You don’t however need to do all this manually. There are many software programs that you can use to automate the process. Software, such as OnlyWire allows you to post content to all of your sites within one window. This is great for posting links to your website when you upload a new article or video.

An added advantage of all these links means that not only do you have more chance of people following them to your website, you grow the amount of backlinks to your website. The more links you have pointing to your website on the internet, the better. This is because search engines like Google and Bing crawl the internet and find all of these links. The more of these links there are, the more the search engines will find them, which will result in the search engines listing you higher in their search rankings, creating more traffic for you!

2. Video Marketing

 

The world is video crazy. More and more people are watching videos online on popular sites like YouTube. This is helped even more by technology allowing us to watch videos on the go on our mobile phones.
People like watching videos because they are much more attractive than reading text. Many websites have cottoned on to this and have started to make videos for their website. This is a great way to promote your website to people as it offers them a more exciting way of finding out about you.

You can make loads of videos for the different aspects of your website. Many people just make short videos advertising themselves, which is great. But the best type of videos to make are ones that offer something to the viewer. The most common type of these are tutorial videos that people can follow. People find that these are easier to follow that text based tutorials because they can see for themselves how someone has done something. Of course this depends on the quality of the teaching!

Whatever type of video you decide to make, just remember that the aim is to get people to your site. A good way to do this is to display links to your website at both the beginning and end of each video as well as underneath the video where you can write descriptions. If you watch the video back and there is no reference to your website at all, then nobody will ever visit your site, making the whole video pointless!
There are many video websites out there that you can post yours onto, it doesn’t just have to be YouTube.  The more publicity you can give your website through videos, the more traffic you are likely to get.

3. Blog Marketing

 

When you are just starting out, it can be difficult to build an online reputation. A method that you can use to increase your presence is blog marketing.

This method involves posting comments on other peoples blogs. Try to find blogs that are related to your niche and start commenting on them. It’s important that you don’t just blatantly promote your site! Posting “Come visit my site at www.vchdjwvcdjhvwjh.com” will not get you anywhere. More than likely, your post will be deleted as spam and you may be banned. Instead, post valuable content relating to the post that you are commenting on. Over time you will begin to build a reputation as someone that knows what they are talking about.

This is a great way of spending your free time. Not only are you reading up and researching information that you could write your own posts on for your website, but you are also building your reputation.
All that is very good, but wouldn’t it be better if you could actually post links to your website on other blogs. As stated before, doing this directly will get you banned, but there are ways of doing this.

Many blogs use ‘Disqus’ that let their readers add comments. The good thing about ‘Disqus’ is that you can add a link to your website under your profile name, this way whenever anybody clicks on your name, it will take them to your website. Again, you will need to be adding quality comments for people to do this, but this is a great way to increase your online presence. Therefore the more blog comments you make, the more links to your website there will be.

If you notice, we use Disqus for our comments.  So feel free to leave your comments on our site and link back to your website.

4. Forum Marketing

 

This method is very similar to blog marketing and is great for a new start-up website. There are loads of online forums focusing on different subjects. If you can find an online forum that specialises in your niche, then you can begin to build an online presence.

By offering helpful information to others, you will grow your profile and be seen as an expert in your field.
Like many blogs, a lot of forums don’t let you place links to your site, or if they do they are links that can’t be clicked on. These are called No-follow Links. A quick search on a search engine for ‘Do-follow Forums‘ will reveal loads of forums that will be beneficial. These types of forums let you comment as normal, but let you add links in your signature that people can follow directly to your website.
These are great as people who value the information that you are posting will be able to click on a link to your website and follow you there. It also increases the amount of back links that you have pointing to your website, helping you rank higher on search engines.

Did you find this post helpful? If so, please spread the word about it, so others can also benefit. You can leave your comments below & feel free to ask any questions. :)

4 Ways to Build Traffic To Your Website!

Attracting website traffic is one of the most important parts of making money online. The more people you can get to visit your site, the more money you can potentially make.
The primary reason why people fail online is that they don’t generate enough traffic to their website. Many people just give up because of this. This is unfortunate because there are simple methods to attract large numbers of people to your site. It likely won’t happen overnight (though it can!) but if you invest the time working on the right method, it will reward you in the end.

These simple traffic attracting methods are great for new websites and even long running blogs. It lets you use your time wisely to advertise your presence without costing you any money!
The bottom line is all about saving money wherever you can!

If you are fortunate and have money that you can invest in advertising for your website then great, you will be able to attract traffic in many different ways.

If however, you are just starting out and need people to come and visit your site, then this strategy is perfect for you!

Make the most of Social Media, Free Marketing, Content & Videos!!!

1. Social Media Marketing

Twitter

I’m sure you have heard of Twitter! You may already have a personal twitter account that you are addicted to, perhaps you have never considered going on it before.

Twitter is a revolutionary social media application that allows people to communicate across the globe. Admittedly, a lot of this communication is idle chit-chat and gossip, but it can be utilised as a powerful tool. The recent democratic uprising in the middle-east is said to have been organised via twitter and other social media.

Now I’m sure that most of you won’t be planning anything on that revolutionary scale, but I hope this demonstrates the powerful reach that Twitter can have.

You can view twitter as an amazing marketing tool that can enable you to communicate with existing and new people that would be interested in your website.

So, for starters you need to set up a twitter account for your website. Find or create a great profile picture and write a short descriptive bio that explains what your website is about. With Twitter, you only have a limited amount of characters, so make them count!

For example, a website about gardening could promote themselves through twitter. They could create a new account under the name ‘amateurgardeners’. A photo of a flower could be used as the profile picture and the short bio could be “Teaching amateurs to be better gardeners and grow their own food!”. Something along those lines, so that anybody that stumbles upon the Twitter account is in no doubt what it is about.
The next step is to start following people. Don’t just jump in and start following anybody! You need to follow people that are relevant to your niche. Find some of the biggest names in your niche and follow them AND whoever they are following. This way you are easily targeting potential visitors of your website. They will see that ‘amateurgardeners’ is now following them and seeing that the two of you have a common interest, so they may follow you back. Don’t be disheartened if not everyone follows you back straight away, the ones that do will be interested in your niche.

Time to start tweeting! There are loads of people that have twitter accounts, but don’t tweet anything. They shouldn’t complain if they are not getting enough traffic because they are not putting in the effort to engage with their audience. The more often you tweet, the more traffic you will get. But it’s not just about frequency, its about quality. You need to tweet regularly about your niche, tweeting recommendations, tips, news and most importantly what’s happening on your website. There is no point in ‘amateurgardeners’ tweeting about celebrity gossip!

For more Twitter tips, read our post – ‘10 Twitter Tips To Drive Traffic To Your Site‘
For obvious reasons, most people tweet when they are awake. If you think about it, when you are asleep you are missing out on millions of people on the other side of the world that could be interested in what you have to say. Luckily, there is software available like MarketMeTweet & Tweet Adder that allows you to automate your tweets so that they can be broadcast 24 hours a day.
There are a variety of automated software on the market that allows you to manage your twitter account more economically. Programs like MarketMeTweet, Tweet Adder and HootSuite make it easier to manage your Twitter account, follow, un-follow and automate tweets, saving you time that you can spend working on your website and thus, making more things to tweet about!

Facebook

Facebook is another huge social media phenomenon that you can use to market your website. Just like twitter, many people have Facebook pages that they just don’t do anything with. They let them sit there not doing anything for them. They are missing out because Facebook can be used to attract huge numbers of traffic to their website. There is an estimated 600 million users worldwide, that’s almost 10% of the earth’s population! That is a lot of people that you could potential interact with.

To start with, you need to create a Fan page for your website. This is easy to do and takes minutes to set up. Just like Twitter, you need to assign a good quality profile picture and fill in some information about what your website is about. This is to help people know what your website is about and ultimately make them ‘Like’ you and follow links to your site.

Tell all your friends about your Fan page so that they will ‘Like’ your page. After that you will begin to see that your Facebook page starts to get a bit of notice.

To help increase this, you need to network with more people, preferably people who are interested in your niche. A good way to do this is to search for popular people that are related to your niche and become their ‘Friends’ and/or ‘Like’ their ‘Fan’ page. This way you are advertising your presence to people that you want to attract to your website. Some of these people will respond by becoming your friends and visiting your ‘Fan’ page to ‘Like’ it. You will begin to build a good following of people that are interested in what you have to say.

Once you have built yourself a bit of a reputation within your niche, you can try to attract more people. A good way to do this is to politely ask high profile people within your industry to become fans of your page. This way, when they do, all of their followers will see that they are friends with you, which will attract more people to you.

Obviously, just like Twitter, you need to be posting updates to your page regularly. Updates, news, upcoming events, workshop dates, etc. with links to your website. This will all help to drive traffic to your website.

Other Social Media Sites

 

There are countless other Social media and bookmarking sites that you can sign up to. Sites like Digg, LinkedIn, MySpace, Stumbleupon, Google+, etc., all have huge amounts of members. Creating your own profile/page on a number of these can help bring in more traffic to your site. Though the initial signing up process will take time, the benefits will be worth it.

You will need to add regular updates to these sites, linking back to your site, to make them worth it. You don’t however need to do all this manually. There are many software programs that you can use to automate the process. Software, such as OnlyWire allows you to post content to all of your sites within one window. This is great for posting links to your website when you upload a new article or video.

An added advantage of all these links means that not only do you have more chance of people following them to your website, you grow the amount of backlinks to your website. The more links you have pointing to your website on the internet, the better. This is because search engines like Google and Bing crawl the internet and find all of these links. The more of these links there are, the more the search engines will find them, which will result in the search engines listing you higher in their search rankings, creating more traffic for you!

2. Video Marketing

 

The world is video crazy. More and more people are watching videos online on popular sites like YouTube. This is helped even more by technology allowing us to watch videos on the go on our mobile phones.
People like watching videos because they are much more attractive than reading text. Many websites have cottoned on to this and have started to make videos for their website. This is a great way to promote your website to people as it offers them a more exciting way of finding out about you.

You can make loads of videos for the different aspects of your website. Many people just make short videos advertising themselves, which is great. But the best type of videos to make are ones that offer something to the viewer. The most common type of these are tutorial videos that people can follow. People find that these are easier to follow that text based tutorials because they can see for themselves how someone has done something. Of course this depends on the quality of the teaching!

Whatever type of video you decide to make, just remember that the aim is to get people to your site. A good way to do this is to display links to your website at both the beginning and end of each video as well as underneath the video where you can write descriptions. If you watch the video back and there is no reference to your website at all, then nobody will ever visit your site, making the whole video pointless!
There are many video websites out there that you can post yours onto, it doesn’t just have to be YouTube.  The more publicity you can give your website through videos, the more traffic you are likely to get.

3. Blog Marketing

 

When you are just starting out, it can be difficult to build an online reputation. A method that you can use to increase your presence is blog marketing.

This method involves posting comments on other peoples blogs. Try to find blogs that are related to your niche and start commenting on them. It’s important that you don’t just blatantly promote your site! Posting “Come visit my site at www.vchdjwvcdjhvwjh.com” will not get you anywhere. More than likely, your post will be deleted as spam and you may be banned. Instead, post valuable content relating to the post that you are commenting on. Over time you will begin to build a reputation as someone that knows what they are talking about.

This is a great way of spending your free time. Not only are you reading up and researching information that you could write your own posts on for your website, but you are also building your reputation.
All that is very good, but wouldn’t it be better if you could actually post links to your website on other blogs. As stated before, doing this directly will get you banned, but there are ways of doing this.

Many blogs use ‘Disqus’ that let their readers add comments. The good thing about ‘Disqus’ is that you can add a link to your website under your profile name, this way whenever anybody clicks on your name, it will take them to your website. Again, you will need to be adding quality comments for people to do this, but this is a great way to increase your online presence. Therefore the more blog comments you make, the more links to your website there will be.

If you notice, we use Disqus for our comments.  So feel free to leave your comments on our site and link back to your website.

4. Forum Marketing

 

This method is very similar to blog marketing and is great for a new start-up website. There are loads of online forums focusing on different subjects. If you can find an online forum that specialises in your niche, then you can begin to build an online presence.

By offering helpful information to others, you will grow your profile and be seen as an expert in your field.
Like many blogs, a lot of forums don’t let you place links to your site, or if they do they are links that can’t be clicked on. These are called No-follow Links. A quick search on a search engine for ‘Do-follow Forums‘ will reveal loads of forums that will be beneficial. These types of forums let you comment as normal, but let you add links in your signature that people can follow directly to your website.
These are great as people who value the information that you are posting will be able to click on a link to your website and follow you there. It also increases the amount of back links that you have pointing to your website, helping you rank higher on search engines.

Did you find this post helpful? If so, please spread the word about it, so others can also benefit. You can leave your comments below & feel free to ask any questions. :)

Top 50 Earning Blogs!!!

Successful Blogs Earning Money Online

For today’s post, I wanted to look at some of the most successful and profitable blogs that are currently online.
For many people that are just starting blogging, it is hard to know how much you can potentially earn. In the initial stages of setting up a blog, it can be tough to keep motivated to keep going when you’re not making much money, but given time and lots of effort a blog can take off  in a big way. The best examples that you can look at are the blogs that are at the top. It certainly inspired me to learn just how much money some of the top blogs make on a daily basis.
The following list of 50 blogs are considered the best in the business. I often get inspired by these blogs, urging me on to put in the work to make my own site the best that it can be. I hope that this inspires you as well!

	Website	Owner	Daily Income	Value	Main Income
1	The Huffington Post	Arianna Huffington	$29,896	$21.82 Million	Pay Per Click
2	Mashable	Pete Cashmore	$15,781	$11.52 Million	Advertising Banners
3	Techcrunch	Michael Arrington	$14,816	$10.82 Million	Advertising Banners
4	Engadget	Peter Rojas	$9,861	$7.2 Million	Advertising Banners
5	Smashing Magazine	Vitaly Friedman	$6,382	$4.66 Million	Advertising Banners
6	Tuts+	Collis Taeed	$5,068	$3.7 Million	Membership Area
7	Life Hacker	Nick Denton	$4,821	$3.52 Million	Advertising Banners
8	Gizmodo	Attila Talos	$3,918	$2.86 Million	Advertising Banners
9	Perez Hilton	Mario Lavandeira	$3,645	$2.66 Million	Advertising Banners
10	Joystiq	AOL	$1,752	$1.28 Million	CPM Advertising
11	Problogger	Darren Rowse	$1,751	$1.28 Million	Advertising Banners
12	Kotaku	Nick Denton	$1,599	$1.17 Million	Advertising Banners
13	Six Revisions	Jacob Gube	$1,587	$1.16 Million	Advertising Banners
14	Noupe	Noupe	$1,400	$1.02 Million	Advertising Banners
15	Venture Beat	Matt Marshall	$1,251	$913,721	Pay Per Click
16	CopyBlogger	Brian Clark	$1,184	$864,861	Affiliate Sales
17	Abduzeedo	Fabio Sasso	$983	$718,239	Advertising Banners
18	Talking Points Memo	Joshua Marshall	$887	$647,750	Advertising Banners
19	WPBeginner	Syed Balkhi	$692	$505,420	Affiliate Sales
20	Matt Cutts	Matt Cutts	$0*	$488,944	Twitter
21	Steve Pavlina	Steve Pavlina	$664	$485,024	Pay Per Click
22	Slash Gear	Ewdison Then	$621	$453,999	Pay Per Click
23	Smart Passive Income	Pat Flynn	$607	$443,406	Affiliate Sales
24	John Chow	John Chow	$555	$405,242	Affiliate Sales
25	Freelance Switch	Collis Ta’eed	$533	$389,517	Membership Area
26	Shoemoney	Jeremy Schoemaker	$485	$354,112	Private Advertising
27	Gothamist	Jake Dobkin	$452	$330,022	Pay Per Click
28	Entrepreneurs Journey	Yaro Starak	$389	$284,170	Affiliate Sales
29	IncomeDiary	Michael Dunlop	$382	$279,505	Affiliate Sales
30	Chris Brogan	Chris Brogan	$371	$271,147	Affiliate Sales
31	Matts Marketing Blog	Matt Carter	$302	$220,834	Affiliate Sales
32	ClickNewz	Lynn Terry	$239	$174,873	Affiliate Sales
33	Dooce	Heather B Armstrong	$229	$167,580	Pay Per Click
34	Coolest Gadgets	Allan Carlton	$227	$166,069	Advertising Banners
35	Tony Robbins	Tony Robbins	$193	$141,526	Affiliate Sales
36	Just Creative Designs	Jacob Cass	$185	$135,497	Advertising Banners
37	David Risley	David Risley	$137	$100,588	Affiliate Sales
38	Car Advice	Alborz Fallah	$127	$92,886	Advertising Banners
39	Sizlopedia	Saad Hamid	$118	$86,842	Pay Per Click
40	Gary Vaynerchuk	Gary Vaynerchuk	$88	$64,744	Affiliate Sales
41	PC Mech	David Risley	$82	$59,955	Affiliate Sales
42	Timothy Sykes	Timothy Sykes	$81	$59,284	Affiliate Sales
43	Joel Comm	Joel Comm	$75	$55,408	Affiliate Sales
44	Tyler Cruz	Tyler Cruz	$74	$54,736	Affiliate Sales
45	Chris Garrett	Chris Garrett	$67	$49,327	Affiliate Sales
46	Money Dummy	John Paul Aguiar	$65	$48,093	Affiliate Sales
47	Retireat21	Michael Dunlop	$65	$47,487	Affiliate Sales
48	Revenews	ReveNews, LLC	$64	$47,122	Affiliate Sales
49	StandOutBlogger	Thomas Sinfield	$59	$43,633	Affiliate Sales
50	BlogBareFoot	Carrie Wilkerson	$37	$27,390	Affiliate Sales

[* - Matt Cutts has stated (see comments section) that he doesn't actually earn any money directly via his blog.  Instead he utilizes Twitter to promote various products and merchandise to his many followers.  Still a viable blog to feature on this list though, as it shows that other methods can be used to make money online.]

Top 50 Earning Blogs!!!

Successful Blogs Earning Money Online

For today’s post, I wanted to look at some of the most successful and profitable blogs that are currently online.
For many people that are just starting blogging, it is hard to know how much you can potentially earn. In the initial stages of setting up a blog, it can be tough to keep motivated to keep going when you’re not making much money, but given time and lots of effort a blog can take off  in a big way. The best examples that you can look at are the blogs that are at the top. It certainly inspired me to learn just how much money some of the top blogs make on a daily basis.
The following list of 50 blogs are considered the best in the business. I often get inspired by these blogs, urging me on to put in the work to make my own site the best that it can be. I hope that this inspires you as well!

	Website	Owner	Daily Income	Value	Main Income
1	The Huffington Post	Arianna Huffington	$29,896	$21.82 Million	Pay Per Click
2	Mashable	Pete Cashmore	$15,781	$11.52 Million	Advertising Banners
3	Techcrunch	Michael Arrington	$14,816	$10.82 Million	Advertising Banners
4	Engadget	Peter Rojas	$9,861	$7.2 Million	Advertising Banners
5	Smashing Magazine	Vitaly Friedman	$6,382	$4.66 Million	Advertising Banners
6	Tuts+	Collis Taeed	$5,068	$3.7 Million	Membership Area
7	Life Hacker	Nick Denton	$4,821	$3.52 Million	Advertising Banners
8	Gizmodo	Attila Talos	$3,918	$2.86 Million	Advertising Banners
9	Perez Hilton	Mario Lavandeira	$3,645	$2.66 Million	Advertising Banners
10	Joystiq	AOL	$1,752	$1.28 Million	CPM Advertising
11	Problogger	Darren Rowse	$1,751	$1.28 Million	Advertising Banners
12	Kotaku	Nick Denton	$1,599	$1.17 Million	Advertising Banners
13	Six Revisions	Jacob Gube	$1,587	$1.16 Million	Advertising Banners
14	Noupe	Noupe	$1,400	$1.02 Million	Advertising Banners
15	Venture Beat	Matt Marshall	$1,251	$913,721	Pay Per Click
16	CopyBlogger	Brian Clark	$1,184	$864,861	Affiliate Sales
17	Abduzeedo	Fabio Sasso	$983	$718,239	Advertising Banners
18	Talking Points Memo	Joshua Marshall	$887	$647,750	Advertising Banners
19	WPBeginner	Syed Balkhi	$692	$505,420	Affiliate Sales
20	Matt Cutts	Matt Cutts	$0*	$488,944	Twitter
21	Steve Pavlina	Steve Pavlina	$664	$485,024	Pay Per Click
22	Slash Gear	Ewdison Then	$621	$453,999	Pay Per Click
23	Smart Passive Income	Pat Flynn	$607	$443,406	Affiliate Sales
24	John Chow	John Chow	$555	$405,242	Affiliate Sales
25	Freelance Switch	Collis Ta’eed	$533	$389,517	Membership Area
26	Shoemoney	Jeremy Schoemaker	$485	$354,112	Private Advertising
27	Gothamist	Jake Dobkin	$452	$330,022	Pay Per Click
28	Entrepreneurs Journey	Yaro Starak	$389	$284,170	Affiliate Sales
29	IncomeDiary	Michael Dunlop	$382	$279,505	Affiliate Sales
30	Chris Brogan	Chris Brogan	$371	$271,147	Affiliate Sales
31	Matts Marketing Blog	Matt Carter	$302	$220,834	Affiliate Sales
32	ClickNewz	Lynn Terry	$239	$174,873	Affiliate Sales
33	Dooce	Heather B Armstrong	$229	$167,580	Pay Per Click
34	Coolest Gadgets	Allan Carlton	$227	$166,069	Advertising Banners
35	Tony Robbins	Tony Robbins	$193	$141,526	Affiliate Sales
36	Just Creative Designs	Jacob Cass	$185	$135,497	Advertising Banners
37	David Risley	David Risley	$137	$100,588	Affiliate Sales
38	Car Advice	Alborz Fallah	$127	$92,886	Advertising Banners
39	Sizlopedia	Saad Hamid	$118	$86,842	Pay Per Click
40	Gary Vaynerchuk	Gary Vaynerchuk	$88	$64,744	Affiliate Sales
41	PC Mech	David Risley	$82	$59,955	Affiliate Sales
42	Timothy Sykes	Timothy Sykes	$81	$59,284	Affiliate Sales
43	Joel Comm	Joel Comm	$75	$55,408	Affiliate Sales
44	Tyler Cruz	Tyler Cruz	$74	$54,736	Affiliate Sales
45	Chris Garrett	Chris Garrett	$67	$49,327	Affiliate Sales
46	Money Dummy	John Paul Aguiar	$65	$48,093	Affiliate Sales
47	Retireat21	Michael Dunlop	$65	$47,487	Affiliate Sales
48	Revenews	ReveNews, LLC	$64	$47,122	Affiliate Sales
49	StandOutBlogger	Thomas Sinfield	$59	$43,633	Affiliate Sales
50	BlogBareFoot	Carrie Wilkerson	$37	$27,390	Affiliate Sales

[* - Matt Cutts has stated (see comments section) that he doesn't actually earn any money directly via his blog.  Instead he utilizes Twitter to promote various products and merchandise to his many followers.  Still a viable blog to feature on this list though, as it shows that other methods can be used to make money online.]