Without a doubt, Google SMS Channels is really a good service. Many bloggers are creating SMS channels dedicated for their blog, so that their readers can follow their blog from mobile.
I have created Devils Workshop SMS channel last night and started receiving SMS for each post as it was getting published. But I was disappointed to see that there was no link to article in SMS I received. Links could help people having GPRS/wi-fi enabled cellphones browse articles from their handset.
I tried finding such option first, but I failed. So I created a small script which accept your original feed URL and give you link to a new feed which:
First shorten links to your article using famous service TinyUrl. This takes care of 160 character limit of SMS.
Next it append such shortened link to your feeds title.
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Now when Google SMS channel will fetch such converted link, they will send short urls to articles in SMS updates.
Below is screenshot which highlights this difference:
How to use:
1. Getting a converted link
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You can either get converted link using web interface provided at Google SMS Channels with TinyUrl
OR simply prefix http://gsmslinks.rtcamp.com/ to your feed URL.
Just edit RSS/Atom feed URL. If you are creating a new channel, enter converted feed link here otherwise replace old link with converted link. Please DO NOT forget to remove prefix http:// from links as it is added by Google by default.
Next better click on Preview button to check if desired results are coming in mobile emulator screen on page. If yes, click Update Channel button below.
If you have any question, please ask via comments only. If there exist option to do this, please let me know. 🙂
Adopting blogging as a profession or say professional blogging is still a very fresh concept in most part of the world. After years of my blogging experience, I have gradually realized the value of blogging which can give you both knowledge and enough money to make a living out of it. Literally there is no core difference in blogging or problogging so one needs to get out of the hangover for the word “Professional” associated with problogging.
Now consider a case when you want to go to the office or some other public place. What will you do? Obviously you will get ready, wear clean clothes, shoes etc. But why? The only reason is just to look professional and presentable. Same way, if blogging is done in a presentable way can bring a lot of difference to you. So in this article let me share with you some productivity tips which will help you do quality and professional blogging.
1. Develop Strong Niche
Avoid being “Jack of All Trades, Masters of None”. As only Master excels, not the Jack. So develop a strong knowledge in the area of your own interest. People tend to get influenced by things around them easily and start chasing them. So they end up following neither their own interest nor others. So give your interest enough time so that you have gain enough knowledge to pour in to your blog posts for the readers of your blog.
Once you develop a strong foundation in the subject of your choice, now comes time to ring the bell of blogging. Take up a dedicated time of the day (away from any distraction) and just write in. Here is the tip, consider yourself a reader than a writer. Think what would you like to read on that particular topic (that you are currently writing on). With this dual psychological trick, you use both, left as well as right brain to bring maximum productivity in your work.
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3. Be Clear
Avoid crossroads or misleading information. Write less but be clear on what you want to say. There is literally no point in writing big but useless or unclear posts. Another disadvantage of being unclear is that you lose a reader who could have recommended your blog further.
So the third tip is, be crystal clear in your thought and post to create interest in user.
4. Automate Your Work with Technology
Using right softwares, you can increase your productivity by many times. A simple example of using Windows Live Writer (WLW), a desktop blogging tool available for free. It has built-in dictionary which will avoid your wastage of time in reviewing your posts for spelling errors. Also, it has blog post option where in you can synchronize WLW with your blogging by scheduling a your posts. Set time and date your post will automatically show up in the blog. Similarly using good softwares (like WLW or ScribbleFire) can help you get maximum results in minimum time.
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5. Blogging Software (Platform)
Use your own domain with WordPress or Blogger platform as these are two best softwares for professional blogging. WordPress is even more preferable for fast SEO (Search Engine Optimization). As making money is a part of your pro-blogging carrier, Google AdSense is the best program for both, novice and experienced writers.
Later when you become famous, you can also go for direct advertising and make good living out of pro-blogging. Both WordPress(self-hosted) and Blogger make it very easy to add Google AdSense or any other type of advertising on your blog.
6. Record Your Ideas
Recording your idea is the most effective solution to mind-map your ideas. If you do not have habit to write for longer periods, this one is the best for you. Just record your audio ideas so that later in the day or week you can listen them to write a good post. This forward and backward chaining of thoughts will increase you productivity on a very high scale as none of your ideas are lost away.
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Another advantage of this technique is that you will also gain experience in audio recording. So once you get comfortable in recording your own voice, you can save lots of time by avoiding writing blog post altogether and consider making an audio post each day. Yep, I am talking about audio podcasting, which can help you gain good exposure. Same way this technique will enhance your skills to start video posting on self made videos. This way, you can save a lot of time in writing and hence increase your productivity and worth.
7. Mind Mapping Techniques
The new and good way of mind mapping is already been discussed in point 6 of audio recording your voice. Another good mind mapping technique is writing or jotting your ideas down. This old school technique is very effective and your friend in traveling times. Whenever you are on a trip always keep a notepad with you. Just jot down any ideas you get on your niche. Another great way is use commercial softwares like Novamind. It is one the best softwares for mind mapping.
If you follow this, you will see a lot of difference in your productivity when you will sit in front of your PC/Laptop next time. You only have to write about ideas you jotted, without any pressure of making in depth analysis. Also such habits can be a good time-pass in long boring journeys.
8. Use Google Alerts
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Google Alerts is a very useful way to keep in touch of what’s going around the world. You don’t have to waste your time going to search engines and find something. Just add a Google alert for your favorite topic and Google will automatically email you about the latest information on that topic.
These simple techniques can bring wonders to your blogging life. 🙂
I hope you enjoyed reading this article and you will find it useful in your professional blogging carrier.
Have you been asked to create a new account, whenever you try to log into Orkut?
And you are like what the hell I have an account in orkut, my friends can see my profile. But I can’t log-in WHATS GOING ON!!!
Don’t worry guys you are not the only one who is facing this issue, there are many other Orkut user’s who are facing the same issue. This is a new bug in Orkut and is confirmed by folks at official Orkut Help center.
The only things it does: Asks you to create a new account, even if you have an existing Orkut account! Strange thing is, this bug exactly force you to violate Orkut ToS, which prohibits creating multiple accounts on Orkut. Its different story that Orkut Buyukkokten, creator of Orkut, himself have multiple profiles on Orkut! 😉
But the good news is:
This issue has been taken up for fix by the Orkut team and lets hope for solution soon. They have solved most of multiple profile issues.
There is no doubt that WordPress is a better blogging platform than Blogger, but this is equally true that Blogger is an Ideal Start for newbies. It is a common trend that one starts with Blogger, Gains some maturity and then switches to WordPress. There are several problems with Blogger and most of the Blogger users are those who don’t have any Technical Background For them, here is an explanation of using If Else type coding in the Blogger Template. This will enable bloggers to optimize their blog in different ways.
If Else type Conditional programing can be done by using <b:if cond=’ ‘>…..</b:if> tag. To Try this just log-in to your blogger account and move DashBoard > Layout > Edit HTML and check the “Expand Widget Templates” Option.
Now, take an objective: Lets say, we want to use different Meta tags for different pages (i.e. posts), which is not possible by any other method . Just enter the following code at the proper place:
Please Replace http://yourblog.com/2008/06/yourpost.html with the actual URL of that post. You will notice that the condition is made for the variable data:blog.url and equality operator == is used. You can use some other variables and operators. The != operator is used for Not Equal to cases .
I am sure that now you can guess the meaning of above source code. It simply says that if the URL of the page is equal to http://yourblog.com/2008/06/yourpost.html then apply the following meta tag. If you want to assign a meta tag set for the Home page of your blog then instead of using the URL of your homepage you can use data:blog.homepageUrl and your code will become like:
The variable data:blog.pageType looks for the type of page. Post pages are identified by item and homepage of your blog is identified by index. Hence, for homepage you can use both, data:blog.url == data:blog.homepageUrl and data:blog.pageType == “index” .
You can use the above conditional coding in various ways to optimize your blog. I have several suggestions for you, but you can discover more ways as per your need.
Your home page will only feature the actual title of your blog, whereas post pages will feature your blog title, plus the title of your blog post. To Optimize your blog for Search Engines you need to modify it so that the past pages have titles of your blog post only. To get this done look for <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title> and replace it with the following code
Similarly , sometimes you want to display some page-elements on homepage and not on post pages ( or , vice-versa ) . You can use this conditional coding again for this objective . Just Go to Page Element section and select the required page element to edit . The editor will open in a new window .Just focus on the URL of this window. At the end you can find the widgetId=HTML# . This is the widget ID of this page element . Now , switch back to the EDIT HTML section and locate that widget ( may use Find option of your browser ). You will notice a layout tag <data:content/> inside this widget code . This tag displays the contents of that page element on any page. You can do your conditional programing around this. For example you want to hide it from homepage, just do this:
This trick can be used for many purposes, like displaying Ads, Featured Posts, Special Messages for visitors.
I hope that this article will help you in optimizing your Blogger blog. If you need any help, feel free to contact us. 🙂
[Editor Note: This post is by guest blogger Arpit Kumar. He blogs at TechRaga on Internet & technology. He is very active twitter user, in case if you like to follow him on twitter.
Yep, you got it right, its $332 I made from one single post! And now as I look back I feel I could have made at least twice more than that!
If you are a reader of this blog, then you may have came across my post titled – Get Unlimited Bandwidth & Storage with Dreamhost. It was about a very limited, once-in-a-lifetime kinda offer.
I not only host this and many other websites/blogs with Dreamhost but also actively use its affiliate program. But $332 with one single post was unthinkable. Well it happened with me and here is my analysis but first let me show you screenshot of my Dreamhost reward panel.
As you can see there are five $47 and one $97 reward entries in 7 days window i.e. from September 5 (when I made post) to September 10 (last day to fetch ‘unlimited’ offer). Now lets do some simple math : 5x$47 + $97 = $332.
Apart from this jackpot, I have been always successful with Dreamhost affiliate program because…
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Dreamhost is really best webhosting service overall. Mind my use of word “overall” as its unfair to compare performance of Dreamhost with a dedicated server solutions.
Dreamhost is beyond a webhosting service. There is a large community of Dreamhosters, who runs dedicated forums, wikis, blogs where you will find lots of information as well how-to guide on every single topic related to webhosting.
They have nice affiliate program which not only pays your webhosting bills but also generate lots of hard-cash if used smartly. By the way I was not aware about this fact while signing up for Dreamhost. I was not aware about promo-codes either! It still hurts to loose those $97 in discount. 🙁
Above all is about Dreamhost’s greatness but what I think works best is the fact that I am promoting something which I use myself. 🙂
I was sure about nice response to that post about as it was really a great offer. But at the most I was expecting 1 or 2 signups. And now when it brought me $332 via 6 signups, I feel I underestimated it because…
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I don’t use “Featured Post” like option as Darren Rowse use on Problogger. I am sure that in this special case, it would have helped me get at least 5 more signups.
I did not use service like Digg, Stumble Upon to promote that post.
I know some people who were thinking about switching to Dreamhost from long time. I guess I should have mailed them that article.
I could have written a follow up or reminder post on say September 9, with title like “Last Day to Grab Unlimited Webhosting” or something like that.
There are popular forum related to webhosting. I could have used them.
Well opportunities are countless. Next time, I may follow above 5 points only to discover more of them at the end of the party.
Anyway my purpose of posting this story is to tell you that affiliate programs do work if used smartly. Also there are more ways to monetize your blog beyond Google AdSense! 🙂
All you have to do is, subscribe to his blog feed via email and post about this event on your blog. This giveaway has deadline of September 20 and winner will be selected randomly.
Earlier Gagan gave two free Rapidshare premium accounts in similar event. This is very good-old tactic new bloggers use to promote their blog.
Anyway, if you are blogger and looking for free Rapidshare premium accounts you can check this event.
I use torrent to download all the stuff I need from Internet. If you like downloading via torrents too, you can check 5 best torrent search engines here.
Almost a year ago I opened Devils Workshop for guest authors as well as co-authors. Now its time to take this initiative to the next level with our new revenue sharing program, which will allow all authors to display Google AdSense content ad unit all of their posts.
What makes this revenue sharing program unique is that ONLY your Adsense content unit will be shown on your posts. In fact if you are irregular blogger or don’t want to go through hassle of maintaining your own blog, then you can earn much more through this revenue sharing program as every post you publish here will be read by large reader community.
Also if you are a niche blogger then you can use Devils Workshop as a platform to publish your off-topic articles. As an example, lets assume you have a dedicated blog about Google but you recently discovered something really cool which is not at all related to Google, rather than tipping off another blogger you can publish it here by yourself.
If you are an active blogger, then I bet you already heard about Pepperjam Affiliate Network and their lucrative $10 sign-up bonus offer. If you haven’t joined Pepperjam or planning to join it later, this post is reminder to rush up as sign-up bonus and other Pepperjam offers are available till 31st August.
Overview of Pepperjam offers:
1. $10 New Publisher Sign-Up Bonus – You are eligible for a $10 bonus just for signing-up for Pepperjam Network. Only thing you need to do is join Pepperjam via any referral links.
2. Flat $7 for each referral – For the entire month of August the Pepperjam Network Publisher Referral Program will pay publishers (aka, affiliates) a flat $7 for every new publisher referral. Now if you are a blogger, then you must join Pepperjam within 2 days to get $10 sign-up bonus. You can use last day to refer your blog visitors to Pepperjam via your affiliate links.
3. Blogger Incentive Program – Yes, there is still some money. Pepperjam publisher / blogger will receive $10 for each post they make (up to 5 per month) that promotes Pepperjam Network or any Pepperjam Network tool. Of course, your post need to be pre-approved by them. I already got late to try Pepperjam, so I am posting this straightaway so you don’t miss your sign-up bonus. But you can contact bloggers@pepperjamnetwork.com prior to making your post to gain approval of the topic.
Beyond these offers:
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Above offers are lucrative enough to make you join Pepperjam. Honestly, I joined Pepperjam for $10 sign-up bonus. But when Google closed their Adsense product referral program, I really wanted to go for some alternatives.
I tested commission junction & Chitika long time before. But after more than 100K impressions, they failed to make any money for me. I haven’t tried Chitika Premium ad unit yet. Widget bucks worked little bit for me but I had more advertising space to offer in this blogs sidebar. So after going through some alternatives, I finally put Pepperjam ads there.
Its too early to comment about Pepperjams performance, but I am hopeful because of following reasons:
First and most important, I liked product lists they are offering. I found many relevant programs for this blogs topics. Ex: text-link-ads, SEO Moz, etc.
Next I liked PepperjamAds section where one can create single ad-unit for all approved advertisers. The best thing about PepperjamAds is text-links it shows. I really hate flashy animated product image ads. Of course you can get image ads for any of your advertiser if you want. If you like to have preview of PepperjamAds, check vertical skyscraper ad unit in this blogs sidebar.
With the Pepperjam is launched and kind of money they spent on giving bonus/rewards, they must have very large publisher base now. This makes its attractive for advertisers and I already pointed out that I am really surprised to find highly relevant advertiser for this blog. Something I failed to find on years old commission junction.
That’s all for the day. Thanks Amanda (Coleman) for clearing my doubts about Pepperjam. 🙂
There are times when you want to make a change across all your posts. Consider following examples:
I have a dedicated page for firefox on this blog with AdSense’s firefox download code. Earlier I used to link that from every “download firefox” link. But as Google retired there AdSense for referral program, I thought its better to send visitors directly to official firefox download page. So task was to replace all link of type A with type B.
I kept open this blog for guest authors from long time. Earlier, I used to send interested people to registration page. Then I created a dedicated page about joining Devils Workshop. And so I needed to replace all links.
Gaurav Dua of Orkut Plus first moved his blog from blogspot subdomain to .org top-domain and for some unfortunate reasons, again shifted to .net domain. In all these transitions, links remain in-tact, but speaking for my posts I would love to give links which will not redirect. Technically its not bog deal but from user experience point of view its good thing. Again task is to replace all links of type A and B with type C.
Then there is another top blogger Darnell Clayton from Inside Orkut who started with blogspot subdomain but with time registered top level .COM domain.
OK enough about links. Now lets come back to some text. Gaurav Dua of Orkut Plus started his blogging career under nickname Jerry. He no longer uses that name but my old posts had it. So here I wanted to replace Jerry with Gaurav in my all posts.
Looks like there is lots of work to do when you encounter such examples in your blogging career. Of course if your on Blogger then you have to edit each post manually but if you are on wordpress. there is a plugin for everything.
Of course, those who comfortable with MySQL can directly write queries to do such jobs but I still advise using Search Regex wordpress plugin.
With this plugin, you can not only do search and replace of any text but can also preview changes first. All form one page! Power users can also use regular expressions too.
Just noticed on my blog that AdSense referrals units are showing blank space. As Google announced earlier about AdSense referral program’s retirement, this came as no surprise.
Speaking for this blog specifically, apart from Firefox referral, AdSense referral program never worked well. I joined Google’s alternative affiliate network form some time, but yet to test its performance. I tested few affiliate networks in past and will most probably use PepperJam and Chitika soon.
Firefox referrals used to make 10% of all my AdSense earnings and it would have been great (atleast for me) if Google continued to promote Firefox. But it seems that Google got enough toolbars all over the web!
Anyway as a blogger first thing you should do now is to remove all AdSense referral codes from your blog. You may still see some referral earnings till September end in your AdSense account as explained in earlier post.
If you have any alternative referral program for firefox or in-general please let us know. For time being, I have switched to non-profit Spread Firefox community for firefox promotion.
Just noticed on my blog that AdSense referrals units are showing blank space. As Google announced earlier about AdSense referral program’s retirement, this came as no surprise.