…because good design helps sell your ideas.

BLOG DESIGN JOURNAL


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Why Blogger Is a Great Blogging Platform for Beginners 0

Posted on April 16, 2011 by

Each platform has features that are beneficial for all types of bloggers, but for a beginner Blogger is the way to go. You may be wondering why Blogger is the best blogging platform for beginners. There are many reasons, but the following are the main features of Blogger by Google that make it the best for beginning bloggers.

Ease of Use

If you are new to the world of blogging you want to find a platform that will allow you to be creative without having to learn a lot of code and spend most of your time trying to figure out how things work. Blogger offers a platform that is wonderful for beginners but with enough options to make it ideal for experienced bloggers as well.

Monetization

Many bloggers want to monetize their blogs so that they can earn via ad revenue and affiliates. Blogger features an easy monetization tab that lets you integrate Google AdSense and Amazon affiliates programs. There are also easy to use HTML widgets that you can use to include other types of ads and affiliates.

Unique Designs

There are hundreds of thousands of templates available online for the Blogger platform. This lets you easily create a unique look for your blog. Download a layout template from any site that features free blogger templates and upload it using the easy to manage dashboard in Blogger to make your blog design fit your vision of what you want your blog to be.

URL Freedom

With Blogger you can elect to use a ‘dot blogspot’ URL for free, purchase a domain name on the Blogger site or use a domain name you already own. This lets you begin with a free URL until you find out how your blog is going to do, or whether it is a blog you are going to keep before you purchase a domain name for it. Changing your URL is easy as well through the settings options on Blogger.

Widgets

The widgets that Blogger offer include everything from a sidebar calendar to news feeds and social network links. These widgets are easy to use and access from the Blogger dashboard under the design tab.

Blogging is fun and often profitable for many people, however when you are a beginning blogger you want to choose a blogging platform that will give you a chance to learn how all the features of a blog work together to create a finished product that will attract readers. Blogger is a great platform to get started on and you’ll find that the easy linking of all your Google accounts helps you create a solid Internet presence.

About the Author:

Lisa Mason is a freelance writer with a specialty in Internet content and SEO articles and the author of How to Earn a Living Writing for the Internet. She has written thousands of articles, hundreds of ebooks and thousands of website pages and related content in more than 10 years as a professional writer.

See her website for a free article writing template guide as well as more information about writing and the writing services she offers.


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Blog – The Reason A Free Blogging Platform Is The Right Way To Start A Blog 0

Posted on April 08, 2011 by

For new bloggers, a free blog website is a better way to get started out in the blogging sphere. Common blogging platforms like Blogger or Typepad let users to start and host a blog for total free. This encourages persons to start out blogging, because of the factor that one of these platforms can provide you with all of the tools that you require to get your weblog up and operating without spending any cash which implies that you have nothing to lose by beginning a blog. The fact that it is so simple to obtain a path to blog for free is one of the reasons why numerous people who have never had any other form of web presence earlier find themselves drawn to blogging.

By registering with a free blogging web site, you might obtain it simpler to be noted by search engines than you would if you were start your own blog from scratch. For illustration, Google.com operates the free blogging platform Blogspot.com and spiders its pages faster looking for updates, so if you have your blog hosted by Blogspot you are nearly assured to be indexed on Weblog which is Google’s blog search engine. This simple access to SEs can take some of the chore out of promoting your blog, and could aid you to acquire a following with a nominal promoting effort.

If your blog appeals a sizeable readership, you may want to think moving your site. Many persons consider that being hosted by a free blogging platform gives a weblog a kind of amateur feel that is fine for a new member of the blogosphere, but is not proper for a high-profile blog. Registering your personal domain name could assist you to make your blog look seasoned, and getting a company that will host your blog is not tough or costly. Once your web log takes off, you will in all likelihood be capable to sell sufficient ad space to be able to afford to purchase a domain and pay for the hosting of your blog, and still have enough money remaining. Still, it does not make any sense in most events to spend money in these fascinating luxuries before you acquire a substantial readership.

Starting your blog on a free blogging web site is a healthy means to build a following before you spend any funds on your web log. If and when your weblog turns well-known and you are ready to consider the next step and purchase your own domain name, your audience will go with you to your new site. The factor that it is practical to utilise a free blog host like Blogger, or WordPress.com as a kind of incubator for your web log is great news for bloggers all over.

Author’s site – Make money online. Read – Ways to make money online – a collection of 100+ legitimate ways to earn money online and How to start a blog .
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Is Your Blog Design Getting You the Attention You Need? 0

Posted on March 27, 2011 by

The purpose of your blog is to get your readers interested and involved. The quality of the content on your blog does play a role in this, but so does your design. The following are some of the ins and outs of effective blog design.

Your blog should show your personality to your readers. Even though this has been said many times before, the advice always tends to hold true – to get your readers excited, show them who’s behind the curtains! When you visit a blog, getting to see the person or persons behind it makes a huge difference. By going into detail about who you are will help you create a strong “About Me” page. What you put there represents you and will help show your personality.

This is an area where you can play around with the design and using your picture can enhance the overall look of the page. Aim to build a level of trust and loyalty with your readers here which will help take your blog a long way.

It’s also important to have a plan of monetization in place as far as the design goes. You need to be sure ahead of time about how you’re going to monetize your blog. Some bloggers put up ads here and there without planning it out but you should go the other way and preconceive how your blog will look with ads, as well as what kinds of ads you plan to run.

You could run banner ads or use Google AdSense. Consider how to incorporate the ads into your design no matter what kind of ads you choose. This way, your blog will turn out to be much more enjoyable, which will lead to a better conversion rate.

Last, remember to utilize the favicon to your advantage. Even though favicons might seem like little things, they have a tremendous affect on your readers. Viewers can find favicons in either the tabs, bookmarks or address bar of their browser. So, a lot of people will view your favicon. You should try to put some time into developing a cute and easy favicon that gets the job done. This is yet another way to improve your blog’s branding and to give it a unique identity. So, don’t miss out on this small but powerful design tactic.In a nutshell, form the aforementioned article it becomes palpable that in order to get all that you can from your blog, it’s imperative for you to pay your attention toward building a design that is memorable, delightful and makes it show up among the crowd. Internet marketing expert David Bain is author of the “13 Pillars of Internet Marketing” Online Marketing eBook and founder of the “26-Week website marketing plan“.
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Finally – an Easy Way to Buld Links to Your Main Websites with Blogger Blogs 0

Posted on March 21, 2011 by

Hello, dear online marketer fellow and thanks for reading my articke which I am sure, will show you how to deploy another weapon in your link building arsenal. I will show you how to use Blogger (owned by Google) to get back links to your main websites and catapult them to the top of the search engines.

First, I need to answer one question – is it worth it getting links from blogger blogs and my answer is sound yes. The main reason is link diversity.

You need to so the links coming to your website look natural.

The keyword here is natural – that’s what we the webmasters are trying to do, build links to our websites ourselves while mimicking the natural link growth pattern of a website. For that reason we need links from different platforms and sites with different ip addresses.

Now, when we know that we need to find blogger blogs to get links from. It is easy. We also try to find blogs that are on topics similar to the website that we want to build links to.

All we need to is go to Google and type in inurl:blogspot.com + gardening (assuming that your blog is on gardening). You will get a long list og blogger blogs and all you have to do is to comment on different gardening articles with a link back to your website or blog.

Some of the blogs will allow you to use the keyword you are going after as a user name and some will not. When the latter – you can try to put a link in the comments section.

The html code is Your Keyword where Your Keyword is the word that you want to rank high in the search engines.

Strive to leave meaningful comments or most of them will be deleted and you would have wasted your time.

If you are like me, you will want to get higher return on your invested time when it comes to commenting on Blogger blogs. What I mean is that I want to be able to control my destiny so instead of commenting on someone elses blogs I would rather create my own blogger blogs fill them with content and point links to my money sites. This way 100% of them will stick.

All you have to do is to sign up with blogger for an account and create a blog on a topic similar to the one of your main website. Next, post 5 articles of 100 words each on it with a link in the content pointing to your main website or blog.

Since you already have filled your main website with content it won’t be hard to come up with five articles of 100 words each. For example – if the topic of your blog is gardening the topics of the 5 articles could be – how to grow tomatoes, how to grow cucumbers, how to grow big tomatoes, how to store cucumbers so they last longer e.t.c, you get the idea.

Of course, 5 articles on a blogger blog with links to your main money making website won’t catapult you to the top of Google but it is definitely a step forward. To get to the top of Google for your keyword fast and easy you need to look for 2 things – if there is a website with page rank 0 or 1 and if yes – the number of links from external sites that point to it.

If there is one and the competition is less than two million websites I can assure you that for a month and a half you can get to the first page in Google for that term. All that you need is to build more links to your blog or website than the website with PR 0 or 1.

It all sound well you might think but how on Earth I can build links fast, correct. Fortunately, it is easier than you think and my favorite method is called article marketing – that is writing and submitting articles to article directories with the sole purpose of getting links to my main websites.

It can be done either manually or with article submission software. In the beginning when I was just starting I was doing it manually, but once I was able to spend some money I bought an article submission software.

In essence it creates accounts for your on thousands of article directories (between 1000-2000 of them), verifies them and submit articles to them all while you do other things. Believe me – it is a huge time saver – you need about 30 minutes to have an article written and distributed to thousand directories. But not only that, with that piece of software you can go back and check how many of the directories have submitted your articles.

From my experience with one run of the article submitter I get about 300 links to the website that I am promoting at the moment. Given that you usually need about 1000 links to rank a website it means that with a few runs of the software you will have all the backlinks that you need.

Of course, you don’t have to stop there, you want to add a few links from blogspot blogs and a few links from WordPress blogs, so the links to your website look more natural to Google, but that’s the fastest way I know to build a huge amount of links to my websites.

Earlier on I said that this method works if there are websites with pr 0 and 1 on the first page in Google. What I meant is that you can see results fast if there are such websites. However, even if all the websites in the top 10 results for a given keyword have pr 2 and higher using articles to build links will get you there as well, just not that fast.

To read more about Article Demon – the article submission software that I use – check out my Article Demon Review article.

And while there – don’t forget to download my 3 Ways to Make Money with Article Demon Report ($97 value), no email required.

James Newstead has more than 5 years as online marketer. He specializes in link building for corporate customers
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5 Must Have Add-Ons for a Blogger Blog and Where to Find Them 0

Posted on March 17, 2011 by GuestBlogger
Image representing Blogger as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

When you first sign up for a blog on a site like Blogger, there is a wide variety of options made available that allow you to reach out to your readers.

From customizable templates to imbedded videos, audio and advertising, the new blogger seemingly has the world at his or her fingertips.

That warm and fuzzy feeling eventually starts to wear off though as new ideas pop up that may not be immediately covered by Blogger’s built-in features.

Luckily, Blogger and essentially any other blogging platform allows its writers to add any number of open source add-ons to their blogs for enhanced features and interaction with readers.

AdSense
The single greatest thing you can do for your blog is turn it into a profitable outlet for your daily writing. Google’s very own AdSense add-on is one of the easiest and most effective ways to do this. The best part is that it is incredibly easy to add AdSense to your blog through the interface provided by Google in Blogger. Read the rest of this entry →


Your Questions About Blog Theme Ideas 0

Posted on February 21, 2011 by Blog Design Journal

Mark asks…

Has anyone tried Google AdSense in their blog?

Has anyone tried Google adsense in their blogspot/blogger and had success?
I know it only it has great success if you have great traffic but like what topics/themes of blogs have better success?
Has anyone had problems with Adsense in their blogs?
What exactly are “fraud clicks” how can that be avoided?
I don’t have a blog but I think it’s probably the easiest way to set up a website and add Adsense.
I am a college student and I am trying to make extra money and I want to start a blog with Adsense. Any Ideas?

Blog Design Journal answers:

If you like to make money with adsense using blog make sure you don’t use other advertising such as banners. And also make your blog an information blog. Not the kind of blog where you usually interact with others. If that the case then you are very likely not getting very good click on the ads.

People don’t like ads. The only times when they click ads is when they are in the mood of researching topics. And that mood usually start at the search engine.

Ruth asks…

Ideas for baby nursery…?

I am not pregnant, but I have always been into interiror decorating, and my friend, who is a little “challenged” in that area, to say the least. So, she has kind of hired me, so to say, to help plan/decorate her nursery. She will definitely be finalizing any plans I make, but I want to give her some really great ideas, but on a small budget (like under 2,000 for everything). She isn’t finding out what she is having so it will have to be a unisex room.

Here are some nursery pics I have come across that I love. what do ya’ll think? Favorite? Least favorite? Are they good for unisex?

1. I love this fabric, http://images.teamsugar.com/files/users/10/107379/48_2007/unisex-nursery.jpg with kind of a meadow theme going on, maybe some green hillps painted on a sky blue wall with clouds. I love the orange and green colors.

2. http://www.myriopinar.com/menu/menu-49ab31b7ac31f.jpg: I love this idea with the murals too, but I doubt my ability. I love the little quote on the wall though “blessed be this bird in the nest” and I thought a little birdy theme would be adorable too.

3. I think this one is my favorite. Modern, neutral colors, and a little hint of a jungle theme, with just one or 2 animal print accessories: http://www.luxurynursery.com/images/blog/2009/05/neutral.jpg

What do yall think?? Thanks!
AHH! I can’t get the 2nd link to work! Well, what do you think of the quote and birdy theme? With bircages, trees painted on the wall, and little birdies on the wall? and this bedding: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9xmGODKbhaY/Sk1JdeK7h9I/AAAAAAAAAVs/SqinbmVFiVI/s400/Birds+of+Paradise+Crib+Bedding.jpg

Blog Design Journal answers:

I like the 3rd best the 2nd didnt work. But the browns are great since its neutral and nothing overwelming like pink or blue, it will be more relaxing for the baby an they wont be overwelmed and distracted by all the color.

Helen asks…

I need a good ideas about a site for a project that includes a lot of photos and essays!?

I started a project after lots of people responded to one of my blog. I just constructed an idea that all the people that are interested can participate in a site much like wikipedia, a site where volunteers edit and develop it. The project includes a lot of photos, essays and a forum like discussions. The truth is I don’t have the money and the time for a domain name like project.com, and I don’t really know anything about web page design.

So what I am looking for is some ideas. If I create a wordpress.com page can you give me some good Themes that wouldn’t exactly look like a blog and more like a normal website.

I know it is kind of complicated but just shoot ideas :)

Blog Design Journal answers:

Hi,

Very nice to know that you wanna launch a good wiki website.

Here you can find some excellent wordpress themes.
1- http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/
2- http://webmania.bloguite.com/lists/750-excellent-wordpress-themes-pointed-by-the-best-blogs-around.html

I hope you can find some good designs here. Goodluck for your website & keep up the good work.

Regards,
Muhammad Uzair Usman
Creative Web2.0 Website Designer
http://www.uzairusman.com

Richard asks…

How to add code into WordPress?

So i have a wordpress blog at http://www.appsformacs.co.uk/reviews and i’m planning on adding a HTML nav bar/ dock thing.

How would i do this. I’ve looked through all of the files, and theme files but they all seem to be php.

Any ideas?
I know how to code, it’s just i don’t know how/where to add/put in my OWN content!

Blog Design Journal answers:

Http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page

http://www.w3schools.com/

Start here.

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4 Steps for Earning Money with Blogs and Getting Blog Traffic 0

Posted on July 12, 2010 by GuestBlogger

A very popular topic online is how to earn money with a blog. My personal opinion on this is that if you don’t have the traffic, then you won’t make money with anything. But it all begins with a concept and a niche. And if you have these 2 things in line, then you’re on the right track.

In this article we’ll take a look at a 6-step process for making a blog as profitable as possible, and then how to get traffic to your blog. Let’s begin!

1) Find a theme for your blog

If you already have a topic in mind for your blog, then great. I’m going to show you how to further refine this theme so that your niche is as honed as possible. First of all, you should know that you can write about anything. Read the rest of this entry →


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