Brenda Ads Theme

Ads Theme Template for Blogger Blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sun, 30 May 2010 19:58:00 +0000

It seems many bloggers (just like myself) find this template not only attractive, but very manageable and easy enough to customize for ones needs.

Reporter vs Expert - Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:53:00 +0000

There are basically two types of bloggers in the world - reporters and experts - and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it's hard for reporters to become experts, but it's easy for experts to report).

If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I'll be frank; you want to be the expert.

Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven't established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it's easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc� experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.

Most Bloggers Are Reporters

The thing with expertise is that it requires something - experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).

There's nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it's a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts - there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.

Don't Replicate Your Teacher

If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a �guru� (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.

The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry - the Internet marketing industry - not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it's next to impossible to succeed.

Even people, who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it's fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche - Internet marketing - and rarely have any key points of differentiation.

How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things - email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It's a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let's face it - making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) - your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.

If the key is to become an expert and you haven't spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.

Report on Your Process, Not Others

The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people's work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.

It's okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it's fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there's. Frame things using your opinion - your stories - and don't regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.

Expertise comes from doing things most people don't do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.

You Are Already An Expert

Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don't leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.

Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life, who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of�well fear.

Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven't much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.

Reporting Is A Stepping Stone

If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from �scratch�, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.

Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.

Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it's okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that's all most experts really are.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

10 Blog Traffic Tips

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:50:00 +0000

In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else's blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that's about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called "traction", which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major "pillar" articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good "how-to" lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn't news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don't have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that's the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you've done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people's blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger's article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it's sort of like your blog telling someone else's blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it's so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it's worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn't bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it's worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your "Resource Box". You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I've listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won't stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I've put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it's certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

How a Brazilian blogger launched a $10K/m membership site

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:57:00 +0000

Hi All,

Daniel Scocco is a blogger from Brazil who used his blog as a launch pad for a membership site.

He went through Yaro Starak's Membership Site Mastermind program, then went to work to launch
his membership site.

He did a 5-day launch and brought in OVER 200 members at $48 a month. If you do the math on
that, he generated a $10,000 a month income stream in just five days.

That's incredible and inspiring stuff and you can hear Daniel and Yaro break down exactly what he
did in this podcast interview here (it won't cost you anything) -

http://tinyurl.com/q63pw4

What's particularly powerful about Daniel's story was how he was able to leverage the relationships he built up with high-profile experts in his industry.

He invited well known people to contribute content to his membership site, which meant he didn't
have to do all the content creation work.

He also leveraged their fame and access to people to help sell his membership site. A brilliant
strategy that you could replicate in your market, so you need to listen to this interview.

Set aside some time now, download the podcast and enjoy the discussion - it's truly motivational
stuff -

http://tinyurl.com/q63pw4

To your success,

Brenda

PS. If you want to be the next success story like Daniel, join Yaro's Membership Site Mastermind
program.

The current enrollment ends on Monday, so you only have a couple of days left to go before you miss out.

You can learn more about the program and sign up here -

http://tinyurl.com/opl3k3

Free Magazine Subscriptions and Technical White Papers

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 18:24:00 +0000

To everyone who has taken advantage of the free Magazine subscriptions and technical white papers we have offered, thanks for all of the emails thanking us for the lead, you are all very welcome. I will remind those of you that haven't yet taken the time to browse the 100's of titles, that this is absolutely one of the greatest and biggest promotion we have been able to offer our readers in years. Here is the link: http://nyreos-blogspot.tradepub.com. There is a title for every topic and every profession, so stop by the web site and search the categories, search by industry on the left side of the page and you can even use the search box provided. After you have subscribed to as many publications as you want to, leave us a comment and also a back link to your own website if you would like to. Brenda~

Leave Comments About Your Business

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:10:00 +0000

In the "Comments" section below this post, please let us and everyone else that visits this blog know where the majority of your online income is derived from. In other words, do you sell a product or products, do you just supply and publish free information and have adsense space ads? We want to be able to track where the responses are coming from in the world and also some other information that will be of use to all of us deriving a portion, if not all of our income from Home-Based-Businesses. So along with your comments and information about your business please leave your URL and the Country or US State you live in. Thanks in advance and I hope all of you will participate. Brenda~

Facebook to get a facelift

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:09:00 +0000

Social networking site to give users more tools to customize what information they see.

By Barbara Ortutay Associated Press

NEW YORK Facebook is revamping its home page and plans other changes so its millions of users can more easily choose the types of information they see.

Facebook said Wednesday it will let users follow public figures like President Obama and swimmer Michael Phelps and bands like U2, and even institutions like The New York Times.

Facebook's fan pages currently work as static destination sites for anything from bacon to Coca-Cola to Jane Austen. The social-networking site will eventually make them work more like profiles, which individuals can now continuously update by posting photos, links and other tidbits.

Beginning next Wednesday, Facebook will also launch a redesigned home page that lets users receive continuous updates from their friends instead of every 10 or 15 minutes.

It is also adding filters so people can choose which of their friends to keep up with and which to silence, limiting news from tiresome or annoying acquaintances you don't necessarily want to “de-friend.” Currently, people can choose to receive less information about certain friends but can't silence them completely.

Facebook will also tweak its central feature, the status update, which now invites people to broadcast to their friends a response to “What are you doing right now?” Responses can now range from mundane to poetic to uncomfortably personal.

Facebook's new question, “What's on your mind?,” may encourage people to dig deeper into their subconscious and post more entertaining updates than “Kevin is updating Facebook.”

Free Magazine Offers - Newly Released White Papers

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:54:00 +0000

We are pleased to offer you this exciting, new, and entirely free professional resource. Visit our Free Industry resource center today to browse our selection of 600+ complimentary Industry magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more. Get popular titles including: Broadband Properties Path to Improved Customer Service: What is SIP and SOA and how can it make my life easier? Extend the Value of Microsoft Applications with Avaya Unified Communications

No credit cards, coupons, or promo codes required. Try it today!

FREE Custom Backgrounds for your Twitter profile

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:02:00 +0000

I've been on Twitter for only a few months, I think I signed up for an account just before the holiday season of 2008. Anyway, when you sign up and make a profile, they give you a few choices of how you would like to design your profile page and with some tweaks you can make your page look nice. But, I got a "Tweet" from someone I am following on there and they sent me to a site that let's you design your own 'Custom' background and even gives you a video tuutorial on how to design it using the tools on their site before you start. So here it is, check it out at http://prettytweet.com/ and after you're done you can actually have them install it for you by just placing your Twitter ID and password in the box provided and poof.. It's Done. For $5.00 you can have them eliminate their little ad that says "Designed by PrettyTweet.com, but it's small and cute, so I decided to leave it on. Anyway, why not give them some credit for providing a cool service. :) Brenda~

Free Blogger Template Sites

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:47:00 +0000

Blogger Templates - For Use With Blogger 1. FinalSense 2. BlogspotTemplates 3. BlogspotTemplates 4. Blogskins 5. eblogtemplates 6. Blogger-Templates 7. Isnaini 8. PannaSmontata-templates 9. Noipo 10. Giselejaquenod 11. Freetemplates 12. Blogger-k-templates 13. ThemeTube 14. FreeSkins 15. Arcsin 16. Freeblogger-templates 17. Blogger-Templates-Directory 18. Templates4Free 19. Charmskins 20. OurBlogTemplates 21. Jump2Top 22. FreeBlogTemplates 23. IDWebTemplate 24. BlogFashions 25. SmallBusinessBible 26. Vietnam-Blogger 27. Templates4All 28. iBlogSkins 29. Lasvak 30. Blogcrowds 31. Geckoandfly 32. Pyzam 33. Template Panic - Blogger & Word Press Templates

I had to share it just for fun.. :)

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:12:00 +0000

Feed the Fish With Your Mouse

Blogging Tip from ProBlogger

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:17:00 +0000

Adsense Tips from ProBlogger

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 02:06:00 +0000

I Finally Figured Out How to Move Tags to the bottom of posts

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:09:00 +0000

Instead of cutting the code "between" the xxxx, you have to cut the ENTIRE LINE OF CODE INCLUDING THE LEFT ARROW AND WORD SPAN AND AT THE END THE WORD SPAN WITH THE RIGHT ARROW 'xxxx' and then just paste it after the footer code. I was looking for a place to paste it "between" some bunch of code I did not have on my page. Well anyway, after a very hectic day, I actually can say I did it!!! Thank you again noodle_cook :) Brenda

Moving labels, authors, timestamp, etc. to bottom of posts.

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 07:48:00 +0000

I tried moving the tags, time, authors name, etc. to the bottom of the posts for 2 hours and it did not work. I don't think I followed the directions properly in my previous post that I copied over from the eblogtemplates.com comments board from noodle_cook. It's 2:53am EST in NYC, I'm over-tired and going to bed. Until tomorrow, G'Day or G'Nite depending on where you are in the world. :) Brenda~

About

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 06:23:00 +0000

My brother Brad and I (Brenda) started blogging in early 2007. What started as one blog on the business of Domaining and Internet Advertising, ended up becoming 11 (as of 2/28/09) different blogs covering a wide range of topics. We now have help from a group of 17 dedicated colleagues who inspire us on a daily basis. They are located all over the world and we correspond through email, chat and once a week a long distance conference call. As far as designing the blogs and sites, I know what looks good and works well for navigating. But, I will admit I do get frustrated having to depend on our programmers to get the sites the way I imagined them to look. So I try to learn as much as I can on my own for myself. It's something like designing a new house or home addition and explaining your ideas to the Architect, they always tell you "it can't be done that way." I just Love to prove them wrong! :p We hope to add to our ever growing online friendships and share our ideas and knowledge with everyone. Along the way we'll be sharing our ideas, blogging tips, contacts, links and fixes with anyone and everyone who one day finds they need it. So if you have a blog or site about blogging, ex; SEO (search engine optimization), IM (internet marketing), web design, script and code fixes, widgets, fonts, themes or anything related to developing blogs and websites, send it our way and we'll be sure to place a link to your site in the appropriate place.

Resources

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 06:21:00 +0000

If you know of a great resource or have one yourself, please leave us a comment below or send us an email. If we add your suggested site, we’ll update this page with a link to the appropriate site and add a credit to the original publisher. Please send us a brief email granting us the "re-post permissions" as per the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act". This is important to us as internet publishers of proprietary content as it should be, and you should support our efforts by conforming and respecting that 'Act' if you are a professional blogger and/or webmaster.

ALL of your comments and suggestions are always welcome!

Brenda~

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Credits To: Studio7Designs

Free Font Downloads

Free Fonts and Other Resources: Web Page Publicity

Huge Collection of Free Fonts: Da Font

Nice Selection of Free Fonts: Urban Fonts

Fonts and Other Freebies: Simply The Best Fonts

1001 Free Fonts for Download: 1001 Free Fonts

Over 9000 Free Fonts: Creamundo

A Small List of Free Fonts: Best Free Fonts

Paid Font Sites

A Large Selection of Fonts for Purchase: My Fonts

Quality Fonts for Purchase: Veer

Information and Fonts for Purchase: Fonts

Font Resources and Sales: Font Haus

Stock Photos and Vectors

The Best Stock Photo and Vector Website: iStockphoto

Quality Photos for Purchase: Shutterstock

Stock Photos and Other Pay Downloads: Veer

Quality, Affordable Vectors for Purchase: Vector Stock

Stock Photos With a Great Selection: Jupiter Images

Stock Photos and Photography Network: Stock Vault

Quality Stock Photos: Corbis

Free Photos and Vectors

Submit Vectors or Download Others for Free: Open Source Vector Art

Tons of Great Free Vectors and Photos: Deviant Art

59 Pages of Free Vector Art: Free Vectors

Large Gallery of Free Vectors: Vecteezy

Quality Vector Downloads: Vector 4 Free

Neat Collection of Free Photos From Around the World: Free Stock Photos

Great Collection of Free Vectors and Resources: You The Designer

Great Free Stock Photos: Free Foto

A List of Free Downloads: Bittbox

700 Free Stock Photos: Free Picture Click

Website Templates

A Few High Quality Wordpress Themes: Evan Eckard

Over 2000 Free Web Templates: OSWD

A Small Selection of Nice Templates: Open Source Templates

A Large List of Free Templates: Free CSS Templates

Nice Wordpress Templates for Download: Free CSS Templates

A Combination of Free and Pay Templates: Free Templates Online

Affordable, Quality Templates: Templamatic

Free Blog Templates: Blogging Themes

CSS Galleries

The Best Sites on the Web: CSS Remix

A Frequently Updated Gallery of Sites: CSS Mania

An Organized List of Nice Sites: Most Inspired

CSS Gallery of Quality Sites: CSS Design Yorkshire

A Selection of Only Nature Based Sites: CSS Nature

A Selective List of Well Designed Sites: Web Creme

High Quality CSS Showcase: CSS Tux

Nice CSS Websites: The Designed Tree

A CSS Collection Organized by Category: CSS Elite

Inspiration

A Great Site About Everything Type: I Love Typography

An Incredible Illustrator: Burst of Beaden

A Great Designer and Illustrator: Fully Illustrated

Customizable List of Design Resources: Cork Dump

The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada: GDC

Freelance Advice Blog and Resources: Freelance Switch

Amazing Collection of Logos: Logopond

Stunning Desktop Wallpapers: Desktopography

A Graphic Design Magazine: Computer Arts

Tutorials

The Best Photoshop Tutorials: PSD Tuts

A Talented Photoshop Designer: Abduzeedo

Photoshop Tutorials and Web Design Resources: Web Design Library

Tutorials for Photoshop, Illustrator and More: Tutorial Vault

A Few Neat Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials: Design Spice

Great Photoshop Tutorials and Downloads: PS Wish

Tutorials for Every Computer Program: Tutorialing

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A Couple Free Patterns for Download: Design Spice

Free Photoshop Brushes: Design Fruit

Free Photoshop Actions: Visual Blast

Tons of Free Photoshop Brushes: Brusheezy

A Few Nice Free Photoshop Brushes: Obsidian Dawn

Great Grunge Brushes and Others: Photoshop Brushes

Free Background Patterns for Photoshop: Free BG

Over 150 Free Background Patterns: Squidfingers

Design Blogs

A Frequently Updated Design Blog: Veerle’s Blog

A Design Magazine and Blog: Smashing Magazine

A European Design Blog: Design In Europe

A Unique Nerdy Blog: Design You Trust

The Personal Blog of a Graphic Designer: Larissa Meek

A German Design Blog: David Hellmann

The Blog of a Canadian Geek/Model: Mostly Lisa

A Graphic Design Blog: Bittbox

A Blog About Freelance Graphic Design Advice: Freelance Switch

A Design Blog Full of Resources: You The Designer

A Popular Design Blog: Fazai 38

Colour Palettes

A Flash Site of User Generated Colour Palettes: Adobe Kuler

Using Colours From Photos: Colr

Colours, Palettes and Patterns: COLOURlovers

A Colour Palette Generated From Your Images: Color Palette Generator

See The Results of Your Palette on a Website: Color Spire

Create and Email Colour Palettes: Color Blender

Tips and Tricks

Vector Do’s and Dont’s: iStockphoto

The Web Design Polish: PSD Tuts

Promote Your Design Business: Freelance Switch

How To Increase Web Traffic: You The Designer

Coders

Quality Programming: XHTMLized

Professional Web Slicing: PSD Slicing

XHTML in 24 Hours: We Use Scissors

Affordable, Quality Coding: PSD2HTML

From Design to Code, Quick and Cheap: Front Enders

Designer Geek Merch

Great Nerdy Clothing and Accessories: Veer

Nice T-Shirt Collection: Design Loot

Graphic Design T-Shirts and Accessories: Cafepress

Geek Merchandise For Everyone: Think Geek

Graphic Design T-Shirts: Zazzle

Unique T-Shirt Designs You Can’t Find Anywhere Else: Allmightys

A fantastic resource for finding information on corporate brand identity: Brands of the World

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Credits To: BloggingTips.com & BloggerBuster.com

The Top 10 Blogger Template Resource Sites

Written by Amanda Fazani from Blogger Buster on July 14, 2008

These days, Blogger users are spoiled for choice by the variety of free Blogger templates available to them. What’s more, as blog designers push the boundaries of blog design, the quality of templates just gets better and better!

Whereas not long ago, Blogger templates seemed to all have the same two column layout with no extra functionality, Blogger template designers now add features like navigation menus; tabbed widgets to include much information in a small space; three (and even four) column templates, and even magazine style layouts which previously were only available to those using Wordpress.

In this post, I’ll present the cream of the crop for Blogger templates: the top ten resources where you can find the best quality and variety of free Blogger templates to enhance your blogs.

B-Templates

B-templates probably has the largest collection of Blogger templates available online. Featuring a collaboration of templates by many different authors (and many unique designs too), B-Templates organizes templates by layout, style and color.

Top picks

Visionary: An adaptation of Justin Tadlocks simple and functional blog template for Blogger, with tabbed navigation in the sidebar. Easily customized to suit your own blogging requirements.
Ads Theme: a professional layout with plenty of room for ads and widgets.
Made in Spain: To date, this seems the most downloaded Blogger template on the Btemplates site. It features a journal style background, enabling your blog to appear more like the pages of a book than a regular, digital publication!

Jackbook

Jackbook is written by Jacky Supit who specializes in converting Wordpress templates for those using the Blogger platform.

To date, Jackbook has offered some of the most popular Blogger templates available, some of which have even been showcased by Mashable.

Top Picks

Rainbow Garden: This is a stunning and elegant Blogger template with a colorful background and three column layout.
Lemon Blogger Template: Simply put, this is a fabulous template! The “Lemon” title refers to the color scheme (which is actually a combination of yellow and green). This features many useful functions including navigation and search functions built into the code.
Dreamwork Redux: This is a very elegant template with a darker layout and unique widgets in the sidebar. It also includes three columns in the footer section, and built in feed links.

eBlog Templates

eBlog templates features a huge collection of templates for Blogger, many of which are Wordpress conversions. You can also find a great selection of Blogger tutorials here too.

Top Picks

Dilectio: This popular template is a conversion of the Wordpress theme developed for Smashing Magazine. It includes a navigation bar in the header, and well styled sidebar sections.
Minyx: This is a professional styled theme with a feed icon integrated into the header; built in blog search and stylish sidebar headings.
Natural Essence: This is a simple, elegant template with built in widgets for navigation and recent posts/comments.

BlogCrowds

BlogCrowds is one of the most established communities for bloggers, and their Blogger template offerings are well worth a look. Here you will find dozens of excellent quality templates to doanload, many of which are not available elsewhere.

Top Picks

Hemingway: I have to admit, this is one of my all-time favorite Blogger templates! It features a unique layout on the home page which displays the two most recent posts side by side. On post pages, you will see meta-data for the post in the left hand column. It is one of the most professional Blogger templates I know of and well worth a look.
Probama: Here’s a political theme which would certainly suit many of the political bloggers sprouting up in the run up to the US elections… Of course, you could change the header banner to suit your own blog’s theme, though overall this is surely a professional and well designed template.
Magic Paper: This is such a beautiful design! Featuring three columns and a parchment style layout for each section, this would certainly suit a blog with ethereal overtones.

GosuBlogger

Goasu provides some beautoful templates with excellent functionality. Some of the templates available are Wordpress conversions, but you will find a range of original templates here too.

Top Picks

Freedom Wall: This has a lovely wall effect background and stylish header section.
Dark World: Simple yet stunning, this dark template has a built in search function and navigation bar.
Angelic: This template includes Ajax functionality for an accordion style link list.

Blogger-Templates

This is one of the oldest resources for Blogger XML templates, and is among the most popular Blogger powered sites online.

Top Picks

Ratatouille: This Disney themed template has many unique features, including the built in movie preview!
Colibri: A beautiful floral theme for Blogger with a wide two column layout.
DarkSpark: A striking blue on black design with integrated navigation buttons and a stylish header image.

Zona Cerebral

Zona Cerebral includes some truly stunning templates for free download. Most are original templates, though recently the trend for Wordpress conversions has ensured some of the best blog designs from across the web are available to Blogger users from this site.

Top Picks

Revolution: Yes, this is a Blogger conversion of Brian Gardner’s fabulous theme! Almost all functionality has been retained for this Blogger version. You certainly won’t be disappointed with the download
Yoghourt: This stunning template is in shades of brown with a seemingly simple layout and excellent features.
Clean and Dark: This is a simple template with few images which is optimized for ad integration.

Gisele Jaquenod

Gisele offers unique and premade designs which are specifically made for Blogger. Generally speaking, her templates would appeal to a more feminine audience. Many include her recognizable “birdie” logo, though all are presented beautifully.

Top Picks

Birdie’s Good Life: Probably the most famous of Gisele’s creations, this epitomizes the style she projects through her template designs.
Birdie’s Secret Garden: With three columns and a pastel color scheme, this is a feminine and girly design.
Bloggin Out Loud: This template features a more masculine, musical theme and excellent design work in the header section.

Template Godown

Template Godown offers some beautiful Blogger template designs, most of which are Wordpress conversions.

Top Picks

Japanese Fleur: This is one of the most beautiful ornamental designs I have ever seen, with a search bar neatly entwined in the foliage of the header section (you really must check this one out to understand what I mean!).
Atlantia: A simple theme with integrated navigation bar and RSS icon in the sidebar.
Naga Geni: An eastern themed almost monochrome template with a three column layout.

Blogger Themes at Blogging Tips

Here at Blogging Tips, you can now download a great selection of my own Blogger XML template designs! Most of these were originally designed for Blogger, though I have also begun to convert Kevin’s Wordpress themes too.

Top Picks

BT Dark Green: This is a Wordpress conversion of the original Blogging Tips theme. It features an integrated navigation section and mouseover effects for links in the sidebar.
A New day: This pale theme features a wide sidebar and image transparency effects in the header.
Butterfly: Of my own designs, this is one of my all-time favorites (and probably the most downloaded). Featuring a striking red on black contrast, this theme is feminine without being overly girly!

Yet more resources to be found…

These ten featured sites offer a great selection of Blogger templates for free download, but are only a small percentage of the complete list of resources available.

Over at Blogger Buster, I maintain a complete list of Blogger template resources (including premium blog designers) which you may also find useful. You may also like to check out a few showcases of Blogger template downloads to see the variety of designs available now for Blogger users:

These days, Blogger templates are available to download from all corners of the world wide web, and as more designers are turning their skills towards this niche of the web design industry, we can only expect the quality of templates to keep on improving!

**********************************************************************************

Credits to: IHelpYouBlog.com

Pro-Blogging Platforms:

Wordpress (non-hosted)

Wordpress (hosted)

Blogger Revenue Generation:

Widgets

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 06:20:00 +0000

100's of Widgets for your blog or website.

YourMinis.com

*************************************************************************

Credits To: Mashable.com

Widgets are a handy, easy and simple way to add some flare to your blog. Whether you’d like to display the number of currently online visitors to your site or simply the weather report for Los Angeles, you can do it with widgets. We’ve assembled a list of 50 useful or simply cool widgets for your pleasure. And remember, the first rule of widgetizing your blog is - don’t overdo it!

MyBlogLog’s Recent Readers - this widget can easily be called a hit amongst blog owners; its popularity even managed to convince Yahoo into buying MyBlogLog. The widget lets you see the avatars of recent visitors to your blog, provided they’re also members of MyBlogLog.

Mashable - get the latest social networking news from this very site.

Flickr Flash Photo Stream Badge - display images from your Flickr profile with a handy Flash photo stream.

Preview Anywhere - see a live preview of outgoing links in a small popup which activates on mouseover. Some find this annoying, while others might find it useful.

Twitter Badge - if your life is so interesting that everyone must know what you’re up to all the time, then a Twitter badge is the ideal counterpart to your blog. It’ll proudly displays your recent tweets.

Digg News - display the latest Digg links on your blog. Themeable and fully customizable.

FEEDJIT - real time traffic data directly in your blog’s sidebar.

LineBuzz - inline comments for your blog. Very handy for blogs with frequent lively discussions.

Flixn - display a stream directly from your webcam, so your blog visitors can always see what you’re up to.

3Jam - lets your visitors send messages to your mobile phone, without them knowing your phone number.

Jaxtr - with Jaxtr, your visitors can actually call you to your mobile phone; again, your number stays private.

LinkedInABox - show off your LinkedIn profile. Perfect for personal blogs.

Box Widget - enable visitors to use box.net’s online storage directly on your web site.

Price of gas - displaying gas prices on your blog might seem unnecessary to some, but it’s cool if you have a traffic/travel related blog.

iBegin Weather Widget - Display weather information in your sidebar. Just like with Price of Gas, works great with travel-related blogs.

ClockLink - display time in various time zones with these nifty Flash clocks.

Film Loops - display the latest loops from your FilmLoops account.

Daily Painters - display paintings from famous painters on your blog.

WhoLinked - show your visitors which sites have recently linked to your web site. Works with all major blog platforms.

Criteo AutoRoll - displays links to blogs similar to your blog.

Bitty Browser - embed a cute, fully functional mini web browser to your blog.

Leafletter - create a mini website and embed it into your blog.

WikiSeek - search Wikipedia with this simple widget.

FeedCount - show off the number of visitors to your blog with this handy little button.

Technorati Link Count - display the number of links your website has from one of the biggest blog authorities - Technorati.

MyPageRank - another good way to show how “big” your blog is is to show off your Google PageRank.

CheckPageRank - in addition to showing your PageRank, this widget also shows your Alexa ranking.

BlinkxIt - embed a link to related videos directly into your website.

Skype button - display your Skype online/offline status on your blog.

RockYou Horoscope - not something I would personally use, but some people are into horoscope. Hell, most people are into horoscope. Anyway, this widget shows horoscope (doh!) and does it in a nicely designed colorful box.

del.icio.us Tagometer - display how many times have del.icio.us users saved your page.

del.icio.us Linkrolls - this badge shows your latest bookmarks from del.icio.us.

Timelines - need to create a timeline? Seek no further. This widget makes it really easy.

PollDaddy - PollDaddy lets you create beautiful polls in no time, and display them at your blog.

Vizu - another poll-making widget, compatible with all major blog platforms.

AnswerTips - display definitions from Answers.com for various terms on your blog. The definitions are shown in bubbles which are activated on doubleclick.

AnswerBoxes - give your visitors a chance to enter a term themselves, and get a definition from Answers.com

Now Playing - if you got to share your current playlist contents with the world, Sigamp will do the trick. Works with most popular music players, including Foobar, Winamp, iTunes and others.

BuzzBoost - display headlines from your RSS feed on any website.

LibraryThing - show off the latest books you’ve been reading.

Plaxo Address Book - let your most faithful visitors access their address books direclty from your site.

AuctionAds - a widget that displays auctioned items on eBay, and gives you a percentage of the price paid when someone buys an item.

aStore - similar to AuctionAds, only for Amazon. Create a mini-store on your site and receive profit when someone buys an item through your store.

Plazes - show your current location on a Plazes map.

Stockalicious - track your portfolio with this widget, and share it with others. Let everyone know how much money you’ve lost.

Yahoo! For Good - create a charity badge and ask for donations for a worthy cause.

Giftspace - your friends never know what to buy you for birthday? Let them know what you really want with this nifty widget.

MixMap - see where are the visitors to your MySpace profile from on a map.

Google Map Widget - display a searchable Google Map on your website.

Google Video Search - add a video search form and selected videos to your web site.

Odeo player - display an Odeo player for and podcast right there in your sidebar.

Widgets

About Widgets

Looking to spice up your Text Boxes? Perhaps by adding popular news items, interesting trivia, a comic strip or clips from your favorite TV show? With widgets, it's easy to add additional features to any Text Box.

Getting Started

Below is a list of widget providers you may want to check out. We've selected a few example widgets to get you started. Just copy the embed code from any widget below and paste it directly into a Text Box.

Popular News

This widget displays the most viewed, emailed and searched CNN items.

To add the widget to any Text Box, simply click the "Get & Share" button, then choose the "Embed" option. Copy the embed code and paste it directly into your Text Box. Done!

You can also explore additional CNN widgets.

Trivia

This widget displays information about who was born on the current date.

To add the widget to any Text Box, simply click the "Grab It" button, then choose the "Embed" option. Copy the embed code and paste it directly into your Text Box. Done!

Comics

This widget displays the latest Dilbert comic strip.

To add the widget to any Text Box, simply click the "Grab It" button, then choose the "Embed" option. Copy the embed code and paste it directly into your Text Box. Done!

TV Clips

This widget displays clips and highlights from Saturday Night Live.

To add the widget to any Text Box, simply click the "Share" button, then choose the "Embed" option. Copy the embed code and paste it directly into your Text Box. Done!

You can also explore additional NBC widgets.

Message to "Ads Theme Template" Users

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 05:06:00 +0000

For those of you that are using this template and know the answers to any of the questions and problems many of us are facing, please post your solutions/fixes and/or paste your lines of code in the comments box at the bottom of this post. Thanks in advance, Brenda

Moving "poster, timestamp, labels & comments" to bottom of post.

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:58:00 +0000

Author: noodle_cook
Comment:

Now the post gets too long, and you need to move poster, timestamp, labels, and comments to the bottom of post, find the code between <span class='meta'>, then cut and paste and put in post footer:

<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>
<div class='entrytitle'>
   <!-- enclose with div entrytitle to control the style-->
   <!-- Cut and paste the code for span meta-->
    <span class='meta'>put it here</<span>
</div>
</p>

If you just want the labels moved then cut and paste this and put in the "put it here" stub indicated above:

<b:if cond='data:post.labels'&gt;
   <b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'>
      <a expr:href='data:label.url' rel='tag'><data:label.name/></a&gt;
      <b:if cond='data:label.isLast !=&quot;true&quot;'>,</b:if>
   </b:loop>



</b:if>

To Answer Your Questions about this Template

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:07:00 +0000

I will be posting all of the questions and the answers to those questions on this blog. I have decided that there are so many people out there who have been having problems with it that I will try to help as much as I can. Even if that means just passing on the help that I originally received from noodle_cook and a few others. If you look at the comments under the post entitled "How I arrived at this point." you will find some starter questions. If you have any more, send them to me and I will try and locate the answer for you. I will paste the code right into the post so this way you can have it at your finger tips at any time to copy and paste into your HTML box. I will also obviously pass on any added/special instructions that should be followed. Be sure to always back up your Template before you tweak and play with any of your code. Brenda~

Day II of Tweaking

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 16:18:00 +0000

After staying up until 1:00 am EST I finally decided I'd better get some sleep. Now here I am looking at the blog and wondering what I should try to fix next. noodle_cook has been so helpful getting me to this point, I just can't say Thank You enough! Ok, I'm going fix myself a fresh cup of coffee and start working on the "Nav Buttons" and the pages they point to. Also I'd love to get my "Contact" form to be placed properly. As far as the ads, I'm not worried about who get's paid (if anyone does at all), as long as they show up on the page as something in the appropriate placeholder for now. Ok, here we go. Happy Bloggin, Brenda

How I arrived at this point.

noreply@blogger.com (Ms.. Prince) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:01:00 +0000

With the generous help from noodle_cook on the comments page ( http://www.eblogtemplates.com/ads-theme-blogger/#comments )for this template. I was able to have him/her publish the blog in a blank format. I would never be at this point if it was not for them. I will do my best to now publish a blog worthy of the time they took to get me up and running. Brenda~

Welcome!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:09:00 +0000

This Ads Theme template was fixed.

Brenda Ads Theme

Ads Theme Template for Blogger Blogs

Reporter vs Expert - Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting

10 Blog Traffic Tips

Top 10 Tips

How a Brazilian blogger launched a $10K/m membership site

Free Magazine Subscriptions and Technical White Papers

Leave Comments About Your Business

Facebook to get a facelift

Social networking site to give users more tools to customize what information they see.

Free Magazine Offers - Newly Released White Papers

FREE Custom Backgrounds for your Twitter profile

Free Blogger Template Sites

I had to share it just for fun.. :)

Blogging Tip from ProBlogger

Adsense Tips from ProBlogger

I Finally Figured Out How to Move Tags to the bottom of posts

Moving labels, authors, timestamp, etc. to bottom of posts.

About

Resources

Credits To: Studio7Designs

Free Font Downloads

Paid Font Sites

Stock Photos and Vectors

Free Photos and Vectors

Website Templates

CSS Galleries

Inspiration

Tutorials

Free Photoshop Downloads

Design Blogs

Colour Palettes

Tips and Tricks

Coders

Designer Geek Merch

Credits To: BloggingTips.com & BloggerBuster.com

The Top 10 Blogger Template Resource Sites

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Yet more resources to be found…

Widgets

See also:

Widgets

About Widgets

Getting Started

Popular News

Trivia

Comics

TV Clips

More Widgets

Message to "Ads Theme Template" Users

Moving "poster, timestamp, labels & comments" to bottom of post.

To Answer Your Questions about this Template

Day II of Tweaking

How I arrived at this point.

Welcome!