iPENthisBLOG

Free Wallpapers and Calendars for October

2009-10-03T06:32:00.000-07:00

We are happy to present the cute fish wallpaper for this month of october. Download them.

As always, the wallpapers are provided in various dimensions. Wide screen resolutions are also provided. You could also find wallpapers without the calendar.

The files' names say the above details. Choose the one which is best for your computer.

If you like this set of wallpapers, please share/digg using the links below.
Wish you all luck and success for this month of October. Hope this calendar-wallpaper helps you stay focussed and finish your projects in time.

Have a fulfilling month ahead :)

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We would love to hear from you. Leave a comment, if you feel like saying something.

You could share inspiring designs with us. You could even let us know what you would like to have as your desktop wallpaper for November, so we can have an extra helping of inspiration :).
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PRETENDING TO BE A PROBLOGGER

2009-09-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

A magic, a surprise...When you wake up today, you are a problogger, with a six figure income. Kafoosh..

Nothing has changed, you are the same, your place is the same, only change is that your blog has become a golden egg laying duck.

Now, today, let us pretend or believe that you had indeed become a problogger, with the money churning blog. Then?

What would you do, then? Lay in the bed, enjoy the visitor count? Or would you be checking the analytics every second? Now, start thinking like a Problogger.

You could not waste your time by looking at statistics or just ignore your blog and work on it at your own whims.

You could find new avenues, new partners, new advertisers, new products for your blog to grow, with the time you have in hand.

Where would you invest your money and time, now? I ask you to think like a problogger who had made it there by hard work and not like one who had blindly hit the jackpot one fine morning :)

There are a few things I believe (not yet being a six figure income blogger), a Problogger's day would be filled with:

READING A LOT

Could be not believable for some but true. More you become a Pro, you become more aware that you have a lot to learn. More you get indulged, farther the horizons.

Being a pro, you get the complete knowledge of your lack of knowledge. When you read a lot, you come to know what more you could know.

The major chunk (say 30% to 40%) of your time would go for reading. Not just other hundreds of blogs but you have to read books and articles and you need to do research. You need to go through your own blogs and think over some articles.

You need to make the right decision of which blogs to read, which tweets to follow. You should be bold enough to unsubscribe and unfollow hundreds (if not thousands), to remove the clutter.

Reading wisely, reading a lot, reading from varied sources - An important trait. BE OPEN TO KNOWLEDGE.

SHARING A LOT(importantly interesting things)

As important as reading, is how willing you are to share. You need to share interesting things with your readers, followers.

There are lot of forums/social networks/blog networks where you could share interesting ideas, interesting finds with others.

Twitter, digg and what not. You need to leave comments in other blogs to keep your foot on ground.

Even though you are a problogger with six figure income, you can't try to earn from all the things you do. You need to have a business mindset but should not stoop low in trying to earn with whatever you do.

You need to share a few goodies, a few free e-books, a few interesting give-aways. They in a way attract visitors to your blog but it mainly enhances your blog's brand and your brand. It helps you see yourself with awe. BE HAPPY TO GIVE.

PLANNING INTELLIGENTLY

You need to plan ahead and as well as your plan needs to be flexible and intelligent. You are a problogger. Do you have posts lined up for the coming month? Say atleast a few posts for the next couple of days?

You have very little time? 'Reading a lot' and 'creating e-books' swallowed your time? Then you need to plan intelligently. You can't give out reasons, if your blog visitor count dropped from 10,000 to 1000. Could you? To whom would you give the reasons?

Start inviting guest posts, schedule your posts well in advance, don't be hyper active, just post at a comfortable pace.

You should not only plan for when to publish your posts but also when not to. Include your vacations and outings too in your schedule. Plan accordingly. Take in all contingencies. Let the plan be flexible(I repeat). BE READY FOR ANYTHING.

NETWORKING

Do you actively(proactively) send mails to other bloggers, for partnership? Inviting them to guest blog, asking for interviews, calling them to review your e-book? You remember, today you are a problogger. So, you need not wait further, start networking.

Be bold enough to reach out. You could start by writing guest posts and sending it to other good blogs. Then you could start inviting some of the bloggers to guest post in your blog.

When you see a good product in any blog, you could ask them to advertise in your blog, quoting your stats. It is not always advertisers who find the publishers. If the product seems to be relevant to your blog, you could take the first step in the partnership. BE PROACTIVE.

Start thinking like a problogger to become a problogger. Once you become a problogger, you won't get a new sets of high end 'mindset'. Start working on your attitude, now and see the difference, that it brings slowly.

If you too wish you could share what the difference was, share with us in the comments section. Let us know your thoughts and ideas.

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1000 supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ways of having a sucking post title that might help yuoo

2009-09-14T17:20:00.000-07:00

The elevator pitch for any blog post, is its title. If that is the worst in the face of the earth, your blog could not be saved.

A strong, witty, catchy title is very very essential. If you could convince yourself to click on the link after seeing your title, then that is THE title, your readers would surely read.

Getting attention is the difficult thing to do. Once that is achieved, if your blog post is good enough, that would do the magic on the readers.

In this post let us just see the DON'Ts of writing a post title.

Long titles

Frighteningly Big number in your title

small list of useful links

Difficult to understand words

Expressing indecision in your title - not being confident

Not being honest to your title

Having spelling mistakes

These are some of the things that need to flash in your mind in those couple of seconds when choosing the blog title.

I have tried to come up with the most stinking title, I could think of. So that you could relate to what I am saying :). Hope it helped.

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What are the things that annoyed you on seeing some bad post titles. What are the mistakes you had done before while choosing titles?

Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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Picture Credit : mwparenteau

Best Attitudes for a Guest Blogger

2009-09-10T07:47:00.000-07:00

It's a simple mental setup that makes your guest posts stand out and make the right impact on your new readers.

Listed here are, just 5 of the essential outlook needed for a guest blogger.

Being genuine in what you are saying

If the topic you are handling is not of your interest - leave the topic alone and don't smother the readers.

Move on to something interesting which you and as well as the readers like to read excitedly.

Share what you know and don't pretend.

Ready to accept criticisms

Sometimes, interests and ideas conflict. Your style of writing, sometimes might not go well with the readers of the blog in which you are guest blogging.

If your guest post didn't take off as expected, you should be ready to face the music.

Not looking at it as (only) a marketing indulgence

Guest blogging brings a very good exposure. However, publicity and marketing benefits are always just a bi-product of guest blogging.

Conceive something wonderful to share, put it in words and place it in someone else's blog and rejoice your creation.

Loving the readers of the guest blog as much as your own

Don't create an orphan post. You created it. Be with it.

Answer the queries, converse with the readers by being with the post. Being always there could be difficult but once in a while, turn to the guest posts of yours and answer any queries that the readers have raised.

Seeing Guest Blog as your own Blog

Keeping the standard of your guest posts at par with those in your own blog. You should not go for quantity of guest posts, you write but by the quality of them.

This is a crucial element. Because the goodness of guest blogging is enormous like new readers, recognition, respect, more visitors etc.,

And these goodness's could make you lose focus on quality of the posts you write and make you write more guest posts. Even if you write a lot of guest posts, quality should be THE priority.

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If you are new to the idea of guest blogging, you could hold a master's degree in it, after going through the links in this post in blogherald - a great resource.

If you would like to guest post in iPENthisBLOG or If you like me to guest post in your blog, use this contact form.

If you have something to say, please do share in the comments section.
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Secret for posting regularly in your blog

2009-09-03T12:05:00.000-07:00

Before moving to the secret...let us sit back and sort out, in how many blogs are we planning to make it big? Some could manage even five blogs.

It's your call. Don't quit this part. Make it. How many blogs do you plan to make it really BIG in?

After we are done, we are ready to move ahead. Because, even if you have all the blogging prowess, if you distribute your efforts to more blogs than you could manage, all blogs of yours would turn out only mediocre.

A blog needs constant catering. Dedicated effort. Even if blogging is a hobby, it needs more interest and dedication than painting.

How could you be true to this art of blogging, by not being intermittent and how to post regular updates in your blog?

Some tips, here.

A FLEXIBLE SCHEDULE

Schedule is 'freezing/fixing of time' for doing something. An irony here. The Schedule needs to be flexible.

Don't make a rule that you would be posting every Monday and Thursday at 9:00 AM. It doesn't work that way and draws all the energy you have.

'Two posts a week, 2 hour per post, anytime in the mornings' - Kind of schedule makes blogging interesting and attractive to indulge in.

A COMFORTABLE BLOGGING STYLE

If your blog posts need a lot of research, or if you are a design blogger, you need a lot of time to do the actual work before blogging. So, don't mix up blogging and the work before that.

Follow a separate flexible schedule to hone the skills of yours in these fields and work on them. Be atleast two projects ahead, before you start blogging on the first.

Don't hurry and push yourself and take the joy out of both blogging and the thing you blog about.

Follow a comfortable blogging style. DON'T HURRY to tell the world what you did.

USE HIGH PRODUCTIVE TOOLS

There are many tools helping bloggers - to blog, to read, to bookmark, to share, to write, to listen ...

Use your discretion, use only a select number of tools that you feel are useful to you. Stick with them.

Experiment with new tools only after a certain period (atleast after 2 to 3 months). Drop all the services, you feel are redundant.

For blogging, don't use two tools catering the same need. Say using both live writer and w.bloggar to publish your posts is useless.

If all of your blog posts are of the same pattern - say 'a picture and a content' or 'only content without picture', it would be good.

Because changing the post's style everytime could make you go in search of new tools and that in turn could take the fun out of blogging. Follow a pattern.

A SUITABLE TIME FRAME BETWEEN POSTS

If you could post one post everyday, if everything goes well, then cut back to 1 post every 2 days.

Make provisions for the unexpected. Always post at a slower pace than what you could at your normal potential.

This way, you could future post and satisfy your readers by posting regularly. This could cover you, if you fall ill or if you take a vacation.

Also this gives you time to increase your knowledge, reach to your readers at a more personal level by replying to comments, networking with them in social networks etc.,

DON'T BE HYPERACTIVE IN SOCIAL NETWORKS

Social networks are good for networking and marketing your blog. The bare truth is there is no better networking than going out and talking with your school buddies.

If you can't do that, social networks are just a way to not be social. You get to know new people, you could reach out to your readers but that shouldn't cost you YOUR PERSONAL TIME.

If your blog is good, people would come to know of it and they would appreciate your work. You need not be howling, tweeting, scraping your throats out in the social networks.

Reduce your activities in social networks to less than an hour a week. Too much to ask? :) Try it out and see how your blogging quality increases.

DO IT WITH DEDICATION

Blogging is like any other art, dedication is paramount. If you are not interested, you could not do it well and you could not do it regularly.

Respect your passion for blogging. Blog with dedication, you would automatically find time to do it and that too you would find time to do it extremely well.

Keep a higher calling in your mind when you blog like improving your knowledge/skill, sharing good things, helping your readers, making a difference and don't get trapped in the quick money syndrome :)

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Share your thoughts on how you manage to post regularly in comments section.
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Free Desktop Wallpaper/Calendar : September

2009-09-01T06:33:00.000-07:00

September is a time, when it rains in India :) [i love rain :)] This month's wallpaper is created, inspired by rain and monsoon.

Click here to see the wallpaper in various dimensions. It is available both with and without wallpaper. Also, available are wallpapers for wide screen.

The name of the file says whether it is with/without calendar and the dimension of the wallpaper. Choose the one suitable for you.

Hope you find the calendar/wallpaper useful and charming.

Every month we are trying to come with some good wallpapers for you to use. We would like to hear from you, on this.

Let us know what you feel about them. If you have some interesting ideas, tips, thoughts, share them with us in comments section or in twitter

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You could find the rest of the wallpapers, published in iPENthisBLOG, here.

You could find other interesting freebies, goodies - here.

Share this post, if you like it, by clicking the icons listed below.
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Elements that make a blog complete

2009-08-25T19:14:00.000-07:00

Content is king. Quality of posts rule. Readers relish and enjoy your blog because of your writing. All - true.

Even then, there are some features, when present in your blog doesn't add much value (atleast, conceived not to), but if not present has a huge impact on the reader experience.

These small details, when taken care of, makes the blog more reader oriented and makes the blog feel complete.

Let me list a few MUST features in a blog i.e., other than content.

ABOUT PAGE

When your readers convert to clients, the first page they search in your blog, is the about page. If that is missing, you are losing business directly.

An about page takes priority next to the blog itself. Because, it is where 'YOU' are presented to your readers and it is where you reach out to your readers in a personal level.

About page is where you could make your elevator pitch on what you do and also introduce your blog to your readers.

SEARCH

Search has become the new navigation option for many readers.

People, in impulse, try to locate a search option in a blog to navigate to areas of their interest. If present, it could help your readers to have a smooth experience in your blog.

You can search content in iPENthisBLOG here.

RSS

RSS is the mandatory part of any blog. Why? Because a blog has regular updates and expecting a reader to come every day (sometimes more than once a day) to your blog to read is asking for more.

RSS is the alternative for your readers' convenience to get updates from your blog easily for free. So, make the provision for your user's convenience.

CONTACT INFO

As pointed in about page, for your clients, readers to reach you and to network with you, you need to provide your contact info. Its priority is in par to the about page only next to blog itself.

If you do not want to be spammed, you could opt for many robust alternatives like using image of your mail id or contact forms available through zoho etc.,

NAVIGATION

Though search is available, a basic navigation option to access the about page, contact information, your portfolio, the archives etc., are a must.

Without these, a person landing on your blog's homepage would invariably leave the blog because of the difficulty in reaching the archives.

COPYRIGHTS

Even if this makes only for a single line at the end of your blog, this is very important as to what and how your blog posts and elements must be considered.

It could of help for many bloggers/media to know how your content must be treated.

Is it not evident - the content is mine and should not be copied? Yes, it is. Yet, it is better to be clearer from your side.

COMMENTS

This need not be said. Even then. Some blogs close the commenting options for many reasons.

I would say, comments section is the integral part of any blog and the only differentiator and a boon for blogs compared to websites.

Make the full use of comments section by opening up to readers and make it as robust as possible.

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Is there anything else, which you feel is a must to make a blog feel complete. Share your thoughts in the comments section. What elements could make the user experience great from good?

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Bloggers don’t earn money

2009-08-18T11:51:00.000-07:00

Yeah. You read that right. Bloggers don’t earn money, their blogs do.

Okaie, a bit overboard. But before your punch lands on my nose, let me try to dodge and say the 'Why' clause too.

Blogs are the primary things bloggers make and build and not MONEY. I hear a lot of – ‘Earning through blogging’ and feel like laughing out loud on their faces.

Tweet for money, blog for money, eat for money...

For God’s sake, Is there something left for us to do not with the intent of earning.

Just because you(i point them) feel it is easy to earn from blogging, doesn’t make it a gold mine and the rest - idiots to ignore it.

Earning through blogging is lot more difficult and it calls for constant innovation and eternal creativeness.

Great authors sell great books and become rich. Great artists do great designs and earn in millions. Same is true for blogging. Hardwork always gets paid and nothing comes easy.

If you can’t take in what I just said, possibly you should take some time off to refocus and start blogging.

Blogging is sharing of thoughts, knowledge and providing excellent service through words. If you could give in your best, you open up opportunities. Down the line, you could capitalize this opportunity and become rich.

Right from the first post you publish, if you have money and money alone as your sole motive. You could see a dollar here and a dollar there but what you forget is, blogging started as and still is a medium of sharing.

Blogging is freedom. Blogging is fun.

Build your blog around strong (business) values, churn out great ideas, write passionately on whatever you feel like. Do it as professionally as you can. Ensure always your posts are of very high quality. Market it elegantly.

Only these are the things that warrants your mind space. Leave the rest to people who want to earn pennies.

Just don’t build your blog on dreams of earning money alone because that in itself would take the true beauty and the wow factor of your blog and also would impede your growth.

A right perspective at the beginning would help you in a long run and you could feel happy on what you done and even be rich.

What I ask of you is if you focus on blogging more, right from the beginning than money. Later on when your readers start trusting you, you could stand up to their believes and be proud of yourself.

Just imagine Google filling it’s homepage with flash ads, knowing, millions use its service now. That belief and trust is what any blogger yearns for and need to live up to. That would make you earn enough to live happily.

You are not blogging to use someone. You are blogging to help someone.

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Did you know, when someone(something) provokes you, your mind opens up and you could write a decent post. I realized just now, that we could. That something which made me furious are the Google ads in my blog which most often show ‘ make money through blogging' kind of ads. $#%$.

Are you trapped in the ‘make money from blogging’ stuff. What keeps you focussed on what you believe? Share your thoughts/rants/opinions.
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Why feedburner integration is a must for your blog

2009-08-17T15:53:00.001-07:00

When opening a blog, of the various musts, the foremost is integrating all your blog feeds with feedburner.

I don’t know what feed is.. – hop in here and come back and read the rest.

Because losing count of your readers even at the start could be a big miss. If you yourself don’t know how many, from which part of the world are reading your blog... that could be game changing and for sure not to your advantage.

Feedburner is the best RSS management service. It is similar to what Google Analytics is to a blog but only to manage information of RSS Subscribers of your blog and not the blog visitor information like that of Analytics.

Make it a mandate for to provide only the feedburner feed link in all occasions when asked for your feed address and not the default feed link, which comes as soon as you open a blog.

Keeping a count of how many readers you have is a very important count like any other important statistics of your blog.

It helps you popularize your blog, it gives authenticity and lets you publicize your blog. More the readers, more the value of the blog. It is as vital as visitor count.

Many bloggers miss on the fact that statistics helps to make your blog better (Truth, even if you hate numbers). Integration of Feedburner and Google Analytics as soon as you open a blog is a must.

Some of the features which are provided absolutely free by Feedburner and which are a boon to a publisher(blogger):

1. Complete statistics of your RSS subscribers for you to analyse and optimize your blog and blog posts.

2. Customization of your feeds like modifying post headings, branding etc.,

3. Integration of Google Adsense to monetize from your feeds.

4. Option of subscribing via mails made simple. Helps reach many more readers who opt mails for feed-readers(Google Reader, Netvibes).

5. Provides option of pinging your posts immediately after you publish to various feed-reading services.

6. Free publicizing tools like headline animator, feed counts to popularize your blog.

These high quality features from Google, for free are a must have ones.

If you fail to integrate feedburner at the start of your blog, who knows, there could be +50 or +500 more actual subscribers for your blog now. The sad part would be that even you wouldn’t know it. Don’t make the mistake.

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Have you integrated feedburner or are you going to? Any interesting finds, lessons you learnt from the feedburner statistics? How do you find feedburner? Share your thoughts.
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Free Desktop Wallpaper (also calendar) : August

2009-08-15T01:33:00.001-07:00

I am happy to introduce the first, monthly, desktop calendar/wallpaper from iPENthisBLOG to help you be organized. This is exclusively for iPENthisBLOG readers.

Just a helping hand for being organized. :) .

Wallpaper with and without the calendar is available. The wallpaper is provided for a range of resolutions. Wide screen suitable version is also provided.

Hope you like it.

Click here to see the various wallpapers. Choose the one that suites your need. The names of the files depict the resolution and whether they are without calendars and whether they are suitable for wide screen.

Download them to your desktop and let us know what you feel about them. We are positive, that we could come up with some interesting wallpaper every month for you to use.

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If you would like to see a few more variety of wallpapers along with what iPENthisBLOG is providing, the design blog - Smashing Magazine gives a collection of exquisite wallpapers every month. Do check them out.

You could check out the Goodies section for other free downloads.

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Six Blog Topics Any Blogger Should Read

2009-08-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

To be a successful blogger, a blogger should be knowledgeable in a mix of fields ranging from writing to marketing.

So, what are the essential fields or topics which a blogger shouldn’t miss. What are the topics that should cover the entire knowledge space of a blogger.

The following are the topics a blogger on any field, be it cooking, photography, travelling... or anything for that matter should be knowing about to be a successful blogger.

Blogging

As said, this alone does not make up the whole of what a blogger should know but it is the essential part or to say, the beginning step that any aspiring blogger should take.

What is blogging, how to blog better, who are the pro bloggers etc., what platforms a blogger could choose, and many more could be learnt by following blogs on blogging.

Even when you become pro, missing on blogs on blogging is a sin. You would eventually be left out. Is it not obvious that you should know and better yourself in what you are doing?

I recommend: Problogger and DailyBlogTips

Writing

Even if your blog(photography, design) doesn’t call for more than 100 words. To make a strong impact on your readers and to reach out with brevity, you need good writing skills.

By following blogs/sites on writing(creative writing), you could improve this skill.

Depending on your chosen blogging language, you could opt for appropriate blogs, but for bloggers in English, I recommend: menwithpens and wordsmith (This newsletter is well compiled that you learn easily many new words)

Design

Many bloggers design their own blogs. Even if you pay to get your blog designed, it could save you a lot if you follow certain blogs on designs which introduce excellent, free resources now and then.

Design is a critical aspect for making your blog’s readers making them looooove you or forget you. It is that important.

I recommend: smashingmagazine and hongkiat

Platform and Services

There could be a particular CMS(content management system) like Wordpress that you are using. You could have hosted your blog in blogger or Wordpress. So, blogs helping you to hack these platforms are a must follow ones.

There are numerous services that a blogger uses, like Google Analytics, Google Adsense, Feedburner, Flickr, Twitter etc., Good blogs on these services [also the official blogs of these services] are a must read(follow) for bloggers.

For Google - Blogger, I recommend: Bloggerbuster

Wordpress readers, I am sorry. I don’t know a good blog to recommend. If you know of any good blog, please let me know in the comments section.

Technology

Technology is getting evolved in to new and advanced ones every day. If you miss out on the new advances, you would be in Neolithic age before you realize. Iphone, Facebook, twitter all made and is still making waves.

As a blogger you need to be abreast of these technologies to fully exploit it and in adventuring new ways to reach your readers.

You need not be a tech blogger but following one or two good blogs is a must to stay in the curve.

I recommend: Techcrunch and Mashable (Especially social media).

SEO

As mentioned in the section ‘writing’, your blog should be loved by your readers. And... also by search engines(Google :) ). Following blogs in the field of SEO helps you to achieve the latter.

‘What? You need to optimize the blog?’ – if this question occurs to you. Sorry,to say, but yes. Why then are we calling blogging as blogging and not writing? Because blogging is not just writing.

How to earn from your blog, how to target keywords...and you learn many more by following such blogs.

I recommend: Seomoz

A blogger is not one who just writes a blog. He runs a blog, makes it interesting, informative, approachable and a success. To achieve this, a blogger need to be multi-talented and hence the need to acquire knowledge in such wide fields.

Not with the intention to baffle you, but these alone doesn’t constitute the entire list. There are obviously many more blogs to follow like the blogs in your chosen niche, blogs oriented specifically to your geographical location etc.,

Following at the max of five blogs in these other fields and atleast 20 blogs in the same niche as that of your blog would suffice.

Do you find some topic that I had left out? Do you have any recommendations? pitch in your thoughts.

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If you liked this post, you would like this one too.

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BAGS - Bloggers Action Group for Society

2009-08-08T23:16:00.000-07:00

Author's Note: This material is not a regular post of iPENthisBLOG. This is about the BAGS initiative for bloggers. Just like CSR, this is Bloggers' Social Responsibility column. heartily welcome you to drop by and have a look and act.

Sometimes, smallest of acts bring the much needed, long awaited, miraculous changes in society. When such tiny activities accumulate, they have a much larger impact.

But acting on that one act is what is lacking. Even before we start doing something, the enormity or the fear of failure or our own multitude of apprehensions stop us from even beginning.

With that small introductory note, and to alleviate those fears of working alone, let me introduce, BAGS – Bloggers Action Group for Society. It is an unregistered, non-profit, open group of bloggers.

Any blogger who has a blog presently, anywhere in the world, could be a part of BAGS.
Bloggers in BAGS look for opportunities to help the society in any way possible as a blogger.

Let me give some initial ideas of where, as a blogger, we could do our part - Writing a post about a Non Government Organization(NGO), reaching out to under-privileged children - in teaching them about technology, doing social services with a few of our fellow bloggers in our locality or anything that is good for the society could be a BAG initiave.

You need not spend money. Couple of minutes or hours, of your time, in a week would do.

When any such initiative of yours becomes interesting for many other bloggers to follow then that is what we call ‘the miraculous change’ - the society was waiting for.

Help spread the word of BAGS to bloggers you know. Mainly the ideologies of BAGS. Ask your friends who blog what their idea in helping the society is and get together and do something to the society.

Let us get started now, this moment. Start churning ideas of what could we do, as a blogger, to the society.

The initial initiative, which I am kick-starting under BAGS, here in my blog, is to allocate one ad space for an NGO, whose integrity I am sure of and which I know is an authentic organization. If you like this idea, please, after making sure the NGO in your locality is really authentic, go forward.

I started to blog, to say something and I believe in what I am saying. I also had wanted to do something and BAGS is one opportunity for me to start doing something.
We are a rare breed, who dare to say what we feel and don’t shun away. I think we have an advantage here, to make these right, bold decisions.

If you come up with some way of making a difference, please share it with all of us, so if it suites us, we could put it in action too.

Welcome all of you aboard to start thinking about people around us.

Update: If you like this idea of allocating ad-space and could not find an NGO. Until you find one, feel free to use the Janakalyan-sevashram's ad, to the right- it is a 125X125 ad.

You need not be Mr. Know-It-All to be a good blogger

2009-08-03T08:58:00.001-07:00

Are you reading a lot of sites on how to blog? You carry a hope that someday you would come to know everything there is to blogging. Blogging in whatever you are interested in.

Already you have, plenty, if not in hundreds, of feeds in your feed reader which you are religiously reading every day. Apart from this, you also follow a good number of tweets.

So... one day you would be that ‘Problogger’, THE reliable, best of the best blogger. Good. Really good to have such ambitions. It brings in a sense of purpose, ain’t it? A lot of inputs now. A well-honed master of the subject a few months from today. Right?

All is good. Let me bring to your notice, just one simple observation. Before that, a question. How many blogs are you currently following in your niche?...Answer this to yourself. And, since you are following them, I can suppose they are good blogs giving quality contents.

Even if the number of blogs you are following is a double figure, now you know, there is no ‘one’ problogger but many more good bloggers too. There could be even more better bloggers whose blogs you are not reading presently.

This shows, that everyone has something unique to contribute to the goodness of all.

Take for instance, is there no other blog telling people how to blog or what to blog. There are plenty and yet every day we see unseen, excellent, budding blogs with great potential.

WWW is enormous, no one wants one pit stop solve-it-all solution when they could very well afford to take inputs from many places.

And also, it becomes difficult for everyone to find the best of the best blogs out there. The best blog could even be yours but what I am to say here is, start one, a right one, right now.

Don’t wait until you master everything there is to master.

It’s ok not to know everything because till you carry the idea that one day you would know everything in itself would inhibit your ambition to grow and challenge yourself because you are seeing the horizon. Once you hit it, you would think to have known everything but the quality of your content would drop as your knowledge stops growing.

If you notice, the probloggers in any niche, are still blogging and they still have something to say even after 3 or 4 years in the niche and everytime they push a post, it is of high quality and answers many questions. How do you think this is possible. They are not waiting to know and they have not waited to know everything there is to know.

When you keep this option of learning in the process - open, you would enjoy blogging and as a side effect, you could turn out to be THE PROBLOGGER, which you thought you could become only in your fantasy.

I am still carrying some apprehensions like - am I lacking something? Am I really doing what I know? I know I need to learn a lot to give a lot. But I am ready to learn. This is one such bold post to enforce to myself that it is good sharing ones point of view, without waiting.

Enlighten me. I am all ears. Ready to learn. Leave your comments in the comments section for everyone to know a new thing and grow as a blogger.

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Don't miss this related post on what is the fun in having a blog?

The inspiration for this post is this post from problogger - This too would help you in knowing what you need to make it big in blogging.
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How to invite readers to follow the comments section

2009-07-25T07:44:00.000-07:00

Blogs become interesting reads especially because of the openness of it and a normal conversational style of it.

What adds these elements to blogs are the comments of readers. When blogs accrue a lot of interested readers, their ideas, suggestions, wraths, opinions is what makes the blog livelier adding colour to it.

Sometimes, a very good article attracts a lot of readers to add their points of view and inturn makes it a gem of an article attacking the core idea from all possible angles.

But many who come to that post of your blog might miss knowing the complete information by not checking the comments section.

There are some ways to introduce your readers to comment section of your post, which I think would be effective in making the comments section visible.

INCLUDE
Write a post which is of conversational style. Need not be always but now and then you could try this style.

Posing questions, asking for opinions, calling your readers to share their experiences etc., are good ways to start once you have good reader base.

Always leave a note inviting reader comments. This would help your readers break that indecision and leave a comment.

This would in turn attract attention to the comments section for people to know what other readers had to say.

SHORT
Don’t keep the blog post too long. Atleast have sub headings, to help your readers to skim through the content at a glance, if in a hurry.

Especially, if your blog post is a list post, don’t tend to make it tooooo exhaustive by giving 100 ways of doing something.

Leave some space for your readers to add upon. In fact, it is impossible to cover all possible points or to arrive at a lovely number like 100  and yet make your post useful and informative.

APPRECIATE
At times, we forget to compliment some valid, inspiring comments. Make it a point to appreciate good comments in following posts or at least where it warrants.

Give regular recognition to your reader inputs. Participate, whenever possible in the conversations happening in the comment section.

Apart from these, you could also make your comments section stand out visibly inviting by proper design usage.

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Check out this related post on why a blogger should comment.
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Have you made your comments sections as interesting as your blog posts? What could make the comments section interesting? How could a valuable conversation could be triggered?

Share your thoughts in the COMMENTS section.

Time saving Firefox Plugin for Google Reader

2009-07-21T08:30:00.002-07:00

Google Reader in itself is a great service in avoiding mindless hopping to various blogs.

If you strongly believe in not wasting your online time and want to spend it wisely, one of the first things I recommend is you to try out Google Reader.

Even then, because of the enormity of blogs and surplus information available, even a powerful tool like Google Reader sometimes becomes not very helpful. It is always better to tweak the good tools to make them best.

Post rank provides a firefox (again a good browser choice for many who are keen in productivity) plugin.

PostRank gives ranks to a blog post by continuously monitoring the RSS feeds. This rating is dynamic and changes as the days go by giving weightage to most popular, most read feed posts.

PostRank's plugin (Click here to download the plugin) helps to sort posts in a particular feed or all posts in a particular category(folder) in Google Reader or you could also sort all the feed posts in your Reader.

You could categorize the posts as 'Best', 'Great', 'Good' or 'All(not sorted)' using this plugin.

This way only those posts which satisfy the criteria would be displayed so that you don't miss the important, most popular posts.

You would now never miss, fall back from knowing the hot happenings in your field of interest.

To see how the plugin seamlessly gels with the Google Reader, you could watch the video embedded below for clarity.

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For knowing the other uses of Google Reader, don't forget to Check out this post.

Do you do anything else to save time online, especially any optimized way of keeping up with your RSS feed? Share your thoughts.

Twitter background essentials

2009-06-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

Having a twitter account is very important for a blogger to market and to reach out to the readers.

After having one, the next thing is to make it interesting and attractive like any other social media profile.

Customizing options are very limited in twitter, unlike other social forums like Orkut etc., but that had not stopped creative people from finding ways to brand their profiles.

I too have a custom background suiting my needs in my twitter profile.

Ok. What are the essential things you need to showcase in a custom background of yours. I think I need not convince you of having a custom background as you could understand the potential of the blank spaces around your profiles you find in your twitter account.

There are a lot to display and brand, but what are the essentials that needs to be put in order to make your profile a self promoting online space.

Blog Title
Blog Title is very much essential especially if your blog address is something different from your blog title.

Also when you have more than one blog, you can't have two blog addresses displayed in the URL space provided in twitter. Hence you could use the blank spaces around the profile for displaying titles of your blogs.

Blog Description
An elevator pitch of your blog would also be a good idea to spread your blog's intent in the limited space in twitter.

About You
A small bio of yourself and your email id and the services you offer could be of a great help to people dropping by to get the most from your tweets.

A Twitter Landing Page
In the space provided for displaying your website url, you could display a specially prepared landing page for your twitter followers, if your blog warrants one.

Having a special page for twitter followers to land than the homepage could be helpful in giving an intro of your blog to your new readers and introducing them to the various aspects of your blog.

Products to sell
If you have any product to sell like an e-book, service or anything, you could introduce your products to your twitter followers by displaying them in your profile background.

These are the things I feel are essential in a twitter background.

Have you anything else displayed in your profiles or do you feel something else too could be introduced into the twitter background.

Have you noticed any interesting twitter backgrounds? Do share.

If you like to have a custom twitter background, there are many services out there creating some decent backgrounds. I too have created some basic twitter backgrounds(look for the twitterbgs.zip folder) which you could use as a base and work on them to suit your need, if you like them.

Socializing with social media

2009-05-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

The right attitude and mindset is what a blogger needs to be successful. Knowing what one's passion is and pursuing it diligently with even more passion is the right ingredient needed for any blogger.

But there is also social media which is mainly for getting to know new people which is what makes it interesting but seems to eat up a blogger's time.
But for the good or the bad, we bloggers are using social media to also spread our brand, our blog and sell ourselves.

It is all fine and seems that it is even essential in making your blog reach new readers.

The goodness of these social medias far overweigh the negatives and hence makes them an essential aspects needed in the kitty for any blogger. I don't mean you need to tweet crazy nuts at 1000 tweets/day, Stumbling a couple of hundred sites per day.

Just honor and respect the apps and use them intelligently. Always, blogging would be the priority for our bloggers and it needs to be that way because honing your interest and your knowledge and skill should take precedence over socializing.

But do we use these apps with the same passion with which we run our blog. To say, I am interested in designing and anything related to blogging and that is why iPENthisBLOG is around.

The sweet reality is, if you enjoy these social media as much as you enjoy blogging and as much sincere and honest as you are in your blog, you would be successful in these social medias too and you could manage them comfortably.

Use social media to spread word about your blog but not just as a marketing tool. By using it that way, you suck all the goodness out of these apps.

I am not going to give 10 best ways to handle the social media frenzy out here but I am going to share some simple things what I feel about handling them.

Don't get taken back by the enormity in the number of social medias around. Find those ones which are suitable to your blog and are to your liking and which would help better server your readers.

Include, if possible, these apps in your blog. Also, if possible, automate some updates. I don't mean to say not to get involved in what you are doing by simple retweeting your messages but to use tools like friendfeed to update apps like Facebook regularly.

Make a routine of, on what days are you going to socialize with which people and where.

Use social media with ease by using alternative apps or using browser addons or what ever you feel is making you more YOU and enjoy the process and not one which makes you not like what you are doing.

If some social media doesn't suit you, don't feel bad in dropping out from them.

Social medias are like pals, interact with them, meet with them often and enjoy being with them but remember your obligation, your love - your BLOG. :)

Finding the balance is something what every blogger needs to know and get expertised in. I am trying to get it and working on it. Hope you too have some ideas on social medias and how you use them.

Have you achieved the balance? Is it easy? What do you feel?

Free ZooZoo Bubbles Iconset

2009-05-18T22:39:00.000-07:00

Looking at the zoozoos in Vodafone ad, inspired me to create these zoozoo bubbles iconset. They are a very simple set of 4 web icons.

Yeah, I know that many other essential webicons like rss, email etc., need to have been added.

I would work on them and add them to this initial collection.png images of sizes from 16px to 512px are also available.

These icons are all free to use and are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License and could be downloaded, here.

These are very simple icons. I would try to showcase some good quality ones in the future.

Have fun using these icons wherever you feel them to be appropriate in your projects. Also let me know, so that I could have a look and feel happy about it :)..

Please feel free to drop in your feedback, comments. I would appreciate it greatly.

Why a blogger should comment?

2009-04-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

Bloggers are of many kind, some blog for fun, some for money and some to spread their ideas. But all blogs have one thing in common - a comments section.

To say the truth, comments are the integral part of a blog. As much a blog is important, so are the comments the blog accrue.

Why is it expected for readers/bloggers to leave a comment in a blog?

Bloggers are a select group of people who like to share what they know and that's the reason they have taken the pains(pains? ...haha) to open up a blog and voice their views.

There are many 'take home' pointers below for realizing the true joy and potential of blogging via comments section.

To share

This should be the main reason for commenting. Whatever I am to put forward in the below pointers are just a followup. The driving force should be to reach out to other bloggers.

It is always difficult to be the first in all that is good that is happening around. Commenting is joining the good things that you were not the founder of.

Sometimes you could bring perspective to a discussion which is going haywire by commenting.

Ask any blogger, what are the important assets of their blogs apart from ofcourse their content, they would surely shout 'Readers' and the readers leave their footprints in the comment section.

By sharing, you display your personality of what you are.

To reach out

Sometimes because of the enormity of web and blogs, an individual blog could be missed.

It is not bad to say, that you are here by dropping your valuable comments for the good of all.

For your blog and you to get noticed, you need to tell others you are there and remember you need not carry any guilty feeling while doing this.

As time passes, you would better in this skill and your opinions and ideas would be respected and your commenting(sharing ideas) skill gets refined.

To grow

Sharing your thoughts without being closed helps you grow as a blogger. This is the biggest hurdle a blogger could ever have - being closed.

Every blogger would have a feeling of his blog being the best(am i wrong?...really?).

By stopping by in other blogs and when you see the glory of these blogs, you get humbled and you grow as a blogger where you truly appreciate and leave your comments.

This feeling of seeing more knowledgeable, creative people around you and knowing that you are actually talking to them helps you better yourself.

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Yeah, of course, there are always the other reasons - increasing your reader base, making more money(more readers/more clicks), more exposure, increase reliability index.

But, but, I am realizing(replace it with a more powerful word for struggle, effort and experience) that when commenting with these motives, takes the joy out of blogging and that out of reading other blogs.

After all, blogging needs to be fun and everything you do should be relished. Even if blogging is done with a business motive, don't forget, blogosphere is a fun world and it should be rejoiced.

To put everything in a single line - Cut rest of the crap and enjoy blogging and be ready to learn and get surprised all the time and the rest would fall in place.

I am sure you have something to add, let's share.

LNK.BY - URL Shortener with a meaning.

2009-04-22T07:19:00.000-07:00

Url shorteners are services which shrinks a URL to a shorter one.

Why do you need this? Sometimes for aesthetics to hide a long string of 40 to 50 characters and make the link presentable(like in a presentation?).

And for the more obvious reason :) of using the link in Twitter which slaps a 146 character limit on the face of twitter users.

Already there are umpty number of url shorteners like tinyurl, tiny.cc, is.gd, bit.ly, then what is there in lnk.by?

All the services do what they say. They shrink the urls but of all the available url shorteners including Lnk.by, Bit.ly seems to be more sophesticated, enabling the publisher to track the usage pattern, history of links shrunk etc.,

But where all url shorteners fail, Lnk.by wins by a mile. All services cater the publishers who use the service, but Lnk.by actually answers the need of the readers who click the link.

When you shrink a link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o) in to
http://tinyurl.com/384n2f or
http://is.gd/8L1 or
http://tiny.cc/w23AC or
http://bit.ly/27OtIV, it doesn't make any sense to the reader.

It brings a kind of 'Oh! no! what the heck is this link' kind of feeling as soon as you see one, if no proper accompanying description is given.

But when the same link is shrunk using Lnk.by, we get, http://WACH.it/caf. Oh yeah, now the shrunk link makes sense, there is a video in there...

You need not do anything, just paste the url and say go and the Lnk.by detects almost all sites and say whether it is an article to read, a video to watch or a picture to see and shrinks them accordingly.

Lnkby is still in alpha and hence there could be a few kinks (but I didn't notice any for a few urls which I tested).

This is just a beginning of a new idea, later on, just like some famous sites have their own shortening services, to enable readers realize that it is their website to which the shortened url directs to,some service in future could shrink all websites' url and com eup with a service, say instead of youtube - yt.cc/abc and for flickr - flkr.c0m/abc1 etc., :)(far call?)....i think not :)

This would tell the readers not only what kind of content they are going to but also where they are going.

I am presently using tinyurl. Going to give Lnk.by a try, what do you use? Any thoughts?

Remember the milk - Excellent Online To-Do Service

2009-04-18T23:56:00.000-07:00

Remember the milk(RTM) is a funnily named excellent online TO-DO list.

It complements many other services which we use every day and integrates seamlessly with these services.

It has all the features needed to manage the petty tasks you tend to forget like ‘buying milk’ :).

Compared to many other similar online services, RTM stands out because of its large array of services. Let me put across those services which impressed me.

RTM via Twitter(I love this feature)

Twitter is a powerful micro-blogging tool to update your current status to your friends. RTM could be used in Twitter too. (intelligent!! :) ).

You follow RTM in twitter and you could add tasks, manage tasks by sending direct messages to RTM.

Complete list of commands you could use in these direct messages could be found here.

RTM for Gmail

You could add the RTM tasks to your Gmail as an additional gadget and you could see RTM panel where new tasks could be added and already available tasks could be managed.

This could complement the already existing Tasks (Google Labs) feature which could be used for managing tasks related to mails in your inbox and RTM tasks to manage your offline tasks.

RTM for Google Calendar

Google Calendar is a powerful tool with features of sending reminders to your mailbox and helpful in managing appointments/events and even tasks but it is intelligent to use Google calendar only for events and appointments and not clutter it with tasks.

Adding tasks to your calendar i.e, assigning petty tasks to a particular day(date) in your calendar clutters it and surprisingly doesn’t help you manage it better.

Adding RTM to Google calendar adds a separate tasks pane at the top to manage tasks which are not time bound but might be day(date bound).

Now your Google Calendar gets all the features of Microsoft Outlook, a calendar to manage appointments/events and a tasks pane to manage your personal/petty tasks.

RTM Offline

Using Google gears, RTM has enabled offline feature. i.e., you could use RTM even when you are not online.

You could see your already existing tasks and edit them, add new tasks all being online. When you go online later on, these details get updated.

You could access the RTM offline mode even if you have closed your browser by visiting http://www.rememberthemilk.com/offline

RTM reminders via mail/IMs/SMS

This is an essential feature for any tasks which we tend to forget and sadly, many other similar services doesn’t provide it but RTM does.

You get reminders via all possible communications available email, Instant Messages and even SMS(in select countries).

RTM impressed me because of its large array of services and clean integration with many other much used services like Gmail/Twitter is a TO-DO list of my choice. Give it a try.

You could have a look at the many other services offered by RTM here.

You could have a look at b-list review, another TO-DO list service online. It mainly could be used for following a project or activity with multiple parameters like time, assignee name etc., rather than to manage everyday tasks.

What do you think of RTM ? You like it? Any other similar services you are aware of? Let’s share.

What is the fun in having a blog?

2009-04-03T20:10:00.000-07:00

A silly question indeed. Blog is all fun and creativity and your attitude towards anything and everything you are passionate about.

If I had titled this post as “Boring blogging” – many would have been curious to know what it is all about. I could have named it that way but honestly, I would not have found anything to write about J.

A blog is just like a piece of blank paper with nothing on it. It’s all in your hands to make it beautiful and enjoy the process of making it beautiful.

If you like painting you paint it, if you are a poet, you write poems on it. If you enjoy whining, seriously some enjoy doing it J, you could complain about whatever you feel like in your blog.

Technically, it is a web log of whatever you like to share with other netizens.

Professionally, it is a place to showcase your expertise and gain more business.

Emotionally, it is a place to let out your feelings. On the whole it is like any damn simple thing which becomes awesome in the hands of the right beholder.

Nowadays, it is easy in having a blog and it is indeed a right thing to own a blog.

Because, on owning one, you take a small step in doing something different and indeed which is a giant leap introducing you to a complete network of new people and help you better as a person and improve your personality.

Blogging is not just doing what you know. It is also learning what you don’t know. If you like to write, owning a blog would not let you do that alone. You need to be able to make your blog appealing, you should network with other bloggers. You need to communicate with your readers. You need to improve your interpersonal skills.

Talking to a group of people and being comfortable with a set of strangers offline for a short duration is easy. But online, you could take two routes, either be an imposter or be honest and improve your personality. The second path is the best way, connecting with new people and being polite online and gaining confidence of your readers always, the entire experience would be very enthralling and interesting.

Give it a go. Open up your own blog. There are many blogging tutorials, books and blogs out there from where you could learn a lot.

After some time, your blog could be worth millions not only monetarily but could become a great asset for you to sell your skills, ideas and could be used as a platform to showcase your skills to your potential employers.

It can become a medium to communicate with your customers.

Blogs open up new opportunities for earning and improving your business which is sure a ‘not to miss’ aspect for your business. The advantages augment. You reach new customers, your customers become more loyal. You could introduce new point of contacts for selling to your customer. The goodness is unlimited.

Leave alone these things, updating your blog which is read by someone in the other part of the world and getting appreciated and communicating with likeminded people brings limitless, unexplainable happiness.

This is the right time. Start a blog. And experience the world of difference that I am experiencing and enjoying owning this blog. It is really fun running a blog - a mini enterprise and you the founder.

Footnote:

There are many free services which is a boon to bloggers and some of the notable ones are www.blogger.com , etc., where you get a web address like mydomain.blogspot.com, to host your blog.

Having a domain name, nothing but a web address for your own, just like I have my own domain name www.iPENthisBLOG.com , for hosting a blog is also fun.

But before owning your own address open a free blog in blogger or anywhere else.

Give it a try and then later move to a domain address of your own because the work involved on running a hosted blog could dampen your spirits.

You could get a new domain from www.godaddy.com, www.prouddomains.com etc., If you are looking for some interesting blog domain names, you could find some interesting ones from my repository.

Welcome to a new world of greatness and richness in thought and personality.

[Pic by Annie Mole]

Where can a blogger look for inspirations?

2009-03-30T20:36:00.001-07:00

Basic rule is not to look at a single place all the time how much ever inspiring the ideas be.

Because, longer you search there, you are going to exhaust it sooner, rather to say you would think it to inspire no further.

If you have the topics ready before hand and you just need to draft, how good it would be.

Generating ideas/topic to blog on is the difficult hurdle which stop many bloggers from posting for couple of days. To break this barrier, we need to keep us constantly inspired and there are many places where we could find inspirations.

Reading other blogs

We subscribe to many blogs of our interest. Reading other blogger’s post often triggers an idea in us. Star them, add a tag or note when you come across such blog posts.

Alltop is a good place to start with.

Visit viral contents sites

Digg, stumbleupon are great sites to see some interesting posts to get inspiration. They often trigger ideas for posts which are too good to miss.

The catchy headings, content in the dugg posts in your niche are worthy to keep an eye on, regularly.

Search twitter

Searching twitter is like finding the ‘secret potion for inspiration’. More often than not, you would end up clattering your keyboard as soon as you got the results.

But remember, don’t rely on one thing for inspiration always.

Look at images

Pictures/images’ multitudinous interpretations always flood you with enormous ideas.

Look in image sites like Flickr, Picasa, Google images, Getty Images etc., on keywords pertaining to your interest/niche.

You will find genuinely new ideas that would woo readers.

Look in your own blog

Find the pattern where your readers had shown immense interest on a post compared to other posts and try to get a post out in the similar lines of the post which did well before.

You could also look into the conversations which went through in the comments section of your blog.

Talk with your peers

Networking , chatting is good. Talking regularly with your peers especially, would create interesting ideas. Conversing with people who are highly charged and motivated motivates us.

Talk to people like that and never let your morale or interest get a beating. You could join some blogging forums or take part in bloggers’ meet regularly.

Be inspired to do something always and never would your ideas dry up.

Take a break

Sometimes, thinking anything other than blogging could be the real need of the hour and it could kindle amazing ideas which you thought you never thought about.

Switch off your laptop, take a walk and bingo, there is an idea for you to post in your blog.

Involving in some other sport, art is also a great thing to divert our mind and draw inspirations meanwhile.

Easy way to be on schedule to post in your blog regularly without missing your time lines is to be creative, dedicated and importantly without being obsessed.

Yeah, many get obsessed on blogging and forget everything else and this tires the mind and body quickly. Take it easy.

Schedule the time you would blog and draw inspirations when you are away from blogging. This way, never there would be a time when you hit blogger’s block.

I too am trying my best creatively to be a better blogger everyday. Cheers to all of us!! Btw, you have something to share? please do.

[Pic by timlewisnm]

Reaching Out to New Readers

2009-03-27T21:36:00.000-07:00

For a blog to be successful, marketing is an essential step. Why should you market your blog? Won’t the readers come flocking? No they don’t.

Sometimes, because they don’t and sometimes because they can’t. They can’t coz they are not finding your blog or sometimes not in the way they expect it to be.

All visitors to your blog can’t be organic. You need to market your blog.

I am sharing some tested and much used ways of attracting and appeasing new readers. The steps are not elaborate. I am putting them in points. If you like to know anything in detail, you could find many resources on them by googling.

1. Provide feeds for your blog. Additional newsletter with them would be great. Feedburner from Google is one good service doing this, making the job easy for you.

2. Attract completely different audience who listen to podcasts by providing podcasts in your blog. You think it is a tiresome job? Atleast providing the barest service of podcast is not difficult. Odiogo is one great service doing a fantastic job. You could find the service in action in my blog.

3. Open up new social networking options to communicate with your readers like facebook, twitter etc.,

4. Introduce a mobile version of your blog. Many mobile users tend not to use this service b’coz they like to see how the real blog looks. However why to leave a small number of readers who prefer a mobile version. Keep in mind to keep the link to mobile version at the top of the page for them to access it immediately after the page loads. There are some good services enabling this.

5. Introduce guest posting in your blog. The blogger who guest posts would bring along his/her readers to your blog.

6. Write guest posts in other blogs. It helps you reach out to new readers of the other blog.

7. If possible, buy adslots in other blogs in the same niche of yours.

8. Exchange banners with other good blogs. That is you display his/her blog’s ad for your blog’s ad running in their blog.

9. Word of mouth is a powerful medium to make your blog visible. Don’t feel shy about it. Reach out to people and introduce your blog. They would stick if they like what you are saying. Don’t stop yourself.

10. Make your blog’s url visible in any way possible. In t-shirts, in your works(designs, articles), in the signature of your mails etc.,

11. Join blogging networks and write posts there.

12. Use bookmarking sites and viral networks like del.icio.us, digg and stumbleupon.

Getting new readers regularly is good. If your content is good, many readers are sure to stick, if they are interested in your niche. So reaching out in anyway to the new readers is essential.

Is marketing and reaching out, good? Do you do it? Do you like doing it? Do you see any cons? Share it with us all in comments section.

[Pic by gusilu]

Create interesting blogroll using Google Reader

2009-03-24T08:37:00.000-07:00

Blogging is a profession which involves as much reading as writing is required. We do follow many blogs and see amazing posts everyday.

When we see one, we get an urge to share it with our friends and readers and we use social networking sites like facebook, twitter to share them.

Many bloggers have blogrolls, through which feeds are shared with readers.

Using Google Reader, you could create blogrolls without complicated scripts nor plugins.

There is indeed another great advantage in using Google Reader to create your blogrolls.

If you are using Google Reader, it is easy to follow what I am to say. If you are not, it is such a great tool to miss. Give it a try. It is easy and nice to follow your favourite blogs.

Fine. Now, whenever you open a post of your favourite blog in Google Reader, towards the bottom, you would see a share link. If you click this, the post gets automatically added to your public page.

There is a public page in Google Reader where your favourite feeds could be shared with everyone. This is publicly accessible once you share the link to people you know. This page could not be found via search.

The greatest advantage of sharing your blogrolls via Google Reader is that you could add notes/comments/views/opinions to these posts and interact with your readers unlike other blogrolls.

Just like the snapshot below, where you could find my notes at the top.

You could do so by just clicking notes link in your shared content or click the ‘share with notes’ before sharing a post.

When coming across some good content, if you have something to say about it, you could put your thoughts then and there and in this way you are reaching your readers.

Adding the blogroll to your blog is just a copy and paste job of the javascript from Google Reader's 'addclip' option found under 'your stuff' column.

By creating blogrolls using Google Reader, you are not just providing something more for your readers to look through but also you are communicating with them.

Here(look in the sidebar) is a blogroll which I created for another blog of mine. Clicking on ‘Read More’ takes to my public page.

Another good thing is - you share not just the feeds but the exact post of a feed which interested you and hence could make your blogroll a well noticed,followed portion of your blog as it would be entertaining to your readers with new contents from new blogs everyday. Better than conventional blogrolls.

Do you use Google Reader? Do you share your blogrolls using it? What are your views on these lines of sharing your blogrolls. Freely drop in your thoughts via comments section. Will readers like it?