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3 Little Known Widgets to Customize and Embed on Your Site

It is always good to give your site readers something they can enjoy themselves with. Getting creative with what you offer your blog followers to spend some time with is essential: this way you encourage them to share your content and promote your site. Here are 3 little known tools that allow you to create, customize and embed widgets to grow your site popularity:

1. Create a (Sliding) Puzzle

ProProfs is a free online tool that allows to create various brain games and embed them to your blogs.
Steps:
1. Register at the site;
2. Go to “Sliding puzzles” section of the site and click “Create a Sliding Puzzle“;
3. Provide an image by searching Google, entering a direct image URL or uploading from your computer:

4. Provide the puzzle title, description, name and the difficulty level.

Preview:

Cloudy road sliding puzzle game » tile sliding puzzle

2. Countdown Widget

CountDown2Zero.com allows you to create a cool-looking, fully customizable widget counting time down to the event you are looking forward to:
Steps:
1. Go to the site (no registration required) and click “Create Your Countdown!”
2. Provide the following details:

• The event you are waiting for;
• Widget description and tags;
• Your moniker and email;
• Your time zone;
• End of countdown (time and date);
• The widget color (two if you want a gradient color).

Preview:

3. Flickr or Picasa SlideShow

PictoBrowser is a fun web app that lets you create a slideshow of any Flick or Picasa member’s photo:
Steps:
1. Enter your (or any other user’s) Flickr Username.
2. Select images by tags, groups and sets.
3. Customize the display elements of the slideshow:

• Image alignment;
• Player width and height;
• Background color; etc.

Preview:

Are you aware of any other less known widgets you can embed to your blog to entertain your readers?

Thanks to Ann Smarty

Useful Hints and Tips on Blogging and Making Money Online Earning Reputation

The idea of a diary is one which has existed for centuries and has been an integral part of our society since its conception. With the advent of the internet the concept has changed and become one which is entirely different but no less as accessible and ultimately more rewarding. Speculation surrounds the future of many types of media, in which the internet is expected to play the greatest part. The movement towards what is being termed `social media` is one which becomes ever more relevant every day and a large part of this is web logging, or blogging.
Blogging is a popular form of social media unlike any other – on the surface it may appear simply to function as an online diary, but one which can be read by anybody. This awareness of readership undoubtedly affects the psychology of writing, as the blogger will write for their intended audience. This means, therefore, that blogging can be a fun, rewarding and profitable activity. Although many blogs continue to function as a personal diary, the majority of blogs have some focus or can be classified into a genre, such as music, political, travel, corporate, arts, business or fashion. In the same way that magazines have a focus, the majority of blogs do the same and are read or subscribed to for that reason. There are also other types of blog which are defined by the media they display; for example, a blog which focuses on displaying embedded videos and the discussion of their content is known as a vlog, while one which does the same with photos is known as a photoblog.

Setting up a blog is an extremely simple and quick process. Many websites offer free webspace for blogs, the most convenient being www.wordpress.com and www.blogspot.com, both of which give the user a unique e-mail address, such as http://yourname.blogspot.com, making the blog easy to find and to link to from other websites, such as facebook and twitter. These blogs are easy to edit and update and can be used for any genre of blog. Editing may require basic HTML to format the layout of text and other content, which may seem complex, but a quick Google search can easily show you the basics of HTML.
Some technologies allow you to add a blog to an existing site or as a stand-alone site under your own domain, if this is your intention. Wordpress and Joomla are two of the dominant technologies in this space, both allowing extensive customisation and both with vibrant developer communities with a market place of plug-ins providing almost infinite functional extensions to the base technology. Much of the technology is available free of charge although some developers will require a license fee.

Many businesses are now beginning to recognise the marketing potential inherent in the fast-growing social media landscape. It allows them to interact directly with their consumer base – past, present and potential. Whilst such interaction will require resources, it can elicit market feedback in a way that is simply unattainable through other mechanisms such as on-site surveys, providing vital feedback in the refinement of existing products and services and the identification of new ones.

With the blogging landscape also including searchable blog aggregation sites, it is now possible to rapidly identify any questions relevant to your business and to post a robust response to them on your own site or blog. You can then add a summarised (yet useful) post to the thread of the original question with a link to the full response on your site, Everybody wins; the blog owner; the readership and of course you as you begin to build awareness and recognition as a valuable contributor. As a result you should, over time, also attract links from other sites who regard the material to which you are pointing as being of value.

Even if yours is not an inherently commercial endeavour, it is still possible to make money from blogging in a number of ways. This can turn your hobby into a lucrative prospect. The main way in which non-commercial bloggers make money is from selling advertising space on their blog and thus earn money. You will find that most blogs have relatively unobtrusive adverts at the top, bottom and sides of the page and by selling this space on your blog you can do the same. It helps for your blog to be focused and well-presented in this case, allowing the advertising networks` spiders to display the most appropriate ads, thus improving click-through ratios – and your revenues with them.

13 Tips To Prove How Blog Posts Can Bring in More Visitors and BackLinks

There are numerous bloggers who provide umpteen number of ideas and share their knowledge over how to improve the readership for your blogs. And there are so called proclaimed Gurus who never follow the tips they share and they just keep on ranting on how, when you follow their tips and tricks by providing your email address and download their crappy free e-book. Now, devoid of all those special privileges to my dear readers, I wish to share the outcome of my blogging experience, which is not more than 18 months of course. But, the valuable lessons I learnt from this time had been priceless and I would just let you know the steps that I follow when I create a post on my blog.

When I sat to pen them down, I cam across several of them from the depths of my mind, but most of them can be generally known to most of you readers and I do not need to emphasize on them much. Contrary to the age old techniques, the following are followed by one and all those famous bloggers around like Darren Rowse and others.
1. Bifurcate the blog topic - Yes, I wish to let you know that never CRAM every known thing to you in a single post. First, prepare a rough sketch on what you are going to post about. And then try to break the post into multiple posts, so that, you can be more precise on what you are going to blog about. Easy to follow and you can dwell deeper into the topic by informing the readers from the scratch.
2. Maintain consistent tone throughout the post - You start with a serious tone which reflects as if a teacher is teaching to the students, later in the middle of the post, you move on and take a very casual tone wich is like a friend informing other friends about the cool tips and tricks and sharing the information. That’s not advisable enough, if you are writing on your blog, stay to a very informal tone and continue the same throughout the post. You can see this method to be most effective on CopyBlogger. They teach you how to write and they say the same in a very informal tone with humor and titbits to make the reading and learning a fun, not a chore.
3. No grammatical errors – You is know to how can you always wish so to is make all your was readers to be good well-informed. Yes, there is no meaning to the before line when read it full(Read only the odd numbered words). Thats the power of a grammatically incorrect statement. It drives your readers crazy and makes them wish to hunt you down and perform a massacre on you. But, as they do not have the time to hunt you down, they just close your webpage and move on to the greener pastures. check, before you hit the dreaded ‘Publish’ button for any grammatical mistakes.

4. No spelling mistakes - Many a time readers can mostly make out the word if there is a spelling mistake. But, if the spelling mistakes are throughout the post, they will definitely say good-bye no matter what the content is. Or else they will stick only if the content is more important and life saving. So, take care of the spelling mistakes. If your browser places a red line below any word, do pay attention to it. But, at times, browsers prefer US English to UK English. So, you may have the need to add the word to the dictionary if you are posting theinformation specifically for UK English preferred readers.
5. Rephrase complex sentences - As blogging is easy and the information is meant to be shared to one and all, make sure that you do not use any obfuscated(read, Complex, Unreadable, not easily understandable) sentences that drive the readers crazy. The readers, no matter where they arrive from, wish to go light on reading and they just scan the words to understand the meaning. So, try to rephrase the sentences in such a way that, if you have to use 3 sentences in the place of one complex one, do it. Take that initiative and break down the complex sentence to 3 simple ones. Your readers will love it.
6. Point to relevant resources - It’s a good practise to point at the relevant resources to provide breivity to the post being written. Rather than clarifying the point that you are posting from it’s ABCs, you can tell the reader to read the initial stretch at one point and you can continue from the point where the source has stopped. This source can either be your other post or your friend’s post or any post from where you have learnt the ABCs. And, if you have posted the process over how to get to the required point, then you can point the reader to get to know the advanced concepts from the other post of yours or any other blog which has informed you over how to do it the best.
7. Do a thorough research - Contrary to the belief and #6, never ever leave the post in between hanging in the mid-air. Let the reader be informed that, the post had been done after a thorough research and there is no stone unturned.
8. Place apt images - Whoever told that a Picture is worth thousand words, it stands true to its core. Search for relevant images which gel well with your posts. An images wisely chosen and used in a post will be pleasant to look at and people generally bind your post with the image they have seen and find the relevancy which leaves a lasting impact and gets imprinted in their memory. You can find a lot of free stock images from Free Pixels, Image After, Stock Vault and there are hundreds of similar kinds of sites. Other source would be Flickr where you can search for the relevant image and use it, as long as You abide by the rules and regulations and provide relevantinformation where you have taken the image from.
9. Keep it simple and upto the mark – No beating around the bush and do not beat the dead horse. Keep the post simple and explain each point in detail. Never try to re-instigate the earlier said point again and again making the readers get bored to death.
10. Length of the post – There had always been a debate over the length of the post, as this post has crossed the 1500 word mark, I could have just posted the bullet points and left it. But, keeping the importance and the requirement ofthe post, the length of the post does vary from 250 – thousands of words pointing to relevant sources and links. So, do not worry as long as the length of the post is relevant.
11. A very good title – Would you read the length of the article in the newspaper if the headline does not make an impact on you? You wouldn’t, right? Similarly, a good post with a good title brings in a very good response as it evokes interest in the readers and they wish to read more of whatthe post holds.
12. Be controversial, upto a point. Not always – Being controversial is one of the few tricks under the hood which can bring in readers and provoke interest and make the readers get involved in the article posted. State your view, if it contradicts the general point, back your view with strong hold on your views. Do not contradict just because you need visitors to come to your blog. Be honest and get involved in the heated argument. And do get ready to bear the comments too.
13. Keep the post in a conversational style – Talk with your readers in a friendly conversational style rather than a monotonous, i-posted-you-read style. Be a part of the conversation by replying to the comments and mentioning the releavnt points in between. Ask the readers opinions and count them in. If you find any comment more intriguing, do quote the comment and the name of the person and their website URL in the next post where you deal with the point.
I hope I have provided the general input required to make a good blog post. Even though you might be aware of most of these, getting to know these points again would be more beneficial while you are posting next time.
This post is part of the 31 Day Project initiated by Darren Rowse of Problogger.net