Have a Happy New Year

“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each new year find you a better man.” –Benjamin Franklin. Happy New Year guys. All the good times this year will be cherished and all the bad times could be used to learn from for not only the upcoming new year, but also the years ahead. This is a good time to jot down those goals and put the major ones into perspective and best of all, it’s a good time to re-design yourself and see what you could improve on or start something new for the new year. If starting a blog, improve on financials, or starting a business, was on your list of resolutions, this post is for you.

 

Sign-up and register with a blogging service.

You can sign up free of charge at Blogger or Wordpress. We prefer Blogger. :P

 

Get a free template for your blog or make your own

You can find professional or personal templates in the templates section or use the generic template below to learn how to build your own template in Blogger

 

Preview template | Download template

 

Tools used for blogging

These tools are provided to help you take your blog to the next level after you’ve gotten it up and running. Template building and analyzing blog information are equally important if you want to build an online business and generate steady income.

 

• Google Analytics

  An enterprise-class web analytics made smarter, friendlier, and best of all, it’s free. These analytics gives your rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. With powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now gives you visibility to analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. Google analytics can prepare you to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

• Going Up!

  GoingUp! is a web analytic service delivered by the Web Analytics Association(WAA) and offers some of the best tools in the industry to analyze your website’s performance form visitors and traffic to search engine tools to optimize your site and increase your search engine ranks.

• Babylon 8

  Babylon 8 is a widely used language and dictionary software. This software is used by millions of students of all ages and races. Because it can translate or define at a click of a button, tutorial websites in different languages or unfamiliar terms won’t be a problem anymore. Get your work done by getting your information when you need it.

• Windows Live Writer

  This software makes it easier to compose compelling blog posts. With WSYIWG blog editor as well as tools for publishing photos and maps, live writer proves indispensible for bloggers that just needs to get the post up for their readers.

• Centricle.com HTML converter

  This web tool is used for ad sense users trying to implement their ads into HTML. Bookmark website for easy access when you need to convert a quick ad sense code for use.

Sign-up and register for money-making networks

These are recommended money-making networks that are proven to generate quick and high revenue.

 

Make money with Ad Sense

 

• Bidvertiser
• Google Ad sense
• AdBrite

Browse the ad sense list

 

Make money with Affiliates

 

• Linkshare
• Pepperjam
• Connect Commerce

Browse the affiliate list

 

Make money with Twitter

 

• Sponsored Tweets
• ad.ly
• RevTwt

 

 

*For last year’s words belong to last year’s language

And next year’s words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

- T.S. Elliot, “Little Gidding”

Postings and update control for Blogger’s on the go

One way you can manage to keep your blog updated with fresh contents and at the same time update the social networks connected to your blog is by creating scheduled postings, using the facebook app: networkedblogs, and by linking your facebook page’s update to your twitter account.

To create schedule postings in the Blogger dashboard - Write your posts as usual but instead of clicking “Publish Post”, select Post Options > Post date and time > Scheduled at, and type in the date you want the posting to publish, then select “Publish Post”

 

If your blog has a facebook fan page, you can connect your blog and fan page together to alert your facebook fans about updates and new postings on your blog. To do this, you’ll need to install the facebook app: networkedblogs to be able to log your blog in for feed streaming.

Once your blog is logged in, you will need to configure feed settings to enable this feature. To do this, select your blog > feed settings > configure > and select “Auto-Publish blog posts to Page Wall.

 

For your blog’s twitter page, you’ll need to enable the facebook twitter page linking feature. If you haven’t already done so, facebook should notify you with a message at the top of your fan page. You can enable the feature by following the click link and selecting “Link a Page to Twitter”

How to add a scroll to top button with jQuery

This script adds ability to scroll to an absolute position (from top of page) or just a specific element on the page instead. For pages that are long winded, it’s a good idea to provide your viewers with an easy way to quickly navigate up to the top of the page. Also allows you to set it’s visibility on a readers screen: on start, in between, or when a user scrolls to the bottom.

Click here to see the demo

1. Login into your Blogger dashboard > Layouts > Edit HTML

2. Insert the following section code below into your template right after the section code: ]]></b:skin>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js">
</script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="scrolltopcontrol.js">
/*********************************************
* © Dynamic Drive DHTML code library (www.dynamicdrive.com)
* This notice MUST stay intact for legal use
*********************************************/
</script>

Note: The above references a “scrolltopcontrol.js” file plus a sample image: which you should download below (right click, and select "Save As")

3. Next, you will need to add the section code below right before the section code: <div id='header-wrapper'>

<a href="#top"></a>

4. Preview your template and if everything works fine, Save Template.

** Tutorial completed

How to add a site logo/watermark to your Blogger

This is a site logo/watermark script that allows you to display a static image at any of the four corners of the browser, never going out of sight. This can be useful for branding purposes, or just to offer your readers an easy way to jump back to your site’s homepage with a click of a button. The logo can also be set to disappear after X seconds.

Click here to see the demo

1. Login into your Blogger dashboard > Layouts > Edit HTML

2. Insert the following section code below into your template right before the closing of head. </head>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="staticlogo.js">
/*********************************************
* Site Logo script- © Dynamic Drive DHTML code library (www.dynamicdrive.com)
* This notice MUST stay intact for legal use
*********************************************/
</script>

Note: The above code references the external .js file "staticlogo.js", which you need to download (right click, and select "Save As").

Configuration

The section code is taken from the staticlogo.js file, you should configure the following if you want to customize your logo/watermark.

setting: {orientation:4, visibleduration:20000, fadeduration:[1000, 500]}, //orientation=1|2|3|4, duration=millisec, fadedurations=millisecs offsets: {x:10, y:10},//offset of logo relative to window corner logoHTML: '<a title="Blogspot Vision" href=http://www.blogspotvision.com><img style="border-right-width: 0px; width: 50px; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; height: 47px; border-left-width: 0px" src="logo.gif" /></a>', //HTML for logo, which is auto wrapped in DIV w/ ID=&quot;mysitelogo&quot;

Note: Most of them are fairly self explanatory. For setting.orientation, it sets the orientation of the logo relative to the window edge, and should an integer from 1 to 4 (1=top left corner, 2=top right corner, 3=bottom left corner, 4=bottom right corner). The option setting.visibleduration sets the duration (in milliseconds) before the logo disappears. For perpetual, enter 0 instead.

** Tutorial completed

How to create a new page in Blogger

As we all know, Blogger doesn’t provide an option for users to create new pages for their blogs in their dashboard. This can be inconvenient for publishers trying to monetize their blogs for higher revenue or just optimizing their blogs for a better user experience. Fortunately, users can create new pages, even with Google’s Blogger service, but the reason Blogger doesn’t provide an option for this feature is because since it’s a free service with millions of other Blogger blogs out there, Blogger tries to reduce space usage in this type of manner. There are two ways you can create new pages in Blogger, and if you’ve made a post, you’ve just discovered the first method.

Here’s the first method for creating a new page in Blogger

1. You can actually create new pages with postings. When you make a post, your individual post pages are considered as a new page. For example, let’s say you’ve added a navigation menu to your blog and you want to link a page to one of the menu’s link, take “Tools”, for example.

2. Make a post, but in this post, make it about your “Tools” section. We know that postings can handle HTML, so you can stylize your “Tools” page to how you want it. Next, publish your post, and there’s your new page. You can now link that posting link to your navigation menu’s link. Here is a screenshot of how I linked the Blogspot Vision’s Tools link to it’s navigation menu bar.


Here’s the second method for creating a new page in Blogger

1. If you choose not to create a new page by post, you can create a new page by changing your archive link to whatever you want it to be. Let’s take the Blogspot Vision’s “Tips” link for example. The tips link was created and named tips, for example, this is the link I created for tips: http://www.blogspotvision.com/search/label/tip

2. After you created this link, you can go ahead and link it to your navigation menu link, in this case, I linked it to the tips menu link. When you actually click on your newly created link, you will have a new page with no content in the post section, but you can easily add content by using the “Add a Gadget” > HTML/JavaScript option.


3. Once you’ve added your content using the HTML/JavaScript gadget, you’ll need to move it to the Blog Post section of your layout and then add the IF conditional tags to your content in the Edit HTML section under the Layout tab of your dashboard. Here’s a screen shot of mine:


4. Preview your template before you save, and if all works fine, save your template.

** Tutorial completed.

Money Making Adsense Networks

WidgetBucks – does the heavy lifting by creating contextual ad widgets that your visitors will actually find interesting and engage in. You reap the rewards of PPC ad widgets that earn better than $2 CPM. WidgetBucks also offers the Referral Program, in which affiliates can earn a 15 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the people they refer. Payouts are monthly and paid along with commission checks.

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Google Adsense - free program that enables website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads and earn money. Great program for beginners and learners, offers in-depth analytics.