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”

How to add a basic calendar to your Blogger

If you need a simple, elegant calendar to display the current days of the month, Basic Calendar is an excellent script for the purpose. Uses CSS to allow easy changing to its appearance, everything from calendar dimensions, colors, down to the font used to highlight the current day.

Click here to see the demo

Steps to follow:

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>

<style type="text/css">
.main {
width:200px;
border:1px solid black;
}
.month {
background-color:black;
font:bold 12px verdana;
color:white;
}
.daysofweek {
background-color:gray;
font:bold 12px verdana;
color:white;
}
.days {
font-size: 12px;
font-family:verdana;
color:black;
background-color: lightyellow;
padding: 2px;
}
.days #today{
font-weight: bold;
color: red;
}
</style>
<script type="text/javascript" src="basiccalendar.js">
</script>

Note: The above references an external .js file. Download basiccalendar.js (by right clicking, and selecting "Save As"), and upload to your webpage directory.

Note: Within the above code, you may customize the CSS rules to change all visual aspects of the calendar.

3. Next, go to Layouts > Page Elements > and Add an HTML/JavaScript Gadget. Insert the following section code below as the HTML and after saving, move the gadget where you want the calendar to appear.

<script type="text/javascript">

var todaydate=new Date()
var curmonth=todaydate.getMonth()+1 //get current month (1-12)
var curyear=todaydate.getFullYear() //get current year

document.write(buildCal(curmonth ,curyear, "main", "month", "daysofweek", "days", 1));
</script> 

** 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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AdBrite - Generate more revenue from your ad space. Adbrite offers customize ads to match your site, approve and reject ads for your site, works alongside with other ad programs, and supports: text ads, inline ads, banners, britepic, and fullpage ads.

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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.