Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Switch your Blogger profile with Google+ profile

Today Google announced that your Blogger profile will be replace with your Google+ profile.

But for everyone who wants to switch your Blogger profile with Google+ profile, this option is available for Blogger in Draft's users, and will be accessible from www.blogger.com in the coming weeks.

If you have a Google+ account and would like to replace your Blogger profile with your Google+ profile, log in to draft.blogger.com and click “Get started” on the promotion message, pictured below, or click here to get started right away.


If you don’t have a Google+ account, you can create one at plus.google.com, and then head back to draft.blogger.com and look for the promotion message.

And if you change your mind, you can always revert to your Blogger profile. However, all the changes that you made to your Google+ profile won’t transfer over to your Blogger profile.
Linking your blogs to your Google+ profile is a way to maintain one identity across the web, and you’ll have one less profile to manage and update. On your Google+ profile, you can link to your other online content in addition to blogs, which makes it easier for others to discover what you’ve produced on the web.
Keep in mind that this switch is completely optional - it’s perfectly okay to continue using your Blogger profile on your Blogger blogs. This option is only for those who feel comfortable associating their Google+ profile with their blogs.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

A quick tour through Blogger's brand new user interface

All Blogger accounts that haven’t yet made the switch will be upgraded to the new user interface. You will be able to opt-out at any time by clicking the “Switch back” link; however, all accounts will eventually be permanently upgraded, said on Google Buzz.

To help you get a better sense of what’s changed and how to navigate the new interface, check out the short video below.



If you’d like to switch to the new look at any time, you can easily do so by clicking the “Try the updated Blogger interface” link at the top of your dashboard.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Connect your Google Analytics account with your blog

Having a solid understanding of the traffic and visitor engagement statistics of your blog is one of the best ways to help it grow, today you can now easily connect your Google Analytics account with your blog, announced on Google Buzz.

Adding Google Analytics to your blog will give you more insight into where your visitors are coming from and help you determine which content they engage with the most. It's an easy to use, powerful, free product that is used internationally by businesses large & small.

If you already have a Google Analytics account, simply navigate to your blog’s Settings | Other tab and enter your blog's Google Analytics Web Property ID. Blogger will then insert Google Analytics code into your blog automatically, regardless of which template you're using, including mobile.

Notes:

  • Google Analytics is supported on blogs using Dynamic Views, Layouts templates, and mobile templates, but not Classic templates.
  • Because of the technical differences in how Blogger’s stats and Google Analytics collect data, you are likely to see some minor discrepancies between the two.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Introducing Lightbox

Lightbox is a whole new way to interact with photos. When clicked, images now expand into a shiny new overlay that displays them at their full size for optimal viewing.

Once an image is opened in the lightbox view, any other images from the same post will now appear as thumbnails along the bottom, which can be easily browsed by clicking the arrow keys on the left or right side of the lightbox.

If you’ve custom-coded your image HTML so that images function as hyperlinks, then the lightbox view will not display and your original image hyperlink will work as expected.

For some reasons, if you’d like to disable Lightbox on your blog, log in to Blogger and select “No” next to Lightbox in the Settings | Posts and Comments section (new interface) or the Settings | Formatting section (old interface).

Friday, September 9, 2011

The Blogger app for iOS

Today Google announced the new Blogger app for iOS. With the Blogger app, you can write a new blog post and publish it immediately or save it as a draft right from your iOS device. You can also open a blog post you've been working on from your computer and continue editing it while you're on-the-go. Your blog posts are automatically synced across devices, so you’ll always have access to the latest version.

The Blogger app makes it easy to add photos either by choosing from the gallery or taking a new photo right within the app. You can also add labels and location to provide more details about the post.


Download the Blogger app today for iOS versions 3.2 and above in the App Store. If you’re using an Android-powered device, you can download the Blogger app for Android from the Android Market.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Suggestions and autocomplete for Blogger's blog

The text suggestions and autocomplete feature of Google Scribe, now be found in Blogger in Draft.
Google Scribe helps you write more efficiently by suggesting common words and phrases as you type. Google Scribe supports Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish. The language is automatically detected using the text in the post. Kuntal Loya, Blogger's Software Engineer, said on their blog.
Enabling Google Scribe is easy. Simply click the pencil icon in the toolbar within the Post Editor.


After Google Scribe is turned on, suggestions will appear in gray as you type, and you can accept them by hitting the spacebar or by typing a punctuation mark, such as a comma, period or question mark.


If you would like to receive more than one suggestion at a time, select "Show Multiple Suggestions" from the drop-down menu next to the pencil icon. You will then be able to see several options in a drop-down menu as you type.


Here are some keyboard shortcuts you may find handy. If you use a Mac, you can use the shortcuts below by replacing Ctrl with Command key (or 'Apple' key)

  • Ctrl-j to enable and disable Scribe
  • Ctrl-Shift-j to select and deselect multiple suggestions
  • ESC to temporarily remove a suggestion
  • TAB to restore a suggestion

Happy blogging!

Friday, July 8, 2011

Blogger interface is now available

According to Blogger team. As of right now, the new interface is available for all Blogger in Draft users. There is no sign up or activation process required; Just visit Blogger in Draft, and you’ll find the revamped interface.

Blogger new interface

Inspired by Google’s newest design evolutions, Blogger teamn have updated the look and feel of their new design. Over the last couple of months, we’ve made significant improvements to our new user interface. First and foremost, we’ve incorporated your feedback and made numerous fixes based on that feedback.

As you know, Blogger in Draft is Blogger’s equivalent to “Google Labs”. As Draft users, you'll get to experience Blogger's newest features, including the new design, earlier than other users. If you’re not yet on Blogger in Draft, simply go to draft.blogger.com, and check on the “Make Blogger in Draft my default” option on your dashboard.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Customize favicon for your Blogger's blog

For many bloggers, having a custom favicon (the tiny image displayed in your browser’s window or tab) is the finishing touch that ties together the design and identity of a great looking blog. Today, Blogger's team announced that Blogger in Draft users can now add a customized favicon to their blog. Many bloggers have waiting this customize for long time.

You can add a custom favicon from the Design | Page Elements tab (or, from the Layout tab if you're using the new user interface), by clicking Edit on the new “Favicon” setting above the navbar element:


A new window will then open where you can select an image from your hard drive to replace the default favicon image. This initial launch only supports .ico files, but you can easily convert your JPEG, PNG, or other non-ico image file using your own image software. There are also many conversion tools online, and a quick Google Search brings up a handful of options such as http://www.icoconverter.com/.


Once you’ve selected the .ico file for your favicon, click Save. Blogger will automatically resize the image to the correct dimensions, and you’ll then see the Page Elements updated with your selected favicon image:


When you save your template changes, you’ll see your newly-added favicon image displayed in your browser window or tab. That’s it!

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Add the +1 Button to Your Blog

“+1” is often used as a digital shorthand for “this is pretty cool.” It’s also a way for friends, contacts, and the rest of the world to find great things on Google search. Google launched the +1 button back in March as a way to help share web content and make search more personal and relevant.

To add the +1 button to your blog, you’ll need to enable Share buttons on Blogger. To do this, go to Design | Page Elements on your Blogger dashboard, find the Blog posts area, click on Edit, and select the “Show Share Buttons” option. If you are already using Share buttons, the +1 button will automatically show up as a new share option.


By adding the +1 button to your blog, you’re providing an easy way for your visitors to recommend your posts to their friends right from your blog.

[via]

Friday, May 13, 2011

Blogger was down for more than 36 hours


If you’re one of the many people that uses Blogger, you may have noticed some issues with your blog lately – namely, that you can’t update it. Blogger users have been locked out of their blogs since Wednesday night when a behind-the-scenes maintenance update went wrong.

Users were informed on Monday that there would be an outage on Wednesday at 10 p.m. PST for an hour-long maintenance update. However, at 11 p.m., Blogger wasn’t back up. Blogger users were unable to update their blogs, and haven’t been able to for about 36 hours. Site content has been put into read-only mode, which means visitors can still come to the blog and read posts, but bloggers just can’t add any new material.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, any posts that were added after 7:37 a.m. PST on Wednesday have been removed. Google updated its Blogger Status blog at 6:07 a.m. PST Friday saying it has started restoring the posts that were temporarily removed.

Updated on Blogger Buzz, Eddie Kessler, Tech Lead/Manager, Blogger said that Blogger is back now.
"What a frustrating day. We’re very sorry that you’ve been unable to publish to Blogger for the past 20.5 hours. We’re nearly back to normal — you can publish again, and in the coming hours posts and comments that were temporarily removed should be restored. Thank you for your patience while we fix this situation. We use Blogger for our own blogs, so we’ve also felt your pain."

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Refreshed interface for image and video upload

Clicking the “photo” or “video” upload buttons in Insert image will now display a sleeker, updated picker. Blogger's also made it draggable so you can look back at the post editor if you need to. [via]

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Best Paid Blogging Websites

Today, blogging activity can be an alternative way to get money or as second profession. A big number of bloggers create and manage their blog to earn revenue from the internet services. Those services are like: pay per click program, Google AdSense, online reviews, and paid to blog.


Those programs are legal by law. Beside you earn money, you can understand how the online business today. The most profitable in giving us revenue and knowledge is paid blogging.

Paid Blogging asks you to write a review about someone’s sites. You can give the positive words or the negative one. However, the reason of advertiser asking you to write about them is to show the world about their service and to build a good links.

To start a paid blogging program, you don’t have to prepare your money for registration, because they are FREE. All you need to prepare is your own quality.

PayPerPost.com
These folks pioneered the “get paid to blog” concept. Besides being the most popular paid blogging network, I’ve found that they always seem to have the most job opportunities available at any given time. PayPerPost pays bloggers anywhere from $5 to over $200 per completed and approved post.

Bloggerwave.com
Although Bloggerwave is a smaller paid blogging network and lists fewer open job opportunties, their site is super blogger-friendly and easy to to navigate. Bloggers here get paid a minimum of $10 for each completed and approved post. Bloggerwave also pays on time and like clock-work.

Smorty.com
You’ll like Smorty because they pay from $6 to $100 for each post and they pay-out weekly. A great feature with Smorty is that bloggers are allowed to have multiple blogs so income earning potential is unlimited. The Pagerank of your blog along with a high Smorty smart score determines how much you can earn – up to $100 per post.

ReviewMe.com
Bloggers – get paid to review products and services on your site. You control what you review. You will be paid $20.00 to $200.00 for each completed review that you post on your site.

LoudLaunch.com
With LoudLaunch the amount you are paid per post is based on your blog ranking? LoudLaunch allows bloggers to be compensated for distributing our advertisers LoudLaunch press releases. Search through our advertisers latest press release campaigns, select campaigns aligned with your blog, post a Micro Press Release on your blog based on the advertisers campaign, and be compensated based on the exposure your blog can deliver.

BloggingAds.com
BloggingAds is different. They supply the advertisers, the text and the money, all you have to do is post the ad on your blog. We are looking for bloggers to post one-time ads on their blog sites for money.

SponsoredReviews.com
A Sponsored Review is an article you write for an advertiser. You review their products and services and then post the review on your blog. Each advertiser has his or her own requirements. Bloggers can earn anything from $10 to $500+ for each review.

BlogsVertise.com
Once approved, your blog goes into the assignment queue. The blogsvertise administrator then assigns writing tasks for what our advertisers want you to mention in your blog. The current payout rate for new accounts is $4 – $25 per entry.

PayU2Blog.com
If your blog meets our requirements then you can make money blogging in our system and you can count on Payu2blog to deliver that consistent steady income from advertising on your blog.

CreamAid.com
CREAMaid is a service that lets you meet other bloggers with similar interests, and make money while doing it. Anyone can start using CREAMaid by inserting a CREAMaid Conversation widget inside her post. When your post is selected, you will be able to instantly collect a royalty for your contribution (usually about $5).

Contextual.v7n.com
Do you own a blog? Blog publishers in the Contextual Links @ V7N Network make cash and get paid by PayPal for simply adding text links to their blog posts. Currently publishers make $10 per link.

LinkWorth.com
LinkWorth is a search engine marketing company that offers a variety of monetization options for bloggers. LinkWorth gives up to 70% of the revenue for its ads.

InBlogAds.com
If you have a blog, you can make money simply by reviewing other websites. You receive 60% of the sale price for each review.

DewittsMedia.com
Your blog must have a minimum Page Rank of 3 to be accepted. You get paid a flat fee of $10.00 per post.

LinkyLoveArmy.com
Your rate of pay to blog for this company is based on your Google’s PageRank (from $5 to $16 per post).

PayMeToBlogAboutYou.com
The process is simple! Register, look for bloggers or advertisers, negotiate back and forth via the messaging system, strike a deal, BUZZ and compensate!

BlogChex.com
Migrate your existing blog or start a new one . Refer a friend and get 5% of what the friends blog site makes. Promote your blog and get paid.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Chrome Extension for Dynamic Views

Last week Blogger brought five exciting new ways to view your blog content, which take advantage of the latest web technologies to provide a richer experience for your readers. You can already see these views in action by appending /view to the end of any Blogger URL, and now Blogger announced another way to experience these views via the Blogger Dynamic Views Chrome extension.


Once installed, the extension will automatically detect when you are viewing a Blogger blog, and then display a Blogger icon (the orange ‘B’!) in your address bar which lets you select and view the blog in one of the five new dynamic views.


Of course, you can always disable the extension whenever you want from the Extensions section of the Tools menu.

[via Blogger Buzz]

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Free Blogspot Templates: Simplebox Template

Preview: http://simpleboxtemplate.blogspot.com

  • From your Blogger dashboard, go to Design | Edit HTML
  • Make sure to back up your old template before install this new one by click on the "Download full template"
  • Check on the "Expand Widget Templates"
  • Now copy/paste this code to replace all the code in the HTML code section
  • Click Save Template button and you're done.

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Dynamic Views for Readers

Blogger currently offers five dynamic views for its public blogs. These views are only accessible if allowed for by the blog author.
  • Flipcard: available at [blogURL]/view/flipcard
  • Mosaic: available at [blogURL]/view/mosaic
  • Sidebar: available at [blogURL]/view/sidebar
  • Snapshot: available at [blogURL]/view/snapshot
  • Timeslide: available at [blogURL]/view/timeslide
As an example, the URL for accessing the Sidebar view for Blogger Buzz would be http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view/sidebar.
These views require modern browsers such as Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox 3.5+, Chrome or Safari. Many elements of these views will not work should you have an older browser.

In all views, search is available in the upper right hand corner. Clicking on the ">" arrow in the very top left of the header bar will slide the header bar across and allow you to choose different views for the current blog as well as type in a new blog URL.

Flipcard

http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view/flipcard
  • Mouse over any of the cards to see the post title and comment count. As you scroll down, additional posts will continue to load.
  • Click on a card to see the post in full view. You can navigate through the posts using J (older post) and K (newer post) or the arrow keys. Hit Escape or click Back to all posts to return to the Flipcard view.
  • In the upper left, click to sort by Date, Author and Category.
Mosaic

http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view/mosaic
  • Clicking on an individual tile will expand that post to the full width of the view, and clicking again will collapse the post back into its original position.
  • The exact position of the tiles is randomly determined each time the blog loads, but they will appear chronologically from top left to bottom right.
  • Once a tile is expanded, you can page down by using the "up" and "down" arrow keys as well as J and K.
  • This view is optimized for the tablet viewing, and supports screen rotation.
Sidebar

http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view/sidebar
  • Optimized for quick reading and browsing.
  • Left sidebar is list of chronological posts, with comment counts and thumbnails for individual posts.
  • J and K arrow keys will navigate through the posts, and comments can be displayed on the same page by clicking the Show link.
Snapshot

http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view/snapshot
  • This view will display only the posts which have images.
  • Clicking through any photo will display the full post page, with naviagtion links at the bottom for Newer and Older posts
  • Mousing over any photo will display a post snippet
Timeslide

http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view/timeslide
    This view breaks the blog content down into three different areas:
  • Left column: Enlarged picture with a post snippet, title, and snipppet displayed in chronological order
  • Middle column: Displays just the post title and snippet
  • Right column: Displays just the individual post titles
  • When searching for posts in this view, the results will be highlighted.

Dynamic Views for Blogger blog

Today Blogger's previewing five new dynamic templates in Blogger that you’ll soon be able to customize and use for your blog. These new views use the latest in web technology, including AJAX, HTML5 and CSS3, to deliver a host of benefits to you and your readers:
  • Infinite scrolling: read more posts without having to reload or click to a second page
  • New layouts: different views suited to different types of blogs
  • Speed: download images as you view them, not all at once in advance
  • Interactivity: there are now more ways to experience and engage with blog content
To try these views on your own blog, simply add “/view” to the end of the blog URL—for example, http://freeblogspottemplates.blogspot.com/view. These new views are available on all public Blogger blogs with feeds fully enabled.


These dynamic views will work on your blog if all of the following are true:
  • Your blog is public. Your readers don’t need to sign in to view your blog.
  • Your blog has feeds fully enabled. In the Settings | Site feed tab, you have enabled either Full or Jump Break for your Post Feed.
  • You have not disabled dynamic views. In the Setting | Formatting tab, the option for Enable Dynamic Views is set to Yes.
If any of the above conditions are not true, users who attempt to access dynamic views for your blog will instead be taken to a landing page and redirected to your original blog in a few seconds.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Free Blogspot Templates: Bright Photoblog Template

Preview: http://photoblog-freetemplate.blogspot.com/

  • From your Blogger dashboard, go to Design | Edit HTML
  • Make sure to back up your old template before install this new one by click on the "Download full template"
  • Check on the "Expand Widget Templates"
  • Now copy/paste this code to replace all the code in the HTML code section
  • Click Save Template button and you're done.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Adding a Drop-Down menu to your Blogger blog

One of the most convenient way to display huge lists of links, like BlogRoll or favorite sites etc. is using a drop down menu. The tool is very useful for webmasters and bloggers, and equally simple is the coding required to put it on your blog/web site.

Follow these simple steps, to add a Drop-Down menu to your blog:

From your Dashboard, go to "Design" section, then click on "Add a Gadget", and select it as "HTML/JavaScript"
Now put this code in to it:
<form><select name="menu" onchange="window.open(this.options[this.selectedIndex].value,'_blank')"
size=1 name=menu>
<option>- Your Title - </option>
<!-- change the links with your own -->
<option value="http://yourlink#1.com">Title One</option>
<option value="http://yourlink#2.com">Title Second</option>
<option value="http://yourlink#3.com">Title Third</option>
</select></form>
Replace the titles in blue and the links in red with your owns then click Save and you're done.

Enjoy!

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Putting AdSense on Your Blog

First of all, choose the blog that you want to put AdSense on, and go to the Monetize tab. You can get there by clicking the Monetize link of the blog you want on the dashboard.

Once you're there, choose one of the three options to display your ads: in your sidebar and posts, just in your sidebar, or just below your posts. Or just enable AdSense reporting if you already manually enabled ads on your blog (choose this option to start seeing AdSense reports on the Monetize tab).


The next page asks you to either sign up for a new AdSense account or use an existing one. Once you've signed in or created or account, you'll get a confirmation screen. If for any reason you need to switch to using a different AdSense account, click the switch AdSense accounts link on this page.
Blogger provides a simple way for you to make money with your blog. AdSense is Google's content-targeted advertising program. This means that you don't select keywords or categories for your ads. Instead, Google's servers determine what your posts are about and display the most relevant ads to your readers. So, if you blog about baseball, there might be ads for Major League Baseball memorabilia next to your post. If you blog about painting, there might be ads for art supplies.
Blogger requests access to your AdSense account in order to allow us to create and place ad code on your page through our layouts and template tools. As part of this process, you may notice that Blogger is receiving "0%" of your AdSense earnings - this means that you will receive the same amount for clicks or impressions as you would creating the ad code from your AdSense account. To view any partners that have requested access to your AdSense account, and their associated revenue shares, please log in to your AdSense account, click the "My Account" tab, and choose the "Account Access" sub-tab. If you see a "grant access" link next to blogger.com, you must click this link in order to create ads with Blogger tools.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Make it easy for readers to follow your blog by email

Fresh content is the fuel that drives the blogosphere; it keeps readers coming back to your blog. And today Blogger realesed a new, powerful way to do just that with Follow by Email, depending on your blog feed.

The Follow by Email gadget provides blog authors a simple way for their readers to subscribe to the latest hot-off-the-press updates, which are delivered directly to the reader’s inbox. When new blog content is published, all subscribed readers will receive a daily email notification of the new published posts, which includes a copy of the new content as well as links back to the actual posts.


To enable Follow by Email, click the Add a Gadget link from the Design | Page Elements tab, and then select the Follow by Email gadget which should be at the top of the list. Once you add the gadget, readers visiting your blog can then just enter their email address and click Submit.


Taking advantage of Feedburner technology, Follow by Email will also track your subscription information, such as the number of subscribers and daily views. To view these stats, log into Feedburner.com, and select the appropriate blog feed from your list.

[via Blogger Buzz]

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Blogger Features in 2011

2010 was a big year for Blogger with template designer, real-time stats, comments spam filtering, mobile templates, web fonts, and more... And as Google promised with their users on Blogger Buzz yesterday, 2011 will be another exciting year with some features look like below:





And here's the video:

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

More storage, more photos hosting by Picasa Web Albums

With Picasa Web Albums, you automatically get one gigabyte of free storage. As some of you may have noticed that Picasa Web Albums' storage counter shows that you have more free space than a couple of days ago.

In the past, each image and video you uploaded counted toward your free 1GB. Now, uploaded images that are 800 pixels or smaller and videos that are 15 minutes or less in length no longer count against your free storage limit. This means you can upload and store unlimited photos and videos at the above sizes -- for free!


The new feature encourages users to upload smaller images. If you use Picasa to upload your photos, there's a setting that lets you pick the dimensions of the photos that are uploaded. The "small" option is recommended "for publishing images on blogs and webpages". Blogger users who resize their photos before uploading them will no longer have to buy extra storage if they're prolific.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Adding Google Translate gadget to your blog

Google Translate is a free translation service that provides instant translations between 57 different languages. It can translate words, sentences and web pages between any combination of our supported languages. By adding Google Translate gadget to your blog, you have a chance to increase your traffic with the readers who don't use your language but still interested with your contents.

  • Go to Google Translate gadget page
  • Choose your blog language in Step 2
  • Setting your gadget display, specific languages or choosing another advanced settings in Step 3
  • Go to Step 4 on Google Translate gadget page to copy and paste the snippet of code into HTML/JavaScript of your blog by going Dashboard | Design | Add a Gadget

Enjoy!

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Promoting Your Blogger blog

This is in no way a science or guarantee; it's simply a few suggestions with which many bloggers have found success.

Set your blog to Send Pings. The Let search engines find your blog? setting determines whether or not your blog will be included in Google Blog Search and if it will ping Weblogs.com. If you select 'No,' everyone can still view your blog but search engines will be instructed not to crawl it. You can find these settings on the Settings | Basic page. When this setting is activated, your blog will be included in various "recently updated" lists on the web as well as other blog-related services.

Activate Your Navbar. Do this and you might start to see the effects right away! One of the features on the Blogger Navbar is a button called NextBlog - click it to visit the next Navbar-enabled blog.

Install Email This Post. If you use Email This Post on your blog, people will be able to forward your posts to friends. This may not have an immediate impact on your site stats but it enables others to publicize your blog for you.

Turn on Post Pages. By publishing every post as its very own web page with Post Pages, you ensure that your entries are way more link-able and more attractive to search engines.

Turn on your site feed. When people subscribe to your site feed in their newsreaders, they're very likely going to read your post.

Add your blog to Blogger's listings. When you add your blog to Blogger's listings by active the checkbox on the Set Displayed Blog page, it shows up in Nextblog, Recently Updated, and other places. It's like opting-in to traffic.

Write quality content and do it well. If your "style" is bad writing, worse grammar, no punctuation, and an ugly design, that might be okay for a niche crowd. But the idea here is to achieve mass appeal, so fix yourself up a bit.

Publish regular updates. Simple: the more you blog, the more traffic you'll get.

Think of your audience. A good way to build an audience is to speak to one in particular. When you keep your audience in mind, your writing gains focus. Focus goes a long way toward repeat visitors.

Keep search engines in mind. There are a few things you can do to make your blog more search engine friendly. Use post titles and post page archiving. This will automatically give each of your post pages an intelligent name based on the title of your post. Also, try to be descriptive when you blog. A well crafted post about something very specific can end up very near the top results of a search.

Keep your posts and paragraphs short. Strive for succinct posts that pump pertinent new information into the blogosphere and move on. Keep it short and sweet so visitors can pop in, read up, and click on.

Put your blog URL in your email signature. Think of how many forwarded emails you've seen in your day, and just imagine the possibilities.

Sumbit your address to blog search sites and directories. People look for blog content at Technorati every day, are you on their list? You should be. Submit your blog's url to Technorati and any other site of that ilk you come across.

Link to other blogs. Links are the currency of the blogosphere and it takes money to make money so start linking.

Install a blogroll. It's a very simple yet effective social networking scheme and it has the same result as a simple link if not stronger: traffic! So if you don't have one yet, sign up for a blogroll and get that link-list going.

Be an active commenter. This is in the same vein as linking. Most comment systems also provide a way for you to leave a link back to your blog which begs a visit at the very least. So if you feel inspired, leave a comment or two in your blog travels. It behooves you.

Enable Following on your blog. Following a is a great way to keep your friends updated on the latest activity on your blog. New blogs will have this blog feature enabled by default, but for older blogs you will have to enable it from the Design | Page Elements tab.

Monday, February 21, 2011

If your blog contains adult content

If your blog contains adult themes or language, you may want to consider choosing to have a Content Warning page appear before readers can enter your blog. A Content Warning page will warn visitors that some may consider the material on your blog objectionable and will give them the chance to either continue to your blog or to cancel; this is especially useful if you would like to keep minors from accidentally stumbling upon your blog.

To add a Content Warning page to your blog, just toggle the setting titled, "Adult Content?" in your Settings | Basic tab.


* Please note that if your blog contains adult imagery, Blogger may apply the Content Warning page to your blog even if you haven't altered your settings.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Free Blogspot Templates: Your blog template

Preview: http://yourblogtemplate.blogspot.com/

  • From your Blogger dashboard, go to Design | Edit HTML
  • Make sure to back up your old template before install this new one by click on the "Download full template"
  • Check on the "Expand Widget Templates"
  • Now copy/paste this code to replace all the code in the HTML code section
  • Click Save Template button and you're done.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Blogger Android App

Have you ever wanted to write up a quick blog post on the go? Now there is an easy way to do this on your Android phone! The first version of the Blogger Android App is released today. Using the app you can easily compose a post, attach a photo that you just took with your phone, and either save it as a local draft for later or immediately publish it to your blog. If you are an Android user, you can start using the Blogger app today by downloading it for free from the Android Market.


Feature highlights
  • Multiple accounts and blogs: You can easily switch between different accounts and blogs that you have author rights to. Simply choose your account and blog and you are all set to go.


  • Write and save/publish: You can write a post, assign labels, and then either save it as a draft or immediately publish it. Saving as draft is handy if you need to wait until you have Internet connectivity.


  • Photos from camera and gallery: If you see something interesting, you can take a photo directly from the app and include it in the blog post. You can also browse your gallery to include the ones you like.


  • Sharing to Blogger from gallery or browser: Blogger is one of the available sharing options. If you come across a photo in the gallery, or a website while browsing, you can share the content to the Blogger app directly from the sharing menu.


  • Share location: You can share your location by activating the location bar and selecting the correct location. This information will be included in your post.


  • View saved/published posts: By switching to the List View, you can view all your drafts and published posts that you wrote using the app. By performing a long-press on a published post you can invoke a menu that includes the option to view your post in a browser.


Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Free Blogspot Templates: Angel Blogger template

Preview: http://angelbloggertemplate.blogspot.com/
  • From your Blogger dashboard, go to Design | Edit HTML
  • Make sure to back up your old template before install this new one by click on the "Download full template"
  • Check on the "Expand Widget Templates"
  • Now copy/paste this code to replace all the code in the HTML code section
  • Click Save Template button and you're done.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Using the Blogger Reading List

With the Blogger Reading List, you can read all of the latest posts from your favorite blogs right on your Blogger Dashboard! Your Blogger Reading List, conveniently located under your list of blogs on your dashboard, enables you to subscribe to any blog with a feed. It will update instantly each time a new post is published on any blog in your Reading List. Additionally, you can check out our latest Blogger Buzz posts from the "Blogger Buzz" tab, and the latest Blogs of Note from the "Blogs of Note" tab.

It is simple to add a blog to your Reading List. First, click on the "Blogs I'm Following" tab under "My Reading List" on your Blogger Dashboard.


Then, click on the blue "Add" button in the bottom left corner of your Reading List.


Next, insert the URL of the blog you'd like to follow in the URL box. You can add as many blogs as you'd like by clicking on "Add another". When you have added all of your favorite blogs, click the orange "Add" button.


You'll then be given the option to either follow publicly or privately:


Once you've decided on following publicly or privately, click the orange "Follow" button and that's it! You've added all your favorite blogs to your Reading List! Now, every time one of the blogs are updated the latest post will be displayed in your reading list under the "Items" section.


Additionally, adding a blog to your Reading List will create a subscription to the blog in your Google Reader account.

How to remove a blog from your Reading List

To remove a blog from your Reading List, go to the "Blogs I'm Following" tab under your Reading List on your dashboard.


Then, click the blue "Manage" button. You will be taken to a page with a list of all the blogs that you are following. To stop following one of the blogs, click the trash can icon next to the blog you want to stop following. You will instantly be removed from following the blog and it will be removed from your Reading List.


You also have the option to change how you'd like to follow the blog (publicly or privately) from the drop-down menu.

[Guides & Tips from Blogger Help]