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How to Get Your Blog Published on Amazon’s Kindle

By Merle in Blogs & Podcasts

When Oprah announced on her show that she “LOVES” Amazon’s Kindle, millions of people rushed out to get one. First introduced in 2007, the “Kindle” is Amazon’s electronic replacement for books. It’s a portable, wireless device that allows you to download books, magazines, newspapers, even blogs instantly and take them with you anywhere.

Since the Kindle can hold over 1,500 books, that’s like carrying around an entire library in the palm of your hand.

The wireless connection is built in and provided at no charge by Amazon. There’s also a built in browser for viewing websites and reading emails.

Amazon’s Kindle Store has over 230,000 ebooks to download, plus U.S. and International newspapers, magazines, even blogs. Almost all of the ebooks sell for $9.99 or less. The latest model is a larger more improved Kindle DX which was made available this year. Boosting a bigger screen and longer battery life, it can even read to you out loud. Now that makes for a nice bedtime story. It also holds over 3,500 books and sells for about $489.00.

The Kindle can also display PDF’s which you can transfer from your computer with a USB cable. The older versions of the Kindle could read PDF’s and Word documents, but they had to be emailed to Amazon first to convert them to a format readable by the Kindle. This option is still available as well.

So what does all this mean to you? Well, if you’re a blog publisher you can now publish your blogs in the Kindle Store where users can subscribe to them for a monthly fee. This is a great way to make some money and increase your subscriber base all at the same time.

First you’ll need to go to http://kindlepublishing.amazon.com to set up an account and submit your blogs for approval. Once approved your Blog “goes live” in the Kindle Store within 12 to 48 hours.

The Kindle gives the user full text and images from the blogs they are subscribed to, which unlike an RSS feed only gives you the headlines.

When submitting your blog for approval here’s the information you’ll need:

• Blog Title
• Blog Tagline
• Description
• Image from top of your blog (banner or masthead)
• Screenshot of your blog (optional)
• Posting Frequency

It’s really pretty simple to get your blogs listed.

So how does the payment process work? Good question, nice to see you’re paying attention. You’ll be paid 30% of the monthly blog subscription price. Amazon sets the price, not you. It’s priced on what they think is a “fair value” for their customers. For example, my two blogs were set at $0.99 a month.

All blog subscriptions are free for the first 14 days. Then they’re billed at the monthly subscription price. Blogs are wirelessly updated throughout the day.

You’ll be paid by check or EFT, your choice. Electronic Funds Transfer has no charge, but if you opt for a paper check and live in the U.S. you’ll have an $8.00 fee attached. Payments are sent once your earnings reach $50.00.

If you publish a blog I’d strongly encourage you to get it listed in Amazon’s Kindle Store. It won’t cost you a thing but a few minutes of your time and makes for great free exposure..

By Merle- The pay-per-click Authority when it comes to paid search engine advertising. With helpful articles, how-to’s and tips that will help you make the most from your advertising investment. Download a FREE “How To” ebook by subscribing to our ezine at http://www.PayPerClickResearch.com

How You Can Write Your Own Paycheck the moment You learn the Hidden Insider Secrets of Wordpress!

By Patrick Shelley in Blogs & Podcasts

Below I will show you a really cool trick I just learned from a Gem of a manuscript containing all kinds of hidden WordPress back door secrets.

I have been a blogger, learning about blogging and of course learning WordPress for several years. I am in front of a computer so much that I have been known to take my shirt off for an hour or two so that I can take advantage of my monitors radiation to work on my tan.

Yes, I’ll admit it, I am a computer & internet junkie. I love to make money on the internet. I am so happy to be able to work from home, working my own hours, doing what I want to do whenever I want to do it. I don’t even miss that morning commute any more. It was really weird, when I first started to work from home I actually found myself checking to be sure I had everything before I made my new commute exactly 21 steps to my new office in a spare bedroom in my house, is that sick or what!

I even remember that I used to justify my commute by saying to myself (because I was the only one listening) that my morning trek was my quiet time. Yeah right, who was I kidding. If surrounding yourself with 20,000 pissed off caffeine junkies who are all late for work is your idea of quiet time; maybe you should plan your next family vacation to Iraq.

Let’s face it we all want freedom but we all know that freedom takes money. The more money you have the more freedom you have, period. To illustrate this point here is a saying from my dear old Dad. “Son, life is like a poop sandwich (not his exact words), the more bread you’ve got the less poop you’ve got to eat”. Wise words Dad, thanks.

Well, we also all know there’s a ton of money to be made on the internet, but the 64 thousand dollar question that eludes most people is, HOW? How in the world do you go out and get your piece of that mega Billion dollar pie?

The answer is WordPress! Why you may ask? Well, the answer to THAT question is; it can do everything!

If you want to build conduit sites, adsense sites, affiliate sites, of course blogs, sales pages, review sites, landing pages, redirect sites, full blown company sites and so much more I could write a book on it, then WordPress is your goose that laid your very own Golden Egg!

Do you know what the real definition of insanity is? It’s doing the same thing the same way over and over again every single day and somehow magically expecting the results to change. If it happens call me, I’ll be impressed and I’ll call the Guinness book of world records, because trust me they’ll want to know.

My point is; if you’re really interested in making money online then it would be absolute insanity if you didn’t want to master the one and only tool out there that can literally do it all for you. That would be like saying you’re a professional carpenter but you don’t want to find out how to use a hammer. Ridiculous I know, but it does illustrate the point.

So, what is the really cool tip and trick that you can put into action right now and start earning money within the next 1 hour? Yes, I just said that this one tip can have you putting money in your bank account within just one hour.

Well, first let me ask you just one little thing. And don’t worry this won’t drag on very long at all. I don’t need you to start wondering if Starbucks delivers just so you can finally finish this article.

My question is; do you think online video games is a big industry? I know what you’re thinking; What? does it take this idiot an hour and a half to watch the TV show 60 minutes? No, it doesn’t last time I checked I got it down to only 63 minutes.

Well, what if you could finally have the power to turn a WordPress blog into your very own personal online video arcade? Sounds too good to be true right!

Well it’s not too good to be true, WordPress just launched the plug in and I’m going to show you how easy it is to use right now.

To launch your video arcade simply choose a cool looking WordPress theme from 1000’s of free themes online. Next just install the WordPress arcade game plug in and go sign up with Mochiads the people who will supply you with constant game feeds. When you’re taken to your welcome page just scroll down and get your games publisher ID. You then just type the ID into your WordPress dashboard so you can configure the plug in (You only click one button by the way, that’s how easy it is). If you have all your files uploaded and named properly then that’s it!! That’s all there is too it!

Ok, so you might be thinking, that’s great now I have a free game site, but how do I make money?

Well, if you have hundreds or thousands of people coming to your site every day to play free games you can load your pages with Google adsense, sell advertizing blocks on your site, put up your own ads for your own products (if you don’t have your own you should develop some, the profits can be huge) or put ads for products you affiliate. Literally, your choices are endless.

This system is so easy, you can follow all the directions I gave you and have it up and running in under 10 minutes.

Trust me, If I can do it, you can do it. You really can make a fantastic living online and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Of course people will tell you you’re crazy, but will it be the 1st time anyone’s ever said that to you? Remember; Today’s Mighty Oak is just yesterdays Nut who held his ground.

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Patrick Shelley is in no way a professional WordPress Coach of any kind. He is simply a guy who wasn’t making enough money and needed a solution which he found at=> http://hotwordpresstips.tripleyourinfo.com

7 SEO Tips for your WordPress Blog

By Suzanne Morrison in Blogs & Podcasts

Do you have a WordPress blog? If so, one of the best ways to increase the traffic to your blog is by applying search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. In this article we will go over 7 simple things that you can to do increase your traffic from the search engines.

1. Make sure that your permalinks are set up optimally for SEO - whenever you publish a blog post it will have a permanent URL known as a “permalink”. By default the WordPress permalink setting is not optimal but you can easily edit this by clicking on the Settings->Permalinks menu in the WordPress dashboard and then use a custom setting http://yourdomainname.com/category/postname. This will mean that your blog post category and title will appear in the URL rather than a number.
2. Install the All in One SEO Pack (or a another similar plugin) - the All in One SEO Pack plugin allows you to add a custom title, meta description and keyword tags for your home page and blog posts.
3. Optimize each blog post for a low competition long tail keyword phrase - before you make a blog post take some time to do a little keyword research. Visit the Google Adwords Keyword tool and use this to find a long tail keyword phrase that has a low amount of competition. Ideally this phrase will have just a few hundred monthly searches rather than a few thousand monthly searches. Use a different keyword phrase for every blog post that you make and put the keyword phrase in the blog post title and 2-3 times throughout the post.
4. Use Social Bookmarking services to bookmark each blog post - whenever you post to your blog use a social bookmarking service e.g. Digg or StumbleUpon. There are also services such as OnlyWire and SocialMarker that will let you submit your site to multiple bookmarking services at the same time. Social bookmarking can get you additional traffic to your blog and give you a backlink to your blog post.
5. Optimize the home page of your blog - it is normal for the home page of your blog to get more traffic then any of the other pages. You can increase the number of visitors even more by optimizing your home page. Choose one or two keyword phrases for the home page of your website using the free Google Adwords Keyword tool. If possible try to choose prases that are not too competitive, but still have a good few thousand monthly searches. Ensure that you include these keyword phrases are mentioned in the TITLE tag, meta description and throughout the permanent content of your blog home page.
6. Install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin - this won’t increase your search engine rank, but having a sitemap will help to ensure that the search engines index all the posts and pages of your blog. You can use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin to create a sitemap for your blog.
7. Build links to your blog - building links back to your website is the surest way to improve your ranking in the search engines. If you ignore this it will be very difficult to get a good level of visitors from the search engines. You can build links using article marketing, directory submission, forum posting, commenting on other blogs, press releases, link exchange and social bookmarking.

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You can find more tips for getting a Higher Search Engine Rank read Suzanne’ Morrison’s free step by step SEO for Blogs series.

Traffic Tactics For Your Blog

By Brett Schaefer in Blogs & Podcasts

Use the right software

Selecting the right software for blogging can go a great way in making you stand out among the crowd. Custom blog software would be very useful, since users can customize it themselves.

Blog hosting

Always host your blog on your own domain. If you place your blog on another domain, it may not be able to attract public attention, build confidence, and improve rating in search results. So using a different domain is the biggest mistake one can ever make.

Title tag

Whenever you put a title tag, make sure that it is relevant to the subject matter, and is not just a random one. You put a title to attract your visitors, so ensure that it is short, and snappy.

Article marketing

Notwithstanding which area of article marketing for your blog you have ventured into, there are many public forums for that topic, which you must actively participate in. There are quite a few online communities, where you can post messages or initiate a discussion to increase your visibility, and attract a huge community of people to your website.

Tagging

Tagging is very important. You can visit Technorati for this purpose. If you have many tags on your page, then it will show in the search results.

Technorati

Testing Technorati is extremely important. You must notify Technorati whenever you have made a comment on a blog. For this purpose, you will need to ping Technorati, or else, you may take the help of Ping-o-matic, which automatically alerts Technorati whenever a comment is posted by you.

Boosting blog’s visibility

To increase your and your blog’s visibility, it has become clear that commenting on other people’s blog is extremely important. But a primary concern is that you must comment on a subject which you are comfortable with. You need to search to get across a proper blog where your comment will be appreciated.

WTF at Technorati

Bloggers are allowed to comment on why few of the topics are a hot favorite. This can be done on a Technorati feature known as WTF.

Rate and ranks

Technorati can rate and rank any blog, based on the links to the blog. That is, your blog will get a higher ranking if other blogs link to your blog.

Blog commenting

Commenting on other blogs has also become important because others will then comment on your blog. A blog becomes dry and dull if there are no comments on it.

Choose your blog topics

There are people who simply join in the bandwagon without much knowledge on what it is all about. If there is some great news about something related to your industry, it does not necessarily mean that you should jump to cover it, or even mention it. Yes, that does help to increase your popularity, and sharing something is always good. But if you don’t feel the need for doing it, simply leave it!

Intelligent linking

If you link things in your blog, then do so in an intelligent manner. Don’t link each and every issue that you want to, but maintain a fine balance between linking important topics. Both under-linking, as well as over-linking, are not good. So conventions and creativity should be used only when the circumstances so warrant.

Invite contributors

You may invite a famous person to contribute something to your blog. It may be something that he specializes in, but that will surely add sheen to your blog. by doing so, other people become aware that you have an association with famed people, and invariably, your blog will get more hits. Also, the celebrated person will feel flattered on the status you provide him or her.

Interaction

Make your blog interactive. Mere textual data becomes monotonous after a point of time. So use graphics, images and charts to make the blog appealing to the readers.

Provide answers!

Whatever niches you might be in, there are always some questions whose answer remains vague. So you can focus on those important issues and provide a concrete answer for those questions.

Tracking visitors

Software which tracks visitors can analyze the areas most frequented by visitors, the ones which hardly get any hits, etc. so these vital information can be used for betterment of your blog. Feedburner is very good for RSS purpose.

Charisma

Online, as well as offline, charisma is always valued. The voice presenting something in a blog is extremely important, as people appreciate honesty, compassion, empathy and other emotions associated with it.

Proper archives

Proper archives need to be maintained. Sorting them out date-wise or subject-wise always helps. Generally, archives must include every article that has ever been posted on the blog, but from the usability point of view, you can just link interrelated topics in a blog post.

Blog URL

URL’s are also important as it gives the readers a view of what lies on that page. The best URL’s should be short, but having enough information regarding the content of that webpage.

Sharing information

An open source on the internet is always welcome. Sharing private information on the internet is always considered a good marketing strategy.

Don’t go overboard

If you over-market all your blog posts, negative sentiments will prevail. So be cautious on this front.

Link bait

Capitalize on linkbait, if you have got it. Your website needs to be very much presentable if it hits the front page of Reddit, Digg or any other place where a constant flow of visitors will be ensuing.

Writing style

Your readers will personally take your style of writing and your focus on subjects. If you constantly modify that style, you will disappoint those segments of people who rely on you for that subject or style.

Branding tool

Building a brand is very important. A good brand is one which people feel pride associating themselves with, so such a brand must be built.

Blog submission

Blog submission to blog directories is very important. BlogCatalog.com, blogarma.com and bloggernity.com are some famous blog directories.

Yahoo feed

You must create a feed on Yahoo! This option is available under the “My Yahoo!” tab.

Google Adwords

Google Adwords is expensive, but a great marketing tool nonetheless. A low-cost option is also available with them.

Blog name

If you can, buy a domain name for the blog, which costs about $10 annually. You won’t even have to shell out money for hosting.

Frequency of blog posts

Regularly update your blog.

Signatures

Make it a habit to use signatures. Put a link of your blog in your signature, and use it while sending emails, posting on forums, etc.

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Brett Schaefer has been involved in Internet Marketing for a number of years and writes on a variety of topics. If you’re interested in learning how to monetize your blog then visit http://www.AtomicBloggingWorld.com

Search Engine Optimizing your Wordpress installation

By Ryan Edmunds in Blogs & Podcasts

If you’re obsessive about SEO you likely already have a domain name that contains one relevant keyword, an entire keyword phrase or even a targeted search term. This is a great practice if you have a website that is highly targeted to one topic or set of keywords, but there is a lot more you can do that will help to boost your search engine ranking position (SERP) and possibly outrank the sites that DO have your keyword in their domain name.

The keyword appearing in the URL is important, but more important than that is the keyword appearing in the title tag. Somewhere in between or just underneath is something called the H1 (which is not surprisingly followed in importance by H2). Naturally your keywords should also appear in the content here and there (not everywhere). If you write about your keywords on a daily basis you are probably already on top of your SEO situation, but if your blog is more relaxed topically and you like to drift and touch on anything you like, then you may benefit from doing a few SEO best practices for Wordpress.

1) Title Tags

The title tags are the most important thing. It may not be most important to the Search Engines, but it certainly is to the reader. Even if something is the #1 result in Google, a reader wont likely click on a title that has nothing to do with what they are searching for. That is why it is good to serve your post headline in the title tag instead of just the blog name.

You can do this by editing your header.php to include the appropriate Wordpress template tags within the HTML Title tag. This may also mean using an IF statement to determine what type of page is displaying and what tags to use.

2) The H1 Tag

There is a high degree of confusion circulating the web on the proper use of h1 tags with Wordpress. The basic purpose of h1 is to let the search engine know what a page is about. The last thing you want is more than one h1 on a page. This confuses the heck out of search bots and, as a result, drops your SEO score.

The typical belief is that serving your blog title in the H1 tag is proper. This makes sense because you have your keywords in your blog title, but what about the individual posts? Aren’t the post titles more relevant than the name of your blog?

If you have a post on your blog about “99 Ways to skin a cat” isn’t that particular page about skinning cats rather than your blog’s title, which may be “catskinners.org”?   The solution here is that you want to have your post titles on the single post page inside the H1 tags. Since there shouldn’t be more than one H1 per page, this means you need your title or logo inside a div.

If you have more than one post on your homepage (which most people do) then you should place your post titles’ inside of H2 tags and your logo in an H1. This tells the SE’s that your homepage is about whatever your title is, and the post headlines are the next most important thing. Once a user clicks through to a single post the most important thing becomes the title of that post.

3)Inbound/Outbound links

A huge part of blogging is sharing the link love and creating conversations between one blog to the next. It is typical in the blogosphere to see someone quote a post from another blog, add their own 2 cents and then link the blog where the topic started. This is a fine thing to do and it will even help you gain a few links yourself as your own sharing attitude encourages others to share. You just have to be careful not to have too many links out and balance it with your links from your blog pointing to your own blog.

People often forget that a link to your blog from your blog still counts as a link to your blog (how was THAT for a sentence?). Since one of the best things you can have linking to your blog is some good relevant anchor text that contains your keywords, why not go ahead and link any of those words within your posts back to your homepage?

Here are some more things you can do to make the best use of your internal links:

• Linking from your posts to older posts (when relevant)
• Linking from your posts to your homepage (whenever possible)
• Keep your navigation consistent across the whole site
• Link every page to your homepage at least once (more is ok too)
• Use a sitemap template that includes all your single posts and pages as well as the date and category archives

4) Anchor Text and Keywords

You probably already know at this point that one of your main goals in offsite SEO is to get links with your keywords in the anchor text (the text that makes up the active link). This is one of the single most important factors to both your SE for your determined keywords and your PR. The more links you have, the better your PR. The more links you have containing your keywords, the better your SERPs for those keywords are. It is healthy to mix them up and use different combinations of your keywords to help monopolize your grip on a given topic.

We’re almost finished. There is one more important spot we need to place our keywords. If I were a keyword where would I be? In this blog post! You can have all the SEO you want on your Wordpress template but it isn’t going to matter much if you don’t talk about your keywords in your blog posts. You obviously don’t want to come off as a spammer so be wary not to simply randomly throw in long and short-tail keywords in every single sentence. However, there is nothing wrong with using your full keyword search term whenever the opportunity arises. For instance, if you have the option to use a pronoun or the actual keywords you should choose the keyword.

You can optimize your Wordpress for search engine rankings quite simply by sticking to some of the concepts we’ve covered here. It can be done over time or all in one shot. However, it would be handy to come back to this little guide each time you are setting up a new installation of Wordpress. Remember that not all Wordpress themes are search engine optimized so you may have to get your hands dirty and shine up the code of each template you use on your blog.  A good start is making sure the markup is semantic and Google recommended.

Written by Ryan Edmunds from Needless Productions

5 Ways To Import and Promote Your Blog On Facebook

By Charnita Fance in Blogs & Podcasts

With the Facebook public timeline functioning more like Twitter everyday, it’s a great way to get your blog noticed. I’m sure most of you probably already know about importing “stories” directly into your Facebook wall via the wall settings. If you’re looking for more options and ways to display your blog, here are five methods that might help. There are, of course, more ways to import your blog into Facebook but, these are the methods I found to be most reliable and actually do work.

Create A Page

Creating a page for your blog is a great way to showcase and gain readers and fans. There are a lot of customization options and you can even add compatible applications to your pages. To get started you will need to click here to create a new page. After you get your page the way you like it, you can start sharing it with your friends and inviting them to become fans. One thing about Facebook pages is that it will not show you as an admin of the page; you will be listed as a fan of the page along with everyone else.

The first application you may want to add is some type of RSS feed importing application but, in my opinion, it’s better to import your posts through the Notes application. Importing your blog posts through notes (which I’ll explain in more detail below) will display published blog posts on the page wall as opposed to the boxes tab or some other small area of the page.

NetworkedBlogs

This is a great application found here, that works on both personal profiles and Facebook pages. If you add it to one of your pages, it can be added as a separate tab that will then display snippets of your latest blog posts. You can also allow the NetworkedBlogs application to update your personal or page status (depending on which you add it to) everyone time a new post is published. This application is kind of like creating a page for your blog but does different in a few ways. For starters, with NetworkedBlogs you will be shown as the author of the blog. Once you have your NetworkedBlog page setup, you can then invite people to follow your blog in which they’ll be able to rate your blog and leave comments.

Import Notes

Notes is an application that allows you to create notes, which are almost like blog posts, for your friends to see. Every time you post a new note it shows in the public timeline for all to see but, many do not know that you can import a blog into your Facebook notes. From the Notes application you will see an option in the right hand column under “Notes Settings” to import a blog. Setting it up is pretty easy, you’ll just need to enter either your blog or RSS feed URL. After going over the preview of an imported blog post and confirming the import you’ll be all set. Facebook will then check your blog every couple hours for new posts. As I mentioned above, this is also great to set up with your Facebook page.

Blog Box

This application is nice because once added, you can add a blog box tab to your profile, making it more easy accessible to those who visit your page. The Blog Box application can be found here. Once again you will need to import your blog into the application after which it will check every 6 hours for new posts. There are not many customization options for Blog Box. The great thing about Blog Box is that it allows you to edit your posts right from within Facebook. Doing this allows you to edit your title, text and tags plus you can even add your mood, what music you’re listening too, and a location.

Simparis Blogcast

Last but not least you can import your blog with the Simparis Blogcast application. Once again you’ll need your RSS feed and then you can choose to have Simplaris handle the updating, manually update yourself or setup your blog to ping Simparis. This application can be added to your info tab, profile column or box tab. Whenever a blogcast is posted it will show under your recent activity section on your wall as well as in the box on your profile if you are using it. There are a few option such as changing the update mode, showing pictures and links versus plain text and even specifying the post length. You can also choose how many post to show on the profile box.

How do you import and promote your blog on Facebook?

Do you use one these methods or is there another way you like better?

Feel free to share.

Written by Charnita Fance from Social Web Tools

Let People Search For You and Find Your Blog

By V. Divya Sai in Blogs & Podcasts

Having a famous blog does not always mean that your name is equally famous too. Considering Google and Yahoo as the current leaders in search engine technology, if you search your blog‟s name and your own name in these search engines, your blog may not necessarily be displayed in the top 10 results in both the cases. Why Not? For you and for those who know, you are the author of your blog, your name may be seen as an important keyword for your blog. But for search engines and other millions of users, your name may or may not be considered as a keyword for your blog. What has to be done? So to tell everybody that you are the owner of your blog, make these changes/additions in your blog:

1. Use your name as the “author name” in your blog in the correct format (e.g. John Smith instead of J.Smith), which will be displayed below all your posts, as “Posted by John Smith on 5th October”. By this method you will increase the density of your name in the blog, and visitors will start recognizing you as the author of the blog.
2. While commenting too, make sure that your name is being shown as the commentator‟s name, which is linked to your blog. Again this will increase the density of your name, and visitors (especially those who are active and frequently comment on your blog) will recognize and even use your name in their comments while addressing/conversing with you.
3. Link your name with your blog, from different web pages (do-follow blogs) and forums.

And more importantly tell the search engines that you are the author of your blog:

1. The above methods are applicable in this section too.
2. While adding the meta-tags to your blog, make sure your name is included in both meta-keywords and meta-description.
3. Write an About US page, with a brief description about you, a picture of yourself and if possible a video too.

An important strategy you MUST NOT miss in the 3rd point is the title of your “About US” page. Although in most of the blogs, including some professional blogs, you will see the title as “About Us - Blog Title”, but this is a big mistake according to search engine optimization techniques (if you want to connect the author with the blog). So the best title for your blog‟s „about us‟ page must include your name in it, for e.g. “John Smith Author At - Blog Title” This technique ensures a better connection between you and your blog, as words in titles are given maximum attention by Search Engines. Depending on the popularity of your blog, your “About Us” page will reach the top 10 results within a week or two, with your name as the keyword.

So the best title for your blog‟s „about us‟ page must include your name in it, for e.g. “John Smith Author At – Blog Title” This technique ensures a better connection between you and your blog, as words in titles are given maximum attention by Search Engines. Depending on the popularity of your blog, your „About Us‟ page will reach the top 10 results within a week or two, with your name as the keyword.

Get in to the Image Results too: This is not a big deal once you have optimized the title. Simply in the same web page, put your own image. But make sure to include your name both in the „alt tag‟ and in the image file name. Example:
The blog administered by me – BloggerStop.Net is being displayed at the First position in both Google and Yahoo searches for the key words “V Divya Sai”, and that‟s my name.

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About The Author:
V.Divya Sai is a Scientist and Biotechnologist with a keen interest in Blogging. He has founded the blogs Bikers Blog and Blogger Templates & Widgets with the main aim of helping other bloggers to uplift and optimize their blogs. BloggerStop.Net is mainly beneficial for people who blog on Google’s Blogger platform. A list of important tutorials can be seen here: Blogger Help .

2 Tips To Avoid Costly Liability For Visitors’ Posts To Your Interactive Website

By Chip Cooper in Blogs & Podcasts

Many sites these days are interactive — they permit site visitors to post to the site.

Forums and blogs would be at the top of most of our lists for types of interactive sites. However, different kinds of sites are also permitting owners to post, such as classified ad sites.

What happens if a visitor posts a defamatory statement ‘- or statements that are in violation of specific statutes — on your blog, forum, or in a classified ad on your site? Are you liable?

The Communications Decency Act

Congress came to the rescue of “interactive computer services” in 1996 with subsection (c) of the Communications Decency Act which provides: “No provider or user of any interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” 47 USCA Sec. 230(c) (referred to below as “Section 230″). Section 230 was intended to overrule prior case law which routinely held that online providers were liable as publishers and speakers for third party content. Now, under Section 230, interactive websites have a shield against liability for visitor’s posts. However, two recent cases show that the Section 230 shield from liability has its limits.

The Craigslist.com Case Upholds Section 230 As Liability Shield

In November 2006, a US District Court held that Craigslist.com, an online classified ad site, was not liable for discriminatory practices of its users.

The suit had been brought by the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law which alleged that Craigslist.com had a series of rental housing ads containing discriminatory statements. Examples of discriminatory statements by users included “no minorities” and “no children”.

In March 2008, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the District Court’s decision. Essentially, the 7th Circuit held that Craigslist.com was just a “messenger” and is shielded from liability by Section 230 for the discriminatory ads posted by its users.

The Roommates.com Case Goes The Other Way

In April 2008, the 9th Circuit reversed a District Court’s ruling and held that Section 230 did not shield Roommates.com from certain portions of the site that gave users limited choices for expressing their beliefs. On the other hand portions of the site that allowed free-form text were held to be shielded by Section 230. Similar to the Craigslist.com case, the users’ statements were alleged to be discriminatory and in violation of fair housing statutes.

The key distinguishing factor noted by the 7th Circuit was the structure imposed by Roommates.com. For example:

• questions were posed to users asking for racial preferences; and
• pull-down menus for user’s profile answers required answers before the user could proceed

Does Roommates.com Case Signal a Major Shift?

The question arises: does the Roommates.com decision signal a major shift away from the protections of Section 230? The decision indicated that a major shift was not intended.

The opinion indicated that the ruling should only apply narrowly to a limited number of sites: “The message is clear: If you don’t encourage illegal content, or design your website to require users to input illegal content, you will be immune.”

In addition, the opinion contained clear language that a major shift away from Section 230 was not intended. “Websites are complicated enterprises, and there will always be close cases where a clever lawyer could argue that something the website operator did encouraged the illegality. Such close cases, we believe, must be resolved in favor of immunity, lest we cut the heart out of section 230 by forcing websites to face death by ten thousand duck-bites, fighting off claims that they promoted or encouraged — or at least tacitly assented to — the illegality of third parties.”

Beware of “Obligation To Monitor” Pitfall

A word of warning about another pitfall — be careful in assuming an obligation to monitor messages, email, or posts contributed by your site visitors or in exercising editorial control over them. If you assume an obligation to monitor, or if you maintain editorial control, and if you fail to screen out defamatory statements, you may be liable, despite the protections of Section 230.

For this reason, your Terms of Use should clearly state the extent to which you exercise editorial control, if at all, over messages, email, or posts of site visitors. And it’s always best to reserve the right to monitor postings, but not the obligation to monitor.

Conclusion

In summary, there are 2 basic lessons regarding visitors’ posts to your site:

• beware of placing structure on user’s posts in classified ad sites; there is safety in free-form text, and
• be careful to avoid an obligation to monitor visitors’ posts.

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Chip Cooper is a leading intellectual property, software, and Internet attorney who’s advised software and online businesses nationwide for 25+ years. Visit Chip’s http://www.digicontracts.com site for his online contract drafting service, and download his FREE newsletter and Special Reports: “Determine Which Legal Documents Your Website Really Needs”, “Draft Your Own Privacy Policy”, and “Write Your Own Website Marketing Copy — Legally”.

How To Start A Blog Using Wordpress Blogging Software

By Cory Threlfall in Blogs & Podcasts

I really enjoy blogging now that I have learned the essentials of how to start a blog and keeping it updated regularly. While you can’t learn all there is to know about starting a blog in 15 minutes, that is really all it takes to get one set up on the internet using the steps I’m about to share with you in this article.

If you want to reduce the risks involved with starting a blog then make a plan now to read this powerful information regarding it.

With that said are you ready to get started on setting up your first blog using Wordpress, the most popular blogging software on the web today?

I’m sure you are because that’s why your here right now in the first place.

Enough said already. Lets move on to Step #1.

Step #1: Choose a niche your passionate about.

I was blow away by how powerful choosing the right niche really is. Here’s why? Why start something you have NO interest in. Remember, your going to be producing content about a topic and if you have no interest in it you’re setting yourself up for failure. By choosing a niche your passionate about you’ll love blogging about it every day or every other day.

Believe me, this is the most important step to understand so choose wisely.

Step #2: Register a domain name around your niche.

Now don’t let this next step scare you. It’s very easy to register a Domain Name. Here’s what you do.

Go to - www.domainsbot.com - and enter in one of your main keywords related to your niche. For example - self improvement. From there Domains Bot will search its database of all available domain names around your keyword phrase and present you with the results. It doesn’t get any easier then this.

Once that is done and you have found a domain name you like that is focused around your niche it’s time now to register it with one of the domain registry services Domains Bot has built in to its service. To do this simply click on the ‘Buy Now’ button. From there choose a domain register and set up an account, then proceed to follow the steps it guides you through.

Once you’ve finished that move on to Step #3.

Step #3: Get a web hosting account set up.

Setting up a hosting account is easy as well. Things that are new to us always seen difficult, just be patient and follow the steps each service has in place for you. So with that said it’s time now to set up your web hosting account.

First go to - www.bighosts.com. Here you’ll find web hosting reviews so you can make a sound decision on which web hosting service you want to use. Take your time and read through a few of the reviews.

Once you’ve selected a web hosting service and set up your web hosting account and have followed there emailed instructions for adding your new domain name to your web hosting account, proceed to Step #4.

Step #4: Install wordpress blogging software using Fantastico through your cpanel.

Assuming you are logged into your web hosting account and things are working smoothly with your new domain name it is now time to install Wordpress using Fantastico. What you need to do now is login into your cpanel(Control Panel) using your login information you received from your web host and scroll down the page and locate the Fantastico icon.

Click on the icon and follow the instructions Fantastico guides you through. This only takes about 2 - 5 minutes. It’s very straight forward.

Once you’ve completed that and have everything installed you’ll be given an login admin URL along with your username and password you set up. Simply login into your new wordpress blog using your username and password.

That’s it. Your blog is up and live. Now all you have to do is choose your theme and plugins.

Here’s a few resources for you to get started with. For Wordpress Themes go to - www.wpthemesfree.com - and for Wordpress Plugins go to - www.wp-plugins.net/beta/.

Now this may take you a little more then 15 minutes the first time around but after you do this a few times your timing will increase.

Remember, these are just the basic steps to setting up your Wordpress blog using Fantastico and getting it online, but is the easiest in the long run.

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Cory Threlfall - Looking to become an expert blogger in record time AND are serious about earning BIG money with blogging, then I highly recommend you check out my honest make money blogging product reviews. I’ve checked out all the top blogging products on the Internet and these are the ones that I think will benefit you most ==> How To Start A Blog

Hot Tips to Keep Your Blog Safe and Secure

By Paula Brett in Blogs & Podcasts

More and more of my I.M. colleagues and indeed new people that I meet on line are `getting into blogging’.

And why not? Blogs are relatively easy to produce and use, no matter which platform you choose, and they can be a brilliant tool for internet marketers.

However, no matter how easy they are to install and use, and no matter how helpful they can be to your business, the one thing that I’ve noticed more frequently is that many people are neglecting the security of their blogs.

Now I’m actually talking in particular about Wordpress blogs here. Yes, I have used Blogger blogs in the past, and I know that many people swear by them, but I found Blogger a bit too restricitive for my liking (though I understand that things have changed a lot at Blogger since I first used them).

Because Wordpress is an open source blogging tool, meaning that it’s free and available to everyone, it’s a prime target for hackers and ne’er-do-wells.

Of course, the Wordpress development team are tireless in constantly working on the script for our benefit, but none of this is any use if we don’t actually get up off our backsides and do a bit of work on our blogs behind the scenes.

It’s par for the course to worry about your blog theme, your next blog post, your readership, attracting subscribers to your RSS feed etc. etc., but do you actually think very much about your blog’s security?

I suppose that I might perhaps see more Wordpress blog security problems than most, being in the hosting business.

Did you know that probably the biggest cause of server compromisation is actually people who install Wordpress blogs and other open source scripts and don’t keep them up-to-date with the latest versions and patches?

Hackers find it easy to search around, find a way in through an old script, hack your blog, access your email accounts, start sending viagra and cure for baldness spam emails `from you’ and generally get up to all kinds of nasty things.

I can’t tell you how many panicky emails I’ve had to answer from people who’ve logged into their blog one day and have been smacked in the face by a skull and cross bones proudly proclaiming that their carefully crafted, lovingly nurtured blog has been hacked by Hound Dog Horris the Hardcore Hacker!! Great!

So I’ve put together a few suggestions that you might like to implement to help keep your Wordpress blog `safe’.

Keep Up-to-Date

First of all, the most obvious fix is to ensure that you keep your blog up-to-date with the latest version released by Wordpress.

Most Wordpress blogs display a little warning in the Dashboard that tells you when a new version is released and a link for you to click to download it. If yours doesn’t, then it’s worth checking the Wordpress website fairly regularly for updates. They also invite you to sign up for email notification of updates.

If you feel a bit daunted installing updates via FTP, or you installed your blog initially using Fantastico in your cPanel, so are not sure how to install the updates, Wordpress offer quite a good set of instructions for this.

Plugins

It’s a good idea to hide the list of plugins you are using. Any known vulnerabilities and bugs that may occur in some plugins can be used as tools to harm your website.

Check out your blog, now… yourdomain.com/wp-content/plugins

The chances are, you will see the full directory of all of your blog plugins, and in some cases, the date they were installed.

To hide your plugins, simply create an index.html file and upload it to the wp-admin/plugins folder. This index file can be blank or you can be really creative and add some promotions to it.

Another way that Hound Dog Hacker uses to determine whether your blog is furtile ground for hacking is to check which Wordpress version you’re using.

So, if you’re one of those that has put upgrading on the back burner, then you could be announcing that you’re ripe for a hack harvest with a huge magaphone!

How so? Well, go to your blog… go on, open a new tab in your browser and type in your blog’s url. Then right click on your blog with your mouse and select View Source, View Page Source, or similar, from the drop down menu.

Check out the coding… about 10-12 lines down, you will see something like this

The plugin is merely one small .php file that you upload to your plugins folder, and then activate it in the usual way in the plugins section of your Dashboard.

Block Access

A folder that Hound Dog Hacker likes to have a good old nosey around on your blog is your wp-admin folder - this is the storage place for all your blog’s most sensitive data. So here’s a quick tip to secure this directory…

Open notepad or wordpad on your computer, and add the following code:-

AuthUserFile /dev/null AuthGroupFile /dev/null AuthName “Access Control” AuthType Basic order deny,allow deny from all allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE

If you don’t know your IP address, you can find it here whatismyipaddress.com

Next, save your txt file as .htaccess and then upload it to your wp-admin folder.

NOTE: This method might be a pain in the neck for you if you don’t have a static IP address, however, if you are with an internet service provider that has a range, you can add the range.

I have to say that my IP address isn’t static BUT, I’ve only had to add extra IP addresses twice in the past 6 months or so, to allow me to login.

I did wonder why, when I went to my blog login page whilst on my laptop that I was denied access… doh, then I realised that my .htaccess file was denying me access from this computer.

I now keep the .htaccess file on my desk top and just add an IP address, if and when it changes, to the file and upload it in seconds. So your file might look something like this

AuthUserFile /dev/null AuthGroupFile /dev/null AuthName “Access Control” AuthType Basic order deny,allow deny from all allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE allow from TYPE YOUR IP ADDRESS HERE

I hope this has helped give you some ideas, or at least galvanized you into taking a closer look at your blog security.

Paula Brett is a writer and internet marketer in several niches. She works mainly with newcomers to internet marketing. You can check out the plugin mentioned in this article and other free downloads her blog

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