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3 Internet Home Based Businesses Anyone Can Do by: Kent Thompson Copyright 2005 Kent Thompson If you’re serious about having a home based business, then you need to prepare. The leading reason for a failing home based business is the lack of preparation people commit after they’ve made a decision to start a home based business. So what kind of home based business opportunity should you take on? Do you want to have an internet-based home business? Millions have done it, are doing it and are earning good livings doing so. Here are three different kinds of Internet based business models you can try: 1) Be an online retailer for reputable companies. Your home based internet business can give reviews about all the products and services of these companies. Your customers will browse around your website, and then click on to the link. The link will send the customer to the company’s customer service website, which takes care of processing and shipping their order. Your home based online business website does the marketing, promoting and advertising aspects for these companies. Your commission comes from the proceeds of the sale. You don’t even have to spend money for expensive e-commerce software. 2) You may not be able to bear the pain of separating from your oldest possessions, but how about auctioning these things off? For a minimal entry fee and closing fee, you can put your prized possessions on auction at Ebay or other spin-offs found on the net. This is a virtually free home based business since you don’t pay for web presence. You’ll get traffic since Ebay receives as many as 4 million visitors a day, and you won’t need to worry about your e-commerce software. Plus your small home based internet business stays open even when you go fishing! 3) Sell information. You can start your home based internet business by writing on a subject that you enjoy or are knowledgeable about. If you can do this, then this small home based internet business is for you. Write your e-book and sell it on sites like Ebay.com, ebookAd.com, or Clickbank.com. These home based internet business are all simple and easy enough to do. You can earn a living on these ideas if you view this small home based business with passion and commitment. Just remember these home based internet tip: Constantly fine-tune your marketing strategy and always test new ad copies to see what brings you the most sales! About the author: Find out how you can make $1000 per sale in one of the hottest home based businesses! Check out http://techearn.blogspot.in Circulated by Pratik Dhanve

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©2005 - All Rights Reserved

Convert PDF to Word and Word to PDF with Free Software

PDF and Word (.doc and .docx) are two document formats most computer users encounter on a frequent basis. PDF files have advantages of being platform independent, hard to edit and smaller in size. Word documents on the other hand are easy to edit, format and read on devices that support them. While both of these formats have their advantages, many users have felt the need to convert one to the other to take advantage of the other's features.

There are many paid software and tools that support this conversion, but most of them are too expensive. There are many free online conversion tools as well but either they result in low quality conversion with lots of missing resources or take too much time due to server limitations. Most of these online tools limit the size of files you can convert. Also, many people are not comfortable with uploading their personal files on a third party server.

In this situation, the only solution to obtain high quality conversion from one format to the other and that too quickly is using a program installed on your PC. There are many free software that support this but the problem with most of them is that they do not offer high quality conversion and result in lots of missing resources. However, there are certain free products that offer quick and high quality conversion from PDF to Word and vice versa. This article contains some such software.

In this article:
1. Convert PDF to Word
2. Convert Word to PDF

Convert PDF to Word

Open Office
The basic version of Open Office that you download from OpenOffice.org lacks PDF operability. To add PDF functionality to Open Office, you will need to install the PDF Import extension. If you have older versions of Open Office, you can use the older version of this extension. LibreOffice, an office suite descended from Open Office has this extension included by default.

While Open Office does not support direct conversion of PDF files to Word documents, you can use an indirect method to achieve this conversion. To do this, open any PDF document in Open Office Draw and copy all its elements with Ctrl+A followed by Ctrl+C. Now open Open Office Writer and press Ctrl+V and then save the file as a Word document. In this way, you can get a Word document of your PDF file with remarkable accuracy.

You can also directly edit the PDF file with Open Office Draw just as easily as a Word document.

UniPDF
UniPDF is a small free utility that lets you convert PDF files to Word documents with speed and accuracy. It also offers conversion of PDF files to RTF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, HTML and plain text. While it lacks a plethora of features, it is good at what it promises to do; convert PDF files.

Both of these programs run on Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP. It is interesting to note that PDF to word conversion is possible only if the PDF file is not a scanned image and was created as a text document.

Online Tools
While the above mentioned offline tools will be enough for most conversion needs, it is always good to have a few options. These online tools provide accurate and fast conversion from PDF to Word.

ConvertFiles: Limits the file size to 250 MB. Offers high quality conversion with OCR support.
ConvertOnlineFree: Limits the file size to 30 MB. Is a good option but lacks OCR support.

Convert Word to PDF

Open Office can be effectively used for this purpose. Just open a Word Document in Open Office Writer and use its Export as PDF option to immediately get a PDF version. Similarly, you can use Open Office to convert XLS and PPT files to PDF as well.

Are you frustrated by seeing your Adsense earnings..?
Getting your morale down when seeing CPC like 0.05. 0.10, 0.15 or 0.01…….. 
Then you must be thinking that why you are using this Google’s product. You may be getting thousands of visitors daily but not earning passive money from Adsense. This is just because of a fact that you are doing some mistakes for making money from Adsense. You haven’t been taught by anyone how to enhance adsense earnings. Don’t be de-moralized, here once again I am with you to help you in increasing your Adsense revenue sharing.

Killer ways to increase adsense revenue

The killer tips I am going to share with you, might be you are aware from some of them. I don’t promise but I commit if you follow these tips, your Adsense revenue estimate earnings will definitely boost.

9 Killer ways to increase Adsense revenue by 100 times :

1. Keyword selection for web-page :-

Select high CPC paying keywords

For getting high CPC value, you need to select appropriate keyword for the web page. If you are new in the blogging world to make money especially from Adsense, then I’ll recommend you to choose high CPC paying keywords like Mesothelioma, donate car, insurance, medical lawyers as your site’s niche. Don’t be sad if you are already running a website on blogging niche and it is not giving you good CPC. I will recommend you to start a new blog on above mentioned keywords niche, it will definitely give you massive opportunity to make money from adsense program.

2. Site performance :-

Site performance is one of the major factor to increase the adsense revenue. I had faced this problem a lot because my blog was at bad crawling server. Though Google crawls my site but no efficiently. Many times it gets crawler errors which I came to know before a few days ago when adsense score-card is shown in my account.It shows me crawling issues there and when I learn there about it, it simply tells me that
“crawler is getting problems to crawl your site and it will affect your CPC and won’t give too much revenue.”

Improve site performance to enhance revenue sharing

As I read this, I immediately changed my blog’s hosting and take it to the best server. After taking good server, to enhance Adsense earnings and site’s load time I’ll move to CDN (Content Delivery network) in future. You should take your site to CDN after getting a good server.

Learn :- Money earning ways from Google adsense

3. Ads type, Size and color :-

The different kind of Ad types are available for you to display on your site. Text ads, image ads and video ads you can display show to your domain. It is recommended that you should use both image and text ads on your site as you can see in the snapshot also. Google also states that to increase Adsense revenue, one must use text & image ads both.

Recommended google ads format to improve adsense revenue

After selecting the desire ads type, we should move on for choosing best size ads. Google advice us to switch on to recommended ad formats which can be beneficial for us to improve adsense earnings as you can see in this image also. Brand asks us to display ads of size 336×280 (Large Rectangle), 300×250 (Medium Rectangle), 160×600 (Wide Skyscraper) and 728×90 (LeaderBoard).

Learn :- How you miss money from Google adsense for games

Enable both text & image ads to earn more money from Google ads

Ads color also play an important role to enhance the Adsense revenue. If your site background is white, then you should use white color background ad unit from “My Ads” section in Google account. You can choose color there as per your choice.

4. Ads position and placing :-

As you generate ad unit from my ads, now the main task is to display your ad at the proper place on your site. Placing and positioning of ads can effect a lot to your Adsense earnings. Placing your ads at the right place will give you more clicks and generate passive income for you.
One of the best way to get more clicks I’ll recommend you to place your ads bellow the post’s title and in the middle of your content. Try to display ads on the top of your webpages and site because maximum time visitors don’t go to the bottom of a web page. You can show ads at the end of your post content also, it will work for me many times and surely it will work for you too.

5. Block certain ads :-

Many times you have noticed that you are viewing a webpage related to mobile specifications and certainly an ad of home design is displaying which is totally irrelevant to your content. You will not click on that home design ad. If there was an advertisement that an iphone 5 is free available here, you might click on it to find how you can get that iphone free.
Hence in this case, administrator should block home decor category to display ads on the site. It will surely increase your CTR (Click Through Rate). Keep in mind that your Adsense CTR shouldn’t be too much high, Google may remove ads if CTR is high.

Learn :- How to protect Google adsense from getting banned

6. Forget internal linking :-

A blogger’s biggest desire is that every visitor that lands on his site, should visit at least 3-4 pages before leaving the site. Hence he/she offers his/her other article’s link within the content and try to put more and more internal links in the post. Just offer relevant post’s link with the current article, it will definitely help you a lot when you display relevant ads also on the site according to your niche.
It increases the chances to click on an ad more because you have already blocked the irrelevant ads on your site.

7. Domain’s Page Rank (PR) increases Adsense earnings :-

The page rank of a website is decided by Google itself. There certain algorithms and tools by which Google judges that what page rank should be given to a domain. Page rank is a number from 0 to 10. If your site PR is 0 then your adsense revenue will definitely be low. As you work on page rank and get at least one PR of your site, your Adsense earnings will be increased definitely.
For example we have 2 domains :- abc.com (PR-0) and xyz.com (Pr-4)
Both these domains are displaying Google ads, now we’ll see how amazingly earnings differ. Suppose CPC is 0.10 for domain abc.com.
Now if a click comes on xyz.com, the CPC will be same 0.10 but the earning from one click is 0.10 x 4 = 0.40 
Just imagine your site’s PR is 6 or 7. You will be at the seventh sky. 
So Page rank enhances the revenue in your adsense account.

8. Google Analytics improves adsense earnings :-

Google analytics improves adsense revenue share

Yes, you are listening right. Google analytics also increase the revenue for adsense account. All you need is to track and observe correct results from your analytics. To be very simple if you can judge that visitors are clicking on ads at least once when visit to your site for a particular keyword search on Google, then you can work on that keyword and do SEO for that individual keyword. It will enhance your adsense revenue from ads.

9. Google search box :-

You should have at least one Google search box on your domain, it will also improve the earnings from Google ads. You can display 2 search boxes on a web page. Whenever a user searches any query in this box,it will show relevant results and ads. It will boost your money earning.

Learn next :- Why you should go for Google adsense Youtube

If you have any query, you can ask frequently.
Live in blogosphere and earn more money from Google Adsense.

How to Make Money Online with Google Adsense

How to Make Money Online with Google Adsense

Google Adsense is one of the finest platforms for monetizing blog’s content and get paid online. The adsense program is reputed ad network where google pays you when the advertisements gets valid clicks.

Start with Google Adsense

Signing up for Google Adsense program is very simple and easy but getting approved is not easy. You need to follow just simple steps while in the sign up process. After doing everything you will be asked that you will get a mail once your blog gets google adsense approval. Before applying for google adsense you should keep in mind that your blog should be at-least 6 months old.

Choose the Best Keywords

Google is all about keywords, so in order to make the profit you need to choose the best keywords out there. Target your keywords so that you will be able to “influence” what types of ads will show up on your blog or site. If the keyword density is too high then you would be penalized by google and can even be tossed out of their Adsense program.

Choosing of Ads

Adsense advertisements come in a variety of formats. Having an advertisement that looks better on your blog or site is important. But for getting better results you must choose the most working ad sizes which are 300×250 pixel banner ad and 728×90 pixels Leaderboard ad.

Image Ads

Many people ask whether the text ads work or image ads. Many bloggers suggest between text ads and image ads too. But the true point is that both of them work well and it depends on the ad which is going to appear.

Choose the right colour

Link units are not the only ones that can benefit from the right colour. Basically with them it is easier just used the same colours as you do in the menu and you are done. With normal ad units isn't that straightforward.

Payments from Google

Each ad on your website has a different commission depending on how much the owner of the ad is paying Google. Now don't get any clever ideas that you will personally click on the ads to earn commissions. Google track who is clicking the ads. Google will set a minimum commission threshold for your account.

Monitor Your Success

No matter what you do with your blog or website you need to keep concentrating on how successful your ads are doing. If you do not monitor the ads then you will ultimately fail. You will also be able to quickly see whether or not your chosen keywords are making money. If your keywords are not working then change them. You should always do a top keyword run at least once a week to make sure that your site is up to date and current.

Conclusion

Google Adsense is also called PPC (pay-per-click) advertising program that helps many internet users. There are endless money making opportunities with Google Adsense. You too can earn a hefty income per month using this method, but you must remember to follow the rules. Write cool and unique content. And you will see adsense earnings pour in for months to come.

Adsense Income - Where Do You Start!

Adsense Income - Where Do You Start!

The very first thing you must do to have an AdSense web site would be to select a market -- or even subject -- for the web site.

In the event that this really is your own very first web site after that it's wise to create a web site in regards to a subject you've good quality understanding or even encounter along with. Should you style an internet site in regards to a subject you realize regarding, you will discover this super easy to produce plenty of great content material dependent by yourself understanding. It may be easier currently talking about some thing you realize.

Write down ideas for some webpages associated with content material.

Your own home page is going to be your own intro towards the subject. Which web page may have hyperlinks in order to additional webpages that contains much more particular details about the subject. Every web page in your web site would have been a subwoofer class towards the primary subject. For instance for those who have an internet site regarding canine breeds, your own home page is going to be your own intro web page referring to canines generally. Your additional webpages might be divided for every dog breed, providing more in depth details about the specific type.

You don't have to possess a extravagant web site, frequently some thing basic is much better.

You will have to obtain a website name plus some website hosting. Browse around to obtain a great deal upon web hosting. In the event that there is a great opportunity you'll be producing several AdSense web site after that locate a offer that provides a person limitless site web hosting.

Investigation

Without having sufficient info out of your personal understanding after that you will have to perform a few investigation in your subject. That you can do this particular via publications in your own home, in the collection or even on the internet.

You must have great content material. You would like these potential customers in order to would like to return for your website. Should you content material is actually junk, very few can come back again. Great, strong, distinctive content material could keep all of them returning as well as ideally hitting your own advertisements.

Additionally you would like your own AdSense advertisements to complement this content in your website, therefore getting lots of great content material may make sure that the actual advertisements positioned on your website may complement your own subject.

Additionally, you will end up being preferred much better along with the various search engines for those who have top quality content material in your website -- as well as make certain it's distinctive. Obtain suggestions through additional websites as well as content articles on the web however do not duplicate something sentence after sentence. Usually reword points in to your personal text.

Complete your own webpages together with your content material and also have this shown properly as well as readable.

Make use of great colours in your webpages, colours which are simple about the eye. Frequently darkish skills for example dark or even deep blue can be very difficult to see as well as change aside site visitors quickly.

You may even wish to select colours that may advantage the actual market of the web site, for example eco-friendly colour plan for any horticulture web site, or even white wines for any wedding ceremony market.

After you have your quest carried out and also have additional several great webpages associated with top quality content material for your website now you can include your own AdSense advertisements as well as add your website for your server.

If you do not observe sufficient earnings arriving out of your advertisements invest a little bit of period tweaking your own advertisements before you have them perfect. Additionally continue operating from accumulating visitors aimed at your website, the greater visitors, the greater mouse clicks you're going to get in your advertisements.

Google AdSense Don'ts - Dirty Tricks and Bad Tips That Will Get Your Site Banned

Google AdSense Don'ts - Dirty Tricks and Bad Tips That Will Get Your Site Banned

Want to make money with Google AdSense for content? Here's a list of what not to do, unless you want to get banned. Google doesn't play around when it comes to click fraud. Click fraud loses Google money, and it loses AdWords customers money.

If you don't play by the rules, you may get a warning, you may get suspended, or you may just get banned.

1. Commit Google Don'ts

The first thing to avoid is any of the Google Don'ts. Cloaking, keyword stuffing, and title stacking are all ways to get banned from Google searches. They're also ways to get banned from AdSense.

When you place AdSense ads on your site, your site is far more visible to Google and it's much more likely that your rule breaking will be caught.

2. Click on Your Own Ads

No matter how tempting, never ever click on your own ads. This is probably the easiest way to get your site suspended or banned. It's a form of click fraud, and Google is very good at catching this, even if you think you're hiding your tracks.

Don't let anyone who uses any computer in your home click on your ads, either. Make sure your significant others and children are aware of the rules, or you could jeopardize your standing with Google.

3. Hide Your Ads

It might be tempting to hide your ads by making them the same color as your background or camouflaging them on areas with busy background images. You do still get paid for pageviews, so invisible ads would still pay, right? Don't even try it. This violates Google's Terms of Service, and it's easy to get caught.

Don't stuff your ads far below the rest of the content, either. Clicks pay better than pageviews, so it's to your advantage to have your ads prominent. Try to make the ads look like they belong on your page.

4. Beg for Clicks

Don't hold ad-click contests, beg, or even give big hints that people should click on your ads. They can ban you if they catch you begging for clicks anywhere on the Web, including pages that are totally unrelated to your AdSense pages.

Google also forbids labeling your ads with language stronger than "sponsored links." This is really for everyone's benefit. Pages that beg for clicks are usually not great reads, and pity clicks don't help the advertisers.

Note: It's fine to have contests on your Web site that aren't related to ad clicking or other rule breaking, such as "best photo" contests.

5. Alter the Code

AdSense generates javascript code that you can copy-and-paste directly into the HTML of your Web page. If you need to change the color or size of your ads, generate new code from AdSense. Don't make changes to the code from your Web page editing program or tweak it by hand.

If you put AdSense in Blogger, Google will generate the code for you from within Blogger.

6. Use Robots to Click on Your Site

Never use any sort of automated tool to inflate your page views or click on your ads. This is click fraud of the highest order, and Google is very sophisticated at catching this. This is a trick that can easily get you banned.

Likewise, don't use human-powered schemes to pay for clicks, either. No trading clicks with other AdSense users, and no pay-for-clicking schemes. If advertisers wanted to pay people for clicking, they would have signed up for it themselves.

7. Tell People How Much You Earn Per Click

Google is very picky about how much you disclose about how AdSense works. They don't let you tell people how much you were paid per keyword, because this could jeopardize revenue from AdWords advertisers. Beware of anyone who offers to sell you this information.

8. Make Pages Specifically to Display Ads

Google says you can't make pages simply to hang ads, "whether or not the page content is relevant." Many Web sites, including About.com, make money from ads. Google itself makes most of its money from advertising. What makes the difference between ad sponsored content and content for the sake of ads?

When you develop your site, your first thought should be about creating content, not ads. Avoid writing empty sentences for the sake of generating keywords, and avoid lengthy copy-and-pastes just to make more pages. Every page you publish should have a content-driven purpose.

9. Make Content About Taboo Topics

Google has a strict list of content standards, and they don't accept AdSense on pages that are violating them. These include, among other things, sites that promote or sell:

• alcohol
• certain weapons
• firearms
• tobacco
• drugs
• designer knock-offs

This is a silly rule to violate, because AdSense is keyword generated, so it's amazingly easy for you to get caught. If you do have content that violates these rules, such as a beer-making supply store, they may be legitimate sites, but AdSense is not for you.

10. Cheat in Any Other Way

This isn't by any means a comprehensive list.

I'm sure there are many ways to game the system that Google hasn't found out about... yet. There always are. AdSense is constantly changing to find new ways to detect click fraud, and eventually you will be caught.

The best way to generate income through AdSense is to create good content that is well optimized for search engines and to promote your site through legitimate channels.

That sounds like a lot of work, because it is a lot of work. However, it's a strategy that won't get you banned.

Blog Traffic Exchange and AdSense

Blog Traffic Exchange and AdSense

After doing up nice websites with interesting contents, the webmasters' dilemma is usually one of attracting visitors to their sites. Having more visitors is gratifying; it is a reward that website owners deserve for putting time and effort into their sites.

Traffic exchange networks were designed to promote visitor traffic to websites or blogs. The idea is simple – members of the network surf each other's sites. Upon setting up an account with a traffic exchange program, you will be entitled to earn 'credits' by manually surfing other members' sites. Depending on the program, you may have anything between 0.5 to 1.0 credit for every site you visit. There is a timer at the top or bottom frame of the page to compel you to remain at the site for a period of time. This can range between 10 to 30 seconds. You are then required to click one of the images to correspond with the given image in order to proceed to the next random site. This is to prevent autosurfing hacks that may cheat the system.

With the 'credits' you earn, you can assign them to your blogs. For every visitor you get to your blog, 1 credit will be deducted until all your 'credits' are spent. In a nutshell, the more blogs you visit, the more visitors you get to your blogs.

Alas, no program is perfect. While the concept of traffic exchange sounds good, there are the negative aspects that you should consider as well. I'll summarize the good and bad points of traffic exchange.

Pros of traffic exchange

1. The programs are free, that is if you are not buying the 'credits' but earning them.

2. For some programs, you can specify the category of blogs you would like to view or the sort of visitors you would like to have. The traffic is therefore targeted.

3. While viewing other member blogs, you may come across a couple of interesting ones that you can re-visit or learn from.

4. Since the programs work well only if they have a wide network of members, the administrators often conduct mini contests and games to interest the members. You may find some fun in these communities.

Cons of traffic exchange

1. The biggest negative point is that such traffic exchanges run counter to many advertising programs, especially those that pay you based on impressions you get to your site. A notable one is Google AdSense. If your site's traffic is mainly through traffic exchanges, be prepared to receive reminders like this from the Google administrator:-

“It has come to our attention that invalid clicks or impressions have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s) through users of third-party programs paid or provided with other incentives to visit your site. Such programs may include, but are not limited to auto-surf, pay-to-surf, pay-to-read, or pay-to-click sites.”

2. A number of the sites that register with traffic exchanges are new sites and are not worth the time reading. Many of the established ones that have a good following of readers do not need such traffic exchange programs to boost their traffic.

3. After surfing for a while, you would also find yourself looking at the same sites over and over again, simply because only a fraction of the members are active users. It may be boring in that sense.

4. While I make it a point to read some sites, I believe that many people don't. They may be doing their homework or watching television, and mindlessly clicking the image after every 30 seconds or so. You may be getting more visitors but these are not the people who appreciate your blog contents.

Blog Traffic Exchange sites

If you want to have a go at it, here are the ones I think you can consider.

Blogmad 

This has a 1:1 ratio, which means that for every site you visit, someone will visit yours. The surf timer is 25 seconds and the site layout, ideas, and image icons (with the two big eyes) are pretty nice.

Blog Explosion 

The surf ratio is 2:1, i.e. for every two blogs you visit, one person will visit yours. The saving grace is that they have about close to 50,000 blogs registered, although I have an inkling that only a small percentage of these are active. They do run contests like Battle of the Blogs which add to the fun of using their service.

Blog Soldiers 

Another 2:1 ratio traffic exchange. Nothing fanciful about the site, and the administrators should do more work to build up their membership base.

Blog Advance 

Their surf ratio of 1:1 sounds attractive, and like a few other programs, they throw in free bonus points when you log in or surf. What I didn't like was their lack of response. I raised a technical problem concerning adding a site and despite 2 messages, they have not replied. Such a contradiction to their statement that “at Blog Advance your voice doesn't fall on deaf ears.” Also, I received error messages on a few occasions despite having clicked the correct surfbar images and was unable to proceed to subsequent blogs. I guess there are unresolved bugs in the coding of their program. (Update: This service is no longer available and link is therefore removed.)

EasyHits4U 

This is another 1:1 traffic exchange site that seems to have more commercial sites registered with them than blogs. It has a 30-second timer giving viewers a lot of time to view the blogs. The thing that stands out is that they pay you cash for active surfing ($0.50 for 1000 sites viewed)

TrafficG 

This is not blog specific, and you will see a number of non-blog websites. The ratio of 1:1 is good, and the longer surf time of 30 seconds means that you might get more quality traffic, people who browse your blog contents.

Blogazoo 

They have a 4:3 ratio, and credit incentives to read blogs and find the 'gazoos'.(Update: This service is temporarily not available and link is removed.)

Linkreferral 

I happened to come across this site last week. Essentially, when you registeryour blog with them, other members can review your site, give a rating and post comments. The more sites you visit or review, the higher your blog rank will be, and the more likely that your blog will be seen by others. Unlike the other programs, you will expect visitors to go through what you write in order to review your blog.

Conclusion

If your blog is new, traffic exchange may do wonders in sending visitors to your site. Surfing other members' sites is also a good way to learn useful tips to improve on your blog. For a wider exposure, you would want to have your blog listed in Blog Directories, Feed Directories, and search engines like Google,Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com. Also, submit your Blog to the various Search Engines. Nothing beats content though, and if you have good quality writing, you can be sure that your blog will be read.

I have tried out the traffic exchange sites for the purpose of this writing. With the credits, I have bought banner and text link ads since advertising a blog is not against Google's TOS. These ads appear at the traffic exchange sites when members are surfing, and make your site more visible.

Feel free to share your experience on the above sites, but please refrain from posting suggestions of new traffic exchange sites. There are hundreds of them and if you'd like, do a keyword search and try them out. New traffic exchange sites are created practically everyday. Run an eBay search and you will see a number of them being sold too. It is alright to register with a few of them, but unless you intend to spend all your time surfing member sites, there is little reason to be registered in a hundred traffic exchange sites.

If you are ready to submit your blog to blog directories for better search engine optimization and publicity, read the articles on “Submit Blog to Blog Directories”Part (I), Part (II), and Part (III).

While you are looking at traffic exchange sites, you may also want to consider earning money while you are surfing the net. AGLOCO seems to have a nice scheme for you which you may want to take a look. You may also want to consider having AuctionAds to display an eBay auction widget which is compatible with AdSense and other ad systems. No harm trying it since it might give you an extra income.

Submit Blog to Blog Directories

Submit Blog to Blog Directories (I)

How do you attract more readers and visitors to your Blog? To make your Blog more visible, the solution lies in submitting your Blog URL or RSS Feed to as many good Blog directories as possible. There are hundreds of websites touting themselves as blog search engines, blog directory hosts, feed aggregators, and traffic exchanges. A couple of the website creators are out to make a quick buck, selling their sites and member database on eBay the moment they attract sufficient traffic.

Over the past few weeks, I have submitted this Blog and RSS feed to many of these Blog directories for free. The first submissions were of course to Google and Yahoo; if you have not submitted your Blog URL to them, you may read the earlier articles on submitting sitemap to Google and submitting sitemap to Yahoo. At the same time, submit the Blogger Sitemap to MSN and Ask.com too.


Although my blog is only about 2 months' old at the time of this writing, if I were to enter my blog title “tips for new bloggers” into Google search, I am able to see it appearing at the top of the search results. Many of the other results are those of the blog directories in which this blog was listed. Listing in directories therefore helps in promoting your blog.

Before you proceed to submit your site to these directories, my personal advice is that you create a free web-based email account solely for this purpose. Should the directory hosts decide to sell their sites and database in future, your present email account would not be compromised. This is also to prevent flooding of your personal email with updates sent to you by the many directory administrators.

The aim of this article is to relate to you my experience in those free blog directories that I have tried submitting to. While I appreciate comments on these, please refrain from posting suggestions of new blog directory sites. A number of them may be fly-by-nights and I will not recommend them unless I have personally used them. Others may have specific requirements such as blogs having to be older than 6 months, or blogs covering specific news contents.

Different directories have different forms to fill when submitting your blog. Their instructions are usually easy to follow. However, you may want to note the following:-

1. Some directories require you to register before adding your Blog. While most of them allow you to submit more than one Blog, some may require you to use a different login name for each Blog. What I did in these situations was to create different login names but using the same email address.

2. If you are asked for the RSS Feed or your Feed URL, check that under your Settings -> Site Feed, the “Allow Blog Feed” shows either “Full” or “Short.” Do not choose “None.” Your Feed URL is yourblogURL/feeds/posts/default oryourblogURL/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss where yourblogURL is the URL of your Blog beginning with http:// Do not type in “www” for Blogger blogs. For example, our Atom Feed URL is http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default You can test it by typing your feed address into a web browser and view. If you have an external Feed address like a Feedburner Feed address, you may submit that too. I shall go into the details of Feed and Feed directories in a separate article.

3. Where you are to create a picture, banner, or link button to represent your blog, you can use Google's Picasa or any image editing software to create a new picture, or resize a current one to the required dimensions. Normally, you are required to upload it onto a free image host or server and provide the URL of your banner or picture. You can read about using free hosts like Google Page Creator and Google Groups. We also have a rather comprehensive list of free Image Hosts and File Hosting Services in our article on Manage Blogger Image Storage Space. Check out those sites and choose one that is fast, reliable and enables hotlinking to the uploaded files.

4. The “Reciprocal Link URL” is the main page where you will be putting a link to their blog directory. More likely than not, this will be the URL of your Blog.

5. The “meta keywords” or “tags” are keywords that represent your blog's content. Similarly “meta description” is a short few sentences describing your blog. Basically, “meta” tags provide information about your Blog for search engines to identify and match.

As the directory list is long, the article will be split into several parts, and updated as and when I try out the sites. Some sites track the number of the visitors to your blog. You may see voting gateways, which basically give visitors a chance to vote for your blog if they wish to. If they do not want to vote, there is always an option for them to enter the site without voting. Have a look at the directory sites and submit your blog to those you like.

Traffic Exchange Sites

A number of traffic exchange sites have blog directories which can include links to your blog. You may read my earlier article for a more detailed discussion on traffic exchange programs.

Blog Directories

Technorati 

They supposedly track 75.2 million blogs. Quite naturally, you would want your blog to be one of them. Register with them and submit your blog. Follow their instructions to claim your blog. They will provide you with statistics like the number of blogs that link to you. You can also invite other members to favoriteyour blog.

Wikablog 

If you are familiar with Wikipedia, this is the equivalent for blogs. It faces the same problems as Wikipedia i.e., while it is easy to list your blog, it is equally easy for others to edit your listing. Nevertheless, for a new blogger, this is one of the fastest way to have your blog appear in a directory. [Update: This site has been down for quite a while and link is therefore removed.]

Fuel My Blog 

This is an interesting directory. Unlike the usual text-based blog directories, this site goes by images that you create to represent your blog. When your visitors click a link on your site that says Fuel My Blog!, your image will move up the ranks and appear on the front page, making it more visible to directory viewers.

Blogtoplist 

A blog directory listing that is sorted by the number of unique visitors to your blog. Your visitors can also cast a Vote to increase your ranking. The scores are reset every week to allow new bloggers like us a chance to be placed among the top.

Topblogsites

Here, you are ranked by unique hits based on the Votes you receive from your visitors. Many of the comments posted on the directory site are spam comments, and if you can disable comments, you might want to do that. [Update: This site has been down for quite a while and link is therefore removed.]

Mybloggingarea 

Another directory that ranks you based on the Votes and the number of unique visitors to your site.

Topblogarea 

A blog directory that tracks unique visitors. Unlike the earlier ones, visitors do not vote at this directory.

Blogflare

This is a simple, nice blog directory that tracks your unique visitors and pageviews. [Update: This site has been down for quite a while and link is therefore removed.]

Topblogging 

Here, you are ranked based on unique visitors. Although there is a count for votes in, somehow the code provided by them did not track this vote count.

Blogroll 

I joined this directory only about a week ago. A simple directory that monitors theVotes and unique hits.

Worldtopblogs 

Ranking is by the Votes cast by the visitors to your blog.

Topbloglists 

There is a voting gateway for your visitors but ranking is based on unique pageviews.

This article continues at Submit Blog to Blog Directories (II).

For more visibility, you may want to submit your Blog to Feed Directories and ping your Blog every time your contents are updated. Also, submit your Blog to the various Search Engines for maximum exposure.

While you are looking at blog directories, you may also want to consider earning money while you are surfing the net. AGLOCO seems to have a nice scheme for you which you may want to take a look. You may also want to consider havingAuctionAds to display an eBay auction widget which is compatible with AdSense and other ad systems. No harm trying it since it might give you an extra income.