Optimize Images

I think having attractive images in your articles is a key part of blogging, but I also think you need to optimize images so that they not any larger than they need to be. If you are lucky enough to have a copy of Photoshop, it is ideal for this task. A few rules which will help you out are:

• Save images that use a limited pallet as .gif or .PNG. i.e a logo that just uses red, white and blue.
• Save images that use the full color spectrum of colors as .jpg i.e a photo of yourself.

If you are saving for the Internet you should use “Save for web”. The aim is to get the final file size as small as possible without wrecking the appearance of the image.

PNG & Gif (indexed): Set the total amount of color to the lowest value possible without effecting appearance of the product. You can play with dither, for some images it will help remove artifacts, by adding a bit of noise. Raise the value of Web snap as high as you can go without making the final product look ugly.

Jpg (RGB): Lower the quality to as low as possible without making the final product look ugly, and without adding too many artifacts, you can also add some blur which may remove so ugly artifacts, but don’t get too carried away.
Make sure that if you are resizing images that you set the mode to RGB. Indexed images don’t resize well.You should ensure that images are cropped to remove any unnecessary parts, and resized to the correct final size. Don’t waste valuable bandwidth by using html code to resize an image.

Use A Minimalist Theme

Attractive graphics and excessive use of plug-ins in your theme can add to the file size of your site, and raise your loading time. So selecting a minimalist theme is a great way to reduce the size of your Blog.

Compress the Stylesheet and Javascript files used

You can compress Javascript and the Stylesheet used in your theme. To compress Javascript you can use a Javascript compressor. For the CSS files, you can remove the comments, and remove blank lines and spaces using your favorite text editor. This will optimize your set up a small amount.

Reduce Overall Latency by Reducing HTTP Requests

PlanetEnjoy writes about the importance of reducing HTTP requests:

Every HTTP request, or loading each item on your website, has an average round-trip latency of 0.2 seconds. So if your site is loading 20 items, regardless of whether they are stylesheets, images or scripts, that equates to 4 seconds in latency alone (on your average broadband connection).

So it is important to ensure that you are not including an unnecessary amount of HTTP requests.

Don’t Rely on Other Sites!

If you are loading content from other web sites it is going to slow your loading time. For example both the widgets at the bottom of this page load from other servers, Blogrush and Blogcatlog. If either of these servers are having bad days the widgets can take an age to load. This is part of the reason why I have them in the footer, so any lag doesn’t stop any other content from loading. Ad networks, badges, widgets, images, scripts may all be loading content from other servers. For optimal performance you need to rely as little as possible on other servers.

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On top of the list is Media Temple, Datagram, BlogSpot and Six Apart.

Yes you heard it, 8 of the top 100 blogs use Blogspot and 4 use Six Apart to host their blogs. It goes to show that while most would advise you set up your blog on your own hosting and with a platform like WordPress that you can actually grow a successful blog on a hosted platform like Blogspot.

Of course keep in mind that many of the blogs in the top 100 are in networks so they just go with who everyone else is with in their network and some of the services that the bigger blogs use are probably out of the range of what most bloggers can afford.

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All these 15 add-ons are free and you don’t have to be a geek to use them on your site.

1. Google Talk Badge – This badge will enable site visitors to get in touch with you quickly. They won’t need a Google account and the badge is enabled only when you are online. Alternative is meebo me.

2. Web2PDF Online – Love this. People can download your articles as PDF files with a click. The PDFs are free of any advertising and you also get full access to stats so you know what articles downloaded most, etc.

3. Zoho Creator – If you ever need to create web forms for your blog, use Zoho Creator. It lets you customize the form layouts, there are no data limits and best of all, readers can upload file attachments while submitting the form.

4. HP Blog Printing – This makes your blog printer friendly. Visitors can pick blog posts that they want to print and only the text + images get printed. Everything else including banners, sidebars, etc. are cut off from the printed version.

5. Outbrain Ratings – The is the best way to add ratings to your blog posts. Outbrain offers two extra advantages as well – your readers can find more stories related to the one they are currently reading and two, they can rate stories even from feed readers.

6. ShareThis or AddThis – They help reduce clutter on your blog by neatly arranging icons in a CSS drop-down that appears only on mouse hover. Both are similar though I prefer AddThis as it is loads faster and allows branding.

7. Google Feed Wizard – This is useful if you have to embed RSS feeds in your blog – you can create blocks in either horizontal or vertical format. If your need options other than AJAX, try these RSS widgets or the static Google Gadgets.

8. Skribit – This is again a great tool to get feedback and opinions from your site visitors.

For instance, you can put up a question like “What should I write about” or “How Can I improve” in the sidebar and readers can add opinions anonymously. They can even vote on suggestions left by other visitors.

9. who.amung.us – This helps you and your readers know how many people are currently on the site and what pages are they reading. No sign-up required and amung.us will even tell you the exact location of different visitors on a map.

10. Eco Safe Badge – This badge allows website visitors to send a full copy of your web page to any email address in HTML or PDF format. Alternatively, they can download a PDF version of the page in a click. The whole idea is to discourage visitors from printing web pages.

11. Meebo Rooms – This allows visitors on your website to interact with each other inside a chat room. Other options worth exploring include Google Lively but again, Lively requires installation at the client’s end.

12. Scribd iPaper – If you frequently link to PDF files and Microsoft Office documents like doc or xls, the Scribd iPaper add-on will make sure that your content remains accessible even to readers who don’t have Microsoft Office or Adobe Reader.

You simply copy-and-paste a small block of code into your webpage, and QuickSwitch converts all the documents in your blog into Flash Paper format hosted on Scribd. If you only link to PDF files, try PDFMeNote script.

13. Yahoo! Media Player – If you have an audio blog or frequently link to MP3 files, integrate the Yahoo! media players in your blog template – this auto-detects any MP3 links and creates an embedded player so you are saved from all the hard work.

14. Translate Gadget – This lets your non-English speaking visitors translate articles from your website in their native language using Google Translation.

Alternatively, you can create your own translation box with language flags or through a different translation service.

15. Digg Your Blog – A good Digg widget that doesn’t get much attention.

Unlike the regular “Digg This” buttons, this widget creates a list of posts from your own blog that are currently getting votes on Digg. Put it in your sidebar to highlight “recently popular” content.

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I am fully aware of the risks of publishing a post with advice on intellectual property law. The return fire could be overwhelming. After all, the blogosphere is supposed to be a place for open and unrestricted exchange of ideas and information, unhindered by rules and structures imposed by a legal system that can’t seem to keep up. On the other hand, blogging has become a business for many, providing substantial alternative or primary income streams for bloggers who work hard to research and publish original content. These tips, then, are intended for those bloggers who want to protect the business side of their blogging efforts, lest their hard-earned “blog assets” be snatched away by others who know how to use the legal system. So, please don’t flame me. Yes, I am an attorney but I’m a blogger too!

Protect Your Brand (and Domain Name Ownership Doesn’t Count!)

I won’t name names, but a quick check of the records of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO for short) tells me that there are some very successful (top 25) bloggers who have registered their blog title or domain as a trademark. If you blog with a plan to brand your site or yourself, and if you succeed, you now own substantial trademark rights. (Technically, publishing information online is a service, making it a “service mark” but the rules are the same.) Your domain name may or may not be the same as your blog title (or “brand” in marketing parlance). Even if the domain name and blog title are the same, owning the domain name does not protect your brand. That is the role of trademark law. To enhance and secure the valuable trademark rights arising from your blog publishing venture, your trademark should be registered.

Why do I recommend registration, particularly for heavily monetized blogs? There are many reasons but I want to mention two of the most important. First, registration puts everyone on notice of your rights. You do not want a business to accidentally adopt your blog title as the name for a book or other product or service. A trademark search performed by the lawyer for that business may include domain names but trust me, it probably will not be exhaustive enough to capture a blog title that is not identical to the domain name. If your blog title/brand is registered, a search will find it immediately. Even if no search is performed, your registration provides constructive notice to everyone. So if another blogger decides to use a blog title identical or similar to yours (even innocently), your registration is a powerful tool to shut that other blogger down – quickly.

A second important reason for registering your valuable blog title is that the registration becomes an important financial asset. If you ever wanted to sell your blog, the registration will add tremendous value. The same goes for licensing your brand for other products or services. A trademark registration provides a level of predictability and sophistication that is well understood by those in the corporate and financial worlds. If you want to play in those worlds someday, be prepared with the right tools.

If you want to register your blog title as service mark, you can do it yourself online at www.uspto.gov. I don’t recommend that because the risk-reward and cost-benefit ratios of DIY trademark work are decidedly against you. If you have a heavily monetized blog with great cash flow, let a pro do it right the first time.

Protect Your Content as if your Ad Revenue Depended on It

Unless you have the attitude that everything you write should be public domain immediately upon publication, you must pay some attention to the fundamentals of copyright law. What you call a “scraper” in the blog world, IP lawyers call “infringers.” This tip is for bloggers who don’t like scrapers and other copycat artists who are too lazy to write their own stuff or who are looking for shortcuts to page ranks and links.

Starting with the basics, I am amazed at the number of high traffic blogs I visit that do not display a proper (or any) copyright notice anywhere on the site. I won’t go into all of the legal benefits of using a copyright notice (of which there are many). Let’s just say that if you ever had to take legal action against someone who blatantly copied your content, your failure to use a copyright notice will substantially devalue your case. On a more practical side, there are lots of readers and bloggers who believe that if you don’t display a copyright notice, your content is public domain. This belief is wrong but it doesn’t help you if they don’t know it’s wrong and end up using your post in its entirety. So use a notice to at least discourage those who may not know any better.

While I am talking about copyright notices, let’s be clear about what this is. The notice must include “ © “ or the word “copyright”, your name, and the year of first publication of the content. For an established blog, that probably means using a range of years, reflecting that the content has regularly been updated.

Now what about guest posts, partial quotes from other posts, and comments? Generally, copyright ownership of a guest post is a matter of agreement between you and your guest poster. If nothing is said about that by either of you, then what you probably end up with is an implied license to publish the post on your blog and that’s it. The guest poster would retain copyright ownership and be free to use that same post as well. FYI – the same would apply to freelancers who write for you. You will need an assignment (in writing) of the copyright unless the freelance post meets the statutory definition of a work made for hire.

Quoting from other blogger’s posts is an established practice and fortunately copyright law supports it, typically under the fair use doctrine. There are no hard and fast rules in this area but be mindful of this one: Do not quote more than is necessary to make your own point about what was said by another blogger or author. If you follow this simple rule, no one will call you a scraper and everyone (including the lawyers) will be happy.

Finally, a word about the creative commons open source licensing scheme (www.creativecommons.org) If you want to use it for your content, that is fine, but make sure that you clearly notify readers of its application to your posts. If your content is copied for commercial use without your consent, for example, you cannot use the restrictions of the creative common license unless readers of your blog are told about it ahead of time. The creative commons license is fundamentally a contract, requiring an offer and acceptance on behalf of two parties, not just you. One way to invoke a creative commons license is to prominently reference it in your copyright notice and again in your site Terms of Use. (You do have Terms of Use, don’t you?)

Respect Third-Party Graphic Content

Most bloggers like to juice up their posts and pages with attractive graphics and photos. In my experience reading blogs, photos are used primarily for aesthetics and not for further educating the reader about the subject matter of the post. That immediately takes away the “fair use” argument. This means that if you import third-party photos or other graphics into your blog, be 100% sure that it is public domain material. If it is not, it may be available to you under a creative commons license, but you must use the material as specified in the license. Usually this means including an author attribution and a link back to the owner. Also, remember that just because a photo or graphic is published on the web without a copyright notice, it does not mean that it is public domain. Similarly, you cannot copy third-party material (graphics or text), modify it, then use it as if you owned it. That is called a derivative work and under the law, only the copyright owner has the right to do that.

Watch Your SEO Metadata

As metadata has become less important in search engine algorithms, IP lawyers are seeing fewer disputes over use of third-party trademarks in website metadata. Still, if you have a monetized blog that focuses on a hobby such as digital photography or collecting, do not plant company or product names in your keyword or heading metadata for the purpose of driving traffic to your site. The law is all over the place in this area but such usage creates legal risk. If you use third-party trademarks in your blog text, that generally will be OK, depending on the context.

Use these tips wisely (meaning get legal advice applicable to your specific situation) and if you have, or aspire to have, a money-making blog, your IP legal bases will be well covered.

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1. The First method is recycle your blog posts into new articles and submit to article directory. There article directories receive thousands and thousands of qualified visitors every day. When you submit your articles to these directories, your name and your blog name are shown to thousands of visitors. On most article directories, you are also permitted to include a “resource box” where you can include your contact details, a simple biography and so on. This is where you can truly leverage the traffic of the said article directories. Some good article directories to get you started:
   • www.eZineArticles.com
   • www.ultimatearticledirectory.com
   • www.submityourarticle.com
2. Second method to get traffic is to join internet forums that is based on your niche. To find these kind of forums, just go to any search engine and enter “ +forum”, without the quotes. You would want the most focused forum with a substantial number of active members, and preferably always bustling with activity. Just check the dates of the threads posted on the forum. You can find my previous article on getting traffic from message board useful.
3. blog and ping technique is also a useful technique to generate traffic. Basically, when you update your blog, you can let blog portals such as www.technorati.com know by pinging them. You can ping a lot of portals at once by using the free www.pingomatic.com.
4. Besides the techniques described here, there are also paid methods like buying links from high-ranking pages or buying banner advertisement space. A thing to keep in mind when buying paid traffic is to always weigh your profits generated from the paid ads. If your profits do no offset the expense, you will end up losing money, so choose wisely.

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But that is not all, there are several other reasons that make bloggers switch/ start their blog with blog.co.in. It is their bonus program in which they assure to pay you bonus money by adding their own adsense ads. But your blog should qualify for their bonus program.

Here are a quick highlight on the criteria, your blog shall get paid upon:

• It must be atleast 30 days old
• Should have a minimum of 100 posts published with at least 500 words in each post
• Should have at least 50 approved non-spam comments (Do not count Pingbacks and Trackbacks)
• Should have your original content (NO free articles / NO copy-paste from internet)
• Strictly follow their content policy
• Does not violate any copyrights.

The minimum amount is Rs 1500/- and the upper limits depends on your blog and is not fixed. So, if you are a blogger and you are planning to start your own blog and want a fixed monthly income, then you can choose to blog at Blog.Co.In rather than using any other blogging platform and using your own ads.

Link: Blog.Co.In | Bonus Program

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