Looking at Vlogging

Spurred by the ROTLD announcement I started considering monetizing my blogs. That means, for most of them, a new look and more frequent posting. I started by looking at a few Romanian blogs and even considered vlogging or video blogging.

Submitting articles while preserving formatting

Virtually all websites accept now articles and most will actively court collaborators. While some have built-in mechanisms for article submission, many accept them by email only. Here we look at two ways to ensure that your article formatting is preserved without complicating the editor's life.

Amazon Affiliate linking made easy

Affiliate marketing is a great idea if you can trust the company you essentially work for to pay you and if your volume of referrals is sufficient to pass their threshold and result in income. There are many people who claim to make a good income this way, but as far as I am concerned most such claims are exaggerations. Nonetheless, in this article we'll be looking at how to easily generate links with your affiliate tag embedded.

Who was Andrew Sullivan in Blogging?

I recently read about some blogger - Andrew Sullivan - announcing his retirement from blogging. I don't care much about celebrities, so I did not think much of it. And yet, this announcement has dominated a sizable chunk of news media, warranting a deeper look into it.

Moar Refreshments (mai multe piscoturi)!

The Romanian word “piscoturi”, loosely translated as “refreshments,” has become associated with the meagre price deontology or blogger ethics commands on the online advertising market (i.e., “piscotareala”) in that many are willing to sell not only their blog, but their soul and their mother’s soul for a few cookies and a coffee. Being a writer is a job everybody would love to have, except the writers themselves. Few other jobs (except maybe acting or singing) have as many people trying and so few succeeding. Being a blogger is somewhat less glamorous than being a writer, at least not in the traditional sense of the (former) word, as it combines traits of several other fields, such as IT, publishing, PR, but it still has a strong creative component. In this article, we take a look at the Romanian refreshment (piscot) market.

Feedburner Feed Stats–useless

I have recently decided to suppress the FeedCount, "another cool way to promote your feed" - a Feedburner option. I found that my subscriber count varied wildly, with a minimum below my email subscriber count, suggesting that there is something very wrong with the way Google has modified said algorithm after taking over this service. How wildly?

AdSense, Chitika and advertising alternatives

Having covered recently how to modify a Blogger template (i.e., Layout) to add AdSense to your Blogger / Blogspot blog, we shall now look at a different way of placing said ads and also other advertisers, beyond Google’s AdSense.

Back to AdSense

I recently decided to add AdSense to an older blog, hosted on Blogger, and using the old Layout. Here's how that went. This is one of the articles that is not necessarily meant for everyone, but rather for me to keep track of what I’m doing (i.e., it doesn’t take you from zero level, but the info here is probably more useful than what you get in such articles).

Google Plus vs Disqus comments on Blogger

I have recently learned via an email from Blogger that it is now possible to integrated Google Plus comments with a blog such as this one. Unfortunately, as of yet there is no reaction from Disqus and there does not seem to be possible to have both.

Customizing your 404 - Page Not Found

Earlier this year Blogger made it possible for its publishers to customize its "404 - Not Found" page, the page someone sees when going to non-existent address. Today we look at donating it as space for a PSA (Public Service Announcement)..

Is buying followers or likes a good idea?

I've recently heard about a "big blogger" - if not in blogging, definitely in volume - who may have artificially inflated his twitter count with fake followers. Intrigued, I decided to take a look at the business of buying fake followers.

domains as prizes

After changing the domain names for my blog recently I found myself wondering why do I bother with oh-so-many domains I keep paying without using?

Submitting Your Site to Bing Webmaster and Microsoft AdCenter

I recently changed my domain for a website and decided to submit my site to Bing. In the process, I discovered Bing Webmaster Tools as well as got started with a Microsoft AdCenter coupon for free advertising on Bing.

Branded Short URLs

Short links are great, but wouldn’t it be great to have your own such service, much like New York Times (nyti.ms). It turns out that there are at least three ways you can achieve this goal. We will be looking at Bitly Pro, Google Links and hosting your own.

Join the BlogIdol Movimiento!

Paying annually for a domain name is a drag. Getting a free one chains you to your service provider. If you want a domain solution that will not cost you yearly and dearly but you can take with you, we have it right here: introducing The BlogIdol Movimiento (right now in Beta)

Adding floating buttons (Facebook, Reddit, Pinterest, Twitter, GPlus) to Blogger

Sometimes, the Blogger provided buttons just don’t work. Here, rather than bother with that, we’ll just make buttons float to the right (though they can also float on the left.

Beauty and the B..logger

A recent story about a Dakota Fanning selling perfume with sexually explicit ads, while Oscar nominated Gary Busey is selling cars got me thinking about brain damage and blogging.

More harassment from Google

After having my Google Plus account suspended for daring to protect my identity even while following Google policies to the letter and then having to deal with another suspension whose sole explanation was "suspicious activities", I find yet another email from this corporation, this time accusing me of running AdSense ads on pornographic content. But is that content really pornographic?!?

Add +1 and other social buttons to your blog

Adding the new +1 button is incredibly simple. And since it serves a clear social / marketing / SEO role, we’re looking at the other options for Blogger or Blogspot blogs as well.

fake traffic bots

Faking traffic to one's website is not done only for ego-boosting reasons ("look how many people read me, ma"), but also for profit. Here we try to show some examples and clarify some myths.