Post in Forums and Generate Traffic to your Blog

Using forum posts to generate traffic to your web site gives you several advantages that other methods don't. One of these, of course, is that it only costs you time, not money, and very little of that. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. Keep reading to learn how to get it right.

Introduction
The modern world of eBusiness has opened up countless opportunities for anyone that has a bit of creativity and a good work ethic. The incredible accessibility of the Internet grants virtually anyone the ability to get online and start his or her own money-making venture. Whether his or her enterprise is a traditional store with a website front, a store run solely on the Internet, or a new type of business that runs on subscriptions or ad revenue, almost everyone has some use for the Internet to bolster his or her business.

The real trick about the Internet’s ability to help a business is that you absolutely must know what you are doing. If you simply put a website online and sit and wait, no one is ever going to find you. There are literally hundreds of millions of websites on the Internet, and your potential customer is not going to just stumble upon yours through luck. Luckily, for the savvy Internet user, there are several key steps to take that will ensure that your customers are flooding into your website, ready to consume your product.

A good place to start looking for traffic to your website is the closest place to it: the Internet. Sure, it is possible to advertise using conventional means (billboards, fliers, commercials, etc.) and get plenty of traffic, but there are key advantages to using the Internet to generate business on the Internet. It is much more likely that someone will take the time to click a link to your website than it is that he or she will write it down while driving past a billboard and type it into his or her computer when he or she gets home.

If you are looking to generate quality traffic on a budget, then there is really no better way to go about doing it than one that will allow you to not spend a dime. One of the best free ways of generating traffic is by posting on online discussion boards, also known as forums. These posts will offer your potential customers the ability to go directly to your website from your posts, as well as find your information on their favorite search engine.
The simplest way to get customers to your website is to give them a link. When posting on a forum, you are often offered the opportunity to include a link and brief description for your business in every one of your posts. Other users do not mind this small amount of text after each one of your posts; often, others will have much more intrusive “signatures.”

The idea behind a link in your signature is that a potential customer will see information relevant to him or her (the description), and if he or she wants to learn more, will click on the link that goes with the description. The traffic that you receive in this manner will be from very targeted individuals who are interested in what you have to offer. The conversion rate (number of sells compared to the number of visits) from this type of traffic is very high. For that reason, direct traffic is also considered “high quality” traffic.

Another means of generating direct traffic is by providing a link to your website from your actual post. If you find a topic that is relevant to your business and post information that contributes to the discussion, then you should feel free to link back to your business website and let everyone know that they can go there if they would like more information about the subject or a product that is relevant. Be careful to read the rules of the forum before doing this, however, as some forums are very sensitive to anything that smells even a little like spam.

Traffic generated from links in posts is even higher quality than links from signatures, because the potential customers that are going to your website are doing so because they are interested in the specific topic that you were discussing, and not just the general idea that you convey in your signature’s description.

One thing you must watch out for as far as this kind of linking is concerned is that it can be very easy to get a negative reputation. If you provide a link to your business in every single one of your posts, it will quickly become obvious that you are just trying to be a salesperson. Also, if the content of your post is not constructive and you contribute nothing to the discussion, people will figure that you are just a personal billboard, and ignore you as such.
A more complicated means of generating traffic for your website is by providing links that help your search engine rankings. Luckily for you, there is very little that you actually need to understand in order to take advantage of this form of traffic generation.

The way it works is that every time you post your link on the Internet, a search engine like Google or Yahoo! will automatically detect your link. Every time the search engine finds that same link in different places across the web, it puts another “tally mark” next to it. This running tally—the number of times your link is found on the Internet—affects how close to the top your link will show up when someone searches for keywords that are relevant to your website. This is the most basic idea behind link building and SEO. In other words, the more times you post your link on the web, the more likely it is that your website will show up in top search engine results.

Another aspect of search engine link detection is that certain search engines can differentiate the different pages of your website based on your links. If you provide links to different pages of your website, the search engines will keep track of each page separately in addition to the website as a whole. In essence, you are getting two tally marks—as opposed to one—every time you post a different link.

If the search engines have a record of each of your specific web pages, it is much more likely that search engine results will be much more relevant to your information. As discussed before, this means that you will get much higher quality traffic, which converts to more sales and more money for your business.

Recently, search engines have begun offering website developers the option to designate certain links as “no-follow.” If you find a forum that has this option enabled, what it means is that you can post as many links as you want in all of your posts and the search engines will never notice. Obviously, this will negatively affect your search engine rankings and traffic generation. What you need to do to avoid this trap is learn the difference between “do-follow” links and “no-follow” links.

In 2005, in an attempt to ensure the highest quality of search engine results, Google popularized an HTML attribute called “no-follow.” The idea is that webmasters can indicate links that are not to their own content by tagging them as no-follow. This feature is often used by websites to indicate to search engines that links generated by users are not to be followed and indexed. Although the theory behind this idea is fairly sound and it is probably true that “no-follow” has reduced the amount of random page results in search engines, “no-follow” is the forum-marketer’s worst enemy when it comes to upgrading your search engine rankings.
Luckily for you, it is actually very easy to avoid forums which adhere to the “no-follow” attribute. You can find lists of such forums on multiple websites.

Once you have found a list of discussion boards that will work for you, you have to choose one or two specific ones that best suit you and your personality. If you would like to make the most of your own knowledge to get the word out there about your business, then you have to choose a discussion board that revolves around a main concept that is in line with your business and/or interests. If you are posting about a topic on which you are knowledgeable and in which you are interested, it is more likely that you will come off as legitimate. The greater the quality of your posts, the more likely people will believe you and follow your links.

Once you have found a forum that supports “do-follow” links and is also related to your area of expertise, you are almost ready to start marketing your own website. There is just one more piece of advice for you: come off well. You can become a respected and well-liked source of information on your topic quite easily if you are respectful and knowledgeable in your posts. However, if you are controversial and rude, it is much more likely that people will come to hate reading your posts. They will not follow your links and your time posting will be completely wasted.

Dreamy Blogger Template




Dreamy is a simple, organized, eye-candy, blue, minimalistic blogger template. I am sure that most of people will like it. It has some nice features like Gallery style main page, which makes automatic summary of your posts, and automatic thumbnail of post images as well. This is a premium feature that I have developed using some css, I have never seen anyone using this feature before for blogger templates.

TO design this one i got inspired on a website that I always loved the design: www.vimeo.com

Features:
  • Gallery Style
  • Cool Navigation Bar
  • Organized
  • Blue
  • Custom comments, Blockquotes and Lists
  • Automatic Thumbnail
  • Automatic Post Summary

Live Demo | Dowload Theme

Clicksor

Clicksor is the third most popular alternative of adsense.It is pretty good to be honest but due to restrictions of something like 5000 page views per day makes it rank 3rd.Their tolerance level is also better than most of the ads companies around.Lets discuss some of its features
Benefits:

  • A really big range of ads types available
  1. Pop unders
  2. Animated Ads
  3. Image Ads
  4. Text Ads
  5. Flash Ads
  6. Banners
  7. Interstitial Ads
  8. Dynamic Ads
  • The minimum pay out from pay pal is 20$ and 50$ from check.It is not really bad.
  • The pay period is the fastest of all ads agencies,15 days only.
  • They are highly contextual.That means they totally shows only ads that matches your keywords.
  • They have a real time costumer support which is really exciting.
  • The statistics are real time too and gives a handy set of information frequently.
  • They have 3 types of payment on ads service.Cost Per Click, Cost Per Visit and Cost Per Thousand Impression.The ads either of these 3 will be selected through the wish of the publisher which is another impressive feature.
Concerns:

  • The restriction of 5000page views daily is quite a headache for smaller bloggers or websites.
  • The ads take really too long to show that does not impress the visitor and hence results in moving to another destination.
  • Only English Ads are accepted
I haven't tried clicksor ads myself yet I am showing a screen shot of earning of one of my friends.But, the feed back from other guys and friends is quite good.But, just a piece of advice, you should have a good amount of daily traffic to your website or blog if you are looking to go for clicksor.So I would rate it high for bigger guns and pretty low for the small bloggers.
Screen Shot:

Adbrite

Adbrite ads are another one of the top adsense alternatives.I say #2 after Bidvertiser getting a rank of 9 out of 10. It has a highly professional ads system with an attractive outlook of their website too.Lets get to the main thing and tell some benefits and advantages which are unique and decent and really beats adsense by a big margin.

Benefits:

  • The best and unique feature of setting your minimum payout by yourself and that is not it.You can set it to as low as 5$ only, Yes not 50$ it is 5$.Impressive isn't it?That is why it is great ad company for smaller bloggers and website holders too and can earn big money.
  • It shows both type of ads together i.e Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Impression.
  • It is also a great companion for other ads agencies.Because, if you are running two ads program on one website or blog, then you have an option to set the pricing mode which will show ads according to their price.If adbrite is paying more for an ad on your website or blog it will show it otherwise it will show the other companies ads which is amazing.
  • Adbrite ads have another amazing and unique type of ads feature that is inline ads. Inline ads have an amazing click through rate because they are shown for any 8 double underline keywords on the page, when a visitor rolls his mouse over those keywords he will see a little related ad over it which really attracts people to click it.
Screen Shot:


  • Another decent ads type is full page ads.Full page ads ,as the name suggests, shows on the full page except the header of the web page and there is an option of "Skip This Ad" at the top but it does not really look as if the visitor is going out to any other webpage and hence surfs on that ad.However, the full page ads pays on per impressions i.e CPM (A screenshots is at the bottom of this article).
Screen Shot:



  • They also pay by pay pal which is the fastest way to get money. However, you can get a check too if you do not have a pay pal account.
  • You can pick which ads to approve and which to deny unlike adsense.
  • There terms and conditions are not as tough as adsense.Hence, they warn you first if something suspicious is going on with your blog or website.
  • The best customer support service I ever see.They litrally want you to earn money and always available to help you out.They reply in less than 48 hours guranteed or even some times in less than 24 hours.So you do not need to worry about any problem if you face, you can always consult them.
  • They accept you into the system within 24 hours and takes 3 hours to take any effects on the ads.
  • The Cost Per Click (CPC) is really good and even beat adsense.However, it increases with the passage of time but trust me I am earning from it more than even adsense.
Concerns:

There are not many conerns but only few which should be kept in mind.

  • It usually takes 20 to 30 days for getting higher Cost Per Click and Cost Per Impression.They do geather the information about your website then they start to pay higher as passage of time.So you have to be patient a bit in the start.
  • Not too much options for ads customization and type.
  • Shows "Your Ad Here" too often if your page is not attracting big number of advertisers to advertise on your page.
Hence, Adbrite ads are better than the adsense and highly ranked and growing network.In the last I'm posting the screen shot of my earning.I earned above 100$ in last 7 days thats amazing isn't it?That is why I am always a bit confused in Adbrite and Bidvertiser as they seems to be head to head like a difference of just 0.005 between them.But,I still prefere Bidvertiser.

Screen shot:(Note: Few Stats are erased because it would be against the terms and conditions of Adbrite Showing all stats to some one.)

Bidvertiser

As you can see on my blog, I am mostly using bidvertiser so it gives a clear idea it must be worth having it right? Bidvertiser is a great alternative to Google adsense and ranked as one of the top Google alternatives.Let me explain you its great features in details one by one.




Benefits:

  • Bidvertiser have both the paying options PAY PAL (Mostly people having pay pal mentioning that adsense does not have this feature and it causes them problems etc) and CHECK payment.
  • Minimum payout amount is as low as 10$ (through pay pal). However, 50$ for check ( which is still 50% less than Google adsense.
  • They are the quickest in paying the amount too. Unlike other ad services, they pay at the end of every month. So, you do not have to wait too long for month cycle and stuff.
  • The acceptance procedure into the ads program is super fast. I myself got approved in less than an hour and my blog was only a day old.
  • Custom size ads is another one of the major feature that differs it with all the other ads networks.Hence, you can customize the size,colors and many other properties to fit it into your blog beautifully to increase your revenue dramatically.
  • Cost Per Click (CPC) is the major concern for people going for the alternatives.But, I myself getting around 0.50$ per click and it increases with the passage of time.For proof im showing a screen shot of my earning of a blog I made for a month.
  • The whole procedure is quite transparent, You can see next to the ads about their max bids which gives you a rough idea how much are you going to earn with that particular ad per click.
  • You can choose which ads you want to show and which you don't. Hence, you can block any irrelevant ad if you want or even block those ads which have low bids.
Screen Shot:(Few Stats are erased because it would be against the terms and conditions of Bidvertiser Showing all stats to some one.)







In the end, I am really tired of writing more stuff jokes apart. You will discover further benefits when you join it your self.Hence, It is easily in the top list of top adsense alternatives.
Make money from your Website or Blog with BidVertiser

Why Adsense Alternatives ?

Google adsense in the today's world is rocking the internet marketing sector because of its name and higher number of advertiser's than any other ads agency.But, now-a-days the trend has started to change due to certain reasons.Google's strict policy, bad customer care service, higher pay out and the most important one getting banned without even any particular reason is driving people more towards to alternatives of adsense and rightly so.



Adsense's Concerns:


1) Lets start with the minimum pay out . The minimum payout is nothing less than 100$. It really does not matter for the big guns in the business but what about small blogger like me? what about the people who just started using advertisers to earn some money? ofcourse they require at least some amount to start with to get motivated. But, 100$ looks too far for all small or new bloggers or websites that are having less traffic than 10,000 visitors per day. In the end, the publisher loss his interest in the work becuase it looks it would take ages to reach that 100$ mark. However, almost all the other similar to adsense services provide as low as 10$ payout which is really encouraging.

2) It does not let you allow certain ads which usually pays high. Infact, you can not do anything about those ads at all.They just show on your website according to your keywords in the content, hence if you content does not have high paying keywords then you will not be able to earn maximum revenue like you can do in other ads agencies.

3) Getting verified through a PIN which is sent to your mailing address is another pain in the head. It can take as long as a month or two to get the PIN and verify yourself as a human. None of the other ads services requires such a long procedure for activation.


4) Now here comes the most important factor which makes people join the alternatives, Getting banned from adsense without any particular notice, without any warning, nothing at all. You might wait for like 5 to 6 months first to get to that 100$ mark and when you earned 100$ you wake up next morning happy that you will soon receive the payment, you check your e-mail and there is a sweet e-mail message popping up to wish a very happy morning from adsense which says your account has been banned. You can jump from 100th floor of any building to prove that you did not do anything, you can appeal for reinstating the account but in the end you will only get an automated e-mail reply service saying that try as hard as you can, once we blocked you then you are never allowed to enter again without even letting know what made them banned you.
Here is what you most probably going to see after reaching that 100$ mark and log in the next day with a happy face



5) Lack of customer service or support. Whenever you try to contact them,you will simply get an automatic reply that you will soon recieve an e-mail response but no one knows what does soon mean in their dictionary. While, all the ads services I have been using got an excellent support center. They all reply to your question within 48 hours and mark my words 48 means 48 hours no more than that (Business Days).

You can clearly get an idea what are the basic factors you should be aware of, if you are looking to join adsense. It is just that it got a name of BIG G with it that makes it so popular, otherwise there are some serious concerns about their services which makes people to join its alternatives and adsense similar services. It is just the case of lack of awareness but now a days people are getting aware and hence people are mostly moving towards other top adsense alternatives which earns even more money in a friendly enviornment.

Identify the Font used in a Website with "WhatTheFont"


Submit an image to WhatTheFont to find the closest matches in our database.WhatTheFont web service at new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont to identify the name of most fonts. If WhatTheFont can’t identify the font, you’ll be able to post it to the forum from there so that other people experienced in typography can help you out.

Better Tracking of Visitors Interaction on your Blog

Do you mind, if somebody uses the content posted on your blog or website pages? I personally do not mind. However, it would be nice if there will be ability to track all the cases, when content is copied, and the proper credit will be presented. The Tynt Tacer free service for web masters make that wish easy to achieved.


What does Tracer do?
Tracer secretly tracks when users copy content from your web site and automatically adds a link back to the original page when your content is pasted. So, why do I need Tracer?
Tracer is a brand new way to:
  • Generate more visits and page views
  • Get credit when content is copied from your site
  • Measure and understand user engagement
  • Improve your search engine ranking


Generate more visits and page views
The automatically added attribution link provides return traffic to your site when your content is shared without your knowledge.

Get credit when content is copied from your site
The automatically added link back ensures you get credit for content that you have created. You can’t stop users from copying from your site but you can improve the chances of getting credit for your content.

Measure and understand user engagement
Tracer allows you to view statistics on how often content is copied from your site, what that content is and what keywords are being copied most. This helps you better understand which content is most interesting to your users.

Our data shows that those pages that users engage with most are not necessarily those with the most page views.

Tracer allows you to identify the most popular content on your site so you can:
  • Provide high quality data to your advertisers, over and above page view stats.
  • Learn which stories users forward most using our copy/paste technology.
  • Produce content more closely aligned with what your users are interested in.
  • Optimize your search terms or keywords.


Improve your search engine ranking
The number one signal that search engines use to determine how relevant your site is, and therefore how high your site ranks, is the number and quality of links that link back to your site. Tracer automatically adds a link back to your site when content is copied and pasted. When your content is pasted onto a blog, Twitter, or another web site it has a direct impact on your search ranking.

By seeing what words and phrases users are copying from your site you can better understand how you might select your keywords, meta-tags, tags, and even ad-words.

Also, Tynt.com is an increasingly popular place for people to find interesting web sites and content and generates visits to your site when content is copied.

Who needs Tracer?
  • Sites that would like to increase traffic and page views.
  • Sites that would like to better understand what content is most engaging.
  • Writers or content creators that would like credit for their work when it is copied.
  • Writers or content creators who would like to see which content is the most engaging and/or the most popular. Keep in mind that page views alone don’t necessarily mean that the user engages with content.
  • Sites selling advertising who would like to find out which pages can drive higher advertising rates.


How to Install
First, you need to register for a free account, to register for an account and as soon as your request will be processed, you will receive an email including:
  • A single line of java script to add to your web page html code.
  • A link to your personal Tracer Statistics Dashboard giving you valuable insight into what is being copied from your site.

Sign for free and get tracer for your pages: http://www.tynt.com/tracer/home


Video Presentation:


Insert Adsense Block in the Middle of the Blogger post


Go to your blogger account, and navigate to Layout >> Edit html, and check check Expand Widget Templates
Find the tag :


<data :post.body/>


And replace it with the following code.

<div expr:id='"aim1"   data:post.id'></div> <div style="clear:both; margin:10px 0">       <!-- Your AdSense code here --> </div> <div expr:id='"aim2"   data:post.id'>       <data :post.body/> </div> <script type="text/javascript">var obj0=document.getElementById("aim1<data :post.id/>");var obj1=document.getElementById("aim2<data :post.id/>");var s=obj1.innerHTML;var r=s.search(/\x3C!-- adsense --\x3E/igm);if(r>0) {obj0.innerHTML=s.substr(0,r);obj1.innerHTML=s.substr(r 16);}</script>


Note that you must replace

<!-- Your AdSense code -->


Now you are done, just to put your google adsense block in the middle of the post, you have to put this code in the exact place you want to put AdSense block.

Shopping/Ecommerce Plugins For Wordpress

WP e-Commerce plugin for Wordpress
Description
: The WP e-Commerce shopping cart plugin for WordPress is an elegant easy to use fully featured shopping cart application suitable for selling your products, services, and or fees online.
WP e-Commerce is a Web 2.0 application designed with usability, aesthetics, and presentation in mind.
Note: This is by far and away the most complete and powerful Shopping Plugin you will find for Wordpress. The feature list goes on and on, have a look for yourself here: WP-Ecommerce Features.

Quick Shop plugin for Wordpress

Wordpress Shopping PluginsDescription: QuickShop supports any Wordpress that has the Sidebar Widgets installed, really. It adds a SideBar widget that shows the user what they currently have in the cart and allows them to remove the items, not to mention a TinyMCE button to easily allow you to add products to your posts/pages.
Features: A TinyMCE button. This is practically a copy and changeover from the NextGen Gallery ; Full range of formatting for widget layout in Admin -> Options -> Quickshop ; Two widgets - one is Paypal, the other is set for your custom solution ; Now has both Paypal Subscription and Donation tags ; Ability to create different product options in a drop-down.

eShop plugin for Wordpress

Description: There is a fair few features for this powerful plugin, here are some: use Wordpress pages, or posts, to create products ; list multiple products, with add to cart form, on a single page ; products can have multiple options ; upload downloadable products ; basic Statistics ; download sales data ; 3 methods for calculating shipping charges, plus various zone settings via Country or US State… and a few more.

WP Live-Shopping plugin for Wordpress

Description: This widget enables you to display all relevant live shopping offers within your Wordpress blog in one single widget. You can add the widget to your sidebar and customize its appearance as you like inside the boundaries of LiveShoppingWidgets presentation options.

YAK Shopping Cart plugin for Wordpress

Wordpress Shopping Plugins

Description: YAK is a simple shopping cart plugin for WordPress, associating products with weblog entries — thus the post ID also becomes the product code.
An options screen is used to configure settings for the shopping cart. There are 3 pages in the WordPress Management screens; one for showing and fulfilling orders, another for product management, and basic sales reports.

WP Auctions plugin for Wordpress

Wordpress Shopping PluginsDescription: WP Auctions is a revolutionary plugin for WordPress which allows you to host auctions on your blog and to sell ANYTHING, completely fee-free!
You no longer need to worry about listing fees, seller fees, final value fees, gallery fees or any other type of fee for anything you want to sell online from this day on! Once you list your auctions, you can register your plugin with the WP Auctions Live page and generate some traffic for your website.
Features: Create and host as many auctions as you like ; Upload multiple images for each auction ; Sell items only on ‘Buy It Now’ basis ; Show 3rd party ads when there are no auctions *new ; Get payment via PayPal (PayPal account required) ; RSS feed for your auctions, and many more…

ArtPal plugin for Wordpress

Description: ArtPal is a free (GPL) Wordpress plugin, originally written for Artists, to seemlessly integrate PayPal with their Wordpress blogs so that they can sell their work online.
Features: Easy PayPal integration–all you need to supply is your PayPal email address ; Real-time sales updates–as soon as your item sells, ArtPal will disable it from being sold. You’ll never worry about your item selling twice ; Professionally supported–businesses mean business. Digital Sublimity provides commercial support, so you can be rest assured that your critical application will stay up and running when you need it.

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