Use Google Insights:

An excellent tool from Google, which shows you the trend for a keyword entered by you. Say you are thinking about writing on ‘making money online’ but you are not able to guess the exact topic to write on. Enter the term in search box, scroll down to see Search terms related to ‘making money online’. The terms that you see here are ‘hot’ on Google and I guess, it will make sense to write something based around such keywords.   

There is one more graph that shows ‘rising searches’ over a period of time. It distributes data in percentage and shows searches that have grown significantly in a given period of time.

Breakout means that the search term has seen a rise of 1000% in a given period of time.

Use Spyfu: 

Another great tool to get an idea for your next post. As you enter a search term it shows data neatly categorized into 3 categories- stats, ads and search results. Search results shows the top 10 results returned on google search, ads shows the ads of people who opt to show their advertisements through Google adwords, stats is the most important category that we will talk about here.

As can be seen in the image above, stats shows data for Cost/Click, Clicks/Day, Cost/Day, Advertisers, Search Results.

1. Cost/Click gives you an estimate of how much Google charges from an advertiser bidding on the particular term. Assuming that Google shares a revenue of 50:50 with its adsense publishers (most probably, it is more towards publishers side), you can expect 1/2 of what is mentioned in Cost /Click for a properly SEO optimized page.
2. Clicks/Day: In Spyfu terms, The number of clicks per day is the best way to gauge the traffic that a keyword gets. It is a useful number in a lot of ways. Consider the difference between the keywords “Low Fares” and “Cheap Tickets”. If you are a travel industry insider, you might assume that “Low Fares” gets a lot more clicks than “Cheap Tickets”. Indeed, “Low Fares” is an industry term, but “Cheap Tickets” gets almost 100 times more clicks. Which keyword would you rather optimize your content for? 
3. Advertisers: Greater the # of advertisers means there is great competition for that term means more moolah for you as a publisher. 

Over to you now. How do you get ideas for your blog posts?

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2 excellent tools to get ideas for your next post and to find the hottest keywords in your niche

If you ever wanted to own a .com domain name or want to increase one in your arsenal, the best time is NOW. Godaddy is offering .com domain name on a huge discount.  For $0.99 only- with the promocode 99domain.  That is the cheapest ever .com domain names offering I have found in my existence on web for 2+ years. The promocode can be used only once per account.

Go grab it now!

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GoDaddy PromoCode- Get a .com domain for $0.99 only

In the last mail they pointed out to check with the ISP (Internet Service Provider). To my surprise that turned out to be the culprit. Within two days my ISP solved the problem that was lurking around for more than 2 weeks.

Now you know whom to contact, the next time you see HTTP 504.

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Next time you have problem opening your site or find HTTP error 504, you may want to contact your ISP

HP has done a very nice job of putting together the differences between them.

JPEG: a JPEG is a digital image file format designed for maximum image compression. It is the best way to format your colourful photos. Also known as .jiff, .jpg, .JPG, or .JPE

GIF; Lossless compression technique. it is more widely supported by Web browsers than the JPEG format. It is well suited for compressing areas of images with large areas of the same colour – such as computer-generated art and line drawings. It is also a good option for putting animation online. Images are compressed in to a 256-color or 8 bit image.

PNG: Lossless compression technique. Like GIF but does not support animation.

When to choose what?

As evident from the description above, since PNG is a lossless compression technique the images will be of high quality but of relatively larger size than jpg. Choose PNG where quality is of utmost importance. Choose jpg when you won’t mind the slight reduction in quality but you want to save your bandwidth since the images become really small.

How to create your own GIF animated pics:

There are a host of free online services available to do this. One of them is GIF Ninja. You simply need to provide the site with 5 images and it will rotate those images for the duration specified by you in the “Choose the animation speed for your gif” box, thus creating your own animated gif image.

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When to choose jpn, png or gif and differences between them? – Image format chooser guide

Update: Voting for Blogging Idol 2 has begun. Please follow this link, vote for me and increase your chances of winning. I am on #95.

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Win $1000 - Last chance.

So, how can you submit sitemaps for a blogger hosted blog without any warnings or errors?

Suppose you have a site called abc.blogspot.com. The sitemap for this site would be: http://abc.blogspot.com/atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100 meaning simply append atom.xml?redirect=false&start-index=1&max-results=100 to your blog URL in Google Webmaster Tools > Sitemaps > Add Sitemap.

Food for the thinking mind: If you don’t include redirect=false, webmaster tools will throw warning. If you don’t include start-index=1&max-results=100, the maximum number of URLs submitted will be shown as 26, always. Remember if you have more than 100 pages on your blogspot site, you would need to include two sitemaps one having an index starting with 1 and ending with 100(start-index=1&max-results=100) and the other having an index starting with 100 and ending with 200(start-index=100&max-results=200)

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How to submit blogger sitemap successfully and fix the maximum limit issue?

Those who use adsense would understand that it requires a lot of testing and retesting before arriving at that perfect layout for your ads. This testing might lead to a lot of unwanted impressions (that are against adsense TOS). Here are the two ways, I test my adsense ads without fear of invalid/excess impressions.

1) Use images exactly of the same size of the ad you are going to use. Pick the adsense images here.

2) Many a times you might want to check the layout rendered after the actual javascript is executed. Add a parameter google_adtest = “on”; to your adsense code and place it where you want to intend to put the actual code. For ex: If your adsense code is-

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-****************";
/* 200x200, created 08/08/08 */
google_ad_slot = "12345678";
google_ad_width = 200;
google_ad_height = 200;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

The code after adding the parameter would become-

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "pub-****************";
/* 200x200, created 08/08/08 */
google_ad_slot = "12345678";
google_ad_width = 200;
google_ad_height = 200;
google_adtest = "on";
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

With google_adtest=”on” , though you will see the ads related to your content, no impression or ad click will be added to your account and hence you are safe. I guess you must be wondering that Google adsense TOS does not allow any change of code then how come I am doing it. I have verified this from the Google Adsense team and they are ok with it.

NB: For one of my blogs hosted on blogger, I have created a dummy blog. All testing related to new layouts, ads etc is done on this dummy blog.

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How to test adsense ads without any fear of invalid impressions?

If you are using MS Office 2000:

1. Open the document.
2. Go to File > Save As. Click on Tools on top right side as shown.
   
3. Click on General Options.
4. The next screen will ask you for the password. Fill in your desired password.
5. The next time onwards, whenever you open that file, the system will prompt for password.

If you are using higher versions of MS office:

Microsoft has made this process a bit simpler for higher versions. Simply go to Tools > Options > Security tab and fill in the desired password.

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How to password protect your word or excel documents- The simple way

Fixed: Width is defined in pixels
Dynamic: Width is defined in terms of percentage of space available

Consider the tables below. They look alike but are coded differently. The first uses fixed widths, the second dynamic widths.

When to use Fixed, when Dynamic?

Use fixed widths if you require pixel-by-pixel control of the table layout (such as if you have embedded a background image and want to place text at a specific position).

A downside of fixed widths is inflexibility - the table may not render correctly on all browser resolutions.

Dynamic is the way to go, so that the table is displayed appropriately whatever the browser resolution may be, neither getting truncated if the resolution is too small nor leaving extra whitespace if too large.

Table Width Problem With Windows Live Writer

If you use Windows Live Writer for blogging, you will notice that it allows specifying table dimensions in pixels only. To work around this limitation, you can edit the source code to change its dimensions to percentages. Here’s how:

1. Define the table structure in Edit mode as usual.

2. Go the the Source view of the post. Locate the portion that defines the table. It will look as below.

<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="400" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
  <td valign="top" width="150"><strong>Col1</strong></td>
  <td valign="top" width="250"><strong>Col2</strong></td></tr>
<tr>
  <td valign="top" width="150">Text in the first column</td>
  <td valign="top" width="250">Text in the second column</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

3. Change the width values to percentages, as below.

<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="98%" border="1">
<tbody>
<tr>
  <td valign="top" width="38%"><strong>Col1</strong></td>
  <td valign="top" width="62%"><strong>Col2</strong></td></tr>
<tr>
  <td valign="top" width="38%">Text in the first column</td>
  <td valign="top" width="62%">Text in the second column</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

4. That’s it! You’re done.

A word of caution: After changing to percentages, DO NOT tinker with the table/cell boundaries in the Edit view! If you do that, all your hard work will be lost – the dimensions will go back to their fixed pixel definitions. Put in percentages only after you are sure you will not change the table structure anymore in the Edit view.

Post from: Review Of Web

Fixed vs. Dynamic HTML Table Width

• 1 point to the competitor with the highest increase on the number of RSS subscribers
• 3 points to the competitors (one for each) with the highest number of votes on the open voting session
• 3 points awarded by a panel of judges

As you can see, you can help me with the first two points. An amount of $1000 will be given as cash to the winner of this competition. Well, I have decided to give away the whole cash amount to my subscribers IF I WIN this contest. I am keeping my contest very simple to include larger audience and to give a fair chance to everyone.

How to win:

1. Subscribe to ROW by email. You will get one point. Enter your email address below and hit subscribe.
   
2. *[Optional but a bonus entry] Make a post on your blog about ROW’s $1000 give-away and ask your blog readers to subscribe. You will get two bonus point (and hence triple the chance to win). If you are making a post make sure to come back here and mention URL in the comment form so that I can track your blog post. Also while making a comment use the same email id in the comments form you used to subscribe to my blog on Step1.

Some rules:

1. Winner of ROW $1000 contest will be selected randomly by putting all the email addresses in http://www.random.org/lists and selecting the top three entries.
2. To distribute the booty among more people I will give 3 prizes out of $1000.
   • 1st Prize - Cash $500
   • 2nd Prize - Cash $300
   • 3rd Prize - Cash $200
3. Winners would be paid by PayPal.
4. You stand a chance to win only if I win the Blogging Idol contest. I can win if I can gain the maximum no of subscribers in a months time, get highest no of votes from you and from the judges between [Nov 1-Nov 30th]. So guys, to increase your chances of winning, help ROW win by publicizing this blog.

I will keep you informed when the voting will start.

So keep rolling guys and Best Of Luck!

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Subscribe to ROW and win $1000