Do you have

• an ugly blog that makes small children cry and your dog cover his eyes with his paws?

• a boring blog with zero zing?

• or a blog that fails to stand out in a sea of sameness?

It doesn’t have to be that way! Massive Lifestyle can help you.

Massive Lifestyle is now offering to critique your blog. Why? Two reasons.

1) We’re kicking off our own Remodel-Blogging services to help revive your blog.

2) There are countless blogs that could greatly benefit from a simple helping hand.

If you want your site exposed  to a no-holds-barred, honest critique with a helping of humor at your blog’s expense, post a comment here with your blog address and simply ask.

Along with our reviews, we will offer a few tips and tricks to make your blog awesome. If you decide to hire us to help, we’ll even give you a discount!

What we will do

Check out your site for design and visual appeal. Does your site hurt our eyes? Does it look like one those AOL pages from the late 90’s? We’ll tell it like it is and spare no feelings.

Look over your site’s content. Are your posts too long? Is your site’s purpose immediately clear? Do you have lots of obvious errors?

Review your site’s layout and usability. Is your site’s design intuitive or do first time readers have to jump through hoops to figure things out? Is your blog full of clutter? We will tell you what your friends won’t. The unbiased truth.

We have no idea how many people will take us up on our free offer, so we’re going to take them on a first come, first serve basis. In some cases, blogs on life support may get rushed to the front of the line. In other words, if you’re in a rush to get your blog reviewed, you may want to hire us.

If you would like a private consultation, our services can be had for a small fee of $50 via PayPal. You can choose whether you want your review publicly posted on our site or private, sent to you via e-mail. And, if you pay us, you can choose how you want your advice: Straight up and a bit kinder (for those who don’t appreciate criticism) . We definitely understand a lot of people don’t have the time or skills to devote to making their blog pretty and would never want to make anyone feel bad.

If you decide to hire us for a consult, we will deduct $25 from your first custom design order.

Some of the things we can do to make over your blog

• customize your WP Thesis theme

• Install Thesis on your self hosted WP site

• create custom banners and other site graphics

• custom SEO and landing pages to help your blog be found by search engines and readers

• devise a custom color theme for your WP blog

• help you determine which items to keep on your blog and which to get rid of

Got more questions or want to hire us? Contact us at 866.538.0868 or e-mail support@massivelifestyle.com

Plugins are software scripts. Plugin is usually a number of files compressed into archive that can be downloaded to your hard disk from plugin directories or from the site of the plugin. This is the official plugin directory: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ You don’t need to have programming skills when using most of the plugins but you have to read carefully the instructions given by the plugin author and follow them. If something is wrong with the plugin you should consult the plugin author. When selecting a plugin you should see to compatibility of the plugin with the version of your wordpress blog. Very often it is written in the description of the plugin. It is strongly recommended to make backup of your site in case something go wrong, before installing a plugin.

Here are some cool plugins you should look to add….

• W3 Total Cache – This WordPress plugin is great for two reasons. First, it makes your pages load way faster. Second, since it stores static versions of your site, it requires much less CPU processing than using WordPress all by itself. This WordPress plugin is number one on the list for a reason.

• HeadSpace: WordPress SEO Made Simple- Move over All in one SEO. There’s a new guy in town. HeadSpace provides you with the features you need to drive your site to the top. People spend way to much time working on SEO and too little time writing great content. This plugin let’s you put your focus back where it belongs. It takes care of all the SEO work that your blog will need.

• WP-DBManager – This little gem is amazing for backing up your website. It actually has quite a few functions that it can perform but perhaps it’s most impressive feature is it’s ability to email the entire WordPress databse to me every day.

• Thank Me Later – This plugin is great. It sends an email to all first-time visitors. You can write up the email to remind them about your RSS feed or just to invite them to connect with you personally. I do both.

• SEO Smart Links – Do you inter-link your articles? You should. Linking within an article to other articles is a great way to build Page Rank throughout your site and it’s a great way to get readers to find your other articles on similar subjects. This plugin will interlink keywords to your other articles for you.

Have Fun!!!

As a marketing tool, blogs are full of all kinds of potential. Blogs have some truly unique characteristics as a marketing tool. First of all, they are much easier than newsletters when it comes to getting your idea across. They can be added to, and they can be updated at any time and from virtually anywhere. Blogs also have long lasting shelf lives, as they exist on the internet until you decide to remove them. This contrasts well to newsletters which have extremely short shelf lives, because once you send it out, it’s sent, then trashed, and gone. Unless you are just posting marketing materials that are deglossed, most blogs offer a large amount of credibility. Whether your blog is a personal blog or a business blog, viewers come to blogs expecting to find frank and personal perspectives on a topic that you are passionate about.

If you maintain your viewers and you respect the idea that you should be passionate about the content of your blog, then your credibility will go up, and this is what blogging is truly all about. Blogs are easy to syndicate, meaning that you can get your information and opinions out there, and can allow them to spread like wildfire. If you have an opinion to share, a product to sell, a brand to market or something else to say on the internet, and you think that people are going to want to read what it is that you have to say, then blogging is an excellent option for you to consider.

If you do not already have a blog that is associated with your business or your website, then now may very well be an excellent time for you to start blogging. You should not think that blogging is unnecessary simply because you are employing other strategies for marketing or communicating online. There are completely different dynamics when it comes to e-mail communication and blogging. Nothing facilitates conversation, communication and community the way that blogging does. There is no confusion about blogging being spam the way e-mails can be looked at as spam. Blogs have a long shelf life, meaning they last longer than e-mail correspondence and blogs work very well in conjunction with other forms of communication and methods of marketing as well.

Think about this, things online move rapidly. Spending 2 months to promote a blog and get traffic would only take 1 week of full absence to have that traffic diminish. With that in mind, we’re in big trouble. But of course like anything else, there are smart fixes and solutions for that and in this blog post I aim to talk about those things.

Write in one sitting

If you’re really busy, there’s a good chance that you can still have a day or two where you can write some blog posts. Believe its more than enough.

The way I do it most of the times is write my blog posts in one sitting. So basically you could pick your most productive day, in most cases, its every Monday, and then sit down and don’t do anything other than write blog entries. You would be surprised how many high quality articles you can pump out in that day.

For me I usually do it every morning mostly in my home office (anyone can call their room their office ) and spend almost 6 hours in writing articles. I can then come up with 5-8 blog articles that I can now set on queue. The important thing here is that you have the continuity of content which will definitely help with consistent traffic and awareness around the blogosphere.

Utilize Social Media accounts

In the event that you cannot really go out and market your blog through commenting or other things, you can simply just utilize your social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook and etc.

Most people can access this through their mobile phones so just a simple tweet maybe every three hours can do wonders. Social media is still a hot commodity when it comes to traffic generation and if you have good following on social sites then there’s a good chance you can benefit from it a lot by doing it consistently.

Make things Structured and Automated

One thing that I learned a lot ever since having a job is making things automated and structured. Of course before, I thought I was very structured but I know I improved a lot.

Here are some of the things that you can automate so you no longer need to do it manually.

• Automate your tweets – This can be done in various ways. You can signup to a service known as twitterfeed. What it does is simply just automatically tweet your latest post published so there’s no need to do it manually. Another is by utilizing this plugin called as Tweet Your Old Post. This brilliant plugin simply just tweets any random posts of yours in a certain time interval and the beauty about this is that you can have control on types of posts that you want to publish. Let’s say you just want to continually publish your top posts. What you can do is filter it using your categories so that you can eliminate your personal posts from being tweeted.
• Structure your newsletter series – Just like in posting blog posts, you can actually do your newsletter of one week or 2 in one sitting. In my experience, the best way to do it is every Sunday since you are much more relaxed to write a series of newsletters.

Seek for outside help

In an event where you feel you really need outside help, you can simply just hire a freelancer out there to do things for you.

Contrary to what most people think, its actually not that expensive. You can simply do a contract that would pay a freelancer on a per article basis so you don’t need to shed a lot of money for something that is not done daily.

You can also hire virtual assistants that can oversee minor operations on your blog such as publishing blog posts, deleting spam comments, answering emails and maintaining small things. Hiring someone can be really really helpful especially if you want to maintain consistency in your blog.

There ya go! Those are the 4 things that you can do to be able to maintain your blog even when you don’t have time to do it on a daily basis. Strategic blogging involves being wise enough in facing certain problems mentioned above. If you can make yourself involved lesser than ever while still reaping the same benefits, then you’re doing it right.

But it’s not. The truth is, there are only five different ways the Fortune 500 use social media. Seriously — just five. And once you know what they are, you can figure out which ones would be most useful for your business.

These five social approaches, though different in many respects, all have one thing in common: Each of the Fortune 500 use them to generate a profit. After all, they’re not using social media just to be social. They’re using it to make money.

In order to make money with social media, you have to set up your campaigns to be measured. And I’m not talking about simple metrics like number of followers or unique page views (although those are important). I’m talking about real metrics like leads generated, prospects converted and profits realized. Those are the kinds of metrics that enable you to track the success of your social media campaign on an ROI basis. And when you’re tracking your social media campaign on an ROI basis, you’re making your CFO happy (along with your CEO, your CMO and everyone else in your company).

Branding

Some companies use social media strictly as a branding tool. Typically, this means running a YouTube campaign that (hopefully) gets a lot of buzz around the water cooler. While using social media strictly as a branding tool might be considered “old-school” these days, it can still generate some positive sales growth.

Take Toyota as an example. Its YouTube mini-series featuring the Sienna Family has generated more than 8.3 million impressions. Those are not passive impressions fed to consumers during a TV commercial break, but engaged views attained through social sharing. When people share your commercial with their friends, they’re reinforcing your marketing for you, and it’s the best kind.

Of course, one of the most successful campaigns of this type is the Old Spice YouTube campaign that has more than 140 million impressions and, according to Nielsen, helped sales increase 55% in three months, and a whopping 107% during the month of July alone. Part of what made this campaign successful was that Old Spice set it up so it could quickly respond to viewers’ comments about the videos. By engaging the viewers in the videos, Old Spice improved the stickiness of the campaign and, best of all, enhanced the viral nature of it.

e-Commerce

If you can sell your product or service online, then you’ll want to drive people to a landing page on your website where they can buy your goods. How can you accomplish this? Just do what Dell does. It tweets about special promotions for its folloers on Twitter. Right now, the DellOutlet account has 1.5 million followers. If you crunch some hypothetical but fair numbers on the back of an envelope, Dell’s ROI might look something like this:

DellOutlet followers: 1.5 million

DellOutlet followers who actually see the promotional Tweet: 50,000

Followers who click on the link in the Tweet: 500

Prospects who purchase a computer based on the Tweet: 50

50 purchases x $500 computer = $25,000

That’s $25,000 in revenue just for sending out a tweet. Not bad for a day’s work. Of course you’ll have to put in the effort to build your Twitter community in the first place, but those are certainly resources well spent, given the potential return.

Research

Many companies are using social media as a tool to do simple, anecdotal research. Sometimes, this involves building a website that engages customers in a dialogue. Starbucks has done this famously with MyStarbucksIdea.com. When visitors land on the site, they’re asked to provide new ideas to Starbucks on ways to improve the brand. Visitors can share ideas, vote on which ideas they like the best, discuss the ideas that have been submitted, and even see the results of their suggestions in action.

But you don’t have to build an entire website to keep tabs on your customers’ needs. Got a blog? Great. Ask your visitors to leave suggestions in your comments section. Have an e-newsletter? Terrific. Use the tools from ConstantContact, ExactTarget or MailChimp to include polls and surveys in your e-newsletter. Active on Twitter? Wonderful. Then use Twtpoll, SurveyMonkey or SurveyGizmo to drive people to a survey page on these sites.

The bottom line is there are plenty of ways to keep your finger on the pulse of your community’s needs, using social media tools that are readily available to both you and the Fortune 500.

Customer Retention

A good rule to remember is that it costs three to five times as much to acquire a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. Given that, wouldn’t it be smart to use social media as a tool to keep customers loyal and engaged? That’s what Comcast and Southwest Airlines do. They communicate via Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms to help solve customer service issues.

When Frank Eliason at Comcast first noticed that people were making comments about his company on Twitter, he probably wasn’t very happy. After all, if you’re going to Tweet about your cable company, it’s likely a complaint. So Frank took things into his own hands and started Tweeting back to the disgruntled customers. His tweets offered suggestions and tips on how to fix the problems people were having with their services.

Research has indicated that if you take a customer in a heightened state of anger and help them out, they’ll actually become brand advocates. In other words, they start promoting your brand to others because you reached out to them and helped them at a time of need.

That’s what happened with Frank and Comcast. Customers went from being disgruntled to being brand advocates — all because they were pleasantly surprised when Frank reached out to them via Twitter and helped solve their problems.

If you find yourself reading negative comments in the blogosphere about your brand, don’t shy away from them. Engage with them. You’ll be surprised how effective it can be.

Lead Generation

If you’re having difficulty selling your product or service online, you may want to invest in a social B2B lead generation strategy. At my company, we use social media to drive prospects to our online magazine for marketers. When prospects get to the website, they can read a blog post, watch a 60-second video or download a white paper. Once we gather their contact information, we (gently) re-market to them by reminding them of all the great results our partner generates for its clients.

This hub-and-spoke system works like a charm. Why? Because B2B and professional service firms are often sold based on a relationship. Much of the decision process is based on a vendor’s reputation and trustworthiness. What better way to build trust than by providing helpful, useful information to the client prospect via social media?

Remember, when you’re using this hub and spoke system, you don’t want to limit yourself to just the big five (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and MySpace). You’ll also want to use e-mail marketing, speeches, e-books, webinars, blogs, videos and other social media tools to build trust and awareness.

Jamie Turner is the chief content officer of the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine for BKV Digital and Direct Response. He is also the co-author of How to Make Money with Social Media, now available at fine bookstores (and a few not-so-fine bookstores) everywhere.

HERE ARE FIVE TRENDS THAT WILL SHAPE SOCIAL MEDIA

Some intriguing insight into the near future evolving technologies and social media. Let’s face it, however smart we may be, predicting the future is still pretty tricky business but I will do my best:

1.  Identity will become embedded in devices

Imagine this: your social media identities (Twitter username, Facebook profile, etc.) will be entered as part of the initial process of setting up your new devices, and will be propagated into all applications. You no longer will need to enter your Twitter or Facebook credentials to access related functionality on mobile applications – instead, they will seamlessly access your profile. The recently rumored Facebook phone offers an example application.  Paul Marsden suggests that this possibility will provide an opportunity for smart app-based loyalty programs and deal feeds that use social media identities to personalize communications.  Of course, the transition from paper to electronic couponing is well underway and the conversion of the portable device into a credit card reader has become a reality, but embedding identities, albeit threatening from a privacy perspective, takes these developments to a logical next level.  PSFK illustrates this first trend by envisioning a typical product thusly:

2.  Online sharing will become embedded in Media Life

With social identity embedded into the devices we use daily, social sharing will become an integral part of the way we enjoy media on our regular TV’s, DVD players and music players. These devices will evolve towards all being Internet enabled and allow us to share likes, links and personal commentary. Remote controls and store shelves may include “like” buttons which autopost to Facebook, while music players will sync preferences to preferred identity.  Disney’s buggy ABC.com Full Episode Player (FEP) is a start in concretizing this trend, providing greater intimacy for the TV viewing experience.

3.  Location will be embedded in all activities

Location aware devices will employ pre-emptive use of location to alert the user to things or people nearby that may be of interest. Four-square writ large.  Users won’t have to check in to a place to see if their friends are nearby, as their device will automatically alert them. This trend bears particular implications for marketers, enabling them to provide consumers with value in that message and offer – and not just another annoying discount offer that they will eventually tune out if it becomes an onslaught.  Individual targeting is clearly a trend I think we can all agree on for marketers, for whom broadcasting no longer makes sense.  From a personal perspective, we can only hope there is a clear opt-in aspect to this trend, so that consumers can decide where, when, and for whom they willingly can be located.  In more cases than not, more than I need to know is not always better and persistent targeted messages from marketers can get annoying pretty quickly.  But these personal tics aside, Paul Marsden intriguingly inquires about this potential scenario:  ‘Opportunity for a new breed of tuangou group buy offers, bringing together real time flash mobs to buy in bulk in store?’

4.  Smart Devices and Web Apps will automatically check in and post updates

Identity aware devices, empowered by embeddable RFID tags, will allow this type of technology to spread beyond the mobile phone. A smart coffee thermos, for example, could enable automatic check-ins and send coupons to your phone as you enter your favorite coffee shop.  This is going to be the nuclear explosion in the coupon business.

5.  Social networking will redefine how large organizations communicate

Large organizations have always struggled to share knowledge across multiple teams, divisions and geographies.
Social media inspired design patterns applied to existing enterprise software and/or intranets opens up opportunities for collaboration on an unprecedented scale. Employees in large organizations will finally be able to find colleagues with knowledge or experience they could benefit from. Collaboration will no longer mean simply sharing documents and version control, but the ability to find colleagues by shared interest and collaborate seamlessly in a multi-channel environment.  To some extent, this echoes, but also advances Tapscott and Williams’ Wikinomics ideas.  As TNW points out, at present, current examples of this fifth trend include disruptive innovators like SocialText, Yammer, Podio and SocialWok.

In summing up, TNW suggests that what links these five trends into the big picture is convergence, as in traditional media (TVs, radios, etc.) becoming social media devices, corporate intranets becoming private social networks, and so on.  All of this, of course, is being powered by ongoing developments in consumer generated content and content creating tools.  No question, the future is now.

Apple finally unveiled its tablet computer, the iPad. Thus concludes Phase 1 of the standard Apple new-category roll-out: months of feverish speculation and hype online, without any official indication by Apple that the product even exists.

Now Phase 2 can begin: the bashing by the bloggers who’ve never even tried it: “No physical keyboard!” “No removable battery!” “Way too expensive!” “Doesn’t multitask!” “No memory-card slot!”

That will last until the iPad actually goes on sale in April. Then, if history is any guide, Phase 3 will begin: positive reviews, people lining up to buy the thing, and the mysterious disappearance of the basher-bloggers.

The iPad is, as predicted, essentially a giant iPod Touch: aluminum-backed, half-inch thin, with a 10-inch screen surrounded by a shiny black border. At the bottom, there’s the standard iPod/iPhone connector and a single Home button. It will be available in models ranging from $499 (16 gigs of memory, Wi-Fi) to $830 (64 gigs of memory, Wi-Fi and 3G cellular).

The cellular signal will be provided by AT&T for $15 a month (250 megabytes of data transferred — think e-mail only) or $30 a month, unlimited. Amazingly, those AT&T deals involve no contract. You can cancel whenever you like. And since this thing isn’t a phone, you don’t have to worry about dropped calls; you’re paying exclusively for Internet service.

There’s no reason you couldn’t use it to make calls using Skype, of course — Apple says that virtually all of the existing 140,000 iPhone apps run fine on the iPad. (You can run them either at regular tiny size, or blown up double with some loss of clarity.)

Then again, you might look a little bizarre walking through the airport holding this giant clipboard up to your ear.

Until I saw the demo, I wondered why you’d want an iPad instead of a laptop. After all, the price is about the same. And once you add a carrying case to the iPad — wouldn’t you worry about that glass screen bouncing around in your briefcase or backpack naked? — it’s about the same bulk and weight as a laptop.

Now, though, it looks like Apple really has created something new. Criticisms of “Like a laptop” and “a big iPod Touch” don’t really do justice to the possibilities.

The iPad as an e-book reader is a no-brainer. It’s just infinitely better-looking and more responsive than the Kindle, not to mention it has color and doesn’t require external illumination. (Book fans should note, however, that the iPad e-bookstore won’t offer bestsellers at $10 each, like Amazon and Barnes & Noble do. And although Apple says the iPad has a 10-hour battery life, it hasn’t yet said “doing what.” Playing video eats up battery a lot faster than reading e-books.)

Web browsing, painting programs, TV and movies, newspapers and magazines all seem like naturals on this 1.5-pound machine, too. The New York Times app is especially appealing to me — and yes, this is my completely independent opinion — because it seems to work like the much-adored Times Reader app for computers.

Overall, the iPad seems like a dream screen for reading and watching—at some loss of convenience in creating. True, there’s an on-screen keyboard, big enough to type on with both hands in the usual way. And Apple will offer a specialized multitouch word processor, spreadsheet and presentation app for $10 each. But I’m guessing that, with no mouse and no physical keys to feel, writing and editing will be more effort than on a laptop. (Apple will also sell an external keyboard that holds the iPad upright as you type. Then again, if you need to carry all that around, maybe a laptop would make more sense.)

But these are just the wild speculations of a guy who’s never even tried the thing. (Believe me, I’ll review it when I get one.)

My main message to fanboys is this: it’s too early to draw any conclusions. Apple hasn’t given the thing to any reviewers yet, there are no iPad-only apps yet (there will be), the e-bookstore hasn’t gone online yet, and so on. So hyperventilating is not yet the appropriate reaction.

At the same time, the bashers should be careful, too. As we enter Phase 2, remember how silly you all looked when you all predicted the iPhone’s demise in that period before it went on sale.

Like the iPhone, the iPad is really a vessel, a tool, a 1.5-pound sack of potential. It may become many things. It may change an industry or two, or it may not. It may introduce a new category — something between phone and laptop — or it may not. And anyone who claims to know what will happen will wind up looking like a fool.

Widgets are a handy, easy and simple way to add some flare to your blog. Whether you’d like to display the number of currently online visitors to your site or simply the weather report for Los Angeles, you can do it with widgets. We’ve assembled a list of 50 useful or simply cool widgets for your pleasure. And remember, the first rule of widgetizing your blog is – don’t overdo it!

MyBlogLog’s Recent Readers – this widget can easily be called a hit amongst blog owners; its popularity even managed to convince Yahoo into buying MyBlogLog. The widget lets you see the avatars of recent visitors to your blog, provided they’re also members of MyBlogLog.

Mashable – get the latest social networking news from this very site.

Flickr Flash Photo Stream Badge – display images from your Flickr profile with a handy Flash photo stream.

Preview Anywhere – see a live preview of outgoing links in a small popup which activates on mouseover. Some find this annoying, while others might find it useful.

Twitter Badge – if your life is so interesting that everyone must know what you’re up to all the time, then aTwitter badge is the ideal counterpart to your blog. It’ll proudly displays your recent tweets.

Digg News – display the latest Digg links on your blog. Themeable and fully customizable.

FEEDJIT – real time traffic data directly in your blog’s sidebar.

LineBuzz – inline comments for your blog. Very handy for blogs with frequent lively discussions.

Flixn – display a stream directly from your webcam, so your blog visitors can always see what you’re up to.

3Jam – lets your visitors send messages to your mobile phone, without them knowing your phone number.

Jaxtr – with Jaxtr, your visitors can actually call you to your mobile phone; again, your number stays private.

LinkedInABox – show off your LinkedIn profile. Perfect for personal blogs.

Box Widget – enable visitors to use box.net’s online storage directly on your web site.

Price of gas – displaying gas prices on your blog might seem unnecessary to some, but it’s cool if you have a traffic/travel related blog.

iBegin Weather Widget – Display weather information in your sidebar. Just like with Price of Gas, works great with travel-related blogs.

ClockLink – display time in various time zones with these nifty Flash clocks.

Film Loops – display the latest loops from your FilmLoops account.

Daily Painters – display paintings from famous painters on your blog.

WhoLinked – show your visitors which sites have recently linked to your web site. Works with all major blog platforms.

Criteo AutoRoll – displays links to blogs similar to your blog.

Bitty Browser – embed a cute, fully functional mini web browser to your blog.

Leafletter – create a mini website and embed it into your blog.

WikiSeek – search Wikipedia with this simple widget.

FeedCount – show off the number of visitors to your blog with this handy little button.

Technorati Link Count – display the number of links your website has from one of the biggest blog authorities – Technorati.

MyPageRank – another good way to show how “big” your blog is is to show off your Google PageRank.

CheckPageRank – in addition to showing your PageRank, this widget also shows your Alexa ranking.

BlinkxIt – embed a link to related videos directly into your website.

Skype button – display your Skype online/offline status on your blog.

RockYou Horoscope – not something I would personally use, but some people are into horoscope. Hell, most people are into horoscope. Anyway, this widget shows horoscope (doh!) and does it in a nicely designed colorful box.

del.icio.us Tagometer – display how many times have del.icio.us users saved your page.

del.icio.us Linkrolls – this badge shows your latest bookmarks from del.icio.us.

Timelines – need to create a timeline? Seek no further. This widget makes it really easy.

PollDaddy – PollDaddy lets you create beautiful polls in no time, and display them at your blog.

Vizu – another poll-making widget, compatible with all major blog platforms.

AnswerTips – display definitions from Answers.com for various terms on your blog. The definitions are shown in bubbles which are activated on doubleclick.

AnswerBoxes – give your visitors a chance to enter a term themselves, and get a definition from Answers.com

Now Playing – if you got to share your current playlist contents with the world, Sigamp will do the trick. Works with most popular music players, including Foobar, Winamp, iTunes and others.

BuzzBoost – display headlines from your RSS feed on any website.

LibraryThing – show off the latest books you’ve been reading.

Plaxo Address Book – let your most faithful visitors access their address books direclty from your site.

AuctionAds – a widget that displays auctioned items on eBay, and gives you a percentage of the price paid when sometimes buys an item.

aStore – similar to AuctionAds, only for Amazon. Create a mini-store on your site and receive profit when someone buys an item through your store.

Plazes – show your current location on a Plazes map.

Stockalicious – track your portfolio with this widget, and share it with others. Let everyone know how much money you’ve lost.

Yahoo! For Good – create a charity badge and ask for donations for a worthy cause.

Giftspace – your friends never know what to buy you for birthday? Let them know what you really want with this nifty widget.

MixMap – see where are the visitors to your MySpace profile from on a map.

Google Map Widget – display a searchable Google Map on your website.

Google Video Search – add a video search form and selected videos to your web site.

Odeo player – display an Odeo player for and podcast right there in your sidebar.

Starting a blog can seem overwhelming, but in truth, it’s one of the simplest ways to join the online community. Follow these tips to ensure your blog is positioned for success.

1. Define Your Goals

Before you start a new blog, it’s essential that you define your goals for it. Your blog has a greater chance of success if you know from the beginning what you hope to accomplish with it. Are you trying to establish yourself as an expert in your field? Are you trying to promote your business? Are you simply blogging for fun and to share your ideas and opinions? Your short and long term goals for your blog are dependent on the reason why you’re starting your blog. Think ahead to what you’d like to gain from your blog in six months, one year and three years. Then design, write and market your blog to meet those goals.

2. Know Your Audience

Your blog’s design and content should reflect the expectations of your audience. For example, if your intended audience is teenagers, the design and content would be quite different than a blog targeted to corporate professionals. Your audience will have inherent expectations for your blog. Don’t confuse them but rather meet and exceed those expectations to gain reader loyalty.

3. Be Consistent

Your blog is a brand. Just like popular brands such as Coke or Nike, your blog represents a specific message and image to your audience, which is your brand. Your blog’s design and content should consistently communicate your blog’s overall brand image and message. Being consistent allows you to meet your audience’s expectations and create a secure place for them to visit again and again. That consistency will be rewarded with reader loyalty.

4. Be Persistent

A busy blog is a useful blog. Blogs that are not updated frequently are perceived by their audiences as static web pages. The usefulness of blogs comes from their timeliness. While it’s important not to publish meaningless posts else you may bore your audience, it’s essential that you update your blog frequently. The best way to keep readers coming back is to always have something new (and meaningful) for them to see.

5. Be Inviting

One of the most unique aspects of blogging is its social impact. Therefore, it’s essential that your blog welcomes readers and invites them to join a two-way conversation. Ask your readers to leave comments by posing questions than respond to comments from your readers. Doing so will show your readers that you value them, and it will keep the conversation going. Continue the conversation by leaving comments on other blogs inviting new readers to visit your blog for more lively discussions. Your blog’s success is partially dependent on your readers’ loyalties to it. Make sure they understand how much you appreciate them by involving them and recognizing them through meaningful two-way conversation.

6. Be Visible

Much of your blog’s success relies on your efforts outside your blog. Those efforts include finding like-minded bloggers and commenting on their blogs, participating in social bookmarking through sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon, and joining social networking sites such as Facebook,Twitter and LinkedIn. Blogging is not a demonstration of, “if you build it, they will come.” Instead, developing a successful blog requires hard work by creating compelling content on your blog as well as working outside of your blog to promote it and develop a community around it.

7. Take Risks

Beginner bloggers are often afraid of the new blogging tools and features available to them. Don’t be afraid to take risks and try new things on your blog. From adding a new plug-in to holding your first blog contest, it’s important that you keep your blog fresh by implementing changes that will enhance your blog. Alternatively, don’t fall prey to every new bell and whistle that becomes available for your blog. Instead, review each potential enhancement in terms of how it will help you reach your goals for your blog and how your audience will respond to it.

8. Ask for Help

Even the most experienced bloggers understand the blogosphere is an ever-changing place and no one knows everything there is to know about blogging. Most importantly, bloggers are part of a close-knit community, and the majority of bloggers understand that everyone is a beginner at some point. In fact, bloggers are some of the most approachable and helpful people you can find. Don’t be afraid to reach out to fellow bloggers for help. Remember, the success of the blogosphere relies on networking, and most bloggers are always willing to expand their networks regardless of whether you’re a beginner blogger or seasoned pro.

9. Keep Learning

It seems like everyday there are new tools available to bloggers. The Internet changes quickly, and the blogosphere is not an exception to that rule. As you develop your blog, take the time to research new tools and features, and keep an eye on the latest news from the blogosphere. You never know when a new tool will roll out that can make your life easier or enhance your readers’ experiences on your blog.

1. Advertising

Including advertisements on your blog is the most obvious way to derive an income from your blogging efforts. Ads can come in the form of text links or banner ads, and advertising options are available that you can easily tap into through pay-per-click, pay-per-post and affiliate programs online. Google AdSense, Amazon Associates, eBay Affiliates and Pay-Per-Post are just a few of the most common advertising programs available to bloggers.

2. Merchandise

Another simple way to monetize your blog is by selling merchandise through a service such asCafePress who will work with you to create custom items for you to sell through your blog.

3. Reviews

Bloggers can make money by reviewing products, events, businesses and more through blog posts.

4. Ebooks

A great way to bring in some revenue on your blog is by writing an ebook and offering it for sale through your blog. Ebooks are particularly successful for bloggers who have positioned themselves as experts in their fields and advertise their ebooks as additional or exclusive information just for readers of their blogs.

5. Donations

Many bloggers add a donation button to their blogs asking readers to make a monetary donation to keep the blog alive. Donations are also solicited with clever taglines such as, “If you like this blog, why not buy me a cup of coffee?” The donation link leads the reader to another website such as PayPal where the individual can easily make their donation.