Get Fit as a Blogger

Blogging is a mind demanding job, but, what about our physical aptitudes? We know that path to success requires above ideas, money, and creativity: health. Blogger Lounge personal nutritionist gives us some advice to keep moving on the track of success, trying to keep the balance on the hours we spent writing and researching for our blogs and taking care of health issues. First of all:

Because physical activity is very important for cardiovascular health and preventing obesity: run, walk (if it is in treadmill, an inclination of 4% is very recommended), or get on the bicycle or cross trainer, for about 30 minutes, for the less, 3 days per weekend.

Never skip a meal. Try to make 3 of them: breakfast, lunch and dinner. It has been related that fasting increases the possibility of increasing fat tissue deposits in the abdominal zone, increasing as well the risk of suffering diabetes mellitus type 2, and other chronic-diseases as hypertension.

Determine the hours for you meals.

Remember that quality and quantity are the keys for a good nourishment . Try not to eat fast food items, as there are great fast recipes that you can prepare in less than 20 minutes for example: salads, sandwiches, rice soups, grilled chicken. If you are in a hurry and you cannot manage to prepare something, choose the healthier prepared food in the supermarket: food with more than 5 grams of fats per portion are high in it, watch out for the food that is low in sugar or has “no” sugar, some of them have fructose which is not the best option, nowadays, sucralose is the best one. Industrialized food and some light items are high in sodium- as it potentializes taste- that is why is not highly recommended.

Choose cereals that are high fiber. Oatmeal, without cooking is a very healthy cereal, as it prevents cardiovascular diseases, and retards hunger, so it you have it for breakfast- among fruit, milk, vegetables and a meat item- you will have lunch until the hour you have scheduled for you.

Choose pro biotic milky products. If you are more than 30 years old milk with 2% of fat is a good option.

Try to eat fish 3 days per weekend. Salmon is a great option as it has healthy fatty acids.

Include fruits and vegetables in every meal. You can eat them raw in salads, or cooked with little butter, or olive oil.

If you are craving, while writing, prefer eating fruit or vegetables; cucumber is a great option, as one portion is like 2 cups.Chewing gum is not recommended to “fade” hunger, it will cause you a blotted feeling and “tummy” pain.

Drink daily 2 liters of water.

Remember that diets are individualized. These are general tips for you to feel great! Keep on blogging!

One more time, thanks a lot Anne! LY

How to Analyze Your Competition

The following post is a compilation of techniques used to analyze other blogs or websites. This simple but effective strategies will help you understand and analyze other successful blogs. A successful business needs a great strategy, one of the best is to simply study how others are achieving success and how they are earning money.

When you analyze a competitors blog, you need to make sure you’re prepared to do the job correctly. Competitors blogs, if analyzed properly, can give you all sorts of information that you can use to increase the traffic, popularity and income of your own blog. You can use them to analyze your own market. If a blog gets a lot of hits it has to be doing something right. Check out where it is ranked, what key words it uses, how it is formatted, and what you can do to exemplify the good and filter out the bad.

Identifying the Leaders

This is the first thing you have to do. You need to start off by identifying the major players, a good place to do this is Technorati. Look for popular blogs. Also use this examination as an attempt to identify the niche markets that the major players have not identified and exploited. If you can find new niches you’re basically set as far as traffic goes.

Try to identify all places that the big guys hang out and start hanging out there. It’s all about who you know in this business so bigger is better. You might not be ready to play with the big guys, but the only way to get there is to sit down and give it a shot.

Analyze the Leaders

The next step is to study the top 10 competitors of your blog very closely. There is a lot that can be learned by looking at other blogs and analyzing them. These are the things that you should look for.

Check what kind of information they offer and how often they post new things.

Think about the look, feel and functionality of the blog, check the design.

See what advertising campaigns and offers they’re running.

Look at their strengths and weaknesses, from the reader´s point of view, check the comments.

Look at their strengths and vulnerabilities

Now, summarize the information you’ve found into a few sentences for each competitor, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each one. Try to write down your own strategy. With this research, you can create a marketing plan. Be sure to include how you intend to deal with competition, and what steps you think you’ll need to take for your blog to come out on top. Keep in mind that any subject can change over time, so be sure you keep up with the latest news.

How to Earn $100 per Day With AdSense

Making $100 per day with AdSense is not so difficult. Many bloggers and webmasters are making even more than that, believe me, much more. Reaching this amount each day may sound you almost impossible, but it is not, in fact many successful bloggers claim that they reached the $100 per day barrier just after 3 month of using AdSense (this is not a rule) on their blogs.

Now, if you want to earn $100 per day, this means that you´ll be making about $3,000, which is a very healthy income. This is supposing that your blog makes you this amount each day, what I´m trying to say is that your earning may vary. In this post I want to explain you two different scenarios about how to make $100 per day with this program.

Scenario 1

Of course you need high quality content, for a blog let´s say you need about 100 posts about a good topic, look for some good keywords to use in your posts. Now, I said 100 posts because your blog needs a base for your readership, your visitors need something to read obviously. In this scenario we are going to suppose that your website or blog displays normal price keywords with an average of $0.10 per click, there are many paying this amount.

Update frequently. Write at least 4 or 5 posts per week. Your readers expect that you update your blog with new things each day. If you are going to write just 5 posts per week try to leave 1 or to for the weekend because many people read blogs during the weekends so you should give them something to read. The same thing if you have a normal site, try updating it frequently, add new articles each week.

Traffic. That´s right, this is maybe the most important ingredient in the list, because you need readers and visitors to click your AdSense ads. If you have a 3% CTR which is ok, you´ll need about 33,333 page impressions. A lot? It is, but if most readers view 3 pages per visit this means you have to receive 11,100 unique visitors daily.

Clicks. If you want to make $100 bucks a day you´d have to average 1000 clicks daily for a blog or site using $0.10 keywords, or 2000 clicks if you are using $0.05 keywords.

Don’t forget positioning, blending and optimization. Promote your blog or website. Let´s take a look to another scenario.

Scenario 2

Your blog must have more than 100 high quality posts (or articles if you own a normal site). Why? The same reason as in the first scenario, your readers need something to read. This time try to find some high paying keywords, this time let´s assume you are using keywords paying an average of $0.50 per click. You still have to update your blog constantly, remember 4 or 5 posts per week, more would be better.

Traffic. With the same CTR, 3% , you need 6,666 page impressions generated by 2,200 unique visitors each day.

Clicks. Your blog or site needs an average of 200 clicks per day. Nice, right?

Remember that you have to focus on traffic, content and optimization. Promote your blog, take care of your readers, write good content and always implement new optimization techniques for your AdSense ads.

Top 10 Most Valuable eBrands

Did you know that a great brand can have a market value of several billions? Amazing right? And I´m not talking about the whole company, forget about the assets, buildings, machines and other things, I´m talking about the intangible stuff, the brand, the name, the logo and the company image. It is the brand the one that gives a face to the company, it is the brand the one that fights every day in the battlefield of business. On the Internet it is not enough to have a good website or a good blog with tons of articles if you don’t have a good brand, no one is going to know you exist and no one is going to remember who you are. Thousands of millions are spent each year by global companies to maintain and to improve their brands. Ok, enough explanation about the importance of a brand, let´s go straight to the point. In this list we include online companies as well as those that have been playing an important role on the Web for more than 5 years. Here it is, the Top 10 most valuable eBrands list. (According to Interbrand)

1.Microsoft ($56,926 million)Top 100 brands rank: 2

2.Intel ($32,319 million) Top 100 brands rank: 5

3.Hewlett-Packard ($20,458 million) Top 100 brands rank: 13

4.Google ($12, 376 million) Top 100 brands rank: 24

5.Dell ($12, 256 million) Top 100 brands rank: 25

6.Oracle ($11,459 million) Top 100 brands rank: 29

7.Apple ($9,130 million) Top 100 brands rank: 39

8.eBay ($6,755 million) Top 100 brands rank: 47

9.Yahoo! ($6.056 million) Top 100 brands rank: 55

10.Amazon.com ($4,707 million) Top 100 brands rank: 65

84 Great Looking WordPress Themes

Sven Lennartz and Vitaly Friedman of the Smashing Magazine have a great compilation of some really great themes for WordPress, the post is called “83 beautiful WordPress themes you (probably) haven´t seen” they are actually 84.

I found this list really useful for those who want to give their blog a new fresh look. Take a look at the list and download the one you prefer, as they say: “All themes offer quality, elegance and a user-friendly interface”. If you don´t want to mess with layouts and stylesheets, this is a good option.

How to Write Killer Posts

Hi There!. The following post includes 4 fantastic tips on how to write killer posts for your blog, they really work, I´ve seen posts out there that really catch my attention, after some research I conclude that these are maybe the main tips on how to do that with your own posts, I hope you implement them in your blog, you´ll see the results. Follow these tips on each post you write.

Write killer-attention-grabbing headlines

Since your title is what’s going to attract most people to read your article, you need to work on creating a killer headline. One that’ll stand out from the rest and grab the reader’s attention. Some great pointers when it comes to creating a killer headline include usage of the following phrases – How to, Discover, Attention, Did you know, etc, etc. Titles containing these words have always proved effective, so it’s a good idea to follow this technique.

Do research to see what are you going to write about

Subscribe to as many blogs as you can related to what you are blogging about to receive their feeds, by doing this, you´ll be able to see what are the latests topics and news, Don´t copy, this is just to give you an idea on what you should be blogging about. Subscribe also to newsletters, most of them are weekly or monthly newsletters, so this is another way to get ideas for your posts. Let me give you an advice, do research every night, let´s say 3o minutes to 1 hour, write down your ideas, and start writing your posts the next day.

Make sure your posts are keyword-rich

It’s always better if you can incorporate keywords into the posts you write. You need to place that keyword in your headline, in your intro, and you’ve also got to maintain a keyword density of around 2-3% in your paragraphs.
why? Search engines rate your post or article according to its keyword density. Also, if readers type in the keyword term matching yours, your article is likely to come up in the top 10 results. When they click through to read it, and then visit your blog thereafter, you’ll be generating targeted traffic…and hopefully some money.

Create small and direct posts

Small posts are easier to read and easier to remember, most readers like to read small and direct posts. Sometimes I tend to write long posts because I want to give you all the information I can, anyway, what I´m trying to say is that most of your posts (not all) have to be small and direct, lets say about 250 to 350 words. I´ve seen blog posts with more than 2,000 words.

Use paragraphs

This may sound a little bit strange, but readers hate posts where all the information is contained in just one paragraph, its harder for them to read and to scan, organize your posts so that your readers can understand it.

Add your style

What´s this? Well, what I´m trying to say is that always use the same format and the same style for your posts, if you are going to use add your signature at the end of a post use it at the end of all your entries, that´s just an example, if you already have a style for your posts stick to it.

Professional WordPress Themes

WordPress is a very powerful blogging tool. Do you remember all those posts about blog design and about the importance of having a good image? Well I found some very nice themes for your WordPress blog you have to pay between $50 to $60 per template but it´s worth it because they have a very professional look. So if you want to have a great looking blog invest a little. Template Monster has a huge collection of templates just for bloggers with different designs, just select the one that fits your needs and download it.

If you want to include AdSense ads or other ppc advertising in your blog remeber not to use a template that uses flash because AdSense does not support this kind of technology. Here are some designs I liked because of their layout and color combination. I hope you enjoy them.

10 Famous Quotes About Dreams

I´m not talking about the dreams you have when you are sleeping, I´m talking about the kind of dreams that can make you fly and that you have even when you are awake, yes, those in which you believe and that sometimes can make us cry. We all have dreams, some of us dream about success, money, love, wealth; others dream about having a nice house, the perfect wife, the perfect job, who knows?!, I don´t have to continue with examples , you have your own dreams. Well enough talking, here are some very inspiring quotes about dreams. I´m going to begin with my favorite.

1. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams” – Eleanor Roosevelt

2. “All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.” – Orison Swett

3. “A man’s dreams are an index to his greatness” – Zadok Rabinwitz

4. “A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams” – John Barrymore

5. “Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.” – Unknown

6. “Help others achieve their dreams and you will achieve yours.” – Les Brown

7. “Dreams do come true, if we only wish hard enough, You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.” – Sir James M. Barrie

8. “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” – Anatole France

9. “Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.” – Goethe

10. “I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” – Henry David Thoreau

If you know another good quote about dreams please let us know in your comments.

How to Categorize Your Blogger Blog

Blogger is a great tool to start blogging, but when it come to functionality and features it is a little bit obsolete. For all newbies, blogger seems to have all the necessary features and tools for a blog, and that´s ok, I mean, when I first start blogging I was using this platform. But for those that know more about blogging and all that stuff, Blogger needs something more, like for example: “labels” you can add labels to your posts with the new Blogger but you can´t add categories, like in other platforms, for example: WordPress. In a blog it is very important to categorize each post, because this improves navigation and functionality, your readers will be more comfortable and they´ll know exactly where a post is.

In this post I want to show all Blogger users, how to add categories to their blogs using a very simple but effective technique. I remember some posts explaining how to add categories ,but using an application that it seems to be no longer available, it was (or is, I really don´t know) called Labelr. Since there is not another tool to categorize posts in Blogger let me show you the technique I used when I had a blogspot blog, it worked for me, it is a bit different than other techniques but it solves the problem.

Create all categories

First of all go to your dashboard and select the blog you want to categorize.

When you are in the control panel of your blog, select the tab to “create” a new post.

What you are going to do now is add the title for your category, something like: “Category: Money Making Techniques”.

In “Post and comments options” set your post to an earlier time, maybe five months ago and disallow comments for that entry.

Now publish the post, and thats it, do the same for each category you want in your blog.

Add categories to your template

Once you´ve created all your categories, go to the “Template” tab and start adding the links to your template, wherever you want them to appear.

Save changes and republish.

Categorize your posts

To file an entry under a certain category just copy the post´s URL and go to edit the post of the category you want.

Where you write the content of the post, write the title of the entry you want to categorize, and add the link.

Save and publish one more time.

Do the same process with each post in your blog, this will take time but it´s going to make a big difference in your blog.

As I said this technique worked for me, there are other ways, here are some links where you can find different techniques to add categories to your Blogger blog.

Li-Zhao has a great post on the same topic, it is more like a hack, it seems very simple to use, try it.

Karl Bunyan of the K! Blog has another great post about this.

WordPress 2.1 Released!

At last! New version of WordPress is officially out! WP 2.1 was released one week after version 2.0.7. This new tool includes new features, let´s take a look at them.

Autosave – forget about losing your posts, this new feature, saves your drafts frequently.

Tabbed editor – You can switch easily while writing a post from a WYSIWYG to coding edition.

Improved Upload manager – You can easily upload and manage your images. You can also edit the image attributes after the image is uploaded.

New visual Editor interface – This new version comes with a new interface that allows you to switch from one tab to another while you are writing your posts, tabs are: visual and code.

Spell Checking – The visual editor includes now the spell checking feature.

Pages can now be drafts or private.

Privacy – Most bloggers are not going to find this feature useful because most of us want exposure not privacy, but this new feature allows you to block your blog for search engines and directories. Who wants that?.

Comment Feeds – This new feature now includes all comments and not just the last 10.

Well these are some of the features of the new WordPress 2.1 check the webiste to know more or go straight to the download page.

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