Blog Stats

Stats are very important to analyze your traffic and to know how your blog is working, there are many free stat services that offer you a great range of features that help you successfully analyze your blog or website. If you want to be a professional blogger and make real money then you need something to measure your traffic. Some of the features of these services and tools are:

Hit counters: This feature gives you a report about how many hits your blog or website receives during a certain period of time, lets say hits per day or hits per month or total hits.

Visit counters: This special feature reports how many visits your blog or website received during a certain period of time, some of them are real time counters, this means that they are updating constantly and giving you a general report at the end of the day.

Referrers: This nice feature allows you to analyze where your traffic is coming from, you can actually see if your readers come from a search engine or form another website.

Keyword analyzers: This feature gives you a report about which keywords where used to find your blog or website.

Users Online: When this feature is enabled gives you a constant report on how many users or readers are reading your website or blog in that exact moment.

If you use a statistic system for your blog and if you analyze your traffic and your readers then you would be able to apply new strategies and your blog is going to grow along with your income. Take a look and use these free professional stats analyzers.

Blog Patrol: Measure your blog stats with these free ready to use counters and tools.

MapStats: Track your visitors and submit your blog.

Histats: Very useful statistic software for website and blogs, track your visitors, analyze your traffic and predict it.

Free-Counter: Get free counters and stats for your blog or website and add your blog to their directory.

Stat Counter: Very reliable tool to analyze your traffic with invisible counters.

ShinyStat: Real time counters and traffic reports for your blog or website.

FeedBurner: Attract readers and analyze your subscribers.

How to Setup a WordPress Blog

Blogging has become one of the most popular activities on the Internet, for many bloggers it is a way of life and a way to make money . The numbers of blogs has increased because now it´s easier to create and manage one. There are new tools and platforms that can help people to create and edit their own blogs, most of them are free services. Some of the best platforms are WordPress and Blogger, both of them are very popular and useful, as you can see Blogger Lounge is powered by the first one. This time I´m going to explain you how to setup a WordPress blog. Here is what you have to do.

Check web hosting requirements. First of all you have to ensure that your hosting provider supports PHP and MySQL database. PHP version has to be at least 4.2 and MySQL 4.0. Here is the link where you can see the requirements, you can ask your provider for more support.

Download WordPress. You can download the script from the website for free. Save the “.zip” file on your hard disk and use something like WinZip or WinRar to unpack the files to a temporary folder.

Now, rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.

Then open this file in your favorite text editor (like Notepad).

Now edit the next variables:

The name of the MySQL database (create a new one using your web hosting control panel in case you had never created it before).

Your database username, password and MySQL database server (usually localhost).

Now upload all files to your web host. Point your browser to /wp-admin/install.php and follow the instructions on the screen. During the installation process the admin password will be generated. Take note of his password because you will need it in the next step.

Another and easier solution on how to install the PHP script is to sign up for a quality web hosting service which offers pre-installed PHP scripts. Then easily go to your control panel, find the section with pre-installed scripts and select WordPress. The installer will do all the job for you. All you need to do is to choose the script you want to install.

Now the setup

At this point the script should be successfully installed. Point your browser to wp-login.php file in your WordPress folder and sign in with the username admin and the password generated during the installation (this password can be changed from the Profile section at any time).

Remember that the design of a blog is very important. For this reason WordPress offers the option to change the layout. Here is a post where I give you some great links and resources where you can find the best WP themes. Once you have a theme, upload the files to wp-content/themes/your-new-layout-name folder. From the Presentation section select your new theme and activate it. Now your blog has a new look and you are ready to start blogging for money (or just for hobby)!

Blog creation Process Overview

This is a posts that summarizes the entire process to create a professional blog, many successful bloggers use this same technique. This is going to give you a clear idea about how your blog should be developed. My advice about this post is: “Always stick to your schedule.”

Step 1

The brainstorm. Sit down in a comfortable place of your house and start thinking ideas for your new blog, writte them down, all of them. No matter how crazy it might sound. I recommend you to research a little to know which topics are the best and which ones are the most profitable ones.

Step 2

Decide which tools you are going to use to edit and manage your blog. If you haven´t alredy. There are many good options out there choose the one that best fits your needs, here in Blogger Lounge you can find information about software and tools for blogs.

Step 3

Now decide what blogging platform your blog will use, you can choose between Blogger, WordPress and Movable Type, each one of them offers different features but all of them are very useful. After you decide which service you are going to use sign up for an account and select a good title for your blog.

Step 4

The following step is design, choose the design the best fits your needs, some platforms like Blogger and WordPress have very good looking templates you can also search for more using Google, just search for something like: “ Free Blogger Templates” or “WordPress Themes” there are hundreds of free designs, remember that a good blog design has to fill some requirements. This step also includes the design of logo and some graphic elements.

Step 5

At this point you already have your account, all the tools you are going to use and your template, now what? Well now it´s a good time to start writing content for your blog, but, why do you have to write content before you set up your blog? Because in order to start getting visitors and readers you need something to catch their attention, no one is going to visit your blog if you don´t have something to show. So write between 4 or 5 high quality posts about the hottest thing of the moment and you´ll be getting more and more visits each time you posts something new.

Step 6

Ok, now it seems that you have everything ready. At this point you can start building your blog, add all elements together, upload your images and your first entries. It is time to promote your blog, start submitting your blog´s URL to each directory you find and to the major search engines, posts comments on other blogs and invite readers to visit your own site.

Step 7

Now your everything should be working just fine. Your blog is ready and running, maintain it and make it grow, post frequently and take care of your readers, enjoy your new baby and watch him grow!

What is a Blogger?

A few years ago I couldn´t possibly imagine that I was going to become a blogger as a matter of fact I didn´t know what that means. I remember that the first time I heard the word blogger was in 2003 while reading an article, Anyway, let me give you a brief description about what a blogger is, but first here are some definitions from experts.

Radio Docs says: “A blogger is someone (anyone) who posts to their own weblog” simple, right?

Technorati says: “A blogger is someone who writes a blog.” Another simple explanation.

Smart-Shop says: “A blogger is an individual who maintains a web log [...]There are some bloggers who write for themselves. But there are millions of others who want their writings to be noticed, and commented upon. It is this passion that makes blogging such an exciting and obsessive activity.”

Now comes my own definition, I define a blogger as a person who creates and shares information (posts) with others through a blog about a particular subject, a blogger is not just a profession it is a way of life. That´s all I have to say about what a blogger is. Share your own definition with us.

How to Choose a Profitable Name for your Blog

Choosing a domain name for your blog is a very important and tough decision, and should not be taken lightly. A bad choice of name could seriously affect the potential profitability of your online business, and prevent it achieving as much success as it should do.

There are many factors you should consider when selecting a domain name for your blog, as you can see many successful blogs have simple and direct names, if your blog is about cars then you need a name that reflects that, you don’t need something like. www.myblog123.blogspot.com, remember that simple and direct names are more successful and profitable.

First of all , you should try and include your main keyword in your name ans see if the domain is available. This will keep your site optimized for the search engine rankings, because search engines generally rank websites and blogs slightly higher if they include their main keyword in their domain name.

Ideally it should be relatively short and easy to remember. Try to keep them as short and as memorable as possible. If the name you are looking for is not available any more you can add a dash between your keywords. If you cant find a good name using the .com suffix you can also choose one like .net. A good name is essential if you want to make a successful blog.

How to Hide the Blogger Navbar

Ok bloggers, lets say you have a Blogger blog and you already have some published posts you have a descent number of readers but, your blog still looks like, well, like a “Blogger Blog”! why? because it still has what it is called the Navbar, you know, the one that has 50 pixels high and spreads across the entire width of the browser window, the one that has a search field and all that stuff. Well let me give you a tip to remove or just to hide that annoying thing.

They allow you to change the color of the navbar to match the design of your blog, but that doesn´t solve the problem, your blog is still marked as a “Blogger Blog”. Blogger has to mark all blogs that are powered by them but I think it is enough if you have a button that links to them or something like “Powered by Blogger”. Follow this simple steps to successfully remove the navbar. With this technique your blog is going to look more professional.

1. First of all go to your blog´s control panel.

2. Go to the “Template” section and save template changes.

3. Now copy and paste the following code in your template as it is shown here.

<style type=”text/css”>

#b-navbar {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none
}

</style>4. Now save Template changes and republish.

This simple code should solve the problem ,if you did it well you might notice that now you have a gap between the header of your blog and the top of the page, if that´s the case let me give you a solution for that.

Insert the  code in your Blogger template as it is shown just after the “body” tag , save changes and republish.

body
{
margin-top:0px;
}

Now you should have a professional looking blog without the annoying navbar.

Email Subscription Services

Everyone owns an email account, then ,why not promote your blog via email? This will help you to increase the number of subscribers of your blog and will also allow you to deliver a newsletter to each subscriber. This tools enable you to send your readers a daily, weekly or monthly summary of your latest posts right into your visitor´s inbox.

Email subscription is very important for blogs because this will also increase the loyalty of your readers that will be waiting for the next update of your blog. These tools enables you to manage you email subscribers and to design your own newsletter to match your blog´s design. Another advantage of this applications is that you will be able to schedule your newsletter for a certain day, week or month. Here is a list of some free and useful email subscription services. Enjoy them.

Zookoda: Is a free email marketing application specially designed for bloggers with many features like real time reports and broadcasts.

FeedBlitz: A leading blog and rss email subscription service, boost your readership!

Mailer4U: Create and send newsletters via email.

ListPower: Is a free mailing list manager that enables you to send a custom newsletter to all your subscribers.

Polls for Blogs

Have you ever participated in a poll? I´m sure you have, even if you just saw it on a website and you answered in your mind. The truth is that online polls are a very good way to increase visibility, interest and traffic, they can boost your number of readers and attract more. If you own a website or a blog you can make a poll about anything you want, money, business, favorite place, favorite color or favorite car, anything. Online polls are also a very useful statistic resource because you can analyze the results and see how your readers and visitors think or what they need.

Make polls in your blog and you´ll see the response of your readers you´ll also increase your traffic and you can analyze your results. Here are some free resources and tools to create, manage and analyze polls.

Polldaddy: Offers free online polls for your blog, just copy and paste the code wherever you want the poll to appear.

Pollverize: Create as many polls as you wish.

Easy Poll: Create and manage your polls.

Snapoll: Change colors and layout of your polls and use them in your blog.

Vizu: Create polls for your blog readers and for your email subscribers.

Ballot Box: Keep your visitors coming back to see your polls.

Poll Pub: Create your own free polls and contest for your readers.

Remember that the use of polls is a very successful strategy to draw visitors to your blog.

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