10 Time and Space wasting widgets that you should remove

When we start our first blog, we usually put widgets as we like. We experiment some of them, trying to find out which one will make our blog look cool. During that time we always think about ourselves. 

But, if you wan't to make your visitors stay longer, you got to think about them and not about you

I have here 10 Time and Space wasting widgets that you should remove.

1. Calendar. This used to be fun when I was starting, because I always forget what date is today. But now, it took so much space, and it is useless. Everyone has a calendar in their home, so why put them on your site.

2. Recent Post. Add popular post instead, because recent post can be found easily on your blog archive.

3. Subscription count/RSS. I suggest not putting them on your blog if you only have a handful of followers. If you don't, it could work against you, readers will wonder why subscribing when no one else is doing it. 

4. "Hosted by" Widgets. Most visitors doesn't care who hosts your blog. And if they do, they're more likely to respond to a well-written review post about the pros and cons of your hosting service. If you want to make affiliate sales through your hosting provider, it’s a much better way to go about it than a standalone widget in your sidebar.

5. Blogroll/Link exchange. If you have link list of other blogs, I suggest put them on a separate page just like mine. Your sidebar should be reserved for more important things for the visitors to see. Having them clicked is not your priority, you just exchanged links with them.

6. Facebook Stream. Facebook page status update could be distracting to your readers. If you want them to become a fan, just make your own Facebook fan page.

7. Irrelevant Affiliate Advertisement. When I was starting, I used to be putting a lot of affiliate banners. For me, that time having a lot of Ads looks cool and alive. But now, they seems to be annoying, especially if those banners are not relevant to what you are blogging about. Just remember that people won't click on your ads because they're there, and having tons of ads will definitely irritate them not to click more. Relevance is always important and you should stick to it.

8. Blog Ranking. If you have an Alexa or Techonorati rankings widget, I suggest you put them on a separate page, because these rankings doesn't mean to your average reader. It is OK if you are blogging about blogs.

9. A lot of Social Sharing Button widget. I have seen some blogs that actually has social sharing widgets from A- Z.Put only those sites that most people use like Facebook, and Twitter, having Friendster or some unknown social networking sites will just be in display and no one will use them to share you blog contents.

10. Donation button. This widget will usually not work, because blogging is not about begging for money, it is about helping, and entertaining your readers. This widget will probably work if  you are blogging for a cause like, animal conservation or you run a site like Red Cross

Space is very important on your blog, just keep it simple and appealing to the eyes if you wan't your readers to stick longer.

Types of Blog that earn Money

Do you quit your job and wan't to make a living blogging? but, you are still trying to figure out what kind of niche to blog that can give you big bucks. And you want know what type of blog can earn money faster.

Blog is now a big trend on the Internet because many people has found a way to make a fortune out of it, with almost no investment and can give passive income.

To ensure success and money, you have to make sure you are in the right niche to begin with, so that failure won't be a problem, and all you need is a huge amount of hard work for your blog to be successful.

There are a lot of niche topics you can choose to start a blog with, but not all can generate any money because they are too specific. For example, a site that focuses on nail polish did not get much traffic, therefore limiting its income potential. But if that site becomes, not just a nail polish, but also a nail art, a nail accessories etc, it will be much more popular.

Just remember, when picking a niche, you must be interested in it. If you are not, then you won't put enough effort needed to make it successful.

And if you happen to be interested on one of these blog niche then I suggest start blogging. Because this type of niche will always be in demand forever.

Money and Finance

Money and Finance is of course the most profitable blog niche out there. Because everyone is looking to improve their finances, earn more money, start a business, job, or anything that involves money.

This will not only help your readers but also help yourself. And because you are teaching your readers how to handle their finances, you will know if it works because you need to try it for yourself first, before teaching it to others.

Health and Fitness

Based on the economic trend, the wellness industry will be the next trillion dollar industry. And entrepreneurs are looking for a way to get a piece of that trillion dollar (including me).

This kind of blog niche will be profitable no matter what year it is, even if the society or economic situation change.

There are a lot of targeted niche you can choose on this industry like, weight loss, exercise equipment, nutrition, diet, food supplements, skin care, and many more. It is very profitable because people will always be willing to pay in order to look and feel better and younger. A blog with this niche is a sure way to earn money.

Dating/ Relationships


As long as there are people in the world, there will always be a need for dating service. If you look in the net, there are thousands of these dating sites, and there is no stopping them.

Online relationship has been very popular these days, because of a growing number of people wanted to have a partner on another country.

Under this niche is relationship advice blog site, it is also profitable because our lives and happiness is so dependent on the relationships that we have with one another, there will always be money in helping people to connect with others and lead a more fulfilling live.

Make a professional looking Blog site

In this topic I will teach what you need to know for you to have a professional looking website or blog site. We all know from my past articles that content is the key for success in blogging. But, your blogs' design also plays a major part on having a successful blog.

The design of a blog often affects how a blog site can attract visitors and readers. It also has the power to repel or make them stay, thus how you customize your blog design can directly affect the success of your blogging career.

When we see a blogs design we can easily distinguish the beginner and the professional. But even for a beginner, you can make a professional looking blog.

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1. Make your site look and feel very important.

The look of your site makes the first impression on the readers and visitors. Make it nice, simple and clean. Use templates that has the right color combination or blends with its widgets and not something that hurts the eye. 

Most of us blog for money, right? I suggest wait for the right time putting advertisements, do not put any ads on your blog site. Let the readers read your articles without ads, sometimes, when a reader sees too much ads they instantly leave your blog site.

2. Put social Media Buttons.

Social media buttons are those icons of famous social networking sites. They are very useful in promoting your blog site. Users can easily Like or share your blogs content using those widgets. But, do not put all of those media buttons, I suggest you put only those famous social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkIn, Google+ so it won't take so much space.

3. About and Contact page
Have a proper About page – write about the site, yourself, the team, etc. Having a good About page lets you connect with your users and blogging is all about creating relationships. It also shows how serious you are about the site/blog you are running.

Instead of mentioning mailto links, have a contact page where users can fill a form and submit to send an e-mail. Doesn’t it sound nice and easy.

4. Edit your template
For beginners, customizing your template is a headache. But, based in my experience when I was a newbie, Blogger was the best for first timers because you can learn all by yourself. In blogger you can add and move widgets easily, and chose templates that will fit your style.

You can also customize a bloggers template by editing its html codes. But only for those who knows html. Make sure you backup or save your template regularly. If you really suck at designing you could always seek professional help. These are the pros, and they can give you a really good blog design just the way you want them.

5. Update Regularly
If you want your blog to grow and make money from it, you need to develop a consistent publishing schedule. Readers will visit your blog on a daily basis, looking for fresh and interesting content. If you don't publish regularly, visitors will take your blog lightly, and you must make them feel that this blog is really important. Consistent publishing is one way for readers to know that you are serious about your blog

6. Easy to navigate
Design your blog to have proper widgets, and make sure they are working properly. Put your popular posts and any other widgets that might help for easy navigation. Most readers are lazy, they wan't shortcuts. so give them shortcuts, put a sitemap or table of contents on your blog site, so that they can see all of your articles.

Make sure you use a font style that is easy to read and a font color easy to the eyes. We use our eyes for reading, so we must make our blog appealing to our eyes.

7. Annoying Pop-ups
This is one I hate the most, Pop-ups! they just appear out of nowhere, whenever you refresh your page, they appear again. Pop-ups ruin the professional image of your blog. Readers are there for your content and not for those pop-ups. Let the readers enjoy reading without distractions

What you need to know first before you start blogging

Blogging is the new trend in recent years, and people are so into it, using blogs for personal and business use. Through blogging we can do just about anything, from creating a company blog site to just a simple blog diary for ourselves. Millions of people has been blogging this past decade.

While it is fun to blog, there are some people who wan't to make a living for it. In blogging you can actually earn money, and I know some people who actually become rich for doing it. 

But, before you wan't to make this a career or you simply just want to become famous in the blogosphere, I have here tips on What you need to know first before you start blogging. And I want you to keep these tips in mind if you want to be a successful blogger.

1. Blogging is not a get rich scheme! You probably heard from other people, especially those successful bloggers that they make a fortune blogging. But unfortunately blogging is not a get rich scheme, you won't become rich after blogging for one week.

To become successful you need to be persistent, and you must prepare more than 1 year of hard work and learning without pay. That's right, no income for your first year or maybe more. Some new bloggers won't earn a cent during their first year as blogger. In my situation I only earn about $20 dollars in 1 year, and its kinda frustrating, but it didn't stop me from doing this.

If you want to have a reasonable income,you got to work hard, and it is the same as any profession. To be on top, you need a lot of hard working to do. 

2. Lazy people are not allowed. Successful bloggers are enjoying the benefits of passive income. They own their time and will only work if they want to. Sounds lazy right, but these people who are successful blogging has experienced sleepless nights working.

They made blogging a priority and even set a time when to post an article. If you are lazy and don't have the time to go to your computer and start writing killer articles, then blogging is not for you. You are better off with your day job.

3. Content, content, content! Blogging is about content, and content means writing, writing means hard work, hard work means success! For me, writing is hard, since I was in grade school to college I am one of those students who are lazy picking up the pen and write something in your notebook. And since I am a Filipino, I will have a hard time expressing my writing skills in English, that is why sometimes, I am having a hard time writing.

Content is your blogs life, if your content sucks, your blog sucks too, even if you have the best designed blog in the world but, with crappy articles, you won't become successful.

Just remember "content is the life of blog" and if you are having a hard time writing, there is always a way to learn, there are websites that teaches proffesional writing

4. It is not about you.Blogging is not about you, except if you own a personal blog where you just talk about yourself and your favorite things. If you are not running a personal blog, you need to put a certain limit to your personal stories that you share on your blog.

I am not saying you should not share your personal experience with your readers, but make sure you share only that personal experience that adds value, inspiration and enthusiasm to your blog readers. No one wants to be reading a post on your favorite nail color or what food you like to eat when it is raining, those are non sense article and will have no significance to your reader.

What readers want from you is to learn and entertain. So focus on those articles that readers really want and stop posting unnecessary articles.

Treat your readers like a customer, and you are the owner of a restaurant. You listen to your customers opinion and will do anything to give them contentment and satisfaction. 

And if a customer is satisfied they will come back for more and become loyal readers and followers. And these loyal followers will refer you to some of their friends and family, then, the rest are history... 

Finding and fixing broken links

In this lesson I will teach you about broken links. A broken link is a hyperlink which does not take you to the required page when you click it. Sometimes these links produces errors in your browser.

Why do we need to fix our blogs broken links? 

One of the main reasons why we fix it is to improve our page rank and improve our SEO. If a blog or website has no broken links, chances are for an improvement in pagerank.

Locating your blogs broken links

Locating our blogs broken links could be a pain in the butt, in the old days you got to click each and every one of your links to know if they are properly working and it will take you a lot of time. But now we have tools to search and find these broken links.

http://www.iwebtool.com/ and http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com are websites that lets you find those broken links in your website.

How to fix broken links

Most broken links can be found on links to other websites, guest comments, and images links. And all you have to do is to go to any of those two link checker websites and put your blogs' URL (ex. www.yourblog.com) and you will see lists of URL's that are broken. Now you can repair them or delete them.

1. From the link URL you can see the subject of the link within the body of the link.

2. Go to the page of your blog that you think or know the broken link is from. 

3. Click on the link and see if it is broken just in case you have not identified it correctly. 

4. Then you can either delete it completely or correct it by deleting the link and replacing it by a new working link. 

5. Once you have worked your way through the broken links on your blog, enter your blog name into Broken Link Checker again and re-check. 

6. The list of broken links should now all be marked with a tick, or if you have missed a few broken links repeat the fixing process as described above.

Once all the links has been fully repaired, you will notice and improvement in your ranking.

I suggest you do broken links checking and repairing once every month or every 2 weeks. If you miss maintaining it for a long time, you will probably have a lot of repairing to do. Just like in my first blog, I never checked its link for more than one year and now it has 55 broken links.

How to remove attribution widget

Are you annoyed that sometimes the attribution gadget gets in the way of your blog design?

Attribution is the one that says "powered by Blogger" 

This gadget is usually locked in most blogger templates, and I will teach you how to remove them on these simple steps.

1. Dashboard > Template >Edit html

2. Search using Control+ F >

     Look for this code

 <b:widget id='Attribution1' locked='true' title='' type='Attribution'>

  

    Replace true with false.

3. Now save the template.

Go to layout and look for the attribution gadget and then you can move it or remove it. 

How to update your feedburner feeds

You probably experience this kind of trouble; when you post something, it doesn't appear on your feed burner URL (example feeds.feedburner.com/NAME ). The problem is that your original Feed is not an archive it is just an update of your blog, and if your feeds exceed larger than 512K it will stop updating.

Try this on solving the problem.

If your feedburner is not updated try Pinging the feedburner, by just typing the feed URL.

If step 1 number will not work try these. 

Sign in to your FeedBurner account.
Click the title of your FeedBurner feed on the My Feeds page.
On the feed management page that appears, click the Edit Feed Details... link just below your feed's title.

In the Original Feed Address field, change the address listed there from an example like the following:

Code:

http://myblogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml

or

http://myblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

to the following format:

Code:

http://myblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?max-results=3


(Note that max-results sets the number of posts you want to have appear in your FeedBurner feed. Any integer value between 1 and 500 is permitted.)

Click Save Feed Details. Your changes are immediately applied and FeedBurner re-burns the newly shortened (or lengthened) feed.

For bloggers who write lengthy posts try experimenting with the max-results to keep feed file size under control. If you want to know the filesize of your feed go to www.web-sniffer.net and look at the report it returns; there should be a value in kilobytes for the size of your feed in an "uncompressed" format.

How to put ads on all your post

This tip is for bloggers who want to monetize their blog site. Placing ads is one of the ways for a blogger to earn money, they place ads for visitors to see and click. But ads should be placed carefully so readers won't get annoyed while reading.

One of the best way to place ads is by placing them on our blog posts, you can put them on top or you can put them below your posts you can even put them on the middle.

Before, we usually edit your blog templates and start messing with your html code, for beginners it is a hard task. But now putting advertisement in our daily post is now easy.

Heres how:

• Log in to bloggers.com
• On your selected blog, go to its main dashboard
• Go to "settings" and select "posts and comments"
• Your will see post template on "post" section
• Click the "add" blue button
• A blank space will appear, you put text or html code in it
• Go to your adsense account on  www.google.com/adsense
• Then get the code you want to put on all your blog posts, copy the entire html
• Then go back to "posts and comments" and click "post template" then place your adsense code on the blank space.
• Save your settings.

If you are going to post a new post, you will notice on its html part that it has already an adsense code, if you want to put it on the middle, simple click "html" when making a new post, before the adsense code put the center tag " <center>" and after it, end it with the end tag " </center>

note; for those who haven't qualified for adsense click here for my advice

How to Put Adsense on Single Post Only

Do you have your Adsense placed after your post title? And when you look at your home page you see Ads that takes up too much space. Having a mismanaged ads sometimes is annoying, you probably want to clear those unwanted ads that appear on your home page.

Adsense has a built in Options, but has limitations.

You Can't Put Adsense Ads Within Posts.
This is one of the limitations using a built-in Adsense gadget, you cannot place your ads within your post. You can only put them before, after between posts and in the sidebars. But not on your actual post.

Can't Use Channels.
In a Adsense gadget you can't use channels to track the performance of your ad units.
But there's another way, if you want to use channels, simply create your code on your Adsense account, copy paste the code into a JavaScript gadget, instead of using an Adsense gadget.

Put Ads within Post.
Now lets put your Adsense ads within your post. We won't use the Adsense gadget

1. Get your Adsense code from the Adsense website
2. Parse the code to replace special characters with HTML entities
3. In Blogger, go to Layout, then choose Edit HTML
4. Make a backup of your template by clicking Download Full Template
5. Click Expand Widget Templates
6. Search for <data:post.body/> or <p><data:post.body/></p>
7. Place your Adsense code on the line immediately above this
8. Save the template.

After the code has been place it will look like this

<div class='post-body entry-content'>
<div style='float: left;'>
&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;&lt;!--
google_ad_client = &quot;pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&quot;;
google_ad_host = &quot;pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx&quot;;
google_ad_slot = &quot;xxxxxx&quot;;
google_ad_width = 336;
google_ad_height = 280;
//--&gt;
&lt;/script&gt;
&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;
src=&quot;http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js&quot;&gt;
&lt;/script&gt;
</div>
<p><data:post.body/></p>   <---- the code we are looking

Then save the template.

Note: When you put code in you html editor always make it a habit to back up your template by downloading your template. So when an error happens you can always retrieve you template

What is a blog

You have probably heard from other people or on other websites about success on blogging. Many has become rich by blogging. They say they earn as much as $1200 a day, and all you have to do is blog 30 minutes a day.

Many People though online blogging is a get rich scheme. Well, its kinda true, there are people who finds success in blogging., and they become rich fast. But those people are very persistent.

Because of the hype, many people have tried blogging. When we see what they have like cars, mansions, wives, we always think " I want that, I want those". And they get rich by just being online like 30 minutes a day.

But first what is a blog?

What is a blog?
A blog (a blend of the term web log) is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. Blog can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Although not a must, most good quality blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and even message each other via GUI widgets on the blogs and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other static websites. In that sense, blogging can be seen as a form of social networking. Indeed, bloggers do not only produce content to post on their blogs but also build social relations with their readers and other bloggers.

Many blogs provide commentary on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries; yet still others function more as online brand advertising of a particular individual or company. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, Web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability of readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (art blog), photographs (photoblog), videos (video blogging or vlogging), music (MP3 blog), and audio (podcasting). Microblogging is another type of blogging, featuring very short posts.

As of 16 February 2011, there were over 156 million public blogs in existence.

for more go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog


I got some advice for new bloggers, so you won't get lost.

You Can't Make a Fortune Overnight. While some claims they did become rich overnight. As far as I know there is no business anywhere that could make you a millionaire the next day. Like I said before this is not a get rich scheme you have to be persistent to achieve success.


You Have to Work Without Income. Yes this is true, developing a blog takes time, effort and you have to sacrifice without pay for almost a year some takes longer. I know someone that takes 3 years before he receive his first pay check online. I did work on my blog for about 7 months without pay, now I have only $2 in my paycheck balance, isn't that frustrating. I did blog for 7 months but only get 2 dollars.

Be Persistent. You need this kind of attitude for you to achieve success. Quitting due to frustrations will not get you to the goal you always wanted. If you fail always try again, continue learning, absorb what you learn and never quit.

Have Fun Blogging. Actually blogging is fun, you design your own site, you can put any posts as you like, make friends, you can do anything and its quite challenging and fun. When you start blogging keep in mind that you do it for the love of blogging and it is fun, don't mind how much you will earn, because it frustrates us sometimes. Treat your blog like your online game character, that you always visit everyday, learn new things, and make friends online. Do it for fun and you won't be frustrated.

Have Something Original. Today there are millions of websites and blogs and having something original is kinda hard. And you will say its all been done before. Well, for me it is not true. Even if you know your field is saturated you can always put some twists in your own, that your competitor doesn't have.

Remember back in the day, when Myspace and Friendster ruled the Social Networking business. Mark Zuckerburg of Facebook has found a way that those two sites doesn't have, that makes Facebook unique. In the end FB has put those two out of business and forced to sell it.

You gotta have a long term Strategy.  If you want to make it online, you have to be focused to stay on the competition. With the technology, trends changes so fast you gotta keep it up and don't be left behind.

You don't have to be an expert about the internet. Actually anyone can do it, even our grandpa's can blog. You don't need to put animations in blog, make it simple and very easy for visitors to read. Just make your site user friendly and easy to navigate.

How to add widget on Blogger Header

On blogger, you probably tried and experimented with the blogger gadgets or widgets, they are very easy to use and you can drag them anywhere you want. Usually beginners rely more on adding gadgets on their blog rather than editing the html, so it might not confuse them designing their blog.

But there are lay out parts of blogger that you cannot add a gadget, like the Header bar. Most of us wanted to add more gadgets on the header bar so it can save some space, put advertisement or put your own banner as you like.
I searched the web and found some techniques but it requires html knowledge. For beginners you are kinda worried about editing your html for reasons of messing up you entire blog.

So I found this simple instruction.

Step 1. Click "layout" or "design" on the old blogger interface----> "edit html"
Step 2. Look for this code (hint: use control F).

              <div id="header-wrapper">

Step 3. You can find that tag in this section

<div id="header-wrapper">   <----- the tag we are looking for
<b:section class="header" id="header" maxwidgets="1"showaddelement="no">
<b:widget id="Header1" locked="true" title="Sample Blog (Header)" type="Header">
</b:widget>
</b:section></div>

Now the instruction is to change the tag number in blue color to how many gadgets you will add. 

Dont erase the " " tag, just enclose the number within the " ". On the red colored tag, just replace the "no" to "yes" tag.

<div id="header-wrapper">
<b:section class="header" id="header" maxwidgets="3"showaddelement="no">
<b:widget id="Header1" locked="true" title="Sample Blog (Header)" type="Header">
</b:widget>
</b:section></div>

Click save, and you will notice an extra gadget slot is added on the header. You can put as much as 5 gadgets

How to Blog

Blogging is the new trend on the internet, it is fun and  you can even earn money from it. Blogging is not journalism, so you can do anything you wan't from it as long as you don't violate any legal issues. You can also have friends and share ideas with other bloggers.

I wasn't a blogger until last year, just for curiosity i build my first blog http://dustent.blogspot.com/, it is not very professional but at least I created one and enjoyed while designing it. It took me months to add and understand how tags and widgets work. And even quit for about 5 months because I am running out of Idea.

But I have returned, because I won't fail my fans club, hehehe.

Anyway I will share you my first step on how to blog. Being a blogger doesn't need expertise on the field of website design, you just have to read more and understand how it works. And it is very easy, even grandpa can do it. Some of the most successful bloggers are oldies, although they are not very familiar with the internet, they became successful because of their experience and wisdom and they are willing to share it to the world.

These are the first step on how to blog

1. Go to blogger.com if you have a google account already, you won't need to sign up
2. Think, decide what you want to blog about. there are many blogs already, so if you wanna be noticed and successful, you gotta create something that you are very good at. If you are an architect, go create an architect type of blogs and show your design, don't blog about medicine  or agriculture.
3. Host or not to host. When you want to blog decide if you wanna host or use free domain names. Domain names are like from blogger (your domain name.blogspot.com) or weebly (your domain name. weebly.com), or you can choose wordpress free software because it is cheap, as low as $30 per year or get it for free.
4. Create your domain name. Domain names are your blog name.

Choose some of these where you want to create your blog:

Blogger.com
Wordpress.com
Weebly.com
Dreamhost.com
Godaddy.com

Now you have it the the first step on how to blog.