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Showing posts from 2013

Fashion and Beauty Blogging: Look at 7 hard realities before you jump

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Updated in February 2019 It goes without saying that if you want to succeed as a blogger - whether in beauty or fashion or other niches - you will need to act professionally and take blogging as business rather than hobby . It is also expected that you are choosing the fashion niche for blogging because you are passionate about being fashionable and knowing the fashion trends, and you love looking beautiful. It is much better if you have the necessary skills in these areas. Though blogging into beauty and fashion looks easy - especially to beautiful ladies - bloggers face many challenges born out of very high competition form brands, retailers, fashion magazines and websites, beauticians and beauty parlors, and established bloggers.  It is not that you cannot succeed if you are starting a fashion blog now. You can indeed succeed very well. However, for that you should take the right steps and also be aware of the challenges so that you can tackle them effectively. Thi

Should I submit my blog to blog directories?

We got an email this week, reading like this: I have a blog where I am putting everything that I like, mostly music, children and travel, to different places within my state. Can you advise if I should submit my blog to directories. My friend suggested four good ones and I checked them and they are fine. Are Indian directories OK? We replied to the lady by email, and then thought we need to expand the subject and write a post on ITB. WHY SHOULD I SUBMIT MY BLOG TO DIRECTORIES? Of course you want to be discovered by others. This is more significant (i) if your blog is on a particular subject and (ii) if you want to make money out of it. For example, a blog on a research topic, photography, cooking... You want traffic. All bloggers want traffic unless someone wants to keep the blog hidden for a purpose. PLACES ON THE WEB, WHICH TAKE SUBMISSIONS

Beware of comment spam on blogs

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Bloggers love comments and we need not tell the reasons. And all bloggers hate comment spam: comments sent by people for the sake of advertising or link building or with some other motive. Unfortunately, many bloggers welcome all types of comments either without realizing that many of the genuine looking comments are not really genuine, or in the hope that a large number of comments is a mark of their blog's high popularity. On the other hand, may bloggers get so pissed off with unwanted comments that they make it difficult for a genuine commenter to give his feedback. What do they get by making irrelevant, irritating comments? Unscrupulous spammers comment on blogs with the misplaced hope that people will buy the product they shamelessly promote. At times, they are not the real sellers but an agency on their behalf; this agency convinces the seller about the usefulness of this type of commenting.  Spammers also flood blogs with comments to get backlinks (and so, more bac

5 habits for success in blogging

People start blogging under a variety of influences and with a variety of goals. Whatever the initial provocation, majority of bloggers either quit blogging altogether or reduce it  significantly. Some do so in six months, some in a year. Only about twenty percent of bloggers persist with blogging beyond a year. Yet at any given time, the number of bloggers and blogs is quite large: it includes a large number of those who are waiting to fall into low or no activity. There are two main reasons for frustration or boredom with blogging: One is that most of us bloggers take up this activity as a hobby; so when its initial charm recedes, we find it dull. Another big reason is that we expect too much from blogging in terms of popularity and/or money. When it does not happen, we take it as a waste of time. As we elaborated in this post on the love of blogging, one can gain a lot by way of professional reputation, expertise, personal growth, self-realisation, promotion of one's prod

Web design in Hindi blogs: common issues हिंदी ब्लॉग डिज़ाइन में खामियां

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updated in September 2020 हिंदी के ब्लॉगों की डायरेक्टरी संकलित करते हुए हमें करीब एक दशक हो चुका है और हम हर वर्ष यह देखते हैं कि हिंदी के ब्लॉगर लिखते तो अच्छा हैं लेकिन अपने ब्लॉगों में रंग या चित्र डालने और अक्षरों की फॉर्मेटिंग पर बिलकुल ध्यान नहीं देते या फिर उन्हें ऐसा कर देते हैं कि केशव की यह कविता याद आने लगती है: केशव केशन अस करी जस अरिहूँ न कराहिं...  इस लेख में हमने कोशिश की है कि हिंदी ब्लॉगों में प्रायः दिखने वाली डिज़ाइन की गलतियों की तरफ आपका ध्यान आकर्षित करें ताकि आप ऐसी गलतियां न करें. यह Web design in Hindi लेख  हिंदी और अंग्रेज़ी दोनों में है.  नीचे हमने A से G तक सात चित्र दिए हैं. सब किसी न किसी ब्लॉग के स्क्रीनशॉट हैं और हर चित्र में छोटे चित्रों का समावेश किया गया है, साथ में ज़रूरी टिप्स दिए हैं. बात हमनेब्लॉग्स की की है लेकिन ये टिप्स सभी तरह की हिंदी वेबसाइट के लिए उतने ही काम के हैं.  चित्र A को देखिए.  इसके मुख्य भाग में एक ब्लॉग का स्क्रीनशॉट है, जिसमें दर्जनों विजेट (Gadget), बैज या अन्य चीजें लगाई हुई हैं जिनसे ब्लॉग अजायबघर सा लगता है. दाहिनी ओर के छ

Protect your blog and computer against attacks

During our survey of the blogsphere for quality blogs, we are often faced with sites infected with malware. Thanks to very effective software on our computer, we have been able to detect and block them. We had quite a number of such attacks during the ongoing compilation of the Directory of Best Hindi Blogs and so comes this post. To our bloggers who are not technically oriented and who do not wish to invest thousands of rupees on paid anti-virus programs, we are recommending here four FREE anti-virus programs. Of these, the Microsoft Security Essentials comes free if you have genuine Windows installed on your computer / laptop. Otherwise you can download it from here:  Microsoft Security Essentials

Independent domain name and good website host are needed for any website's growth. That includes migration of existing blog...

This post is part of a series on web hosting and domain names . We keep updating these posts. This posts tries to practically show how website owners (especially bloggers on free platforms) can benefit from professional website hosting. The term 'website' includes all types of sites including blogs. Should I have an independent identity or place my blog on a separate web host or both? We’ll settle the hosting issue first. Blogger and Wordpress – also supported by third-party themes, plugins and widgets - provide enough design and hosting functionalities on blogs hosted on their servers. So, we will advise you to keep hosting your blog on their servers, unless you want to do one or more of these on your blog: maintain the blog on a long term and build a brand around it; promote yourself as a budding or established celebrity or expert; sell products or services through it; give it a very customized look and want to keep changing it; add a lot of matter that w

A good website host can do wonders to your blog!

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How website domain names and hosts work In a previous post, we discussed website domain names . OK, all websites need to have a domain name [web address] so that people can find them. But where does the domain sit and how a visitor gets to browse it? What are the ways to make it secure and big and prominent? That takes us to website hosting (or simply web hosting), which is the topic of this post. This series of posts are regularly updated. In these posts, we use the term 'website' to include all types of sites including blogs. Who hosts my blog xyz.blogspot.com? Google Inc., the owner of the Blogger platform, has placed your blog ‘xyz.blogspot.com’ on their servers. Similarly, xyz.wordpress.com is hosted on Wordpress servers. Google does not charge anything from me. If I create a blog xyz.com and ask Google to host it, will it host it free? There are web hosting companies [e.g. Bluehost.com ] that will host your blog / website but charge you for that. How is