Starting A Blog

How To Create A Free Blog On BlogSpot Platform Just In Few Minutes

By Ashutosh Jha → Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Having a blog of your own is a great thing as you can share anything you like and if you are among the few people who have the dream to be your own boss and want to live through online earning, blogging is the best way.

Today I am going to show how you can create your own blog just in few minutes and that too without spending a single penny. My favorite is to have blog on custom domain but initially you can try on blogspot. So let's start with how to create a free blog on BlogSpot.


There are many blogging platforms where you can create a blog for free but among them I feel BlogSpot as best. Few others are –

• Wordpress.com
• Pen.io
• Anchorcms.com

But many newbie who doesn’t want to spend money initially and would like to enter into the fabulous blogging world, BlogSpot.com is the best option. And once you are good in blogging either you can choose a custom domain for your blog or you can move the blog to self-hosted platform also.

BlogSpot let you create a free blog but it has few limitations but as a beginner it will not affect you. So for a starter it’s a good idea to create a free blog and get the hitch of blogging.

Note: BlogSpot.com blogging platform is a Google product which enables you to create a free blog with the blog extension blogspot.com or blogspot.in and all the images are getting hosted through Picasa, which is also a Google product.

This post is dedicated to the people who are new to the blogging world and want to start their own blog where he can continue with their dream. So now let’s come to the points. Below I am going to explain the step by step procedure to create your first blog.

Step by step guide to create a free Blog on BlogSpot

To create your first blog, just go through the www.blogger.com url and login with your Gmail credential. If you have not registered with Gmail, just do it for free and it’ll not take more than 2 minutes. Once you are logged in to your blogger.com, it will ask for your identity as would you like to use Google+ profile or want to set a limited identity for blogspot. Here I would suggest you to go with the Google+ profile and then continue. And you will get the screen something like below-

Step 1: The above image shows that you don’t have any blog with you right now. So let’s create it. Click on the “New Blog” button showing on above image and give the title for your blog and the domain name that you want for your blog and click on create it.

Step2: Now you have just registered a domain with BlogSpot but your blog is not ready. At this time you will be at the blogger dashboard (this is the backend of your blog). Now either you can continue with the limited blogger basic templates or choose your own templates from the net. There are many good looking templates are available free of cost for blogger.

Recommended: How to select an effective template for your blog

Now download any template for free. But the premium template is always the best due to its feature. You can get a premium template free of cost just by subscribing us. After subscription of TricksRoad, just drop us a mail and will send you a free premium template and will also guide you, in case of any difficulty.

So for now, select any template from the internet and install it. Go to the dropdown in the below image and select “Template”.

Now go to the top right corner and select Backup/Restore option. A pop up window will get open here. Now browse the xml file of your template and upload it. With this you are done with the template installation.

At any points of time you can view your blog, just by clicking “View Blog” button at the top of the dashboard.

Step 3: Now first create few pages for your blog like About us, contact us etc. For this go to “page” option and select “Create A New Page”. Give the title and content and then publish it.

Step 4: Now create few posts for your blog. Just go to the post option and create a new post. Write the content and publish it. So now your blog is ready. If you want to add few gadgets like subscribe option, popular posts etc. follow few more steps.

Step 5: Adding Gadgets:

Go to the “Layout” section.

And click on Add Gadgets. To add subscribe option, select the “Add a gadget” from top right and from a blogger list, add subscribe option. Similarly do for other gadgets also (a guide to customize the template will be available with the template).

Now with this, you have created a good blog for you and you are having few posts also. Add some more posts and do some basic SEO like bookmarking. After this you will be getting few initial traffic. Then apply for the Earning.

Earn from blog:

Go to Earning tab and select AdSense.

Signup for the AdSense and once your account will get approved, you will be earning from your blog.

Recommended: 12 killer tips to earn more from AdSense

So friend this was all about creating your first free blog. This was for those readers who don’t have a blog and want to create one. So just follow the above steps and get a blog right now. The whole process won’t take more than an hour.

If you liked this how to create a free blog on blogspot post, please don’t forget to share it on Facebook, twitter and do subscribe our newsletter for the updates and freebies.

Blogging Resource

A Guide to Guest Blogging Backlinks for 2020 and Guest Post Services

By Ashutosh Jha → Tuesday, March 17, 2020

If you have not thought about giving guest blogging a try until now because you are not that great at writing optimized content, you should know that you don’t have to be. There are guest post services that you can invest in so that you could build backlinks without needing to do any of the hard work.

This means that you don’t even have to contact actual webmasters when it comes to ensuring that your blog post is published on their site. This whole situation is a complex one that must be handled with care because, if you end up publishing content on a poor quality website, your ranking will be affected.

How can you invest in guest post services?

The process is actually quite simple. You just need to find an SEO agency that can also help you with this sort of service. This means that they will be using their SEO writers to ensure the content is of the highest quality, relevant, SEO optimized and contains backlinks to your website.

It’s great to know that they will also talk to webmasters on your behalf so that they can publish the piece you have paid for on high authority websites.

But, before making this kind of decision, it would be best to learn exactly what guest blogging entails, how it can be done, where you can find the right opportunities and much more.

What are your guest blogging goals?

It would be useless to consider writing a guest blog article and not have specific goals in this matter. When you talk to the right guest post services provider, they will make sure that the end result is one that will match your goals.

But, first, you need to set them. Guest blogging without a specific purpose will not help you accomplish anything. Maybe you want to establish yourself as an authority in your field. Maybe you want more traffic.

Maybe you just want to build backlinks for your site. What if you want all three of these goals?

Fortunately, with great content and proper SEO tactics, nothing is impossible! It would be recommended that after you decide exactly what you would like to achieve, you look into the pros and cons of doing this guest blogging gig yourself.

Where can you come across guest post blogging opportunities?

It’s essential to understand that the blogging opportunities for your website are completely different from the ones for a website that belongs to another field. There are certain things you should look for in a blog where you would like to have your content published. First of all, the site must be related to your niche.

At the same time, their readers should be interested in your field. You should check whether there are many readers following the activity of the blogger and if said blogger is active on social media because that can let you know whether your content will be promoted or not.

When you outsource this need, you will not have to worry about looking for these opportunities yourself. You just need to keep your website optimized and ready to welcome more traffic.

Although you might be focusing on guest blogging, other SEO aspects should not be overlooked because your link building work depends on them.

How can you prepare your pitch?

If you have found a blog that seems to be just right for your guest blogging activity, it would be recommended that you don’t go straight to contacting the owner of the website. Instead, you make sure that you know exactly what the blog is about and what sort of content they publish – whether it is general, for beginners or even in-depth pieces for specialized audiences.

If they already have other guest pieces, you should make sure that you learn more about their performance. Are they accepted and read by the public?

Find out more about the guest bloggers that have already had their content published so that you can know exactly how to introduce yourself when you want to contact the owner of the blog.

How do you know it’s time to pitch?

Take a closer look at your own website first and make sure that it will leave the best impression not only to visitors, but also to crawlers.

After all, getting a better ranking depends on how search engines perceive it based on the 200 plus ranking factors they consider when displaying search results.

Now, if you have already made a name for yourself, it might be easier to have your guest post accepted if you react when you are mentioned on one of their lists or one of their blog posts or even when they publish a new guest post written by someone else.

Sometimes opportunity find you, but other times, you need to be the one looking for opportunities or – better yet, leave it to the right SEO agency to do it for you.

Best practices for approaching blog owners

If you are not that good with rejection, you have to make sure that you know exactly how to get in touch with blog owners so that they don’t turn you down or ignore your email. As long as they have posted guest posts on their blogs, you will most likely come across some guidelines written for guest bloggers.

Make sure that you pay attention to the information you find there. Read it carefully and then go straight to learning more about the others that have had their posts published. Are they all bloggers or consultants or something else?

Take a hint and use the information you find to create a great pitch. When sending the email, use the name of the blog owner for a more personal touch. Here is one of the best guest blogging email template for your reference-

How to create a stellar guest post

The guidelines mentioned above and following them to a t is certainly a good start. Make sure that you pay attention to a few interesting factors such as the way the blog posts on said site are formatted so that you can do the same with your own.

At the same time, it wouldn’t hurt to consider using internal linking to connect your content with the posts of the blog owner. It is essential that you don’t treat this post as an opportunity to advertise your business.

If you do this, the blog owner will not publish your post or, if you get the option to publish it yourself, they will remove it and surely not ask you to write another one again. The main focus should be offering valuable content, which convinces readers to come back for more.

Don’t forget to create a guest post bio

This is the place where you talk about yourself, including information about your business. According to Neil Patel-

what you write in this section will depend on your guest blogging goals

You can craft your bio to easily achieve them with this kind of guest posts. If you are interested solely in quality backlinks, just add a link to your website, but if you want to increase followers on a social media account, tell your audience how they can follow you on that specific social network by mentioning your username.

If the purpose is simply to get more traffic on your site, the solution would be to have the readers follow a specific link to a special offer or a product you are trying to sell.

Outsource your needs and rely on guest post services

Truth being told, guest blogging works, but it is a lot of work. Just imagine having to go through all of the above each time you want to get a backlink to your website. It is going to take so long that you will not be able to focus on running your own blog or business. It is simply too complicated.

Of course, this does not mean that you should not know the information mentioned above. This will help you make a fantastic choice when you decide on the company that will help you with guest writing and posting services.

It would be recommended that you talk about all of these essential details before having them write the content or publish it for you on a specific blog. It’s still great to know that you have more options in this case.

Conclusion

For 2020, guest blogging is one of the most efficient ways to build backlinks to your website. The problem is that it has to be done in a certain manner to be efficient. At the same time, it can be challenging to keep your website optimized and seek opportunities that allow you to have your own work published on other blogs that have a great reputation and would certainly help with your own ranking.

That is why considering the alternative – a guest post writing and publishing service – is the best way to go. Of course, that is if you are interested in achieving the best results while being efficient.

At the end of the day, it's your business model, your choice. Choose the option that best fits your goals.

About the Author: Ph.D. Ion G. Tudorache

Ph.D. Ion G. Tudorache is a specialized SEO strategist, with 14 years of experience in the SEO industry. He is the co-founder and director of Gamit SEO, an online marketing agency. The main purpose of the agency is to provide first page results for its clients through comprehensive analysis and implementation of different techniques.

Make Money Online

How I got Google Adsense Approval in First Attempt : Complete Guide

By Ashutosh Jha → Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Hello, Everyone! A couple of days back we received a fully approved account of Google AdSense.

Thanks to you all for giving support. I started blogging somewhere in September'14 as a passion and very soon got addicted to it. Truly speaking till Aug’14 I was not even knowing ‘B’ of Blogging world.

I was an IT professional and were working on a few IT projects like web development, web maintenance, application development etc. Then while reading some marketing tips for one of my clients and I reached out to Harsh’s blog ShoutMeLoud and few other blogs like Harleena’s Aha-Now, Anil's BloggersPassion, Problogger, CopyBlogger and came to know the blogging world closely.

These are the blogs which motivated me towards blogging. Until that time I already had developed around 30-40 websites for my clients and were having few maintenance projects also.

I managed some time and started blogging and all I can say at this point in time is, It’s Awesome!!

In this guide, I am going to share the secret tricks for how to get Google AdSense approval fast.

I am not much successful in blogging till now, and still, I’m a newbie. I have just started this blog a couple of months back and getting approval for AdSense in Just a couple of months, and that too in the very first attempt is an awesome feeling.

So, just wanted to share the experience as to how I got approval for AdSense for a 2-month-old domain and a blog, which had only 20 posts at the time of approval (this is our 22nd post).

I’m not telling getting AdSense approval is a big thing, but at the beginning, I got so many rumors about the Google AdSense. I just want to clear those.

Also, AdSense is not the only way to earn from the blog and a few weeks back I shared a detailed article on How a blogger can earn from their blog or website. Here I listed around 17 real and proven methods to earn from blogs. I would suggest you to please check that post.


Below I’m going to explain the tips taken by me before applying to the AdSense. In this journey, the article that helped me is Alltop9’s AdSense guide. Thanks to Lasya for that.

How to Get Google AdSense Approval Fast- Exactly what I used!

Here are some of the tips I used to get Google AdSense approval fast and in my first attempt. I am sharing those so that you can also follow these and get AdSense approval very fast.

1. Get a Custom Domain

Now a day almost all the bloggers have their custom domain. If you don’t have and you’re using the free services of Blogspot or Wordpress, please get a custom domain for your blog, and it doesn’t charge more than $1. You can check our article on How to select a best domain name for the good name and 5 best domain name registrar to select the right company to register your name for online business. This is the important step friends as there is hardly a blog which gets approval through BlogSpot and Wordpress extension domain now. No doubt these are the best free platform to start blogging and you need not to spend a single penny for it.

Click here to buy a .com domain name just at $0.99

2. Use Top Domain Extension

This also effects in the approval process. If you’ve read our article on How to select the best domain name, you must have read a point where I’ve explained the need for the top level domain. We should use a top level domain like .com or .org. Avoid registering country specific domains as this indicates you’ve started blogging for just that particular country.

Click here to buy a .com domain name just at $0.99

3. Domain Age

Domain age plays a crucial role in the approval process especially for the accounts in Asian Subcontinent. As per AdSense policy, your domain age should be a minimum of 6 months, but it’s not mandatory in this subcontinent. As you can see, my domain age is just a few days more than two months. So I believe a domain with age one and half month is sufficient for the AdSense approval.

4. Blog Layout & Navigation

Yes, blog design is also an important step in the approval process. In fact, blog design is the main aspect in the success of the blog itself. We’re in 2014 and 2015 is just a few days ahead; so please avoid using the design of 1999. Give your blog a professional look. This will help to attract readers as well as an advertiser on your blog. You can check my article on how to select the best template for the blog or website.

Here I’ve explained each and every step in detail. Mark those points and match with your blog and see if all are good. It’s not that difficult to find a good template. There are so many templates available on the internet free of cost; just you’ve to search it. Also, the navigation on your site should be easy and clear. This helps in making the site more users friendly.

5. Average Daily Page views

This is the most common question a newbie blogger ask before applying to the AdSense. How much traffic really it needed to get approval? There is no exact answer to this question but as per my experience and what I read about this till now is 100-page view is decent to apply for AdSense. And you will agree with me, 100 daily page views are not too much right? You can take help of social media or blog promotion or even blog commenting method to get this much traffic daily.

6. Number of blog post

This is also one of the common questions that bloggers or webmasters usually ask. Generally, it’s seen that many bloggers have received approval with even 12-13 post and there are a plenty number of bloggers who are still getting rejected with over 100 posts. But it’s a good practice to start with 15 blog post.

7. Blog Post Length & Quality

This is very much important point in the approval process as well as for the success of your blog. It’s always advisable to write a long blog post and not to write a blog with less than 500 words. But this does not mean we should compromise on the Quality of the article. You should never copy anyone’s article else Google will detect easily and can reject your application and even can find your blog. So always try to write a quality article and try to have at least 350-400 words in each article. Google or any other search engines love lengthy and quality blog posts.

8. Add a few necessary pages

Add a few important pages like About Us, Contact Us, Privacy Policy and Disclaimer pages in your blog. At first instance, this will not feel you much important, but from a business point of view, this is equally important as the articles. One should know about yourself, about your blog and the peoples behind you and so about and contact page is vital.

Also, what are your terms and settings about the user who is visiting your site are also important and that can be covered in the Privacy Policy and Disclaimer pages. So try to include these pages before you apply. This will not take more than 5 minutes as many websites are available online which generates these pages free of cost.

9. Take care of content and Language

Please don’t put objectionable content like adult content on the site. Google will never approve these types of sites. Also, you should only use the English language on the site.

10. Follow the AdSense Policy

This is the general step. You should follow the policy of the company to which you’re going to apply. So I would suggest reading the Google AdSense policy before applying to it. This will not take your much of time. Anyway, this contains almost all the points that we covered above.

11. What if disapproved in the first attempt?

This is also one of the most common questions that most of the bloggers and webmasters ask. As AdSense has revised their policy, it’s getting a little bit difficult to get approval in the first attempt or so on. What to do in that case? Whenever AdSense reject any account, they send the reason for this.

You’ll get an email explaining why your application got rejected. Some of the most common reasons are like not having enough content, too new domain, not decent traffic or so on. So work on the reason they provided and apply again. This will not take much of your time. Don’t just sit idle after getting rejected. You should work on the reason and apply again. You’ll definitely get success.

Final Words

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Friends these were few tips to get approved AdSense account fast. I’m sure if you’ll follow these tips, you’re definitely going to get approved Adsense account. Again AdSense is not the only way to earn from your blog. If you are not getting approval also, there is nothing to worry. You can use other mode of earnings like in text ads, affiliate to earn.

But as AdSense is the best ad network in the world, so everyone tries to have an account with it. If you’re getting rejected frequently check above tips and correct the blog. Also, you can drop your issue in a comment. I’ll surely try to find the solution.

Also Read: 12 Tips to Increase AdSense Earning

Hope this post will help you in getting AdSense approval fast. Please share in a comment if you know any awesome tip on getting approval. If you liked this post, please consider it for sharing this on your social sites. Also if you want to get such awesome tips on Blogging, Internet Marketing, and SEO, subscribe us.

How To

List of Dofollow Forums to get High Quality Backlinks and Traffic

By Ashutosh Jha → Sunday, December 1, 2019

A single high-quality Dofollow backlink is better than 100 nofollow backlinks. So you can estimate the importance of Dofollow backlinks in the success of any blog or website.

The blogs or websites or forums which provide dofollow backlinks uses dofollow attributes which boost the traffic as well as a ranking of the blog. If you have got links from few high PR dofollow forums, you’ll get decent traffic, as well as your page rank, will increase. Indirectly you can say dofollow backlinks plays a significant role in the success of any blog.

Today we’ll be talking about, how we can increase the dofollow backlinks using online forums. Remember you should not use the unethical way like auto link building or link buying method to increase backlinks. Because nowadays, Google or any other search engines are so intelligent that it’ll identify your blog and can ban you. So be cautious while building backlinks.

Also Read: How to increase links by commenting on CommentLuv enabled site

To increase dofollow backlinks, first, you’ve to visit these forums and register yourself and then need to participate in the discussion because most of these forums allow links in your signature. So the more you'll take part in these forums, the more links you’ll get. By doing this, not only you’ll increase the links, but you’ll also get decent traffic as well as you can establish your blog as a brand too.

Also Read: Top 3 Most powerful ways to promote your blog for free

Now the Question is how to get these dofollow links?

It’s simple. Don’t worry all forums are free and you don’t have to pay a single penny for it. What you’ve to do is, visit these sites and register yourself. Then complete your profile because many forums allow your website details in the profile section too. So just by completing your profile, you’re going to get one links.

Now go to the Introduce Yourself section and let the other members know about yourself and about your blog. This is the best way to start in a forum. Later move to the other section of the forum and check the threads and the question which you feel comfortable, answer that. And if on your blog, if you have any article related to that question, share your link.

By this way, you’re going to make decent traffic as well as quality backlinks too. But starting this method to increase backlinks and traffic, I would suggest you to first read forum policies and the below points carefully-

• Don’t ever try to spam any forums. They’ll simply block your profile.
• Don’t try to put unnecessary links in the post section on any thread.
• Focus on QUALITY, not on QUANTITY
• Reply to the threads indecent manner and try to solve the problem.
• Try to make an image for you and your blog
• Use signature in each and every post

Using these ways you’ll never get blocked from any of the online forums, and you’ll manage to get maximum benefit from those.

List of Top 20 High PR Dofollow Forums

1. SiteOwner Forum
2. Search Engine Watch
3. CNET Forum
4. V7N Forum
5. MySql Forum
6. 5 Start Affiliate Program
7. Sitepoint
8. HTML Forum
9. PHP Forum
10. File Sharing Forum
11. Web Hosting Talk
12. Joomla Forum
13. MyGame Builder Forum
14. Microsoft Answers
15. Videolan Forum
16. Chronicle Forum
17. Flicker Forum
18. Geek Village Forum
19. Book Forum
20. Cpanel Forum

Also Read: 5 Killer tips to generate traffic without SEO and Social Media

So, friends, these are the 20 best high PR Dofollow forums. Frankly speaking, it’s not possible for anyone to be active on all the forums. At most, you can be on 4-5.

Even I’m active on the only couple of forums. So it doesn’t matter how many forums you are on, be active and try to participate in the maximum discussion. By this way, most of the members of those forums will know you. Isn’t this is what you want? Yes by this way, if you do these regularly you will manage to get maximum promotion and extra traffic to your blog.

Once people have confidence on you, on your words definitely they will rush to your blog.

Final Words

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Forums are one among the top ways to get a maximum promotion. I already talked about how we can promote our website or blog using online forums. It’s time to get benefit regarding traffic, backlinks, page rank and SERP. So I hope you’ll join some of these forums and you will start participating in discussions. If you’re not doing this, believe me, this is the best method to get an identity in the blogosphere.

Also, you should remember these forums frequently changes their policy and guidelines. So keep checking these. Hope you enjoyed reading this. So why don’t you share this with your friends? Maybe one of them needs this type of articles. If you know any other high PR forum which provides dofollow links, do let me know in comments. I’ll definitely include that in our list. Thanks for reading. Keep visiting!!

Top 10

10 Things to Know before Starting a Blog

By Ashutosh Jha →

So you want to start your own new blog?

Or you want to take your blog to a new height?

This post is for you. Here I’ll discuss about few important things to know before starting a blog.

If you’re in this field you must have seen things about blogging changes every now and then but not completely. This I think is the beauty of blogging. You must have to be active in the blogosphere and on the internet to keep yourself updated.

There are millions of blogs online, but whether all are successful? Of course not. Only few of those make the name and money. Why like this? There must be some reason behind this success. If you can get those secrets and can implement on your blog too, you can be the next.

In this post I’m going to show you some important things you need to know before starting a blog. I am sure if you’ll follow these tips, you’re going to save lots of time and energy.

Before moving to those 10 things that you should know before starting a blog, first I would like to ask few questions to you. You should ask these questions yourself before planning to start a blog. So here are those-

1. Why you want to start a blog
2. Who would be your primary audience
3. What is your story (Niche)
4. Can you fill the gap of niche with your content
5. Can you commit to Blogging- Consistency
6. Are there a chance to earn from it
7. Can you be active in the online world
8. Can you handle the pressure and critic
9. How you’re going to build links and about SEO
10. What is your ultimate goal

I think these are the very basic question you should ask yourself before starting a blog or even if you’ve a running blog, you should ask these questions to plan out the things in a better way. Do let me know your answers of any favorite question in comments. I’ll love to know that.

Things you should know Before Starting a Blog

So let’s start with those points by following which you can become one of the successful blogger in the coming time. Also if you disagree with me at any point of time or you want to ask any question/doubt, please drop your question/feedback below. I’ll love to answer those.

1. Select the best category of Story

This is the very first and basic step while starting a blog. Niche selection is very important as this is going to decide your future as how other things will go. It’s always preferable to select single topic niche compared to multi topic niche especially in long race. Already I’ve written a complete blog post on Single Topic Blog vs. Multi Topic Blog. If you’ve not read this, I would suggest you to read that also because I have given a complete guide for the niche here.

Also if still you’ve lots of topic in your mind and you’re not sure (my case was similar), this is what you should do and the same I did. Take a pen and notepad and write the entire niche name on which you want to start a blog. Now write at least 15-20 blog post name for each of the niche. You will clearly come to 4-5 from the list. Now check out of the remaining, which have less competition and more chance to earn, select that niche. I am sure by this way you’ll select the best niche for you.

2. A self-Hosted blog is still best

We think about this a lot but the best thing you can do about blog hosting is host your blog on your own hosting. No matter it is a blogger or wordpress. Self-hosted blogs are far better than the free platforms like wordpress.com or blogspot.com or Tumblr. 

So, if you’re going to start a blog I would recommend you to use BlueHost hosting. This is one of the most reliable hosting I’ve ever seen. I’m using their service on my other blog and am completely satisfied with their service. You’ll get a free domain also with any hosting package.

With self-hosted blog you’ll be able to manage as per your need which is almost not possible in free blogging platform.

Click Here to signup for the BlueHost Hosting Today

3. Define your Target Audience

This is the point where many newbie bloggers commit mistake. They either failed to define their target audiences or if they do, many fail to reach out to them. You need to overcome on both the scenario.

Define your audience & Reach out to them

This means select your customers from your niche. This is so simple. If anybody wants to sell a cloth, he/she needs to reach out to that person who are looking for the cloths not there who are looking for something else which does not even have any relevance with cloths. In blogging also we do follow the same things.

If anybody/group is looking for the technical tips but you provide health related tips and you’re reaching out to them definitely you’ll never convert those to buy from you or visit to you. So always select your target audience. If you’re blogging in health related domain, join those groups where people are looking for health related tips, advertise on that place where these people come. You’ll definitely rock.

Always serve only those things which people need!!

Also Read: Powerful Ways to Promote your Blog

4. You should have a good Domain Name

There are plenty of websites and blogs in the world and around a million are getting registered each month. So in this competitive world you need to be unique through which people can easily remember you. If you’re starting a blog for the short term like event blogs, you can have keywords in the domain name else select some name which readers can easily remember. 

Either it should depict what you do or have to be unique. Like bloggingtips clearly says it will say about blogging tips. Whereas domains like TricksRoad or Aha-Now are something which are easy to remember. So always select the unique domain name and you should avoid below things while registering domain name-

• No Sms words like u for you, 4 for for etc.
• No numbers
• Try to avoid hyphens (-)

You can check my details post on How to select best domain name.

Click here to buy a .com domain name just at $0.99

5. Focus on Readers

Most of the bloggers especially the newbies focus on visitors and try to get more and more visits to get good income from AdSense, you should initially avoid this. I am not telling you that you should not focus on traffic. You do but focus on the contents more.

Focus on readers rather to have more page views. Write engaging contents and that content which solve other’s problem. If you’re able to do so, traffic will automatically come. And then you would be easily able to convert your visitors into loyal readers.

6. You need to be Social

Initially I too had this misconception that I’ll get the traffic from Google and other search engines but within few weeks I realized it’s almost impossible to get decent traffic initially. This is the truth. Nobody can get lots of traffic at the initial days and hence you need to use some other strategies.

So, how do you get traffic in the short run? You can get through social media. There are many social networking sites to boost traffic and you should work on those sites to get visitors. Join Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Reedit and others to get good amount of traffic. You can read our post, Top 5 Social Networking Sites to Boost Traffic.

Also if you’re willing to spend few dollars you can buy ads on facebook, stumble upon or on other social sites, but if you don’t; you have to make good social media profile. Once you’ve good profile, you can easily get the traffic.

7. Design is Marketing & Marketing is Money

Neat & clean design will lead you to success. Initially when I started TricksRoad; I had a basic design which was ok.

I continued it for a month and later felt that in this competitive environment where around a millions of new sites are getting started each month, ok will not work. You’ve to be the best and then finally came with this, which is good. Isn’t it?

You should have a design which can make money for you. You need one which can drive traffic to your site and hence can lead to money. You can refer my details post on How to select effective templates for blogs and websites.

8. Long Content still works

Long content has always been a key of success and will be. Google or any other search engines still value a lot for the lengthy articles over the short articles.

Google has recently launched an in depth article section on their search result.Also the best online marketing person in the world Neil Patel says the more the content length is the more attention you get. You can check his in depth analysis on content length here.

I haven’t seen a small article went viral. Always you’ll find those articles which are at least 1200 or more viral on the internet. This is not just for the sake of length. This says while writing the post, a well research has been done and so can solve the problem in a better way.

So, you should also be ready to write the long articles if you want to get visible in search engines. You can see in the above figure, all those posts those are in top 10 are of length more than 2000 words.

9. Personal branding is essential

It has been seen that Google prefer personal branding more. You can get this idea from their social site Google+ where they focus more on the personal branding of author. So this is the time to show person behind the great content, site and business.

In fact this helps a lot. If you show your picture on the blogs, your visitor gets an idea about your personality and this helps a lot in the interaction. You should spend equal time in building the site and building your personal brand too.

If you’re only focusing on building and branding of your blog and site, no doubt people will have a good image about your blog and they will visit you often. But this will not help you a lot. 

Now suppose you’re starting a new site, you’ve to work again from scratch to make it famous. But if from the start of first blog itself, you’re working on personal branding as well you won’t have to work that much and your name and image will be enough for your readers to visit to your new venture. Neil Patel, Dino Dogan and Harsh Agarwal are the live example of this.

So it’s the time to show your face if till now you haven’t. I’ve seen many bloggers using the name as Admin, what exactly this mean. This clearly shows either you’re not willing to come outside or you’re not sure about the thing you do. And if you’re not sure how can others. Believe me you’ll get lot of benefits of personal branding.

Also, try to keep same pic everywhere starting from your blog to social sites. I agree this is bit difficult but this will help to identify you by your visitors and will add an extra point in your branding.

10. Monetization Techniques

Last but most important point while planning to start a blog. Ultimately you want to make blogging as your career and want a full time income from this. So you need to plan everything pretty well. Like choose only that niche from where you can earn money else later you’ll find bit difficult to earn.

Be sure about the monetization techniques that you’re going to use in near future to earn from your blog. You can check my article on different ways to make money from your blog. Here I have listed around 19 real and proven methods to earn from blog.

What else do you need to know? Over to you

Planning is very important before starting anything in life. This doesn’t end to blogging. If you’ve planned everything well, you will get success. And I’m sure with these points you can break the barrier. So that’s about things to know before starting a blog. If you liked this post, please consider it for sharing. Also to receive such tips directly in your email, subscribe us. It’s just a click away.

So what other things we need to know before starting a blog? Please comment.

How To

How to Add Star Rating in Blogger Post

By Ashutosh Jha → Saturday, May 18, 2019

A couple of days ago I was having communication with one of the clients for the review post and after finalizing everything he asked whether I will rate their product or not. As TricksRoad is on Blogger platform so I have many limitations. But I started searching for it and finally, I am able to implement it. That review post will be live in a few days where the first time I’ll add star rating in blogger post.

After adding a star rating in blogger post, it looks quite nice and so I am sharing the details as to how to add star rating in blogger post so that you can also do the same. Till now I have published many review posts but no one demanded the rating so never worked on it but it’s well said-

Necessity Is the Mother of Invention

But before going through the simple method to add star rating in blogger post, let me tell you few benefits about adding star rating in blog posts.

Benefits of adding Star Rating in Blog Post

There are many benefits of adding a star rating in blog posts. Below I am listing few of those.

• It increases the faith of your visitors on the product

• While reviewing you provide a rating (Usually 1-5) so the users simply can estimate how much that product worth of without reading the whole review.

• Increases traffic to the site

• Provides value to your clients

Now as you know the benefits of adding a rating system in blog posts, let me tell you how to add star rating in blogger post.

How to Add Star Rating in Blogger Post?

As we know adding star rating in WordPress is damn easy due to its rich plugins but in blogger, it is a bit difficult. Here difficult mean just it is not possible directly but with just a couple of minutes of work, you would be able to add star rating in blogger post as well.

Also Read: 5 Best Techniques to Increase DA of a Website

Once you’ll add a star rating, it will look like the below in search engine.

To add the star rating in blogger post, just follow the below steps and within a minute you’re done.

Step1: Go to the blogger post in which you would like to add star rating and click on HTML view.

Step2: Now at the end of the post, add the below code.

<div>  <span> <span>Post-Name</span><br/> </span> Reviewed by <span>Reviewer-Name</span>on <span>August 25 2015 <span title=”YYYY-MM-DD”></span><br/>  </span> Rating: <span>Your-Rating</span></div>

Step3: Just change the items listed in bold in above code write post name (you may write product name if you are reviewing a product), Reviewed by, date and rating. Enter these values as per your convenience and hit the publish/update button of a blog post.

Also Read: How to Index New Blog Post Quickly

That’s all. Once your article is crawled, you can check the star rating in Google search engine.

Hope you liked this article, how to add star rating in blogger post. Do implement and let me know how it works. Also, please share this with your friends.

Website

5 Web Designer Skills Every Blogger Must Have

By Ashutosh Jha → Friday, March 8, 2019

With the average small business now spending around $75,000 a year on digital marketing, even small blogs have to struggle to compete. If you want to have a standout blog, you need to have a few web designer skills to stay ahead of the competition. Even if you're not using it as a marketing tool, to get the readers you're looking for, you need a solid design.

5 Web designers Skills Bloggers should have

Here are five skills that every blogger should have.

1. Mobile Optimization

Given that mobile browsing has far surpassed desktop usage for several years in a row, you need to make sure your blog looks good on mobile devices. It's vital to have a design that's optimized for mobile devices given that's where a growing population of your audience is going to be.

Reading on a mobile device introduces more challenges that are found on a laptop or a desktop. However, there are some great design solutions that have allowed more bloggers to stretch and scale their pages to optimize reading. If you're using a CMS like WordPress, there are a lot of plug-ins to help make things easier.

Make sure you're not causing your readers to squint or to have to stretch or scale your text. The text shouldn't be cluttered and should be in a standard and easy to read font. Avoid using white text on a black background or any majorly contrasting colors.

Don't crowd the space with ads, videos, and images. They can be used to break up text blocks but placing them side by side makes it harder to read. Make sure things are scaled to fit on any kind of mobile device without any awkward margins.

Mobile traffic is increasing day by day and being a website owner or business owner, you can't ignore this at any cost.

2. SEO

Search engine optimization is more than just adding the right keywords. Search engine algorithms now know how to tell if your site is well organized and designed properly. They can tell if you're adding images that are too big or too small for devices you're displaying your information on.

There are also a lot of opportunities to connect your site to search results. You can add undisplayed text to the "alt" tags behind each imaged. You can also add keywords at the header of every page to help direct searches to you.

When people are using a search engine, they're either looking for specific service or the answer to a specific question. Your blog can answer those questions while offering your talents or specialty as the solution at the end of each post. If you don't offer services, you can use links to other posts to keep them engaged.

The longer that you keep people on your URL, the higher you'll rank on search engines. With lots of quality content that's all linked together, you'll get a high ranking on your favorite search engine. Combine all of these elements and you'll get lots of valuable traffic.

3. Integrating Media

Given that video is slated to account for more than 80% of internet traffic in the coming years, you need to give the people what they want. Even if you're a much better writer than a videographer, you need to add some media to your blog. People want to see video explainers, how-to videos, or get an introduction to who you are and what you're about.

If you can't get it together to make a video, you can accent your posts with videos or gifs. They bring content alive and allow readers to see another perspective on what you're writing about. When you're looking to engage with your audience, you need to offer the kind of content that they're looking for.

Images and videos are good for engaging with your readers in a memorable way. While some people can remember and recall text exactly as they read it, pairing ideas with an image helps to solidify the idea in their minds. When you're able to integrate your text with images, you'll build a dedicated audience who understands your style.

You can build a unique style through all the elements of design and some well-placed pieces of visual media.

4. Designing Logos

Your logo is going to be what becomes your brand. People will look at your logo as a way to get an idea of what you're about. The way you design your logo is going to influence how people treat you and the content that you post.

If you're designing a fun and friendly website for kids and families, you want to have a colorful logo with lots of images. You can turn your letters into fun shapes and use a more playful font.

If you're creating a site for professionals to get advice about succeeding in their industry, you're going to want to play it cooler. Add a minimalist logo with a simple color scheme to ensure that people take you seriously. You can check- how to create free business logo online.

5. Adding Links

Links are part of the way that you design your website and attract an audience. Part of the way that you design your website needs to include links that are cleverly and carefully integrated. Your links should be clear, but not too distracting and not overly promotional.

If you're going to promote other products, other writers, or your own writing, you need to do so in a way that isn't distracting. There are other link styles that aren't as ugly and garish and still let people know they can find more information.

Check out this site for a how to on creating a custom WordPress.

Web Designer Skills Take Practice

When you're trying to hone your web designer skills, it'll take some trial and error to get it right. Just make sure that if you get better at what you do, that you revisit some earlier posts to get everything up to the standard you're trying to meet. You never know when an old post might suddenly take off.

If you're looking to generate some leads that turn to sales, check out our latest guide to make a little bit of money from your blog.

SSL on Blogger

How to Enable HTTPS on Blogger Blog- Add SSL to Blogger Blog

By Ashutosh Jha → Monday, November 19, 2018

Google is considering security as the top concern and so, all their products and services are now equipped with an SSL certificate. And this is the need of current time as well looking at the hacking and data breach cases.

Also, if any website is not having SSL certificate, Google chrome shows that site as not sure as shown below-

This definitely gives a good impression to your visitors and buyers. There is a large percentage of users who don’t do any transaction if the site is not equipped with an SSL certificate. And this is the reason behind the below image.

This image shows how just 4 years back, only 3% sites were having SSL certificate which has been around 27 times just in 4 years. This survey has been done by Netcraft.

So, now as we know the importance of SSL certificate, let’s talk about how to add SSL certificate to blogger blog.

If you have custom websites then you can simply buy an SSL certificate and install it. This will change your URL from HTTP to https which is the secured form.

But what about blogger blog?

We don’t have such options here directly and that is what we’re going to see in this post. Here we’re going to see how to enable https to blogger blog or add SSL to blogger blog.

SSL certificate on blogger blog comes free and Google does this for you. Here are some of the advantages of HTTPS on Blogger blog

• Blogger blogs used to have issues like ISP blog which has been solved by using HTTPS on a blogger blog
• HTTPS also secure readers from stopping traffic from unauthorized redirection and malware injection
• Secure the actions and data transfer between platforms and sites
• Give users a sign of confidence and security

How to enable https to blogger blog or add SSL to blogger blog?

Enabling SSL certificate to a blogger blog is quite easy and the best thing is you don’t have to spend a single penny. Google does this free for you. To enable https on a blogger blog, you just need to enable it.

To enable HTTPS to your blogger account, just follow the below steps-

1. Sign in to your blogger account
2. Choose the blog for which you are looking to enable HTTPS
3. Now browse through the setting and select basic under it
4. 
5. Here you’ll find a section for HTTPS here you need to select HTTPS to redirect as yes and you’re done.

That’s all and now once you will save, your blog will start redirecting to the HTTPS site instead of HTTP earlier. The changes may take some time to come into the effect.

Once the changes have taken place, if you’ll write domainname.com also, it will automatically be redirected to https://domainname.com.

Note: You’ll find many articles explaining this HTTPS on blogger blog doesn’t work with a custom domain. But now it is working and our blog is a perfect example of it. I have enabled HTTPS on TricksRoad a month back and I just had to follow the above 4 steps I explained above.

Wrapping it up!

This was all about how to enable https on a blogger blog. Make sure you now have SSL enabled blogger blog in order to be secure and have trust to the users.

Do try to enable HTTPS on your blogger blog and let me know if you face any issue.

Starting A Blog

5 Killer Tips to Generate Traffic without SEO or Social Media

By Ashutosh Jha → Sunday, November 4, 2018

After looking at the title of this post, you must be thinking is this possible?

You want traffic, and you must have heard that SEO/SMO is the necessity to get traffic. I’m not declining this fact, but SEO/SMO is the best way to generate organic and continuous traffic. But we can also get enough traffic from other sources.


Getting traffic on your website/blog without SEO is of course possible and the main thing is – It is quick, easy and less time consuming and of course FREE.

So now you must have been thinking, how? Today in this post I am going to show you the 5 killer ways to get instant traffic to your blog just by spending few minutes per tips.

Blog Commenting Method

I’ve put this method at the top because of its popularity and importance. Blog commenting is the best way to generate traffic for your website. What you have to do is to make a list of blogs (of course select the one which you like) and whenever you write a post, visit those blogs and leave a meaningful comment.

Now suppose you have added only 10 blogs in your list and you left comment on all 10. At the worst condition at least you’ll get 20 unique visitors (I’ve considered only two per blog) on your blog. Now suppose each user are only seeing 3 pages of your blog and so you will have -

10*2*3=60 Page views

This is the minimal page views you’ll get. I’m telling you my experience. At the start I commented on one blog around a month ago and till now I’ve received more than 100 page views from that URL. This has not been done in a single day but of you are getting 100 page view for one comment, isn’t it’s a great source of traffic?

Also if you want to generate even more traffic from this method, you can include the CommentLuv enabled blogs which shows your latest blog post along with your comment. You can find the high PR CommentLuv enabled blogs here.

Also Read: Tips To Check Keywords Ranking on Google

Search and Pull Method

This is also one of the best methods to pull traffic and the easiest one. In this tricks all you have to do is find the popular NICHE and bring the already existing traffic back to your blog/websites. This seems to be easy and exciting right? Yes, it is. Just you have to follow the below two steps and you’ll be able to drive good traffic-

• You have to find the popular blogs with relevant posts as soon as they are getting published. Don’t worry. I’m not asking you to find this. Google Alert will do this task for you. Yes you heard it right. It’s a free service provided by Google. All you have to do is set up a Google alert for the topic you want to have the traffic. Suppose I’ve written a blog on how to start a free blog, then I will set up a remainder something similar to ‘start a free blog’. And whenever Google will find the similar topic on any popular blog, it’ll send you an email on your registered email id. You can set up a Google alert by this link and can set up the alert like below-





• Now whenever any post will come on the internet, Google will send you a free alert right in your inbox. As soon as you receive that, visit the blog, read it and leave a meaningful comment. Now once a user will visit that website which is already very famous, they’ll also read comments and as you’ve left a good comment they’ll definitely visit your blog.

Tip: Never provide your home page URL while commenting. Provide the address of your particular post and also use recent post widget to engage users more.

For this subject line, I’ve created a Google Alert and I usually get 3-4 alerts a day. That means you’ll comment on 3-4 good blog. Suppose each blog is sending you only 5-5 users and each user is seeing only 3-3 page, so total number of page view will be-

4*5*3=60 Page Views

As your comment will be the first/second so chance of getting traffic with this method is more.

Link others in your post

Yes! You heard it right. This is one of the most common mistakes that a blogger. They always hesitate while adding other’s link in their post. But you do it. Suppose you’re writing any good post and you know someone has written a good case study about that, link that. There is several benefit of it-

• When that person will find, you have linked his/her post, they may share your post in their social profile. Now just imagine if a blogger having good social profile shares your link on their profile, how much traffic you can get?? This is the usual case. At least in return they’ll tweet you.

• They can even link you back on their post in return. Isn’t this awesome? If above 2 conditions are not happening, nothing to worry. Open your email account and write a cool email to him/her. You can simply write the following-

Hi, Mr./Ms. …

Good Morning !!

I am a blogger, blogs at so and so blog (provide URL here) and while writing this post (name your post), I found your case study (provide URL) very useful for my readers. I’ve put a link to it in my post (provide your post URL).

It will be very kind of you if you can visit my post and provide suggestions and if you’ll find it interesting, kindly tweet.

Thanks,
Signature

If the first two-point will not work, I am sure the third is definitely going to work. So now you have great traffic and a good network with a good blogger. I’m considering only 100 page views through this method. But be sure you’re going to get far more than this count.

Use signature in your emails

Let all the emails that you send with the work headers, link your blog. Now a day peoples are so crazy and busy in their life that they don’t have much time to search your blog or put manual effort to type URL. So the best way is to put a link to your blog and enable the LAZY :) people to access your blog with a single click.

How many work-related emails you send daily? 20 for now. Yes, I’m considering only 20. Provide a link to your blog in your signature. Now suppose only 10 of them have clicked on your link and have seen only 3 pages each, you are going to get-

3*10=30 page views.

How much time this method cost you? Hardly 1 minute and that too a onetime investment :) Isn’t this a killer method to generate traffic.

Use Intro method to get traffic from forum

This is also one of the best methods to get traffic. People generally use the forum to answer and ask questions. In the answer by providing the link to your blog, you are going to have couple of benefit-

• Good Traffic
• Backlinks. This is going to increase SERP and DR of your blog.

Now it’s time to start another trick in these forums.Start a new thread for discussion for your newly post. Just write ‘I’ve written a good article on this topic and wanted to share with you all. Let me know your view on this’. If this is a popular forum and has 1000s of the user a day then there is a chance that at least 100 will visit your link. I’m considering only 2 page views per user in this case because they have to write about your post in the forum soon. So total page views will be-

2*100= 200 page views

But remember all forums don’t provide this facility to start a new thread for your post. So before doing this read their T&C.

Final words

So, friends, these are the best 5 methods to pull the best traffic to your blog and that too without any SEO or social marketing. I’ve given the least estimated traffic you can get as a newbie from these sources.

So in total, you will be having 200+30+100+60+60=450 page views and think how much time it cost you, hardly an hour? Again this is the least traffic you can get. You’ll get much more than this. And if only 5 of them will share your content on their social profile, you are going to get massive traffic again.

So start using these methods and let me know which tricks you are using to get the traffic on your blog apart from SEO and social marketing. Also, do let me know if I’ve missed any great source over here. Thanks for your time and kindly share this post, if this has helped you!!