I had mix reactions actually. Good in the sense of exposure, bad in the sense of forking out additional cash to buy extra bandwidth. I wasn’t really prepared for the wrath, but nevertheless it’s an eye opening experience.

Over the hours, I scoured the web for all the information I can find about preparing myself for the next StumbleUpon, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Google Plus effect. Some of the methods suggested seemed complicated but anyhow, all are useful. Anyways, here are 8 simple things that everyone should know about preparing for the next sudden increase of traffic due to social network sites.

What’s The Host’s Reaction?



I for one, am a client of a shared hosting account. If you are like me, you don’t have much control of the situation when a spike occurs. When it happened to me, I thought that i could bring forward some of next month’s transfer limit. However, the only choice presented to me by my host was buying additional bandwidth which will only last until the end of the month. I bought it today 28th May, and will last only till 31st May.

I found out that some other hosts may even think that the spike is an attack of some sort. So it’s pretty important to find out the actions of your host. Cause once the server is down, none of the steps below will help.

External Media Hosting



This includes images, videos and audios. All the media for all my websites are hosted externally. It helped me tremendously. I had over 60,000 visitors before I exceeded my bandwidth transfer quota of 10GB. It meant that the size of a page is about 166KB. If I had included the 8 screenshots, the total size of the page would’ve been over 500 KB, capable of serving 20,000 visitors, 3 times less, before exceeding bandwidth.

I host ALL my images in imageshack, videos in YouTube and audio files in imeem. All 3 are highly reliable media hosting sites in their respective categories. Thanks to them, I have lifted a huge burden on my server’s side by keeping page sizes as small as possible.

WP-Cache 2



Super efficient caching plugin by Ricardo Galli. It improves pages of self hosted WordPress blogs by caching and storing them in static files, improving efficiency by skipping the process of compiling the entire PHP code and building the page from the database. Serve hundreds more for each passing second and improve performance from near a minute to millisecond. WP-Cache 2 is a huge improvement over its predecessor, WP-Cache.

PHP Accelerators

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The name says it all. As long as the application is written in PHP, you get to enjoy the performance boost. What it mainly does is
cache the compiled bytecode form of PHP scripts to avoid overheads on ALL page request of parsing and compiling source code that may never even get executed.

Depending on execution time and the percentage of source code executed, the PHP code will experience speed boosts of an average of 6X on a given request. Check out the list of PHP accelerators. The current general preferred accelerator is eAccelerator. However, you will need to ask your host about installing this. Your webhost may have already installed a PHP accelerator.

Mirrors



duggmirror and Mirrordot are the most famous mirrors for social networking sites like Digg and Slashdot. Both sites will mirror articles that hit the front page of both social bookmarks, keeping a copy in their servers in the event that the ‘dugg’ site goes down. For example, here’s my site’s ‘dugg’ article mirrored in duggmirror. Put the mirror link in the comments of Digg or MirrorDot, to redirect traffic in the event the site fails.

Switch Off Plugins



Know that plugins are also files that are called by your themes to generate queries to the database to yield the information on your blog. The more plugins, the more queries to the database. Sudden increase in web traffic will last mostly around 2-3 days. Choose a few from among the list of plugins that you can live without for a few days. Once you realize an incoming surge of traffic, quickly turn a few off temporarily.

Optimizing Apache Server



This article lists 5 steps that you can take to configure Apache for maximum performance.

Upgrade Hosting



If frustrations still appear after executing the above steps successfully, then it’s time to move up. Take everything a step at a time. If you’re on :

• Shared hosting, try upgrading to Virtual Dedicated Hosting.
• Virtual Dedicated Hosting, try upgrading to Dedicated Hosting.
• Dedicated Hosting, try upgrading to a higher-powered dedicated server.
• High-Powered Dedicated Hosting, go for multiple Load Balanced Servers.

If it is a bandwidth transfer problem, try negotiating for an increase. If not, move over to a different provider that can feed your traffic bandwidth requirements.

Rangit.com has been around since 2007. From the very first post written till the article you see now, many things have changed. Plenty of blog writing mistakes were made and I’m glad they happened. It’s a long learning process and I would like to share with you what I have learned so far. Below are seven ways I’ve experienced through blogging that has helped this blog be what it is today.

Start with the end in mind.

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This is habit no.2 of Stephen Covey’s Habits of Highly Effective People. It is so important to know how the article is supposed to look like, how the points are arranged, etc. Once it is clear, you will then know what to focus on and everything will fall into place at the end.

Images.

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As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. It improves the value of the article by invoking feelings and getting the point across to readers.

Title.

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The single most important thing that draws readers to read the written article. It’s the one line summary that appears in social media, search engines and rss feeds. Including numbers and interesting words like “Top 25 Linux Games” or “140 Faces Of Well Known Bloggers You Won’t Want To Miss” increases the appeal even more. More example titles here.

URL.

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To search engines, the URL is more valuable than the article title. You may construct your title attractively but keep the URL short. Like for example, the title may be “7 Things To Look Out For when Writing A Blog Post” but the URL should be keyword rich like “http://rangit.com/blogs/how-write-title-post-article-attractive”, omitting out irrelevant words like ‘to’, ‘for’, ‘when’, ‘and’.

Spacing.

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Keep paragraphs less than 10 sentences. Or less 5 is possible. Also, include lists. A list simplifies information and readers are able to scan through easily as compared to picking out from a block of text. Readers will know how long the content is especially if it’s a numbered list.

Research.

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The content of what you are going to write may already have been published by many people before you. Read theirs. Find out what they are missing and include it when writing your own article. Get ideas from the comments section of their article.

Originality equals personality.

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It shows honesty and genuineness. Also, humor and mischief is stylish and attractive in its own way. Yep, a pretty good example is thesuperficial.

1. Aaron Wall of SEObook

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2. Adam Curry of PodShow

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3. Amanda Congdon of ABC News

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4. Ana Marie Cox of The Ana Log

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5. Andrew Krucoff of Young Manhattanite

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6. Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish

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7. Andy Baio of Waxy

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8. Anil Dash of Dashes

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9. Arianna Huffington of Huffington Post

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10. Arnold Kim of Mac Rumors

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11. Beppe Grillo of Blog di Beppe Grillo

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12. Bill Simmons of The Sports Guy – Page 2

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13. Biz Stone of Biz Stone, Genius

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14. Blake Robinson of CrunchGear

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15. Bob Lutz of GM FastLane Blog

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16. Brian Clark of CopyBlogger

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17. Brian Crecente of Kotaku, The Gamer’s Guide

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18. Brian Lam of Gizmodo

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19. Casey McKinnon of Galacticast

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20. Caterina Fake of FlickrBlog

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21. Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs

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22. Chris Anderson of The Long Tail

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23. Chris Pirillo of Pirillo!

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24. Chris Sherman of Search Engine Land

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25. Craig Newmark of craigblog

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26. Daniel Lyons of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs

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27. Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch Blog

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28. Darren Rowse of Problogger

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29. Dave Winer of Scripting News

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30. David Lat of Above the Law

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31. Doc Searls of The Doc Searls Weblog

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32. Drew Curtis of FARK

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33. Elizabeth Spiers of elizabethspiers

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34. Ethan Zuckerman of Global Voices Online

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35. Evan Williams of evhead

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36. Frank Gruber of Somewhat Frank

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37. Frank Warren of Post Secret

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38. Fred Wilson of A VC

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39. Gina Trapani of Lifehacker

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40. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com

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41. Graham Hill of TreeHugger

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42. Guy Kawasaki of How to Change the World

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43. Harvey Levin of TMZ

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44. Heather Armstrong of dooce ®

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45. Heather Champ of heather powazek champ

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46. Heather Cocks(right) of Go Fug Yourself

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Thanks andy

47. Henry Copeland of Blogads

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48. Hugh MacLeod of gapingvoid

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49. J.D. Lasica of Our Media

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50. James Farmer of INCorporated SUBversion

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51. Jason Calacanis of Calacanis

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52. Jason DeFillippo of Metroblogging

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53. Jason Kottke of Kottke

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54. Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror

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55. Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine

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56. Jeffrey Zeldman of A List Apart

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57. Jen Chung of Gothamist

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58. Jeremy Schoemaker of ShoeMoney

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59. Jeremy Zawodny of Jeremy Zawodny’s blog

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60. Jessica Coen of Vanity Fair

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61. Jessica Morgan(left) of Go Fug Yourself

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Thanks andy

62. Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software

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63. John Amato of Crooks and Liars

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64. John Battelle of Searchblog

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65. John Biggs of CrunchGear

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66. John Chow of John Chow

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67. John d’Addario of Fleshbot

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68. John Dvorak of Dvorak Uncensored

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69. John Gruber of Daring Fireball

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70. John Neff of Autoblog

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71. Joi Ito of Joi Ito’s Web

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72. Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo

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73. Judd Legum of Think Progress

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74. Julia Allison of Julia Allison

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75. Kevin Rose of kevinhasablog

Scott Beale



76. Lawrence Lessig of Lawrence Lessig

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77. Leo Babauta of Zen Habits | Simple Productivity

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78. Leon Ho of Lifehack.org

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79. Lockhart Steele of Lockhart Steele

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Thanks Ryan

80. Loic Le Meur of Loic Le Meur Blog

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81. Malcolm Gladwell of gladwell

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82. Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr. of Perez Hilton

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83. Mark Cuban of Blog Maverick

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84. Mark Lisanti of Defamer

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85. Mark Frauenfelder of Boing Boing

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86. Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos: State of the Nation

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87. Matt Cutts of Matt Cutts

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88. Matt Drudge of Drudge Report

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89. Matt Haughey of Metafilter

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90. Matthew Mullenweg of Photo Matt » Unlucky In Cards

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91. Matthew Sheffield of NewsBusters

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92. Melissa Lafsky of Freakonomics Opinion New York Times Blog

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93. Mena Trott of Mena’s Corner

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94. Merlin Mann of 43 Folders

Scott Beale



95. Michael Arrington of Techcrunch

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96. Michael K of Dlisted

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97. Michelle Malkin of Hot Air

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98. Mickey Kaus of Kausfiles (Slate)

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99. Mike Masnick of Techdirt

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100. Neil Gaiman of Neil Gaiman’s Journal

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101. Nick Denton of Gawker

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102. Nick Douglas of Valleywag

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103. Nick Wilson of Performancing

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104. Nurudin Jauhari of Jauhari

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105. Om Malik of GigaOM

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106. Pete Cashmore of Mashable

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107. Peter Rojas(left) of Engadget

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108. Peter Sciretta of /Film

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109. Phillip Torrone of MAKE Magazine

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110. Rachel Sklar of Huffington Post

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111. Rafat Ali of paidContent

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112. Ray Wert of Jalopnik

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113. Rich Juzwiak of FourFour

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Thanks DeeDee, Emily

114. Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb

Scott Beale



115. Ricky Van Veen of College Humor

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116. Rob Beschizza of Gadget Lab

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117. Rob Malda of Slashdot

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118. Robert Scoble of Scobleizer

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119. Ryan Block(right) of Engadget

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120. Scott Adams of The Dilbert Blog

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121. Scott Lapatine of Stereogum

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122. Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist

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123. Scott Watermasysk of Ancora Imparo

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124. Sean Bonner of seanbonner

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125. Seth Godin of Seth’s Blog

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126. Steve Garfield of Steve Garfield’s Video Blog

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127. Steve Hall of AdRANTs

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128. Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion

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129. Steven Levitt of Freakonomics

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130. Stewart Butterfield of FlickrBlog

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131. Takashi Yamada of Yanko Design

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132. Ted Leonsis of Ted’s Take

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133. Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Radar

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134. Trent Vanegas of Pink Is The New Blog

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135. Tucker Max of tuckermax

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136. Xia Xue of Xiaxue

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137. Wil Wheaton of WWdN: In Exile

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138. Will Leitch of Deadspin

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139. Zach Braff of zachbraff

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140. Ze Frank of The Show

Scott Beale

Make sure that the blog is already making income before quitting 9-5 day job.



This is the No.1 mistake I made. Seriously. I was living on my savings for the past 7 months. I always thought that having a website was like having a service that is accessible by anyone in the world. And if I had advertisements placed around it, I’ll be rich in no time. Guess what? I was wrong. It was a mistake.

My budget was so tight that I couldn’t afford to go out with my buddies during the weekend for a drink. It was bad. My blog was like a leaf in a garden that didn’t stand out. I had AdSense installed but I was like making $0.01 a week! How pathetic can that be? I have read other blogs and have seen others making it in 2 months and thought that I could do the same. My savings was only enough to sustain my lifestyle for 3 months at most. Who knew it took 7 freaking months! What an experience that was.

Domain name



When I first started, I wanted a blog that is interactive in a sense that it allows an user to rate the product mentioned. And so I searched for a domain name, keeping in mind that it has to be short and sweet. I ended up with the domain rangit.com (this blog) as an anagram to the word ‘rating’. At that time, i called my this site ‘because you value yourself’.

Later on, an idea came in and thought ‘Why not divide my blog into 3 different niches?’. I knew that it would be better that way so that it keeps the scope and audience focused. Then losu.org and odyb.net came. Both are anagrams of ‘soul’ and ‘body’. if you check out the sites, they are named ‘because you value your soul’ and ‘because you value your body’. Too bad my domain name of rangit.com doesn’t really match ‘because you value your mind’. I would have used a different domain name if I knew it earlier. Oh well.

Register domain names separately from the host.



When I first started blogging, I had no idea how hosting went. I made a mistake by registering my domain name together with the host. The problem is, I have no control over the domain name. A simple step of redirecting nameservers took days. If I had control over it, I would have just changed it in a minute. Lesson learned.

Just use the best blogging software and forget the rest.



WordPress. The best. Period.

I always wanted to be different and at that point of time, Joomla! was a new open source project and it received good reviews. What i didn’t know was that Joomla was still a baby and couldn’t perform a lot of the other features that WordPress can. I installed it anyway and blogged on that platform for almost 4 months. Those were really frustrating months. If you’ve followed me since the birth of rangit.com, you’ll know.

Take it 1 step at a time.



I made a mistake by registering 4 blogs. I thought that more blogs meant climbing up the social ladder, faster. Wrong. It was proven when I couldn’t concentrate on all 4 at the same time. In the end, I had no choice but to prioritize. Look at losu.org and compare it to rangit.com. Rangit.com far supersedes in terms of traffic and posts. Oh well, I gotta learn to better manage my time.

Better URL structure.

All my blogs have the same URL structure.

• http:// sitename / category / post title

Though it’s not too bad in terms of search engine friendliness, I would have preferred

• http:// sitename / post title

Networking?



There’s a question mark for a reason. For the past 9 months, there were at least 5 different blogger gatherings around my area. I wanted to join in the fray, but I thought, ‘Hey, how can i go? I have nothing solid to offer? The bloggers who will be attending are already making 5 figure income, known all around the local blogosphere and have a legion of loyal readers.’

Most of my friends are not bloggers. I have no blogger buddies. My blogs are not as famous as theirs and I make much less money than them. I felt that the only way for me to avoid being neglected is to make it in the blog world first, before attending any gathering. Of course it’s no harm attending the event, but I think it’s better to attend it with confidence and knowledge that I have something to offer too. Tell me I’m wrong.

Ad positioning



Ah… I only found out about the BESTEST spot to display an advertisement ONLY 3 weeks back. What a waste to the months before. You can even see it in action. Tons and tons of other bloggers have already been doing it.

It’s the (336 x 280 Google Ad) directly after the title. Trust me. It works.

Choice of niche affects revenue



I didn’t realize but the choice of niche affects your revenue. I didn’t know that keywords like ‘hair’ and ‘computer’ had a difference. I always thought that all keywords are more or less the same. Too bad I only learned about it after a few months of writing. Oh well, at least now I know what to focus on more.

=)

50 MB limit

I have just fully backed up 3 of my blogs and they take up only 1.63MB of space. The total number of articles are less than 300. Don’t panic if you hit 50MB. To get more space allocation, all you need to do is just send them an email at morespace@techrigy.com.

The famous 10

If you use any of the below blog platform, you qualify for free backups.

1. Blogger
2. WordPress
3. TypePad
4. Friendster
5. LiveJournal
6. Serendipity
7. Windows Live Space
8. Movable Type
9. Terapad
10. Vox
11. Multiply

Switch Blog Platforms

Want to move to a better blog platform? Do it easily using the ‘Restore’ feature. If you are using Joomla and want to migrate to WordPress, here’s a nifty script modified by me.

Images & Videos

Look out for the image and video backup support. They will be out pretty soon.

Blog Backup Online
Secure, store and transfer blogs

For those who aren’t so sure, you might ask, what is adsense?

AdSense is an advertising program run by Google. Website owners enroll in this program to enable text and image advertisements on their sites. These ads are administered by Google and generate revenue on a per-click basis based on website content. Though it’s pretty amazing how certain people can earn 4 figure income in a day through adsense, there are 2 BIG issues that come with it.

Click Fraud

If you are hated by certain groups for something controversial that you’ve said, you’re dead. There are certain groups of people out there who pick out websites that they disagree with and destroy the webmaster’s adsense income. All that has to be done is to click on the ads multiple times, say for example 100 clicks per person. A group of 3 is already enough to get your site’s adsense suspended.

Tracking Visitor Clicks

Of course it’s all great when you get clicks, at first. As time goes on, you’d want to improve the content and layout of your site. However, you can’t see who clicked what, where that visitor came from, how many clicks that particular visitor makes, or even which advertisement he clicked on. The only thing that you and I can do in the adsense dashboard is to see the clickthrough rate and how much you’ve earned.

However, the world of adsense publishing became a better place thanks to Trevor Fitzgerald, a 20-year-old student studying Business Administration at Michigan State University, who developed this amazing nifty tool called the ‘Adlogger‘. However, you gotta be able to use FTP to upload the folder to your website.

Guys, if you’re an adsense / YPN freak, you’re gonna love the 16 benefits that come with using the super cool, free, open source, amazing Adlogger.

1. Track and log when a visitor clicks on one of your AdSense ads
2. Optionally receive an email after every reported click
3. Receive an email after every reported multiple click
4. Secure administrative backend
5. Know the total number of clicks and the total number of unique visitors that clicked
6. Know the IP address, hostname, user agent, browser information, operating system of the visitor who clicked on the ad
7. Determine which advertisment was clicked
8. Get past click performance for a specific date or range of dates
9. Find your best performing pages
10. Custom channels help you monitor which pages are receiving clicks
11. Block ads for a specific IP address or range of IPs
12. Automatically block ads for visitors who are clicking too many within a certain time period
13. Know exactly when, why, and for whom ads were successfully blocked
14. If AdSense ads are blocked, you can display an alternate advertisement
15. Code generator page to make installation and setup easySynchronize all of the reporting to Google AdSense server time

You gotta start using it, man. Actually, everyone should. =)

Adlogger
Prevent click fraud & track clicks

To show appreciation to visitors

Daily, I write around 4 posts in 3 blogs. A health blog, a motivational blog and a technology blog. Each of them are in a category of their own and have different sets of users. With MyBlogLog, I can appreciate my readers, new and returning, by showcasing their presence. This allows each reader a chance of being clicked into and checked out by other visitors. I find this very important and have located the MyBlogLog display as the second widget at the top. As the saying goes, ‘encouraged people achieve the best, dominated people achieve second best, neglected people achieve the least’.

To build a solid community



MyBlogLog empowers authors and readers to run at the same level. Everyone who reads my site can learn about and engage with one another, and in the process take the conversation to a whole new level. Readers can become friends with other people who read my favorite blogs. Readers will see what else they’re reading. If you wanna know someone deeper, you can check out their MySpace and Friendster profiles or even view their Flickr photostreams.

To get writing ideas when hitting writer’s block

There are times when I run out of ideas to write. Everyone experiences writer’s block once in a while. However, there are a million things to write about out there. The solution lies in knowing where to go. That is where my community of MyBlogLog comes in. By checking out other readers’ choice of blogs helps to generate ideas. You know, like for example, I came across 2 blogs writing about 10 or 9 reasons to use MyBlogLog and felt something missing. I didn’t feel ‘the kick’ reading it. So thanks to my readers, I have now filled in the blanks and completed the missing points by producing this brilliant post. =)

To motivate yourself

Every author has low days. Days where you hit rock bottom in terms of spirit and strength. I feel demoted and low when I get less than usual in terms of Adsense. Or when there had not been any prominent reviewing opportunities for the day. However, the picture of the people displayed in MyBlogLog tells me that I have people who read my site. A community waiting for the next interesting post from me. And that itself is motivating. Everytime I visit my own blog, I feel both excited and responsible for myself to get back on track.

To keep track of stats



I have 3 tracking codes embedded in rangit.com. Google Analytics, OneStat and MyBlogLog. Google Analytics is the best. However, Google Analytics is a bit more complicated than the rest with all the features and reports. Onestat is simple and easy to use. However the reports are not detailed enough for me to analyze and improve. MyBlogLog on the other hand is cool! The lock on displaying yesterday’s data in the free edition is good! It keeps users from being distracted to keep on checking the results. MyBlogLog has 3 of the most useful data displayed in the dashboard. I get to see the full URL of :

• Where readers came from
• What readers viewed
• What readers clicked

To show that you are of the same wave with the author

As a reader of other blogs, I leave a footprint behind when I visit. The footprint in MyBlogLog will show my personality when authors view me out. MyBlogLog will display my blogs and communities for the world to see, so as a reader I get to show my favourites and authors of the community will get a chance to know me. It allows forming of ideas and opinions on me. Imagine a geek meeting a geek. Or a joker meeting another joker. It connects people. Isn’t it cool?

To attract readers with your avatar picture



Yeah. Attract clicks. Put up an interesting picture. It can be anything. I’ve a reader who has the Chinese God of Wealth as his avatar! It would attract a whole load of God of Wealth devotees. Or if you think you are a cool dude or a hot chick, put up your best picture. This will help strengthen your community and increase readership. As the saying goes, ‘a picture paints a thousand words’.

To increase your chances of knowing people who can promote you

Wouldn’t you be surprised if someday someone BIG visited your blog? Like for example, if you see John Chow‘s avatar in your MyBlogLog community wouldn’t you get excited? A BIG person’s presence does make a load of difference. It protrudes a sense quality which helps a lot in convincing readers to stick around. If you wrote something that catches the eye of the BIG visitor, who knows, you might get mentioned about something of high value that you wrote. Then, you’ll have to thank me in the comments. =P

MyBlogLog Community
Begin to build bridges

Part of what I learned was on where to get free, open, copyleft images. Surely I wouldn’t want to land any party in any legal tangle. I found many, many useful image repositories during the 6 months on the project and it has widen my knowledge. Here are 9 of the most reliable sites to get re-usable, high quality, free images for your website, blog, adverts, banners, etc.

PicSearch



One of the most accurate and fresh image search on the web that indexes over 1,700,000,000 pictures! Picsearch connects its users to the vast visual resources of the internet by using its own technology to crawl the web and create a searchable index of images. When a user sends a query to Picsearch the returned result is received as a set of thumbnail images that are sorted to ensure that they are as highly relevant as possible. When the user clicks on a thumbnail they are linked to the original web site where that image is located.

Parents, relax, because Picsearch is family friendly so children are able to surf in safety as all offensive material is filtered out. The site is also very user friendly as it’s designed to be simple, fast and accurate. Good stuff!

Woophy



Woophy stands for World Of Photography. The website is founded by a Dutch collective of photo aficionados and internet designers who believed that navigation on internet can be more visual, logical and associative.

With the help of (amateur) photographers across the world their objective is to ultimately cover every inch of our world map with images that represent the world’s beauty and peculiarity from all different cultural perspectives. You can search by city, country, category keywords or member to find photos. The categories are animals, culture, landmarks & buildings, objects and people. You can also limit the search results by date and sort by number of views. Thumbs up!

Free Stock Photos



Download images and use it for personal or commercial design projects as many as you want for FREE! There are some restrictions in using photos from the site such as retaining the domain name when you use the photo for your website or blog.

YotoPhoto



Originally an experiment to facilitate easier image searching of the Wikipedia, Yotophoto eventually expanded to index over 250, 000 free images. Yotophoto is a search engine for free-to-use stock photographs and images. These are images that are either in the Public Domain or released under generous Creative Commons, GNU FDL or similar licenses. Yotophoto’s goal is to help people locate, remix, republish open and copyleft images.

Stock Xchng



Stock.XCHNG was launched in February 2001, as an alternative for expensive stock photography. The idea was to create a site where creative people could exchange their photos for inspiration or work. In about two years the site evolved into a massive community indexing over 1.000.000 registered users and more than 250.000 photos online!

The site encourages users to share photos with fellow designers! The aim is to keep SXC as a friendly community of photography addicts who generously offer their works to the public free of charge.

MSN Search Images



MSN, one of the top 5 search engines. The returned results are almost as good as Google’s or Yahoo’s. Just click the image to get its details like the source and the image availabilty. There is a written term saying that ‘MSN Search is not affiliated with the contents or authors of the page displayed below. We are not responsible for its content. The image may be subject to copyright laws.’ So check the image’s page to find out if it’s copyrighted or not before using it.

Yahoo! Images



It’s good! No doubt about it! However, images appearing in the results may or may not be copyrighted. What you can do is, if you find a picture that you want to use, review the site and contact the owners to find out about using it. Yahoo! Image also lists popular image searches by web surfers so you can check out the top search by everyone.

Google Images



Relax, and be happy for this is the mother of all image searches. You will MOST likely find the image you are looking for, here. There’s a lot that you can do besides keying in the keyword and press ‘search’. You can also limit images to a specific size, a specific format or even colors! Once you find a picture, check the site or contact the site’s owner to find out about using it.

Again, the important thing to understand in using this search is that the images come from all over the Web and there’s no guarantee they’re free. What I usually do is just send a mail and offer a backlink as ‘appreciation’ for using the images. I have had 100% approval rate using this method as every website appreciates backlinks that boosts their search engine rankings. Everybody is happy that way. =)

Flickr



Flickr’s 2 main goals:

• To help people make their photos available to the people who matter to them.
• To enable new ways of organizing photos.

Flickr has tons of features, very easy to use and a community of world contributors. This is definitely the BEST and COOLEST online photo repository in the world. I could spend an hour doing nothing but checking out the ‘last 7 days‘ section. What’s even cooler? Flickr lets you search for only Creative Commons-licensed images in the advanced search tool to save users the trouble of having to sift through thousands of images to find the ones free for re-use. Brilliant work by the Flickr team!

Other Image Repositories
List of small to large directories

This is how it works.

1. A blogger inserts a Spotplex code into their blog.
2. Whenever an article in the blog is read, the code reports Spotplex server that the article is read.
3. The article shows up on Spotplex and the view counter reflects the change.

At the moment, they only allow people with invites to sign up. If you think your website is popular enough, register your email and they may give you an invite.

UPDATE : I’ve just received my invite in less than a week! Go get your invite and test it out!

Spotplex
Find most visited articles

Getting others to say you’re good is better than you saying you’re good



67.3% of readers state that they found the blogs they read regularly through links from other blogs. Link exchange is important. Find writers you admire and comment on their blog. Try building relationships. After all, the first half of life is spent mainly in finding out who we are through seeing ourselves in our interaction with others.

Write highly valuable content and post consistently



It doesn’t matter if a blog is plain or full of multimedia flashes or colorful pictures. The blog author may be the most scorned man in the world who doesn’t have a sense of design, but if he writes REAL articles, the author will still attain growth in readership. If you choose to have it daily, then by all means stick to daily. Writing 3 extra articles today to cover for the next 3 days doesn’t count. Effort and consistency counts.

Have an opinion and write with style



I myself write about things that I found around the net, like the Blog Readership Report. However, I will usually add in points of my own. I will take the effort to make it exciting and beneficial to my readers while keeping to the facts. Some blog authors include profanity in their blogs to really show themselves, some remain professional and keep it clean. The most important thing is be yourself. Once there is acceptance in readers, there will be growth in readers.

Show some personality



Be funny. Be loud. Show some attitude. Again, stand out from the crowd by being yourself. If a blog is about birds, I’m pretty sure that the blog will draw a crowd from animal lovers and not home improvement enthusiasts. So stick to a category and stay there. Persistence is the twin sister of excellence. One is a matter of quality; the other, a matter of time.

Write Daily



68.3% of readers will visit their favorites everyday. My personal preference would be to post 1 article everyday. When I started out blogging in November 2006, I posted articles irregularly. I only did it when I felt like it. It was not until February 2007 that I decided to hold it together and retain the shape of my blog. I began to write daily for the love of myself. Soon enough, readership increased. I feel happiest when I get comments. =)

Vizu Answers
See What The World Thinks

Blog Readership Report
Understanding blog readers’ usage patterns