Photoblogging - How To Start A Photo Blog

Photo blogging is a different kind of blogging, which is primarily focussed on pictures and not on text or articles. The pictures are usually accompanied with a caption or a brief description and rest is left for the viewers’ imagination. Unlike the usual blogging, in photo blogging you don't have to think much before posting a new post. But that said, it doesn't mean the authors of the photo blogs are not talented or it's a matter of seconds or minutes to publish a new post. Their talent and creativity is all visible in the pictures taken by them. Photographers see the same things that we do, but with a different angle and that is how the pictures are presented.
Nowadays, the content of the photo blogs is not limited to the pictures taken by the cameras. You can see a number of digital pictures on Internet, created by either modifying the pictures taken by cameras or creating them from scratch in photo editing software like Adobe Photoshop (shareware) or Paint.Net (freeware).

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4 Tips for Organizing And Uncluttering your Blog Archive

A well organized blog has a tone of respectability as well as being easy for your followers to search through for their favorite articles. Unfortunately, many bloggers let their blog devolve into a mess of discombobulated pieces. In the name of creating order out of the chaos that is far too many blogs, here are my top 10 tips for organizing your blog archive.

1. Use Pages on Your Blog

The most important thing that you can do to improve the fluidity of your blog experience is to add pages. Pages make it much easier to find what people are looking for. Pages don't get lost in the infinite black hole that is an archive; instead, you can put them anywhere you want on your homepage and, actually, on every page within your blog. This means that pages are always vying for attention and will, as a result, get that attention.

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10 Things Every Blogging Office Needs

Being a professional blogger isn’t as simple as waking up one morning and stating, “I am a blogger, look out world!” Like any other discipline or endeavour, being a successful blogger means that you have to take the job seriously. That means working with dedication, planning and forethought. Having the right tools is an essential part of being a blogger, as you need the right tools in order to get the job done.

1. Computer or Laptop: There is no doubt one of the key tools of the modern journalist and the pro blogger is the computer. After all, the computer has become the informational link to the world. Blogging is all about information and staying current with what is happening in the world around us. This means that your computer is an essential tool in your blogging toolkit. While it is not necessary to have a top of the line gaming computer, you should have one that can get the job done or you will lose hours and hours on productivity. Making sure that you have a quality anti-virus program and firewall might be savvy addition as well.

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How To Save, Back Up And Restore A Blogger Template Using The New Blogger Dashboard - Video Tutorial

Last week i was busy making some video screen casts with tutorials for the new Blogger design.In the next few posts i will be sharing the videos with you here on Spice Up Your Blog.Whether you like the new Interface or not we do need to familiarize ourselves with it.I'm sure as with all new Google products or updates the Blogger team will continue to make improvements.I'm certainly not over impressed with the new design and did leave feedback with 8 changes or additions I would like to see.

The first video covers Making a back up of your Template, as we know when you edit your template it's vital to make a back up in case of mistakes.

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How To Delete A Blogger Blog Using The New Dashboard Design - Video Tutorial

In the last post we had a video screen cast showing how to Back Up And Restore A Blogger Template in the new Blogger design.In this post we continue with the new Blogger design tips theme and show how to delete an unwanted blog.Remember when you delete a blog on Blogger you have the option to restore it within 90 days.Check out the video below and look out for more screen casts on using the new Blogger in upcoming posts.

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7 Fresh Ideas To Deal With Bloggers Block

Guest Post By Grace Pamer.Want to get involved ? See how you can become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

Blogging is a phenomenon of the Internet age that has few precedents from the past. Bloggers have to come up with new ideas for articles on a regular basis, write and edit their work, and post them, ready to move on to the next blog entry. On the whole we undertake no formal training for such demands and yet the pressures can sometimes be intense. We often work in a particular niche, sometimes alone, and on occasion may feel the constraints of such choices. In fact, in many ways, the only activity prior to the advent of web logs (blogs) was the work of professional column writers at newspapers and magazines for they had to come up with new ideas regularly to maintain their readerships expectations - and they were paid to do it!

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Redirect one page to another in Blogger

Blogger has launched an Array of Search Engine related features and one of them is the ability to create Custom Redirects. Technically Blogger allows you to create 302 Redirects which are used to specify that the Web Page has temporarily moved to a new location.










Blogger has launched an Array of Search Engine related features and one of them is the ability to create Custom Redirects. Technically Blogger allows you to create 302 Redirects which are used to specify that the Web Page has temporarily moved to a new location.

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How To Track Visitors And Optimize Your Website

Post Updated (9th July, 2010): Now "Stats" is an integral part of Blogger.
If you haven't used Blogger in Draft (Beta-Blogger) till now, then do it right away. It is where, Blogger releases all its new features before officially adding the services to Blogger blogs. To access Blogger in Draft, instead of logging in to www.Blogger.com log in at draft.Blogger.com

The latest Beta add-on from Blogger is a "Stats" section in the Dashboard - to monitor and analyze your visitor traffic in near-real-time.

Tracking your visitors' activity on your blog is an important part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). So, if you haven't yet accessed the "Stats" section of your Blogger-account - then do it right now. And as of now "Blogger Stats" is relatively new and limited in terms of the information these tools provide, so even now I advise everyone to sign up at the below mentioned websites/services, start tracking to give your visitors what they want (that's what SEO is all about)...

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You would have seen many fancy and flashy visitor counters in hundreds or rather thousands of blogs, but simply counting the number of visitors or page views is totally of no use to any blogger or webmaster. Visitor-Tracking is a much more advanced and useful method as compared to those simple counters.

So here's a list of important tracking websites, providing free and fabulous features to all the bloggers...

The tracking reports and statistics from these websites mainly contain:

1. Of course, unique visits & page views, averaged and archived to weekly, monthly and yearly graphs. (And all the reports are in real time)

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4 Tips for Organizing And Uncluttering your Blog Archive

A well organized blog has a tone of respectability as well as being easy for your followers to search through for their favorite articles. Unfortunately, many bloggers let their blog devolve into a mess of discombobulated pieces. In the name of creating order out of the chaos that is far too many blogs, here are my top 10 tips for organizing your blog archive.

1. Use Pages on Your Blog

The most important thing that you can do to improve the fluidity of your blog experience is to add pages. Pages make it much easier to find what people are looking for. Pages don't get lost in the infinite black hole that is an archive; instead, you can put them anywhere you want on your homepage and, actually, on every page within your blog. This means that pages are always vying for attention and will, as a result, get that attention.

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11 Elementary Tips to Consider When Redesigning Your Blog

Do you think that your blog looks and feels very ‘dated’ and that it would be good to move it in another direction in order to let it progress and grow? If so, the following 11 tips should be a good rundown for making the redesigning of your blog as simple and un-complicated as humanly possible.

1) Navigation 

Navigation is a vital aspect on any website in the world just for the simple fact that without the ease of navigation through a website we would never actually find the certain pages we are looking for.  I find it extremely annoying when I cannot find what I am looking for - your visitors will probably feel the same, hence making navigation crucial.
A good example of an easy website to navigate through:

As you can see on the fuelyourcreativity.com website, it is easily navigated through; with the main navigation bar on the top of the page, the blog posts are easily indentified, and below the logo is a list of all the categories for easy access to your specified blog post.
There is also a "most popular posts" section, pagination and a list of the social networking links, all in all making this an easy accessible website.

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Should You Make Blogging Your Career?

Recently, someone asked me a question; How much do bloggers actually make? This is a question that generally gets asked around a lot. And no matter how successful a blogger is, he has wondered about the same thing at some point or another. The fact of the matter is, there's no simple answer to this question, as there is no generalization in this industry. Some bloggers earn more than a normal job would get them, while others just look on! So is blogging worth it? In this post, we will (hopefully) discuss whether it is or not. But to me, it depends. There are really so many factors that it is hard to anticipate anything. But here is a list of last year's Top 10 Earning Blogs which will hopefully give you a general idea of how much a pro blogger can earn.

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10 Best Strategies To write Quality Content To Increase Traffic

People are always going on about how SEO is important for their rankings, how marketing will popularize their blog, and how important updating your content with regular postings is. But if there's anything that has the most say in how successful and viral your posts will get, it's your written word. Contrary to spoken communication, writing depends solely upon the quality of words, the expressions, and the writing style, rather than your tone, your body language, and your facial expressions which are visible only in spoken communications.

Your words then, are alone in conveying your message to the reader, which makes written communication somewhat more of a challenge than verbal communication. Writing online isn't easier, since there are much more distractions present. And the fact, that people nowadays are getting lesser and lesser time to read between the lines, makes the task all the more harder. The key then, as it seems to me, is to write good quality, killer content that retains and intrigues your readers. In this post, I will share some tips with you that will help you create better quality content in relatively lesser time.

I am not disagreeing with the notion that SEO is not important. It is as important as anything. But you don't see poor quality content getting viral, do you? Nor will poor quality content live long, no matter what tricks you apply to it. On the other hand, good quality content will retain its life and grow in popularity with the proper nurturing. Quality forms the backbone of your blog, without which your blog will just be a limp creature hanging on to dear life! So to give rigidity to your blog, you need to create some really good quality content.

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The Basics of Search Engine Spiders

Search engine spiders, also known as crawlers, consist of scripts or programs that when used by search engines, go out and collect information about publicly-accessible web pages.  These spiders are solely responsible for collecting information – including content, keywords and meta data – and use this information to index your site and rank it against other web sites for any given search query.  There are multiple types of spiders that are designed to scan and engage in specific functions and acts, each contributing to how any given search engine views your site.  By understanding what these spiders are doing when they happen upon your website, you will be better equipped to know how to use these spiders to your advantage.

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How To Choose Credit Card Payment Gateway For Your Blog / Website?

Blogs and websites are now popping up left and right every day. More and more people are looking for alternatives to their regular jobs. As a result, many small online businesses have surfaced especially in the past few years. And the Credit Card has facilitated the online business industry, commonly known as e-commerce. A growing number of people now want to buy stuff over the internet while sitting in the comfort of their living room, all thanks to the Credit Card which gives them the leisure. This means that now is as good a chance as any to incorporate e-commerce to your website. This also means you need to have a mechanism to accept Credit Cards on your blog / website,

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Should You Drop Out Of School For Blogging?

Blogging provides people with the opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions with the world, and earn something out of it. Recent trends have shown that the young generation is taking more of an interest in blogging than ever. But blogging is a time-consuming and effort-intensive job. And in today's fast-paced life, it often becomes difficult to take time out of daily life to do something extra. As a result, many of you who are bloggers may be finding it hard to juggle your blogging career along with your academic / professional life. Does that mean you should drop out of your school? Is blogging really worth it?

In simple words, no. Blogging isn't worth it. In this post, we'll discuss why, and also, how to manage your blogging career along with your normal life.

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Six Tricks to Keep Your Blog Posts Engaging

Guest Post By Grace Pamer.
Most article writers produce content for the Internet, and Internet readers are notoriously hurried. If your writing fails to grab and retain their attention, you lose your readership within the count of five. Really! The following are six simple rules that help a writer engage their audience and keep them reading.

Expert Writers are Always Avid Readers

Writing is an art. Just imagine being a painter who sees only your own work, or a musician that never listens to others. The talent fades away, or at best, never improves. The same principle of thriving on exposure to other's work is also true when writing. Reading a wide variety of works, from poetry to articles about article writing, enriches your own skills.

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From April 1st The New Blogger Dashboard Will Become Default

When checking back i was very surprised to see it was almost a year ago since Blogger introduced the new design on Blogger In Draft.April 20th 2011 to be exact as i explained in the post The New Blogger Dashboard And Design Is Live.After a few months in draft Blogger offered the option to use the new interface on the main blogger site.While some people took up the option and have become familiar with it, many including myself have continued to use the old dashboard.On the first of April however the new design will become default and we will all be using the new GUI.Over the last week I have been trying to familiarize myself with the layout and options of the new interface and it ain't been easy.

One of my main worries however is that hundreds of Blogger tutorials here on Spice Up Your Blog were wrote with instructions for the old dashboard.I have decided to edit all those posts over the next week and all future Blogger tutorials will be aimed at the new design.

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DIY Earned Media - How To Get Free Publicity For Your Blog

Last year, the Nielsen Company reported 156 million blogs on the Worldwide Web, and Technorati, the blog search reported that bloggers were updating their sites more frequently than in previous years.Blogging is now mainstream, making it more difficult than ever to gain success in this medium.The following are real-world examples of how I garnered favorable publicity for my blog on sites like the Washington Post and MSNBC, and how I even landed a weekly radio commentary on public radio.

In my profession, which is public relations, this is often referred to as earned media.It's earned because unlike advertising you don't pay for it, at least not with cash.You earn it through time, relationships, reciprocity, quality products, ingenuity and creativity.

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Top 25 Google Chrome Extension for Bloggers

Google Chrome is now one of the most popular and widely used browser. Apart from its ease of use, one of the things that make Google Chrome so popular is the plethora of amazing extensions it offers. You can find extensions for almost anything. Google Chrome extensions can prove to be really useful for bloggers, as a lot of amazing blogging related extensions are present out there.
So today, we have a list of Top 25 Google Chrome Extension for Bloggers. These extensions were specially hand picked, keeping in mind the requirements of a blogger. Check the list out and pick the ones that suit your needs the best. We hope you will find this list useful.

1. AddThis – Share & Bookmark (new)

As the name suggests, AddThis is is an amazing extension for sharing stuff on social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Digg, Blogger. Tumblr and Reddit etc. etc. It allows sharing on more than such 300 websites; and that too very easily and quickly. It is a really handy extension that not only allows sharing stuff, but also lets you bookmark, print and translate webpages. This tool is highly customizable and you can modify it according to your choice from the “Options”.

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Our aim: Turning Bloggers Into Entrepreneurs

We are so pleased to display our new logo and present our new tagline "Turning Bloggers into Entrepreneurs" we really mean it. We have been in this field for three long years and we have now decided to experience something big now. Today we will find out how to incorporate the spirit of entrepreneurship in the blogging world. Most of the people are engaged in blogging for two main reasons; to make money or because they are passionate. Very few of them think ahead of it.

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