$25,000 Giveaway - Or Get a Free Blog Template

The newly launched ThemeForest is offering an amazing deal to 2,500 people. The First 2,500 to join and comment will win $10 and one of the 2,500 will win 25,000 dollars. So if you join fast, you'll receive $10, which you can transfer to your paypal account or which you can use to buy yourself a template.

ThemeForest is a newly launched website which offers all kinds of templates, such as Blogger Templates, Wordpress themes, HTML Templates, Flash sites and so on. If you're not interested in buying a template you can always design one and earn money buy selling it on their site.
How to Join the Contest?

1. First you will need to sign up with ThemeForest, which should only take a moment.
2. Next, visit the post over at PsdTuts, where they have a link to the short and sweet form you need to complete. PsdTuts is one of ThemeForest's many affiliates.
   
3. Wait for a reply email, which will tell you when your money has been deposited.

Source

15 Beautiful Google PageRank Display Button Widgets

PageRanking of a website is a very important factor when it comes to Search Engine Optimization, Advertising, and most importantly, trustability. So these handy little widgets will help build a great reputation for your website by openly sharing your PageRank with your readers.

• The widgets display the PageRank of the current page being viewed.
• You're bound to find at least one that matches your website, of the selection below.

How to Implement the Widgets?
Simply click the "add to blogger" button if you're blog is powered by google blogger. If not, copy and paste the code into your webpage. Simply click on the code and it will highlight automatically. Make sure the code is placed between the two body tags of your template. If you have any questions regarding installation, please feel free to comment below!

Source

Related Posts Widget for Blogger / Blogspot

Now here is wonderful hack for displaying links to related posts beneath each of your blog posts. The related articles are chosen from other posts in that same category/label/tag. With this hack many of your readers will remain on your site for longer periods of time when they see related posts of interest.


Updates:

If your related posts have not been showing up lately: See How to Fix!

Steps for Implementation:

1. Go to Layout >Edit HTML in your Blogger Dashboard.
   
2. Back up your existing Template before making any changes!
3. Make sure to check the "Expand Widget Templates" box.
4. Search for the </head> tag.
5. Add the following code just before the </head> tag.

<style> #related-posts { float : left; width : 540px; margin-top:20px; margin-left : 5px; margin-bottom:20px; font : 11px Verdana; margin-bottom:10px; } #related-posts .widget { list-style-type : none; margin : 5px 0 5px 0; padding : 0; } #related-posts .widget h2, #related-posts h2 { font-size : 20px; font-weight : normal; margin : 5px 7px 0; padding : 0 0 5px; } #related-posts a { text-decoration : none; } #related-posts a:hover { text-decoration : none; } #related-posts ul { border : medium none; margin : 10px; padding : 0; } #related-posts ul li { display : block; background : url("https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaIdEFCjHPf-zIOW8bNn_Wr1-mBHISO1fTi50wsKrcdF4ULHp0Z7eEYmE_qzRHVHoPyTYxnWJM7EaJWN0jIucMSKf9CpqI4ydIte_WWF5uvGK5qEggYZENzLd8hQzZA0gSmbk6KPq8ogA/") no-repeat 0 0; margin : 0; padding-top : 0; padding-right : 0; padding-bottom : 1px; padding-left : 21px; margin-bottom : 5px; line-height : 2em; border-bottom:1px dotted #cccccc; } </style> <script src='http://theblogtemplates.com/scripts/Related_posts_hack.js' type='text/javascript'/>

6. Now search for <data:post.body/>. In some of the templates this code may look like this
   <div class='post-body>
   or
   <data:post.body/>
7. Add the following code just beneath the code you just searched for.
   

   <b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
   <div id="related-posts">
   <font face='Arial' size='3'><b>Related Posts : </b></font><font color='#FFFFFF'><b:loop values='data:post.labels' var='label'><data:label.name/><b:if cond='data:label.isLast != &quot;true&quot;'>,</b:if><b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;item&quot;'>
   <script expr:src='&quot;/feeds/posts/default/-/&quot; + data:label.name + &quot;?alt=json-in-script&amp;callback=related_results_labels&amp;max-results=5&quot;' type='text/javascript'/></b:if></b:loop> </font>
   <script type='text/javascript'> removeRelatedDuplicates(); printRelatedLabels();
   </script>
   </div></b:if>

8. Now Save your Template and you're done!

Customization

• In order to change the number of maximum related posts being displayed for each label, search for the code below (within the code given in step 7) and change the number "5" to any desired number.

max-results=5

If you have any questions on implementing this hack into your own blog, shoot me a comment and I'll be glad to help!
Make sure to check out our other great Blogger Hacks as well:
Recent Posts Hack with Thumbnails; Recent Comments Hack; Sleek Search Bar

Special thanks to Real Trix!

Source

Random Posts Widget for Blogger / Blogspot

This widget can definitely bring some excitement to your blogger powered blog. Letting your readers surf your blog to the fullest extent by creating a link to a random post in your blog's sidebar. Besides providing fun for your blog, hopefully your visitors will stay on your site for longer periods of time.


Installation and Customization:

• Click button below to complete Installation:
  
  
• Once you have installed the widget, you can change the link text. The default value is "View Random Post". To change this, view the code and search for "View Random Post", and change it to any desired text.

Those are all the steps necessary to implement the Random Post Widget to blogger. I hope you and your readers thoroughly enjoy it!

Source

Best SEO Sites for Increased Traffic Tips

As many of you know, Search Engines are the most substantial source of traffic for almost any blog on the web. The blogs without any traffic from Google will never have the chance to be shared with the world. In order to increase your traffic, you must optimize your blog so that Search Engines are attracted to it. Which is also known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
So here is a list of useful SEO sites where you can learn how to harness the power of google :

Courtney Tuttle
Join Courtney's Internet Marketing School and you will definitely gain vital knowledge when it comes to search engine optimization.

The Keyword Academy
This is personally my favorite SEO site run by Courtney Tuttle and Mark Butler. You'll learn more in one of their posts than you will in 50 of Darren Rowse's Posts.

Grizzly's Online Blog
He's got some great strategies for making an income online along with useful SEO tips.

Search Engine Land
Search Engine Land is a hub for news and information about search engine marketing, optimization and how search engines work for searchers.

Daily Blog Tips
Improve your blog with Daily Blog Tips. A fast paced blog featuring articles on blog design, SEO, promotion, monetization and more

Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
talk about Google, SEO, and Gadgets. But mostly Google.

SEOmoz
Search Engine Marketing News & Tips

Search Engine Journal

Pronet Advertising
Pronet Advertising is a weblog about Neil Patel's personal experiences in online marketing.

Search Engine Guide
The small business guide to search engine marketing. Articles from the top names in the industry cover topics including SEO, PPC, SEM, blogging, social media, adsense, adwords, Google, Yahoo, MSN and Internet marketing.

Online Marketing Blog
All about the intersection of search engine & social media marketing

Marketing Pilgrim
Andy Beal discusses news from the search engine industry, blogging, rss and other internet marketing.

Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Watch provides news and tips about search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), and searching the Web. We offer daily news & analysis of the search industry, including the latest on Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.

Get Elastic
Ecommerce articles on internet retail, online marketing, social media, SEO, and killer ecommerce tips from Elastic Path Software; Featuring the Get Elastic ecommerce podcast - conversations with ecommerce industry insiders.

Web Analytics World
Manoj Jasra's insight on Web Analytics and the Search Marketing Industry. Also including Interviews, Technology Reviews and Podcasts

BlogStorm
Search engine optimization & internet marketing blog

Small Business SEM
Small Business SEM by Matt McGee | SEO and Marketing Discussion for Small Businesses

SEO Scoop
SEO Scoop is a popular search engine optimization blog that focuses on SEO tips, theories and news.

Search Engine Roundtable
Search engine optimization news and resources

Source

PayPal Donation Button Widget - Make Money

Here is a great way for your readers to reward you for all the hard work and effort you've put into your blog. A PayPal Donation button will allow your readers to easily send you money via PayPal.

PayPal Icons
These icons can be used as your donation button if you choose to customize.


Adding a Paypal Donation Button

Sign into your Paypal account and if you don’t have one you can get a free paypal account here.

1. Login into your Paypal account with your paypal E-mail address and password:
2. Click on ‘Merchant Services’ Tab available in the Top Menu
3. When you scroll down your window, you will see a ‘Donations’ link in the ‘PayPal Website Payments Standard’ heading Section.
4. Clicking on the ‘Donate’ link will take you a form where you are asked to fill some information’s like Organization name/service, Donation ID (optional).
5. Click on 'Customize Appearance' in order to use your own image for the button. You may use one of the images above if you like.
   
6. After Filing the required information click on ‘Create Button’ link.
7. Now you will see some HTML Code, copy it
   

Adding HTML code into Blogger blog:

1. Sign in into your Blogger Blog and Click on the ‘Layout’ link in your dashboard
2. Click ‘Add a Gadget’ link and select ‘HTML/JavaScript’ option
3. Now paste the HTML code that you copied from your Paypal account and save it.
4. Now open your blog and you will see the ‘Paypal Donate’ button in your blogspot blog sidebar. You can display Donate button wherever you want on your blog like blog Header, footer or its sidebar
   

Adding HTML code into Wordpress blog:

1. Login into your Wordpress blog and go to its Dashboard
2. Click Presentation –> Widgets
3. Click on the content area in front of ‘Text 1’ widget
4. Paste your HTML code in the content area available and save changes
5. Open your Wordpress blog and check donate button will be in your blog sidebar
   

Wordpress Donations Cloud
This paypal widget is quite useful because it's more than just a button. It allows users to link to their own site when they make a donation. Therefore encouraging your readers to make a donation.


I hope you've found this article to be of great help and I wish all of you much success in your blogging adventures!

Source

SocialOomph / TweetLater Provides Great Automated Twitter Tools

Social Oomph is a great Twitter Service which automates some of the dull parts of managing your Twitter Account. Such as filtering spam, scheduling tweets, shortening URLs and more. This twitter widget is extremely useful!

Here are some of the free features on Social Oomph.

Schedule tweets — Plan, set & forget

Schedule tweets and keep your Twitter stream ticking over with new tweets even when you're not in front of your computer. Publish tweets when your international followers are online and you're asleep.

Bulk upload & schedule tweets — Save time

If you have many tweets to schedule, prepare them offline, put them in a simple text file, and upload them in bulk. Save time by not having to enter and schedule them by hand in the system.

Track keywords on Twitter — Empower yourself

Set up alerts and track keywords in the public Twitter stream. SocialOomph will monitor the Twitter tweet stream and periodically email you a digest of the tweets that contain those keywords. You can also use this to track your @replies.

Save and reuse drafts — Save hours of typing

Save draft tweets, frequently used text snippets and URLs and reuse them in your scheduled tweets. Save tons of time by avoiding repetitive typing.

Send welcome DMs to new followers — Automate

Send a nice non-promotional DM to new followers that focus on them and your future interaction with them, or simply to thank them for choosing to follow you.

Bit.ly URL shortening — Track those clicks

Add your bit.ly URL shortening account details to your SocialOomph profile, and they will shorten your links with it so that you can track the clicks on all your links.

Follow those who follow you — Automate

Automatically follow people who follow you and save a ton of time while your Friends list builds itself.

Unfollow those who unfollow you — Automate

Automatically unfollow someone when they unfollow you if that is how you prefer to manage your Friends list.

Vet new followers — Semi-automation

Even though you've selected to auto follow new followers, SocialOomph will interrupt the process for 72 hours and give you an opportunity to manually review new followers and decide if you want to follow, ignore, or block each new follower.

Purge your DM Inbox — Keep it tidy

You will probably agree that it's a bit of a pain to manually delete DMs from your Inbox, especially since they accumulate so quickly. You can run a purge on your Inbox to delete everything, or DMs older than 7 days, or DMs older than 30 days.

Personal status feed — Your own tweet engine

Grab your own personal 140-character tweet scheduling engine and RSS feed. You can schedule and publish tweets that don't go to Twitter, they go to your personal tweet stream, which is available in RSS, XML and Javascript formats.

Unlimited Twitter accounts — No charge

Add and manage as many Twitter accounts as you want. SocialOomph will not charge you a dime.

Sign Up for SocialOomph

Source

Blogger Tag Cloud Widget by Categories / Labels

Source

Blogger Templates and WordPress Themes by ThemeForest

ThemeForest offers professional blog templates and themes at affordable prices. If you can't afford to hire that expensive designer then ThemeForest is the right place for you. They offer wonderfully designed WordPress Themes and Blogger Templates which will help make your blog stand out from the rest of the crowd.

More about ThemeForest
ThemeForest has a growing collection of hundreds of nicely designed templates. The prices range from about $10 to $35. In most cases the wordpress themes are a little more expensive and nicer looking than the templates for blogger.

My Favorite Blogger Templates

Red and White
An awakening template featuring two nice sidebars.


Underland
This template should make you and your readers feel as if you were underground.


Buy Themes Template
This would work great for a design blog or even a photo blog.

My Favorite WP Themes

Business Professional Package
Excellent template which will give you blog the professional and clean look.


Convergence Community
Convergence is a nicely put together WordPress theme with the intent and focus on creating a community site.


BlueLight
Manage your portfolio and blog posts easily with this mash-up Wordpress theme.

Source

Tip Jar Widget for Blogs makes Money

ScratchBack is a friendly online "tipping system" for bloggers who desire to make a buck from their sidebar. It's a great alternative to a "Paypal Donation" button, because your potential sponsors will be tempted by a worthwhile reward. This reward is a nice fat link back to their site which no blogger can resist.


How it Works:
First you will need to sign up and install their widget code on your site. Once you've implemented the code into your blog you should be able to see a nicely sized widget in your sidebar. This should only take a matter of minutes to get your self up and running. Their system allows you to accept tips from advertisers and in return they will receive image or text links on your site.

Payout Rate:
The current commission structure has been switched from 50% to 90% for the publisher. This is an outrageously wonderful ratio! So you'll make 9 out of every 10 dollars sold on your site (payments made via PayPal).

Customization:
You might run in to problems when it comes to blending the widget in with your blog. Other than that, they allow you to choose from multiple themes, and some of which are pretty good looking. And the rest of the designs have a bit of a junky look to them, so don't get too excited...

My Experience with ScratchBack:
To be honest, I have only used it on WidgetsForFree™ for one day and I made only 2 dollars. So I will have to rely on my readers to give us some honest feedback on the longer term use of Scratchback. Although, I might give it a shot once the widget is fully customizable and is capable of matching my blog design.
Sign Up for ScratchBack

Source

Hide Show DIV Content with Links by using Javascript

The Hide and Show DIV elements for HTML content is a great way to clean up your sidebar. It becomes especially handy for those long blogroll lists or anything that clutters up the blog. Just simply click a link to make all the hidden content magically appear and disappear.


Demo:
+/- Click Here to Expand and Collapse

• HowHero Tutorials
• Blog Translation Plugin
• Make Money Widget

How to use it in Your Blog
Step 1: Adding CSS and Javascript
First, add this code below directly above the </head> tag.

<style type="text/css">
.commenthidden {display:none}
.commentshown {display:inline}
</style>
<script type="text/Javascript">
function togglecomments (postid) {
var whichpost = document.getElementById(postid);
if (whichpost.className=="commentshown") { whichpost.className="commenthidden"; } else { whichpost.className="commentshown"; }
} </script>

Step 2: Adding the Active Content to be Displayed
Place this code wherever you would like it to appear. Make sure to change the red text to a name that is "unique" to any other name in your template. An example might be "blogroll-dropdown". If you do not give each Hide Show DIV element a unique name the script cannot be used more than once on the same page. The green text is the title of the link that you click on to make the content appear. Replace the code "Expanded Content" with the content you wish to have expand and collapse.

<a aiotitle="click to expand" href="javascript:togglecomments('UniqueName')"
>Link Title</a><br />
<div class="commenthidden" id="UniqueName"
>Expanded Content</div>

Step 3: Sample Code
Here is what my code looks like for the demo above:

<a aiotitle="" href="javascript:togglecomments('hideshowdemo')">+/- Click Here to Expand and Collapse</a>
<div class="commenthidden" id="hideshowdemo"><ul><li><a href="http://howhero.com/">HowHero Tutorials</a></li><li><a href="http://widgetsforfree.blogspot.com/2008/09/translate-blog-widget-using-flags.html">Blog Translation Plugin</a></li><li><a href="http://widgetsforfree.blogspot.com/2008/09/make-money-blog-widget-performancing.html">Make Money Widget</a></li></ul>
</div>

Source

Recent Posts Widget for Blogger with Thumbnails, Summaries, Comments, etc

Display beautifully crafted links to Recent Posts on your blog with this widget. You can easily customize whether or not you would like to display thumbnails, post summaries, and the number of comments for each post along side the titles.


Features and Customization:

1. The Recent Post Titles
2. Display Post Thumbnails
3. Choose which blog posts to display (choose URL).
   
4. Display Post Summaries
5. Length of Summaries
6. Display Post Date
7. Display Number of Comments on each post
8. Display Read More Link
9. Display separator between posts
10. Number of Posts do Display
11. Determine height

Install the Recent Post Widget on Your Blog:
This widget is very simple to install. Just simply click the button below to choose which blog you would like to implement it on.


Many thanks to Blogger Plugins!

Source