Guest author Kate Croston gives us some pic tips.

Putting images on your blog is a great way to spice it up and bring it to life. However, you want the images to make your blog better, not bring it down. Here are six ways to use photos to really improve your blog.

Balance – Make sure your photo is balanced. What that means is it has an apparent symmetry to it. It might be that it is black and white, it might be large versus small, or it might be just a color thing. Whatever the case, make sure your photo is visually appealing in its balance.

Lead – Don’t let the reader’s eyes just skip over your photo. Lead them into the picture and draw them deeper through the use of pathways, reflections, or framing.

Viewpoint– Make people see things from a new perspective. If you have a photo that people have to look at twice, that’s a few more seconds spent on your blog. Make them think- it helps.

Focus – This is the biggest obstacle. You want readers on any size screen to be able to see the photos on your blog. Make sure the pictures are focused and clear. And large enough to be seen no matter what.

Light – Light brings life to photos. Dramatic lighting can take the most boring object and make it extraordinary. Don’t just plop in the first picture that fits with your post. Take a look around and go for something great.

Play – everyone loves to laugh and smile. It doesn’t really matter what topic your blog is on, you can find pictures that are memorable and fun. Remind yourself that it is okay to play and relax a bit.

That’s all there is to it; just six simple things to look for when you pick out a photo for your blog posts. There are many free places to look for photos, so take your time and find one that really snaps. Your blog will be much better for it.

Photos courtesy of MorgueFile

Kate Croston is a freelance writer, holds a bachelors degree in Journalism and Mass Communication. She writes guest posts for different sites and loves contributing home internet service related topics. Questions or comments can be sent to:  katecroston.croston09 @ gmail.com.

Special guest Divya writes about blog limitations today.

If you are a blogger – blogging for yourself or your company – you will have experienced firsthand that it’s a really tough job. You have to be flexible as well as wise; you have to be creative as well as talented. The basic skills can be honed more or less, but there are some detrimental limitations which need to be overcome. Here are a bunch of blogging limitations you are better off without.

1. Too Commercial

Blogs are meant to be personal. If the ‘personal’ element is missing, then the blog certainly lacks the human element. You could always purchase followers from fake sites to make your blog ‘look’ popular; but as long as your forgetting people, the blog won’t be able to get real admirers.

Blogs tend to become commercial in three ways:

a. with many advertisements splashed on your site
b. With you yourself advertising your works
c. with you advertising other people.

2. Compromise Quality

copywriting by far remains the most integral part of your blog. no matter what you do or how you do it, it’s important to give quality the most importance.

This is something that people will remember. They will remember coming to your blog and reading half baked information; yes! The impression lasts. Hence, quality is something that always needs to lead.

This doesn’t mean you rob content off the net. Yes, that brings us to the next point.

3. Copy Content

Getting a great deal of good work on the internet isn’t difficult. But if you think you can easily pick up content from the web, rephrase and pass it off as great work on your site, then you’re wrong.

Copied content doesn’t work in the long run. And with search engines becoming smarter by the day, this is something that’s bound to change.

So the way to overcome this limitation is by being honest. If you really feel some content is awesome, go ahead. Pick it up – but don’t forget to give the credits. More so, you could directly link to the site give you more of a association. That works well for SEO as well!

In all these cases, you stake losing your valuable reader because you are thinking ‘money’. The bottom-line however is, as long as you have your readers, your blog has value. And value can transcend to money. Hence, overcome this limitation by working FOR your readers.

4. No Social Presence

There are two points to be noted here:
a. Having a dead social profile
b. Being social

If we look at the first point of this discussion, you will note that we started with blogs connections between people. How can you connect if you aren’t social?

You need to go out, speak and connect with people which means a social presence is very important.

Now, if you have a facebook page that you have never visited or seldom update, that’s almost as good as no social presence.

Hence, overcome this short coming by going out there and making a profile and creating a plan to keep that profile alive. Social networking sites are bound to ‘work’ for you.

5. No Purpose

You might begin arguing that you DO have a purpose for your blog. You want help people or you want to build your brand; whatever it is that made you start that blog is what you may call a ‘Goal’ or ‘Purpose’.

But fast forward to now and check:

a. are you regular with your posts?
b. are you just talking about yourself too much or too less?
c. are you trying to please everyone and ending up getting no results on your page?

These are just a few questions which can reinstate my point that your blog lack purpose.

So, overcome this short coming by having a fixed agenda for your blogs. A structure purpose and course of action so that you can meet your goals and live up to them.

Looking at these points, it can be simply said that you got to change these practices if that’s how you’ve been working this way. If you’re a blogger, avoid these limitations.

Author Bio: Divya is a passionate blogger and loves blogging about SEO strategies, web development and how to make the most of one’s virtual presence. She works as a consultant with iNetZeal.com.

Guest writer Steve Chase is here to give us some tips on writer’s block.

Writer’s block is like a pesky little tickle in the back of your throat. You cannot figure out where you want to go in your post, but you seem to stare at your computer screen without typing a single word. Sometimes you have to walk away from your computer in order for inspiration to hit. Inspiration is the key to getting your posts written without falling victim to writer’s block. If you want to get yourself back on track, consider using a few of these tips to help you.

Ask Your Friends Questions

Questions can help you get answers and provide an opportunity to research some ideas. Your friends are a good source of information if you have a social networking page on Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn. Post a few questions to trigger their interest, and then use the information to write post titles or keywords you can use in a new post.

Unplug Your Computer

Wow. You’re probably wondering how turning off your computer is going to strike some inspiration. Your computer can entrap your mind and it leads to confusion, frustration and anger. According to a recent study by Time Magazine, information overload and multitasking can disturb the flow of oxygen and activity in our brains. Maybe you can leave your computer alone for a few hours to rejuvenate the muscles and juices in your brain? Unplug your computer, turn off your smartphone and step outside to get some fresh air.

Take a Walk

A little exercise can do wonders for creativity. Writer’s block is only as powerful as your lack of activity. If you cannot write a page in the next 2 seconds, take a quick walk to the mailbox, up the street, or run a few sprints. Get active, seek spurts of energy on something other than your keyboard. Your legs, arms, core and back will appreciate the extra effort in stretching them for a few minutes.

Listen to Music

Music is stimulating to the brain. Our creative parts of the brain are often triggered when we listen to music and it helps our talents emerge. Writing is an art just like music; if you are not a fan of Mozart, consider listening to Brahms or Choplin.

Take a Day Off

Well, you may not jump into this suggestion at first, but you should consider the amount of time you spending writing each week. Will it hurt to take a day off from your blog to seek inspiration?

Look a Little Deeper

Your writing frustrations could also come from the problems your eyes have while you’re staring at your computer screen. A little time away from your computer can do wonders for your eyes, too. According to Dr. Grossman, over 50% of computer users experience headaches from eye strains from constantly staring at the characters.

Writers block is an internal battle for many bloggers. You can take a couple of days off of work to figure out how to get your inspiration back. Maybe our tips are just what you’re looking for to tackle the little blocks you’re experiencing.

Steve Chase is a self-confessed internet workaholic and blogger. To stay productive, he follows his advise above. He is a contributor to DegreeJungle.com writing on ways to pay for school while being a student.

A stock photo agency is a place where you can get royalty free photos for use on blogs, websites, books etc.

Using a stock photo agency is much better than hiring a photographer because a photographer can supply you with only a limited number of images. On the other hand a stock photo agency can supply you with thousands of images so that you will almost always find what you require. In fact many professional photographers upload their work on stock photo agencies to earn a living.

Hundreds of stock photo agencies are available in the market. The problem is which one to choose?

In this article we have selected some of the best stock photo agencies available on the internet. Of course, “the best” is a loosely defined term and which is best will be different for different people. This is a list of what we think is the best. The list is NOT rank based.

1) Depositphotos.com

Depositphotos is a wonderful website for buying royalty free stock photos. A free trial is available on the website that offers you to download up to 5 images per day for a period of 7 days. The images are categorized under different names to enable easy navigation. Some examples include – Animals, Art Objects, Computers and Electronics, Nature etc.

The approximate price of one photo can vary from as low as 0.10 $ to a maximum cost of 0.63 $. Individual images can also be bought.

The website is available in 9 languages including English, French, and Portuguese etc. Their blog is also informative for designers. It’s worth having a look at Depositphotos blog.

Below is an example screen shot from the site.

2) Shutterstock.com

Shutterstock is a website that has a very huge stock of photographs – more than 18 million. Apart from their website, Shutterstock also run a blog where they discuss things related to photography. This blog is a wonderful source of information for photographers of all levels.

The biggest drawback of this site in our opinion is that they do not sell individual images or at least they do not sell individual images in many regions. You will have to buy a subscription plan if selling of individual images is not available in your area.

The costs of individual images vary from 33 cents to $9.80. Photos, illustrations and vectors all are available.

3) GettyImages.com

This is another beautiful site that deserves to be included in the best stock photos list. The site welcomes you with a beautiful music player clicking on it will make you hear a beautiful music in the background as you surf through the website.

Founded in 1995, it is the first company to license imagery online.

The site has many options to narrow down your search results. For e.g. suppose I want an image that is of a mango tree. Entering the key word “mango tree” will return many results. But suppose I want an image in which there is one person along with the tree. It can be achieved by clicking on a link in the side bar. Then suppose I require an image in which there should be a child with the tree. That too is perfectly attainable.

An example screen shot of the images from Getty Images is shown below.

Today’s post about site stickiness is provided by The Website Doctor.

An amazing post, with amazing content is great to have, but if your blog design is not up to scratch, then you can wave good-bye to those readers. In a few seconds, you will be reading tips on how to make your blog design the best it can ever be. Well, I hope so anyway. As you can tell from my blog, I’m a bit of a cheap skate. I’m using a free .wordpress.com domain, and my blogs design is, well, not the best. But I do have something that makes me good enough to give you advice. My blog is all about reviewing websites, and I have reviewed some horrendous blogs, and some great blogs. So I am now going to give you some fantastic tips that will help you improve your blog design. Here goes:

1. The dreaded template.

The first thing you should do when you start-up a blog, is changed the template. Changed the header image to your logo and slogan and change the background colour. I don’t think there is any explanation why, but just change it. You want your blog to stick out, not blend in.

To sum up: Change your template header and background

2. Is this a scam?

If you website is full of hyperlinks, Times New Roman text and adverts with a plain white background and single coloured text, people are going to be waiting for a window to pop up, telling them about your new e-book about how to enlarge your you-know-what by 55 inches. You need a proper layout. One clear column with your main features in, then one side bar with a few widgets. Minimize the amount of advertising you have, other people will know you are only in it for the money. Oh, and no pop ups.

To sum up: Use a clear layout

3. Text

Make sure you use a sans-serif font for the body text. No fancy hard-to-read text. This is a sans-serif font, this is a serif font.. Notice that the sans-serif font has clean ends on each letter, whereas serif fonts have pointed or shaped ends, making it harder to read. Also, it really does go without saying, the size. Text that is very big will make your readers think that you are expecting kids or OAPs to be visiting your blog. Text to small and visitors will be wondering if you actually want them to read your post, or if you just want them to get a bad eye site.

To sum up: Make it easy to read.

4. Grammar

This is just as much of a design fault than a content fault. people are not going to read your blog if the grammar is like this because there aren’t any capital letters no full stops no comers and the sentences are so long that by the time the reader has finished reading them they are blue in the face and on the floor. People are also going to think your blog was written by a 5-year-old, if it has little use of capital letters.

To sum up: Write properly.

5. Ease of Use

Every good website is easy to use. If you find it’s hard to use, then you’re probably one of the few people who use it. Make sure your blog or website has a distinctive home page, one that you know is the home page. This means a large logo and slogan at the top, with widgets with news, top stories and other information in your website. If you have a blog, the home page should have a stick post, which explains you blog in a few sentences, so people get the rough idea of why it exists. If your website is full of pages with no menu bar or way of moving around the website, then readers can get lost or stuck, so they will just leave the page. If you run an E-Commerce website, a customer should be able to see if you have a certain product in your store by only clicking three times. Its true! Go and try it on Amazon!

To sum up: Make is easy for your readers.

6. Backgrounds

First of all, if your background is very jazzy and bright, it’s going to hurt people’s eyes when they are trying to read your content. These backgrounds include bright green, yellow, and orange, and light blue block colours, a mix of these colours, or anything that distracts the reader. Don’t skip this bit if you don’t use bright colours. Using picture backgrounds are also not a great idea. Especially if it is a small picture and has been tiled on the page. Just no. You can use block colours such as white, pale colours, grey, black* or any other colour that’s not in your face. 

* When you use a black background, don’t use white text. it sort of pulses when you are reading it, and hurts your eyes, especially if its small. Use a gold colour instead. Much better. If you don’t want to use gold, you can get around this by having a black outer background, then a white background behind the text. Sorted.

To sum up: Keep it calm, don’t jazz it up.

7. Paint still exists?

When you are designing a logo, don’t use paint. It end up with a horrible quality with not so good colours. Download a free trial of a graphic program and use that. There’s not much more to say on this one, but just don’t use it!

To sum up: Make sure your logo is good quality.

8. Picture Quality

I can’t stress this enough. Never ever use low quality pictures on your website. We don’t want to look at pictures that we can’t work out what it is. You don’t see large companies using bad quality pictures on their website, so why should you? On the other hand, don’t use very high quality, large pictures. People don’t want to wait 30 minutes for your website to load.

To sum up: Make sure we can see what the picture is.

9. Steer clear of a competitors design

If you have a clear competitor, don’t go using the same colour background, the same font or the same logo style as them. You want to be different from them, not a knock off version. It very easy to see a competitors website and think, that design is really good. I couldn’t do it better. But you would be wrong. I’m sure if you changed the background colour, or use a different font size, or changed the title of each menu, then you could make it better.

To sum up: Be different

10. What you criticise in others, correct in yourself.

If you see a website, and think Wow, that font looks horrible or Why are they using that colour? make sure your website isn’t doing this too. Before you criticise them, correct your own website first.

To sum up: Sort your design before you sort others.

If you are not sure about your blog design, there are lots of forums or review websites where people will review your website and give you tips. My website, The Website Doctor, offers this reviewing service for free, so pop by and have a little look.

Regards,

The Website Doctor

Follow me!

Website: http://thewebsitedoctor.wordpress.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/TheWebsiteDr

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Website-Doctor/300488946631690?sk=wall&filter=1

Nisha Sharma brings us an online blog article today.

Though you might think your business doesn’t need to publish a blog, doing so can actually contribute to your long-term success. Blogs don’t take much time to set up and they provide a powerful opportunity to connect with your customers. Plus, there are some helpful sites that offer free content for websites which you can use to promote your products. They also help you stay at the forefront of your customers’ minds. If you’re not sure whether or not your company needs a blog, check out these five reasons that every online business should have one.

1. Show Your Expertise

There are few better ways to show your authority on a subject than to regularly publish information about the topic. Visitors will quickly be able to see that you know what you’re talking about. While you can show your knowledge by publishing information on the pages of your website, a blog gives you a venue to consistently show your credibility.

2. Provide Valuable Content to Customers

Hosting a blog on your website is also a great service to your customers. When you provide free content to your visitors, they will be more likely to purchase in the future. Offering valuable content for no charge also allows you to build relationships with your audience members. An engaged community is a huge asset to your business.

3. Bring in Regular Traffic

It’s essential to receive regular traffic to your website, as there is typically a correlation between traffic and sales. By writing a regular blog, you’ll receive consistent traffic and draw in new customers, particularly when links to your blog posts are shared through Facebook or Twitter. Once you start receiving more traffic, you’ll have more opportunities to make sales and interest prospective customers.

4. Keep Up with Your Competition

While it’s always a good idea to set yourself apart from other businesses, you still need to make sure you’re keeping up with the competition. As blogs become more popular, it’s likely that most of your major competitors are running blogs on their websites. If you don’t run a blog, your customers will notice and might decide to turn elsewhere.

5. Boost Your Search Engine Rankings

A blog is also one of the best ways to improve your search engine rankings. Search engine algorithms change frequently, but recent updates have stressed the importance of quality content and social media feedback. With a blog on your website, you’ll have more high-quality content for search engines to rank. Blogs are also updated more frequently than traditional websites, which can give you an additional boost from the search engines. Writing a blog is undoubtedly one of the best things you can do for your business.

Nisha Sharma is the Editor for whoishostingthis.com. She loves to write and give online business advice to new and growing businesses.

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So how many of you have a site and absolutely love it? For some of us, it’s second nature. We can sit down crank out a site based on how we envisioned it on our heads.

However, for some other folks, it’s not quite that simple. One of the challenges with building a website is that we usually don’t have all the skill sets needed to create a good one. On one hand, you’ll need your creative juices flowing for the design and on the other hand, you’ll need to leverage your technical know-how to make it come to life. Most people don’t exercise both sides of their brains to the full extent; that’s why it’s a big hurdle that leaves some at ground zero.

When we find that we’re not perfect for certain jobs, what should we do? We hire help to fill the gaps!

Wildfire Marketing Group can provide you with a web design that is based on your input and tastes. Just tell them what you want and they’ll work with you to get you to that goal. We’re talking about pros who can not only customize a site for you but also help drive success, however you may define it. If you want more visitors, they can help. If you want more conversions, they can help.

For those of you who think you’re all set on your website, take a look at Wildfire’s website checklist. This thing is packed things like:

• Marketing planning and strategy
• Creating a search engine friendly website
• Proper HTML and CSS coding
• Design principles
• Proper use of multimedia
• Branding
• Usability
• Website performance
• Conversions
• Improving credibility

All that for a measly $17 with a money back guarantee!

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