zParacha.com

Want to find out how much does your blog worth? Just go to DNScoop.com and get your answer. DNScoop.com estimates the dollar value of an established domain name. Its estimation is based on several factors including

• Links pointing to the domain
• Popularity of the domain
• Age of the domain
• Pagerank of the domain
• Traffic to the domain

Although the estimated value is just that, an estimate, it can give you a good indicator of how much to expect if you sell your domain. This tool can also be used to estimate the price of established domain name you are interested in buying before you make an offer. Think of it as domain name’s blue book (like Kelly’s Blue book).
So go ahead and check your blog or URL’s worth.
Share with us what you think of this tool.

Today I stumbled upon an excellent WordPress plugin. It is called CommentLuv. This plugin rewards the visitors who leave comments on your posts with backlinks to their recent posts. This is an excellent way to encourage your visitors to leave comments on your post. It is a win-win situation for you and the visitors. You get a more engaged visitors and they get the chance to promote their latest posts and get a deep link to their posts.

The plugin is very easy to use. Just download the zip file, extract and upload the plugin file to your wp-content/plugins directory, and activate the plugin.
Once the plugin is activated , it adds a check box with following text beneath the comment text box on each post:

“Enable CommentLuv which will try and get your last blog post, please be patient while it finds it for you.”

The checkbox is selected by default. If the commentator enables the CommentLuv the plugin will visit the feed of the comment author and inserts a link to his/her last post under the comment. Really terrific!

Try it now by leaving a comment below.

Image credit:Kelly Sims

To become a successful blogger is not difficult but the success does not come overnight. You have to be patient and persistent. Remember the 3Ds for success. Desire, determination and dedication. If you have the desire, dedication and the determination to be a good and successful blogger then you have nothing to worry about. Infact, blogging is quite simple but it needs some discipline to be a successful blogger. Following are some simple tips that can make blogging stress-free and make you a better blogger.

• Set goals and work to acheive them:

  This is the most important tip of all. Set your short and long term goals. Write them down on a piece of paper and keep the paper where you can see it regularly. It is a well known fact that people with written goals achieve more in life than the people without any goal. Some examples, where you want to see your blog in next few months, what you want to accomplish today, how many subscribers would you like to have by next month? Make sure you do some activity daily that leads towards your goals. Plan regularly for both short and long term goals and monitor your progress towards your goals.
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Ever since I started placing AdSense units in my posts I have been getting emails from readers asking me how I position my ads in the right hand corner of my posts. So I decided to share this information in a post rather than explaining it over and over in individual emails.

To position the ads in my post I use CSS float property. I’ll show you how you can display the ads on either left or right side within in your post.

Steps to ‘float’ ad unit to right side in your post:

• In your post type
  <div style=”margin: 0 0 10px 10px; display: block; float: right”>
• Copy your AdSense script.
• Close the div with </div>

The float:right property will move the ad to the right side. To push the content away from the left and bottom sides of the ad I added 10px for bottom and left margins.
Example:
<div style=”margin: 0 0 10px 10px; display: block; float: right”>
Your Google AdSense Script
</div>

Place ads on the left side:

If you want to float your ad unit to the left side of your post change CSS style to this

<div style=”margin: 0 10px 10px 0; display: block; float: left” >

Again we are using margins to add white space . We still have bottom maring of 10px but now instead of left margin we are using right margin of 10px to push the content away from the ad.

Example:
<div style=”margin: 0 10px 0 0; display: block; float: left” >
Your Google Script
</div>
This approach of embedding CSS styles within posts has one serious drawback. More

Folks I am very excited to inform you that with all your votes zParacha.com is now in the final of the iBlogCup. 64 blogs participated and now we have two best blogs competing for the cup.

Thank you all who voted for me during this competition. It was a very good contest and some very good blogs were nominated for this competition. Now is your chance to vote for the best blog. I request you to spare few more minutes and vote for me in the final round. The polls close at midnight 02/27/2008 (Wednesday). Don’t delay vote today! Just click here and cast your vote now.

Entrecard is one of the latest blog promotion services that is attracting lot of bloggers. Entrecard is a relatively new blog promotion website but it is different (and better) than other similar websites. You have total control on how to use this service.

I used to have BlogRush widget on my blog but I did not get any significant traffic from BlogRush. When I read about Entrecard last month I instantly started using this service. I am already seeing considerable number of visitors coming to my blog through Entrecard.

The concept is very simple. You create your virtual business card using a 125×125 pixel image of your choice and place a widget on your blog. When other Entrecard members visit your blog they can “drop” their cards. For each card drop you receive one Entrecard “credit”. The member who dropped the card will also receive one “credit”.
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Twitter is a wonderful tool to promote your blog. Typically after they publish a new post bloggers logon to their twitter account and inform their followers that they have published an interesting new post.

But there is a better way to promote your post. twitterfeed automatically informs your followers about your new posts. How cool is that? You publish the post, sit back and relax and twitterfeed will do the rest. Twitterfeed frequently pings your blog and if it finds a new post it automatically informs your followers about it.

Follow these simple steps to take advantage of this free service.

• Sign up at Twitterfeed
• Provide your twitter account information and your blog RSS feed to twitterfeed.
• Tell it how often you want the service to check your blog for new posts.
• From now on you don’t have to announce your new posts on twitter.

Enjoy.

This post has been submitted to Jason’s blog competition about blogging tips.

Today I am announcing a new montly backlink giveaway. Every month I’ll invite bloggers to post a link to one of their favorite posts on their blog. I’ll then compile those links in a post on my blog. It is a win-win situation for all of us. I hope to get more traffic and you get one more avenue to showcase your posts.

Here is how we do it.

In the comments section below enter link to one of your posts on your blog. You have till Friday night to post your comments. I’ll compile all the links and post them on my blog on Monday.

Note: I will not include links to any inappropriate blogs or posts.

If you like the idea go ahead and post your link now and feel free to spread the word among your friends and your blog readers.

Last week DailyBlogTips invited bloggers to write turtorials as part of DBT’s blog writing contest. I submitted my tutorial about Google Custom Search for blogs. In all, 71 excellend tutorials covering wide-ranging topics from blogging, montezing to health were submitted. This contest not only provided an opportunity for many bloggers to present their posts to a very receptive audience, it also benefited the readers by showcasing 71 very useful tutorials.
The interesting part of this contest is that the participants themselves are the judges. They will vote for best tutorials and the top 3 tutorials that receive most votes will win. Following is the list of my favorite tutorials.

• Absolute Guide to Losing Readers : By Ronald Huereca
• Gaining Backlinks With SEO Friendly Web Directories – By Daniel Harrisson.
• How to Add More Sidebar Text Widgets – By Lori
• How to incorporate Google Custom Search engine with Adsense into your WordPress blog.

I wish luck to all the participants. Many thanks to DBT for a great contest.

AdSense is by far the most popular and easy to use advertisement program for new bloggers. With AdSense you earn money when users click on the ads on your website. But the ads are not the only source of revenue for your blog. You can use AdSense for Search to to increase your revenue. But a better alternative to AdSense search is the Google Custom Search Engine. You can customize Google Search Engine to blend with your blog’s theme. You can also specify whether to search entire web or just your own website. It is more customizable than AdSense search and like AdSense for search you can earn money through Custom Search Engine.

In this tutorial I’ll show you how to setup Google Custom search engine and then incorporate it with AdSense into your WordPress blog.

To make things little easier I’ve captured screenshots of some of the screens that we will talk about in this tutorial. To view those screenshots click on the thumbnail images in the following sections. For performance issues I did not include the screenshots on this page but provided the links for easy access.

Now let’s get started.
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