Most blog/website owners use RSS feeds to distribute their content around the world. Just look at the likes of Problogger and CopyBlogger and your see there RSS feed readers are in the 20,000 plus range and that’s a lot of feeds.
But for the normal blogger who needs a boost to his numbers, there are some ways to increase your RSS readers as you can submit to additional directories which are available to further promote RSS feeds which will help you increase visitor numbers.

Heres a list of RSS directories and sites that you can join:

1. Feedest
2. MySpace RSS
3. DaytimeNews
4. RSS Feeds Submission
5. RSS Micro
6. 2RSS
7. FeedsFarm
8. FeedFury
9. MillionRSS
10. Yahoo RSS
11. More News
12. Read A Blog
13. Newgie
14. Jordo Media RSS
15. RSS Network
16. Ice Rocket
17. Blog Pulse
18. Feeds2Read
19. Feed Shark
20. Feed Plex
21. FeedBomb
22. Find RSS
23. Feed Base
24. RSS Motron
25. Octora
26. Blog Digger
27. Feed 24
28. Findory
29. Feed Boy
30. Chordata
31. Golden Feed
32. Plazoo
33. RSS Feeds
34. Feeds4all
35. Postami
36. rssaround

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This is a series of my Resourceful List that i bring to you. I am sure it will be very useful for those who intends to add a little more color to their blog design and instead of engaging a designer which might cost you $500 for a theme, why not do-it-yourself, I am sure it’s not a wise of time since you will be learning another skill.

4_EveR_YounG

131 Ultimate Web 2.0 Layer Styles

Adobe Photoshop is one of my favorite editing program that i use daily to cut and create new graphics. So in order to create a web 2.0 badge or navigation bar, i need a template that i can use to easily blend my colour without adjusting it myself, now Deziner released it’s ultimate web 2.0 layer styles for free with over 131 layers and gradients which you can choose from to create a more beautiful logo of your choice. Have you downloaded and installed it in your own photoshop?

7 Clutch Free Tools For Budding Web 2.0 Developers and Designers

I found this resource list particularly useful for those who are developers especially, though pack with only 7 tips but the i am sure i have learned something out of it since i am not an expert on this topic but it’s worth a read.

25 Web 2.0 Headlines Formulas

Like what skellie said, “Headlines can make or break a story. With thousands of different articles vying for our attention, web users can afford to be picky. The ascendancy of the headline has been one aspect of Web 2.0 culture which hasn’t received the attention it deserves.” Do you guys agree on this point?

51 Web 2.0 Rss Button & Icons

Kenneth Foo let his graphics do the talking over at his giant resource list where he found 51 unique Rss Buttons and Icons, I just thought it would be much better if everyone of the buttons found can be accompanied with a .PSD file so that i can edit it’s colour and etc.

99 Web 2.0 Designs

Vandelaydesign had done it again! This is a nice collection of 99 resources on designing your dream web 2.0 site. I had to say the background stripes maker was what i need for my navigation bar which i will be changing the design really soon on my blog, let me say thank you first!

100 Web 2.0 Online Generators

A list of online generators for tool tip, graphics and image, favicon, flash, css and color. Now a days designing an image and creating a favicon does not require more than 5 steps to finish and you do not need to waste time on cutting and editing the image since it is already generated for you, change the colours and required specifications and you are done!

68 Web 2.0 Designing Tutorials

For those who are requesting to have tutorial guides and aids to do it yourself so that you are able to make minor adjustments to the final results, now you can have it done your way with 60 designing tutorials teaching you step by step on how to create your own web 2.0 logos,software cover for your next software project, glassy look buttons and etc.. A worthwhile site to bookmark on.

54 Css Web 2.0 Design ideas

If you are a Webmaster or Blog designer, these 54 Css Design can assist in inspiring you with more ideas on creating your next 2.0 theme.

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The most successful bloggers in this world is nevertheless just a human being and all humans would have a set of habits which they will follow to be successful in life, and the code of being a highly effective successful blogger would require to follow the eight steps of habits to becoming one successful blogger.

Blogging on a consistent basis
Like how the old lady with a rod on her hands slowly turn it into a needle and doing the same act every time till she succeeded in getting a piece of rod turn into a tiny needle. Write on a consistent basis. There is nothing wrong with blogging on a daily, weekly or even on a monthly basis, but whatever your blogging schedule is, try to keep it consistent, so that your readers would not get confused.

Putting in a 100% effort on your niche
Once you have addressed a niche that you would like to follow, do it diligently and put in your 100% to work towards that goal. Giving up half way is not what you would want to do, if you intend to give up then i rather you not start, put in a positive mind and you will surely be able to carve out a successful blog.

Setting your sights far ahead
Plan ahead to what you can expect over the next few months with your events, contests or ways of trying to increase your traffic actions which should be brainstormed and action once the iron is hot.

Reading fellow successful blogger’s blog
To become a successful blogger, one have to be resourceful and its not always about you in the blogosphere so read other blogs and gain a wealth of information and resources which you may have never came across, 10 brains working together is better than one.

Tagging on other blogs
Learn to return link tags to other bloggers, when you read of a worthy article, make sure you give credit to the author and give a short blurb on why he should be tagged on your blog. In return the author should thank you for your tag and you would have made another friend on the blogosphere.

Interacting with the crowd
Comments given by your audiences should be always taken seriously and a reply back to their comments are a form of respect, whether its a positive or negative comment, it should be taken as a constructive comment.

Leave Comments for others
When you reach another blogger’s blog while you read his well composed article, leave him a comment so that he knows of your presence. Commenting on a regular basis lets the blogger appreciate you and a form of bond unites between the 2 of you.

Joining Communities and participate in events
Successful blogger interacts all the time, it can be with his fellow friends or distance mates through communities or even a big convention event. Making sure you join one of the communities or attending an event would be a good way to making new friends and catching the good times with your fellow friends.

Write with confidences
The most effective bloggers normally are not the A+ Students in English but they always write with confidences and this is what you get with being confident in your post, Perfection!

I have written my own 9 habits which i believe many others would have their own opinions, so write a set of 9 or even 10 habits that you have discovered through your blogging experiences, make sure you jot it down and that is when you discover that most of us are actually having the same habits in fact!

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The Month of August have seen many familiar blogging faces change their skin and why change a blog skin or some prefer to be called as theme or template. There are many answers to why a blogger would want to change his current skin and of course it should always be for a good course. The main thing they change their blog design is to attract traffic.

ProBlogger, John Chow and Carlocab took a step forward and giving their blog a new look. The new look had certainly increase the number of curiosity in the blogosphere, look at the number of backlinks these guys are receiving for a change.

Problogger had his reasons of the change to a new blog face lift, he quoted that “I always find a fresh coat of paint can really lift a room, a haircut can improve a mood and a blog redesign can get the creative juices flowing again.”

Johnchow is all about making money online and if you are serious in making money online then you would be interesting in why he also did a makeover “The old theme was stuck at $12,500 a month and I wasn’t going to break out of that unless I do a redesign. This is all part of the make money online process. I didn’t do a redesign for the sake of a redesign.”

Carlocab changed his blog design without announcing it to the crowd but i believe most of his readers catch his intention of bringing a better and refreshing look from his older skin.

Does blog design really matter?
This was the issue for the month of August, it have brought to many bloggers attention that blog design does matter and to give yourself a more professional look, you need more juice other than just blogging contents, a unique blog design enables your readers to see you from a different aspect and with a more exquisite look, there is bound to be more onlookers to your blog.

Yaro Starak a professional blogger in the blogosphere had something to say about redesigning your blog and why is it important to do a blog redesign if not a simple tweak on your current blog, while it is not the most important aspect but giving a new look with a more diversify design would bring out your professionalism and how you will be look upon in this blogging business.

Yaro Starak

If what Yaro starak says is true then it would be good that you would consider to audit your blog design and see whether there is a need to change, there are many themes and templates around for free which may require a tweak or two just to make sure it is customized to your requirement or else you can seek for professional help, if you are willing to pay good money for a nicely designed theme. Nate Whitehill recently did a wonderful job by giving JohnChow his new skin lift or visit his unique blog design themes which he makes it affordable for everyone to purchase an exclusive theme starting from $79!

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Content makes up 70% of your traffic while the other 30% comes from how you design and give your audiences the friendly navigational aids that they are looking for at your blog. While many bloggers touch on Increasing traffic through contents, Massive traffic with contents and Write unique contents.

I am pretty sure everyone have this word sank deep in their mind, yes writing good unique content is important but bloggers are not appreciated if they chuck aside their blog design, it is time you create or re-design a blog with your ideal layout . So how do we come up with a blog design that is perfect for every audiences to reach for our popular post, a free ebook or even showing important messages you want to deliver across to your audiences?

SIMPLE, You just got to chuck everything onto the front page of your blog and you would have delivered the message across. While the blog design are slowly evolving, there is a distinctive design that had everyone talking about and i personally can feel the effects through the design.

Everyone wants their post and targeted messages to be read by the audiences at first glance through the front page while i use the term ‘front page’ i mean without scrolling your bar, the information first captured and seen by your naked eye.

Lets take a look at all the new blog designs that we are seeing recently. What have they in common in delivering their message to the audiences.

The Screenshots taken were from the following 3 blogs
John Chow
Shoe Money
Darin

The 3 Blogs that i have choose shows you what you can see within the front page. If you notice the layout of these 3 Designs, they have a 80% similarity in the structure of the design. I have came up with a design layout map which tells you what you can look forward to with such a comprehensive design which could market your blog and attract incoming visitors to stay longer and appreciate your blog.

Looking at this Map that i have drawn out which is not the prettiest you can find around, but it is inspired from the Google Heatmap which allows you to figure out which is the best place to fit your Google Adsense.

Back to my topic, this Design map is drawn out from the similarity of the 3 blogs and what i have gathered through experimenting with reading, being a first timer viewer and navigating through the whole design.

The front Page Effect
I will touch on how this front page effect can boost your traffic like how John Chow and Darin reports that they have a increase in both RSS readers and visits/day!

Navigational Tabs
This is where you show your navigational Aids to direct users to your site.

• Home
• About
• Contact

These 3 are the most important tabs that a blog must have, it tells a user your home page, who you are and where you come from and how do they contact you directly speaking to you on emails, MSN or skype if they have something to suggest or query. A blog fails without these 3 essential tabs. You can add on new tabs that you think would help your readers navigate better.

Banner
Everyone needs a banner, even if its a simple text banner which should include in a web 2.0 look.

3 column Header
While not every theme is available with this additional killer column, it is vital to have a list of things you want to project to the crowd right on your front page. Most of time they stick to 3 commonly used messages they want to project.

• Popular Posts
• Email Opt-List
• A unique message you want to deliver to your readers

Content and sidebar
With this design going content and the sidebar is no longer a factor anymore, since this templates offers a list of good informative grabs that you can choose from, but still it is always good that your front page can show your latest post title to gain curiosity among your readers.

The forgotten places
Enough said on the front page effect, there are areas that are not touched on which are seriously not important but since you have such space created, make full use of them and explore how you can work on those areas.

Sidebar
Like my 2 column layout i had to throw everything on my sidebar and i would have to prioritize between those that i want to deliver to my audiences first to be on the front page and the not so important at the bottom. Since you are using a template design which had already covered your most of your messages that needs to be addressed, it is time you place monetizing ideas on your blog.

• Sponsors
• Featured Sites
• Top Commenters
• Recent Articles
• Categories
• Poll and votes
• Blogrolls

3 column Footer
I seem to have covered everything with this magnificent design, and if you want all these on my cramped up 2 column design, there is no way it will work, so having this 3 column footer is good if you have joined a social network like myBlogLog or Blogcatalog which you can include a widget to one of the designate column and as for the other 2 columns you can place in “short shoutout about yourself” and “resources & tools”.

Can i get this design for free?
It would be impossible to get it for free now, i guess designers are still not releasing this for free since its effort have been put in by Nate Whitehill and his team members at unique Designs. This is no promotional review done for them, but a design worth talking about. If anyone can create or do a replica of this design, i would suggest this design be heavily used for both marketing strategy and user friendly blogging.

Currently Unique Designs is offering this full design at $799, if you can’t afford his design at the moment, you can stick to the 3,000 templates available for free and try and source for a design that you find worthy to try.

Posted by MixedSoup | 1 Comment »

Darren Rowse aka Problogger had advised his readers to do an advertising audit check on their own blog. This article struck me as i realise how i have neglected my own advertisement placements on my blogs so badly, though it is well blended into my blog with no borders and placed at a strategic spot according to the Google Heat Map, after reading through Darren’s post, i feel that my blog can further tweak itself for optimal performance enhancing the quality of my ads and creating a much better blending option on my blog to increase my CTR Level.

Blending Your Advertisement Takes Time
Adjustment are to be done periodically if you see a low level of CTR happening with the positioning of your ads, further enhance the visual aids to your readers so that they are not blinded by the striking colours of your ads, be mindful that your readers are here to read your contents and not to see eye catching advertisement you have installed for them.

Make sure you chose the correct colour goes with your contents, remember that word ads should never be striking and blending them to your content words colour is most ideal.

Never Use a Border for Your Advertisements
Put yourself in the shoes of a reader, would you EVER click on an Advertisement that has borders around with 5 to 6 ads clutter together? Chances are you will not want to click it. One of the reason why many bloggers fail to attain Click Through Rates though they have abundant of impressions, is because they have borders around their advertisement.

I have used borders before during my experiment days with Adsense, results was not ideal and there was a 60% increase in my Click Through Rates when i took out the borders immediately within the 2 weeks. There is no harm removing it and trying it out, if it does help your blog, drop me a message to say thank you if its the first time you have heard of it and successful in gaining your increase in CTR.

Make sure your Ads look visible at your start page
Visit your own blog now and without scrolling, tell yourself how much ads are you able to see and view at one glance? I can see My Ads well without scrolling , Gosh! I am unable to see My Ads without scrolling!

If you are able to view all your ads at one go, then congrats! Since chances of you getting a click is much higher than those who have ads way out of any of the heat map range. Looking at the Heat Map, you will notice placements in white are dead spots and should be avoided at all times. Stick to those that are colour in fiery orange to maximize your CTR with good positioning of your ads, trying out is always the best method to know the best position for your blog.

Smart and innovative Adsense Placements
Digging through Problogger Post, I remembered an article that he mentioned on “Clever” Adsense Placement. Though it can be fun on one side to experiment your Adsense placement and see the full potential of it but you got be to mindful of risking yourself violating Google Adsense TOS. Don’t over Blend your ads or you may be on your way to being ban by Adsense.

Ninja Blending Ads
The website above Captial Tutorial uses images to blend with Adsense, and if you were to visit the full website, it will be hard for you to discover this ad like tutorial in the content page.Be mindful not to fall in the group of Fallen Adsense Users, and if you have doubts or query, always question the Adsense Team before you doing anything which you do not find in the TOS.

I will be interested to see your examples of well Blended Adsense placement on blogs or other websites. Drop me a Comment with your link!

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How many of you want to know how your website is fairing with the visitors around? Don’t you want to know at which part of your pages is most clicked or scanned by your readers? If you have not, its time to audit your site cause it can improve your Adsense clicks and also you will know what your readers want more. I came across this free product which offers you 30 straight days of free trial and what this product offers you would be allowing you to track where your visitors are actually putting click on and where are they putting attention too the most.

Click Density is a simple software that enables you to read how your site fairs throughout the days.Having a tracking script within your site and Click Density would be able to let you view the heatmap and clickmap which is vital information to you.

Let me go straight into showing you what heatmap can show, see those small little greenish white button like circle, those are the finding that those were the areas are hot.

Another screenshot of the same and this time, The heat was found at my Google Adsense Area, and that means i observe clicks at that area, I guess i should check my Adsense account now to see if i have made money.

Below 3 features are explained, Heatmap, Clickmap, Hovermap. Take your time to read through it as it explains what the features are used for.

Heat map
Heat maps are the main feature of Click Density. A virtual heat map of hot spots, constructed from the click data of your users, is overlaid on your web site, highlighting the areas of activity (the “click density”). With these reports, you can very quickly identify:

• Popular areas of the page/site.
• Unpopular areas of the page (e.g. links which aren’t clicked).
• Misused areas of the page (e.g. clicks on text or images which aren’t linked).

Click map
Click maps are simpler versions of heat maps. A map is overlaid on your web site, showing a small marker for each click on the page.

Although this doesn’t visualise the concentration of clicks as accurately as the Heat Maps, it can be used to more easily identify “close misses” and analyse the exact location of clicks.
Hover map
This displays usage data for individual items on your pages. All clickable items on the page are highlighted, and can be individually activated to show the number of visitors that clicked on them, and other statistics.

When you have passed the 30 days free trial or reach above 5000 visitors, you can upgrade and go for a full account and continue to use this software, for now you can try Click Density for free!

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While many bloggers around the world have yet to realised, its time you give your blog a change in it’s design. Close to 60% of Blogger are still using the original template and 30% falls under wordpress users. Blogger is seen to be meant for beginners but since it was meant for beginners, changing a template is as easy as load and go! Yaro Starak had done a video log on blog design and giving a change in your design can improve the number of visitors to your site as well.

A list of 10 blogs for each blog platform that offers templates and themes which you can download from. Sad to say the best design still goes to wordpress but blogger users you have no worries, there are upcoming designers who have duplicated the exact wordpress themes, so we will have more collection of such well designed templates.

Blogger Classic & XML Templates

1. Arcsin -A collection of blogger templates that the designer had put in effort to develop.
2. Blogger Templates - You have a wide selection of bloggers(XML) template from 2 column to 3 column, most of which have a beautiful background so if you are looking for templates that have a nice and attraction look, this would be the place to get your templates.
3. Blog Connection - A collection of Classic and XML templates for you to download.
4. BlogCrowd - Without doubt Blog crowd designed a range of templates that were web 2.0 style and many are simple and look stylish to use.
5. JackBook - One of the best Blogger around who could change a wordpress template upon request, check out his new template created for blogger.
6. Final Sense - It has a range of category to choose from, you can have your 3 column template or even a theme template like animals or general template. Choose from the list and find what’ suitable.
7. Gecko and Fly - Large collection in both Classic and XML blogger templates close to 50 over templates.
8. Pannasmontata - As the name is weird and long, they have a list of templates that could be hidden treasures templates which are not found by many bloggers.
9. Pyzam - A huge collection of Blogger template a total of 900 over blogger templates for you to choose.
10. 99 Computers - They tell you much of computers, but they do have some designs that are good for your blogs.

Wordpress Themes

1. Arcsin - There are close to 21 well designed wordpress themes.
2. Blogging Themes - Great list of Wordpress themes close to 30 for you to choose.
3. DoshDosh - Offers 18 Made for adsense Optimize Themes.
4. HongKiat - 49 of the most downloaded wordpress themes.
5. kaushalsheth - A collection of elegant wordpress themes.
6. Mashable - Shows you 20 4 column Wordpress themes worth downloading
7. Smashing Magazines - They may not be the creator of the theme but a huge 83 themes that you have not seen before lights up in front of you.
8. SilentBits - A list of smacking cool 30 wordpress themes.
9. Teknobites - Offers 10 Great Wordpress Themes.
10. WriterSpace - This chap listed 100 Favourite Wordpress themes available for download.

If you have found another blog or designer who have a good collection of templates or themes you are welcome to contact me and i will update this page for everybody’s conviences.

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