Why do we like an original painting better than a forgery? Psychologist Paul Bloom argues that human beings are essentialists — that our beliefs about the history of an object change how we experience it, not simply as an illusion, but as a deep feature of what pleasure (and pain) is. Watch Paul Bloom explain wonderful neuroscience concepts.

“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve

got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your

work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do

what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you

do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart,

you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better

as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” ~~Steve Jobs

Why your blog should be your representation?

• To create a successful blog takes a long term commitment and passion.

Action steps

Step 1: Prepare your brain.

Step 2: What are my skills and my interests?

Step 3: What combination of my skills and my interests I can use to provide

greater value to other people?

Step 4: Can I do this on a regular basis for a long period of time?

Step 5: Save your answer

Other questions to think about:

Tip

Warning

Take away points

Resources and further reading

Did you know?

We’re bringing gameplay into more aspects of our lives, spending countless hours — and real money — exploring virtual worlds for imaginary treasures. Why? As Tom Chatfield shows, games are perfectly tuned to dole out rewards that engage the brain and keep us questing for more.

Majority of the blogs that are successful are focussed on a theme and have carved out
a niche for themselves. The are some inherent advantages of niche blogging.

1. Loyal Readers

Niche blog will write on the topic of their niche. So readers who have need for the a
certain kind of information and like the content on the blog will always keep coming back
for new information. If the blog sticks to its niche it is very unlikely the readers will get
disappointed.
Example: Copyblogger.com is a blog focused on web copywriting. It has thousands of
loyal readers that like to visit the blog everyday.

2. Community

Like minded people like to gather at a place and share their views. A niche blog can be
a networking platform for like minded people, where they join to read their favorite
articles and share their views through commenting on the blog.
Example: Checkout how people like to passionately comment on the articles of
copyblogger.com

3. Niche Authority and Credibility

Blogging consistently on one topic gives credibility to the blog and ultimately the blog
could become a “go-to” place for any information on the niche topic.
Example: howaboutorange.blogspot.com is a blog focused on craft projects. People visit
this blog when they want to have how-to information for craft projects.

4. Targeted Contextual Advertising

If your site has content pertaining to one theme contextual advertising by Google
AdSense or any other company can be very successful. The ads will be targeted based
on the content them and there is a great likely hood that they will get clicked as they will
match the interest of the readers of the niche blog.
Example: digital-photography-school.com is focussed on the subject of digital
photography and makes thousands of dollars with AdSense advertising every month.

5. Attractive to Direct Advertisers

Direct advertisers are always looking for the sites that are successful and have a topic
that is related to their products. Your nice could be a right place for many products and
direct advertisers of the products could get attracted to your blog.
Example: Freelancefolder.com is a blog focussed on helping freelancers. Visit this blog
and see how many advertisements it attracts.

6. Search Engine Optimization

Search engines favor the sites that are focussed around a topic and pages are linked to
one another.

7. Higher conversion rate

If you are selling a product that is related to your niche, the conversion rate is going to
be higher as you already have a audience that is interested in your topic.
Example: digital-photography-school.com makes thousands of dollars every month from
Amazon.com for the referral sales. Visitors to the blog are all of those people who are
interested in photography and if they see an ad for a product they are going to click the
ad and buy the product.

Takeaway points

Attract Contextual Ads

Niche blogs are beneficial because they:
• Attract loyal customers
• create a community
• Create Authority and credibility
• Attract targeted contextual ads
• Attract Direct Advertisers
• Help in search engine optimization
• Bring higher conversion rate

Action steps

What are the topics of your interest? what are the tasks when you do, you almost lose
track of the time? Make a list of such topics. Research some blogs in your interest area.

Did you know?

In a survey by Technorati, 72% of the people surveyed, say they blog in order to
share their expertise.

What is your area of expertise? Would you like to blog the topic? Please share
your views in the comments section.

Definition of blog

The word ‘Blog’ came from ‘Web log’. It is type of website that is usually created and maintained by an individual. The publisher of the blog, commonly called a ‘Blogger,’ creates regular entries, called ‘posts’. The entries are displayed in reverse chronological order, with the latest entry showing first.

Types of blogs

There are many type of blogs, based on different type of content and or in the way the content is delivered.

1. Personal blogs

The personal blog is an ongoing commentary by an individual like a personal journal. Blogs often become more than the way to communicate, they are used to reflect upon life and art or personal viewpoints about society, politics or life.
Example: thisisindexed.com is a personal blog run by Jessica Hagy.

2. Corporate or Organizational blogs

This type of blog could be used to enhance internal communication in a corporation or externally for marketing or branding purposes.
Example: wk.com and newairplane.com are examples of corporate blogs.

3. By genre

Some blogs focus on particular subject for example political blogs, fashion blogs, education blogs etc.
Example:
factcheck.org is a political blog.
beliefnet.com is a religious blog.
nytimes.com/tmagazine is a fashion blog.
wechoosethemoon.org is a educational blog.

4. By the type of Media

A blog comprising of photos is called Photo blog. A blog comprising of videos posts is called video blog. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed medial types are called tumble logs.

Examples:

Ted.com is a video blog.
stuckincustoms.com is a photoblog.

Origin of blogs

Earlier blogs started in late 1990’s. In these blogs an individual will write a journal about their lives or opinions. The posts will be displayed in reverse chronological order. This was like a oneway communication.

Blogs Today

Today after the introduction of Web 2.0 (Social web) blogs have become more like two-way conversation between the publisher and the visitors. Commenting, sharing, book marking of the content is encouraged. Today the visitor of the website or blog also participates in content creation.

Future of blogs

Blogging has become really powerful medium of expression. This is mostly because it is very easy for anyone to start a blog. Everyday more and more people and businesses are recognizing the power of blogging. There are already more than 100 million blogs on the net and thousands are being added everyday. Bloggers are taking the blogs to new heights by integrating
multimedia and social networking into their blogs. There is no doubt the future of blogging is very bright and we are going to see some major advancements in the medium.

Did you know?

According to universalmccann.com, 77% of the internet users read blogs. Do you already have a blog or are you thinking of creating one? If yes, under what category it falls? Please share with us in the comments section.

Sugata Mitra’s studies prove that we are all creative problem solvers by default. If we help each other and create a community, nothing is impossible.

Blogs are just websites, yet they are so different from the regular websites. Let us see
what makes them so different?

1. Content

Blogs are updated more often than the regular websites. some times they are updated
several times in a day. The content is normally arranged in reverse chronological order

with the latest content on the top. Visitors keep coming back for the fresh content.
Example: hubspot.com publishes multiple articles in a day most of the times.

2. Syndication

Most of the blogs have RSS feed that makes the content available to the feed
subscribers without even visiting the blog.
Example: if you signup for my RSS feed you will receive every article in the feed
reader of your choice or directly delivered to your email box.

3. Conversation

Blogs are written with bloggers directly communicating to their audience and replies are
expected in the form of comments. In addition to this conversation sometimes
conversation also happens between the blogs with a blog post on one blog being
mentioned on other blogs and comments being posted on other blogs.

What are the Advantages of Blogs over static websites?

1.Fame

A successful blog has the potential to get you noticed.

2. Networking

Blogs naturally lead to conversation and well read blog will put you in contact with a
wide variety of people.

3. Traffic

Blogs by their very nature are highly optimized for search engines. Availability of a
number of free plugins make the process more easy. So blogs not only help a site for
traffic, they also help in bringing loyal visitors that love to visit the blog again and again.

Tip

If you have a website that sells products or services and you donʼt have a blog yet,
think of adding a blog to your existing website for traffic and loyal visitors.

4. Sales

Blog help you build trust with your audience and they are likely to buy anything that you
suggest to them.

Warning

It takes a long time to build trust and seconds to break it. So, if you
recommend something to your audience, make sure that it is of high value and you
yourself believe in the product.

Takeaway points

1. Blogs are different from the regular websites in terms of:
• content
• syndication
• conversation
2. Blogs can bring you:
• fame
• networking
• traffic
• sales

Action Steps

Search in the google and find at least two websites that have a blog added to them.
Notice how the static website has information like a brochure and how the blog has
regularly updated content.

Did you know?

Technorati is now tracking over 70 million weblogs, and we’re seeing
about 120,000 new weblogs being created worldwide each day. That’s
about 1.4 blogs created every second of every day.

What are your favorite blogs? What are your thoughts on Blogs vs Websites? Please share with us in the comments section.

Run towards something and not away from something. Always compete with yourself. Try to be better than you were yesterday. You will see all dots will fall in place, you will get help from everywhere.
Ben Comen’s story teaches me many lessons!

Using adsense ads on your site or blog may be bringing you good revenue, but are you targeting that revenue and making the most of your Adsense campaign?

If you are using Adsense, but not utilizing Adsense channels to differentiate your campaigns, than you may be missing out on very important analytical data about your campaign which could cause you to limit your income opportunities.

Adsense channels allow you to track your ads independently and compare the data in order to make long and short term optimization adjustments.

Here is how Channels Work:

Each time you create an ad campaign in Adsense, you will be directed to create a channel. This is not a necessary option by Google, but it should be by you.

Each time you create a new adsense ad, create a new channel to correspond to that ad. Be as specific as possible when naming your channels, especially it you have several websites. If your site name is ABCBlog and you are placing the ad in a header, your channel name should be ABCBlog.header or something similar to differentiate it from you other ads on that site or another site you may own.

Once you have created a channel for each ad on your site you can begin to track performance and determine which ads and ad types are doing best in which sites or areas within your sites. The information you gather by using Adsense channels is vital to your adsense campaigns.

Adsense channels allow you to track a variety of information about your ads and make side by side comparisons to locate your best performers.

Channels allow you to track:

• Number of Page Impressions
• Clicks
• Click Through Rate
• Cost per 1000 impressions
• Earning per channel

All of this information is not only beneficial, but necessary to insure you are maximizing your CTR by site and location. If you don’t know which ads are most favored by your visitors then you are leaving money on the table with each one.

If you are already making a decent income from your Adsense ads, you may question the need to track these ads through channels. Well, for those of you posing this question, I ask you…If you are making good income now, wouldn’t you want to see which ads are dominating that income and potentially increase that income in the future? I won’t await your answer.

If you are just unfamiliar with channels in general; check out the very easy to follow tutorials from Google which will familiarize you with the process quickly.

Trust me when I say it is well worth the effort you put into it. You reward will be increased revenue and a more targeted campaign.

(Photo Credit: invisiblekid2007)