Contextual advertising is a great way to gain more business. Since the inception of this advertising model, webmasters all around the world have benefited from this, until…

…Google slapped them last year by taking their PR away. According to Google’s TOS webmasters are not allowed to sell advertising by dofollow. Google search engines basically don’t want to have to crawl advert pages as this takes up room and effort, even though it is automated.

If you have been online late last year when mayhem struck you know what this is all about. Many bloggers have been slapped and lost substantial page rank. The only way to stay within the rules of search engines is to use contextual ads with a nofollow attribute.

This means you still send traffic to the “link” being advertised on your site, but you don’t pass on page rank which is fine with Google.

One such service has recently launched what people were asking for.

LinkXL has now included an option to either make your links dofollow or nofollow which is great if you are concerned about this. And you should be by all means.

The whole process of LinkXL is automated once you have signed up, been accepted and installed some code on your site.

Advertisers can buy links within any of your posts and all you need to do is collect the 60% earnings every month. By default, the cost of a link is set to $5, but you can change this within your LinkXL admin if you wish.

You can choose from a wide range of categories to suit your need as seen on the image to the right.

Billing is automated for advertisers allowing them to concentrate on other aspects of their business. See what LinkXL says about their service for advertisers:

This is natural advertising loved by search engines. To me, this is certainly the best option as a webmaster if I ever wanted to try contextual advertising myself. Even if I was to sell 10 links a month at $10 each, it could mean a difference of $60 in my pocket.

For webmasters the following apply:

From what it’s worth, I think LinkXL might be onto a winner with their new nofollow rule as it will entice a lot of webmasters/publishers to their shores. Whether advertisers see the same value without a follow attribute remains to be seen.

If you like to find out more, visit LinkXL.

Brian Gardner has done it again. He delivers a state of the art WordPress theme enticing users to make a switch to something more cool and funky. The Revolution City Theme is not only light, it offers a lot of exposure to blog owners by means of navigation.

The theme offers a lot of room for showcasing the best you have to offer which in turn should keep traffic on your site for longer. The new Revolution City Theme is also an upgrade from earlier theme releases and you can see these outlined below:

Some of the features of the theme are:

• Featured tabber and thumbnail section on the homepage
• Drop down menu navigation
• All 3 sidebar areas are widget-ready
• Theme options page inside WP dashboard
• Comments section coded for Gravatars
• Google AdSense integration in between posts and comments
• Blog page template

The new theme options page gives users time saving options to simply insert their code into the relevant fields.

I don’t know about you guys, but I really love Brian Gardner’s stuff. I’m currently using a couple of his themes on my other blogs but will probably end up buying this one too. It’s just too cool to ignore.

What do you think? See a live demo of the theme.

Learn more about the Revolution City Theme.

Utility Poster is a groovy blogging desktop software released by Jack Humphrey. Jack lists clients such as Mike Filsaime on his sales page who benefit from his 60 Day Social Marketing Plan, included in the product. Utility Poster is a software working on your desktop in conjunction with your blog admin to help you discover relevant blog post in no time and insert them into your blog within seconds with a drag and drop function.

As you can see, Utility Poster runs side by side if you are logged into your blog admin. It works on all blogging platforms if we are to believe the sales page and requires Windows XP SP2 to function properly with the .NET Framework 2.0 (free) installed.

From what I saw so far, this software is great for link posts as well as niche marketers by the looks of it.

For instance, if you want to search for related post entries, you simply search by keyword and it will return the latest 100 entries. To choose one or several excerpts just click on them and drag them right into your blog editor.

When you watch the video you can see how easy this actually is. Even newbies can do this within seconds.

The idea of Utility Poster is to help you design new posts fast. The software does cost money. At the moment it is listed at $67.

Personally I can see that Utility Poster has some benefits and I would be tempted to try this software. However, since I run Vista I can’t. I find this a huge negative, since most new computers are now being released with Vista from what I see. Maybe they might change this in the future, so more people can use Utility Poster.

How often have you had the desire to link a particular post’s content to a previous post which has relatively similar information? What do you try to do in such cases? May be, hunt for old posts, use the search option within your own blog or use the related posts plugin.

But now, we have something still more pleasing. A better way to interlink your posts to key pages deeper into the site! SEO Smart Links plugin can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags. All this pretty seamlessly!

Eager to know how does it happen? Cool! The SEO Smart Links plugin actually figures out the keyword phrases which match the title of your posts and pages by default with a special option to enable categories and tags matching too! These phrases are then turned into  links which refer to the related posts from within your article. The matching is case insensitive and the original case is preserved. This shall help in giving a well researched look to the post!

So If I mention Top 10 Most Useful “Make Money Blogging” Blogs, which is the title of one of my posts, it will be automatically converted into a link. All this happens in a completely transparent manner, and you can always edit the options from the intuitive administration settings panel.

Let’s look at some of the key features of this plugin:

• Lets you link the keywords in your posts, pages and comments to your other posts, pages, categories and tags.
• Gives you full control with customizable options.
• An incorporated ignore list for keywords you do not want to link ever.
• Gives your weblog a good interlinking, effortlessly.

Installation:

1. Download the plugin from here.
2. Upload the plugin folder to your /wp-content/plugins/ directory.
3. Query caching - set define(ENABLE_CACHE, true); in your wp-config.php file.
4. Go to the Plugins page and activate the plugin.
5. Use the Options page to change your options.
6. There is no 5th step!

I am sure you’re going to love this nifty plugin. Try it out for sure!

We know that the power of blogs in information marketing is getting acknowledged worldwide. Today, a businessman who doesn’t have a substantial web presence is perhaps losing grounds in his/her business niche. People are eager to have their dot com’s registered and get high on search results.

Gone are the days when business was swamped into a single website with static pages which used to stay forever just as the way they were first created. This has led to a remarkable increase in the number of blogger’s the web has today. Freelance blogging is now helping people pay their bills rather than just being a passion or a hobby.

If you think you can analyze things well and can craft them in your own good language, paid blogging may have some good luck for you! But the question arises - where to start from?

I have spoken off to a large number of people who ask me how and where shall they start off to do what I am doing now! I have given these tips and details to many of my well wishers and at times, strangers! Today I think it’s time for me to share some paid blogging avenues with everyone who’s here.

I shall show-cast top-10 websites/blogs which, I believe, may help you find blogging jobs over the Internet.

Check them out!

1) ProBlogger

Darren Rowse, the name says it all! The undisputed leader of ‘making money though blogs’ concept. You’ll find a lot of jobs on his job board. He charges a nominal 50$ to display a job requirement for the entire month. For job seekers, it’s free! A must visit portal to look out for a blogging job.

2) Freelance Writing Jobs

One of the strongest community for people looking for writing/blogging jobs. Deb Ng, the owner of this blog provides a consolidated list of links to blogging jobs found over the Internet. Apart from the general blogging jobs, you’ll find great tips and success formulas on the website. A must have on your RSS reader, if you’re aiming at earning money through freelance blogging.

3) Performancing

Another great website to find blogging jobs across different topics/niche. A large volume of blogging requirement lies and is added pretty frequently. This weblog also features some great posts for potential blogger’s. One of my personal favorite blogs.

4) About Freelance Writing

The author, Ann Wayman, lists a variety of blogging positions across the web, thrice a week. The website proves to be an awesome resource for blogging related jobs. She also has a great blog for writers called The Golden Pencil.

5) Indeed

Try this powerful job search engine to narrow down your search. Perform a search for ‘blogger’ or a similar search keyword on Indeed.com to get a list of results culled from different websites. This website has some real power pay packages. Trust me on this!

6) BloggerJobs.biz

Just as the website says - “The Inside Track to a Blogging Career - The Job Hunt Begins Here!“, it provides a good collection of blogging jobs found across the web, along with some which are hard to find elsewhere.

7) Poe War

This website is a daily stop for freelance writing and blogging jobs. It offers a large database of blogging jobs alongside some cool advices you would always get for free! Try your luck here, you might just dig some gold!

8 ) Craigslist

Craigslist is another amazing resource for finding jobs. Though it’s pretty localized and needs you to navigate a bit before you finally get hold of some good opportunity, but people have  found some of their biggest corporate clients on Craigslist. Just remember to keep a wary eye out for scams!

9) Authority Blogger

Authority Blogger has a section within the site’s forum where you find a lot of blogging jobs. This forum specializes in long term blogging projects by trusted clients. Do not miss this if you’re serious about working professionally.

10) Sunoasis Jobs

This website caters a regularly updated job list. If lucky, you may get your fingers on some of the top notch blogging jobs!

These were few of the prominent websites where you can find a blogging contract/job. There are plenty of similar websites/blogs you are likely to come across. I would love to see more of them, as a comment to this post. Good luck!

I’m sure most of you admire cartoons and have your personal favorite cartoon character. How many of you actually visit xkcd.com? One of the best cartoon websites known pretty much for it’s humor and simplicity.

Ever thought of publishing comics online and getting those cartoon freaks to hit your website more frequently than you would expect? How about publishing comics using WordPress and a cool WordPress theme, specially built for this very purpose? Yes, I’m talking about ComicPress.

ComicPress is developed and maintained by Tyler Martin, who originally created it for publishing his own comic, Wally & Osborne. The first version of this theme was seen way back in November, 2005. A lot has been done on the theme to get it to where it is today.

ComicPress has a pretty clean layout and is easy enough for you to build on. With a couple of changes in the Stylesheet you may have your own custom comic Website in no time! It is free to download and use.

The latest release of ComicPress theme is available in 5 layouts:

• Standard Edition — A traditional, single blog column having a single sidebar under the comic. Generally known to work well with a horizontal or full-page comic.
• 3-Column Edition — Just to cater your 3-column need, it features a wider page than the Standard Edition. This layout gives you one more sidebar to work on.
• Vertical Edition — To publish narrow or tall comics, you need this one. Pretty much similar to the standard layout, but with the sidebar beside the comic, filling in the extra space.
• Vertical 3-Column Edition — Similar to the 3-column edition, it adds an extra sidebar to the Vertical Edition, binding the comic between the two sidebars.
• Graphic Novel Edition — This edition lets you to display your content alongside the large full-page comics.

The layouts are pretty much similar and are designed to give you that extra flexibility to help it suit your blog and comic. The CSS written from the scratch, unlike it’s previous versions which had it based on the WordPress default theme. It’s a great looking and out of the box theme for all comic publishers to dirty their hands on.

However, this theme is pretty much incomplete without a plugin called ComicPress Manager, a  plugin written exclusively for the ComicPress theme by John Bintz. This plugin adds a ComicPress management interface to the WordPress Admin panel. This lets you configure the theme and upload comics, on the fly. As you upload a comic it shall also create the post to go along with it. You may even batch the uploads for future! The best part is, if you already have a large archive, you can allow it to make all the comic posts for you, effortlessly enough!

Do not miss this if you’re planning to start or move to a comic blog!

You can have a demo of the theme and can download it too, all for free! Before you go on to install this theme, this read me is highly recommended.

Enjoy!

While I was researching on people who love to blog and prime reasons for which they have one, I was surprised to find that blogging is now often termed as “money making” by casual Internet users. They have a strong feeling that they can earn magically just by creating a free blog and monetarizing it with Adsense and similar ad display programs.

However, they stay away from the fact that money making by blogging is not a child’s play. I do not deny the fact that a few people, in recent times have done well with Adsense and other affiliate programs, but thinking of becoming another Darren Rowse, or anywhere close to him is somewhat analogous to taming a squirrel!

Several pro blogger’s have always recommended to concentrate on content than ads, if at all you wish to have blogging as your day job. If you have a few minutes to spare, there is a good illustration here. You really need to eye on certain key aspects to help your blog pay your bills, for that matter.

Some of them include,

• Originality
• Quality
• Consistency
• Patience
• SEO

Other factors include a good social network, communication with visitors through comments, and capability to analyze the movements of the niche you are concentrating on.

Having mentioned the facts about blogging for money, I would like to share my work which lists - Top 20 Most Useful “Make Money Blogging” Blogs.

Here we go:

1.  ProBlogger

One stop to all your money making through blogging needs! By far the best money-making web guides, I have ever come across. Apart from originality, the amount of research involved in a post is exorbitant. The writing style is appealing and there is no doubt about Darren’s bird eye view of the blog-O-sphere. A must have RSS feed for your feed reader.

2.  Shoemoney

The name says the most of it! Shoemoney is another well known website with a huge list of RSS subscribers worldwide. The author, Jeremy is well known in his niche for the dynamics he brings up in his articles and the concept he has about marketing a website or product, for that matter.

Daniel once wrote an interesting article comparing Darren vis-a-vis Jeremy! Do have a look. Shoemoney is another wild card entry to your RSS reader!

3.  John Chow.com

John, owner - Thetechzone - one of the best hardware tech website, also masters the art of making money through blogs. He evangelizes various methodologies which a blogger must concentrate on to help generate revenue off the blog. John calls himself a Dot Com Mogul! The prime difference between his and Darren’s approach is that he also rambles about other issues regarding earning money online, apart from making money via blogs.

4.  Self Made Minds

A combined effort of Al Carlton and Scott Jones, the duo master the art of online business ideas with a special inclination towards making money through blogs. There modus operandi evolve around the concept of Internet marketing, money making through social networking, building traffic and earning by learning!

5.  Entrepreneur’s Journey

An informative blog by Yaro Starak, a young entrepreneur from Australia who calls it to be - a website giving down-to-earth advice for blogger’s and Internet marketers. Yaro writes useful articles for web-entrepreneurs and also streams audio Podcasts for his viewers. A great website for people who believe in following a strategy for success with blogs.

6.  Net Business Blog

Authored by Matt Coddington, this blog is just over an year old but expertises in in giving a real insight into the world of online business. It gives valuable information to startup or enhance an online business. It covers a wide range of topics for you to help earn money off your blog. This includes articles on - Blogging, Marketing, eCommerce, PPC, SEO/SEM, Web Development, Branding, et. al. One of the best business blogs to keep an eye on.

7.  Bootmoney

Bootmoney is one of the best affiliate marketer I’ve ever come across. While you think of earning while blogging, the second best thing that can come to your mind after Adsense like programs is - affiliate marketing. Keep an eye on this blog to learn better ways to do it!

8.  Andy Beard

A well crafted blog which aims to shower its reader with news concerning WordPress, Niche Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Tips and Social Media. The ultimate goal remains the same - helping you earn money with your blog!

9.  Dosh Dosh

This one is by far the greatest website in terms of quality of the content . Maki, the author writes once in few days and each of his posts involve an in-depth analysis of the topic he covers. This doesn’t mean he’s busy writing for the remaining days. Maki denies that up-front! He rather keeps himself busy with other things in life, on the days when you don’t see a new post. If you stumble on his posts, they appear to be crafted beautifully and apparently look to have emerged from a think-tank. A great website for people who think on planning their blogging activities in order to earn big with a sound strategy.

10. Mike’s Money Making Mission

Authored by Mike Perry, his blog talks about making money with free blogs! This is entirely a different concept and Mike makes it pretty interesting with his articles. His blog features numerous interesting articles to get you going with your free blog!

These were a few top-notch websites which I hope would justify the title of the post and shall serve you with all you ever wished to know about - “Making money through blogs“!

Having an opportunity to write sponsored posts is indeed a great way to earn money off your WordPress blog. But, at no point of time, I feel you’ll do it at the cost of your page rank or SEO, for that matter.

Keeping an eye on the links you put into your posts is extremely relevant. But what if you have more than a hundred posts on a blog which is running well over the past few months or years and you wish there was a magic button which could get a “nofollow” attribute to all your links!

You may now, breathe easy with this ‘no-follow-links-in-posts’ plugin.  

Nofollow-links-in-posts plugin helps you add the “nofollow” attribute into links within posts. You have an option to enable “nofollow” attribute to links in posts which are older than “X” days. You need to select a category of posts for which you want this effect to hold good.   

The plugin automatically adds a rel=”nofollow” into links in posts older than “X” days!

Talking about compatibility with WP versions, the plugin works only with WordPress 2.5+. So, incase you’re running an older version of WordPress, you need to upgrade it. You may like to try out the latest beta release, we talked about in the previous post - WordPress 2.6 is peeping in!

Installation:

1. Download the plugin.
2. Unzip “nofollow-links-in-posts.zip” and upload the “nofollow-links-in-posts” folder to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory.
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
4. Go to the ‘Settings’ menu and click on ‘Nofollow Links in Posts’ to check out the plugin options.

I would recommend it to all blogger’s who are frequent with sponsored posts on their blogs. Happy no-following!

It has been quite a few months while the stable version of WordPress, WP 2.51 has been around. Though there have been bugs and patches for them in a timeline, but somehow I have been satisfied with the way WordPress has evolved as the leading publishing platform. Some of the prominent bugs in the current stable release were reportedly:

• The Internet Explorer issue
• Error with the File Editor
• Auto save problem, etc.

You can find a lot of bugs currently being tracked and reported at WordPress trac. If interested, you may also submit the bugs you think you’ve tracked down. It’s another great way to learn!

The next release of WP is a beta1 release and is available for download here. If you’re interested in a stable version, I would request you to wait for the final release. Talking about the prominent changes in WP 2.6, the best ones include Post Revisions, which saves a history of edits made to a post, and support for Gears, which speeds up working with the admin screens to a great extend.

Other salient features of WP 2.6 b1 include:

• XMLRPC  mechanism for listing and deleting media resources easily and efficiently.
• Admin SSL Support to allow visiting the admin over http or https with an option to force https.
• Support for the XML-RPC and Atom client APIs is turned off by default now. In order to use an external client for posting, you’ll need to turn these features on, under Settings/Writing section of the panel.
• While selecting themes, you now get to view a preview of how your site looks with the new theme before applying the change. This Theme preview feature is similar to the one at WordPress.com.
• The Gravatar service now also supports MonsterID, Wavatar, or Identicon icons in place of the default icon for those who do not have a Gravatar for them. You may select these options under Settings/Discussion.
• The plugin plugin management has been improved a lot. Active and inactive plugins are now listed separately. You may now ‘bulk activate’ or ‘bulk deactivate’ plugins. The unused plugins may now be deleted with the click of a button.
• A ‘Press This’ bookmarklet for quick posting, something similar to tumblelog.
• You may now relocate your content directory.
• You can also move wp-config.php, out of the root folder of your website.
• WP now has a word counter within the inbuilt editor. This is a blessing in disguise for writer who need to concentrate on words before publishing.
• The image editing dialog is improved over the previous versions. It now gives a lot of control over the images you embed in the posts.
• TinyMCE 3.1.0.1 with lots of bug fixes.
• WP has the latest jQuery 1.2.6 and jQuery UI 1.5 which provide some cool performance boost!

Now that was more than one could have asked them! WordPress is growing big and that too pretty fast. You may download and upgrade your current WP installation. For the professional blogs, I would however recommend to wait for the final release of WP 2.6 which shall anyhow be more stable.

I have been proudly using and evangelizing WordPress as one of the best blogging platforms available today. Having said so, I feel being pretty fair with my words. But, there lies an unbiased desire within me to look out on the other side of the blog-o-sphere, where people are doing great with their non-WordPress blogs. The grass may not always be greener on the other side, but there is no harm in having a barefooted walk!

Once, a popular website named Online journalism review (which has stopped producing new content) conducted a survey on - Which blogging platforms are popular in the world ? The results were beautifully represented as follows:

This information is however more than 2 years old and things have probably changed since then. Advanced would be a better word, I guess! In one of the recent articles, Monika talked about various options one can have while starting of his first blog. However, they were the not self-hosted blogs, something which pro’s love a lot for the fact that it allows a higher degree of customization.

After analyzing the features of various self hosted non-WordPress blogging platforms which help running the blogs across the world, I have come up with 10 short listed candidates. We shall see how do they serve the purpose of blogging and how different they are from the kingpin - WordPress platform. I have excluded both WordPress.org and WordPress.com from this list.

Here we go!

1) TextPattern

It is by far the second most widely used stand alone blogging platform after WordPress. It facilitates round about the same features which WordPress has except the fact that it doesn’t have such a strong community on the web. It has no licensing fee and can be configured quite easily.

Other features include easy publishing using textile, an inbuilt text-to-HTML converter, options to preview a post or page, XHTML and CSS compliance, tagging template system, support for comments, trackbacks and pings, spam protection system, RSS and Atom feed support, plugins, built-in CSS editor, link management or blogroll capability, image and file management systems, etc. It also has an incorporated site statistics feature which is pretty cool!

Moreover, there is a support forum to cater your valuable needs - TextPattern Forum.

2) Moveable Type

This is another well known and widely used blogging platform. It is the first platform ever to use the trackback feature. The platform offers you unlimited weblogs, ability to create standalone pages, image and file managers, customized user roles, customizable templates, plugins, tags, categories, sub-categories, et. al. It supports both static and dynamic publishing. The website also has an active forum here - Moveable Type Forum.

3) Drupal

Drupal is a free software package that allows you to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. It is not just a blogging platform but is extended to a variety of features. It has an easy-to-use web installer and a built-in functionality to combine with dozens of freely available add-on modules. It is a powerful system to create any of the following modules on your blog/website :

• Content Management Systems
• Collaborative authoring environments
• Forums
• Newsletters
• Podcasts
• Picture galleries, etc.

4) b2Evolution

You would have probably seen this one on the fantastico automatic script installer in your cpanel. A powerful CMS which was developed from the same original code that spawned WordPress. b2Evolution is also written in PHP and provides a variety of features like - plugin framework, integrated stats, spam protection, web standards compliance, multiple blogs, multiple users and authors,etc. Just like WordPress, it is fairly easy to install and upgrade. Licensed under the GPL, it is always free to use.

5) Serendipity

This platform is better known for its flexibility to cater the needs of varying users. It has a user database ranging from newbies to geeks. It is remarkably known amongst the users of all technical levels. It offers all mundane features like - plugins, support for skins, anti-spam, comment, trackbacks, pings, flexible input/output, etc. It is pretty easy to upgrade whenever a newer version is available. One of the best features it has is the option to choose between HTML, Textile, Wiki, BBCode and other markups. The support forum for Serendipity lies here - Serendipity Forum.

6) LifeType

This blogging medium is well known for its integrated media management, rich templates, plugins, spam filter, an easy and intuitive installation wizard, etc. It also features moblogging, multiple blog support, XMLRPC interface for remotely creating and editing articles. Just like WordPress, it also has an in-built XMLRPC ping service. You may visit the Life Type Forum for a more specific query.

7) Flatpress

It is yet another standards-compliant blogging platform. It supports plugins, widgets and other mundane features which as blog must possess. It has an easy customization with themes, powered by Smarty. Though it is not as widely used as WordPress, nor does it have as many customization options, but it is a perfect option for someone who is afraid of technology and clumsy features.

8 ) ExpressionEngine

Yet another powerful blogging platform from the makers of pMachine. It is often described as a Roll Royce surrounded by Toyota’s, mainly due to its cost! It can be considered as a paid alternative to MovableType that may better suit the users who do not mind paying for their support. It incorporates all basic and advanced features a pro blog shall have. This includes - Multiple blogs, custom entry fields, Moblog, RSS and Atom, image resizing and thumbnailing, bookmarklets, emoticons, etc. It also has a powerful  template engine which enlists a lot of features. The complete list of features can be found here. Overall, a great option if you wish to try something other than WP and can think of shelling out some money for the cause.

9) Blosxom

It is known for its lightweight yet feature-rich package which again is free. A weblog application designed from the scratch keeping in mind the 3 golden rules - simplicity, usability, and interoperability. Blosxom does not rely on PHP or SQL databases. This is quite unlike other blogging platforms in the market. However, it uses Perl and flat files. It is an extremely small platform with < 150 lines of actual code! Talking about features, it has all the basic ones. This platform is something which should not be compared to WP, but is definitely an alternative for several novice users.

10) Nucleus

This is another blogging tool which is commonly located on fantastico. It has been around for quite some time and current version 3.31 is of just 595 KB! It offers features like - multiple blogs and authors, time stamping on drafts, plugin support,etc.  Nucleus is free to use under the GPL and has a reasonable sized user base. You may look out at its forum for more help - Nucleus forum.

These were a few standalone blogging platforms I found worth putting up here. I would encourage more alternatives as comments to this post. Happy blogging!