CSS (aka. Cascading Style Sheets) is a style sheet language which most use to style web pages written in HTML and other popular languages. CSS is primarily created to enable the separation of document content from document presentation, including all style elements like layout dimensions and look, colors and fonts.

Today, most websites on the internet uses this style sheet language to design their sites. And today, we are all work on older CSS level 2 revision 1 (CSS 2.1) engine of this great markup language. I would be happy to announce you that CSS level 3 (CSS 3) is under development at this moment.It is more advanced, faster and supports way more features than ever before! Today’s most popular browsers supports CSS3 language. So, let’s find out what is new with CSS3!

New Border Functions

One of the many new features and functions of new CSS3, that I like the most is the new border functions! Besides the old-known functions like coloring, you can now simply code gradient color borders. This function looks very good and work only on Firefox for now.

Additionally you can set an image as a border. With this feature you can define an image to be used instead of the normal border of an element.

Other very useful function is a border-radius function which allows you to create round corners in code, not using the images for it like it was case in CSS 2.1 version.

And yes, you can now implement shadows on these boxes. Directly from the code, no need to use any additional image elements.

Background Functions

One of the most interesting functions in this new CSS version is an option that allows you to setup multiple backgrounds on one element! To do this, you can easily separate backgrounds by commas. This can be a very useful function for most websites – it’s much cleaner, faster and productive!

specify the size in pixels, width and height, or in percentages of your background. For me, it works only on the latest Google Chrome version, it should looks like:

New Color Functions

Color functions are one of the strongest functions of CSS 3. Now, you can use the following color codes and combinations to show colors directly through new engine:

• RGBA Colors
• HSL Colors
• HSLA Colors

Another very powerful function is opacity ! It’s probably also the one developers have been waiting for the most to be implemented!

Text Effects

There are some very good text effects included in the new CSS version. CSS has finally included this function and now you can do so much more with text and effects:

One very useful feature of the new CSS version is the text-shadow feature. Now, you can easily add shadow to your text using some simple code.

Another very useful and functional text feature is the text-warp function. It allows long words to be able to be broken and wrap onto the next line. Very good and useful I have to say!

Other Useful Functions

There are some other very useful functions that can be done with CSS 3 version. I would list only couple of these functions below:

• CSS Animations – Yes, CSS3 now fully supports CSS animation effects. For example, you could create one loading spinner without any images! Cool, really cool!
• Multi-column support – Multi-column layout is actually a module on its own. It allows a web developer to let text be fitted into columns, in two ways: by defining a width for each column, or by defining a number of columns.
• Web Fonts – Not exactly a feature which is new to CSS3, @font-face was first proposed for CSS2 and has been implemented in Internet Explorer since version 5! However, their implementation relied on the proprietary Embedded Open Type (.eot) format, and no other browsers decided to use this format.
• CSS3 Speech Module – The CSS 3 Speech module removes some of the old properties and adds new ones. All of them are now assigned to the speech media type.

Of course, there are more other functions and improvements in the new CSS 3 engine. It would be very interesting how things are going in the future! Definitely, we are coming to another era on the internet, where we could do more things using fewer resources!

Looking forward to hear what do you think about CSS3 and HTML 5.0 technologies! Feel free to post your comment using a comment field below!

Image created by bashbosh.com

If you follow and read my blog regularly, you would know that one of the most important things for you is to find some quality blogs related to your website niche. Finding a quality blog can guarantee you some new post ideas, contacts, friends and some traffic.

Every day I look for some quality blogs related to my blog niche. That is because I want to see what they write on their own blogs, how do they write their articles and if I want, to stay in contact with these bloggers. In this article I would show you some “other” ways that can help you to find more quality blogs in your site niche.

Proven Techniques

There are some proven techniques that most bloggers and webmasters use. Usually, you can search for top blogs on your niche by visiting the following sites and services:

• Technorati – This is a specialized service, targeted to blogs and other websites through the net. You would easily find the best and most popular blogs in your own niche through this website. Visit their blogs and join in the community.
• Google Blog Search – Google has created a specialized search engine that crawl blogs all around the world. You can easily see which articles are the most popular at this moment, browse top news and of course, search for blog articles you want to explore.

Most bloggers and webmasters usually check these two, above listed services to find an appropriate blogs in their niche. But, if you want to try to find more blogs you would need to apply other methods and techniques I occasionally do.

Other Techniques

These are some other techniques with which you can find other blogs similar to your site niche. These may be less popular but can contain some valuable information for sure.

• Look for Comments – A very good and useful way to find some quality blogs, related to your niche is to check our a comments on these popular blogs you have found using the Proven Techniques. In most cases, when someone leave a comment on a blog, leaves an URL and name in the comment field. This can be a very productive and effective way to get some quality bloggers to follow and read regularly.
• Forum Users – If you are an active member of forum in your niche, you should know that there are many users which have their own websites and blogs. Of course, most of them would have a blog with that particular niche. Browse and try to find some links from other forum members, usually in signature or on the profile page to their own sites and blogs.

Why to do This?

Finding a quality blogs and websites in your own niche may help you out in many ways. Personally, I use these blogs to find some information about the following:

Post Ideas

Finding a more quality blogs for you to follow, you have an opportunity to get some new ideas for your future posts and articles. You will constantly read what other bloggers write and by that you would know what to write on your website or a blog in the future.

This is a very effective way to get some new ideas for a blog. Allowing you to know what to write next on your site anytime you want. I use this method a lot for all my blogs!

Personal Style

Following others you would notice that they write in some different style than you, right? This way you can improve your own writing skills and style. Applying some elements you like on your website or a blog. This may be a very effective method for your future development for sure!

Discovering how others write, what they write is the essential way to success and improve yourself in all aspects. Visitors and your loyal readers would know how to recognize and reward your quality improvement definitely.

Connections

Ether you place a comments on other blogs, following these bloggers you like on Twitter or simply contacting them directly, may get you some useful connections and maybe a new friends. Connections in the same niche may be a very useful for you for sure!

I absolutely recommend you to stay in touch with your blogging friends, try to make some new quality connections every time you can – this may be a very useful for you and your site!

Conclusion

As you can see, finding a quality blogs in your niche may give you some precious information completely for free. There are millions of blogs around the internet and that is why you would need to use all ways possible to find some good blogs that fits you.

Note that if you have more than one blog, and in different niches, you may find to find some more blogs. Of course, I recommend you to use all these techniques above. Believe me, finding an appropriate and quality sources may help you a lot to achieve your own goals!

Good luck! If you have some other ways I would be happy to hear them through comment form below. Feel free to post any suggestions!

This is a quest blog from Daniel Offer – partner of a Facebook Chat Instant Messenger – Chit Chat for Facebook. If you want to write and publish your guest post, feel free to contact us through our contact page.

The present economic climate has made finding a job much more difficult, particularly for college and university graduates whom are seeking full time employment for the first time.

With large firms reducing their salary expenditures to cut cost, online job opportunities down by 15% from 2008 to 2010 and a job seeker/job offer ratio of about 25:1 (that ratio is significant worse for those applying to graduate schemes) – it’s more difficult than ever to find employment.

Employers May Look For You On Facebook

With the emergence of social networks and with Facebook being the most popular, it’s likely that a manager responsible for hiring will do some form of background check on you on Facebook. What might they find that you wouldn’t want them to see on your Facebook profile?

Use Facebook To Contact Employers Directly

Whilst the tried and tested method of submissions of CVs to job sites or going to job fairs still has some value, a more personal approach may be your best strategy to stand out from the hundreds of other job applications. After all, if employers are using Facebook to find you – why not use Facebook to find them.

Remember, not all job opportunities are well advertised; particularly job opportunities with SMEs and you can use this to your advantage.

Create a list of firms that you think would be a good match for your skills set and then track down someone in human resources on Facebook, ideally the manager. Then inquire as to the job opportunities at their firm, with a private Facebook message –with your CV attached.

Remember to customize the Facebook messages you send, don’t spam. It’s important to demonstrate that you have done your research and that your qualifications, as well as skill set, would make you a good candidate to employ at their firm.

Some studies suggest that about 80% of jobs are filled based on social networking – which takes us back to the old age figure of speech: it’s not just what you know, it’s who you know.

One of the most common complaints with job seekers is that most of their applications are not answered – either positively or negatively. At least with Facebook you’re likely to get an answer.

How To Go About Finding Facebook Contact Details

Consider using LinkedIn and Google to find relevant contact details for the firms that you are researching. Once you have found the name of the individual you wish to contact, search for them on Facebook.

Tips for Your Job Seeking Facebook Messages

• Request in your Facebook message for your message to be forwarded to the individual who is in charge of hiring in the event that you found the wrong contact details
• Be polite, and inform the person why you are sending them a Facebook Message
• Tell them how you found their contact details, in short
• Remember people use Facebook, typically, as a means of keeping in touch with friends and not for work – do not command attention, be polite and courteous
• Ensure your Facebook messages to each company’s employees are unique and genuinely demonstrate that you are a good candidate for the firm which they work
• Follow up your message after a week if you don’t get a response
• Don’t expect everyone to respond – and remember, you only need one full time job!

Use Your Existing Facebook Friend Network to find a job

Don’t forget to reach out to existing Facebook friends for job opportunities; they’re more likely to put in the leg work for you to find out what opportunities are available in their firms.

Moreover, the most effective way of reaching out to old friends is to write to them individually asking about the opportunities that they know are available rather than writing a generic status update – “looking for work”.

Consider writing a private message to each of your Facebook friends individually (not on their Facebook wall), or better still, write to them when they sign into Facebook Chat.

You can monitor when your Facebook friends sign in by using a Facebook Messenger such as Chit Chat for Facebook, it’s a free application that incorporates essential features of traditional instant messengers. For example, it notifies you when Facebook users sign in and out, let’s you send instant messages and you can use it from your desktop – i.e. you can use Facebook Chat without having to use your web-browser.

Find an Appropriate Income Streams

This is the third post in the How to Make Money Online series of posts. Previously, I have how you how to create a website that can make money online and how to define a niche for your website. Today, I am going to show you how to choose an appropriate income stream.

In this article I would try to show you which income streams are the most popular today on the internet. Which you should use on your website or a blog and why. It is very important to choose which income stream you are going to use because it may strongly affect your overall earnings.

Ways to Make Money Online

The first thing you should know there is to know which are the best ways to make money online from your website. These ways are the most popular ways, and in the next post in this series I will show you some other (less popular) ways with which you can earn some money.

Advertising Networks

I have write about an advertisement networks many times on this blog. Ad networks are the most popular income stream available on the internet. Allowing you to make money by placing an advertisements on your site(s) and be paid for every click you get.

Advertising networks works in most cases with pay-per-click business model. They usually have a very good ad types including the related contextual and graphical ad banners. Below are the most popular ad networks currently available on the net:

• Google AdSense
• Yahoo! Publishers Network
• Chitika

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are one of the oldest ways that allow webmasters and website owners to make money online from their sites. In most cases, they won’t pay you for every click you provide to them. Actually, they would pay you for every lead or sale through your affiliate links or a banners.

In this case, you would earn the commission for every lead or sale you do to that specific advertiser. In most cases, you can earn much more money than with other types of advertising on the internet and it can work well on most websites. Below there are some good, popular and proven affiliate networks you can apply:

• Commission Junction [Review]
• Azoogle Ads [Review]
• Amazon Associates [Review]

Direct Advertising

Direct advertising, also known as direct marketing is a very good way that allow you to make money online from your website. In most cases you would find many websites that sell their own website ad space for a fixed flat-price, for a month or more.

The good thing about this type of advertising is that money you earn is directly provided to you. Without any additional commissions other ad networks and companies gives you. For example, if you make a $100.00 on AdSense – at least that much goes to the Google. They actually live and make money from you and your earnings.

Below, you would find some interesting articles about direct advertising:

• Make money with direct advertising
• BuySell Ads – Direct advertising service
• 10 Direct ways to make money online

Difference Between these Methods

In the table below, I would like to show you the main differences between all these three methods to earn money online from your website:

Please note that there are much more other ways with which you can make money online with your website or a blog. These ways, noted above, are the most popular ways to do that!

I am going to explain further this chart above:

Ad Networks – As you can see their money-making-progress is mostly done by Pay-Per-Click (PPC) method. This means you would be paid for every click you generate on their ads through your website or a blog. Of course, they may be pay you some other way, but this is the most popular way to generate some revenue for your websites online.

Compared to these two other income streams you could make a moderate revenue using an advertising networks on the internet.

Affiliate Programs – Using an affiliate programs through the internet you can make most money. Affiliates would pay you per lead or per sale, providing you a commission or the fixed price for your advertising campaign. In some cases, affiliates may pay you by click but it is not common practice.

Affiliate programs have the largest earning potential, compared to any other income stream module. But you would know how to use them properly!

Direct Advertising – When you sell an ad space on your website you may use any price you want. If you set it too high, advertisers would not pay you but if you set it too low you might not get the most potential earnings through this method. Choose carefully which price you are going to use.

Direct advertising usually has  the lowest earning potential, when we compare it to the affiliate programs or ad networks. It is mostly because an ads through this method are purchased directly from you and they usually have a limited flat-rate price for a month.

Which Income Stream to Choose?

Now you probably ask yourself which income stream you are going to choose. Are you going to use these three income streams and on which sites. Now, I am going to explain and tell you all of that and even a bit more.

As you can see on the above table, earnings highly depends on your website traffic. I have consider the following rates for the low, moderate and high traffic sites:

• Low Traffic: 1 – 100.000 visitors
• Moderate Traffic: 100.001 – 500.000 visitors
• High Traffic: 500.001 and more

I understand that most people think that 100.000 visitors is much. In case of the advertising I would consider these values. Because traffic is the most important factor for these main income streams over the internet.

Ad networks are recommended and most effective if you have a low-traffic website. Simply because they would pay you out for every single click you provide on their ads.

Affiliate programs are recommended for moderate and specially the high-traffic websites, because you would have much more chance to gather more commissions and leads per click.

Direct advertising is the most effective for high-traffic sites. Advertisers would likely buy an ad on your website if it has more traffic. More traffic is simply the more potential clicks on your ads and more visitors for advertisers for sure.

This is the third post in the “Step-by-step guide to make money online” series of posts. The next post would be about some other ways with which you can make money online from your website.

The complete guide to Google Buzz. New service from Google!

Google Buzz is a new social-networking service from Google. It is mentioned to be the replacement or alternative for the most popular services of this type on the internet: Facebook and Twitter. In this guide I will try to show you how to use this service, what are the pros and cons and do you have a reason to replace these two services with it.

When I have tried this service at first my expectations was huge! At the beginning I have been a little disappointed – actually I did not know where to start and how to use it! That is why I have write down this guide for you!

What is Google Buzz?

Buzz is simply Google’s answer and entrance to the social networking service. Aiming on the biggest guys on the internet like Twitter and Facebook.

With a Buzz you can share your status updates, online videos, audio and photos with your friends and followers. Google Buzz also let you to import your online activity from other popular sites and services on the internet including Picasa, Flickr, Twitter and your feed updates through Google Feed Reader. Google has already announced other services to be included in the future.

The main advantage for Buzz, for me, is that is a very fast service. Based on simplicity and easy-to-use factor just like Google does with any other own application. To use it is a simple enough and you will know what to do once you try out this service.

Before the Start

To be able to use this service, you would need to have a Google Account. I personally think that most of you already have one. In case you don’t, feel free to create one right now.

Other thing I like about this service is the minimal setup time to create your Buzz account. If you use Google Talk and get mail through Google, it will automatically recommend people you should follow and stay connected to. Google really done a very good job here, it recommend you only the contacts you frequently talk through Google Talk application or by an email.

Please note that almost everything is presented to the public once you create your own profile. So, it is good to go through your account preferences to setup the privacy options further!

To access Google Buzz all you need to do is to go to your Google mail account and you would see a new icon just below your inbox link:

From there, you would be able to access your Google Buzz account from your computer. In other way, Google has included a full mobile support by accessing on buzz.google.com through your phone device. It fully supports iPhone and Android devices.

What to Do?

Maybe you ask yourself what you should do after your setup your account and preferences? The answer is simple – buzz and buzz more! A Buzz allows you to:

• Share images, videos and audio with your friends;
• Write down your status updates;
• Read updates and content from your friends;
• Interact, rate and comment your friend updates;
• Search for the content easily and fast.

Sharing potential

Google Buzz has a great sharing potential. Allow you to share status updates (without character limitations), share images and videos easily or simply record a voice through your supported mobile device and share it with your Buzz friends!

Of course, the simplest way to share something with your friends is to write something down into the field placed at the top of your Buzz account:

Note that you have an option where you can choose whether to set this update as public (available to all your friends) and as private (available to friends you choose only). This is a very good feature for most users of this service for sure.

Updates and Post Options

There are many things you can do with your and your friend’s post updates. You can easily view the permanent link to that update and share it easily. If you click on a date for every post update of your friends, you would see a reactions and a full-post view.

In the other hand, you can easily mute a post you do not like and it won’t be shown on your Google Buzz stream screen anymore. All of that is done instantly, without refreshing the whole stream or page you are browsing:

Note that you can easily link and email to any post update of your friends. Also, you can comment and like the post updates if you want easily:

I am really impressed how this service works in the general. The glamour, speed and simplicity are the key features Google presented to the users.

Search on Buzz

Google is definitely the most powerful in this area – search! A full-featured search is included within this service too.

Search through Google Buzz can help you a lot if you are knowing what do you want to search. Fortunately, there are some ways you can be more precise with Google Buzz search form:

• source:buzz; source:twitter; source:friendfeed; source:reader – use this syntax to find buzz updates from these services only.
• author:bashbosh – an example that can find you all status updates by us. You can replace bashbosh with any author registered on Google Buzz network.
• has:[link/video/image] – find updates that includes links, videos or photos only. Other updates would not be shown here.
• commenter:bashbosh – find all comments I have post on other status updates. Of course, you can replace me with any other Buzz user.

Search can be a very effective and productive. A Buzz is based on real-time process, so you could find some very useful information and conversations when searching through.

Additionally, you can search and easily search and follow people you like. I think this is done much better than with Twitter. You would be surprised how much people Buzz already have:

Note that you can follow anyone you like. But keep in mind that there are a lot of spammers and people you do not want to follow – just like on other similar services.

Google Buzz Tips & Tricks

You can use some additional tips and tricks to improve Google Buzz functionality and productivity. I would like to show you some good tips I have found over the internet.

Email Updates – You can easily send your status updates simply by mailing your email information on buzz@gmail.com email address. The email would be presented as an update to your status.

Keyboard Shortcuts – If you already have a keyboard shortcuts enabled you can easily use the following keyboard shortcuts:

• gb – switch back to Google Buzz from any Gmail window.
• j – move to the next share in your buzz stream.
• k – move to the previous share in your buzz stream.
• o – expand current conversation.
• p – move to newer conversation
• n – move to older conversation
• r- add a comment to the selected buzz.
• Shift+l – Like the selected message.

To enable the keyboard shortcuts, you would need to turn the keyboard shortcuts on in your main settings page:

Text Formatting – Google Buzz allows you to change the text formation settings. You can use a bold, italic and strike-through formatting of your text using the following syntax:

Bold – Use * character between text you want to bold. For example: *I Love Bash Bosh* would be bolded like I Love Bash Bosh.

Italic – To italicize text you would simply use _ character between text you want to italicize. Example: _I Love Bash Bosh_ would be like I Love Bash Bosh.

Strikethrough – Use – character if you want to simply strike out the text in your Google Buzz status form. Example: –I Love Bash Bosh- would be like I Love Bash Bosh.

Save Searches – You can simply bookmark and save your favorite Buzz searches simply by enabling the Quick Links feature in Google Labs tab under the settings of your account:

When you do that you would be able to add bookmark for every search you do through Google Buzz search. This can be very useful feature for some users for sure.

Turn off Google Buzz – If you want to turn-off Google Buzz you would simply need to turn it off by clicking on the footer link that display “turn off Buzz”. After you done it the icon and link to this service would not be presented on your main Gmail screen.

Create a Google Buzz Desktop Application

I have found on the internet how can you create a simple but effective application which you can open directly from your computer desktop. All you need to do is to have a Google Chrome browser installed and follow these steps below:

Step 1: Open Google Chrome browser and go to the https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#buzz website (it is a Google Buzz address attached to your Gmail account).

Step 2: Fill in your username and password and once the page is open go to site control > Create application shortcuts… In the next window choose Desktop and press ok:

Step 3: Now, link to the application will be displayed on your desktop. Open it again and if it open your inbox go to the properties and replace the target URL to one mentioned above. If you want to change an icon, because by default it displays Google Mail icon, you can use these icons.

If you done everything right, opening that icon from your desktop would open a window without any additional bars and options shown – just like it is an ordinary application.

If you know some other tips, tricks and suggestions regarding Google Buzz service I would be happy to hear some from you. Feel free to post your suggestion in the comment form below.

And yes, If you want to follow me through this service, you could do that through Bash Bosh Google Buzz profile page. Thank you for following!

How to choose your website niche. Define your website niche right now.

This is second post in the series of posts where I am going to show you How to make money online from your blog or a website. This is the step-by-step guide that will show you how to successfully earn money from the internet.

Previously, I have show you how to create a website that is capable to earn or make money online. Choosing an appropriate niche for your website is one of the most important things every webmaster or a blogger should experience at the beginning.

Niche – What is That?

Below I will show you one definition that may be related to this term:

A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing; therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact. [source]

So, to put it simple and easy for you, I would say that Niche, related to the internet websites and blogging is:

Let’s say you have a website or a blog related to the specific topic, for example the celebrity news and updates. In this case, your website or a blog niche is Celebrity. This way you will attract related visitors from all sources which are interested in this popular topic.

Niche is Important

Defining your Niche is a very important step, with it you can get the following benefits and advantages.

Targeted Audience

Niche is specially good because this way you get more quality visitors from all sources through the internet. By this I mean you would get more targeted visitors to your website or a blog. These visitors are very important for every website or a blog on the internet for just one reason – they keep coming back!

If your website have many quality visitors on daily basis, this can be a very productive and effective for your website in general. They tend to share your articles, talk about your website with their friends… they simply thrust you!

Targeted Advertisements

You should know that targeted advertisements are the key for every successful advertisement campaign! There are some quality niches where advertisers pays you much more money compared to other niches.

These niches are usually the following:

• Real Estate;
• Weight Loss products;
• Credits, loans…

So, these advertisements, targeted to these above niches would pay you much more money for every ad click or lead you provide to them – compared to other niches on the internet.

You probably wondering why these niches pay more money to the publishers. Well, that is because you would not find too much quality websites or a blogs related to these niches. Also, there is a huge competition for these advertisers!

How to Choose the Right Niche?

Choosing the right niche for a website or a blog is NOT choosing one of the above high-paying niches! You should choose a niche you are interested in, you know something about or you would learn something about it!

I should note that with every niche out there you can make money from your website! All you need is a motivation, patience and a little knowledge in the area you are willing to explore or learn more about!

Knowledge is the Power

This is maybe the most necessary thing you need to have when you choose a niche for your website or a blog.

If you choose a niche you don’t know anything about you will soon experience how hard is to find something fresh, new and interesting to write about on your sites. After all, you don’t want to lie your visitors. Try to write about something you know, you have experienced and learned about!

Discover your Competition

When I pick up an Niche for my websites, I try to find the big guys in that area! Using the following services and engines I am sure you will find some powerful blogs, websites or a forum boards related to your chosen niche:

• Google Blog Search
• Technorati

I like to find some forum boards related to my niche. I usually search for them on Google. Forum boards usually have a huge amount of the information. Also, there is a forum for practically every niche out there!

Finding a competition can help you a lot! You would find so much quality information on these sites. You will learn some valuable information from what they write, how they update and simply how the big guys work on their own sites!

Become an Expert

As you working more and more with your website. You constantly develop a niche, open new opportunities and becoming an expert in your targeted niche.

Think about it a little, if you work with your website you actually gain an expertise in the area you are writing about. The more you write about something on your website, the more you would know about it and present it to your valuable visitors.

If you write more and more quality articles, your visitors and loyal readers would consider you as an expert in your targeted niche.

Different Niches

There are so many different niches on the internet. You may write about anything you want on your website or a blog. But, it may affect strongly on the other important things you should care here:

• Traffic Potential – Different niches has of course a different traffic potential. You should know how much people search for that specific niche. I would recommend you to try some tools like Google Traffic Estimator or Google AdWords Keyword tool to see how much traffic potential you might get!
• Enough Content – Quality content is one of the most important things for every website or a blog on the internet. The website power equals the power of your content! It is a very important that you have always something fresh and new to write on your site. Some niches around internet really does not have so much to write about! Take care about that!

These are the two main reasons which you should consider when you are going to choose that specific niche on your websites. Carefully research all options before you are going to work something on them!

This is a second post in the “Step-by-step guide to make money online” series of posts. Our next post would be how to choose and appropriate income stream for your website.

Twitter is one of the most popular social-networking websites on the internet. It can be a very useful service to drive traffic to your website or a blog. Of course, you can do that completely for free, Twitter is a free service!

Every now and then we see that Twitter with other popular social-networking sites like Facebook advertise on the most influential commercial TV channels like CNN, BBC and much much more. Most popular TV companies have their own Twitter and Facebook accounts for sure!

Quality before Quantity

You probably think that if you have more followers, you would get more traffic from your Twitter account… right? Well, that is not quite a true!

It is better to have more quality visitors (real followers) than many not-quality followers (usually spammers). This is a very popular service which is available freely for anyone! It is a great tool that spammers can use – and they use it a lot!

So, you should follow only people you like! If you like their tweets, their style or if they are your friends you can follow them! Only this way would prevent spammers to spam you with unnecessary messages and status updates you don’t want to see!

Getting Traffic to your Website

When you build up a quality followers list, you are ready to promote your website. You can promote it anyhow you want! Anytime and virtually from anywhere!

There are some articles I’ve write about a Twitter tools and services you can use to effectively promote, publish and connect with your account on this popular service:

• Top 10 Tools for Twitter Freaks
• 25 Twitter Tools you Probably Didn’t use
• 25 Greatest Twitter Tools and Apps
• Use Twitter for Link Building

You should also read which are the reasons why to use a Twitter if you’re a Blogger. This article is specially oriented to a bloggers and may find more information about this topic.

Use Twitter Properly

To get more traffic to your website or a blog, you would need to use Twitter properly. By that I mean you should use it the way it is mentioned!

This does not mean you have to spend hours and hours to check our your timeline, all you need to do is to be more active and one of the most important things – stay in connection with your followers and people you follow!

This way you would get more potential followers. People like to see that you are active on your account. Share your mind, join in the conversation and simply stay in touch with your followers – this is one of the most important factors to get more quality visitors to your site for sure!

Write Something About Twitter

Twitters like to share interesting articles about their favorite service. One of the most effective ways to get your published article out is to promote it to the related audience!

Think about it, if you write something interesting about Twitter and then publish that article as your status – your followers (active Twitter users) will probably share this article on their own account. Giving you more visitors from multiple accounts, which can drastically boost your traffic.

If you search a bit on this blog, you will find many posts related to Twitter. If you open these articles, you will see they are tweeted more than any other article which is not related to this popular micro-blogging service.

This way you can see how powerful is something when you present it to the targeted audience!

Spamming is No Way

Previously, I have had an I Follow You – You Follow Me policy on my Twitter account. During that time, I have had almost 2x more followers to my twitter account.

The main reason I have disabled this policy is – SPAM! There are a lot of spammers which are trying to tell, sell and present something you DO NOT CARE about. I really hate spamming in general and I think I have done just the right thing for my account.

This way I have loose a lot of followers, but what did I get? I get more quality followers which follow me because they like me, my tweets or just my website! Also, I follow people I really want to. This way working on my account is much easier and more productive for sure!

If you are spamming your followers, which are your potential loyal visitors and readers, you would get less followers from day to day. People know how to recognize these spammers – and they know how to stop them… in most cases!

More Articles about Twitter

There are some articles you might want to see or share on your Twitter account:

• Ten Pocket PC Twitter Apps
• 12 Ways to Share Files through Twitter
• Why to Join Twitter?
• Connect Facebook & Twitter with your Blog
• Automatically Reduce Tweets to 140 Characters
• Make Money with your Twitter account

If you have any additional questions, comments or suggestions – feel free to use a comment form below! You can login with your Twitter account too to post a comment!

Experienced bloggers know that blogging can take so much time to work on every day. One of the most important things when you are a blogger is to find a motivation to post something more on your blog, anytime you have some spare time.

In this article I would like to show you how to get more motivation to work on your blog. This can be done by saving your overall work and decide which priorities you want to do first. It is all about the time and your own concentration.

So, I am going to show you how to write a post most effectively, using the maximum concentration for it and working ONLY that! A lot of bloggers try to do several things in one time because we are all used to work on multiple tasks at once on our computers.

Benefits of This Model

I personally know that I spend a lot of time to check out my Facebook statuses from my friends, twitter updates, received emails, browsing through internet much more often than necessary. This can save you a lot of time every day if you do it right!

• Focus on the project
• Produce better content
• Do more in less time

There are many more benefits of this model, but these above are the most essential and important for your blog. This model can help you to save a lot of time and write your own posts more effectively than ever before.

Do Not Waist your Time

One of the most important things to get more motivation and be maximum effective is try not to waist your valuable time. By that I mean you should remove or forget anything that may lead you to an action from your sight, including the following things.

Cleanup your Desktop

Clean your desktop from unwanted applications and services you might use a lot, at least while you are working on your computer. The best way is to log-off your current account and login with another account – let’s call it your working account.

Note: If you do not have additional accounts you can create them easily through Control Panel. You should know that this works on Windows operating systems. You can create an additional accounts on other platforms, but I am telling you my own way.

By default, a new account would get a new and clean desktop. All applications and icons on your desktop will be removed. Additionally, your documents wouldn’t be accessed through that account. Below, you can see my working desktop… looks pretty simple and basic, but it is a very effective and productive for work:

If you want to download the wallpaper I use, feel free to download it from here. I think it is one of the best “motivational” wallpapers available on the internet at this moment.

You could notice that I have left only Firefox and some basic folders in this account. This makes me more productive and effective. Giving me more time just to work – not clicking around to see Tweetdeck updates, MSN chat or any other stuff…

Good thing here is that Firefox is already installed separately using multiple accounts. When I login with my working account my bookmarks and other unnecessary settings (for work) would not be presented.

Organize your Priorities

Every day I think what would be my own priorities. Which posts I am going to write and publish, which blogs I am going to update today and many other stuffs.

First of all, you need to work one thing at a time. This you should strongly remember! Working on one project, in this case a blog post, you will concentrate on only one thing! This may strongly affect your overall post quality – and we all know how worth is it!

Most bloggers try to work on multiple posts at a time – this is one of the worst mistakes bloggers usually do. This is strongly related to the quality of posts they write.

Remember: Spending more time on only one article can be more valuable than working on multiple articles at once! This way you rise up it’s quality and boosting up your blog productivity easily and most effectively!

Stay Focused!

A lot of people like to do some basic stuffs every now and then on their computer. This includes a manual backups, checking an email accounts constantly, browsing through the bookmarks and much much more. The most important thing is to stay focused on your current work!

Automatic Backup

If you manually backup your website and other files on internet, you know that can be a very long process! The best way is to do an automatic backup of your files using some automated services you can find through the internet easily.

I would recommend you a few services which you are going to like:

• iDrive – Probably one of the most popular services on the internet, when it comes to the online backup and services. Gives you 2GB of completely free space to backup your files online on secured servers. You can use this great service completely for free and fully automate a whole backup process for you!
• Amazon S3 – I personally use the most popular (commercial) service to backup my websites regularly! S3 gives you a very affordable online and secured space for a very low fee! Many CMS has already a plug-ins which works with this service with which you can easily backup your sites automatically! I am very pleased with this service!

Not only you can automate a backup for your sites with Amazon S3, you can backup any file you want! There is no file size limitation with this service!

Organize your Messages

Personally I use a lot of time before to check out every email I get. It can take so much time, specially if you use only one account yourself.

Now, I use 3 mail accounts actively! First one is my private mail inbox, second one is for the registration process on many sites, forums and other registration purposes, the third one is for my websites, attached to the contact form on each blog and website I have.

This save me a lot of time per day because every mail I get is automatically separated. If it comes to my private or my website accounts I would read them as soon is possible. If mail comes to the registration account I would open and read it later – simple as that! I would recommend you to do the exact same thing – through email is completely free (and easy to setup) these days!

Because I use Mozilla Firefox a lot, I keep my webmail accounts notified with one great extension for this browser – WebMail Notifier. This little but essential add-on announce me every time I get mail on any of my email accounts. It supports most popular services like Gmail, Yahoo!, Windows Live and much much more… If you use Firefox you would need to have this extension installed for sure!

Like you see, there is more than 3 accounts, but really I use only 3 accounts actively. And by that I mean I use them every single day! I recommend you to create a multiple email accounts and use them only for what they are intended to use.

Useful Applications

When I have covered the main reasons to help you to stay focused on your blogging (or any other) work, I am going to show you some applications I use to greatly improve my writing and a blogging experience even much more.

All these applications are completely free to use. I recommend you to download and try each because they really save you a lot of time. Allowing you to finish your work much quickly than ever before!

I would list the most essential applications I use. I also recommend you to see my previous article where I talk about a blogging resources which you may use additionally.

Windows Live Writer

What can I say more for the tool which is developed from Microsoft and It is created for just one purpose – a blogging.

Windows Live Writer is an essential tool I need to have installed on any computer I work. I actually write every post in this great blogging tool, including this article too of course. With it you can easily compose an article for your blog, setup or edit pictures, insert video files, add watermark to each photo you insert, add tags, save drafts and much much more!

If you are a blogger, I definitely recommend you to try out this tool! Believe me, it is a life saving application for every serious blogger around!

SearchStatus Add-on

This is one of the most important Mozilla Firefox extensions I use. This little add-on would give you so much search engine related information for any site you visit.

Including graphical view of the current page rank, alexa rank, compete and mozrank. Gives you so much information about meta tags, link reports or even notice out an NoFollow meta links on any website around internet.

It is one of the most essential app for every blogger or a webmaster. Includes so much useful information in a very nice user-interface. Absolutely recommended app!

PicPick

PicPick is a small application which can help you a lot. This is a small software with which you can easily capture images on your computer.

It has a very nice user-interface and it uses little system resources. You can do much more than “just” screen capturing with this application. Allowing you to use magnifier, color picker, pixel ruler and many other webmaster-useful tools.

This application is completely free to use. If you tend to capture a photos from your computer and upload them to your website, this is my first recommendation!

Notepad++

Notepad++ is one application that can be a very useful, specially if your are a blogger or a webmaster. It is small, effective and fast – much better alternative than the default Notepad in Windows.

This enhanced Notepad allow you to do many things that usual MS Notepad does not. I specially like the user-interface and a code-color support. From now, you can easily and fast change any code you want on your website.

Notepad++ supports tabs and work on cross-platforms. I strongly recommend you to use this application on your computer – it is completely free software!

If you have your own application, which helping you to do your regular blogging work – feel free to post comment below. I would like to hear which applications you use to improve your blogging (and other useful) experiences.

Be careful when placing an advertisements on your website. Google would NOT accept any website you report to them. Once you get banned from them, It is a really hard to take your AdSense account back – so be extra cautious where do you place your ads!

Created – What now?

You have created a website or a blog on the internet? This is just a beginning, you would need to work hard to make your first payout. This is specially related to AdSense because Google would pay you out if you exceed your first $ 100.00.

So, the main goal here is to reach that number in a couple of months – if you can of course. In these series of posts I will try to show you how to reach that number as quickly is possible.

There are some articles that can help you to create your own blog:

• How to create an effective blog in only 30 minutes
• Why you should use a Wordpress
• 50+ Resources for bloggers
• Choose the right blogging platform

Create a Quality Content

The most important factor for every website is a content. Quality website means quality contents on it. Creating a quality and useful content can really speed-up your earning process by getting more and more quality visitors from the internet.

A quality contents have a very high potential to get popular on the internet. People (your visitors) would like to share a useful, interesting and quality contents all around the internet. Here are some quality articles that can help you to create a quality content for your website:

• How to create a powerful articles
• Ten steps to develop a quality blog article
• How much time do you need to create a quality article
• How to create a powerful content for your site

Traffic = Money

I like to say that traffic is an online currency. This is not so far from the true, you will make money more if you get more and more visitors. Building a quality traffic is one of the hardest steps you would need to do for your website – every website on the internet.

You have so many ways to get some fresh visitors to your freshly created website. You can ether pay for a visitors with ad networks or even build up your traffic for free. Of course, if you pay for advertising, there is a better choice to get quality visitors quickly. Through I do not recommend you to do that at the beginning!

You should be more concentrated to the free traffic sources around the internet. There are so many ways you can get some new visitors completely for free. Of course, this process can take some time to work out good for you.

I think that every website can receive a thousands of quality visitors completely for free. Example is a social-network websites where you can receive a hundreds of quality visitors very fast, if your site goes popular through some social-bookmarking and social-networking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon or Delicious [see more].

Building a traffic for your blog is a long process, you would need to have a patience and hard work to make it happen. There are some useful articles that can help you about this:

• Blog search engine optimization
• How to improve your blog traffic easily
• 20 Traffic generation tips for your website or a blog
• Five proven ways to promote your website with a bit of money
• Best ways to get backlinks

Work Hard to Success

If you want to make money through your website, first thing you should do is to take this seriously. If you want to make some serious amount of money you will need to be serious and think about it in the future as a some kind of the job.

Any successful blogger or a webmaster work really hard to achieve their own goals. Writing a quality article may use a lot of time to successfully finish it. If you consider that an average successful blogger has over 1000 of quality articles you should guess how much time someone has spent to write and publish all of that.

When we speak about a bloggers I should tell you that every blogger can create at least 2 posts per week. I mean that honestly, all you need to have is a motivation and little time to spare. Your hard work will be paid off once I am sure in that!

I should recommend you a few articles related to this topic you should also check out:

• How to find an idea for your next blog post
• 10 Mistakes bloggers usually do
• Regularly update your blog

I hope this article would inspire you to work harder on your blog or a website to success. Only that way you can definitely make some reasonable amount of money from it. You should know that there is no other “quick” or an easy way to do that.

This is a first post in the “Step-by-step guide to make money online” series of posts. Our next post in this series would be about defining your website niche and why that is so important for your site and a money-making progress.

Sharing these lessons with you, I would like to help you to develop a strong and successful blog. Here are my best lessons I have learned in the 2 years of an active blogging.

Persistence is the Key

To have a successful blog on the internet you would need to have a key factor – persistence! Being persist can force you over and over again to build up and develop a blog properly. A lot of bloggers usually gives up too fast – even if they have a blogs with a huge potential. These bloggers would not ever have a functional blogs for sure.

Hard Work

Over last year I have heard a lot of questions like: “Oh… you earn money from your website right? Well, that’s an easy job for sure!” I would say that to develop a functional and effective blog (that can earn money for you), is a really hard work. Hours and hours of researching, editing, writing, looking and simply working on your blog can seriously harm your health for sure. It is not an easy job and you should not be a blogger if you think it is!

Have Luck

To be a successful blogger, you would need luck in first place. Presenting something to the targeted people on your blog may strongly increase your blog blog authority. You would need to have luck if you want to be a successful – in online and offline world too! Someone can be lucky at the start, and someone would not experience it at all. This is the way you have to accept.

Niche Power

Niche is one of the most powerful facts of every blog on the internet. Niche tells your readers what you are writing and what you will write about in the future. Becoming a powerful blogger in some of the not too much competitive niche is a highly productive method to increase your blog popularity, productivity and authority of course.

Do NOT Copy

This is one of the most common mistakes bloggers usually do. They DO copy contents from other blogs. Most of them even just copy-paste the content on their own websites and blogs. These blogs would never be a successful and effective – as long they are built around that content. Trying to create powerful and unique articles on your blog is one of the most important factors for every blogger to success on the internet.

Do a Backup

A lot of bloggers and webmasters do not backup their own websites on the internet. This is one of the main reasons why some of them quit after their website goes down. The reason is simple – they can not build up a blog from a scratch because it can be a very demanding process. If you do not have a backup of your blog, you do not have an option to backup it of course. A regular backup are very important in blogging absolutely!

Build Relationships

Having a blog means you have to build your relationships and community constantly. Building a relationship can improve your blog functionality and productivity. Also, you can find some new friends and relationships that can help you a lot in your overall blogging (and other) problems and questions.

Anyone can Mistake

You should know that anyone on this world can do a mistake. This is of course related to a bloggers too. If you make a mistake (and you will), you should not panic – everything is fixable and can be re-done if you have a motivation for it.

Do not lie

If you lie your visitors you won’t get any progress further! That is for sure. Try not to lie your visitors and only tell them the truth. Visitors would know if you lie to them and they would know how to take it back – be sure they know. This is one of the main reasons why other bloggers does not have a functional and effective blogs.

Be Yourself!

The last lesson I have learnt from blogging is to try to be you. You would not get any credits if you are trying to copy some other popular blogger in your niche. Try to be original and yourself, write by your own writing style and wait for the results – they would come soon or later. Most people would like to see something new and original, keep that in your mind.

If you have something to add, feel free to post comment below. I would like to hear what you have learned from your own blogging experience.

Any website on the internet has some downtimes. When your website is down, logically, any visitor who get to your website at that time is restricted to view and browse through it. Making it unreachable and displaying an error – this means less visitors for you, and we all know how visitors are important for every website on the internet!

Downtime Reasons

There are many reasons why websites break down and making them unreachable, and there are some of the most common reasons why:

a.) Traffic Problems

Many websites goes down because of the traffic problems. This is caused when loads of visitors comes to that specific website at the same time. This effect causes a huge server resource load which usually end up with website downtime.

b.) Server Problems

Many hosting providers on the internet can cause you a lot of problems with your website. Most of them has an unreliable servers which causes websites to go down. This is one of the main reasons why websites goes down.

c.) Using too Much Resources

With my previous hosting provider I have had a lot of problems with my website resource consumption. This caused my website to go down for a whole day! To reduce your website resource usage you will need to optimize it properly. I will write about this problem in one of my future articles for sure.

Of course, there are so many other reasons why websites goes down. Above problems are just the most common on the internet.

Website Uptime Services

Most web hosting providers guarantees you a 99 percents of the uptime. There are some tools that can help you to monitor uptime stats of your websites – completely for free:

Pingdom

This is definitely the most advanced service on the test. And probably the most popular on the internet right now. Allow you to monitor one website with a lot of stats, 20 free SMS credits and amazing 1 minute checking interval! Of course, this is related to free accounts!

HostTracker

HostTracker is a very popular uptime monitor service. Allow you to monitor up to 2 websites with minimum 30 minutes frequency check. Does not give you any free SMS credits but support SMS reporting if you go for a paid plan.

Uptime Party

A very simple service which allows you to check one server or a website for free. Monitor interval is 30 minutes. Anyway, you can try this service for free and if you want to check more sites you would need to pay for it.

SiteUptime

A popular website uptime monitoring service. With free account you can monitor up to 4 monitoring locations within 30 or 60 monitor intervals. Gives you some advanced reports and cheap upgrade to the higher plans.

Are My Sites Up

This is a service which has a huge potential. Allow you to check up to 5 websites with free account. Monitor interval is around 60 minutes (25 checks per day). Interesting thing is that website gives you unlimited number of announcements via SMS or email if your website is down or up.

Montastic

I have to admit that this website looks like it’s created in 90’. Through it would give you to check your website uptime with 5 minutes monitor interval. You can setup to read statuses via RSS feed or Mac & PC widgets – pretty cool.

Site24×7

This is a professional uptime monitor service on the internet. But, you can not do almost any advanced feature with your free account. With it you can monitor 1 website with 60 minutes or more checking interval. Anyway you can try how it work for free.

Binary Canary

This is a very good service which give you to monitor up to 5 websites for free. You can setup to monitor their availability every 15 minutes. Gives you an opportunity to receive notifies by SMS, Email or SMS by Email services.

Service Uptime

It’s a popular service with which you can monitor your website with 30 minutes interval. Gives you a nice uptime/downtime reports monthly, daily, weekly or even yearly. Unfortunately does not gives you an opportunity to get reports by SMS for free.

Up Trends

UpTrends will check your website every 30 minutes to see if its up or down. Gives you an opportunity to place one small button on your website to see how much your website is up or down in period you decide it. Registration is not required!

Features Chart

Below, you can see a chart that display you some of the main features every above mentioned services support or not support.

I hope you will find an appropriate service that will satisfy your needs. After all, you can try out all these services completely for free and check out which one is the best for you!

You want to add something? Feel free to post a comment below!

Please note that these posts are not the most popular posts on this blog. I have used a lot of time, effort and knowledge to write all these posts only for you! Enjoy!

The Best of Bash Bosh: 2009 Edition

I have divided all the best posts into some categories to help you to find something you are interested in easily.

Blogging Tips

Learn how to blog, how to get your domain name and your blog hosting + much more!

• How to create a powerful blog series (II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII)
• How much time to spend to create an article
• 101 Tips I learned blogging
• How to organize your post ideas
• How to create an effective blog in 30 minutes
• 10 Steps to develop a quality blog article
• How to find a blog that’s worth buying
• How to sell your own blog
• How to calculate your blog value
• How to publish and promote a blog
• 50+ Useful resources for bloggers

Money Making Tricks

Find out how to earn money online from your website or a blog.

• 10 Direct ways to make money with your website
• How to mask your affiliate links
• Chitika versus Google AdSense
• 5 Steps to make money online with Google
• Find good affiliate products for your blog
• Ten get paid to write services
• Where to place your AdSense ads
• Ad networks vs. affiliate programs
• 7 Sites to earn money by selling your photos

Web Development

Tools, services and tips to help you with some webmaster related topics.

• The best online CSS tools on test
• How to successfully speed up your website
• 20 Traffic generation tips and tricks
• 10 Great webmaster tools and apps
• Reduce your bandwidth consumption more than 300%
• Get .edu and .gov backlinks
• Most useful plugins, addons and widgets
• Submit your website to search engines
• Best ways to get backlinks

Most Popular Posts

These are the most popular posts on this blog in 2009 year.

• Top 10 best Facebook games
• Download Counter Strike 1.6
• Best iPhone Free Apps for Download
• Best PSP Free Apps Download
• Remove WGA for Windows XP Download
• Free car simulation game – Racer
• 14 Best Facebook applications
• PSP Emulator pack download
• Best iPhone games for download
• GBA Emulator for your Pocket PC

You are free to suggest any page from this blog, do that by  commenting below.

A whole 2009 year is almost past and this is an ideal occasion to present you the most popular games played on the Facebook for 2009. Below, you can see the list of all games I have included and consider the most popular ones for a whole year.

10 Most Popular Facebook Games in 2009

Of course, you can play all these games completely for free – if you have account on Facebook of course. The most popular games are listed below:

1. Mafia Wars

Mafia Wars has over 26.000.000 of active players – making it one of the most popular game currently available on the Facebook. Start a Mafia family with your friends, run a criminal empire and fight to be the most powerful family.

2. FarmVille

According to Facebook, it has over 70.000.000 of active players per month! It is probably the most popular game in 2009! Updated regularly and giving you some new contents every week or two. You build up a farm and make friends through it.

3. YoVille

Has over 18 millions of active users monthly. It is a Virtual World that allows users to create personal avatars that live in custom decorated homes. YoVillians, can chat, play mini-games, attend live events, and interact with real friends leaving them messages and gifts.

4. Treasure Madness

Currently playing over 3.3 millions of players. Explore maps, play mini-games and collect hundreds of treasures! A very addicting game which has a very nice user-interface.

5. Barn Buddy

Right now, it has over 6 millions of active players per month. Look after your own farm, help friends and grow crops together! Work with friends or be naughty and steal their crops!

6. Texas HoldEm Poker

It’s one of the most popular games on the Facebook. Has over 20 millions of active users per month. I have to say it is one of the most addictive games on Facebook – at least for me!

7. MindJolt Games

Right now, it has over 14 millions of active monthly players. It is  actually a collection of some arcade games which can be played either individually or you can challenge your friends.Games like Crazy Taxi and Bouncing Balls are included in this one.

8. Restaurant City

This game is played by more than 16 millions of users per month. You can build up your own restaurant in this game, employ your friends and much more. Compete with other players to make your restaurant best among them.

9. Bejeweled Blitz

Has over 10 millions of active monthly users. Try out the new multiplier gems and speed bonuses. Compete against friends for bragging rights. Cooperate with friends for the chance to win prizes!

10. Games

Right now it has over 2.4 millions of active users per month. Play and challenge your friends to hundreds of fun and addicting games like Bricks Breaking, Gem Swap, Pac Man, Solitaire, Word Scramble, Crazy Taxi, and Bouncing Balls!

CSS can also use a lot of resources on your hosting server and it may cause you a lot of problems for your website or a blog hosted on that specific server. Luckily, there are an online tools that can optimize your CSS files easily and completely for free.

Today, I am going to show you the most popular free online CSS optimization. All these tools are personally tested by me and overall results are displayed in the chart at the bottom of this post.

How Did I Test These Tools?

I have prepared a whole testing equipment necessary for the accurate and reliable results. On the test I have used all these tools with the same CSS file. Style size originally was 16 Kb, or more precisely 17.162 bytes.

Just in case, I have repeated a test 3 times and measure the average result value for the each tool. This will help you to know which one is the best online CSS optimization tool out there.

Online CSS Optimization Tools

I have used several popular and effective online CSS optimization tools on the internet. Including all these listed below. Also I need to add that I have used a default settings for each online tool! With additional adjustments for some tools you may get even better results!

• CSS Drive – Supports basic and advanced optimization interface. On the test, I have used a basic compression method. Do not support upload of your CSS files, but you can easily copy-paste any CSS code in the form.
• CSS Compressor – Has a very nice and simple user-interface. Allowing you to use some advanced features and options. Works really fast and showing a results easily. Giving you a log window where you can see what exactly is changed on that CSS code.
• CSS Optimizer – This is the tool which has the greatest results in this test. Thanks to the advanced but simple optimization process, it is also one of the easiest tools to use. Supports input by URL, from your computer and manual CSS code input. Recommendation!
• Clean CSS – This tool has a very nice user-interface. Also, it works very well by default. This tool is even translated into multiple languages. Also have some features and options that can drastically reduce your output size.
• PHP Insider – CSS Compressor by PHP Insider is one of the easiest tools you can find on this test. Allows you to compress your CSS code in just couple of clicks. Unfortunately, it does not have a support for advanced options that can give you some performances.
• SevenForty – This tool give you some relatively good results. Through it only support manual upload of your CSS files to compress. Output file is archived and inside is your uploaded and compressed CSS style or a code. Gives you some basic options too.
• Lottery Post – A simple and second most effective tool on the test. Gives you a very good results by default but does not support any other options. You can manually add your CSS code and compress it easily. This tool works with JavaScript too!
• Arantius – Arantius CSS compressor is another very good compressor. For my opinion, it has little options and features – compared to other similar tools on this test. It is free, basic and simple – so you can try it anyway and see how it works for you.
• Flumpcakes – This is a tool with worst result during this test. It may optimize and reduce your CSS code, but by default it’s not enough if we compare it to all other tools in this test. Support CSS input by URL and manually.
• CSS Portal – It is a good CSS compression tool. Allowing you to compress your CSS files easily with 4 presented and 1 customized features. Give you some additional options and features to compress your CSS files effectively.
• Code Beautifier – A very simple and easy-to-use tool for the CSS compression. Looks like it works on the similar compression engine to CSS Portal.
• Peterbe – This is an advanced tool that can compress multiple codes including HTML, CSS and even XHTML elements. Works very good and give you a relatively good results. Through it is a very simple and does not allow you to use any additional options.
• Ebiene.de – This is another simple and effective tool to compress your CSS code. A user interface is very intuitive and effective. Trough compression results are average compared to other compression tools on this test.
• AskApache – AskApache is a very good and effective tool for sure. This is a third most effective tool on this test and give you some good results by default. Allowing you to upload CSS, direct compression by URL or even just a plain CSS code compression. Interesting feature is that tool allow you to upload up to 24 Mb per CSS file.
• Refresh-sf – This is an advanced compression tool powered by YUI compression engine. Give you an average compression results. Also providing some options for you to choose. This tool works with CSS and JavaScript codes.

Who is a Winner…

You can see on the results chart who is a winner. The winner is a tool which has the best results during this compression process. Note that less is better in this case, because we want that CSS file to be smaller and by that more optimized for us:

I have to say that most of these tools work their job well. Anyway, we have to choose a winner here. You should also note that all these results rely on the default settings – for each online compression tool I have had in test here.

You should consider that these results may improve drastically if you use some advanced features – if they are provided with that specific online tool!

So there are 3 most effective tools from the test:

1. CSS Optimizer

2. Lottery Post

3. AskApache

I also recommend you to try to use some other tools listed above if you want to get maximum functionality and results. Some tools might work good with my style, some may not – and that’s something you have to accept!

If you know some other tool, service or a tip. Do not be afraid to post comment below – let we all hear your experience and knowledge. Enjoy!

Of course, this can automatically affect your earnings through your site and overall popularity of your blog. Note that any of these mistakes are the potential traffic-killers to your blog – and that is what you do not need at all!

Try to find out which are the most common mistakes out there which bloggers usually do. Discovering what is a problem, it is much easier to know what to do next!

1. Not Updated

This is the most common mistake bloggers usually do on their blogs. You can not definitely build up a good constant traffic if you post once or twice per week. I have an experience in blogging in over 3 years till now and I can say that post frequency is a very important factor in blogging for sure.

2. Too Much Updates

Yes, you read it right – this is possible too. Do not expect to update a blog more than once per day, it can be a very time-consuming process. This is reserved only for the big blogs which works in group with other bloggers. It is much better to post only one top-quality post per day than to post 10 not quality ones.

3. Too Long Posts

Creating a long posts can automatically affect on your blog performance. Most bloggers usually write around 200-400 words per post – which I can consider as standard in blogging. I tend to create a posts within 500 words, but lately I post a much bigger posts from 700 to more than 1000 words per post. If your posts are long, it is highly recommended to use some tags (h2, h3, h4…) which can ease-up reading for your blog readers and visitors.

4. Enough Time

Most bloggers doesn’t spend enough time to maintain their blogs properly. Creating a quality, attractive and effective blog takes much time – much more than you can imagine. Over and over again you would need to fresh up your blog with some new contents and functions. A serious bloggers can make most of it because they are completely dedicated to it.

5. Part of the Community

I do not like when I come to a blog which is obviously not interested into own community. You should constantly stay in contact your community, reading every comment and answering most of the questions your readers ask you to. When bloggers don’t participate in this, they usually gets less and less comments – the reason is obvious of course.

6. Accessible Content

I often read over the internet that visitors are reading less. I do not think this is a true! I might say they are reading more – but differently! Most of your readers are coming for one reason on your blog post page – to find an satisfying information they are looking for! Mostly, they are scanning content to find spots that interest them!

7. Headlines

According to some popular bloggers over the internet, I have found that most of them strongly recommend you to use a quality headlines in your posts. Most of your readers would read a headline they are interested in, rather than a whole post. Bryan from Copyblogger even has a whole series of posts dedicated to headline creation process.

8. First Paragraph

Let’s assume you have write down a great headline. What do you thing your readers will read the next – of course your first paragraph! A first paragraph is very important for the rest of your post. You should use this first paragraph to pull them into the rest of your blog post. The idea is to grab their attention and hang onto it.

9. Not Related Posts

Most bloggers use this mistake on their own blogs. They constantly create a blog posts that are NOT related to their blog niche, or create a blogs with too much niches! I have seen a lot of single blogs with loads of other niches – most of them can create 2, 3 or even more blogs just from the content of that single one! I constantly try to post more related posts and try to reduce my niche.

10. You Post for YOU

Last but not least mistake that bloggers usually do. I do not know why, but most bloggers tend to write about them! This is only effective and productive only if you are a mega-celebrity, otherwise people don’t care about you! They only care about themselves, that is the way it goes for sure. You should post less personal posts and concentrate more to your reader needs!

If you can avoid these mistakes, I am sure you will success with your blog(s). Of course, there are more mistakes bloggers usually do but these are the most common ones! Doing all right, you will be on your way to increase your traffic and your blog audience!

It is not enough just to pick up specific hosting company for your blog. There are many things you should care about. In this post, I will try to help you to find a perfect web hosting provider for your blog that will satisfy all your requirements.

What do you Need

The first question you need to ask yourself is what actually do you need from your host? By that I mean what to expect from that hosting provider.

Think about what do you want from your blog. You should consider how much space you are going to use (approximately), which system are you going to use and most importantly – how much traffic you expect to get at that specific blog(s) you are hosting under the same account!

In this post I will tell you which hosting is the best for which kind of blogs!

Unlimited Space & Bandwidth

Today, most hosting providers declare that they give you an unlimited amount of space and bandwidth – are they?

We are coming to the part many bloggers and webmaster beginners does not know when they create their own blog or a website for the first time. At the first sight everything is perfect – unlimited space, bandwidth, emails, databases, domains… all of that for around $5.00 per month?

Do not think that is a true – it is an effective marketing trick for sure!

Once they purchase that hosting plan, for the first months everything is perfect – till they get more and more visitors on daily basis! Eventually their site gets down and suspended – but how when they get an unlimited bandwidth and space?

Here is a catch! Most hosting providers would tell you that they provide an unlimited amount of space and bandwidth for your hosted sites. Note that these “unlimited” amounts are available only for the shared hosting plans! Read below why!

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is a web hosting that provide you to host your website on the shared server or servers from the specific hosting provider.

This way you and all others on that server share the available space and bandwidth from one or more servers. Today, HDD and internet connections are relatively fast and cheap and that’s why they tell you that is an unlimited.

Yes, you might get space and bandwidth unlimited, but what about the processor power and memory (RAM) your website use?

And there is a catch about it! Your website can use a lot of processor power and RAM usage. In most cases, you will find that you can not exceed 10% of the overall server resources (usually found on TOS that usually no one reads)!

If you get a lot of visitors and scripts running on your website, this might be a big problem for you. Actually, I have had this problem with my previous hosting provider. They have told me that my site causes a lot of resources on that shared server and they have terminated it completely!

Most shared hosting plans are good only for a static websites and low traffic sites. Absolutely not recommended for the mid and high-traffic websites.

If you have a blog with more traffic and complex scripting I recommend you to try some other hosting solutions on the internet other than shared hosting.

Recommended Shared Hosting providers are GoDaddy, Bluehost and JustHost

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting is relatively a new concept of hosting on the internet. The whole concept begin with Google and their huge interface.

Cloud hosting is in most cases still quite expensive and not well developed like other hosting solutions, but I think it has a huge potential for sure! This blog is hosted with a cloud-based infrastructure and I have to tell you that it works great for now!

Cloud hosting is recommended to mid and a high-traffic websites of all kinds. Cloud hosting is a completely scalable hosting solution which can satisfy all kinds of websites from the lowest to the highest point.

Your site can use more servers at once, taking power from others when and if needed. Popular and recommended cloud hosting providers are GoDaddy, MediaTemple and RackSpace.

VPS & Dedicated Servers

VPS and Dedicated servers works on the similar principle. Virtual Private Server hosting actually share multiple servers providing you lower costs and dedicated servers means your website is hosted only on one server – reserved only for you and your website.

VPS can be used for the high-mid trafficked websites and blogs. You can choose how much RAM your website can use and how much resources you would share with others. In most cases you would get a root access to your website through FTP.

Recommended VPS hosting providers are GoDaddy, Linode and InMotion

With both, VPS and Dedicated servers, you would get full access to your server and can reserve some or all resources only for your website!

Dedicated server is the most powerful hosting solution you can purchase. Of course, it is the most expensive one. With this hosting solution you will get a whole server only for you – this is an extremely useful only for high-traffic or high-resource demanding websites.

Recommended Dedicated server providers are GoDaddy, RackSpace and Lunarpages

You have noticed that I have placed on any recommended hosting place a GoDaddy? Well, I have to tell you that I am extremely satisfied with their service and it is one of the most professional (and one of the cheapest) web hosting providers on the internet.

They are the main domain registrant leader in the industry, providing millions of satisfied customers all over the world. Only, they bit lack at support but we can not blame them for that because a huge amount of customers. If you are a little experienced blogger I suggest you to try their servers!

A bandwidth is a very important factor for every website on the internet. This term is used often with hosting companies and describe the amount of data transferred between your blog and your hosting provider for a given period of time – usually monthly.

Bandwidth Optimization

Bandwidth optimization can be done on every website on the internet. Optimizing your website may improve the performance and stability of your website for sure.

There are many techniques that can reduce and optimize your bandwidth cost. In this article I will show you how to successfully optimize your wordress powered blog with just a few clicks.

You can do that by installing the following plug-ins on your blog:

• Free CDN
• WP Super Cache

You should know that these plugins can easily work without each other! But, they can work even better with combination of those two!

Free CDN

This is a great plug-in which may reduce your blog bandwidth drastically and improve your blog overall response time and performances for sure.

This plug-in works on the simple process: It rewrite your static URL’s with other URL which is served from other servers through the world – and not your own host server.

This may work for all your crucial files like JavaScripts, CSS, Images, Flash elements, videos and even files on your blog by attaching them to the another server with extension .nyud.net

This way, all these files are NOT loaded directly from your hosting server! And that is a way this service works – simple and very effective method you have to admit!

If you are paying bandwidth fee, this plug-in hopefully helps with your bills. Even if you don’t, enabling it may save your site in peak times.

WP Super Cache

WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.

This is a plugin which works entirely different than above one. It caches your static files on your blog, providing to your visitors them – not dynamic files.

This plugin can drastically speed up your blog just by enabling it through the interface. And yes, it works great with the above mentioned plugin.

With combination of those two plugins, you can improve and reduce your website bandwidth drastically! Additionally, you will optimize your website and your files on it.

How it Works in Practice

Well, below, I will show you how these two plugins works in the practice! I will show you how these plugins works on this blog:

Above you can see values for the last 10 days of traffic on this blog! 5 days without these two plugins active and 5 days with activated plugins.

You can obviously see there is so much difference between my blog consumption! Very good results I have to say definitely! I have to note that visitors are even higher in the last 5 days when I have get more than 3 times less bandwidth use!

You should definitely install these plugins into your blog! See how your bandwidth goes down from day to day and low your bandwidth costs! Enjoy!

These things can be a very helpful to those which want to build up and maintain a successful blog on the internet. Building a successful and well-trafficked blog takes a lot of time and need you to have a few things in your mind:

1. Patience

A patience is one of the most important things every serious blogger must have for sure! To build and develop a successful blog, you will need a patience to make it work properly. A patience is the key element, specially for a newly created blogs on the internet.

Be patient and your hard work would be paid some day – but not over the night absolutely!

2. Persist

Persistence is the second key element for every blogger on the internet. A lot of them simply give up really fast – without getting the real value from their blogs at all. If you are going bad, it certainly does not mean you will be worst in the future.

If you do not have the persistence, you will never find that out – right?

3. Specify

I have seen a lot of bloggers that does not know what they blogs are about. Most of these bloggers write simply whatever they want to write on their blogs – without attaching to any topic at all. This may confuse your visitors and they might not want to read your blog anymore.

You should definitely choose up to 2 niches for each of your blogs to make the full potential out. Stick to it and you will see the results fast.

4. Communicate

Communication is a very important element for every serious blogger out there. It is important to communicate with your readers any way possible. This way you build up a community around your blog, making it more effective and productive.

Communication is often presented through contact forms and your blog comments!

5. Search

Every serious blogger should know how to successfully search for a content on the internet and then make it original, effective and productive. Searchability is a very important factor for every blogger, knowing what and where to search is one of the most important when it comes to the article creation process for sure.

I recommend you to search for a quality content on other blogs in your niche and social bookmarking services like Delicios or Digg.

6. Expand

Do not be afraid for trying to expand something on your blog. Always try to get something new and change your blog theme from time to time. Expand your blog with some new functions and pages regularly to raise up the overall quality of blogs.

This way, you will tell your readers that you are taking care for your blog.

7. Creative

Be a creative. A successful blogger always tries to be a creative for a blog. Making it different than others over the internet. Visitors knows to recognize an original and new blogs, and maybe they will read it if it contains an original elements and styles.

The worst way is to create a blog that is already a copy of something already available on the net.

8. Skill

If you want to be a blogger then you should not have any important skill what so ever! But, if you want to be a successful blogger – you need to have a couple of them. The most important skill is your own writing skill for sure.

As you blog, you may improve your writing skills easily – trying constantly to create something quality and effective for your readers.

There are a few quality advertising network available for Twitter on the internet. Allowing you to make money by posting an automatic advertisement tweets to your account. Today, I am going to show you one of the most quality one – Ad.ly

Ad.ly is an in-stream advertising platform that matches top-tier Twitter publishers with top-tier brands.

How it Works

It is not hard to explain how this money-making opportunity works. You will be paid for every tweet you get approved from your advertisers. Of course, you can choose any price you want for your sponsored tweets. Look on the below sample tweet to see how it should look:

Of course, you can choose which advertiser you would approve and which not. All necessary information about that would be available for you once you get your first advertiser.

Another very good thing is that Ad.ly automatically suggest your per-week price for your Twitter account. This depends on your followers count mainly and opportunity to get ads on more followers if it is possible.

With Ad.ly you can send part or all of your earning to charity. When you’re tweeting for charity, the end of the approved ads in your feed will be disclosed with (Ad 4 Charity). This is a very good option indeed that allows you to do some charity work through your  Twitter account.

Referral Program

Ad.ly has a really generous referral program that allows you to make a huge 12% of the price your referred friends earn! Yes, you heard it right – 12%

All you need to do here is to send a link to your friends or leave it on your website or social-media profiles on the internet. Those who sign up to use this service through your own link are your referrals. This is a very good referral program with a very high commission.

Payment Options

You can set to receive a money through your PayPal account or a check. A minimum payout price is $50 for each payout option.

So, if you earn $1000.00 in November, you would get your payment at the end of the next month – in this example in December. Of course, through payment option you set up.

Conclusion

Ad.ly is a really quality ad network that allows you to make money online through your Twitter account. Thanks to it, you will have an opportunity to be paid for every successful ad campaign you approve through it.

You can make some extra money by referring visitors to use this service through your own referral link or a banner. This way, you will earn up to 12% of whatever they earn through Ad.ly. This is a very generous referral program on the internet – specially for this kind of service.

I absolutely recommend you to sign-up and use this service and try to make some money online while already you tweeting:

Sign Up Ad.ly Twitter Ad Network

An online storage is good because of the many things: 1.) Files and documents are secured on the internet, 2.) There is almost no risk of loosing your backup data and 3.) Most of these tools gives you an opportunity to create a free account.

Of course, there is more advantages, but above ones are the most important. So, let’s go with a list of the top 10 best online backup tools and services.

1. ADrive

ADrive gives you 50 GB of free web backup storage which you can access through web interface! Additionally, you can purchase a plan with full FTP support and more starting from $6.95 per month. A basic free plan give you opportunity to use some good features and options, only bad thing is that this service through this plan is accessed only through web interface.

2. CrashPlan

CrashPlan is an automatic online backup tool. Offering you an unlimited plans starting from $3.50 per month. Also, gives you an opportunity to signup on free 30-days trial. Has specially created software for Windows, Linux and Mac. You can give it a try. Also, it is a free for the personal use only!

3. Mozy

Mozy is one of the most popular online backup tools. You get an opportunity to create a free account with this service and get 2GB completely for free to backup and store your documents online on secured servers. An unlimited plans starts from $4.34 per month.

4. Dropbox

This service enables users to store and sync files online and between computers. Dropbox has a cross-platform client supporting Windows, Linux, Mac and even iPhone OS!  A free Dropbox account offers 2 GB of storage. Users may upgrade to 50 GB or 100 GB by paying a monthly or yearly fee.

5. Humyo

Humyo is an online file storage service that enables you to synchronize files across multiple computers and a remote data storage. Files can be shared with other users and even published on websites. Offering you 10 GB free online storage (5GB for multimedia files and 5GB for non multimedia files). A paid plans can be purchased starting from $6.99 per month.

6. PowerFolder

PowerFolder is an application which can synchronize your files and folders online over the internet or a LAN network. You need to install this program on all computers in order to work properly. It is available completely for free and allows you to store 5GB of data on up to 5 computers. PRO accounts starts from $ 7.99 per month.

7. SOS Online Backup

SOS provides an option called as UltraSafe, which means that even SOS’s staff will have no access to the encryption key. Allows you to purchase a cheap online plans starting from $19.95 for 2GB of online secured storage annually ($1.66 per month). Supports Windows and Mac.

8. Spideroak

SpiderOak is an online backup tool available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Allows users to backup, share and synchronize your files online. Uses encrypted cloud storage with a strong 2048 byte encryption. Free accounts get 2GB of free storage and paid plans starts from $10.00 per month for each 100GB increment of storage.

9. Jungle Disk

This is a very popular online backup storage powered by Amazon S3 and Rackspace services. Supports Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. The basic Jungle Disk software is sold as a monthly subscription model, and the customer is billed directly by Amazon for data storage and transfer.

10. Amazon S3

Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an online web storage service. I can say it is the most popular online storage solution that exist on the internet. You can store and share these files wherever you want them to. It is based on the unique pricing model allowing you to pay $0.15 per GB per month with additional $0.17 bandwidth costs for US servers.