As part of their public launch this week, InLinks is offering $100 worth backlinks for just $1, for a limited time. With another Google PR update expected soon, this may be a killer deal for all. The steps to purchase InLinks (ranging from PR0 to PR5, they have 1000s of indexed links in their inventory) are as follows:

• Create an Advertiser account with Text Link Ads. It takes only a couple of minutes
• Click Buy Links option and select InLinks
• Search for your keywords ie. The actual URL link text that you want to be linked to your blog (e.g. ‘blogging tips’, ‘make money online’ etc)
• From the lists provided choose the ones with high PRs. Please note that instead of looking at the homepage PR, you should look at the page PR where your link will appear. You can sort the links available for various parameters and search for various keywords as well
• Pick as many links as you want so that the total adds up to $100.00. Usually PR4 links come at $25 apiece, PR3 at $20, PR2 at $15 and PR1 at $12.50
• Go to Cart to check out. Before checking out put the coupon code 100free and click ‘Update’. You will be charged only $1.00 now :). Make your dollar one shopping payment and enjoy!

The purchased links will be active for 1 month. Once the purchase is completed, you can actually see the page URLs where your links will appear. This will eventually increase your Technorati authority as well.

Please note that when you buy back links from older pages, the idea is not to receive any traffic (you may get an odd visitor!) to your site but to improve your page ranking. I spent my $1 effectively today!

InLinks for Publishers

Using the same account that you just created, you can sell links from your pages that are indexed by Google and have a PR assigned. The best thing to do is to sell links from your old pages so that your home page PR will not be affected in the next updates. InLinks has greater potential and more value than Text Link Ads at a lower risk.

I am not sure for how long this offer will be running and hence go for it today itself using the sign up link below! Good luck and I hope that you get a better page rank in the next PR update with this $1 investment!

Happy Link Building!

Link to this Post: InLinks - Get $100 worth back links for just $1 - Limited time offer!

While searching for tools that could provide PR for the whole blog content, I stumbled upon a bunch of FREE websites and excellent tools. I thought of sharing it here as it may be of use to many of you.

Stand alone tools for whole domain PR query

PaRaMeter: The PaRaMeter or Page Rank Meter is a FREE software by CleverStat that can be used to do bulk PR query. It is an excellent tool to query for unlimited number of pages but the problem is that the links have to be either manually added or imported via a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file. Since it doesn’t import XML (ie. Your sitemap.xml) files directly, here’s the work around that I used very effectively.

• Open your sitemap.xml in Microsoft Excel. Remember not to apply the styles or embedded XSL file and further open it as a XML list
• Once the file is opened, delete all columns except the one has URLs listed. This is the first column, usually
• Save the file as CSV and this can be now imported to PaRaMeter

The tool can hierarchically list the URLs that you add based on the domain and it can be sorted on page rank etc. The performance of bulk query is excellent.

There is another bulk page rank check software by TechRepublic but that will cost you $95. Though I did not take a look at the features of the same in detail and compared it with PaRaMeter, I would rather go with the FREE PaRaMeter software!

Web links for bulk PR query

Rank my sitemap tool: This tool can take your sitemap URL as input and provide the page ranks for individual pages as output on the screen or as an email send to you. At the moment there is a limit of 200 pages that can be listed by their PRs in one attempt. If you have more pages on your sitemap, you may split it into two or more xml files and still get the page ranks of all of them. This tool is reasonably fast.

There is a Visual Page Rank tool by iWebTool that is a very nice concept but somehow it did not work very well for me. There are also a number of other pages where you can do bulk PR query (mostly up to 100 pages) but you have to manually enter the pages. I found them pretty useless and hence not listing here.

I hope this post was useful for you. Please book mark this post as this could be handy information for many others.

Link to this Post: FREE Tools and software to get page ranks of all pages on your blog or domain

Things those are unethical in my view

#1 Public bashing and defaming: Publicly abusing others – especially the rich and famous people, including bloggers - is a way of getting into shortlived fame via sensational means. In press terms, this is called yellow journalism - not sure if we can term it ‘yellow blogging’ when it happens in the blogosphere.

#2 Stealing content: This is the most commonly found bad act where by people just blindly copy and paste content from others’ blogs. In most cases they conveniently forget to mention the credits where it belongs. If copy and paste is inevitable, the ideal way of doing it is to post an excerpt along with a trackback to original post.

#3 Writing untruthful stuff: It is always better not to write about things that one doesn’t understand thoroughly. For example, in several SEO blogs I have read contents that depict Google as some kind of a mysterious hero at the same time they talk audaciously about even the algorithms that Google uses though none of them is publicly documented.

#4 Writing biased paid reviews: Paid reviews can be excellent moneymakers for bloggers but writing exaggerated or totally biased reviews can affect a blog’s long term goodwill. Writing off topic reviews can hurt the blog and the blogger even more.

#5 Talking about affiliate products without proof: I have seen many MMO blogs promoting certain affiliate products and networks without actually showing any proof of income or statistics on the same. At the time of review or posting, if there’s not enough information available, the blogger should mention that.

#6 Blindly marking others’ comment as spam: I have talked about blog commenting and moderation ethics in the past. There are many bloggers who sometimes blindly mark others comment as spam without thinking enough about the consequences of the same. If it is genuine spam it is okay to mark it as spam but if it is an excusable act, please bail them out because that could cost them their blogosphere life.

#7 Showing fake blog statistics: Now, this one is a widely seen phenomenon - from bigtime bloggers to beginners. Whether it is related to number of visitors or blog income, there is no limit to self praise. Fake blog statistics are mostly supported by fake proofs as well but when it comes to blog income, I have not seen any of those bigtime earners showing PayPal proof etc. (Not forgetting Shoemoney’s famous check)

#8 Click exchanges: This is prevalent mainly among smalltime bloggers who are riding on the inspiring stories of people making money overnight with AdSense etc. Many of them indulge in the click exchange acts that could finally fetch them the ban that could have been avoided through proper learning. I still have a couple of mails in my inbox that go like this.

You have a nice blog. I visited it today and clicked two of your ads. If possible pls return the fav…

Now a lot of people - including yours truly - ask for RSS subscriptions, bookmarking posts etc. But is it okay to ask for ad clicks?

#9 Cheating own advertisers with fake or bot clicks: This used to happen a lot in the pasts until advertisers invented mechanisms to curb this and ban such publishers. This is big offence in the eyes of advertisers and will definitely affect the future of blogger-publishers involving in this act.

#10 Charging readers for reading content or other favors: I talked about the Pay-Per-Read model sometime back. While Pay-Per-Read may not be the worst thing about a blog, asking for readers to pay for removing ‘nofollow’ flags from comments etc can be really bad.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Please comment on any other bad practices about blogging that you have noticed around.

Happy blogging!

Link to this Post: Ten unethical blogging practices

While the biggies in the game mostly inspire you, there must have been some other bloggers, who kept low profile, but delivered great content to their audience. For these people blogging is a passion and not necessarily a means to make money. I am sure some of you must have started your blogging habit after reading and getting addicted to their way of expressing stuff. The purpose of this survey post is to understand who or which blog actually inspired you to start your own blog?

Well, I am not talking about Make Money Online blogs, high tech blogs or SEO blogs alone here. I would like to hear from all of you those who blogs regardless of how small or big your blog is. The following questions are expected to be answered in your comment:

• Who inspired you to start blogging? (Please mention the blogger’s name and provide the blog URL in your comment)
• Do you still read that blog regularly and draw inspiration?
• Which aspects of that blogger or blog did you like the most?

This is an opportunity for all of us to learn about some other bloggers and their blogs as well. So please shoot your comments!

Have a great weekend!

PS:- Soon after I started my blog, I realized that, there’s life beyond Chow, Shoe or Moo…

Link to this Post: Who is your real idol blogger?

ConveyThis - Language translation widget

This is an amazing little widget that provides a button (and a language dropdown box) to translate the content of the current page to your language of choice. This internally uses translators like Google Language Tools and Yahoo! Babel Fish to carry out the translation on the fly and display your blog or website in the target language.

You can include this widget anywhere on your page, but it would make sense if it appears right below your post title or some strategic place like that. ConveyThis not only translates pages but also produces a simple report like the one given below and thus you can understand the reach of your contents in other languages.

You can get your free translation service by visiting ConveyThis website.

Odiogo - Voice your text content

Probably some of you have already seen/been using services similar to Odiogo. It is basically a text-to-speech system that allows you to convert your text content to audio and hence you can make your blog posts almost as good as typical podcasts – except that the voice does not belong to you. Even otherwise, it is a great accessibility feature to help various disabled people.

Odiogo has a Wordpress plugin which inserts a little listen button underneath all post titles. After signing up with this free service, you will be provided with a Feed ID that will be used to cast your content and feed to their server as streaming audio. These podcast feeds will be publicly available as well (Check out my feed cast) which you can link from your blog or other websites.

Get your free ‘Listen’ button by visiting Odiogo website. They have widgets for all major blog platforms such as blogger, typepad, terapad etc.

Though I tested both these services, I am yet to enable it publicly due to minor issues with my theme. But I am convinced that both these teeny weeny buttons will be of great use to any blog.

Accessibility in general

Accessibility is a topic that can be discussed forever and it can take you to your very design and organization of the theme itself. Proportional fonts and appropriate usage of images, their ‘alt’ tags etc are some of the things that one needs to take care of by design. There has been plugins like chgFontSize in the past, that helped visitors to zoom the content but nowadays most browsers have this feature built in. However, it is the onus on the theme designer and the blogge to make sure that these browser features are properly working with the respective themes.

Accessibility has a humanitarian aspect to it as well and it is not just about getting more people to read your stuff!

Link to this Post: Just 2 much! Two tiny widgets to improve the reach and accessibility of your content

Of late, though, you have numerous choices available when it comes to the question of where to host your blog or web site. However, picking the right web hosting solution for your exact need can be tricky and that is where the subject matter experts - Web Hosting Geeks - can be your guide and reliable review and rating source.

Hosting reviews, ratings and other resources

Using WebHostingGeeks.com and arriving at a decision on which hosting service to go for can be as easy as 1-2-3. Their home page lists the top 10 web hosting services by current rank and rating. This list is updated on a regular basis as per the inputs and reviews from actual customers and review experts. Now, for example, if you want to go for the best linux hosting service or pick the best blog or forum hosting solution or any other given requirement such as pricing, features etc, a number of options are available for you at just one click! Against each of the hosting options, they have provided all the features available under the particular hosting plan and then reviews and feedback from hundreds of customer and webmaster. The latest reviews by actual users are available at the web hosting reviews section.

If you want to understand more about hosting technology or need help in arriving at informed decisions on hosting, you may read the relevant posts available at the web hosting blog. I found this blog pretty informative as it talks about anything from simple topics such as hosting prices and basic terminologies to advanced topics such as web security, fraud prevention, SEO and protocols.

Since 2004, Web Hosting Geeks has also been picking the best hosting solution in each hosting category on annual basis and award them. You can see the web hosting award winners listed at their website under respective categories.

So next time you are puzzled as to which hosting service meets your exact hosting requirements, just visit Web Hosting Geeks and you have your options readily available there!

Link to this Post: Web Hosting Geeks - Reliable web hosting review and rating site

Earlier I used to write more about this particular topic in this blog, though of late the focus has been shifted more towards my current interests. This post is more like a summary of what I have touched upon in the past. This is also an open reply to a couple of emails that I have received on how to make money online without getting too technical.

Work-from-home (mostly content related) jobs for non-technical people

• #1 Forum posting: One can do a contract job to post on various forums and similar sites where your job is to bulk post into these forums. Usually the rate of payment is per 100 posts or so. You can find these opportunities in this DP forums thread or similar forums
• #2 Get-paid-to comment: A number of upcoming blogs or niche sites actually pay for commenting on these sites. I had talked about this in one of my old posts as a casestudy
• #3 Data entry jobs: Online or offline data entry jobs are available almost everywhere. Read this post for more information on data entry jobs
• #4 Moderating: Moderators deal with moderating blogs or forums. This is a relatively easier job but a job that demands high responsibility. You could find moderator job in forum threads such the one discussed in point #1
• #5 Freelance writing: Freelance content creation and Pay-per-word opportunities were touched upon in another post. A lot of people make decent online income via this method. Please note that if you own a blog you could get paid to write reviews as well using services such as Sponsored reviews
• #6 Proofreading and copy editing The post titled Online copy editors and proof readers talked about this opportunity. You could also check out the blogs listed at the end of this post to get to know more about this option as well as immediate opportunities
• #7 Copy ‘n’ paste jobs and article rewriting: Article rewriting is all about modifying and rearranging the existing content of an article to look a little bit different. You could get such assignments online at this DP forum thread as well as elsewhere if you search Google
• #8 Transcription: Read more on transcriptionist opportunities in this post
• #9 Technical writing: Technical writing is actually a job that demands some skills and hence it is not an exact fit for this post. You could find technical writer or information developer positions on most of the job websites. Please check out the Poewar blog (listed below) for more legitimate technical writer opportunities opportunities
• #10 Procrastination: If the above 9 suggestions didn’t work, you could as well continue to blame the government for everything and lead the current couch potato life

The scope of this post was to address the needs of the non-technical online job seekers and those who send emails to me. I will not be writing too much about this particular topic on this blog anymore and that’s why this summary post.

I also read the following blogs that talk about great writing opportunities online as well as related tips.

Poewar
CopyBlogger

Let me know if any of you have other suggestions regarding online jobs related to content creation.

Link to this Post: Top ‘content-related’ work-from-home jobs just in case Obama turns dumber than Bush!

However, after reading Shoemoney’s take on twitter recently, I thought of giving it a shot! Shoemoney claims that a huge amount of ‘fresh traffic’ to his blog is originating from Twitter. Moreover, he is successfully using it as a major affiliation channel as well! Well, I thought ‘better late than never’! Moreover, Kim, one of our friends here, endorsed Twitter, so I decided to take the plunge!!

Practical usage of Twitter for bloggers

Though I am only a couple of weeks into Twitter usage, I already see some utility! I installed the Twitter Updater plugin for Wordpress, that will send updates to my Twitter profile, as soon as I post new articles or edit existing ones. This happens in a jiffy - much before the content is available on blog aggregators or even Feedburner sometimes. This is an extremely useful feature, I think.

There are various other plugins that take your tweets back to your blog, send your feed to Twitter etc, but I don’t want to complicate things for the time being. At the moment I am using it only for blog updates, discussing any important event, clarifying doubts, answering queries etc (Definitely no tweets like ‘I am eating now’, ‘Going to bathe’ etc). Let’s see how things evolve - It’s too early to rule out a possible Twitter addiction as I spend 10-12 hours online every day! If some of you are already experienced Twitter users, please let me know about other possible ‘good’ usages of Twitter.

You can follow me on Twitter using my Twitter profile ‘edassery‘ or using this link. Right now, my Twhirl screen is full of bald heads - mainly two of them Shoemoney (Pink head and tongue out) and ProBlogger (Light tan head with spectacles) - as I follow them both. Two of them are really pumping out as much as 100 or 200 tweets per day, I guess! I would certainly like to see some less boring faces there as well!

Questions to you

• Do you tweet? If so which all tools, desktop widgets, phone clients or plugins do you use? (I am trying to locate the best tools and plugins)
• Have you drawn any major benefits - either personally or professionally - out of your Twitter usage?

Happy Tweeting!

Link to this Post: The Twitter experiment: I too have started chirping err tweeting