User Experience

Many bloggers work so hard getting people to visit their blog that they forget how they’re supposed to treat them when they’re there. Despite the fact that there is usually one author and multiple readers, blogging is not a one-way relationship. You have to engage your readers and get them involved in your blog in order for it to grow. How does this fit into design? Well if your design makes it hard for your readers to interact with you, there is a definite problem. Here are a couple things I’ve found useful:

1) Make your comment link prominent - Many users will know that if they click on a blog post’s header they’ll most likely be taken to a page where they can comment, but believe me when I say not everyone knows this. What people do know, however, is that when they see a big “Comment Here!” box they know where to go and what to do. It also never hurts to include a dialog box icon next to your comments link.

2) Make it easy to contact you - As a blogger, much of your content will be user contributed or at least inspired by your users. You want them to be able to contact you with as little hassle as possible. Not to pick at Darren too much here, but when I tried to contact him for the first time, I admit it took me a good 10 minutes to figure out where his contact page was! I completely glazed over the little link in the sidebar. Luckily for Darren, I’m tenacious.

Overall you want to make it as easy as possible to interact with your users, so always keep user experience in mind when laying out and designing your blog.

Compatibility

There isn’t a whole lot to say about compatibility aside from simply stressing that you need to make sure that your blog is accessible to as many people across as many platforms and browsers as possible. Much of that will fall on the programmer’s end, but the designer can help improve compatibility by using text over graphics as much as possible and laying out the navigation and content so that it is easy to display.

Blogging is part of the Web 2.0 craze, so always be sure to keep the foundations of the new web in mind when designing and laying out your blog!

The following post on custom vs premade blog themes was submitted by Matthew Coddington from Net Business Blog.

At one point in every blogger’s career he or she has to make a choice between investing in a custom template or staying the course with a premade, downloadable template. There are important factors that you have to keep in mind with each ranging anywhere from funds to brandibility.

Pros & Cons of Premade (Non-unique) Themes

Pros

1) They’re free - Is it any surprise to anyone that this is by far the biggest pro for premade themes? They’re free! Free is good. You don’t have to pay for free.

2) There’s a wide selection - There are a ton of themes out there for you to choose from, especially for the more popular platforms such as WordPress. You will almost always be able to find a theme suitable for your blog’s niche.

3) New ones everyday - Designers are constantly releasing new themes everyday whether it’s in an effort to generate backlinks or just to increase their own popularity. There will never be a shortage of new premade themes entering the blogosphere for you to pick from.

Cons

1) They’re non-unique - In many cases this point alone supercedes all of the pros of premade themes. If you are able to find a premade theme that you think is just perfect for your site, do you really want to share that image with potentially thousands of other people?

2) The good ones get used by everyone - There might be a ton of themes out there, but there will always be a sort of elite group of the best themes that everyone wants to use. For example with WordPress you see an abundance of people using MistyLook. That is because it is one of the more attractive themes available.

3) Harder to generate a lasting memory - If someone gets to your site and it looks just like every other blog they’ve visited in the last week what are the chances they’ll find their way back? You might not need a good blog design to leave a lasting impression, but you had better be an amazing writer.

Pros & Cons of Custom Themes

Pros

1) They’re unique - The big one. When you get a custom theme made for your site, nobody else should have it - unless maybe your designer is less than honest. Nobody will wander into your blog and think “oh another guy using that same old theme”.

2) Helps create a brand - People think the idea of creating a brand is reserved for large corporations, but blogs (even the small ones) need to work on their brands as well. You want to be memorable. You want to stand out. You want people to revisit your blog. Custom themes create a unique image for your blog that add to your brand.

3) They’re usually much prettier - Even the best designers don’t do their best work when releasing free themes. It’s a fact of the industry, and I really do not see it changing anytime soon. The best looking blogs will always be the ones that were custom made.

4) There’s only one con - Price.

Cons

1) Price - Custom themes are expensive. You can get a decent theme designed for as low as $300, but many designers now charge upwards of $5,000 for a blog design. I sort of think $5,000 is overdoing it a bit for a blog design, but that’s for another post.

Overall when should you make the jump from a non-unique to a unique theme? In my opinion, I would say as soon as you can afford it. You can create a successful blog without a custom theme, and you may even be able to go your whole online career with a downloaded template. But why would you want to? Sure branding yourself, creating a lasting memory, and standing out from the crowd *can be done* without a good, custom theme by it’s so much easier with one.

1) Sell Used Cell Phones on ebay
The demands for used cell phones with brand names like Nokia, Motorola, Kyocera, Alltel, Ericsson, Sprint, etc in ebay are pretty high. Many of the used cell phones auctions in ebay usually attract bids.

So how to find used cell phones to profit on ebay?
Many people change their cell phones every year. If you are one of them, probably you already have 2 or 3 used cell phones kept at home that can sell on ebay. Your friends may also keep a few of old phones left unused. You can buy from them and resell on ebay.

To get a consistent supply of cell phones, you may think about placing classified ads in newspaper states that you pay money for used cell phone. You shouldn't pay much when buying used cell phones. Do a little research on ebay to find out how much used cell phones are generally selling. If a used cell phone sell at a price of $50 in ebay, you should pay not more than 30% of the price to buy it. If the phone is a recent model you can pay little more and cut a little if it is old and nothing special.

2) Sell Used How-to Books
Used how-to books are quite easy to find and inexpensive to buy. They can be bought at $1.00 or less. You can buy how-to books from thrift shops, estate sales, used book stores, yard sales, etc and sell them in ebay for high profit margin. You can also get how-to books from Book Sale Finder. Here are the type of books you should look for:

Hobbies
Photography, blacksmithing, clock building & repair, woodworking, magic, treasure hunting, iron work, pipe smoking, dog training, antiques, coins, buttons, medals, drawing, painting, craft making, dolls, pottery, etc.

Home and Garden
Home decorating, home remodelling, garden trellis, etc.

Misc
How to repair (watch repair, door repair, pipe repair), how to play, lost treasure, eary aviation, etc.

When you list your books in ebay, you can either list them in the "Book" category of ebay or in the subject specific category of ebay. For instance, If you are selling a book related to home decorating, you may be making more profit if you list the book under the "Home Deco" within the "Home & Garden" category of ebay campare to listing the book under "Book"

3) Sell Gift Cards
Gift card is another profitable market in ebay. There are many people possess gift cards but not everyone of them will use their gift cards. If you can offer to buy these unused gift cards for a price at 20% or less of the value of the gift certificates, they will sell to you. You can advertise your offer in local newspaper, penny shop and trading post. You are looking for gift cards that are still valid (not yet expire). Most gift cards have a toll-free number on the back you can dial to check whether the cards are still valid.

When determining the buy and sell price of a gift card, you should do some research on ebay. Try to look for auction that sell the similar card. See how much the card sells in the auction and set you buying price at 40% to 50% of the selling price of the auction. The starting bid and winning bid of the auction can also give you an idea on how much your card can sell on ebay.

Below are 2 Videos prepared by 2 leading SEO experts - Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon where You can watch and learn how to change your web design, AdWords tips and SEO optimization for blogs that will maximize your traffic and income.

ATOM BOMB video #1
ATOM BOMB video #2


Btw here is the new article and video,for getting top google rankings with stomper

For anything to work well, care must be taken to make firm, workable plans to execute it and the same goes for website designs. With a well thought out website design, you will be able to create a site that generates multiple streams of revenue for you. In fact, may websites turn into online wasteland because they are not well planned and do not get much visitors. Gradually, the webmaster will not be motivated to update it anymore and it turns into wasted cyberspace.

The crucial point of planning your site is optimizing it for revenue if you want to gain any income from the site. Divide your site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages and subsections in those blocks. For example, you might have a "food" section, an "accomodation" section and an "entertainment" section for a tourism site. You can then write and publish relevant articles in the respective sections to attract a stream of traffic that comes looking for further information.

When you have a broader, better-defined scope of themes for your website, you can sell space on your pages to people interested in advertising on your page. You can also earn from programs like Google's Adsense and Yahoo! Search Marketing if people surf to those themed pages and click on the ads. For this very reason, the advertisement blocks on your pages need to be relevant to the content, so a themed page fits that criteria perfectly.

As Internet becomes more widespread, advertising on the Internet will bear more results than on magazines or offline media. Hence, start tapping in on this lucrative stream of profit right away!

In today's business world, if you're not selling your product online, you're losing sales. If you have a product, make money online by selling online. There are simple ways to make money online.

Make sure your site is professional and easily navigable if you want to make money online. If you have a lot of product, a search feature is a necessity in order for you to make money online. If you have only one or two products, you can use a payment method such as PayPal to make money online. However, if you showcase more product in order to make money online, you'll want to open a merchant account to handle credit card payments. Some merchant accounts will also offer free features, all helping you to make money online. To keep from violating credit card rules, make sure that for Internet sales, you have an Internet account.

Consider paying affiliates to help you make money online. Affiliates are online "word of mouth" referrals and can increase the amount of money you make online. They link to your site from theirs, and all of their traffic becomes your traffic, increasing the likelihood of making money online. When it comes to making money online, affiliate marketing is a no-lose for the merchant, because commission is paid only on sales.

Consider making money online by selling your product through an eBay storefront. Bidding on items has become a hot way to make money online. Having your own storefront ensures that buyers can find you easily because your product is in one place. Through your storefront, you can make reports, track traffic and sales, and receive advertising through eBay. You can try a storefront for 30 days free, making it an attractive offer to make money online.

Everybody it seems can make money online. The simplest way perhaps is to make money online through affiliate marketing. If you have a website, you can list other people's websites on yours and become an affiliate, making money online through sales commissions every time someone goes to their site through yours and makes a purchase. You can make anywhere from 5% to 30% by just advertising their link.

Further, affiliate marketing allows you to make money online by earning commissions off sub-affiliates, people you have brought on to be affiliates of the parent company. These two-tiered affiliates may seem like a pyramid scheme, but the point is, it generates a tremendous amount of traffic to your site as well as to your partners' sites, which helps everyone make money online.

The biggest key to making money online through an affiliate program is by generating traffic. You won't make money online, though, by adding numerous links that have nothing to do with you or your product. For example, if you are a web developer, you won't make money online by becoming an affiliate of websites selling fishing equipment. However, you can make money online by becoming an affiliate of web development software. Make money online by linking to bookstores that carry books your clients may be interested in or trade publications and e-zines. As with any business, it all depends on who you market to.

In order to make money online, you need diligence and perseverance. It won't be made overnight, but through continual marketing efforts, you can make money online.

Even though the days of an IPO generating millions of dollars are gone, money can still be made on the Internet. How can you make money online?

One way to make money online is to become an affiliate on someone else's website. The more traffic a site generates, the more product is sold - and the easier it becomes for everyone to make money online. It's vital then for websites to have as many links to their site as possible, increasing their product's visibility, and you can make money online by simply having a link to their site on your site and receiving sales commissions. Your responsibility is simply to get as much traffic to your site as possible. This is perhaps the easiest way to make money online.

Another way to make money online is through e-commerce. If you have a product, make money online by selling it online. In order to make money online by selling a product, you must be able to deliver quickly. In the online world, you must be able to accept credit card payments through a secured site.

A third option to make money online is through advertising. You can make money online by selling advertising space on your website. The advertiser gives you a banner ad that you place on your website and then you make money online whenever someone clicks through to the advertiser. If you have a website that generates a lot of traffic, you can also make money online by charging a fee for advertising space.

Many websites claim that you can make money online quickly by completing online surveys. Be cautious, though, about anyone claiming that you can make gobs of money online through surveys. Don't pay for survey lists. Do it yourself and make money online instead of spending money online.