After a couple of months of hiatus, I am back. I will be posting regular articles starting mid May because currently I am totally swamped with so much work ( Final Exams Week). If anyone wants to be a guest blogger, send me your post using the “contact me” link in the sidebar.

Without further a due, let me introduce you to the hard working blogger behind Celebrity Body Gossip : The 26 year old Anna. Her blog features latest gossip about celebrity body i.e. who lost and who gained weights. Here is the full interview with Anna exclusive on BOT Blog.

1. Tell us about yourself and your blog

I’m a 26-year-old girl that’s as obsessed with celebrities as anyone else these days.

My blog Celebrity Body Gossip mainly focuses on celebrity weights and diets, but I also post about celebrity fashion, pregnancies, celeb couples, and other interesting Hollywood news.

2. When did you start blogging and what/who inspired you?

I started blogging in November 2006. My initial reason for starting a blog was to have a place where I could collect my favorite celebrity pictures.

My main inspiration are the celebrity diet articles found in various magazines.

3. How many hours a week do you dedicate to your blog?

I spend at least 6 hours every day gathering celebrity news and pictures and posting them to my blog. I also spend one or two more hours networking with other bloggers and trying to promote my blog. So that would be at least 56 hours a week.

4. Do you advertise your blog? If yes, how /where?

I never paid anything to advertise my blog, but I try to promote it by exchanging links with other celebrity bloggers, and participating in blog communities (like MyBlogLog and DotSpotter).

5. Do you make any money from your blog?

I don’t make a lot of money at the moment, just enough to cover my web hosting costs.

6. If you were given a chance to swap your blog with any other blog, whose would that be?

I would love to have a lot of visitors like the big blogs (TMZ or PerezHilton), but I wouldn’t want to swap my blog with any other one.

7. Do you have any last words and/or blogging tips for beginners?

Don’t start a blog just to make money out of it. Try to find something that you’re passionate about - something that you know you’ll enjoy writing about even in a few years’ time.

Also, try to update your blog regularly, your visitors will come back for more if they know they’ll always find fresh content on your blog!

End Of Interview

If you believe you are a successful blogger and would like inspire our newbies with your words, please fill up the interview questions at:

http://www.blogsontop.com/blog/interview-questions

Here is an exciting news for our newbies: I have decided to take interviews of successful bloggers who have made a name for themselves in the Blogosphere. It is going to be hard and tedious, but I am going to try. I think the information provided by these successful bloggers will help new and struggling bloggers know what it takes to make their blog famous and hopefully inspire them to keep going on.If you believe you are a successful blogger and would like inspire our newbies with your words, please fill up the interview questions at:

http://www.blogsontop.com/blog/interview-questions

Thanks.

Img Source: adultschool

• Sign up for Google Adwords to get free $50 in your account.

• You will only receive credit after your submit your billing information.

• The total credit is $55  not $50.  $5 goes towards the activation of your Adwords account.

• That means, you do not have to pay a penny until you run out of $50.

• If you do not have a credit card, you will need to find a virtual credit card (VCC). Just Google it for more info.

• Advertise your blog, website, affiliate product or whatever and let me know how far could your stretch your $50.

1. Visit the hundreds of free articles directory (Links of some of the major free article directories given below).

2. Find the articles in your niche.

3. Choose some the articles that seem to be informative and/or educational (You should be able to determine the quality of the articles because it is your niche).

4. Read the articles and try to understand their thesis and argument.

5. Now, combine the information you have just read from various articles and write an article in your own words without looking at the original sources. That way you will be less likely to just directly copy from the sources and will not be penalized by the search engines for duplicate content.

Here is the list of free articles directory I have manged to come up with: (more…)

1. Undisputed- Google Adsense: Adsense is (in the words of an old wrestler ‘Hitman’ ) the best there is, the best there was and probably the best there ever will be.

Pro: Good pay per click, better click through rate because of contextual ads (ads matches the keywords of the page), flexible monthly payment method (direct deposit, check, etc), Min payout- $100.

Con: Very strict against click fraud which is a good thing but sometimes innocent publishers are the victim and there is no second chance, does not have the best customer service, a ban lasts life long.

2. Yahoo Publishing network (YPN): The publishing network second to adsense for contextual ads. And by second, I mean a far second. Arguably the best alternative to publishers banned by adsense.

Pro: Contextual ads similar to adsense (they try), Better ppc than other other ad networks.

Con: Still in beta stage- Only accepts US publishers, people have complained that the pay per click decreases with time or so-called smart pricing (It might just be a ‘talk’. I do not have a authentic source).

3. Adbrite: Another ad network in the market that is a breather for adsense banned publishers.

Pro:It has many different formats of ads like text, banner, full page, picture ads, video ads, inline, etc. Good for sites with huge amount of traffic but that has slightly edgier or over the edge content.

Con: Cheap pay per click, currently only allows payment through check on a Net-60 basis which is extremely annoying.

4. Linkworth: Famous for text-link advertising and the biggest competitor of Text-link-ads. I am not a big fan of TLA because I believe they are elitist as they only accept sites with high page rank and traffic. Linkworth accepts most of them.

Pro: For a basic membership, you get 70% of a link sale. Monthly payment and they allow paypal which is sweeeeet. They are currently making me more money than any other ad network. Definitely recommend.

Con: A little hard to find a buyer for a site with low traffic.

(more…)

1. The layout, colors and the design of your blog is the brand of your blog. People recognize it as yours. But, if you want to place a banner at the top of your blog and your sidebar or whatever and the current layout does not let you do it, then you risk losing your brand image if you have to completely change the look of the blog to place the ads in the right place.

2. If you monetize before having lots of traffic, that means people will accept your blog for what ads it has, but if you suddenly add ads to the clean ad free blog they are used to seeing, it might have a negative impact on your readers.

Of course, I would like to hear from anyone who has views different than mine.

For Publisher: You are given a simple code to paste in your blog where you want the ads to appear. TNX works with points system which you can later buy or sell for real money through paypal. The site has a simple and easy navigation to manage your account and approve or disapprove the links in your site. They also have a earnings estimator which will estimate the monthly earning for your site based on the page rank, link popularity and other factors. Here are some of the frequently asked questions and their answers for a publisher. (more…)

To inspire you folks, I have included an example of a “different” writing. This is a old piece and (written more than a decade ago) if you have already read it, read it again. I am sure it will make you smile again.

This essay was written as a college application essay by Hugh Gallagher.

Essay Topic: Are there any sinificant experiences you have had, or accomplishments you have realized, that have helped to define you as a person?

I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.

I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty-Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.

Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets, I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I’m bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.

I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don’t perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and have won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat 400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.

I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed several covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.

I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four course meals using only a mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.

But I have not yet gone to college.

10. Adsense Deluxe: This is number ten because not everyone uses adsense to monetize their blog. This plugin allows automatic insertion of google adsense ads or yahoo publishing network (YPN) ads in between posts or wherever you want it.

Necessity: * Importance: ** Coolness: ***

9. Simple Tags: If you want to tag your posts with important keywords then this plugin is for you. Tagging makes the post more search engine friendly and is proven to increase traffic.

Ultimate Tag Warrior the previous best tag plugin is not compatible with Wordpress 2.3+. For other tagging related plugins go here!

I haven’t used any Tag Plugin in this blog but you can see the keyword tags after each post. I just included a line of php code in the loop of my ‘Main Index Template’. So, if you want to give it a try, just copy and paste the code below in the loop after the post entry.

<?php the_tags(); ?>

Necessity: * Importance: *** Coolness: ***

8. Sociable: This plugin allows your to put small icons of various social bookmarking sites like digg, del.icio.us, etc after each post which helps your readers spread the word about your blog.

Necessity: * Importance: *** Coolness: ****

7. Wp-Super Cache: As the name suggests, this is a caching system which makes your blog load faster and makes it highly responsive. If you used the Sociable plugin and got your blog dugg then this plugin will help your blog survive the ‘Digg effect’. This plugin might not be as important if your blog traffic is low.

Necessity: ** Importance: **** Coolness: *

6. Related Posts: After each post, this plugin shows the title of other posts that are related to the current post. This is highly effective to engage your readers and get more page views. You can see the example of this plugin in this blog. After every post there are links to the older related posts.

Necessity: ** Importance: *** Coolness: ****

5. FeedBurner FeedSmith: This plugin was creatd by Steve Smith and now adopted by FeedBurner themselves. Here are Smith’s words about this plugin:

this plugin simply forwards all your feed traffic to FeedBurner. The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed, and optionally your main comments feed as well.

Necessity: *** Importance: **** Coolness: **

4. Optimal Title: This is a really cool and important plugin. Here is the original description of this plugin:

This allows you to have your blog name tacked on to the end of the page title instead of having it appear first. Having your page information appear before your blog name in the title is advantageous because it provides more meaningful search engine results and browser bookmark names. The text that appears between your <title> tags is used to generate both of these things, and will often be truncated when viewed. Because of this, it is more effective to have words directly relating to the content of your page appear before common markers. Not only will the titles be more meaningful, but the they will also be more scan able when being viewed in a list.

If that confused you, it simply means it makes the post title appear as the blog title for the respective post page. You can see the example on this blog.

Necessity: *** Importance: **** Coolness: ***

3. Google Sitemap Generator: This plugin generated a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your Wordpress blog which is supported not only by Google but also by Ask.com and Yahoo. Sitemap is basically the map of your site in the language search engine bots can understand. This is an important plugin for SEO purposes.

Necessity: *** Importance: ***** Coolness: **

2. Wp-Contact Form With Spam Protection: Wp-Contact Form allows your readers to contact you without having to email you. This plugin creates a simple contact form where readers can fill in their information and leave your messages. The Contact Form now comes with spam protection. So, yay!!

Necessity: *** Importance: **** Coolness: ****

1. Wordpress Database Backup: Now, this plugin is perhaps the most important plugin after Akismet. It creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database. So, if you are not very good at backing up your database yourself, like me, then this plugin is absolutely necessary. You never know what accident might happen.

Necessity: ***** Importance: ***** Coolness: ***

Top Wordpress Plugin: Akismet is a spam protection plugin which comes by default with Wordpress ( You just need to activate it and insert the Wordpress.com API key). I would include this as Number 1 but since it is already present in your plugins directory, I decided to give this a special mentioning. Spam is a big and annoying issue and akismet really helps filter them out.

Necessity: ***** Importace: ***** Coolness: *****

Other Mentionable Plugins: Source:

No Ping Wait - Speeds up posting by moving generic pings to execute-pings.php.

PXS Mail Form - Creates a mail form with multipart verification, various messages and an auto redirect on successful send. It is much more easy to contact with website author.

SpotMilk - SpotMilk is the admin theme for WordPress 2.0. It makes wp-admin panel much nicer.

Super Archive - Implements a dynamic archive, the best archives system i know.

SRG Clean Archives - Super clean archive. Very simple and useful.

WP lightbox 2 - Overlay images on the current page for WordPress. You can turn it on and all images are now working with it.

fQuick - Sidenotes, short notes for WordPress. You can place it for example in sidebar.

CG-FlashyTitles - Implementation of sIFR 2.0 Flash-based - Nice graphical flash titles for WP. Very easy to install.

flickrRSS - Integrate the photos from a flickr rss feed into your site. Show flickr photos on your website.

Feedburner Feed Replacement - Forwards all feed traffic to Feedburner while creating a randomized feed for Feedburner to pull from.

Gravatars - Add gravatar support to WP. Administrative interface to control default gravatar options.

Get Recent Comments - Display the most recent comments or trackbacks with your own formatting in the sidebar or where you want.

WP Paginate - Create pagination for pages. It is the best plugin for that makes navigation easy with many static pages.

wp-notable - Add social bookmark links such as digg or del.icio.us to each blog entry

Exec-PHP - Execute PHP code in posts or static pages. When this plugin is on you can add php code to static pages or even posts.