I have never held any competition on this blog, so here’s my first ever contest to reward 5 lucky readers on Christmas.

The Prizes

1. Two 125×125 ad spots

2. One 468×60 ad just below the post

3. Two ads in the JohnTP.com RSS feed

How to win a prize

All you have to do is subscribe to this blog via email and then leave a comment on this post using the email address you subscribed with and the web site you want to advertise here. That’s it!

If you have already subscribed to this blog via email, just let me know by leaving a comment on this post. Don’t forget to mention the email address you subscribed with and the web site you want to advertise.

Continue reading ‘Christmas Gifts – Win FREE Ad Spots On JohnTP.com For A Month’

In-Text Advertisements work by double underlining contextually relevant keywords on a web page and upon mouse-over opens a small bubble like box that displays the ad. Self Made Minds has done a comparison of the best In-Text Ad Networks like Kontera ContentLink, Chitika Linx and Amazon.com Context Links.

I have been using Kontera on this blog for many months now and it has been performing quite well. I also recently started experimenting with Chitika Linx on my new hardware review blog and hope it does better than Kontera.

I have not tried the Amazon Context Links yet but it may perform well this time of the year as people are in the ‘buying mode’ now with Christmas nearing. Also remember that Amazon only pays you a commission on any thing that is sold unlike Chitika and Kontera that pay you per click.

Continue reading ‘The Best In-Text Ad Networks’

Daniel recently exchanged Social Media contacts with his readers, and I would like to do the same here.

I had registered on Digg and StumbleUpon a long time back but never was active on any of them until recently. I would like to make more friends on these sites, and so would like you to add me as a friend.

Here’s my Digg profile and StumbleUpon profile. Also if you are interested, here are my profiles on Orkut, FaceBook and Twitter.

Feel free to share your social media contacts on the comment section below, so that other readers and I will be able to add you as a friend as well.

Once we are mutual friends on StumbleUpon, feel free to let me know when you need a stumble or digg via the SU toolbar

Note: Comments with 2 or more links will be put in moderation. I will accept your comments as soon as possible.

There are a few people who fake their blog’s FeedCount. They do it either because they don’t want their visitors to know that their blog is a new one or because they want to make their visitors feel that their blog is popular.

Faking your FeedCount may help you increase your RSS readers as some people prefer to subscribe to a blog only after they find that it is already being read by many people.

My personal opinion was to not display the FeedCount until the blog reaches about 100-500 readers, but I have been thinking recently whether to fake my new blog’s FeedCount or to not display it until it has a few hundred readers.

What is your opinion? Do you fake your FeedCount?

While browsing an hour ago, I noticed two new arrow buttons on an AdSense ad on a blog which allowed visitors to see a new set of ads without refreshing the page! Just a few minutes back, I saw the same type of ads on this blog too.

Here are the screenshots I took

Continue reading ‘AdSense Testing Out Rotating Ads’

Here’s a quick tip to prevent your reader emails from getting lost among your other emails – Use Labels in Gmail.

It’s a very simple tip and one that some may have not thought about but very useful to read through all your reader emails at once instead of searching for them.

I use the PXS-Mail WordPress Plugin to create the contact form on this blog and have set the default subject for the email send by the reader as ‘From JohnTP.com’.

I then created a filter in Gmail so that all emails with subject ‘From JohnTP.com’ will have the ‘JohnTP.com’ label applied. This way most of the reader emails can be read via the label (some change the subject, but I have found that many don’t).

Gmail started allowing its users to apply a color to the labels recently which can also be helpful to quickly find your reader emails among other emails.

You may also create a separate Gmail account for just receiving reader emails.

What do you do when you don’t remember an idea you had for a post or when you face blogger’s block? In a recent post I had suggested to write a To-Post list for your blog but an easier way than that is to write and save a post as a draft with a rough title and points on what you want to cover on the post using a desktop blog editor like Windows Live Writer.

You can always open the draft later and continue writing the post when you have more ideas. This is also a good way to overcome blogger’s block as writing  a post roughly itself may give you more ideas and may keep you writing.

The reason I do this in Windows Live Writer instead of WordPress writer is because it allows me to write offline and save and preview posts fast too. Here are the 12 reasons why I like Windows Live Writer incase you missed it.

These are my favorite posts of last month:

• WordPress Plugin: Feed Count – Feed Count is a WordPress Plugin that displays the number of subscribers to your feedburner feed in plain text. The plugin allows you to customize the feed count with CSS and I am sure those who don’t like the FeedBurner chicklet will like this plugin.
• Get New Readers For Your Blog By Guest Blogging – Have you fed your new blog with many quality posts and yet find that your blog is not read by others? Content is surely king but it isn’t enough to increase your blog subscribers. People need to know that your blog exists and for that you need to promote your blog. There are many ways to promote your blog but one of the best way is to guest blog on popular blogs in your niche.
• Write A To-Post List For Your Blog – Have you ever been in a situation where you have an idea for a post but then later you don’t remember it when you want to write the post? To prevent this from happening again, create a text file named ‘topost.txt’ on your desktop and whenever you get an idea for a post open the text file and write down a rough title for the post and describe the content of the post in a few words.
• Increase Your Blog’s Subscribers By Offering Email Subscription – As there are still many people who do not know what RSS is, offering an Email Subscription form on your blog is a good way to get those people to subscribe. For those who have not done it yet, this post tells you how to do it.
• Give All Your Advertisers Even Exposure – Got Banners is a WordPress Plugin that lets you randomize banners like you see on TechCrunch and John Chow’s blog. Unlike other banner rotators, Got Banners displays all the banners provided simultaneously. But, in a different random order each time.
• Use Images To Get Your Best Posts Noticed By Your Visitors – Many of us link to our blog’s most popular posts in the sidebar or in a separate page to show visitors that our blog is worth reading. But how many visitors do you think will notice these text links on your sidebar? The best way to draw your visitors attention to your best posts is to replace the text links with images.
• Another Way To Draw Attention To Your Best Posts – If you have too many posts that you want your new visitors to check out, either create many images and rotate them or list out the text links in an organized way like you see on Problogger and FreelanceSwitch.
• 12 Reasons Why I Like Windows Live Writer – Using a desktop blog editor saves you a lot of time and makes blogging easier. There are many desktop blog editors available like Windows Live Writer (WLW), Ecto and Qumana. Being a Windows lover, I use Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer. This post lists the reasons why I like it.
• 16 Things To Do After Starting A New WordPress Blog -  If you just started a new WordPress blog, here’s a list of things you must do.

I started this blog writing about all the things that I am interested in, but later decided to focus on just blogging, making money online and WordPress on this blog and to move other tech stuff on to other blogs. I used to write for a Tech blog and also had started a Tech blog of my own some time back, but then left it.

I currently have two more blogs other than this one which I never wrote about here as they aren’t ready.

I am now looking for good writers to help me with these two blogs, I will be paying per review. If anyone is interested and has expertise in either Hardware or Software, send me an email using the contact form and I will reply back as soon as possible.

Readers who just want to check out my other blogs, I will let you know once they are ready.

Continue reading ‘I Am Looking For Hardware and Software Reviewers’

You just started a new WordPress blog, now what’s next? Read on…

1. Blog Design: You can start with a freely available WordPress theme that you can find here and here, but a unique blog design is the way to go if you want your blog to stand out from the other blogs.
2. Add Categories: Add the categories for your blog. Remember to keep it neat and add not more than 15-20 categories.
3. Add an About Page: I have already wrote about the importance of an About page, add it and let your readers know who you are.
4. Install All In One SEO Pack: Install the latest version of All In One SEO Pack WordPress plugin and optimize your new blog from the beginning itself. Remember to visit the plugin’s option page. Also check out the other WordPress Plugins that can optimize your blog for Search Engines.

Continue reading ’16 Things To Do After Starting A New WordPress Blog’