“For a jaundice patient - everything looks yellow”
— Some wise guy.

Who is the most popular Indian professional blogger?
Who’s got the most read blog in India?
Who’s listed at the top ranks in almost all directories you knew?
Which Indian blogger has had the oppurtunity to ’smile away to stardom’ by publishing his own face in the top read magazine in the country?
Which Indian blogger is fortunate enough for being featured on a top notch news channel?

The answer is rather obvious, and the above are fairly good reasons for someone being shot up to stardom. For when you are famous - it brands you with panache and style -i made it easily! - utters your fame.

It is this phenomenon that made Amit Agarwal rise to stardom in India - TV shows - Magazine covers and the hip,hep,hype and hooplah.And everybody today looks up to Digital Inspiration - yes, you guessed it - for inspiration.

How many times have you done that Shahrukh khan act in front of the mirror or that Big B one in Sarkar? Atleast once? A similar kind of phenomenon is happening in the blogosphere too. When you look at labnol, the recent upcoming bloggers are inspired - and a feeling runs to their mind - “I should/could have done that too”.
And i would underline - should - because that’s where the difference is - you could have done that - but you didn’t. Why? Because you didn’t see any good reason that you have to. Now you have a reason - fame. But it’s just too late.

And there are many -many -many who think that there is still a possibility. To make out something like it yet again- to carve out a niche.Like labnol - a technology blog. What goes into it?

He made it with no investment (forget time).
On a free blogger platform.
What does he have that i don’t? I too know tips, tricks and hacks - but i have never told that to someone.(But where was blogs at that time?).

And so, you try to mimic - that is do the same thing to you.

You register a blogspot account - give a fancy name, get a free template, you get an adsense account - and you write down all the things you know - you try to copy stuff by googling down - but hey, your SEO skills don’t allow you to do that, so you write again. Tips - Tricks - Tweaks - Hacks and what not, just basically everything that’s on Labnol only to realize at one point or the other that - whatever you wrote was once written on labnol. You try your best to bring in “Quality content” , increase your CTC, try adsense layouts, keyword targeting etc - some of them who believe in - No pain, no gain - concept goes out buy a domain and pick a sleek adsense customised wordpress template and kickoff a brand new - TECH-somethingsomething.com

After writing so much with pain, you see that your archives are only 1/16th of what’s at Labnol, so you get upset.You take a break. But then you get a newsletter from labnol saying that there are 6 new articles on labnol today. Damn!! You do the painful part again, finding topics and write again.

So isn’t this inspiration? Very much - Digital Inspiration has grown out to be a true inspiration for millions(with exagerration) of bloggers in India(mainly those who started blogging in the mid 2005′).

And this is proven to create many-many-many(without exagerration) mirror blogs in India to Labnol - those are the now cliched - Tips,Tricks,Hacks technology blog…by so and so(Ur name in bold.)

Having said that there are many new blogs around that have quality content, and some wicked ideas! But it’s just that they need to find individuality by making them their own and break from the - tips,tricks and hacks bandwagon(fine, if that’s what you’re good at) and keep consistent.

Thanks,
Mani

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(Post Updated with more goodies - scroll below to see.)
If you are smitten by the iphone, and is ga-ga goo-goo over it, waiting until June may not be a good idea.

Here are a few iphone download goodies like themes for your mobile,wallpapers,desktop themes etc that will keep you dreamy about the iphone until June.

• iphone theme for Motorla mobile
• iphone theme v 2.0 for smart phones
• iphone theme for Sony Ericsson K 800i
• iphone theme for Nokia 6280
• The famous iphone ringtone - good
• iphone theme set(wallpapers,icons) - complete - for Motorola - cool
• iphone - Phone Alarm installation kit - with instructions
• iphone ringer and message alert - mp3
  

Now that the iphone is released - here are some updates.(July 2nd 2007)

• iphone theme for Series60 phones
• iphone theme for S700
• iphone theme for K800 and W850
• iphone theme for K750 and W810
• iphone theme for 5300
• iphone theme for 5500
• iphone theme for Nokia 6265
• Mortplayer and iphone player theme
• iphone icons
• iphone Moto(with animated wallpaper)
• iphone ringtone(mp3 version)
• iphone Wp Moto - PSD(photoshop) file
• iphone TV commercial(avi file)
• iphone ringtone Remix
• iphone ringtone(mid file)
• Make a DIY paper iphone(actual size)

Have fun and leave a comment if you liked this list.

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Many a times I feel that the paid services out there, that claims to give advice on monetizing your site are just crap(atleast many of them).

So, I’m trying to put together right here, all the e-books I can find on the net that’s written on AdSense and comes free.Many of these are available for purchase on the Amazon and other stores. While I recommend that you buy all the worthwhile one’s out there - there is a good number of freely available ones.

Feel free to download those listed here and read at your pleasure - get the “gyan” and appreciate the authors for compiling such a wonderful job.

I haven’t included those that i think is crap. Believe me there were a few that was only 10 pages or so and was titled “AdSense Unveiled”. If you still find any listed here crap, please let me know.

I’m not aware of any copyrights of any of the e-books featured here,if you come across any infringement possibilites, let me know too.

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Brand Awareness according to an authority is - The proportion of target customers that recall a brand.

Realisation by a consumer of the existance and availability of a particular product. Brand awareness is a common measure of marketing communications effectiveness. Unaided awareness is spontaneous; aided or prompted awareness is when the name is recognised among others that are listed or identified.

If you have a logo for your blog/site (like this or this) and want to create brand awareness among your target audience, read further…else you may quit(or check this)
Brand awareness is usually attributed to intensive advertising (both above and below the line), promotions, gimmicks and the like..which prove very costly and the effectiveness of which usually is unmeasurable.

Now think of this situation - Your blog has an image/logo/brand/simple header text - that people instantly relate and recall when ever they see it anywhere. That would be nice isn’t it? Without spending big amounts for any ad campaign what so ever, here’s how you can do it.

Step 1 - Create a logo for your blog if you don’t have one already. Use our photoshop skills, and if you are weak with it, simply try this site. Just make sure you make an image in any one of the following dimensions - 468 x 60,728 x 90,200 x 200,250 x 250,300 x 250,336 x 280,120 x 600,160 x 600 pixels.

Step 2 - Now that you have a cool logo in place, decide whom you want to target your blog (yep, once again.) May be all Indians, or may be the entire US, or just your town -whatever!
Step 3 - OK - So now you have a logo and know whom to target, you just need a medium.
Your medium would be - Google Adwords!! (Don’t worry about the payment thing - i’ll get it free to you )

Hope you already have an understanding about Google AdWords and it’s common TOS.

Goto Google AdWords and register yourself.

Start a new campaign > Start a “site-targeted” campaign > In the “Create an Ad” step, select “Image Ad”> Now select the logo you’ve designed and fill in the url fields > Continue.

Now Google will ask you how you need to target your audience > If you need to select a particular site(a popular one) from a category, select the first option and select the category you want. If your’e looking for a specific site, select the List Url button and give in the blog/site url you want to target.

Now Google will show you the various image ad sizes the particular site has allowed on it. So make sure your image fits one of those.

> In the next step, enter your maximum spent for a day(keep it low)
> Save campaign and return. That’s it! Now, the catch!

- Make sure you create an excellent logo - but not a click attracting one.
This depends on various factors but generally, it can be assumed that a “non text” one with “non-inviting” pictures do not attract clicks. People should just “rub off” their eyes with your logo, but should not be tempted to click on them.(See the 120×600 logo i’ve made)

- You need to make sure that you have the highest bid on the competitor ads in the site, therefore ensuring that your ads show finally.

What’s the big deal?
Since it is learned from many studies that “Image Ads” does not invite so many clicks as a contextual text ad, you can safely sit back and not pay Google while your target audience watches your logo time and again. Next time when they visit your site(or if they have already visited) they’ll instantly recognize/recall your logo. And your brand is associated with the popular site you advertised in.

So you get the benefits of - Running a FREE brand awareness campaign - Effective, as it only targets the appropriate crowd - and ensures instant brand recall value.

Now if at all someone clicks on your ad - you have set your daily spendable amount with Google, so you don’t have to worry about any accidents.

You’ve just made a free brand - awareness campaign for your website.

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Oops! I wish if I could turn a blind eye to this - but seems like the number of broken links on Google and Yahoo are increasing in frequency.

Just a few weeks after I found a misplaced link on Yahoo Movies - here is another one from Google, and that too at Google Codes!

If you go to this page (http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/samples.html) and click on the “Solutions and Wizards” link in the - “AJAX Search in a blogger” paragraph - you’ll be taken to a beautiful 404 error page

A few weeks back, I had reported a similar error on Yahoo! where the link was not broken but mis-linked to an entirely different one.

What’s happening with them? I’m forced to guess that less importance is/was given to basics of web development in these cases.

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Thanks to Blogger, the option of using a custom domain for your blog withouth loosing the Google Juice has left everyone with Godaddy ot ENOM - registering their new domains.

To help you, many expert bloggers have penned down their recommendations and suggestions on things to keep in mind when selecting a domain name.Just google for “selecting a domain name” and you will come across similar points on almost all sites.

Some of them are - Keep it simple - Keep it short - Make it recallable - Do not put characters in it like hyphen or numbers - Make it typeable etc etc etc…

Truth is that many a times simple domain names aren’t available and often you end up selecting domain names you thought you never would take.

But today I’m looking at it from a different perspective.
Why does domain names have to be short or simple?

Here are a few answers i coud think of.
- SEO purposes - linking.
- Help a fellow blogger link to you with ease.
- A reader should find it easy to remember the name.
- You don’t want broken links to your blog.
- You shouldn’t forget your domain name.

What if they were difficult to remember and confusing?
- Readers would book mark you.
- They would add you to their favourites so that they can come back.
- They may join your mailing list so that they don’t have to take the trouble in visiting your blog often.

So, i think selecting a seemingly complicated - difficult to remember domain name will help you get more readers, increase your subscribers, and get more bookmarks and links!

Thanks to Philip’s blog - his blog’s got a hard to remember name(but a popular one), which made me write this article.

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