What is Cron Job Syntax Generator?

It is a new product that I developed in order to help you in generating Cron Job Syntax. Check it out at: Cron Job Syntax Generator

Why do you need Cron Job Syntax Generator?

At times, you might be required to run a specific script certain number of times in a day for your work or personal purposes. It may not be possible for you to manually run the script each time. You may be busy or you may forget to visit a particular page or perform the task at that specific time. In order to overcome this obstacle, you can setup a Cron Job via your Website Hosting control panel and have the script automatically execute it for you, at your desired times.

In order to do the above, it will be required to that you enter the cron syntax in it’s correct format or you will end up making the cron job run at a different time or even worse, the cron job may not work. To avoid this and to save time writing the cron job expression manually, Cron Job Syntax Generator was developed.

How to use Cron Job Syntax Generator?

It’s very simple. You have two options to choose from. Either you can choose from the available Templates or you can enter your own custom values. Take a look at the screenshot below to understand it better:

Cron Job Syntax Generator

As you can see from the GUI, it’s very simple to use. If you want to make use of the templates, just make sure that the radio button of the template is selected. Or if you want to enter custom values for minutes, hours,  days, months and/or weekdays, simply select the radio button under “Custom” and select the custom values from the multiple select dropdown box. You can select multiple values by holding Ctrl button on the keyboard and clicking on the desired values. Finally, enter the command that you wish to execute or the full path to the script by entering it in the textbox named “Command to Execute”. Then hit the “Generate Cron Code” button to instantly generate the Cron expression.

Conclusion

Cron Job Syntax Generator is a Free online tool and it will help you generate perfect cron syntax without having you to code it manually. This will save you a lot of time and increase your productivity. So what are you waiting for? Check out Cron Job Syntax Generator now and let me know what you think of it in the comments below!

PHP / UNIX Timestamp Converter and Generator

So here is a new tool that will simply make your life even more easier. To access it, simply visit PHP/Unix Timestamp Converter/Generator.

How to use it?

It’s very simple. If you have an existing Timestamp, enter it and click on the ‘Convert Timestamp’ button. The human readable date and time will be instantly displayed.

If you have a Date and Time that you wish to convert into timestamp so that you can store it in database, simply enter the details and click on the ‘Convert to Timestamp’ button. The UNIX timestamp will be instantly generated that you can use in your application.

Is there any charge to use it?

Nope! It’s FREE! So what are you waiting for? Visit PHP/Unix Timestamp Converter/Generator now!

Your Turn!

What do you think of this new tool? Has it helped you in any way? Feel free to share your thoughts by commenting below.

MySQL Query/Statement Generator for Web Developers

If you are a Web Developer, then you will find this information immensely useful. Let’s say you are working with databases and you have to perform different operations on the table, such as Select data from it, Update, Delete & Insert data. This is fairly simple if you are dealing with very limited data. But what if you are dealing with large amount of data & with multiple tables at the same time? Can you really be sure that you are performing the SELECT read operation correctly and in the right manner? Can you be sure that the joins you are performing, will fetch you the right results? Can you be certain that you are using the punctuation marks in the correct manner? Well, typically we all tend to do mistakes and in the field of Web Development, a single mistake can consume a lot of time in the sense the we end up spending a lot of time in debugging. So what to do?

Enter MySQL Generator

MySQL Generator will let you generate complex and confusing statements/queries within seconds, in the most simplest way you could have ever imagined!

Take a look at the screenshot below for an idea:

Free MySQL Generator Online

As you can see from the image above, you can perform a complex Join query very easily by just entering the required information and selecting the available options from the select drop down menus. You can also specify additional table names, Join Types and an optional WHERE clause as well. Hit the “Generate” button and that will give you the final query that you can simply copy and paste in your file.

So what queries can you generate?

You can generate all the queries that you normally use, such as:

• SELECT
• INSERT
• UPDATE
• DELETE

As you keep entering the required information, you will notice that the dropdowns will be dynamically populated. In addition, certain options may be enabled/disabled/hidden based upon the choices you make.

Conclusion

MySQL Generator is really a fantastic tool for everyday use. You will find it really helpful as it will reduce your development time and it will also help you to avoid general mistakes that we make, such as typos, etc. And the best part is that it is totally free. So try it out & let me know what you think in your comments below.

What is PHP Date Time Format Generator (PDTFG)?

It is a Free, online tool that will help PHP Developers generate Date formats and Time formats, either individually or both combined.

Why to use PHP Date Time Format Generator?

The reason is very simple. It’s not possible for each and everyone to remember all the format characters that are used to format a local date/time. In order to make you understand this, let me ask you a question (assuming you are a PHP developer). What would be PHP equivalent code for the today’s date and current time format?

March 28, 2013 1:01 PM

Well, it’s tough to answer it, isn’t it? I am a PHP Developer myself, but I can’t get all the details right in a single go. So I find it frustrating and time consuming to refer to the PHP.net manual to get the format correctly. That’s exactly the reason why I built the “PHP Date Time Format Generator”. Now it’s a piece of cake to get the format for the above question. Simply head over to PHP Date Time Format Generator and get it’s value by simply clicking the appropriate buttons. It’s the most easiest way you can ever find to automatically generate the Time and Date formats in PHP.

BTW, the Date TIme format for the above question is:

date(‘F d, Y g:i A’);

Do you know what I did to get the above answer? I did not have to rack my brains. Instead, I went to PHP Date Time Format Generator and clicked few buttons and viola! I instantly generated my answer! I did not have to spend 15 minutes just to figure out what it should be.

What makes PHP Date Time Format Generator even more special?

The beauty of it is that you are not restricted to a single format. You also have quite a good range of separators to choose from. For example, in the above question that I asked you few moments ago, notice that I have used the following separators:

Space, Comma, Space, Space, Colon, Space

In fact, PDTFG has 5 separators that you can choose from, namely: Hyphen, Comma, Colon, Slash and Space.

Apart from the above, different formats are supported for the “Day”, “Month”, “Year” and “Time” entities. Simply click on the buttons to generate a format of your choice.

How to use  PHP Date Time Format Generator?

It is very easy. Simply visit PHP Date Time Format Generator. Go to the “Get Started Here- Build it Yourself” section. Start clicking on the buttons that indicate the format you wish to use. Once you click on the button, two things happen:

1. The “Date Format” box will show the format that you have chosen.

2. Right underneath the “Date Format” box, the “PHP Code” will be populated with the PHP code for the format that you have chosen. This will be the final PHP code that you would need to copy and paste in your own website to use it.

Do NOT enter anything manually int the “Date Format” box or the “PHP Code” box. If you wish to test whether the final code that has been generated meets your requirements or not, simply click the “Run PHP Code” button. That will run the PHP code that has been generated and it will show you the current Time and Date in the format you have chosen.

Samples:

Few samples are also provided that you can use to begin with to get an understanding of how things work. Just click on any of the Sample buttons and click on the “Run PHP Code” button. You will see that it gives you the output in real time.

Conclusion:

If you are a PHP developer who finds it really annoying to deal with the character formats of PHP just to denote the Time and Date formats of your choice, you will find PHP Date Time Format Generator to be immensely helpful. And it’s totally free to use. So what are you waiting for? Visit PHP Date Time Format Generator and try it out today!

Your Turn!

What do you think of our PHP Date Time Format Generator? Do you find it useful? Do you have any suggestions or ideas that would help us improve it for you? Feel free to share your thoughts by commenting below.l

jQuery Cheat Sheet

Below is the complete Cheat Sheet. To see the examples and try out the demos, simply click on the link that you are interested in finding out more about.

Selectors

What exactly is a Website Heatmap?

It a web analytics tool used to measure customer experience. It can be used to improve essential components of a website such as Web Usability, Customer Experience, Conversion Rates.

How is a Heat Map Tool different from a regular Web Analytics Tools?

There are Web Analytics tools such as Google Analytics that show how many people visited your website, their “Bounce Rate”, etc. but they are missing a key feature. They can’t show what visitors “actually do” on your web pages. And knowing what your visitors are “actually doing” on your website can be really vital for your business. They don’t show you why your visitors aren’t “Converting”. This is where a “heat map” kicks in.

What’s Converting?

To answer this question, let me ask you a question first. What do you want the visitors to do when they visit your website? Do you want them to buy anything? Or do you want them to subscribe to your email newsletters? Or do you want them to call you over the phone? Do you want them to sign-up for your free trials or the service itself? It could be anything that you think, would be profitable to you, now or in the future. This is what “Converting” actually is. It’s nothing but the “final action” that you want the visitor to perform when they visit your website.

Conversion is inversely proportional to “Bounce Rate”. The higher the Conversion, the lower the Bounce Rate and vice versa.

What is Bounce Rate?

Bounce Rate is nothing but the percentage of users that leave the page of your website, that they first landed upon. So for example, let’s say that visitors landed up on “Services” page of your website and they left the website right from that very page, then the Bounce Rate is 100%. If they navigate to “About Us” and then leave the website, then the Bounce Rate is said to be 50%. So ideally speaking you would want to have as less Bounce Rate as possible.

What can Website Heatmaps actually do?

Website heatmaps can show what visitors are doing when they visit your web pages. There are different companies that provide heatmaps that more or less, include features such as monitoring:

• Mouse Clicks
• Keystrokes
• Mouse Movements
• Elements that cause visitors to leave the website

Apart from that, they can also create videos of your website visitor’s browsing sessions. Yes, you can actually “SPY” on what visitors are doing exactly from the point of time they arrived on your website, what they clicked on, etc. till they exited the website. These analytics data are usually collected together to form an actual powerful and visual heatmaps and actionable behavioral reports are provided so that you can drill down further into the data.

These data can also show you what visitors click on the website, such as an image, link, button, etc. mouse movements, eye tracking and even how far they scroll vertically on a web page.

The heat maps when used in conjunction with form analytics, can also reveal what part of user forms take too much time to fill. They can also show what fields are left blank and what caused the visitors to leave, in case they abandon the form mid-way. In this way you can revise that field and provide additional helpful info to the user so that they take less time to understand what needs to be done. That will help them finish filling up the forms faster and the faster a form is filled, the faster you get your leads/sales.

You can also analyze collective data on what visitors could not find the products/data they were searching for, what caused them to not take an action and what actually causes them to leave the website as well. This way, you can refine the existing elements on your website to your visitor’s liking.

General Features of using Heat Map tools on your website:

Although every company tries to provide a unique product and/or service, they more or less offer the following features in general:

• A Heat Map tools that shows where exactly a visitor has clicked on a web page so that you can retain the items that receive lots of clicks and remove/replace elements that the visitors’ don’t feel like clicking on .
• A Scroll Map tool that shows how far vertically on the website, the visitor is scrolling. That way you will get to know where the visitors are actually losing interest on the pages and you can revise the content following that point. You can try adding new, fresh content, images, etc. to improve the appeal of the content.
• An Overlay tool that shows the number of clicks each of the elements of the web page (such as buttons, images, etc) received.

Additional Benefits:

• You will also be able track multiple domains/ HTTPS pages, IFrames, Flash Objects, etc. (if the company supports it)
• Improve User Experience by introducing improve elements such as Call-To-Action buttons, etc.
• Save money on expensive user testing and do all the testing yourself.
• Eliminate the problem of cart abandonment by fixing usability issues and fix vital business processes in real time.
• Improve client websites (if you are a Web Designer/Web Developer)
• Easily Optimize Sales Funnel by making use of the insights data.
• Demographics let you understand where your visitors are coming from so that you understand your visitors and their needs better.

Using Heatmaps on your website:

Generally you don’t have to go through the hassle of downloading anything extra. In most cases, the deployment of web site heatmaps is as simple as including a tiny piece of JavaScript code (barely 1-2 lines) and you are done! This will be your step towards collecting essential data that will provide you a detailed insight into your customer’s interaction with your website. You can use this data to optimize your customer’s experience and improve your online business performance.

All you will have to do is login into your account and review the Heat Map data to get started with it. It’s as simple as that!

Heat maps Performance Issues:

Usually the companies offering the heat map services are fully hosted and the usage of heatmaps usually does not have any noticeable performance issues as they are light weight and transparent to the user.

Conclusion:

If you have never tried any Website Heat Map tool so far, I strongly suggest you try it. If you are running a very short informational website without having much to offer for visitors, in such cases Heat maps may  be of little use. But if you are running a Shopping cart website or a dynamic website, or a website that deals in selling stuff, interacting heavily with visitors and relies on user decisions to make use of the service you are promoting, then a Visual Website Heat Map can do wonders and help you keep your existing traffic and improve your existing website to attract more traffic and increase conversions!

So try a heat map tool and start optimizing your website, increase your sales and profits today!

Your Turn!

Have you used any Website heat map tool in the past? What is your review of such a tool? What did you find good about it? What did you find bad about it? Please feel free to share your views by commenting below.

Email Marketing – What is Email Marketing? How to use it? All you need to know about Email Marketing!

Basics of Email Marketing:

Before we actually proceed, let’s hold on for a moment and understand what marketing is at its basic level. That will help understand the concept of Email Marketing better. That said, our next question is:

What is Marketing?

Simply put, marketing is a way to promote something. This is more commonly used in relation with promoting a product and/or a service. And you do marketing because you want to introduce your product/services to people so that they come to know of it and buy it/use it. So basically you are making people aware of a product and help them understand the benefits of using such a product. This, is Marketing.

What are the results of Marketing?

The general motive of Marketing is to make a sale for profits. If you have a product that solves the needs/problem of a person, then you approach them and make them understand the benefits of using your product. And if the person feels that your product will really solve their problem, then he/she will consider buying it. In broader terms, if you are “marketing”, then the direct result of a successful marketing could result in a “sale”. In terms of a user, the result of “successful marketing” results in a “purchase” or “use of a product/service”.

What is required for successful Marketing?

You need to know pretty much everything about the product that you are trying to market. If you know the inside-out of any product that you are trying to market, then the chances are high that you end up making a successful sale, because you can explain the advantages of the product to the prospective “customer” very well.

You will need to know all the benefits the product has to offer. This is required to “convince” a customer as to why your product is better and how it will help them.

You will need good communication skills. You know about the product, but the customer doesn’t. So it’s in your best interests to communicate effectively and explain the advantages of the product. The ability to present the product also counts. So there’s a lot more to this and so I will try to cover this in a later article.

What are the different forms of Marketing?

Marketing can take many forms. Some of the common ones include, but not limited to are:

• An Advertisement
• Flyer
• Brochure
• Email
• Radio Announcement
• TV Commercial
• Press Release
• Twitter Account
• Google Plus Page
• Facebook Page

What is Email Marketing?

What is Email Marketing?

Now that we have seen the different forms of Marketing, it would now be very easy to understand what Email Marketing. Simply put, Email Marketing is a way of promoting your product, business or service by using emails.

Most of the times, Email Marketing is associated with a commercial intent. But the most important factor in it is to offer products/services that will be useful to people. Apart from making profits, the goal of Email Marketing should be to build brand recognition by means of customer loyalty and trust in your products.

Why to use Email Marketing (Advantages)?

Now that internet has evolved, we are no longer shackled by the chains of traditional forms of advertising. We can leverage the power of internet to promote our products & services and thereby, grow our business.  Following are some of the main reasons/advantages of using Email Marketing to promote your products, business and/or services:

• Unlike other forms of marketing, Email Marketing is very cost effective.  It’s very easy to send emails and hence the rates to market your product via emails is very low. Unlike Television advertising, you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars for a single campaign. So this results in huge savings.
• You don’t have to approach potential customers personally in order to explain about your product to them. And sometimes you don’t even need a website in order to explain about your product. You can simply send an email that tells about the advantages of using your services/product with a link to purchase it. Interested users may visit the URL and purchase it. However, having additional information about the product on your own website with a link to it in the email that you send, can really motivate users to visit it and get familiar with it. That will improve the chances of sale.
• Relies on your efforts more than anything else and hence the much time & efforts you invest, the higher could be your profits. You no longer have to rely on search engines to send you traffic. Simply use Email Marketing to get started and earn significant profits.
• Email Marketing is very powerful once used right, so someone who gets the right hang of it can hundreds and even thousands of dollars every day.
• You can maintain an assorted list of emails that you wish to include in your Email Marketing. That will help you cut down unnecessary costs and focus on the market and people that you truly desire. This email list is prepared based upon feedback from users, the percentage of likes that you received, user’s spending habits, etc.

How to use Email Marketing?

Does the idea of Email Marketing sound good so far? It’s good to use it but it could seem fairly complex especially when you are getting started with it. There is a lot associated with it.

You will need to design the emails so that they look impressive and deliver a positive message. And you need to target the right people so that they can avail your offer and/or respond to your email. Based upon the actions taken by the users, you will then need to analyze the results and work on improvements to make it even better experience for the users.

Types of Email Marketing

Every email that you send, does not necessarily have to sell a product. The email could also include just an intro message or a welcome message, a free offer, etc. That said, there are basically 3 types of Email Marketing. They are:

Direct Email:

This basically involves you sending a message promoting your product and this will be the main aim. You will need a list of email address that you wish to send this promotional message to. If you are able to assemble such a list on your own by interacting personally with people either locally or over the web, then that’s good. If not, then you can also rent email lists from other service companies.

Retention Email:

As the name suggests, the main goal of Retention Email Marketing would be to build your relationship with your customers. It should provide a meaningful and valuable information that the customer can use it to their advantage. Including a promotional message or an ad of your product is optional.

External Emails:

Instead of sending your own emails, you take help of others. You simply include your own promotional messages in newsletters published by others, for their readers and you pay them for doing so.

What are the main requirements to use Email Marketing?

1. The main requirement to use Email Marketing is that you need “permission” of the recipient, in order to receive your emails. Without their explicit permission, your promotional email message can be considered as “spam” even though you have no such intent.

2. The second most important requirement is to have a link to “unsubscribe” the recipient’s email from your Subscribers list.

Failure to comply with the main requirements of sending repeated promotional emails can make you liable for heavy penalties. Also legal action may be taken against your company, which is undesirable. So you have to make sure you follow the guidelines to be on the safer side.

How to get permission from a user for Email Marketing?

Get user permission for Email Marketing

Let me give you an example. Suppose you have a website and you are selling some products. A user purchases a product and while doing so, he opts to receive “promotional emails” by ticking a checkbox (in general). By ticking the checkbox & submitting the information,  the customer has now “legally  opted” to receive your promotional emails. You can now include that customer’s email in your address list to send you next promotional email. So that’s one way to get user’s permission.

Another way to get user’s permission is via Opt-in Form on your website. Placing a form with an option to opt-in just to receive promotional emails is a very good way to get customer’s email. Sending a promotional email to such a user is now perfectly valid as the user has explicitly indicated the interest to receive the promotional emails from you.

Why NOT to use Email Marketing?

• Don’t use Email Marketing to “spam” users. Uninterested people usually unsubscribe from promotional emails and sending promotional emails to such people is considered spamming.
• Don’t use it force a user to visit specific website, especially when it’s not your website.
• Don’t use it when you are wanting to focus on short term money making goals.
• Don’t use it to send bulk emails to targeted users.
• Don’t use it to send bulk emails to database of email addresses.

Who Email Marketing is for?

• Email Marketing is definitely for someone who wants to harness the power of digital marketing by leveraging the power of internet and emails while abiding by its terms and conditions.
• It is for someone who does not want to rely heavily upon search engines for customers.
• It is for someone who wants to take matters seriously and personally in their hands and promote products and services only to targeted groups of people.
• It is for someone who wants to save huge money on advertising costs.
• It’s not restricted to an individual or a company. As long as you want to promote your services/products, Email Marketing is for you. So if you are a Web Designer/Web Developer or a MNC, you can use it to let users know about your products so that they can hire you and or buy your products.

When is the right time to use Email Marketing?

• If you are low on budget and want to reach targeted audience, use Email Marketing.
• Go for it if you have been trying to promote your products and services by using traditional methods but have met with very little success or no success.
• If you have a large audience that you want to reach with minimal efforts.
• You already have an audience and wish to target new markets.
• When you want to build long term relationship with your customers.
• You want to make more profits.

What you need to do for Email Marketing?

What to do for effective Email Marketing?

The main part that you need to deal with to get started with Email Marketing is to collect list of email addresses that have opted in to receive your promotional emails or find companies that can send your promotional message in their emails to their subscribers. In this later method, you won’t have access to the email list.

But should you have an email list, here are couple of brilliant options that you can use to get started with Email Marketing effectively.

1. Use Email Marketing Software

2. Use Email Marketing Services

Email Marketing Softwares:

Email Marketing Software lets you take matters seriously in your hands. You can use it to create profitable customer relationships for your business. Based upon the features offered by the software you will be able to do a variety of things such as design the newsletter that you wish to send, prepare email lists, Import/Export data, perform analysis of data so that you see can see ROI, monitor campaigns, etc.

Email Marketing Services:

If you think that doing everything yourself manually is too much work and/or if you are short on time and wish others to do the “dirty work” for you, then Email Marketing Services are perfect for you. Some of the other benefits of using Email Marketing Services are:

• You can use easy tools such as “Email Wizards” to create email newsletter.
• You can create newsletters on the go using any device such a laptop, mobile phone, etc. without having to carry around your Email Marketing Software (if you own one).
• You don’t have to worry about tracking and reporting. Everything will be provided to you for your convenience by the service you choose.
• You can reliably track delivery.
• You can use API to integrate the data with other business applications you may have.

Where to go from here?

So far if the idea and methodology of using Email Marketing to promote your business, products and services is clear, your next should be to check out the different Email Marketing Services that you can use for your next promotion campaign. I will be posting an article very soon about the best Email Services out there,so bookmark this page and check this section later to find out more.

Your Turn!

What do you think of Email Marketing? Have you ever used it for promoting your business? Have you used any Email Marketing Software and/or Email Marketing Services? What are your reviews on them? Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas by commenting below.

That said, I wanted to help any new publishers out there by letting them know of the main do’s and don’ts of Google AdSense application. So read these valid tricks to help increase your chances of getting a fast Google AdSense approval for your new AdSense account.

Top Tricks To Get Your Google AdSense Application Approved

How to get fast Google AdSense approval for your application?

Here are the 20 tips and tricks that will help you in getting approved fast for Google AdSense.

1. Personal Info

You will need to disclose your true personal info. No mistakes & excuses allowed here. You will need to provide accurate info for all the details that you are asked for, in the application, especially the following:

Payee/Contact Name: Full complete name, including your last name.  You will receive check to this name, so make sure it matches the name on your bank account.  For business account,  enter the name of the organization in the ‘Payee Name’ field and your Website Manager name in the ‘Contact Name’ field.

Address: You will receive checks to this location, so make sure its valid or you will end up losing your payments (Who wants that to happen? No one does & no one should! ).

Email: You will receive all communication regarding your Google AdSense account to this email address, starting with your email verification message. So if you make any mistakes here, you’ll end up having to submit a new application using your desired new email address.

2. Name & Email Verification

Gone are the days when you could apply to Google AdSense with very little info and yet, get approved. I have seen Google AdSense evolve, both in its service and terms. When I got approved, I did nothing but filled the form and followed very minimal procedures to get approved for Google AdSense account. Now time has changed & Google’s terms have changed as well.

You will now need to add your Name and Email Address in an important page, such as the Contact Us page and/or About Us Page. My suggestion is to add it to the contact us page as it makes more relevant to add contact information to the contact us page. This will also prove to Google AdSense application approval team that you are the same person applying for Google AdSense account. This will help them reduce possible bot applications and spam.

3. Live website with Easy Navigation

This next trick can help you a lot. It’s especially good to make lasting first impression. Make sure that you are submitting a live website. Do NOT submit a website if you have the “Under construction” board on its homepage. Also the navigation (links to other pages) must be easy for your visitors or your application will be rejected. So if you don’t have a clear cut navigation, work on it & fix it. And fix it now! Go do it and come back. I will wait for you here and then we will continue with the rest of the tricks below.

4. Age Restriction

Ok so now that we are both here, know that it’s very essential that you are a major to get approved for Google AdSense. So you MUST be 18 years or older to get approved for Google AdSense. If you are any younger than this, your application will be instantly rejected. Sorry, no tricks here!

5. Website Age

The much older your website is, the much greater are the chances for getting accepted in Google AdSense program. In countries like China & India (apart from other countries), it’s really mandatory for you to own your website/blog for at least 6 months or more in order to be considered for approval.

6. Amount of content / Number of Blog posts required at Minimum

Apart from focusing on having quality content, it’s essential that your blog has a significant number of posts to get approved for Google AdSense. This is to show that you are active and you have not deserted your blog. Because the last thing Google needs is a publisher who does not care for his blog or has deserted it.

As such, there is no official declaration from Google that says they need XYZ number of posts in a blog to approve it. And yet, they expect you to have a good number of posts to approve your Google AdSense  application. So how to tackle this?

Well, here’s what I recommend. Before you apply for Google AdSense, write at least one high quality, useful post every day. I suggest that these articles contain anywhere between 500 – 1000 words each.  Do this for at least two months. If you have already started blogging and you already has an archive of posts, then that’s good for you. If you are a newbie, then I suggest you follow my recommendation.

A word of caution. Don’t post 1000 articles on the same day. I know, just one individual can’t do that. But there could be some creative people among us who feel that they could hire ten or even hundred writers, give them about 10 topics to write on and that way, add thousands of articles on the same day. If you are thinking that this idea would work in your favor, then sorry to say, but that’s just wrong.

Look at the top blogs out there today. Even they don’t publish thousands of articles every day. And they have been using different monetization sources such as Google AdSense for years now. When the established blogs can’t produce thousands or articles every day, you and I are no match, especially when trying to get Google AdSense application approved for the first time.

And also a blog should evolve naturally with time. Trying to post thousands of articles each day, will not only tire you and consume lot of your resources, but it will also look like spam. So don’t do these mistakes. Avoid bulk posting, especially when you are getting started with your blog and just trying to get approved by Google AdSense fast.

I am not saying it’s a sin to post thousands of articles each day. But to do that, you have to reach that level first! And that will happen as time passes by. You can’t become popular overnight. So don’t even try that. Don’t try to rush things just to get started with monetizing your blog.

I understand how important monetization could be to compensate for your hard work and efforts, but the key thing here is step into the door before trying to occupy the whole room for yourself.

Remember:

Slow and steady not only wins the race, but it is also safer!

7. Copyrighted Material

Don’t place copyright material on your blog or your efforts to get approved by Google AdSense will end up in vain. Google expects you to have your own content, that you have written. You can have it written by someone else, but make sure you pay them and by doing so, you get the copyrights for that article.

If a website owner does not pay the writer, then the writer becomes the owner of the written content and will hold all copyrights. So in such a case, a non-paying buyer cannot use an article on his own website, for which he has not paid the author for content writing. Moral? Get unique content written and compensate the writer for their time & efforts and automatically get all copyrights. Simple.

8. Top Level Domain (TLD)

Having a Top Level Domain (such as www.mysite.com) , has become an absolutely important part in getting your Google AdSense application approved. If you are hosting your blog on a free shared host, then consider that your application is in danger.

To get approved without risk, go buy a Top Level Domain and start your blog on it. It’s not mandatory to buy a Top Level Domain that matches with your website name, although using a related domain name could help you a bit in search engine results. We can start a debate on this (& I am really not in the mood for this as I want to help you guys get your AdSense application approved quickly first), but let’s leave that idea for another article.

So as long as it’s a valid domain name that is not offensive or illegal to use, the chances of getting your Google AdSense application  approved are bright.

Examples of Valid TLD:

• www.mysite.com
• mysite.com

Examples of Invalid TLD:

• mysite.com/somepage.html
• mysite.com/somedirectory
• mysite.com?q=somequery
• mysubdomain.mysite.com
• mysubdomain.mysite.com/somedirectory
• mysubdomain.mysite.com?q=somequery

9. Decent (at least) Website Design

I call a website that hurts people’s eyes or effects their readability as “Insta-Fail”! Personally, I instantly quit websites that use colors that affects readability negatively. This is especially true in case of dark themed websites. When I design websites for my clients, I try to avoid using dark colors, such as black in majority. In some cases, it might look visually appealing to have a dark background website, but it needs a significant amount of work to make it look comfortable for the majority of the users to read, if not all. This is because basically, we are making the website for our users not for ourselves.

Your website design need not be great looking to get approved for Google AdSense. You don’t need to get Ooohh!! Aaaahh! from your visitors to get the Big G to approve your application. Just make sure that the website has an easy navigation, colors that are easy on the eyes, a functioning search box (recommended as it adds in favor of usability). You can also use social media sharing to your advantage here and include link to your Google Plus profile and add some social media buttons such as Facebook Like, Twitter Tweet, Pinterest Pin, etc. to your blog posts.

In short, you can have a great web design to please your readers. But essentially have at least a decent looking website to get your Google AdSense application approved. That includes considering choice of colors used, target audience, etc. If you are looking to get a new WordPress theme designed for your WordPress blog, I can offer my services to you. FYI, I am a WordPress theme designer & WordPress plugin developer, apart from being a Web Designer & Web Developer. So feel free to contact me with the details and I would be happy to help.

10. Keep your website clean

Keep Website Clean to Get approved fast for Google AdSense

Don’t host any malware or employ any redirects. Don’t use any pop-ups, pop-unders, especially if it interferes with website navigation.

11. Variety & Type of Content on your blog

Be extra careful when it comes to the type of content that you post in your blog. Google AdSense is definitely not for adult oriented websites. It’s not even for the websites that deal in Dugs, Gambling, Illegal Weapons, Hate-related, etc. Google AdSense is not right for you if your blog deals with the above content or any content in relation to the above areas.

If you are sure that your blog falls under at least one of the unacceptable categories and would like to look for alternatives for Google AdSense, then I suggest you start reading my article “20 Top High Paying Best Google AdSense Alternatives To Monetize Your Blog“.

12. Guidelines for Webmasters

If you have done any of the following or thought of doing it, STOP! Fix it before you proceed.

1) If you have used irrelevant keywords or used keywords excessively in the content or code of your blog articles, then remove the excessive ones.

2) Do not use hidden links/text.

3) Also refrain from using Auto-generated content, Scraped content, Doorway Pages.

13. Write content that adds to value of your blog and helps users

Make sure that you focus on providing quality info to your users and your hard work will be rewarded. Don’t leave feedback or state anywhere that you are applying for Google AdSense just because you are interested in making money. If you do this even by mistake, your Google AdSense will be rejected without any doubt.

14. Using Other Advertisement Networks on the same blog

If your blog is brand new and you don’t have any ads running on it, then you don’t need to worry about this. But if you already have a blog and you are already using other ways of monetization, then make sure that you remove them. Why? The reason is simple. If you already have ads on your blog, then chances are high that you have reached the maximum allowed ads usage per page.

Google permits you to place up to 3 ad blocks on a single page and if they see that you are already using other ad networks and have already placed ad blocks (say three ads), then they feel that if they approve your Google AdSense application, you might over-crowd your content by adding more ad blocks. This means, they think that you might end up with 6 ads blocks as opposed to the suggested maximum of 3 ad blocks per page.

So this will look as if you are trying to force ads on your readers and Google does not like that. Hence when they find you already using ads from other Ad Networks, the chances are high that they will reject your approval. In my view, they will say “You don’t need us as you have already taken care of monetization!”.

So be smart, strip of any existing ads you may have before you apply for Google AdSense. Once you get approved, you may add them. By saying “add them”, I DON’T mean add 6 add blocks (3 ads from Google and 3 ads from your other Ad Network). I mean add the 3 ad blocks that Google permitted. Don’t try to fill your blog with ads, especially when getting started. It can look tempting to have large number of ads, but it won’t work out well unless your page layout and content allows you to do so.

15. Try to Help Others

You may think what helping others has to do with your Google AdSense application. Let me explain. By “helping others”, I mean try to be socially active and try to solve other people’s problems and issues in your niche. Be an active participant in Forums, Community discussion boards, etc. Usually all these sources will let you make a profile and even let you place a signature. If they do, provide your website/blog name in this. Over time, this will act like a back link to your website. When Google AdSense application approval team performs an analysis of your websites, they will see the back links from good sources and this will give them additional motive to consider approval for your application.

And when you are at it, just make sure that you are “actually helping people”. Don’t do this just to increase back links because it’s very easy to get yourself banned from the forum by the moderators. And one more thing, if you didn’t think of this earlier. Remember the backlinks that gave Big G a reason to consider your website? Well, they can simply visit those backlinks to see the reason why you got it. And when they see that you are actually involved and trying to help others without leaving spam messages such as “Hi, it’s me”, “Thanks”, etc. they will really know about you. They can read all what you posted and why you did and make a wise decision on whether to approve your Google AdSense application or not.

So yes, they are all there! We got eyes everywhere and we are being watched. If you think that you won’t have enough time to genuinely help others, then simply ignore this tip and move on to the next one. You are here to read tricks that will help you in getting your Google AdSense approval fast and not the vice-versa. Right? So let’s move on.

 16. Read Google’s Terms & Conditions and abide by them

Ignoring this tip is a good way to make sure that your Google AdSense application is rejected. Yes, you may not have the time to do so, but I urge you to do it. And do it now by clicking here to read the Google AdSense Terms. You will thank me later. And while you are at it, make yourself a cup of coffee and have some crackers. You got some work to do!

17. Avoid repeated submissions

In case you have already submitted an application but unfortunately got rejected for some reason, don’t be hasty to submit another application very soon. Just give it some time, about couple of months or so. Usually the application review team will let you know the reason why they rejected your application. So read through it entirely and work on to fix out the issues and give it some time to show its results. Once you are confident that your blog/website does not exhibit the same reasons for which your application was rejected earlier, go ahead and submit your application.

18. About Us page

An About Us page is definitely one of the most important factors that determine the outcome of your Google AdSense application approval. If you ever had problem in getting approved, or you are currently about to apply, then make sure you have an About Us page. Don’t think that you don’t need an About us page, if you are going to apply for using AdSense on your blog. No!

It’s highly vital that you have an About Us page as it gives your readers, a good idea about who you are and what you do. And it is also a good way to advertise your services and it’s free! So why do you want to let go of this golden opportunity? Go ahead, write a concise article about yourself/your company and add it to your blog/website to get approved for Google AdSense fast.

19. Privacy Policy page

The Privacy Policy page is one of the most commonly overlooked facts that could have a serious impact on your AdSense application. You may feel that you may not need it, especially if you are running a blog. Well, that’s not true anymore! A privacy policy page helps users understand how data related to them, or the data related to the site will be used. It will offer them helpful information or restrict them, based upon the rules you set. It’s just one additional step towards getting your users closer to your blog/website.

Now if you are thinking of contacting your local attorney for a Privacy Policy, STOP! There’s no need to do that. You can use the website below to generate free Privacy Policy for your website/blog. Check it out at: FreePrivacyPolicy

20. Contact Us page

I think the value of adding a Contact Us page is self-explanatory. But still, I would like to elaborate on that so that you understand it’s importance. A contact us page not only gives a chance for your users to contact you should they decide to hire you for your services, but it also proves to Google that you actually do care for your visitors and offering them a way to contact you only tells them that you could be a very good potential Google AdSense publisher because you are basically thinking in favor of your users.

So make sure you add a Contact Us page to your blog. If you are using WordPress blog and have trouble adding a Contact Us page or need assistance doing so, contact me and I will add a basic contact form for Free. Yes, you read that right. I did say “Free”. No strings attached. Why am I offering it for free? Well, there are three reasons:

1. You are my visitor.

2. I understand that getting approved for Google AdSense can be really tough without following all guidelines and hence I want to help you get approved.

3. I enjoy working with WordPress.

If it sounds good to you and you seek my help in getting a free basic WordPress contact us page, then contact me now. Here’s what the contact us page will contain once I create it:

1. A contact form that the user can fill out and submit to you.

2. The Contact form itself will contain following fields: Name, Email, Subject, Message. When user fills out and submits the info, you will receive that email to the email that you have provided for your WordPress admin email.

3. If you need any other contact info to be added, please prepare it in a Word document as you like so that I can add it to the page, once the contact us form is ready.

Get Google AdSense Application Approved Fast by simply following the above Tricks!

Well, that’s it for now! Hope you guys got good idea on what to do to get your AdSense application approved fast!

Your Turn!

What do you think of these different tricks to get your Google AdSense application approved fast? Have you ever used any of the tricks that I mentioned? Do you have any tricks of your own that you would like to add in to help our friends here? Please feel free to share your Google AdSense approval success stories with us. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Only the Top 10, Best Tech Blogs – Countdown Begins…

1. ZDnet

ZDNet

ZDNet offers latest news & happenings in the technology world and hence, they can be considered as a top technology blog site. They offer different options to switch blog “edition” so that you can read what’s hot in the different geographic locations of the world. Some of their areas that include (but not limited to) are Windows, Cloud, Networking, Storage, Tablets etc. The slideshow in the homepage of this tech blog offers a glimpse of the interesting topics following by Featured Stories. They also offer Top Stories, Debates, Photo Gallries, Videos, Downloads, etc.

2. Engadget

Engadget

Engadget excels at providing information and hence can be considered as the 2nd Best, Top Technology Blog. Some of the categories that they cover are: Gaming, GPS, Handheld, Portable, Science, Software, Internet, Laptops, Tablets, Networking and others. In addition to this, they also offer Top stories that could be of your interest.

 3. Cnet

CNET

Cnet is one of the oldest and reputed tech blogs out there. This tech blog specializes in Reviewing different things. So if you are looking for a review on a Camcorder or want to buy the latest cell phone but want to read others’ review first, Cnet would be the best place to start. They offer reviews on wide range of Categories, but some of them include: Car Tech, Home Audio, Home Video, Desktops, Mp3 Players, Digital Cameras, Televisions, Tablets, etc.

Apart from that, they also feature sections like Hottest Review, Latest News, Downloads on different platforms, How To, Deals, etc. They offer much more than what I can cover here, so make sure you check ’em out.

4. Wired

Wired

Wired offers latest info on a variety of categories such as Gear, Science, Security, Business etc. They also have sub-categories under each category and once you start checking something, you will only start sinking deeper.

On the home of their blog, they feature latest posts, Wired Video, Photo Galleries, Special Report, Recent Stories, All  Headlines, Hottest Web Links, Enterprise, Gadget Lab, Game, Life, Opinions and others.

5. I Love Typography

I Love Typography

I Love Typography is one of the top tech blogs that specializes immensely in providing you with only the best typography that you can use for Web Design. They also have a Shop and you can buy Codex Magazines. These magazines can feature articles, book and type reviews, interviews, tips, type history, new and notable fonts, essays, typeface design — from typography experts.

Apart from the above, they offer articles on origin of fonts, curated list of best fonts and other such related articles on typography. So if you are looking for font related font, forget others and check them out first.

 6. Mashable

Mashable

Mashable is one of the most popular tech blogs in the world. They specialize in offering information on Social Media. They also offer latest news and happenings in the wold of Technology, Business, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Videos and more.

The homepage of Mashable offers: “The New Stuff”, The Next Big Thing,  What’s Hot, etc. Due to the variety of the topics they cover,it’s easy to get lost in the pool of information, so make sure enough time on your hands if you want to check them out.

 7. Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine

One of the brilliant additions to the Top Tech blogs is Smashing Magazine. They specialize in providing Web Design information. Some of the Categories include Web Design, Mobile, Graphics, UX Design, Coding and WordPress. Each of these categories contain their own Sub categories and you are bound to find a lot of excellent and useful information here.

Some of the other features include Smashing Highlights, Smashing Job Board. This is a must check out top tech blog, if you really want to get started with some quality articles on Web Design.

 8. Tech Crunch

Tech Crunch

Tech Crunch excels at providing information on Startups. Apart from that, they also cover latest information on Mobile, Gadgets, Enterprise, Social, Gaming and others.

Their homepage features, Latest News, Trending Stories, Upcoming Events, Product Guides, Crunch Board (Job listings) and other latest information.

 9. 40tech

40tech

40tech covers more like the “technical” part of anything. So if you are wanting to find out solutions for adding a label to mail message  in mailbox or Trying to backup your passwords, you should start from here. They offer news on variety of topics such as Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, Google, Cloud, Evernote, Springpad, etc. They also include information on to increase your productivity.

10. Guardian

Guardian

Guardian covers a lot of areas and hence it could be considered as one of the top best tech blogs.  Apart from covering lot of info on technology, they also cover different areas such as News, Sport, Comment, Culture, Business, Money, Life & style, Travel, Environment, TV, Video,Dating,Offers, Jobs, etc.

Their homepage features latest news, Best Video, Best Sellers, Guardian Jobs etc.

 That’s it!

Do you know of any other best tech blogs? Do you think any of it will make a good addition to this list? Feel free to share by commenting below.

The Best SEO Plugin For WordPress 2013 – WordPress SEO by Yoast

Undoubtedly, WordPress is proven to the most popular blogging tool used by millions of users today. WordPress has made blogging very easy and simple for all the users. Anyone with basic knowledge of computers can now start a blog. Apart from that, WordPress has gained immense popularity because of its ease of use, extensive customization, robustness, frequent updates and help from the community. And the best part is that WordPress is completely free and they don’t charge you a penny to use it to start a blog yourself.

Now as if it weren’t’ enough, the WordPress community didn’t stop there. Although they provide us with vanilla version of WordPress that any user can use to get started immediately with, they have gone a step further and have made provisions for us to add additional functionality by means of “plugins”. All these plugins are available for free and we can install these plugins and use them as we see fit. One of the most important reasons to use a plugin would be for the benefits of “Search Engine Optimization”. With a well Search Engine Optimized blog, your blog can receive large amount of traffic every day. And in order to get more traffic from the search engines, you have to make sure that your blog is optimized well and completely for the search engines so that the blog ranks higher. For a novice user, this is very difficult. So what to do?

Enter “WordPress SEO by Yoast”

One of the most appreciable additions to the plugin repository is the addition of a WordPress best SEO plugin called “WordPress SEO by Yoast”. This plugin is available free of charge and you download this from WordPress and get started using it within the next couple of minutes. I have personally used this plugin for over an year and because of the features it offers and for it’s simplicity, I consider the WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin as the best WordPress SEO plugin. By using WordPress SEO by Yoast, you can perform Search Engine Optimization on your blog/website with minimal efforts and boost your website’s ranking in search engines. The following are some of the features that I find, are important and very appealing.

Very Useful and Important features of the WordPress SEO by Yoast

1. Article Posting area

WordPress SEO – Article Posting Area

1. Focus Keyword

This is by far the most important feature that separates WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast from other WordPress SEO plugins, in behavior and looks. As can be from the image, WordPress SEO offers different functionality in the article posting area. The main feature that I want to highlight now is the auto-suggestion of applicable keywords. Notice how I have entered my main keyword and how it is showing the related keywords for my keyword? I use the keywords as basis for my long tail keywords and I include the most relevant keywords from the suggestions box into my article. That helps my articles rank better in search engines and increases overall visibility of my blog.

2. Snippet Preview, SEO Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords

Under the General Tab, along with the focus keyword option, you can find Snippet Preview, SEO Title, Meta Description and Meta Keywords. I am going to discuss the functionality of each of these features below.

Snippet Preview: Enter something in the SEO Title box & in the Meta Description textarea. The Snippet Preview area will show a preview of how your article might appear to visitors when your blog shows up in search engines. This is very helpful as I can either add new content or edit existing content in the SEO Title & Meta Keywords so that most of my content (if not all) can appear to the users.

SEO Title: There is a limit counter right beneath the box against this. This limit counter shows the number of characters that will be shown from as your Article Title to search engine users. You can fine tune this to make sure that the title does not get cut off.

Meta Description: This works similar to SEO Title with the exception that it previews Meta Description and allows more number of characters to be input. Fine tuning this Meta Description can help convey the intended message to your users and help increase more clicks to your website.

Meta Keywords: As I stated in my previous article, these are useless for Google, but may be useful for the other search engines. Use this if you want to target search engines other than Google.

3. Page Analysis Tab

WordPress SEO – Page Analysis Tab

This tab is awesome too.It shows the mistakes that I am making in terms of under-optimizing my blog for search engine optimization or if I am over-optimizing them for search engine optimization  Either ways, it analyses my mistakes and tell the same to me and I get to correct them. This is a huge time saver and I do not have to use any other external software do do my page analysis.  Everything happens right here, right now, with the blog. Can’t beat that!

4. Advanced Tab

WordPress SEO – Advanced Tab

Lets you provide more information that the search engines can make use of. This will again help increase your blog’s visibility  in search engines, so you can change them as needed.

5. All Settings of WordPress SEO by Yoast – Top WordPress SEO plugin

WordPress SEO – All Main Settings

As can be seen from the image above, there are loads of other options available. Each of these options have many settings, so I may not be able to cover them in this article. But I will try to summarize the functionality of each of those options below.

Dashboard: Provides different options to maintain general setting including Webmaster Tools info for Google, Bing & Alexa.

Titles & Metas: Provides you rich set of options to show default values in your blog articles/pages, should you forget to include any while posting a new article. So this will serve as backup if you forget to include all necessary info. This will save your search engine ranking, at least to some extent.

Social: Provides access to Facebook & Twitter sharing & lets you customize them.

XML Sitemaps: Lets you generate XML Sitemaps. This is the format that Google bot will need in order to be able to understand the structure & layout of the articles in your blog/website to crawl effectively.

Permalinks: Let’s you modify the Permalinks for boosting ranking in search engines.

Internal Links: Provides enhancements for Internal Links. This will improve ranking in search engines when used correctly.

RSS: This helps enhance your blog feeds and also protects them from dumb web scrapers.

Import & Export: Import & Export data for re-installation or for backup purposes.

Edit files: Let’s you edit the contents of the .htaccess file. Warning! This is strictly for highly advanced users only. If you are a new user or want to play safe, just forget about this option and use other options normally.

Conclusion:

So as you may have understood by now, there are many obvious benefits to using a SEO plugin for WordPress and specially WordPress SEO by Yoast for your blog/website, than not using it.

Note:

It’s a good idea to take a backup of your blog/website, whenever you are experimenting with a plugin or adding a new one. I have used WordPress SEO by Yoast for over an year and have had no problems at all. Hopefully this will be the case with you as well.

Your Turn!

Have you used WordPress SEO by Yoast so far? Do you agree that it is the Top Best SEO Plugin for WordPress? If you are using it, can you share your experiences with us? Or are you using different WordPress SEO plugins? Would you mind sharing your feedback on them? Please feel free to share your thoughts and views by commenting below.