One of the far best methods to get attention without having to pay for it is simply to run a contest. There is no need to give away prizes for several thousands of dollar, but it will help, since you will get attention just by giving away cheap prizes such as a DVD or a interesting book.

How to get subscribers

There is no point in forcing your participants into signing up for your newsletter since most of them will cancel their subscription as soon as the contest is over and you have chosen a winner.

Instead you should add a simple checkbox at the bottom of your form.

Subscribe for our free newsletter and receive information on upcoming competitions here at [blogname].

When the contest is over you simply gather all of the addresses, who checked this checkbox, and add them into your preferred email software.

Make sure to read the rest of my posts about creating a successful newsletter.

Photo by Tyla

What? A post about overweight in a MMO-blog? Well, just bare with me for a few minutes and I will explain how all of you can benefit from this info.

I recently read an interesting study (pdf), published in the New England Journal, explaining probability of overweight depending on different factors in life. Here is a small selection of what the study have arrived at.

Probability of overweight increased with:

• 171% if you have a group of overweight friends.
• 100% if you have a overweight best friend.
• 44% if you have a overweight brother.
• 37% if you have a overweight wife.
• 27% if you have a overweight sister.

As you can see from the information above your friends and family will have a big influence on you and this is far from unique when it comes to weight.

How to benefit from this information

First and far most important is to surround yourself with people who are sharing the characteristics you value. If all of your friends are lazy and stingy there is a high probability that you will become lazy and stingy yourself.

On the other hand it can be extremely difficult to break a relationship with your childhood friends and therefore it might be a good idea to try and change them instead. Encourage them into changing themselves and there will be a high probability that you will change as well.

Photo by Pink Sherbet

It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

Happiness is love, happiness is beauty, happiness is being healthy.

As I mentioned yesterday I will present a new design for omTVserier this month and since it is a news site I thought it was a good idea to use a magazine orientated theme. Unfortunately there only seems to be a few good looking themes like this and since I have been using Arthemia for a long time now I decided to create a new one built on Thesis.

The thing is that even though I spent hours trying to find inspiration from existing themes I was not able to find one single good looking magazine site built on Thesis. Therefore I have decided to share my skin when it is done. It will probably not be free since I have spent several paydays working on it, but I promise it will not cost much.

What do you want in a magazine styled theme?

To make this skin even better I thought I would ask for your opinion. What do you want in a theme built for magazines and news sites? Support for any particularly plugin, featured content, YouTube-integration, etc?

What I have this far

• 2 sidebars ready for unlimited widgets
• One footer ready for 4 widgets
• Built in search in the header
• Dropdown-menu

Please think hard and ask your friends if possible. I am certain a lot of people will appreciate this so lets make it as great as possible.

It is a new year and I am going to share my tips on how to make this your most successful year ever. I am sure you have read hundreds of posts telling you how important it is to set up goals but unfortunately people rarely succeed with them. There are two simple reason for this. Their goals are unrealistic or people lack a plan on how to accomplish their goals.

How to Shape a Plan

First you need to know that it is impossible to plan a year in advance. A lot of unexpected things will occur and therefore you should only plan for a few months or half a year in advance. I recommend 4 or 5 months.

Sit down with a piece of paper and write down the number of months you want to plan for. Then write down your goals for the final month and move backwards by writing down your goals for every month. Your goals can be everything from a specific number of visitors to an amount of money. Just remember that they must be realistic.

When you are done writing down your goals for every month you should start over with January and write down what you need to do to reach your goals. If you want to get noticed by 20 new bloggers, make 20 blog comments on blogs where the owner answers all of his visitors.

Case Study

This year I am going to spend most of my time working on a Swedish entertainment site named omTVserier and to show you exactly how my method works I am going to show you my plan for this year.

January

• Hire a writer
• Contact companies and ask them for prizes
• Present a new design

February

• Hire a writer
• Add advertising
• Create affiliate-links unique for every TV-show
• Create a page with a short biography about my writers
• List all new TV-shows on DVD

March

• Hire a writer
• Add rating system for all TV-shows
• Write about Swedish TV-channels

April

• Hire a writer
• Present a TV calendar for American shows

May

• Hire a writer
• Present a TV schedule for Swedish channels

All of the above is how I am going to develop the site. But I am also going to add new information and promote it. Here follows a list of things I will do every month to continue to grow it.

• Write about 10 shows
• Write about 5 actors
• Publish 30 posts (1 a day)
• Make 100 blog comments (3-4 a day)
• Make 2 link exchanges

Share Your Plan

Now I want you to sit down and think about your goals for 2010. Then you should go backwards and write down what you need to do every month to accomplish this goal. As I mentioned above there is no point planning a whole year ahead since much will change before then, but plan for 6 months.

When you are done with your list, publish it on your blog and add it as a comment below. I would love to learn more about your plans for this year.

Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I led you to believe that basketball was a God-given gift, and not something I worked for every single day of my life. Maybe I destroyed the game. Or maybe, you’re just making excuses.

Today I have spent the afternoon developing my design for the new year in a stage to reach my ambitious goal with publishing 365 posts. I am currently 3 posts behind after 10 days but I am sure to catch up since I got a slow start.

Less is More

The main idea behind my new design is the classic less is more. By removing my sidebars and its information I am shifting the focus to what’s important; my knowledge. Instead of wasting your attention on unimportant menus, polls, Twitter and Last.fm I place my posts in the spotlight.

On the downside I also had to remove all advertising. Even though this is my personal blog where I write about my own projects and I am not trying to make money on it, I was glad to be able to pay for my domain and hosting. I will probably change this later on and add some advertising below my posts.

Informational Greeting

This is something I recommend all of you to use at your blog. Add a box with short information in which you greet the visitor, share something about yourself and summarize what your blog is all about.

Hello and welcome to my blog where I share knowledge on personal development and making money online for free. My name is Stefan and I’m currently studying advertising and communication while running a company on the side. Feel free to read more about me and subscribe for my well worth reading content.

As you can see I also add a few links in the text. They are not only helpful for my visitors but also in terms of search engine optimization since they are high quality deep links from the top of my first page.

Wall of Fame

Just like the greeting box, this information actually deserves to be a own post. When it comes to blogs a majority of all visitors are interested in who the author are, even though they might have just found you through a search engine. Therefore you should take advantage of this and expand your about me-page to also show your favourite posts.

If you head over to mine you will see that I not only share information about myself but also lists my favourite posts, quotes and guest posts. Later on I will add a photo but my last one is 2 years old and needs to be updated.

Your Thoughts

After working with a design for a few hours you need to get a second opinion since you get stuck in the same route. Therefore I would love to hear your opinion on the new design. What can I do to improve it?

2008 was a great year with movies such as The Dark Knight, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Seven Pounds and many more, but one of my top 5 movies from 2008 is without doubt Yes Man with Jim Carrey. As a comedy the movie is far from being something special but I truly love the message in it.

Life! We are all living it — or are we?

What is a Yes Man?

Forget everything you have previously learned about the traditional Yes Man who sits quietly and always agrees with his employer or superior. The 21 century Yes Man celebrates life and takes advantage of every opportunity by always saying yes when his  friends asks him to tag along.

You’re dead, Carl. You say “no” to life and therefore, you’re not living. You make up excuses to the people around you and to yourself. You’re stuck in the same dead end job you’ve had for years. You don’t have anything close to a girlfriend, and you lost the love of your life because she couldn’t be with someone who didn’t live theirs.

In the movie Jim Carrey manages to learn Korean, learn how to play guitar, learn how to fly and finds his true love by deciding to become a Yes Man.

The secret behind becoming a Yes Man is simply to stop hiding behind your excuses. Instead of saying “no”, just say “yes” and go out with your friends and have the time of your life. I promise when you grow old you will fret all the things you did not do and remember all the things you did.

Yes is the new no! Start learning to say yes to life today!

Two Week Challenge

Starting Monday next week I want you to become a Yes Man and say yes to everything in life for the next fourteen days. I promise you it will not only change your view on life but also bring you out on adventures you never thought would become true.

When you have completed your fourteen days challenge I want you to come back and share your experiences below by leaving a comment. What did you take part in? Tell me about your two weeks as a true Yes Man.

Yes Man Trailer

Yesterday I wrote a post sharing my tips on my favourite Google AdSense themes for Wordpress and as a follow up question I was asked if it is possible to export your Thesis-settings and import them to another site. This is extremely useful if you decide to use Thesis when creating small niche sites because it saves you time which you can use to develop unique content.

The solution is a plug-in named “Thesis Import/Export” and as soon as you install it you can download all your Thesis-settings into three different files. One for your Thesis-settings, one for your Thesis-design and one for your OpenHook-content which is great if you use the OpenHook-plugin.

When you are done exporting your settings you can upload them again to a new site just by locating them on your hard drive and pressing the import-button. Remember that this is only for your Thesis-settings and you will have to install Wordpress and upload your plugins just as usual.

Download Thesis Settings Export

Today I got a difficult question from Luc Biggs asking which template I recommend to run Google AdSense on when it comes to small niche sites.

I would like to find and stick with ONE Wordpress template – one that looks attractive and is also more-or-less AdSense ready – as I have limited knowledge about coding, HTML, PHP etc. I will then use this theme over and over again with all my high PPC domain names. Which theme(s) could you recommend?

The problem is that you will never find a good looking theme with high CTR (click through ratio). You will always have to make a compromise between these two and therefore I have decided to list one of each. Here are my best looking theme for Google AdSense and also the theme with highest CTR.

Best Looking Theme for AdSense

Surprised to find out that I love Thesis the most when it comes to good looking themes made for small niche sites? Probably not. This version of the theme only took me 10 minutes to set up and still have a CTR of 5% which I find very good since it’s such a good looking template.

By using Thesis your visitors will take you seriously and most probably come back if you deliver good content. This is probably nothing for you who create a one-paged site and need every cent you can get to pay for the domain fee. Just remember that you need every visitor.

Visit Thesis | Live example

Highest CTR for AdSense

With a cross section of 25% CTR I will most certainly never find a good AdSense-theme as BlueSense. If you are creating niche sites made for AdSense this is your number one theme irrespective of what others say. Again, BlueSense has a CTR of 25% on my sites!

This is way better than Thesis but with it comes a risk. A risk that no one will take your blog seriously and therefore find it more difficult to mention it.

Visit BlueSense | Download | Live example

Group discussion

Have you tried any of these two themes? If yes, did you get the same opinion about them? Or do you maybe use another AdSense-theme? If yes, which?

Yesterday I wrote a post sharing my tips on what you should do to keep your new year’s resolutions. Besides smoking, losing weight has become one of the most popular resolutions for several years now and even though one of my goals are similar (exercise more), I do not like the term “losing weight”.

If you take a closer look at the image above you will notice that both of them have a weight of 250 pounds and a BMI of 33.9. Now ask yourself, are they equally healthy? Probably not.

By eating to little and trying to starve yourself you will set your body in starvation-mode which will result in your body burning lean tissue and use muscles as a fuel source. You will actually lose weight in the beginning but it is only because your body will reduce your muscular mass.

Women like Jessica Biel (photo) do not get beautiful bodies by starving themselves. Instead they eat healthy (not little) and exercise.

So please, stop using the term “lose weight” today!

A few days ago we celebrated the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010 and I am one of those who believes this is a perfect time to begin a new era of your life. Unfortunately a majority of all new year’s resolution will be broken and therefore I will share some of my tips to make sure you will keep yours.

1) There are still time

Even though it’s a few days ago the new year began you can still decide for new year’s resolutions. You should actually try to create a new habit every other month but this is a perfect time for you to come up with the big ones.

2) Be realistic

Some of your friends might say this is to aim low but it is a much better idea to go from zero to two exercises a week instead of going from zero to five and then break your new habit after only a week.

With that said you should always aim high since this is how we continue to develop. Just remember to choose a habit which you can accomplish.

3) Give way for monogamy

Just as you should be realistic and choose a habit you can accomplish you should also stick to one or a few at the same time. Even though you might want to quit smoking, loose weight (more on this in another post) and begin exercising you will probably not be able to handle all of it at the same time.

Instead you should decide for one of them, continue with that for two months and then head over to your next challenge while you continue to succeed with your previous habits.

4) Keep it to yourself

Most people spread the word about their new year’s resolution as soon as possible but personally I have mixed feelings about this. I think it is a great idea to find a special person to compete with and help each other.

To mention a specific example I and a friend will run a competition on who covers the the biggest distance during the month of January. This is nothing we will share with our friends (oh!) but since it is a competition it will most certainly encourage us to exercise more. To measure the distance I will be using a Garmin Forerunner 405 which I ordered earlier today. I will receive it later this week and post a review here as soon as possible.

Another reason to keep your resolution to yourself is because some of your friends has probably already failed with it earlier and will remind you. Some people have a tendency to drag others down by being negative.

5) Reward yourself

In this case I went the other way around a bought a gadget first but this is only because I have been lurking at one since my surgery a few moths ago. Instead you should set a goal and when you reach it you can reward yourself with a gadget, journey, bicycle, etc. All depending on your resolution. By doing so you will not buy things that you are never going to use again.

6) Share your resolutions

Even though I told you to keep your resolutions to yourself I feel that all of my readers are positive and therefore there’s no risk with sharing your resolutions below. Here are my resolutions for 2010:

• Run or walk (exercise) for at least 30 minutes 5 days a week.
• Continue to stay away from unhealthy food with my calendar method.
• Publish 365 posts on this blog.

Don’t forget to read my best post from 2009 and subscribe.

Close to my birthday in the end of July I decided to begin blogging in English and created this blog. Now I have 88 posts published and personally i think it has been a successful first year.

Below you have a list of my best posts on this blog for 2009 and I would love to hear which one you liked the most. If you are blogging as well I would also love to see a comment from you mentioning your best post from 2009.

Blogging

• Best Method to Become an Authority Online
• There are Only So Many Potential Visitors
• Get the Most Out of Your Old Posts
• How to Get Free Content From Your Visitors
• How to Get Free Content From Experts
• How to Increase Your Number of Pageviews
• How to Profit on the Schoolyard Online
• Quality Content is not that Important

Making Money

• Why Hubpages is a Bad Idea
• Get People to Work For Free
• How to Make Money by Shopping
• How to Make Money While Driving

Personal Development

• The Simple Secret Behind Courage
• Get Motivated With a Book of Dreams
• Todoist Saves My Day
• How I Managed to Stop Eating Unhealthy Food
• Why You Constantly Fail to Get Things Done
• Why You Should Read Books
• Surround Yourself With Exceptional People

Motivational

• How Music and Life Works the Same
• If You’ve Never Failed You’ve Never Lived
• No Excuses
• This is True Love
• 69 Inspirational Quotes eBook

Book Reviews

• Fight Club
• The Adventures of Johnny Bunko
• The Art of Persuasion

Happy new year in arrears!

Photo credit: auburnxc

We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end and the thing was to get to that end. Success or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played. -- Alan Watts

Cut from the highschool basketball team, he went home, locked himself in his room and cried. -- Michael Jordan

Last week I got a question asking me about how to become an authority online and since there are so many methods I will mention the best one of them even though this also might be the slowest one. Remember that making money online is a slow trade and Rome wasn’t built in one day.

The best method by far is to go where your audience is.

Choose a forum where you easily can distinguish yourself from all other members by simply helping them with their questions. Usually you want to find one where there are few authority’s already. A newly started forum can be a great idea because then you can begin answering the most simplest questions. The problem is that the forum might become a failure and without visitors your work will be useless in all aspects.

You should try to build an archive with your answers. When someone in the future asks the same question you will simply refer them to you old answer and by time other members will do so as well.

When it comes to traffic you should not use forums to build backlinks but rather use a signature and try to embed relevant links to blog posts in your forum answers. Do not just leave a link but try to answer the question and end your comment with “more info can be found in this blog post”.

By time people will not only link back to your answers but also remember your nickname and mention your blog when their friends are looking for help in the specific niche, so make sure your blog contains high quality content.

Remember the popular method of getting a passive income by creating a small niche site with a few pages and loads of ads? Well, it’s probably about to change with Google Personalized Search since sites with a high returning frequency will rank better than simple sites used only once or twice.

If you lure your visitors into clicking on ads they will probably never visit you again and lets face the truth, there are only so many people searching for a specific keyword. Some day you will run out of them and by then you will wish you were converting them into regular visitors instead.

The Benefit of Converting Your Visitors

Every person creating content online tries to attract visitors. Unfortunately most of them don’t see the value of converting their first time visitors by using, for an example, a mailing list.

If you receive 1000 visitors on Monday and manages to convert 2% of them you will only need to attract 980 on Tuesday. After only one month you will have about 500 subscribers and therefore only need to attract 500 new visitors every day. What if you continue to attract 1000 new visitors every day then? Well, after 30 days you will have 1600 visitors with no additional work. After one year you will have 8300 visitors every day…

Lesson: Take care of your visitors and begin building your list today!

And my feet hurt! -- Matt Scott

Google seems to be on a roll presenting new features every other day this week and therefore I will cover them one after one and share my insight on how we can benefit. Today I will cover Personalized Search.

What is Personalized Search?

When you use Google and search for a term such as the movie [fight club] and then click on IMDb you will raise the value for this result. If you then continue to have a tendency to click on IMDb, Google will take advantage of your search history and rank it higher just for you.

Other times, when I’m looking for news about Cornell University’s sports teams, I search for [big red]. Because I frequently click on www.cornellbigred.com, Google might show me this result first, instead of the Big Red soda company or others.

What is New?

This feature is nothing new for us with a Google Account and to tell you the truth I have often wished for it to not be so. Way back it was giving me a headache every time I tried to see how my niche sites ranked without my personal history interfering the search results.

The difference now is that visitors without Google Accounts will experience the same thing thanks to customized search based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in your browser.

How to Benefit?

As I told you above this is nothing new for us with Google Accounts but that does not mean we can’t take advantage of this in the future. I would actually say this could be better for us since if you get hold of a visitor you will have a better chance of keeping him since you influences his search results.

Your main goal should be to get your visitors to click on your links in the Google SERP. I’m certain you can come up with your own methods, and I would love to hear them as well, but here are some examples.

• When helping someone over the phone or via mail, give him directions on how to find your pages on Google instead of giving him a direct URL.
• Link to SERPs in your blog posts and via mail.
• Make up a word or name and tell people to Google it. You might even become famous by doing so. How many know about the lemon law?
• Mention your keywords in advertising and tell people to Google it.
• Mention a keyword during an interview and relate to it somehow.

What are your preferred methods?

Video from Google Explaining it