We Like to Write - A New Online Community for Professional and Amateur Writers & Bloggers

I've set up a new social networking site for professional and amateur bloggers and writers. We Like to Write is an online community, with a forum, chat-room, groups, on-site magazine, and many more functions. All bloggers and writers are welcome to sign up and use the site, entirely free of charge.

The last week has certainly been a hectic one. I've been working hard setting up the latest in a series of websites and blogs - this time an online community, where my readers can get to know each other and promote their blogs and articles. I've also set up a premier membership for those who wish to be registered as available for freelance writing and blogging work, for whom I will take enquiries from potential employers, and promote heavily on the We Like to Write website.

The forum, chat-room, uploads (photos and videos) and groups are not visible to non-members, which affords some degree of privacy to members. However, there is nothing to prevent prospective employees signing up and taking a look around, so the forum will be moderated to ensure a professional atmosphere is retained. I'd like the forum, chat-room and groups to be welcoming places for writers and bloggers of all skill levels, and will be policing the board myself to prevent any unreasonable behaviour. Trolls are not invited!

The on-site magazine can be viewed by members and non-members alike, but only premier members may contribute articles and blogs. Authors may place Google Adsense ads, Chikita ads, and Amazon Associates links on 500 word articles, with the potential to earn 100% of the revenue or commission generated from the ads. Application for premier membership consists of a written test and monthly subscription fee of $1.50, although the service is free for three months to all successful applicants signing up before 21st June, and can be cancelled at any time. Each magazine article or blog is moderated by the site manager, and may also contain up to three self-serving links per 500 words. This means premier members are able to promote residual earnings articles and their own blogs and websites to all site visitors, in addition to building valuable back-links. Referral links are also permitted.

Premier members also have access to a private group and discussion forum, a private chat-room, and are featured in a prominent position on the home page. They are also promoted on the Find a Writer page, where potential employees are able to make booking enquiries through the site manager.

So, I'd like to welcome all professional and amateur writers and bloggers to join me at the We Like to Write online community. I will endeavour to make it a useful and pleasant experience for all members. If you have any questions or suggestions please get in touch via the comment box below this post, or through the We like to Write site itself.

Basic Blogger Tips: How to Create Text Links That Open in a New Browser Window

Bloggers often find it necessary or helpful to add links to other pages or sites to their blog posts. This article explains how to create text links that open in a new browser window, meaning your reader won't leave your blog if they click on the link.

All too often bloggers lose first-time readers as a direct result of placing helpful links in blog posts. The key to successful blogging is to keep visitors on your blog long enough to convince them to subscribe, which may not happen if the first post they come across leads them somewhere else, which in turn leads them somewhere else, and...well, you get the picture...

The best way to avoid this problem is to edit the html code of the link created with the blogger text editor to redirect link to open in a new window.

How to Create Text Links That Open in a New Browser Window

• Create your link as usual, with the blogger text-editor (in compose mode, highlight the word or words you wish to turn into a link, press 'Link,' and enter the URL or email address you wish to link to). 
• Click 'Edit HTML' above the text editor, next to 'Compose.'
• Find the HTML code for your link, which will look something like the text in the following image (click to enlarge).

• Add the following code snippet directly after the URL's end-quote, and before the arrow-brackets: target="new" - as shown in the following example.

• Publish your blog post and check your link - it will now open in a new window, meaning your traffic won't be diverted away from your blog. The RSS link below is a working example.

If you found this tip helpful you may want to sign up for our RSS subscription, or read the following similar articles, providing additional tips and tricks for Blogger blogs.

Basic Blogger Tips: Creating a Successful Blog - Rome Wasn't Built in a Day!

With reports that over 20,000 blogs are started daily it's easy to see why many fail to win significant numbers of readers. In  fact, the vast majority are abandoned within the first six months, as bloggers become disillusioned with the results they see - usually as a result of their own unrealistic expectations regarding blogging.

Upon recognition that your blog is but a tiny grain of sand in an infinitely expanding ocean, you may feel as though you face an impossible task that simply isn't worth the effort it requires. But before you go ahead and give up, consider that Rome wasn't built in a day, and that all enduring structures are built slowly, and purposefully, with keen attention to detail. Also remember that the foundations are the most important feature of any building project. The same is true of your blog.

Creating a Successful Blog

If you speak to any successful professional blogger you'll soon discover they all have pretty much the same advice when it comes to building an enduring blog - patience, and perseverance. That's not to say that quality content, SEO techniques and design are unimportant - quite the opposite: they're detrimental - but understanding the time and effort required to build a successful blog is an important aspect of the process.

It is said that any blog will take a minimum of six months to a year to develop a reasonable page rank in it's particular niche. This is true even if you are posting quality content several times per week or more, so there are no short-cuts here, and patience is ultimately the key.

If you're planning to set up a blog and fill it with content under the assumption it will receive instant recognition from search engines, and an immediate surge of visitors, you are sorely mistaken; creating a successful blog requires motivation and commitment over a long period of time.

This means your topic-choice must be one you are willing and able to expand upon for years to come, or your blog will die an early death, quickly becoming redundant - along with millions of others.

In short, if you want to build an enduring, successful blog you are going to have to put in a lot of effort, on a regular basis, over a long period of time. If you're not prepared to do this you may as well give up at the first hurdle. Blogging isn't easy, but it's not exactly hard, once you know what you're doing. However, if you lack the patience, perseverance, commitment and motivation necessary, you may as well not waste your time.

Basic Blogger Tips: Why You Should NEVER Delete Redundant Blog Posts

Often regular bloggers find obsolete or redundant posts on their blog, and delete them to tidy the appearance. Today's Blogger tip explains why blog posts should never be fully deleted, and what you should do instead.

We all know what it's like. You publish a blog post when you're tired, upset, angry, drunk - or otherwise unable to judge the relevance or usefulness of the post - or you find an old post that is now completely irrelevant, or - worse still - totally inaccurate.

So, what do you do? You delete it, right?

No... This is a wrong move, and here's why: when you delete a blog post the url (web-page address) remains live, or active, and any search engine results or links posted elsewhere, by yourself or your readers, will pull up an error page.

This doesn't sound too bad, but actually it is. Search engines don't take kindly to error pages, and will rank your blog poorly if there are too many of them. Some search engines will fail to index a blog at all, if there are too many of these error pages.

So, what should you do instead? There are two options; one is to update or edit the post, making it relevant/accurate, or changing it to something entirely different. The other is to remove the content and replace it with a polite message explaining the page is no longer available. You needn't go into why, and a simple sentence or two will do. For example:

 "Unfortunately this page is no longer available. We apologise for any inconvenience."

In addition to the message, you could use also add links to similar posts, or those you believe will be relevant or interesting to any readers who've found their way to the post you've removed, which reduces your chances of losing readers. It also seems more professional than a blank page.

Whichever method you choose, you should remember to edit the labels or keywords, in addition to the blog post itself, as you don't want the search engines to register keyword spamming - that is, use of irrelevant keywords).

How to Add a PayPal Donate Button to a Blogger Blog

If your Blogger blog provides helpful information or free products, such as templates or web-tools, you may wish to install a PayPal donate button, to enable your readers to donate a small amount of money if they've found the information or products particularly useful or beneficial. 

Adding a PayPal donate button is completely free, but you will need to sign up for a PayPal account to do so. There are a few countries not yet served by PayPal; if you reside in one of these countries you will be unable to use this service.

How to Add a PayPal Donate Button to a Blogger Blog

• Log in to your PayPal account (if you don't have one visit the PayPal website and sign up).
• Click on the 'Merchant Services' tab.
• Scroll down and find the 'Donations' link in the right-hand sidebar.
• Click 'Donations,' which will re-direct you to another page, called Website Payments Standard Donations. In the sectioned titled 'Step One' you will find another 'Donations' link.
• Clink the second 'Donations' link, which will take you to the page where you can create and customise your PayPal donations button.
• Choose your settings (ensure you choose a button that will fit where it is intended - you can choose a small button if your sidebars are too narrow to accommodate the larger one) and enter your payment details into the field provided. You can upload an image of your choice for the button itself, or use the default PayPal donations button.
• Save the PayPal button and click 'Create Button.'
• Copy the HTML code provided.
• Log into your Blogger dashboard and click 'Layout' (if using Blogger draft click 'Design').
• Click 'Add Gadget' and choose 'HTML/Java Script.'
• Paste the HTML code into the box (title is optional) and press save.
• Position your button by dragging and dropping in the Layout or Design area of your Blogger dashboard.

 You can now accept donations from your blog readers securely through PayPal, using the 'PayPal Donations' button.

* Important note: PayPal will charge you a fee for each donation transaction. The fee will depend on the amount received, but there is a set charge in addition to a percentage; this means low-level donations will result in disproportionally high charges.

Here is an example of the PayPal Donate button.

How to Add an AddThis Share Button to Individual Blogger Blog Posts

Adding the AddThis share button to individual blog posts enables your readers to easily bookmark you blog and share your links with a potentially huge number of people. Today's Tips & Tricks for Blogger blogs post will instruct you in how to add an AddThis share button to individual Blogger blog posts.

Social bookmarking is an effective tool for those promoting an online business or blog. To encourage readers to promote your site you should add a share button to individual blog posts. The AddThis share button is a popular one because it's neat and compact, yet provides links to hundreds of social bookmarking sites.

You can choose from a number of AddThis share buttons, each with a slightly different design. It is also possible to receive tracking reports, displaying your button's performance. These reports act as a helpful guide when working out your stats and trying to determine the most beneficial promotional techniques, but are by no means necessary. For the tracking service you must register with an email address, but untracked buttons require no registration.

How to Add an AddThis Share Button to Individual Blogger Blog Posts

• Visit the AddThis website.
• If you desire tracking reports create an AddThis account, and follow these instructions.
• Select Blogger (or whichever blogging platform you use), and choose your button. There are more options available if the four shown aren't suitable.
• Click 'Get Your Button,' and scroll down to Blog Post Button instructions.
• At this point you may further customise the look of your button, by clicking on Customize AddThis, at the bottom of the page (or use the link I just provided).
• Copy the code.
• Log into your Blogger dasboard and click 'Layout,' and 'Edit HTML.'
• Download a copy of your template as it is currently, in case you make a mistake.
• Check the small 'Expand Widgets Template' box to the upper right of your blog's HTML template.
• Scroll approximately halfway down your HTML template and paste the code into the area shown in the following image (click on image for a close-up view).

• Click 'Save Template,' and you're done!

You should now be able to see the AddThis share button at the bottom of each published blog post. If the AddThis share button doesn't appear as planned simply upload the original template and start again, making sure you paste the code in the correct place.

How to Add A Free Wufoo Contact Form to A Blogger Blog

Bloggers often require a contact form, so that readers are able to get in touch, without the blog owner divulging an email address. This article will instruct you in how to add a free Wufoo contact form to a Blogger blog.

If you click on the 'Hire Me' link in the title-bar you'll see I've recently installed a contact form, so that anyone wishing to hire my services can get in touch easily, without me having to divulge any contact details. All messages received via the form will appear in my email box, and I can limit the number of forms sent from each IP, to help prevent spam.

The Wufoo forms are very comprehensive, with many functions, including template designs and many additional fields to those shown in my form - which can be set up to include questions and multiple choice responses. This is brilliant for those hoping to do business through their blog, as it means communication can be initiated anonymously, at least until it's established that a working relationship will commence.

The free Wufoo service provides three contact forms, with the ability to upgrade to a paid service if this exceeds your needs. A few features are blocked for non-paying users. However, many functions remain available, and the system is easy to use with very professional looking results. There are several options to choose from when it comes to displaying your form - from simple text-links to embedded frames, such as used on this blog.

How to Add a Free Wufoo Contact Form to A Blogger Blog

1. Visit the Wufoo website and set up an account.
2. Click 'Create Form' and add the fields you require, or use the template designer to install a pre-designed contact form.
3. Once you are happy with the elements you've added to the form you can move them around by dragging and dropping. You can also choose which fields are 'required,' and make other adjustments, by clicking on the field and checking/unchecking boxes in the left-hand sidebar.
4. Save the contact form
5. Under 'Forms' click 'Code' and choose how you wish to display the contact form on your blog. Copy the code.
6. To set up a separate contact form page, as I have done, you will need to update your Blogger template to a draft design. Using draft Blogger you are able to add pages in the form of a title-bar, by clicking 'Add Gadget' and choosing 'Standalone Pages'. Simply create a page and paste the code into the html section of your text editor. There are other options, such as pop-up forms or text-links, for those preferring not to use Blogger draft. These contact forms can be added to sidebars and used within blog posts.

Your Blogger blog now has a professional, anonymous contact form, with which your readers can communicate with you privately, and without any security risk that may result from revealing personal contact information to strangers.

Increase Blogger Blog Traffic by Using the Free Blog Catalogue Directory

Blog Catalogue is a free online blog directory. Its purpose is to allow bloggers to promote their own blogs in order to increase targeted traffic, find blogs created by others, and to network with other bloggers. This article provides detailed information about using the Blog Catalogue directory to increase traffic to a Blogger blog.

There are many blog directories to help increase traffic; some offer free services, whilst others require annual payment. One of the best free services is Blog Catalogue - a sophisticated mixture between a blog directory and a networking site, with numerous functions, such as a member's only forum, and the ability to review and 'favourite' listed blogs, join groups, befriend other bloggers, etc. Blog Catalogue also provides a list of useful tools and resources for bloggers, which members are able to review, creating a link to their profile page. Each group also has it's own discussion area for group members. The only condition of use (besides the blog being approved) is that you must add a blog catalogue button to your blog's front-page.

Both personal and professional bloggers are welcome at Blog Catalogue. Signing up is very straightforward, although it does take several business days for each new blog to be approved, and if you need to edit details (due to a spelling error or other adjustment) the blog will return to the back of the approval queue. In the meantime, you will be asked to provide a blog description and related keywords, as well as to create a profile. Throw yourself into this aspect of it - you're here to promote your blog, so use this opportunity to sell your blog and your personality to potential readers. The more appealing your profile is the more traffic your blog will receive.

Because of the superior functions provided by Blog Catalogue, it is possible to generate traffic to your blog quickly and easily. However, due to the review function, it is advisable not to register your blog until you have several pages of quality content, and not to become an active member of any groups or the forum until you are 100% happy with the look and functionality of your blog.

To get the most out of using Blog Catalogue it essential to join whichever (active) groups are relevant to your blog content, make friends with other members, review blogs, broadcast announcements, and generally be an active member of the network. Registering will bring a trickle of visitors, but to increase traffic in any real capacity regular participation in the Blog Catalogue community is required. The more active you are in the forum and group discussions, the more members will see (and may click on) the link to your profile. This can mean an increase traffic to your blog, and in members reviewing and rating your blog. Your blog will be internally ranked by Blog Catalogue, so the better reviews your blog receives, the higher up the list it will climb. The highest ranking blogs appear on the first page of category results, and so on; appearing on page one or two greatly increases your chances of increasing traffic and gaining subscribers or followers.

There is also an option to upgrade your membership to a paid service, providing far greater exposure within the Blog Catalogue community. There are two upgrade options, one starting at $8 p/m, and the second at $60 p/m. Option one is arranged on a first-come, first-served basis, and your money will get you a top five slot for your particular niche, and sponsor links leading to your profile, which links to your blog. Option two puts your blog in the spotlight slot on the first page of your blog category, and is guaranteed to increase traffic, with sponsor links redirecting to your blog.

How to Add Email Subscriptions to a Blogger Blog Using Feedburner

Email subscriptions account for a large percentage of any successful blogger's return traffic.  This Tips & Tricks for Blogger Blogs article will instruct you in how to add email subscriptions to a Blogger blog using Feedburner.


Adding email subscriptions to a Blogger blog is a simple yet effective way to allow visitors to easily follow your blog, without any understanding of RSS feeds or readers.


Most people check their email accounts more regularly than their RSS readers, so email subscriptions can be an extremely effective way to successfully reach your readers on a daily basis. Ideally you should offer both email subscriptions and RSS feeds, in addition to Google follow.

Before adding email subscriptions you must change your RSS feeds over to Feedburner by setting up a Feedburner account, adding your blog URL, and entering the new feed address into the box provided on the 'Site Feed' tab under 'Settings' in your Blogger dashboard.

How to Add Email Subscriptions to a Blogger Blog Using Feedburner:

1. Sign into your Feedburner account.
2. Click on the website in question and then on the 'Publicize' tab.
3. Click on 'Email Subscriptions' in the left-hand column.
4. Choose whether you prefer to display a full subscription form or a simple text-link. The design of your blog may limit you to using a text-link only.
5. Choose Blogger from the drop-down menu, which is currently displaying the option for Typepad.
6. Click 'Go'.
7. You will now be redirected to your Blogger dashboard to add and save the widget.
8. You can now move the widget to a suitable part of your blog by dragging and dropping (this is done in the 'Page Elements' area of the 'Layout' tab in your Blogger dashboard). It is recommended that you place subscription links and forms as close to the top of the web-page as possible.
9. Return to the Feedburner screen and press 'Save.'
10. Directly beneath the 'Email Subscriptions' link in the left-hand sidebar of your Feedburner account you will notice four further tabs, titled 'Subscription Management,' 'Communication Preferences,' 'Email Branding,' and 'Delivery options.' You can change settings under these tabs to alter colours, change the address from which the posts are sent out, set delivery times, etc.

Visitors to your blog are now able to subscribe to your blog posts via email!

Blogger Basics: 10 Simple Tips & Tricks for Effective Blogging

This article provides simple tips and tricks for effective blogging. Following this advice will help you maximise your chances of reaching your targeted audience, gaining subscribers, and successfully monetising a Blogger blog. Some of the following tips apply mainly to those blogging professionally, but many apply equally to those blogging for pleasure.

1. Marketing: Effective blogging requires that you know and understand your market. Choose a topic or a small number of related topics and stick to blogging about those. Niche blogs receive far more traffic and are more relevant to readers, who are usually looking for information - not a glimpse into your inner world or to find out what you had for breakfast.
2. Appearance: Design is important. A cluttered blog with poor navigation will almost certainly put off visitors. Keep it simple and clean. Use categories or stand-alone pages to enable readers to find exactly what they are looking for. Install useful widgets and add relevant ads, but don't crowd the site. List interesting or useful labels, and provide a search box.
3. Subscriptions: Make it easy for visitors to follow your blog. Add social bookmarking buttons, provide an RSS feed, enable email subscriptions, and add similar applications, such as Facebook's Networked Blogs. Keep important buttons close to the top of the blog.
4. Blog Titles: Use appropriate titles for blog posts. They should be clear, concise, and contain relevant keywords. Choosing a rare keyword combination as a title-phrase can be one way to reduce competition and increase traffic. Detailed information can be found in my previous post, How to Choose Successful Blog Titles.
5. Blogging: each post should ideally contain from 300 to 500 words. The title phrase should be repeated more than once in the text, and individual keywords should appear numerous times, at the rate of around 5%. Break each blog post down into short paragraphs, and add a small, relevant image whenever possible (only ever use images you own the rights to, or that were published under the creative commons attribution and marked as suitable for commercial use). Ensure there are no spelling or grammatical errors before publishing a blog (Blogger draft now includes an integral spell-check but professional software such as Office Word or a dedicated writing program such as Whitesmoke is essential if you have major problems in this area). Not only do errors look unprofessional, but they can also affect page rank. 
6. Domain Names: Buy a custom domain and host with whichever company fulfils your needs, but don't use a free Blogspot or Wordpress domain name if hosting on these platforms. A blog is more professional-looking to visitors if it has a private domain name. Blogging on a custom domain also provides SEO benefits.
7. Post Frequency: Blog regularly, but don't swamp your readers with several page-long blog posts per day. Keep it short and sweet, and if you have nothing to say simply keep quiet. Most people wouldn't remove a blog from an RSS reader due to not receiving enough feeds, but they may do if they are frequently overwhelmed with irrelevant or lengthy posts. Besides, blogging about nothing is pointless!
8. Advertising: Avoid using pop-ups and/or too many brightly-coloured or moving images - some readers will find these off-putting and leave your blog as a result. Advertise products relevant to blog content.
9. Promotion: Promote your blog using social bookmarking sites and blog directories. Network a little and find people with similar interests to the topics you're blogging about. Viral marketing can be hugely successful, if the right person promotes your blog. 
10. Content: Use only original content. Not only is it disrespectful to steal someone else's work, it will usually work against you in search engine results.

Detailed information concerning many of the above tips can be found in individual posts on this site.

Here are some useful books providing more tips and tricks for effective blogging. You can add them to your Amazon basket without leaving the site. For more great books about blogging, marketing, monetising, and promoting a blog please visit the Tips & Tricks for Blogger Blogs Bookstore.

Effective Online Promotional Tools: Writing Articles for Online Publishers to Promote a Blog

Writing articles for online publishers that allow self-serving links within the text-body is an effective way for new bloggers to promote and drive traffic to a blog, in addition to creating valuable back-links that help improve the blog’s page rank. There are many online publishers facilitating such promotion, and the best part is that it's absolutely free.

Online promotional tools are often too expensive to be considered by those new to professional blogging, or simply blogging for pleasure. However, most serious bloggers have the skills to write a 400-500 page article, focusing on a topic or topics most often featured on the blog. Clever use of this form of promotion can help a new blog become more successful in many ways, and all it costs is the time it takes you to write an article.

With a little SEO knowledge it is possible to take advantage of the publishing site’s well-established page ranking, and quick indexing by search engines, to promote web-pages that may otherwise remain unseen. When coupled with the additional exposure to traffic from the publishing site’s writer-members, this can be an effective way to drive targeted traffic to a blog.

There are a number of online publishers to choose from when looking for ways to effectively promote a blog. Choose one which appears regularly in search engine results for keywords relevant to blog content. Some publishers place ads on the articles, sharing the revenue generated with writers. Others allow writers to add their own advertising, such as Adsense, Amazon Associates, and Chiquita, to the articles. In this way the articles are potential money earners, in addition to effective online promotional tools.

When choosing a topic for the article it is necessary to consider the keywords most often used in blog posts (if unsure simply check the label list in Blogger dashboard) and those that make up meta-tags - not using meta-tags? Click HERE to find out how to add them to a Blogger blog. It’s best to choose a title phrase that includes keywords which are not too often written about, but searched for reasonably often.

The free Goggle Adwords keyword tool helps determine this, and can aid greatly in choosing effective titles for articles, and in creating rare keyword combinations. Choosing rare keyword combinations for an article is beneficial because it reduces the competition from other blogs and websites, meaning the article will be more likely to be displayed on the first page of search results. People rarely search further than the first two or three pages, so appearing on the first page will guarantee an increase in views, which may convert to blog traffic, as long as the article presents the link in the correct manner.

To promote a blog effectively the articles must be relevant to the blog’s general subject-matter (or at least that that of several articles/blog posts). Articles will ideally introduce a broader subject than that of the blog posts they links to, which should contain more useful or detailed information. For example, when creating a promotional article to promote this blog post, a suitable title might be ‘Cost-Free Ways to Promote a Blog.’ The article would list several free methods of driving traffic to a blog (such as listing in blog directories and using social bookmarking sites) and would list Writing Articles for Online Publishers as one of these, turning the text into a link to this article. Anyone needing more details regarding how to do so is likely to visit the link, thus driving targeted traffic to the blog, and potentially gaining a subscriber or follower.

Online Publishers That Allow the Use of Self-Serving Promotional Links within Articles:

Hubpages

Infobarrel

Squidoo

Ezine

For more information about writing articles online, freelance writing, and online publishers, please visit Freelance Writing Online

How To Monetise Your Blogger Blog Using Infolinks In-Text Advertising

One of the latest forms of internet advertising to grace our computer screens is in-text ads - advertising links embedded within internet text that, when hovered over, produce a relevant pop-up ad. This article explains how to monetise your Blogger blog using Infolinks in-text advertising.

Infolinks isn't the best known form of in-text advertising, but it is the company that pays the highest rate per click, and reviews suggest Infolinks also comes out on top when it comes to providing relevant adverts. I'm using Infolinks to monetise this and another blog, but I'm not currently in a position to review the company as far as earning potential is concerned. Instead, I will provide instructions regarding how to install Infolinks in-text advertising to a Blogger blog, and some introductory advice and guidelines concerning its use. I will, however, mention that there do seem to be one or two categories displaying very few (or no) relevant in-text ads, at this point in time. I assume this is because the Infolinks is still undergoing major growth and, as such, will correct itself, as more advertisers sign up.

Before signing up for an Infolinks account you should realise that not all websites are accepted. It is therefore advisable to wait until you have published at least ten pages of quality content before applying, or your website will simply sit in a queue, until it's ticking whatever boxes are required for acceptance.

Infolinks is incredibly simple to use and install, although the ads do slow down page-loading speed very slightly. Users are able to customise the look of Infolinks in-text ads by switching from double-underlined to single-underlined, with less intrusive dots (although this is not advised), or altering the colour of the in-text links to match those of the website or blog. It's also possible to choose from which category ads are displayed, and set the number of ads to appear on each webpage (the maximum number being twelve). The in-text ads themselves are fairly noticeable to visitors (depending on the settings you choose), so are easy for readers to avoid if they don't wish to see the pop-ups.

How to install Infolinks in-text advertising to a Blogger blog:

• Visit the Infolinks website and sign up for an account.
• Log in and click on the '1-minute integration' tab.
• Press the 'add to Blogger' button (Note: Mozilla Firefox users will be unable to add the widget in this manner, so should copy and paste the html provided before the last BODY tag in their html, or use an alternative browser such as Google Chrome, which works perfectly).
• You will now be redirected to Blogger, where you must sign in and select the correct blog before being able to add the widget.

If you wish to customise your ads use the following instructions:

• Click on the 'advanced integration wizard' tab.
• Choose a colour, and other preferred settings.
• Press save.

If ads are appearing in the wrong parts of your blog - for example, you may have link lists in your sidebars which are being overwritten by infolinks ads - you can easily remove them by editing the html of your blog template to start and stop infolinks at the desired places on your webpage. Full instructions are provided on the 'advanced integration' page, the link to which can be found at the bottom of your 'advanced integration wizard' page. Instructions are also provided for other customisations, including setting the system to display ads based on keywords, which should lead to a higher click through rate (CTR), which translates into higher earnings.