Flashmint Blog Design is holding a contest for both bloggers and designer where designers can win $500 for there theme design and three bloggers can win $500 for just blogging about the contest.

Designers:
All you have to do is just submit you theme zip file and a screenshot with 300×300px before September 1st 2008. The winner will be announced after 2-3 days and get the prize money – $500.

It should come with the following features:

• 3 columns
• fixed width (optimized to 1024×768 resolution) and widget support
• coded
• The colors and style of the theme should correspond to Flashmint design!

Bloggers:
This is lovable part of the contest is bloggers just have to blog about the contest and the three bloggers who will drive largest number of visitors to them will win $300, $200 and $100 for the first, second, third largest number of visitors respectively.

The rules are quite simple:

• Just add the code fragment under your latest post. Get the code here.
• Surely you can make minor changes in the text of the paragraph at your discretion, the only request is to leave the anchor texts just as they are, and the links should be “dofollow”.

Thats not all the reason for blogging is that am going to design a wordpress theme for this contest so just thought it might interest you too

Show off your skills in a competition for bloggers and designers at Flashmint.com, a famous Flash Web Templates provider, to gain from $100 to $800. See the details.

Here i have built The Best 35 Most Popular Wordpress Plugins which are really help full for bloggers to boost your wordpress blogs right from traffic, content, feeds, comments, ajax, make money, sitemaps and more. There are some thousands of wordpress plugins out there but i have included all the top best plugins which i really thinks helps a blogger built a better blog(10 Tips for making your blog more profitableTips for making your blog more profitable)

Check out the most popular wordpress plugins below:

• Get Recent Comments – This plugin displays excerpts of the latest comments or trackbacks of your posts in your sidebar. You will have a comprehensive control on how they appear. It ranges from the number of comments, to the length of the excerpts up to the html layout. This plugin also lets you to order the comments by the corresponding post, or simply sort them by date. Even you can filter the unwanted pingbacks, which originate from your own blog. And it is a widget.
• Google (XML) Sitemaps Generator – This is really a smart plugin that generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. The generated formats are supported by Google, MSN, Yahoo and Ask.com Search. XML-Sitemaps will help you to get indexed by the major search engines.
• All in One SEO Pack – This plugin Optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engine Optimization(SEO). To help your blog better index.
• WordPress Database Backup – WordPress database backup creates backups of your core WordPress tables as well as other tables of your choice in the same database.
• Gravatars – Automattic, the company behind WordPress, recently acquired Gravatar. In case you don’t know, gravatars—or “globally recognized avatars”—are images that you can associate with an email address, so a picture of your choice can appear alongside your comments on many others’ blogs.
• Akismet – Who can? You have better things to do with your life than deal with the underbelly of the internet. Automattic Kismet (Akismet for short) is a collaborative effort to make comment and trackback spam a non-issue and restore innocence to blogging, so you never have to worry about spam again.
• AJAX Comment Preview – Other preview plugins don’t know what sort of changes WordPress will make to a visitor’s comment, but this plugin uses AJAX to send each previewed comment through WordPress’ inner voodoo in order to figure out those changes.
• Subscribe to Comments – Subscribe to Comments is a simple wordpess plugin that allows commenters on your blog to get e-mail notification of further comments. It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there for the simple reason that it helps foster a community around your blog by encouraging commenters to come back and stay engaged in the dialog.
• Comment Relish – This is one of the rare and most wanted plugin for a blogger to boost there feeds. When a reader makes his first comment on your blog then it will send a Thank you mail to his email.
• Most Commented – Retrieves a list of the posts with the most comments.
• Skype Smilies with Wordpress – If you are really bored with the normal yahoo and msn smilies then you must try these sweet Skype Smilies which your readers will love to leave a comment with them

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I know most of you are looking to make your blog a profitable source? In recent times, blogs have become an excellent tool for marketing and generating profits, you can also read the 5 Reasons Why Blogging is New Internet Marketing Tool. Generating profits from your blogs is catching attention of targeted audiences.

Here are some quick Ten steps that can help our blogs generate revenue without using direct selling methods.

Where should you start?
Are you a first-time blogger? If you are, then you should begin with free hosting services. Starting with a free service allows you in blogging with little or no knowledge of hosting, programming and scripts.

In such cases, you are only concerned with filling quality content in your blog rather than paying high bills. You should upgrade to paid services when you feel that your contents are actually attractive to viewers of your choice.

1. Using appropriate niche
   Niche is targeted products, services, or topics. You should always be aware of what is suitable for your working style. Choosing areas where enthusiastic writing from your end on regularity is possible can work for you. Through keyword researching services, you should find search topics that are most popular. Even if your topic is interesting, it has no value without any adequate audience support. Again, tedious topics with quality content and viewers support can earn help you in generating profit from your blog.

2. Regularly updating your blog
   It is one of the most imperative points to remember while thinking about developing a profitable blog. Regularly updating the blog with quality content not only allows unique viewers to increase their visits, it also helps your blog to have an impact on search engine rankings. Posting 2-3 unique content regularly can help you in generating more attention from viewers on the blog.

3. Generating traffic for your blog
   There is no secret to the fact that you require trafficking in your blogs for generating revenue. There are several techniques for generating revenue on the web. Paid advertisements, free advertisements, search engine marketing, viral marketing and RSS/XML feeds forms some of the ways that can help you in getting the desired traffic. Again, you should use the blog URL in your signatures of forum posts and emails for getting it noticed on the web.

   Submitting the URL to blog directories and search engine can also help in generating the desired traffic. There are some blog owners, who publish their contents in paid or free article submission directories, to accomplish the desire task.

4. Keeping track of the traffic in your blog
   Read the rest of this entry »

Thebloggersguide.com is a network of blogs from the world’s cities.It harnesses the power and the knowledge of the blogosphere to create a completely new type of city guides. Yes these are professional travelers and bloggers.The most important thing is that they don’t do pages and pages of listings, rather,make a few recommendations.

These blogger get “kudos” points based on their activity on the site and most importantly the popularity of their posts.Kudos are converted to money and the highest ranking bloggers is invited to become editors of a particular city section and the published guide book.

The bloggers guide runs monthly travel writing competition for writing views.Topics are provided.

The best was New York City Guide by torimcm.Has lots and lots of quality articles,photos,recommendations etc.This editor is thoroughly talented.I loved his work.

HostGator.com is a privately owned company that has been providing services to several popular websites around the world. The company is the current leader in providing web hosting services to most of their clients, especially bloggers. They have six years of experience in the field and over the years, winning great number of prestigious awards for their exemplary services has been their main forte.

Services provided by the company not only allow clients to get websites, it also allows bloggers to get help in developing attractive blogs. Bloggers can choose from a wide range of templates from their domain for building blogs. The features provided by HostGator are best suited for bloggers. By winning innumerable awards for their contribution, they are easily “eating away their competition” in the market.

Role of designing a proper blog for your success:
Building a good blog is necessary for the success of any blogger. Taking the services of a web hosting company allows a blogger to build attractive blogs for promoting their business. They are not required to trouble themselves with the complexities of building a blog. There are available opportunities that allow people to build blogs for themselves and provide the bloggers with all minute trivialities required for developing one. With growing competition in the market, the current lot of web hosting companies sees to it, that every blogger is provided with the best services, so that they can be ahead of their competitors.

Features that are offered by HostGator to a blogger:
There are several features of HostGator, which allows them to rank higher than any other firm providing services of a web hosting company.

Large Web Space: HostGator allows a blogger to use a web hosting space of 600 GB.

Higher Bandwidth: The 6000 GB bandwidth helps in faster access to the blogs of their clients.

Script and Database: The websites that are built by the company for a blogger uses scripts and databases including CGI, PHP 5, RoR, Perl, MySQL, SSH, SSL, IMAP and POP.

Hosting unlimited websites: HostGator allows a blogger to have the option of hosting more than one blog with their help. There is no limit to the number of blogs that a blogger can host through them.

Round the clock support: In case, their clients need to get in touch with them for any reason, it is necessary that the company should be available round the clock for solving their problems. HostGator allows their clients to get help any time of the day.

Money back guarantee: In case, a blogger is not satisfied with their services, they can expect to get their money back within 45 days.

No hidden costs: You are sure to find no hidden costs or fees from a deal with HostGator. There is also no scope of any contracts involved.

Why HostGator is popular amongst most bloggers?

The benefits that bloggers get to enjoy when they use the services of HostGator are manifold.

Website assistance from edit.com: The expert team at edit.com provides bloggers with 100% satisfaction in all the services they require, be it the designing of the logo, the banner or the complete layout of a particular blog.

Merchant Services: HostGator allows their clients to make the choice on how to accept online payments through their blogs by providing them with prices and information that would allow them to know ‘how to get a merchant account for their business?

Easy domain registration: Bloggers are provided with the chance to get the blog extension of their choice. They can choose any one of the following domains like .com, .net, .biz and .info. It is very simple to register with HostGator and get a domain. The cost involved is also very less.

Getting SSL certificates: As online payments are made through credit cards, it is very important that the blog (if used for making online payments) should have SSL certification that helps encrypting the credit card numbers and their passwords. Bloggers can get SSL certificates by paying a small sum to HostGator.

Trouble free installation of scripts: The most difficult part while building an attractive and user-friendly is installing a script in it. Bloggers just need to send an email to HostGator with the name of the script, they are interested in installing and the company handles the job for a small service charge.

Why HostGator is one step ahead of other companies providing services to bloggers?
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Win Cash Prizes for FREE with Wild Treasure.

Wild Treasure Hunt is a social networking treasure hunt game.Treasure hunt is a puzzle,which when solved you could win $$$.It is a place where you can individually or with a team solve puzzles, challenge others and participate in discussions.Wild Treasure is free to join & play.Play as many Treasure Hunts as you want. There is no limit on how often or what you can win at Wild Treasure.Check out the sample image of my Treasure quests.The best and most easiest one was “Explore the world of fitness”. Directly paid me $10.

Wild Treasure has made making friends easier than in real life. All you have to do is send a request to your potential friend and wait to see if they want to let you into their inner circle. If not, who cares – send out more requests to others. Why join those social networking giants like facebook,orkut when Wild Treasure can provide all those features and also do something good along with your friends.

Wild Treasure hunt also have a referral program for user accounts. Any of our users can refer other users and receive 5% of the value of any cash prize won.Pretty easy to earn $$$ huhhh….!

Sign Up Now

Have you ever wonder how much money does google make from your searches.My Home Page Friends is a paid to search program that pays you to search popular search engines like yahoo.com.(Formally was known as my search funds)This program pays in English pounds,which is lot more than US Dollar.

My Home Page Friends pays approximately 1 pound for 100 searches,which sounds very less.But as you go you won`t even notice it.At present you mite be making hundreds of searches on the internet.As you use the internet, be for it researching, finding new stuff etc,you would probably use the google search bar or something similar over 10 times a day.Well all this can be done with My Home Page.My Home Page Friends provides the search box that is built into your browser (this works with both Firefox and Internet Explorer) using the plugin that they give you and just search as usual.I uses yahoo search engine and is will be adding more search engines,giving meta search results.

There are many ways to maximize your earnings from My Home Page Friends.Here are some

1. Search More

Why not type the website address in the search box instead of the address bar

2. Referrals
You also have the chance to benefit from those you recommend to My Home Page Friends. You get 10% of their earnings and I think even a small portion of their referrals earnings.

Entrecard.com is gaining lot of popularity these days.Every Blogger knows about it,as it helps to get lot of visitors to the blog.EntreDropper is plugin for Wordpress ,which allows any one to get backlink from the website by dropping entrecard.It is very helpful if your blog is hungry for backlinks.

Here is a preview website using this plugin Tiny Goa.Visit the website and drop entrecards to get a backlink on it.

If you are planning to use it on your own blog,you need to have Wordpress installed on your web server.But before using it,please do read the entrecard guidelines.

Installation is pretty simple

1. Download the plugin file, unzip and place EntreDroppers.php in your plugin folder. (donot upload the folder)

2. Activate the plugin

3.The plugin is widget-aware and will appear in your widget list. Go to your widget screen and add EntreDroppers to the sidebar.

Alternatively, if you don’t use widgets, add this snippet to the sidebar file in your theme:
<?php entredroppers(); ?>

This tells WordPress where to put the widget.

4. Configure the widget
The plugin can be configured both from the Settings pane or from the widget control area, by clicking “Edit” on the widget. Most of the options are self-explanatory, but you will be needing the EntreCard Latest Droppers RSS feed to power the widget.Get it from the RSS icon in your entrecard dasboard.