I’d say my visitors are gone, since I haven’t posted here in more than half an year. We’ll get them back, no worries about that What happened all this time? Well, we had another 6 months in NYC, so we spent 12 months in 2 years. That’s awesome, and I can’t find words to thank our wonderful friends for taking us into their home and taking care of us like they did. This wouldn’t be possible without such wonderful people around. I’m working full time as a freelance web designer and can say it’s finally worth all the stress and … Continue reading →

Well, in case you’re here for the first time this year: HAPPY NEW YEAR! We’ve got some nice articles for you to enjoy, so this week’s top 10 for our blog is as follows: 5 Link Baiting Ideas For Bloggers – making others link to our blog posts is not that easy. Here are some tricks. Working from Home: a Survivor’s Guide – although I have never seen my freelancing life so “dramatic”, here are some good tips to have in mind, when working from home. Three Simple Steps to Break The Habit of Saying “Yes” – for so many … Continue reading →

In this Photoshop Tutorial you’ll learn how to design a simple and yet elegant layout for a news blog. Maybe you won’t become a web designer overnight, but at least you’ll learn some of the tricks of the trade and understand what layouting is all about. We start with a new document. I have created a 980 pixels wide / 1200 pixels high file in Photoshop. Since I still design for 1024 wide resolutions, this means I won’t have an horizontal scroll bar and also can “stretch” the layout as much as possible to use any pixel possible. You can … Continue reading →

It’s almost Christmas, so I assume everyone is busy with shopping and preparations. If you’ve still got a minute to read blogs, here is our top 10 articles recommended for this week: 5 Tips for Using Google Webmaster Tools – I’m starting to use the system more and this really helped better my Webmaster Tools management. Easy Potato Pancakes – I am all for easy recipes, since I’m a disaster in the kitchen. And, since I also love potatoes, I think this can become an excellent side dish for us too. I Got Fired – well, it happens. Another victim … Continue reading →

Having an active, frequently updated blog is the secret to success in this business. It will attract visitors and advertisers, providing good content on a regular basis. Although there are people who claim that posting 3-5 articles/day (especially if they’re long) might cause your readers to feel “overwhelmed”, posting daily is still an excellent idea. Still, even 1 post a day can become a burden and it takes TIME and EFFORT nevertheless. Read more

The last month from 2010 is already here. We’re planning for the holidays and still trying to keep in touch with the web world. Here are 10 blog posts from the last week, that I find worth sharing: A Twitter Exercise to Get More Followers – I cannot say I’ve been successful with this, but the idea does seem to make sense. Will try more searches and see if for another keywords I’ll be more successful. Grandma’s Money Lessons Still Are True – our folks taught us about the importance of saving money, not buying more than you can afford … Continue reading →

I’ve been blogging for the past 3 years. My Romanian blog is pretty well known, with a decent traffic and community. I’ve learned a lot of tricks these years and of course have made the biggest mistakes ever. One of these was to be inconsistent with my writing. I’d write 4-5 articles in one day (well, inspiration was sometimes generous) or keep the blog inactive for 2 weeks. HUGE MISTAKE! For the past 3 months I’ve made myself a new schedule on that blog. I write DAILY. No excuses, just 1 article/day, at least. My traffic DOUBLED. On this blog … Continue reading →

It’s sunday again, time to vote. Most of my readers have a blog too and they’ve started it for all kinds of reasons: some wanted to earn money from it, some have to take care of the company blog, while others just blow some steam by writing their thoughts online. The reason I started my blog was to write about my life and my work, only then I realized I can actually earn a buck too. What’s your reason?

It’s been a while since Darren Rowse started the “31 days to build a better blog” challenge. Although I knew about it back then, gotta tell you I failed to give it too much importance. My main work was on forum management and, not having a blog back then, meant not really caring about this challenge. Still after it ended, Darren worked on the book we talk about today, a book that, even if not new anymore, does prepare any aspiring blogger for his/her new career. The entire book is organized on 31 daily tasks to grow one’s blog. I … Continue reading →

I have started my life as a “webmaster” more than 8 years ago (March 2002 to be more exact), when I had a small site, dojo.ro. My beginnings were as a forum admin and not a blogger. Well, back then I don’t really think there were too many bloggers. At least not to my knowledge. Those were the days … quality posts, good members, almost no spam. I even recall some of us, forum admins, were pondering if it’s a good idea to actually install an anti-spam plugin. Find out more