I have good news for you! This article will be focused on helping you be more productive as a blogger.

Step #1. Have a Home Office

Having a home office is one of the cool things that just happened to me and the experience has been exhilarating. It has been a great experience and I find myself not wanting to leave the office anymore these days. I spend an average of around 12 hours daily in my office, yet I still don’t want to leave it at the end of the day. Why? I’ve found a place more conducive and fun for my working. No disturbances or distractions, I can create my own space and give it my own look and feel. The same thing can work wonders for you.

You might believe there is no need to spend additional money creating a home office “just for your blogging”, but you’ll be surprised. You need to start taking your blogging serious if you want it to take you serious, and that means you also have to keep investing more effort into making your environment the perfect place for you.

You will be at least 5 times more productive in a place without distractions than you will be in a place filled with distractions so make sure you have an office, or at least a room, dedicated just for your blogging.

Step #2. Create a Schedule

The next step to follow is to create a schedule for both your home office and blogging.

Make sure you have a fixed time to go to the office, and a plan on how to use that time. Don’t ever spend less, or more, than your appointed time in your home office or you will end up losing motivation. It might be tempting to keep working till 8PM when you initially planned to be closing at 5PM, but the reality is that, while it might be fun at first, you will end up burning out and all your efforts will have been wasted.

Make sure you have a strict schedule to follow and ensure you only use your time for what you planned to use it for.

Step #3. Set Goals, and Reward Yourself for Achieving them

Most of us just go through life setting goals, achieving them and repeating the same cycle over and over again. The reality is that you can only take so much of that, and sooner than later you will end up giving up. A solution to this is to create plans to reward yourself for every goal you achieve, and no, that reward shouldn’t be the product of your goal. In other words, if you plan to get an additional 10,000 visitors to your blog in a particular month by publishing 25 guest posts on top blogs in your niche, the reward of sticking to that goal shouldn’t be the 10,000 additional visitors…it should be something else totally unrelated to your goals. It could be giving yourself a day off, or treating yourself to a cruise or whatever else you find pleasing. Make sure your reward isn’t something that kills your passion, but something that makes you happier and determined to do more.

Step #4. Create Constant Changes, that can be Felt and Grasped

This is one particular lesson I’m starting to come to terms with lately. If you studied how human beings work you will notice that one of the best ways to motivate them to give their best is to employ constant, creative change. In other words, while you might have heard about the latest techniques that work really well to make people act better and work better, the reality is that that approach will only last for so long, as is with everything in life. There is only one solution, though; always work on creating changes. Make sure your working environment is always new, make sure your passion for working is always renewed and make sure your rewards for getting things done are constantly changed.

Getting used to the same version of one thing at the same time will soon wear you off, so introduce some changes every once in a while. It could be rearranging the furniture in your office, it could be repainting it, it could be adding music to it and it could be implementing the mundane in ways you’ve never seen. Make your working space feel different and your drive to work will come alive again!

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If your inbox is out of control and you don’t know where to start, or if you just want to start the new year off productively, here are 3 free tools that can help.

ActiveInbox

If your your inbox is totally out of control and can’t keep your priorities straight, you really need ActiveInbox. This plugin for Chrome and Firefox works with both Gmail and Google Apps accounts. It lets you turn emails into tasks, snooze messages to read later, and helps you focus on top priorities. Emails can also be organized into project folders and you can even add notes, which will only be visible to you.

The “Previous Conversation Viewer” is also nice because it helps you keep up with all correspondences from a single recipient. ActiveInbox adds a whole new section to your sidebar for better organization of your tasks and messages.

Taskforce

Taskforce is a lot like ActiveInbox in that it lets you convert emails into tasks, but it stops there. Taskforce displays a small collapsible task window at the top of your inbox, so that you can keep up with what needs to be done and what is currently being worked on. You can delay tasks and collaborate with other people right within the task window, but only if the other person is using Taskforce as well.

If that person does not have Taskforce installed, you can still collaborate with them, but it will be done via email. The Taskforce plugin is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari; it works with Gmail and Google Apps accounts.

OtherInbox

I’m a long time user of OtherInbox (for 2 of my email accounts) and love how it automatically organizes your messages into labels. It currently works with Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL mail. Basically, OtherInbox automatically analyzes your incoming mail and then sorts them by priority. The low priority messages are archived and organized into automatically created labels; however,  you can create your own labels and it will automatically adapt.

You’ll get a daily email digest showing you a summary of all your organized messages. A great addition is the ability to unsubscribe from newsletters just by placing messages in the “OIB/Unsubscribe” folder.  OtherInbox will take care of the rest by working with the sender to make sure you’re removed from the mailing list or newsletter.

If you’d rather organize your inbox on your own, there’s always Gmail filters, which have to be setup manually.

What is your favorite method of organizing your inbox?

Shelfster is easy to use and includes a project-based search so that you can search through your projects for specific items and data that you collect. New items need 15 minutes to be indexed before appearing in search results, so keep this in mind.

Getting Started

You can get started with Shelfster by trying out the demo or creating a free account. Sign up is quick and easy; you only need an email, username, and password to get started. There are some limitations to the demo, so you won’t be able to try out the tool in detail, but it is still a great way to see what Shelfster has to offer.

Create Projects to Organize Your Data

Once you create your account, the next step is to create projects so that you have folders to store your data in whenever you grab it from the Web, your computer, or mobile device. Since the left column of Shelfster will be empty when you first start, all you’ll see is the “+ New Project ” link below the search bar. Clicking on this is much like creating a collection in Google Docs: all that is needed is a name for your project/folder and you’re done.

After creating projects, the next step is to grab content to be used for your projects and with your online account.

Choose Your Preferred Capture Method

Shelfster has quite a few methods that you can use for capturing content to send to your online account. Let’s take a look at them.

Mobile Tools

Currently, Shelfster only has free mobile apps for the iPhone and iPad. With the apps you can gather and organize information that you capture on your device, such as images (capture new or use existing), voice notes (record within app), and articles (written within app). You can add a title, tags, and annotations to your items and then save them into projects to be synced to your Shelfster account. You can also choose to only uploaded images and audio on WiFi only.

The mobile app is great for because you can gather data while on-the-go. You can use your camera to capture a moment, record a voice note if you come up with an idea that you don’t want to forget, or write-up a quick article if you happen to get some inspiration while in a waiting room or long store line.

Desktop Tools

Whether you’re on Windows (direct download) or a Mac (direct download), there is a desktop tool available for capturing content. With both tools you can capture snippets from the Web (much like Evernote) or documents on your computer.

Just like the mobile apps, you can add titles, tags, and annotations to your clips and save items to specific projects (created online).

Browser Tools

If you prefer to clip content from your browser, you can install the Chrome Extension (direct download), Firefox Add-on (direct download), or use the bookmarklet. The browser tools allow you to clip text, images, and Web pages as well as jot down text notes.

If you don’t like having too many plugins installed on your browser, the bookmarklet works just as well and does the same exact thing as the plugins — it’s also my preferred method.

Putting It All Together

Now that you’ve got your projects set up and chosen your desired tool for capturing content, it’s time to get to work in the editor. The editor has 2 columns: all of your projects and content will appear on the left side. You can hide the left column using the small arrow if you’d like to focus more on the writing and less on the data you’ve collected.

Shelfster online is much like Google Docs; it’s your basic rich text editor with options to format and align your text, insert bulleted and number lists, indent text, etc.

You’ll need to create a new document before you can start doing anything. When you create a document, you’ll also have the option of selecting a specific project to add it to.

Once you have some data and notes added, you can click on the title of your items in the left hand column to open a full preview. From there you can drag-and-drop images into the editor and also select text to copy it to the editor. So it’s very easy to work with your collected data, plus it’s convenient to have everything in one place — no need for multiple tabs or windows.

Exporting and Downloading

Shelfster also lets you download and/or export your documents. You can download as HTML (in a zipped file) or as a PDF file. Alternately, you can also export to Google Docs. While this is a great feature to have, there are some drawbacks.

The main issue is “formatting is partially lost when exporting a document into Google Docs”. However, this is easily remedied by going into the line spacing options in Google Docs and selecting ‘add space before paragraph’ or ‘ad space after paragraph’ option.

Shelfster is definitely a great companion or alternative to Google Docs. All it really needs is the ability to share documents and collaborate with others to be the total package. With all of the above-mentioned features and more coming soon, Shelfster is sure to become a popular tool every type of writer.

Do you agree? What are your thoughts on Shelfster?

Try looking around on the Internet without the aid of search engines, and you’ll easily find yourself clucking around like a chicken without a head. Now, the services that Google and a lot of these other websites are invaluable, because they serve as the online information gateways of the Internet. This makes these search engines the best possible place to start advertising next to popular websites and blogs. But of course they’re way ahead of what you’re thinking. Google has set up a service called Google AdWords. The way this works is simple. Clients bid for keywords to tag their ads with. This way whenever a keyword is searched, their ads automatically come up on the side.

So why not just climb the results page?

Good question, but there’s a thing that you have to understand about search engines. They usually like to keep their search results as truthful and as relevant as possible. Adding a couple of websites or ads with links on the results page would really degrade the integrity of the results. People would only get the results advertisers and companies would want them to get. Now they wouldn’t be a very nice thing for search engines to do would it? Instead, they allow people to place ads next to the results list. Besides, these ads are just as relevant as the links on the search results themselves. The problem with climbing search results is that it takes time and a lot of reputation to get to the top page. This is why a lot of Search Engine Optimization companies are so popular because they serve to raise rankings, but that’s for another discussion.

What does any search engine get out of it?

It has to do a lot with how these ads work. You see, these AdWords work like Pay per click ads. Actually, they do work like PPC ads, which means that Google charges the owners of the ad per the clicks the links receive. Pretty neat until the website you’re advertising gets a lot of hits without targeting the specific people you want. Luckily there are ways to get out of it. People can actually change the specifics on how their ads are placed. They can choose the time, and location where their ads are shown. Pretty neat isn’t it?

AirDropper is a really simple yet efficient service that lets you request and receive files right into your Dropbox account. Dropbox is a popular cloud storage service that lets you save files, images, documents, videos, and music in the cloud. You can then access those items right from your computer or mobile device (via an app).

Because of how easy it is to use and access your files on Dropbox, it’s the perfect tool for receiving files from anyone. It also helps to eliminate the extra step of having to download files to your computer, since they’ll automatically be saved there.

Step 1 – Connect to Dropbox

To get started with AirDropper, you’ll need to connect your Dropbox account so that the app has permission to access your account. AirDropper will automatically create a folder called “AirDropper” in your Dropbox account; this is where your received files will be saved.

Step 2 – Send a File Request

Once your Dropbox account is connected, you’ll be able to request a file from anyone (as long as they have an email address). There is a simple form to fill out that includes your email, the email of the person you’re requesting the file from, a name for your request, and a description of the file you’re requesting.

Step 3 – Recipient Uploads File(s)

Now all that’s left to do is to wait until the recipient has uploaded the requested file.

Step 4 – Receive in Your Dropbox

Lastly, of course, you’ll receive the file in your Dropbox account and it will go into the “AirDropper” folder. It’s as simple as that. Whether you’re on Windows or a Mac (using Growl), you should get a notification of the new file once it has been added; so you’ll know right away when the file is there.

Signing up for AirDropper is quick and easy, so why not use it to request and receive files? It’s definitely a great alternative to using your email account.

To get started, just head on over to Pixtick.com and click on the “Launch Pixtick” button (or bookmark the actual application link).

Paste Screenshot

One way of using Pixtick is to take a screenshot using the default shortcut for your system: print screen for Windows or command+shift 3 (or 4) for Mac. You can then paste the screenshot into Pixtick. Also make sure that you “enable screenshot capture first,” to give Pixtick permission to access your clipboard.

Clicking on “Add” underneath your screenshot will add it to your canvas and you’ll then be able to annotate and edit it in the Workspace area.

Open Image

Using the open image feature allows you to add any image (jpg, jpeg, gif, png) that has been saved on your computer. It works in the same manner as pasting a screenshot; you can then add the item to your canvas for annotating and editing.

Note: If you already have one screenshot open in your canvas, adding another screenshot or image will add it to the current canvas – not to a new one. So you’ll have 2 items together in one canvas.

Web URL

Finally, you can add images or screenshots via the Web URL. Just paste it in and click “Get Image.”

Workspace

The Workspace is where you can add annotation and edit your screenshots. A few features include: adding shapes and text, applying shadows and blurs, cropping, resizing, zooming in/out, and freehand drawing.

Save and Export

Once you’re done adding annotations and editing, you’ll need to click on the “Finish” tab. Pixtick will allow you to save the item as a jpg, jpeg, png or pdf file to your computer. You can also set the image quality using a scrollbar. Once you click on save, you’ll be prompted to download the image to your computer.

Alternately, you can send the item as an email, upload it directly to Pixtick for sharing via a direct link or share buttons, or you can print it.

Although Pixtick is a very simple tool, it can come in handy for quick screen captures, annotating, and editing. This is definitely one that you may want to add to your bookmarks.

Once installed, you can quickly search for photos, pdf files, and documents via the Attachments.me website or by using the search box right in your Gmail account. The only downside to the service is that it’s not 100% free. There is a 14-day free trial, after which there is a fee of $54/year (which comes out to $4.50/month). Luckily, you do not have to provide your credit card information during the free trial.

Getting Started

First you’ll need to install the appropriate extension. Attachments.me has an extension for Chrome and Firefox (direct link). Once you install the extension, you’ll need to go to your Gmail account and click on the authentication link that you’ll see at the very top of the page. From there you’ll be directed to the Attachments.me website or you can head back to your Gmail account.

Searching for Attachments in Gmail

Attachments.me doesn’t change much in your Gmail account. You can still use the search box as you normally would, but your results may be a little different depending on what you search for. If there are photos, documents or pdf files that match your search query, you’ll see them above your inbox results (see image below).

Note: Attachments.me can also search for text inside of documents, not just in your actual messages.

You can also scroll over a particular attachment to get more options. You’ll be able to download the attachment and/or see the original email in which it was attached.

Searching for Attachments on the Website

As mentioned above, you can also search for attachments on the Attachments.me website. Using the website is much more efficient because you can filter your attachments by type, search through multiple accounts at once, and bookmark/save your searches.

Scrolling over an image on the website will let you view, download, share, or archive it.

As you can see, Attachment.me is not an overly complicated or feature-rich tool, but it does the job. While it does serve a purpose, is it really needed? It’s definitely handy for someone who receives numerous attachments a day and may have a hard time keep up with them.

Do you find it useful for yourself? Do you think it’s worth $54.00/year?

With that said, here is a list of 5 useful tools that are sure to help you stay focused and boost your productivity.

Focus Booster

This is a desktop app that I go back and forth with because sometimes it works great for me and other times it doesn’t. There is also an online version available for those that don’t want to download the Adobe AIR app. This tool focuses you to concentrate on a single task for 25 minutes (or more if you desired) and then signals you to take a 5 minute (or more if desired) break. You can even enable a ticking sound and end of session/break alarm so that you won’t work over-time!

Breaks are very important and a must for anyone who works at a desk all day long. Our bodies were not made to sit in one position for hours at a time. It’s important to stop and actually get up out of your chair to stretch, walk around, and even get a snack if necessary.

Title Time Tracker

This Chrome extension shows you how long a Web page has been open in your browser. The time is displayed right on the tab – in front of the page title. Note: Once you restart your browser, the time will reset. So if you’re one that keeps certain websites open like Facebook or Twitter, this extension can urge you to focus on more important things by displaying just how much time you’ve wasted on less important websites.

StayFocusd

This is a Chrome extension that not only helps to keep you focused, but also helps to increase your productivity. It does this by limiting the amount of time that you spend on time-wasting sites like social networks and online games. You know those days when you promise to be productive and get everything done on time, but then end up spending all day on Facebook, reading your RSS feeds, or cleaning out your email inbox? Well with this tool, those days will be behind you!

With StayFocusd, after you spend the alloted of time on a site that is your weakness, you’ll no longer be able to access it. The site will be totally blocked and you’ll have to wait until the next day to access it again for the allotted time set in settings.

DayHiker

This Chrome extension basically gives you access to Google Calendar from your browser toolbar. You can check your daily schedule, view tasks, receive “soft” reminders, see the current date and time, and much more. It’s easier to stay focused when you’re organized, can view your schedule at a glance, and are able to check off tasks as you complete them.

The integrated calendar is also a nice touch.

Chrometa

This is a desktop tool that tracks your time automatically, all you have to do is let it run in the background. It will automatically keep track of each website you visit and for how long. It will even automatically categorize your items so that’s it easier to see the types of websites that are distracting you the most.

You can then use this data to “reconcile” your time and create reports. Those reports can then be exported and/or synced as needed. Chrometa currently supports Windows and Mac operating systems.

Honorable Mentions

Mac Apps

Dejal – Time Out – This does just what the title implies, forces you to take a time out by taking “micro-breaks.” You won’t be able to do anything on your screen for the allotted time. Unwind is a similar concept, except instead of graying out your screen it displays beautiful, relaxing photos for your to enjoy.

Concentrate – Eliminate distractions by creating activities to help you concentrate, such as opening or blocking specific websites, launching or quitting specific apps, opening required documents, etc. All you have to do is tell the app how long you want to concentrate and what actions to run during that specific time frame.

Windows Apps

iFreeFace – If Facebook is your biggest distraction, this app will help you to stay focused and “beat Facebook addiction.” While it’s aimed at Facebook users, you can use it to block out any distracting website or online game. There is a similar app for Mac called Anti-Social that will help you block out all of those distracting social networks.

Writing Apps

If you need clear screen while writing on your computer, you may enjoy FocusWriter and WriteRoom. Both provide distraction free writing environments so that you can focus on just one thing, your content!

Do you have a favorite app for blocking out distractions?

Blogging Tips for You and Any Other Blogger

The following paragraphs are here to uncover a few important tips that can literally teach you how to make money with the help of your blog. Although many marketers already know that creating presentations, videos and articles represents a very important point of online marketing, they do not really comprehend that there are a few more things that they must do. In order to start, you should know that building a large customer list and driving traffic towards your blog are not enough to become successful and make money blogging. If you want to turn your blog into a money-making machine, you should:

• Get as many high quality backlinks as possible. You can achieve this goal by looking for blogs that operate within the same niche as you do. You can start commenting on their posts.  Make sure that you are adding your URL address in the “website” section, if the blogs allow you to do this thing. You will see that your rankings will improve in only a few weeks time.
• Give Something Away for FREE.  Giving something on your blog for free that creates value is a great way to get additional readership to your blog while creating a customer that now trusts every word that you say.  Once your readers trust what you say, they will buy anything you put in-front of them.

• Look for massive exposure. You can do this thing by using free syndication tools, which can help you to find different business prospects. And even greater is the fact that you can get most of these tools for free. Thus, you can finally promote you videos and articles on different social bookmarking and media websites in a truly professional manner.

• Choose pop-up autopilot formats. This can help you to get free leads through automatic tools. There are a few things that you can complete with the help of the automatic tools, including auto responses and pre written follow up messages. This way, anyone who subscribes for any items that exist on your blog becomes a new lead on your mailing list.  A good system for this is aWeber for an autopilot system.

• Have a professional header. Although most bloggers consider that the most important thing is the content that exists on their blogs, you must bear in mind that a professional image can always help you to get what you want faster than many other marketing strategies. For this reason, make sure that your blog is very appealing, with a professional header and the tools that you provide are fast and reliable. This is a great way to get new clients that will visit your blog over and over again.

You can implement these simple blogging tips right now and start reaping the rewards of your online business. Although it might take some time until you will get the expected results, you must know that the sooner you implement the aforementioned blogging tips, the faster the benefits will come along.  If you’re looking for additional tips on how to promote your blog check out “5 things you need to know about your website visitors” that will teach you what to do with your website visitors once you have them!

How to Set Up a Successful PPC Program

A PPC campaign is an easy way to bring targeted customers to your website. But it takes a lot of time to make the campaign a success. There is a lot of trial and error method involved in the process. It is important to optimize your content of the advertisement so that users click on it. The optimization of PPC campaign works in three distinct steps

• Keywords: Firstly, you need to come up with the keywords which suit your website well and sign up for a PPC cost program. Only then your advertisements will crop up in the first page of the search engine result page. You need to keep analyzing and find out which keywords work best for you.
• Ad content: Each advertisement will have a unique message stated below the website name. Optimize the content well so that users get the information they need. You should try and minimize the number of words as much a possible because users do not have much time to read through lengthy content. They might be side tracked by other websites content. You only have two seconds to catch the user’s attention. So minimize the content length and explain about your website. If you are not good with content editing, you may need to recruit professionals to come up with this particular piece of information to have a successful PPC campaign.
• Landing page: Landing page is nothing but the web page the user lands on when they click on the advertisements. Many advertisers give their home page as landing page but creating a separate landing page is important to have a successful PPC campaign. When a user lands in the homepage, they are lost and have no clue what to do next, they may leave. It will unnecessarily increase your bounce rate. Create a landing page that gives the user some information about the website in a short and precise manner. Then give a link of your home page. This will help in reducing your bounce rate and help you in converting visitors to your customers.

How Important is PPC in Online Marketing

I believe that only 30% of your website visitors should be brought to your site through your PPC campaigns.  That being said, you shouldn’t let this deter you if you’re getting 60% of your website visitors through PPC cause it can be one of the best ways to get targeted traffic while you work on other things like SEO. PPC shouldn’t be ignored because it gives a head start in your marketing campaign. When you start a website, the ranking gained through other online marketing techniques are not enough to have decent amount of traffic. A PPC campaign will bring in target users to your website that are searching for what you have.

I’m giving away a $100 coupon to start your own campaign with Google Adwords.  Best comment below gets it!  I’d love to hear what your experience is with PPC.  If you have any questions about PPC please visit our PPC Tips page or leave a comment below.

For many people, blogging represents a steady source of income. However, this activity can easily bring along not only a nice monthly income but also a great reputation. In this post we will go over thing that you should do to help you achieve online success, while making good money doing it. However, if you want to get some truly amazing results, you must consider a few important tips to help you become everything you possibly can.

The Most Important Tips for Successful Blogging

The most important element, which can help you become successful and earn money, is the traffic towards your blog.  Getting traffic and knowing things about your traffic will play a vital role. The more visitors you have, the better it is for your income and reputation. Furthermore, if you are able to write interesting posts in a truly unique manner, you can make a name among the other bloggers. Gaining a good online reputation will bring along important benefits to online success. But, in order to achieve this you must take into account the following tips:

• Time Management: Management of your time represents a very important aspect in the online world. Posting some truly interesting and high quality content on your blog, including posts, videos, and feedback becomes very time consuming and you can only do so much of it. Additionally, social media marketing and link building also require a lot of time. Thus, making a daily plan of attack can help you divide your time efficiently. If I have a plan, I find that I make better use of my time everyday. First step to doing this is to realize that your blog just like a full time job.  You have to put in daily work and work overtime some days to make it work.  I personally use Basecamp to organize my life and assign myself things to do.  It’s a little bit pricey ($100/month) but if you have people working with you it’s a great way to keep track of everything and assign yourself things to do, then mark them off.  Great for keeping track of clients as well!

• Build a List: Another thing that you must do is to build a list. This aspect is very essential especially because the list can easily help you double your profits. Building a list will enable you to properly communicate your readers whenever you need to. When you have a list you can send offers that will help your readers out while making money if they buy it.  We recommend aWeber for managing your lists.

• Build the Relationship: Keep in mind that building a relationship with your readers is the key to your success. Your readers and website visitors are who is going to be buying your products, reading your posts, telling other people about your site.  You must build this relationship, get to know them. You need to give them your attention. Most people want to know that someone actually listens to what they are saying and cares about them as a person. In order to build a strong relationship with your readers, you should start discussing their problems and help them find solutions to help them solve all those problems.

• Choose a Niche: This is the very first thing that you must do prior to creating your blog. In order to achieve some amazing results, you have to know what you want to write about. Furthermore, try to find a topic that is not very competitive but still has a lot to offer.  Make sure that you are passionate about this topic or you’ll blog for a couple months and get sick of it and quit.  Readers can always tell if you are passionate about something, it will show in your writing.

While considering all the topics above, keep in mind that blogging will take time and patience. Blogging can allow you to supplement some or all of your income from money you make on your blog. You can earn good money, become popular and even build a serious business. But until you can reap the benefits of this activity, be ready to put in a lot of time, dedication, and a lot of hard work!

How Many Visits and Unique Visitors

Knowing this is the most obvious piece of information – how many visits have you had and how many of them were from unique visitors? It’s usually a good idea to make sure you have this data every single month as a means of assessing (month on month) whether your site is growing.

How Long People Are Sticking Around

There are a few ways of doing this. You can look at ‘time on site,’ to give you a pretty good view on how long people are staying on your site.  This will help you to know if your articles are interesting and people like them.  You can also check out the bounce rate. If the vast majority of your visitors ‘bounce,’ you need to assess why. Getting traffic is one thing – but keeping it is a whole other ball game.  Figuring out why people are leaving so soon will help you to keep customers and gain more credibility in the long run.

Where in the World Your Visitors Come From

Are you targeting users in a particular country? Or perhaps you are going more specific than that and targeting by an area of the country? Whether you’re focusing in on a small area or you’re open to traffic from all over the world, having an idea of where your traffic comes from enables you to ensure you’re hitting the right audience.  It will also allow you to tailor your content for your specific location readers.

Traffic Referral Sources

Where on the web are your visitors coming from? Is it search engines? If so, which keywords?  What other sites are sending traffic your way and how many people come directly to you from them?  If you have traffic from a specific site you should reach out to that person or site and motivate them to send you more.

Devices

Google has, quite deliberately, made this particular piece of information more prominent within Analytics. Which could mean that it’s playing a bigger part in the SERP’s then we think. But it’s vital that you know which devices your users are coming from. Even more importantly, how well your site loads up for those visitors. Mobile is only going to become more prominent and understanding the device pool of your users will be vital to catering to them and their devices.

This is a beginners guide to Google Analytics, basically just the tip of the iceberg. There are millions more things you can do with Google Analytics that will help out your site.  For all you long term bloggers I recommend you read our more advanced breakdown of Analytics articles.  This will give you much more of a break down of things you should do with your blog that will help monetize it in the best way possible.

This is where a tool for backing up your documents for offline use really comes in handy. Whether there is an Internet connection or not, your documents are still accessible. Therefore, these 3 tools listed are great productivity boosters and make Google Apps the obvious choice for creating creating and saving documents of all kinds.

Memeo Connect

This is what I’m currently using and I feel that it does the job extremely well. Memeo Connect lets you bring your documents to your desktop (Windows, Mac), iPad, and iPhone/iPod Touch for online or offline use. It not only syncs your documents to your own GDrive, but it also lets you upload and edit your documents (you’ll need Google Apps Premier Edition Account for editing privileges). “The Memeo GDrive looks and acts like a physical drive on your computer and is integrated with your local file system” (kind of like Dropbox).

Price – $9.00 per user, per year

GDocsDrive

With GDocsDrive you can access your Google Docs on your Windows desktop pretty much like a virtual drive. You can also upload any types of files and folders via drag and drop. Sharing files and folders is easy can can be done with individuals, Google groups, Google app domains, or on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. All file types are supported and you’ll also be able to search through your files and convert them to Windows file formats (ie. Microsoft office documents).

Price – $19.99 USD for one license with unlimited future upgrades

Cyberduck

Cyberduck is a very unique, open source tool for Windows and Mac that supports FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, cloud files, Google Docs, and Amazon S3. One of its many features is the ability to connect your Google Docs account to back up and access your documents. It also lets you share documents by defining access permissions (read or write) for individuals, Google groups, Google app domains, or the public. You can also export and edit your files if you have a Google Apps Premier Account. Because of its many other uses, this is a tool definitely worth checking out.

Price – free

Honorable Mention

Jilicloud 

While you can’t sync your Google Docs for offline use with Jilicloud, it’s a great way to browse and access your documents online along with all of your other favorite Web services. “Jolicloud is a cloud desktop that makes it easy to manage everything you care about in the cloud.” It also has its own OS, which makes it a great alternative to Chrome OS.

A few features:

• Organize your entire collection of apps in a beautiful cloud desktop
• Add more than 1,000+ apps from the Jolicloud App Center
• Create your own apps in seconds
• Access and preview your Dropbox files
• Discover and add new apps your friends recommend

Price – free

Your Turn

What’s your favorite tool for backing up or accessing your Google Docs? Do you use a third party tool or just simply use the Google Docs website?

Most business and blog owners love to keep up with their data such as traffic/analytics, sales/revenue, Adsense earnings, etc. Unfortunately, it’s a pain to have to sign and out of these data sources on the Web; plus it’s rather time consuming if you’re doing this many times a day. Klipfolio Dashboard aims to be a solution for this and lets you organize all of this data into a single dashboard on the Web.

On the support site, it states that Klipfolio Dashboard “is software you can use to stay on top of stuff that matters to you and is the smallest and most flexible dashboard on the planet.” You can add Klips to your dashboard, which are basically widgets (even though they are said to be smaller and faster than regular widgets) that keep you updated with all kinds of news, statistics, and data. You can create and customize your Klips so that they are just the way you like them. Klips can even be posted to your website or blog and you can also purchase individual dashboards for your desktop.

Today we’ll take a look at the Klipfolio Dashboard, which works on the Web and is now in beta “trial” phase. It’s used for building your own Klips and sharing with friends or colleagues.

Getting Started

You can change the layout for your Klips dashboard. There are 5 layouts to choose from; by default it’s set to a single column.

See Samples

You will already have a tab on your dashboard called “Examples” which you can click on to see example Klips. These samples include:

• Revenue YTD
• Current Ratio
• QTD Rep
• Regional Sales Status
• Opportunity Breakdown – QTD
• Bookings by Month
• Tweets
• Stock Quotes

Add a Klip

You can start adding your first Klip by clicking on “Add a Klip” in the top left corner of the dashboard. Here you can choose premade Klips (like the ones listed above) or build your own. Building a Klip starts out easy, but once you get to the editing part, it gets a bit intimidating depending on the type of Klip you’re creating. Let’s take a look.

Building a Klip

Step 1

First select which style of Klip you’d like to start with. You can choose from:

• Value – i.e. margin, rations, ROI
• Table – i.e. sales, network status, pipeline
• Sparkline – i.e. site usage, budget YTD, performance trending
• Pie Chart – i.e. survey results, opportunity breakdown
• Gauge – i.e. goals, benchmarks
• News – i.e. RSS feed, Twitter updates
• Image – i.e. charts, images, maps, webcams

I decided to go with News so that I can keep up with one of my favorite blogs via RSS.

Step 2

Next you must pick your Klip’s data source. This can be a a shared or saved source (such as demos from the library or those shared by colleagues), a new source (such as an Excel or XML file), or no source at all (if the content will be static).

I chose “new source” since I want to get my data from an RSS feed. From here you can choose to upload a file (Excel, CSV, JSON, XML) or point to a web accessible URL.

Step 3

Now it’s time to add your source. After choosing URL, I was able to add the URL, select the data format, and choose a refresh rate (anywhere from every 30 seconds to every 24 hours). Next you’ll need to verify that this is indeed the source you want and then you can add a name and description for it.

Step 4

Here’s the tricky part. You’ll have to go through and edit each section of your Klip such as the headline, content, link, author, etc. This is done by going through the data and clicking on individual elements. You can also enter formulas and text here. Honestly, this part is a bit confusing (and where I had to stop) and will probably take some playing around to figure out. You can click on a question mark next to a specific area in order to get help - such as how to use formulas.

Once done here, you have to enter a name and description of your actual Klip and then it will be displayed on your Dashboard.

Final Thoughts

If all of this seems a bit tedious or difficult to you, then I’d recommend using a premade Klip or purchasing an entire dashboard to meet your needs. While this is definitely a useful tool, the actually editing of a Klip is something that won’t come easy to all and I think it could even really run some users away.

What are your thoughts?

It’s such a pain when you want to share a file and have to sign up or log into a site and then go through 4 to 5 steps before you finally have a link to share. It’s just much more convenient to have that link in 1 to 2 steps; plus it allows you to keep it moving so that you don’t mess up your workflow.

The 7 sites listed below will help you with that. These sites will allow you to upload files usually with just a single click and then share them with another click. If you have anymore to add, feel free to mention them in the comments.

Castle.so

Drag and drop files from your computer onto the castle and you’ll get a link that you can share. Others can then download your file by going to the link. You’ll be able to see how many times the files has been viewed and downloaded.

Ge.tt

Browse and select a file from your computer and within seconds you’ll have a link for sharing. Others can then download and view the file. You can also also share the file on Facebook, Twitter, or via email right from the website. Files expire after 30 days.

Sendoid

Just like Ge.tt, you can browse and select a file from your computer, but there is one difference: you can set a password and choose whether or not to have a reusable link. You then get a link to share with family, friends, or on your social networking profiles.

File Savr

Browse and select your file and then get a URL for sharing and an embed code for adding to web sites, profile pages, etc. You can also backup your files (host them for free) by creating an account on the site.

File Dropper

This site is very similar to File Savr. Browse and select your file to get a URL for sharing and an embed code for adding to websites, profile pages, etc. You can also create an account in order to host your files for free.

Dropdo

An image viewer that also lets you download and share files on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and via email. Upload a file from your computer or enter an image URL to get to share your file.

Minus

You can either drag and drop or browse and select the file that you want to share. Within seconds you can not only view the image, but also get a URL for sharing, a code for embedding, or share it directly on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Google+. There is also an option to make the image private or public and you can edit the title if needed.

Honorable Mentions

Wikisend

“Upload and download lots of files, big files, small files, data files, media files, archives or backups – any files.”

Jetbytes

“An experimental files transfer services which works without storing files during the transfer and allows to download it immediately.”

What’s missing? What is your preferred online tool for sharing images very quickly?