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Sometimes market researchers classify a generation based on their characteristics to help understand how that generation is going to have an Impact on the world.

These sorts of classifications mostly comprise of young teenagers to young adults who are in their early 30’s. This is because most teenagers and young adults will have an Impact on companies and the economy in the future.

To understand the characteristics of this generation will be beneficial for whoever is involved in dealing with them.

Around the 1950’s the ‘Baby Boomers’ were a generation that was touted to be the most impactful in America’s history. There was truth to this because Steve Jobs was and Bill Gates is from the baby boomer generation.

Who are the Millennials?

The Millennials (Generation Y) are the next generation of young adults who will have an Impact on the world in the near future. The Millennials are estimated to spend close to

$200 Billion by 2017! And over 10 Trillion in their lifetimes

What does this mean?

This means you need to gear your entire business and point it towards the Millennials. Your marketing, the platforms you choose and everything about your product and strategy should be focused on catering to them.

They are different and these are their qualities.

• They have been part of the growth of the Inteet
• They do not think twice before trying something new
• They are the Social-Media generation
• They have the FOMO(Fear of Missing Out)

The Characteristics of Millenials

This is the generation that was bo when the Inteet was bo, like a pet, they grew together and have seen the Inteet evolve.

They’ve seen Floppy Disk transform into a Compact Disc, which transformed into a Pen-Drive, which transformed into the Cloud.

They have seen phones change from brick phones to smartphones just in a matter of years.

Their adaptability says something for businesses. Millennials because of their upbringing with technology will be more open to better and greater performing technological products. This makes them a great consumer for super Innovative companies.

Most Millennials are more open to trying new things because all they’ve seen in their times are new things taking over their lives.

The baby boomers, because of the world war were taught to pursue a life that was structured and stable. This meant buying a house, buying a car and ownership of day-to-day objects. The Millennials are slightly different, they are looking to rent and not own.

Businesses like Uber have thrived because of millennials mentality. This is true for even very personal products like clothing where millennial women are renting clothes instead of buying them.

The recession took a big hit on the Millennials opportunities. The unemployment rate is higher and they are looking at cheaper and reliable services that will help them. Ownership is not high in their agenda. Apart from the recession, the choice for Millennials is high, there is too much competition with varied value propositions. They don’t want to commit to one product.

From the Goldman-Sachs report are not very surprising numbers. The use of Social Media by the Millennials are much higher than that of the Baby Boomers(Obviously). This says a lot about this generation, they are more open to sharing things about themselves and focus on having a stronger Identity.

Source : Goldman Sachs Research

Narcissistic Personalities and Extremely Social

The Narcissistic personality is almost 3 fold in the youth (College going Millenials ) of today than it was in 1982. Although, this is a bit negative, but personal Apps and Apps that boost the self-do really well. Selfie apps and fitness that make one look better and healthier are the rage.

Millennials respect brands that have a very strong social presence. Being active on social and being effective is considered a sign of a good company according to the people of this generation.

This also suggests that they are more willing to share Interesting content and promote companies that seem interesting without anyone asking them to. This is useful for companies in the fun space and viral campaigns change the face of a company and bring in millions of dollars in business just because of a few shares.

Facebook has been an effective platform for the Millennials to express themselves and feel validated among their peers. Social platforms that have Interaction and “shareability” enabled in their systems perform much better than the ones that are not.

Apps like Quizup have risen meteorically because of taking the quizzing aspect and connecting it with the social aspect. Even games like Clash of Clans have friends and strangers competing and Interacting with each other. This was not the case many years back where Individuals played most games against computers.

FOMO and Early Adopters

Fear of Missing out is basically the mentality of this generation who see their friends do something and feel like they shouldn’t miss out on a similar experience. It can relate to traveling, owning a product and other experiences. This is good for businesses.

Businesses look for Early Adopters. The ones who will try out new things and be the first to adopt a technology or a style. In the famous ‘Crossing the Chasm’ diagram, the product flow is described with ‘Innovators’ who start the product and the ‘Early Adopters’ who experiment with the product and tell their friends which is the ‘Early Majority’. The advantage for companies now is, the Millenials are filled with early adopters who experiment with new products and brands and always are looking out for the next new thing.

Instagram had 36,000 users on the day they launched. More and more companies are growing at a much faster rate than ever before. This can be seen from the fact that the youngest billionaires in the world are around 24 years old.

They are Mobile-First – The Younger Millennials

The younger Millenials (1990-1998) have had access to mobiles at an earlier age than any other generation (Except the future Generation Z). This makes them comfortable in using the Mobile as their main tool for every single activity. Snapchat is a popular social network focused only on Millenials, with over 37% of their users falling under the 18 to 24 age group and their next highest group is from the 25 to 34 age group. This says a lot about how Millenials only have driven the success of this startup which has become a $ 15 Billion behemoth.

This is the reason Mobile Apps are a craze and the Millenials are more open to discovering new Applications that keep them engaged.

Final Thoughts

The baby boomers were a useful set with their steadier lives of home-ownership and focus on forming a base and following a set structure. But the Millenials are the ones who are going to change the way society behaves. Companies started by millennials will Impact society with their bold decisions and their non-adherence to the status-quo.

This is a generation that will push humanity to the cusp of a better future. And not too far from now a new breed of humans will arise that we call the Generation Z. Their rise will mark the supersonic growth of humanity.

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Arghh…The Smart man syndrome!

This one is long yet very interesting.

I can’t live without oxygen, food, books and most important gadgets. It will be all right for me to live without food and books for a few days. But if anyone will try to keep me away from my mobile, tablet and laptop, I will hit in his face with a club.

I am a lifelong leaer. I don’t know how to sit idle and do nothing at all. I don’t gossip.

I don’t watch movies.

But I love spending time with gadgets.

I am a tech-embracing consumer.

I think I’ve spent my time on my mobile, tablet, kindle and laptop more than anyone else on this planet — 10 hours a day, sometimes 13 hours a day or even more.

I am not mad. I am a normal being like you. In fact, I am productive more than the people I spend time with.

Everyone on this planet is given the same 24 hours in the day. I make sure that I don’t sleep more than 6-7 hours a day.

After waking up early in the moing, I hit the ground and get the right things done. Where young and trendy generation kills their time in refreshing the same page of a social network again and over again, I get busy in setting goals and achieving them.

And here it comes all the difference between the productive people and the rest of the society.

Productive people love their job and profession. They live their life comfortably. Above all, they ea money without being industrious.

It is necessary for everyone that they invest themselves with the right tools. And for a blogger, it is essential to use the tools for profit.

Time management plays a crucial role in completing small as well as big tasks. Without managing time, you cannot go any longer. Apart from time management, there are a lot of habits that can triple your productivity.

The best way I found to maximize the productivity is through our cell phones, as we carry it all day long. Most of the people waste their time in using cell phones.

Some of us might even don’t know that our priceless time is consumed by our mobile phones. So here, in this article, I will share with you the 21 mobile apps to make you fall in love with your SmartPhone.

I’ve been using these apps for the past one year. Truly speaking, these apps have made my tablet and mobile phone worthy of me.

I recommend that you read through all of them and then pick a few that feel the most relevant for you.

The listed below mobile apps, if used with discipline, can be proved productive for you, as these have saved my time and helped me in maximizing my productivity.

21 Mobile Apps to Make You Smarter & Productive

1 Forest

I love this app and that’s the reason I am informing you about Forest app first. Forest is an app that helps me to stay away from my smartphone and stay focused on my work.

Whenever I want to concentrate, I plant a seed in Forest. In the next 30 minutes, this small seed will gradually grow into a big tree. However, if I cannot resist the temptation and leave this app to check Facebook or play a game, my little cute tree will wither away.

2 Productivity Challenge Timer

One of the thing I’ve realized on the path of becoming better every day is that a man expands its strength only by challenging himself. The work what he does out of his comfort zone grows all dimensions of his personality — patience, sincerity, self-discipline, willpower, focus, and self-confidence. As a blogger we always try to remain productive whole day long.

As Patch Adams said, ‘You’ve got to know what you want. This is central to acting on your intentions. When you know what you want, you realize that all there is left then is time management. You will manage your time to achieve your goals because you clearly know what you’re trying to achieve in your life.’

Now don’t wait for the right moment. Install Productivity Challenge Timer and start planning, whether you are ready or not, to make your life awesome.

3 Pocket

Whenever I find any article or link to read, I just save it to Pocket mobile app. It’ll sync across my phone, tablet, and computer so I can come back to it whenever and wherever I’d like, even when I am offline.

Now, I can read everything in Pocket in a clean, easy-to-view layout that’s free of distractions. “Pocket mobile app makes subway reading possible. No longer do your lingering pages refresh mid-commute, leaving you staring at a blank, hopeless screen that cannot connect to the Inteet.” – Slate

4 Buffer

Buffer is the easiest way to share on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn. I schedule my updates to post at optimal times, whether I’m around or not. Buffer has a lot of my time by posting my content automatically.

So build up a queue of awesome content to share with your friends and followers, and follow-up on your posts with Buffer’s straightforward analytics to see which posts performed best.

5 Kindle

Often people have asked me what advice should I give them to play big every day. I ask them to read books. Whenever I want advice I pick up the book and read it. Reading books not only solve my doubts but also expand my consciousness to a new level. And once the mind is stretched it cannot come to its earlier state.

Do you know you have Kindle app for Android & iOS which is free & stores all your books?

I always carry a book with me wherever I go. In case, if I forget, this app helps me to continue my jouey in improving myself and become a better person.

The alteate mobile app for Kindle is Moon-Reader.

6 Feedly

A single place to read all the news you rely on to think, lea, and keep ahead.

Feedly allows me to organize all my favorite publications, podcasts and YouTube channels into collections. It’s one among those mobile apps that helps me to discover new sources.

7 Rescue Time

‘Where my day went?’ is the question I had often asked myself before going to bed every night. I was disappointed with my work.

I began procrastinating…

..The productivity level dropped.

Then, one day, I found this mobile app while surfing the inteet. And that was the day when I stopped asking, ‘Where my day went?’

Rescue Time is an accurate automatic time tracking of mobile apps. It reports voice call time, tells where the website time is spent, informs historical productivity reports to see the progress and provides privacy options to choose what I care about.

Above all, this app helped me in knowing, ‘Where my day went?’

8 Best Motivational Stories

Without motivation we cannot do anything in life. Whatever we have achieved in our life is only because of the motivation. I recall reading somewhere, ‘The first thirty minutes of your day defines your whole day.’

After getting up in the moing, I directly open a self-help book and read a few pages, or else I open my mobile and read motivational stories. The words I read clean my mind from thousands of thoughts and help me to focus on important tasks first. Driven by the words, I start my day tremendously and finish the work that plays a significant role in my goal of becoming better every day.

There are a lot of mobile apps on the web that provides best motivational stories. I’ve installed this: 100+ Motivational Stories.

9 Brilliant Quotes

Brilliant Quotes app is a collection of over 3600 carefully hand-picked quotes from more than 260 people.

It contains sayings from philosophers, writers, spiritual thinkers and other great minds whose brilliant words inspired many human beings. See it for yourself, download it now and get inspired every day!

10 Todoist

To achieve big in life, you need to be armed with big plans. A plan is just an exercise if you cannot accomplish your goal. Every night, before going to bed I make sure that I am going to use the next day to its full. I create a list of my goals so that I am going to maximize my potential the next day.

Todoist mobile app helps me to keep track of my most important projects or to just remember to pay my room rent and other expenditures. The similar app to Todoist is Google Keep.

11 Dashlane Password manager

Dashlane Password Manager allows me to keep track of passwords and personal info that I use across the web. I have safely stored all my passwords, credit cards, IDs and more in one safe place.

Now, within a few seconds, I can login to any of my accounts and save my time.

12 7 Week Habit

Scientists believe the sweet spot for developing a habit is right around 7 weeks, so once you have completed 49 days straight with little failure, you can be sure you’ll have developed a positive habit, broken a bad habit or completed a goal.

7 Weeks is the easiest way to make and break habits. Based on Charles Duhigg’s bestselling book, “The Power of Habit,” 7 Week Habit mobile app creates an ultra-simple strategy of completing one day of your habit or goal at a time.

Every day that you complete successfully marks the day as complete. Each day you complete your task and it gets you one step closer to not only making or breaking a new habit but also to increase your motivation, willpower, and discipline too.

13 Swiftkey Keyboard

SwiftKey Keyboard uses artificial intelligence to automatically lea my writing style, including the emoji, the words that matter to me and how I like to type.

Swiftkey Keyboard is an effective mobile app for you because:

1. It kills your typos
2. Type faster with A.I.-powered predictions
3. Simply swipe-to-type with SwiftKey Flow
4. Autocorrect that actually works
5. Always leaing your slang, nicknames, and phrases
6. Teach the autocorrect your quirks from your online accounts

14 Merriam-Webster

As a writer, my only important work is to spend my time in reading and filling my mind with concise words. Gone are the days when writers travel with dictionary kept in the pocket. Now, it’s an age where we don’t have time to find something. We don’t have patience. We want everything ready-made.

I’ve tried so many other mobile apps, and they didn’t work like I wanted them to. This mobile app is smoother than other mobile apps and offers voice search – to let me look up a word without having to spell it – along with synonyms, antonyms, example sentences and more. It’s a great tool for reference, education, and vocabulary building.

15 Eveote

From everything we get ideas. Ideas are the delusion if we do not act upon it. Every day, we get so many thoughts that if we pick one idea and act upon it, we can change our life.

Success is also nothing but a random number of tries given to our ideas. Only one idea can change our life. So I recommend people to always carry a joual with them. If you are also like so many people who cannot handle diary or joual, then Eveote is designed for you.

Now, you can write, collect and capture ideas as searchable notes, notebooks and drafts. Remember success is a random number of tries given to our ideas. Don’t miss any vital thought, and show a masterpiece to the world by working upon your tremendous ideas.

16 YouTube

If you cannot read books then listen to the audios or videos of your area of interest. I’ve doubled the use of YouTube mobile app after its feature of saving videos. Now, whenever I find Wi-Fi around me, I save the lectures and speeches of professionals in my mobile. Then, I watch them in my free time.

Not only watching videos help me to triple my potential but also enhances my speaking and listening skills. I highly recommend you to take advantage of this new feature of saving videos in your YouTube mobile app to boost your productivity.

Must read:

17 Night Screen

Now we are working for hours in front of displays to complete our projects within the time limit. So, it is very important to establish the viewing condition that minimizes stress to our eyes.

If you won’t adjust the brightness of your device, you may suffer from headaches, dry eyes and even blurred vision. Once you have established good viewing condition you can do your work faster and sooner. This mobile app is made up to adjust the brightness of your device. Download it now! For other platforms, you can use F.lux

18 Snowball

Snowball allows me to get things done without opening a million mobile apps. Snowball takes all the stuff from all the apps on my phone and puts it in one place.

It offers a unified inbox from where I can reply to messages from Facebook, WhatsApp, Email, Messenger and more.

This mobile app also helped me in avoiding the annoying messages by hiding them.

19 Deep Breathing

Everything is written in our breaths.

90 percent of the impurities in the system are thrown out of the body through the breath. Remember worries and tensions block the flow of thoughts.

The breathing patte is different for one who is depressed, unhappy, anxious and tense.

Deep breathing is essential to take control over your emotions — anger, mindless speech, anxiety… If emotions are controlled then life is controlled. Deep breathing for ten minutes opens all the doors of your mind to receive ideas. Deep breathing is linked to silence which is necessary to tread down the road of spirituality.

20 Dropbox

Backing up your important files and documents is necessary for you because there are a number of ways files or documents can be lost unexpectedly — Virus infection, physical damage, theft, accidently deleted…

Files you keep in Dropbox are safely backed up and you can get to them from all your devices. It’s easy to send large files to anyone, even if they don’t have a Dropbox account.

21 Stumble Upon

Welcome to the most powerful way to discover your favorite content. Simply tell what you’re interested in and Stumble Upon serve up the perfect mix of photos, videos, entertaining articles, quotes, news, art, memes, travel tips and much more from around the web.

1. Follow your friends and share your discoveries
2. Create lists of your favorite topics and follow other lists to find more content you love
3. Blaze through the best of the web at lightning speed
4. Share your discoveries via Facebook, Twitter, Email, and SMS
5. Download for free

We are at the end of our list. I’ve enlisted all the apps that helped me every day to become more productive. One among the greatest factor I found on the jouey of becoming a writer is self-discipline. Self-discipline is not to become serious, but it means you need to be sincere towards your goals. Self-discipline requires you to work on a skill over and over again. Whenever people ask me to define self-discipline, I often tu to them with the quote of Bruce Lee, ‘I am not scared of the person who has practised 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practised one kick 10,000 times.’

With the above listed app and self-discipline you can also be a world class performer. If there is any app that helped you in boosting your productivity, which I forgot to write down as well, then you can share it with me and all the readers by Idea below or sharing on Social media.

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Getting a Google Adsense account is too tough nowadays. And even if you get an approval, struggling with 403 Forbidden error is a next headache. In this post, I will cover up how to solve this issue.

I am covering this issue after my website Online Rockers Hub stuck with a 403 Forbidden error.

When do you get 403 Forbidden error?

403 Forbidden error occurs mostly for new AdSense users. Users whose AdSense application was initially rejected and later got approved on reapplying will get this error mostly. You would have even received an Adsense approval message just like the one below saying that ” Your account has been approved and ads will go live within few hours”.

But even after 48 hours, you may not see the ads. You will see a blank ad. If you check your website by right clicking -> Inspect -> Console , you will notice a 403 Forbidden error.

Why does this 403 Forbidden error occur?

This occurs because your application was rejected initially. So Adsense crawlers will be instructed not to deliver ads to your website. But later you have reapplied and got your account approved . But, Adsense crawlers may not be instructed about this approval. This is probably a technical error at Adsense server.

How to fix 403 Forbidden error?

1) Check your Adsense code:

The first thing you will have to do is, check if your AdSense code is exactly same as the one created at your Adsense account. You can get the AdSense code on your page by right clicking -> view page source ( Ctrl + U) . An HTML page will open. Use find option and check if the AdSense code is same.

2) Add your website at Adsense account:

Now go to Adsense account, Click the Gear icon -> Settings -> My sites -> Manage sites and add your website. Click the three dots icon and select authorization and check if ” Only Authorize my verified sites to use my ad code” is off.

3) Check with your hosting service:

Certain hosting services like Namecheap would have a mod rule applied. If you report them this issue, then they will whitelist your domain.

4) Switch off Cloudflare Rocketscript :

If your website uses CloudFlare , then you must make sure that you switch off the Rocketscript . Because Rocketscript will break AdSense code from displaying. Go to your CloudFlare account, go to Speed tab and check if the Rocket Loader is Off.

5) Report this at Adsense forum:

Now, move on to Google Adsense forum , and create a new thread stating this issue. So that, experts can check if your site has any other problems.

6) Use Adsense troubleshooter:

Visit Adsense Troubleshooter and then fill up the questions asked. So that, you will get an opportunity to file a ticket. Now, an AdSense Officer will directly contact you through email. Now, he will check out this issue and he will manually approve your account and then ads will start displaying within 24 hours.

Some genius will try to go to step 6 directly.

Let me tell you,why you should not go to step 6 directly ?

These 5 steps are common steps followed by AdSense experts to resolve this issue.

If you directly file a ticket and explain Adsense officer, then he will give ask you to do them one by one. However, each of his replies will take hours.

Why do you need to waste your precious traffic just because of silly ideas? So go to step 6 only after finishing the remaining 5 steps.

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Blog Idea has always been one of the most lethal weapons for inteet marketers to get a backlink, for networking and branding. Now, how many of you hate the fact you have to fill out all the comment box fields like Name, Email, URL everytime you want to add a comment.

At least, I hate this & especially when you are running multiple blogs; it’s more pain.

Well, Disqus and such other 3rd party Idea system are free from this scenario but WordPress default comment form is n’t.

Today, I’m going to share one useful Chrome add-on call “Easy Comment” for active blog commentators to easily (automatic) fill out the comment form.

Easy comment is a useful addon which fills out comment form quickly. In short, when you go to any WordPress blog to comment on, every time you have to input fields like:

• Name
• Email
• Web-Address

What Easy comment addon can do for you?

Easy comment Chrome addon let you add one click comment on WordPress blogs. This meant you don’t need to enter your details every time. Just click on easy comment icon on the top bar of Chrome browser. Now, add your details like Name, Email & Website URL.

We have also added the feature of configuring multiple profiles. Using this, you can quickly change your commentator profile. This feature is added to take away the pain of bloggers with multiple blogs.

From next time when ever you are on WordPress blog which has default Idea option, this addon will automatically fill up the details.

Well, this is the initial release that you can start using from today. This will save a large amount of time, and you can comment more on different blogs and websites, and this will also help you increase your backlinks.

Download Link: Easy comment

So what are you waiting for? Install and comment.

Do let me know more feature suggestion for this add-on in the comment section below. Do write about this useful add-on on your blog.

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If you want to build a better blog, you need a thriving audience based around your blogging community.

And you can only build a great community around your blogs when you have active readership. When I talk about improving readership, what I mean is generating traffic which doesn’t stink.

Good traffic is targeted traffic, and it converts better in every sense. As a subscriber, as a product buyer, and as an engaged audience member, these kinds of visitors are the ones who will be marketing your blogs in the offline community.

The hard part is building this active readership; you need to be consistent and patient. It takes time to build this improved audience base.

But don’t worry. In this article, I will share a few strategies which will help you build an audience base around readers who need your blog.

The Definite Guide to Growing Your Blog Readership

1. Use social media sites to grow subscribers

Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ can REALLY provide a great platform to build your online reputation. If you want to build a great readership for your blog, an active social media presence will you help you do that.

Regardless of how busy you are with your online businesses or offline work, make sure you are spending quality time on social media sites to engage with other bloggers and influencers in your niche.

One of the biggest mistakes bloggers make with their social media pages is they focus on getting more likes and shares, but fail to build a community. Once your readers are engaged, they’ll be the ones getting you more likes and shares.

The key is to make your readers/blog followers feel like they are part of your community. That’s one reason why I always call ShoutMeLoud readers, “Shouters“.

Try promoting your best content and comment on them regularly to build healthy relationships with your audience.

But, don’t be a scumbag and promote ONLY your stuff; no one will care about you or your blog if you only talk about yourself. Use a win/win approach by sharing other’s content and, in tu, sooner or later, they will share your posts.

This is how to build great long-term readership on your blogs using social media sites.

• If you are a busy blogger, you can use apps like Bufferapp to schedule content, and your primary role will shift to charging up engagement on your pages.
• I use a combination of Flipboard, Nuzzel, Bufferapp to stay pro-active on Twitter, G+ & FB.

2. Connect with other bloggers

Connections are everything in blogging.

Blogging is an online business. It needs good contacts, relationships, and a healthy network with other bloggers and influencers to succeed.

The more relationships you have built up around your blog, the better your quality of readership will be. Once you have a thriving audience, everything else becomes super easy.

You will get:

• More sales
• More profits
• Better traffic
• Better online visibility

Use other people’s blogs to connect with them. Try guest posting, blog Idea, and sending them emails about their posts to quickly build these great relationships.

Again, don’t be selfish! Introduce their blogs or best posts to your readers on your blogs. This way you will be actively building a great online reputation and a strong network of fellow bloggers.

3. Use guest blogging as a weapon

Guest blogging is no doubt one of the best ways to quickly build a brand around your blog.

Guest blogging not only brings you quality back links, but it also gives you more online presence and more readership for your blogs.

Tips for successful guest blogging:

• Don’t post mediocre content on your guest posts; always write high-quality posts. People will only follow you back to your blog when your posts are amazing, unique, and really, really good.
• Try landing on top blogs with your guest posts because these top blogs will always help you get loyal readers, more email leads, and an increase in sales.
• Analyze the blogs where you want to guest post. This way you will know how to write in order to capture that specific audience.
• Try to frequently guest post on blogs which are bigger than yours.

Related Read: How to Craft Guest Blogging Campaign for Maximum Exposure

4. Make sure you have quality content on your blog

If you don’t have great blog posts on your site, no one will be interested in reading your stuff.

Even if you have a lot of influence online, it won’t help you if you’re writing mediocre, generic posts.

Identify what problems your audience is having. This will help you write much better blog posts. Know what they want and build a network around them and what they need.

Research well and connect with other influencers to know what they are writing on their sites. Observe how they are connecting to people on their blogs to improve their readership.

5. Invest money on blog design

First impressions are crucial in blogging.

If you want to quickly grab other bloggers’ eye balls, make your blog design look professional.

Make sure your blog serves up a mobile-friendly theme, as smartphone users are increasing every day. I use & recommend Genesis theme as it has inbuilt schema markup & is responsive.

6. Respond to everyone

No matter how busy you are, spend the time responding to your readers.

Try to engage with them through your blog Idea, social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and respond to emails. Most readers will express their problems using blog Idea and emails. When you quickly respond to them and solve their problems, they will become loyal fans to you and your sites.

Take the time to respond to your readers and other bloggers and you will surely create a great impact.

Don’t forget the importance of creating healthy relationships with your blog’s readers. In order to build an amazing long-term blog, you need active, engaged, raving fans supporting you.

These are some of the strategies which work for me. This is the reason ShoutMeLoud is as successful as it is; we are a community of bloggers.

Try to implement few of these strategies and you will notice the difference.

Do let me know about some other tips which will help a blogger build a strong readership around their blog. Share your advice in the Idea.

If you find this article useful, share it with your friends on Facebook and Google Plus!

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Blogging Is Tough

Not a day goes by where you see a blogger getting views and likes in masses and eaing a nice sum of money on the side.

And all they have to do, to generate that audience and money, is talk about things they experience in life.

You can’t even go through 3 pictures on your Instagram account, without seeing someone famous in the blogging community.

Some are even featured on billboards on high streets and the face for certain brand products.

Being the unique person that you are, you decide to create your own blog and start documenting your life and experiences, to make a living from it.

After all, it seems easy enough to write a blog post occasionally and snap a few pictures here and there, as the rest picks up on it’s own.

With all the things you’ve been through in life and all the funny stories you have to tell, you have an endless list to blog about.

Fast forward a few months and suddenly you realize, you still haven’t made a single penny and you start to doubt you know anything about how to start a blog that will make you money.

On average you get about 10-15 views per day (most of which are family members and friends), no one seems to be leaving Idea and you’re drying out on material to blog about.

Your social media profiles have a few followers and everything seems to just stay the way it is although you put in so much effort on a daily basis.

Eventually, you decide that blogging is not for you and that all other successful bloggers know the secret or have something special you don’t, which is why you failed at it.

Plus it is a time-consuming activity and you’re busy with your real life anyway so it’s time to throw in the towel.

The Traps

Here’s a list of things most new bloggers forget, ignore or fall into, which usually is also the reason they never ea any income and give up eventually.

#1 Blogging isn’t easy!

If you want to become a serious blogger, you have to realize that the “secret” or “special thing” all the other successful bloggers have, is that they are actually hard workers.

Have a look at their blog or their social media…

There is constant new content on there and professional looking one as well. How often do you update your blog? How many times a month do you consider a lot of content?

Especially with social medias such as Instagram, you should be posting at least 1 image a day, with several hashtags, to grow your audience and maintain your existing one.

Anything below that simply won’t cut it out.

That doesn’t mean you have to be active within every area of the online world. You can be successful with just a YouTube channel or just your Instagram account.

But if you pick one area, make sure to stick with it and eventually branch out to others. So first rule of becoming a successful blogger, is to have the right mindset.

#2 Pick the right niche!

The second mistake most people make is not narrowing down their audience.

You have to pick the right niche and know your audience before typing your very first word.

Actually pick the right niche, even before you buy your domain!

You don’t want to invest in a great domain name, just to realize later on that it doesn’t fit your niche. It will only be misleading towards your audience if you do.

The other reason you want to have that right niche for you, is to keep it interesting for yourself.

Remember the times when you were assigned different types of homework and you would keep the worst for last? You don’t want that same feeling when it comes to your blog.

Creating new content should be fun and maybe a little tedious but exciting. You should want to research new things about your topic because you’re generally interested.

It will make your task so much easier and more personal when you type out your text, which also converts onto your text. You audience will notice your sincerity and honesty.

So remember to Pick the right niche!

#3 No need to spend a fortune!

The next point is a bit of a controversial one, but I find it important to at least mention it if you’re considering a blogging career in the future.

I’ve seen a lot of people come and go and spend way more money than I ever did in my 8 first months of blogging.

As soon as they find out about outsourcing, they hire people to do all their work and wonder why they get no traffic, penalties from search engines and no conversions.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve outsourced a fair amount myself, but if you want something done properly, you should understand how it works first.

You can’t join the game and expect someone else to do all the dirty work before you know the basics.

Once you understand these, you can consider outsourcing and hiring freelancers. For instance, if you hire someone to write your next blogpost, it should have a similar style to the previous articles you’ve written.

But if you start off with hiring people, you’ll have a different type of text with no identity to your blog.

Additionally you might not even know how to check it for copyrights or other factors that could get your site penalties.

The truth is, you can start off blogging, pretty much for free. The minimum investment should be a domain registration and a hosting plan.

Therefore, lesson number 3 is start spending once you see money coming in and you’ve understood the process!

#4 Know the basics!

As for the final point, I’ve briefly addressed it above but, it definitely needs its own sub category.

When it comes to basics, I can’t stress enough how important it is to get them right. You could be blogging for months and see barely any improvement.

None of your articles rank on Googles first page, people spend less than 30 seconds on your site and creating a single post takes ages for you to get out.

If you’re familiar with these issues, you might have to go back to the beginning.

Make sure you familiarize yourself with the basics of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Find out what keywords are what LSI keywords are and what long tail keywords are.

Most importantly find out how to use them properly. It may seem tedious at first and requires some effort but it will be so much worth it in the long run.

Therefore remember to know and master the basics!

But now that you know some of the typical mistakes people make and how easy it is to fall in these traps, let’s look at some of the solutions there are.

Regardless if you’re already blogging or about to start, don’t throw away the efforts you’ve made. Nothing is lost and you can still become a success.

Solutions:

As you know now, blogging requires a lot of work and it can be tough to keep up with all the tasks you set yourself.

But one thing you should start implementing in your daily routine, is a checklist. Write down all the things you have to do the night before, and prioritize accordingly.

(Small tip – Do the most tedious ones first! Once they’re out the way the rest flies by!)

Next, you want to stay organized (which usually goes hand in hand with creating checklists).

As for choosing the right niche and knowing your audience, we’ve leaed that this is vital to continuously have new food for thought and ideas to blog about.

But even the best niche can give you a writers block at one point or another. There are several things you can do to avoid this:

1. Set up a Google alert or more to get news stories directly to your email
2. Go back to old content and pick out ideas and create an entire post about it
3. Find blogs, forums and other online communities in your niche and get inspired

Often a question on forums make great posts people would love to read. Plus you know there’s a high chance other people are curious and ask themselves that same question.

Seeing other authority sites in your niche can inspire you and show you which way to go.

As for not spending a fortune, this still applied! However some people may find it easier to sign up to trusted courses to lea the basics and get support when needed.

But before you go and chase every online product promising to make millions online, make sure to read reviews about each product and do realize that all the information you need to be a successful blogger, can be found online for free!

It may require a bit more effort to find the right sources and dig through the information, but it’s out there!

Try connecting with bloggers, comment on their posts, lea from them and pick their brains. Go through older posts and see what they can teach you.

Eventually it will click and you’re just a step away from becoming an authority in your niche yourself.

And don’t forget that the shiny object syndrome is very real and many fall victim to it (I did so myself).

You have all the resources and skills it takes to know how to start a blog that will make you money.

Once you find your path, you should stick to it and not get distracted by the many other options, possibilities and ways of eaing an online income.

Do these things and you are well ahead of many other bloggers that fail within the first few months. It’s often a matter of persistence.

Now continue blogging!

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When it comes to monetizing your blog using contextual ad networks, there are very few high-quality publishers out there.

But Media.net is one of them. (Media.net is Yahoo! and Bing’s network for contextual ads.)

However, the higher the quality of the ad network, the harder it is to get approval.

We have seen the same for AdSense approval & BuySellAds Approval.

Last time, when I wrote a detailed review of Media.net, many users talked about not getting approval for the Media.net ad network. Most of the applications were rejected & let me tell you, rejection is always disappointing.

Well, it would be wrong to blame bloggers or even Media.net for rejection, as Media.net doesn’t limit itself to only judging website content. They look for a lot of factors before accepting or rejecting an application.

Just in case you don’t know, once you get an approved account with them, you will get a dedicated manager who will help you at every stage to optimize your ad placements & settings for generating high revenue.

I’ve never before felt the luxury of having a dedicated manager just for having a publisher’s account on an advertising network.

If you have never applied, or your application was rejected, this guide will help you to understand what criteria they use to accept or reject a publisher’s application.

If you are confident about your site already, you can skip reading & create an account on Media.net here.

• Before you apply, be sure that Media.net is right for you.

Traffic Source- Crucial for eaing huge:

For starters, know that one common complaint most bloggers have with Media.net is low revenue.

The primary reason for this is the geo-location of your traffic.

We have already talked about why we have low CPC for Asian countries and this ad network follows a similar patte. Unlike AdSense, this ad network works wonderfully for those websites which receive a high amount of traffic from countries like the U.S.A & the U.K.

However, there is a smart solution for this low CPC traffic & that is backup ads.

If you have an AdSense account or any other ad network account, you can use that to show backup ads when there is no ad inventory for other countries.

How To Get Accepted Into Media.net

Language of your blog:

If your blog’s primary language is not English, your application will be rejected. This ad network (by Bing & Yahoo!) accepts only those websites which are primarily in English.

If you are one of those bloggers who is using dual languages (English + some other language) on your site, I suggest you try applying.

Ensure that the first few pages of your blog showcases only English content. Once you get approved, you should let your account manager know about the dual-language aspects of you page & make it clear that you will be placing ads only on English content pages. (This may or may not work, but what’s the harm in trying?)

Original content & regularly updated:

Ensure that you keep your blog regularly updated at the time of applying for approval.

This is one of their main criteria as they accept only active blogs.

If you have a good blog which you are not updating, you can follow the trick of recycling old content to fulfill this requirement.

Leave a good first impression:

This one is a no-brainer, but I feel it’s important to mention as a good percentage of our readers are newbie bloggers.

These 3 things should be true:

1. Have the pages: About, Contact, and Privacy Policy
2. The design should be simple & not cluttered
3. Don’t use too many ads. In fact, when you have submitted your Media.net application, disable showing any ads for a few days.

This is one thing that’s very common among newbie & intermediate bloggers; they don’t take proper care of their sidebar widgets.

Get rid of any unwanted widgets such as live traffic or any kind of fancy things which don’t add any value to the content.

Tip: Take advantage of social proof, as this will leave a really good impression of your blog in the eyes of the reviewer. (Yes! They review all the applications manually.)

Other Important Things to Know Before Applying:

Your blog/website should not indulge in any activity that is listed above.

Along with this, you should have quality & valuable content.

Ensure that you are not spreading piracy, hacking tools, or any such content which may harm an individual.

Follow the usual ethics of blogging & I don’t foresee any problems in getting approval.

Overall, Media.net has stricter policies when compared to AdSense.

But at the same time, it’s more rewarding in terms of revenue.

So it’s at least worth trying.

I will keep sharing my insights & understandings about Media.net & similar ad networks in future posts. If you want to stay updated, subscribe to our email newsletter.

Do you use Media.net to monetize your website? Share your reviews and opinions below in the Idea section.

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lPre-Script : There is an Interesting challenge(competition) in the end that will help you become a much better copy specialist that will help you with your blog posts as well and if you win you get a copy of the affiliate marketing book worth $20!

A Primer about the Industry

The book market has never been better. This is truer for creators. With self-publishing gaining prominence, more and more authors who were on the threshold of creating a book have all crossed the chasm and have become authors. There are hundreds and hundreds of books that are published to the Amazon Kindle store on a daily basis. If humans see an opportunity somewhere, they are going to jump on it. And they are going to jump on it in droves.

During 2014 and 2015 everybody made e-books of differing qualities, most of them being bad. They gamed the system by getting reviews from their friends and families and put their books ahead of the pack. There are self-proclaimed authors who take content from blog posts found on the Inteet, make a quick e-book out of it and publish it in the market. There are thousands of these authors.

The barrier for entry in making these books are negligible now. Everybody can make a book with the help of expert editors and Ghostwriters. A ghostwriter is a person you pay money to make a book and they will write the entire book for you, but you will be the author of the book. So this means, you do not have to write a single word to be an Author.

Now why am I saying all this? You may be extremely passionate about your book and its content but you are fighting a marketing game with all these authors. It’s not about the content. It’s about people judging a book by its cover. Authors take pains in making that perfect book cover but they miss out on a crucial ingredient. The Title of the E-book.

The Title of the E-book has been neglected by Authors and they write something literal like “How to be a Digital Marketer” or “Digital Marketing Tips”. This just doesn’t work. Even content companies like Buzzfeed test and re-test their titles to see which ones perform better. Due to this reason a new phrase called “Click Bait” was coined. Which meant that these websites would bait you to click on the URL with a compelling title.

Let’s get to Buzzfeed’s perfect titles in a bit. But before that, let’s get to the most important aspects of naming a book.

Generic titles are all too common

A simple exercise. How different are all these books in terms of their title.

They are all almost the same. They use similar words and even the covers look very similar. And all of their main headings are the exact same. These are just 4 of the books I took screenshots of. There are much more than this.This is the competition in this world and it’s real. In your approach, you should want to stand out from the crowd as much as possible.

Let’s break it down.

What makes a good eBook title?

1. It works on the emotional aspect of the people.
2. It should make the reader immediately curious.
3. It should be attention catching and different

Back to Buzzfeed and how they do it. Take a look at the Image below.

1. The First Title – Emotion

The first title appeals to the emotional quotient of people. The “Will give you all the Nostalgia Feels” gets to the core of anybody’s lif,. their past they can reminisce. If I had to make a literal title it would be “Nick Jonas and Demi Lovato sing in the latest edition of Carpool Karaoke”. Now which do you think is better? Obviously the one on Buzzfeed.

2. The Second Title – Curiosity

The second title is a perfect example of a click bait article because they hide something from you and want you to read it to know more. Curiosity is one of the most innate of human emotions, we all want to know, even if it isn’t important to us. This title also accentuates the characteristics of the mystery man by calling him a hero.

3. The Third Title – Attention Grabbing

The third title is actually a simple piece of news where a flight accidentally forgot 40 of their passengers. But to make this title more appealing, they use an expletive to make it attention grabbing.

With this I hope you get an Idea of how to create titles that can be emotional, make people curious and that grabs attention.

Now let’s look at some examples of very good e-book titles.

1. Ryan Holiday’s Trust Me I’m Lying : Confessions of a Media Manipulator

This is one of the best titles in recent years because it is so catchy. The cover helps this an immense lot. But just looking at the cover, it immediately is attention catching. The Author has confessed to lying and you would be extremely curious to know how he did that. This title is brave and it is actually a business book for founders, entrepreneurs, and marketers.

2. Jason Kincaid’s the Bued out Bloggers guide to PR

This is another book for bloggers but as you can see it isn’t a literal title like “How to be a blogger”. It is much more descriptive. It appeals to the emotional aspects of blogging by empathizing with the struggling blogger. It’s true that a lot of bloggers struggle with marketing and reach and Jason appeals to that aspect directly. When you are taking advice from someone, would you take more seriously the words of a person who has gone through similar problems as yourself or who hasn’t. It’s obviously the former. This is exactly what he has done. And this makes absolute sense because mathematically as well only 10 to 15% of the bloggers will be successful and the rest 85 % to 90% will be figuring out their way and this book is for them.

3. Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s When to Rob a Bank

Who would have even thought of a title like this? And this is an economics book! Who said economists cannot be funny? This title immediately captivates and gets your curious about its content. The subtitle is also interesting. “131 more warped suggestions and well-intended rants”. They don’t even have an obvious number like 100 or 50 and the usage of the word warped is also pretty interesting.

Keep in mind that all these books are non-fiction business/ leaing based books. This is what makes it interesting. if you try to be different and focus on being appealing to your audience, you will most often succeed.

How to get better at writing titles? What is the dynamic of an E-book title?

There are two main components of an E-book title and they are the Main Title and the Subtitle. A lot of people think that the main title should be a literal offering of the book. So if your book is about Facebook marketing then the title should be either “Facebook Marketing” or “How to get results from Facebook marketing” etc. This does not have to be this way. So let’s break down the different type of titles there are.
The Kind of Titles

a. Single Explanatory Word with Subtitle

Your main title could be a simple line or a word and the subtitle explains the core of the book. Here is an example of a popular book that is in the format of a <Word> and <Subtitle with Meaning>. Titles like this bring about a strong brand around it. Just a single word makes it sound like a product.

b. Analogy(Crazy Title) with Subtitle

Another example would be is to take an Analogy and add it to the crux of your title and have the subtitle explain it better. In Jab Jab, Jab, Right Hook, Gary Vaynerchuk takes the boxing analogy and applies it to marketing very well. He explains in the book that marketers need to mix and match their marketing across platforms and experiment with platforms. The beauty of an Analogy based e-book title is that the book cover automatically can be decided. In this case, it’s a simple boxing glove.

c. Own Made up Word with Subtitle

This style of naming a book has gained prominence especially post the advent of social media there are so many components to marketing that it has become convoluted. So authors sometimes create their own words to explain their topics better. Here is an example of a book called “Viralnomics” that is simply Virality + Economics. A title like this, if done well can establish you as an Authority in a specific niche. Just like what happened with Sean Ellis who coined the term “Growth Hacking”.

d. Controversial title with subtitle.

We’ve already seen an example of this and that is Trust Me I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday. This kind of title really works because it’s honest and brutal and unexpected. Most of the book titles are promising a rosy picture or a greater future or how to get “great” at something. With controversial titles, the focus is taken away from these cliches and this makes it super interesting. Be careful with controversial titles because they can backfire. Test your titles with a closed group before showing it to a bigger group.

These were the different kind of titles that you can explore while creating yours. Now, there is a silent guardian and a protector(Dark Knight? ) in all of this. That is the subtitle.

If you only take the main titles of all the books above, it won’t really make sense without the subtitle. For example

1. Jab Jab Jab Right Hook : It maybe a book about boxing
2. Trust Me I’m Lying : A book about a serial liar.

How do you make a good eBook subtitle?

The subtitles have to be long, descriptive and explain clearly what the book is all about. Taking the Viralnomics as an example the subtitle is ‘How to get people to want to talk about you’ and in the case of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook it is ‘How to tell your story in a noisy social world’.

Looking at the subtitles it is clear what the book aims to teach. And if you notice, just by looking at the subtitles it seems that both the books address the same issue. But, if you combine it with the title and the sub title then it comes across as two different books tackling different problems. That is the power of a title, you can stand out and make your book look different from the competition.

Competition to win $20 worth goodies

Now that you’ve leat about titles and subtitles. Let’s get Actionable and make a competition out of it!

The best way to go about getting good at something is to actually do it. So let’s do an exercise. Imagine that you are writing a book about

“How to make Blogging as a Full-Time profession ” This is your core topic of the book

Imagine that the content contains the following topics :

1. The ways through which blogging can be made a profession.
2. Stories and examples of successful bloggers.
3. Strategies to grow your blog.

Contest to win Affiliate marketing eBook:

Based on the above information to those who want to participate, we want you to

1. Make a Title
2. Make a Sub-Title

and the best title and sub-title(combination) will be voted by everybody and the winner will get a free affiliate marketing book worth $20.

Tips on writing a book name

1. Don’t immediately mention the first book title that comes to your head.
2. List down 5 to 10 ten names at least.
3. Run these 10 names by your friends.
4. Decide on the top 1 and mention it as a comment.

Enter your titles and subtitles in the Idea below!

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If you are one of those bloggers who is using a free WordPress theme, you are likely changing your theme around a lot.

Two of the most commonly asked questions regarding changing a WordPress theme are:

• Will it affect my blog’s SEO?
• Will it affect my blog’s traffic?

The answer to this question changes with different scenarios, and I will try to answer this question from all angles with regards to WordPress, SEO, and traffic.

But before I move ahead, there are a few things that you should know:

• Many WordPress themes like Genesis and Thesis come with built-in SEO options, and if you are using the theme’s SEO feature, chances are high that your blog’s SEO will be affected.
• If you are using an SEO WordPress plugin to handle your blog’s SEO, you are more likely to retain your overall SEO, but only if your new WordPress theme is SEO optimized.

Who is Handling Your Blog’s SEO? WordPress Theme or SEO Plugin?

Before shifting to the Genesis WordPress theme last year…

… I was using the Thesis theme, and thanks to the Thesis SEO feature, it handled all of my blog’s (on-site and on-page) search engine optimization requirements.

The benefit of this was that I was running one less plugin, and since I don’t change my theme framework often, it worked for me. But for bloggers who are in the habit of changing their WordPress themes every now and then, it’s a good idea to let a WordPress plugin handle your blog’s SEO. After the launch of Thesis 2.0, I have made the decision to shift to an SEO plugin.

This is where I realized it’s better to use a plugin to handle the SEO part. I highly recommend using the Free WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin, which is one of the best free plugins out there. It will let you handle your complete blog’s on-site and on-page SEO.

For me, it was not a problem to shift my SEO settings from my theme to a plugin & you can read about it here.

Changing WordPress themes could lead to these potential issues:

Heading tag changes:

Imagine you change a WordPress theme, and you are using H2 tags for post titles, or your post titles are hyperlinked. This will surely affect your overall search engine ranking.

You must have heard that Genesis & Thesis are two of the top SEO optimized WordPress themes. This is because their codes are clean, they use proper heading tags, and they take care of all small requirements for an SEO optimized theme.

When you are making a shift from a good theme to another good theme, you have less to worry about. But, when you make the shift to a brand new WordPress theme, chances are high that they are not as SEO optimized as the previous one.

I have worked with many WordPress theme developers, and they are amazing when it comes to doing magic with PHP and CSS, but when it comes to SEO, they have little to no clue about how to achieve proper SEO.

That’s the reason I always like working within the theme framework, as they care about of all the little things.

You lose your custom settings:

This one is from personal experience.

When you change a theme, it might affect your old custom settings.

For example, here at ShoutMeLoud, I don’t use a sidebar for a few pages.

When you change your old WordPress theme for a new one, you might end up losing those theme-specific features. Either your new theme should offer such features, or you need to hire a WordPress developer to do the customizations for you.

Moreover, all the themes are coded in certain ways.

For example:

• Some themes will load the content part first and then the sidebar.
• Some themes load everything at once (which increases loading time).

If you know that loading time of your blog impacts your search engine ranking, you can clearly determine if your ranking will be better or worse based on how much faster or slower your blog is loading.

Change WordPress Theme Keeping the Same Search Engine Ranking

Import SEO settings to a plugin:

If you are changing your theme framework (Thesis to Genesis or anywhere else), you should first take a complete backup of your blog database and theme.

Then, migrate all SEO data to a plugin.

WordPress SEO by Yoast, offers this feature inteally, and you can quickly import all SEO data to the Yoast plugin. After this step, you can change your theme to any other theme without any effect in SEO.

Pick an SEO friendly theme:

There are amazingly beautiful WordPress Premium themes out there.

While they might look amazing with their design, many of them lack basic SEO features. Pick a theme which is SEO friendly and has codes that are bug free.

Once you have shifted your WordPress theme, you can use tools like SEMRUSH or SEO spider to crawl your blog and see if there are any errors these crawlers can detect. If yes, it’s time to make some changes to your new theme or change your theme again to a better one.

It’s a fact that when you change your theme, the crawling of your site might be affected.

So a little change in ranking and traffic is usually obvious in most cases, though you can always fix any SEO issues with a proper site SEO audit.

I always recommend you to stick to one theme for a long time, as changing your theme at regular intervals will affect the overall branding of your site. Moreover, most of the time you will not be able to immediately spot SEO changes which happened due to the theme change, so it may take some time to see any difference.

Also, when you are shopping for a new theme for your blog, make sure your new theme is validated by the W3C markup service.

I always prefer to use a custom design on my blogs; I pick a theme framework and hire a designer to code a custom design for me. This not only gives me a feeling of uniqueness on my blog, but also helps in branding. Once you have a custom design, you don’t need worry about changing your theme at semi-regular intervals.

You’ll be happy with that one.

Also read:

Let me know if you have noticed any search engine ranking difference after changing your WordPress theme.

And what factors do you consider before buying a new theme?

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I remember a time when compressing images on this blog used to be free.

Thanks to developer of the Smush.it plugin, we got very spoiled and became used to free image compression.

In the last few months, everything we know about free image compression has changed. Now, most of the WordPress plugins which are available online offer a small quota of free compressions & then you have to pay.

So in this post, I though it would be a good idea to look at all the existing image compression tools out there (free & paid).

Those who have a small or medium sized WordPress blog can use multiple WordPress plugins to optimize all of their existing/future uploads for free. It might be time-consuming, but I know that when you are starting out, money is more important than time.

For those who have a medium sized or a large blog, you may want to consider going for a paid option. This will help you load your blog faster & will keep your readers happy.

Here’s the formula:

• Happy readers = Good blog = Better ranking = More money

That’s a good formula, but let’s get down to the real business. Here are some of the best image compression WordPress plugins.

(Like always, I will try to put as many important points as possible about these plugins to help you make an informed decision. Cool?)

Here we go…

ShortPixel

ShortPixel is a developer specifically for WordPress. They offer both free & paid accounts (like all the others). Though, there is one really cool part about this service which I’ll tell you about in a minute.

Features:

• Supports Lossy and Lossless Optimization
• Supports JPG, PNG, GIF & PDF
• Restore original image anytime
• Compress all old uploads with a single click
• Process new images automatically on upload
• No file size limit
• Your free quota & paid quota are treated separately.
  • This way, you always have 100 free image compressions
• Save and keep a backup of your original images in a separate folder
• Option to optimize all images (thumbnail images) or only the original image
• Option to keep or remove the EXIF tag of the image. <Read about EXIF tag here>

Free account:

• 100 free image compressions every month
• Refer a friend program: For every referred user you get another 100 images every month.

Paid account (10,000 images):

• $9.98 for 10K images
• Purchased quota never expires
• Offers monthly subscription
• Supported payment mode is PayPal

Ease of use:

It’s easy to setup & the interface is very pleasant. You will see what I mean when you start doing bulk image compression with this plugin.

Tips on using:

Once you have created your free account, login to your admin area & grab the API key. Install & activate the ShortPixel WordPress plugin.

Add the API Key from Settings > ShortPixel.

Head over to Media library> Bulk ShortPixel to optimize your old images.

One cool thing about this plugin is you can deselect thumbnail size from compression.

This ensures that your free quota is only used for the bigger sized images, which in most cases is the culprit for your slow loading pages.

This plugin is updated on a regular basis & has 20K+ active installs with a 4.7 star rating.

ShortPixel is an ideal solution for image & PDF compression in WordPress.

Create free account || Create Paid account

Imagify Image Optimizer

This plugin is from the developer of the WP-Rocket plugin.

It has all the essential features such as bulk compression and image resizing.

It offers 3 different levels of compression & depending upon your blog type, you should pick 1 of the 3:

1. Normal, a lossless compression algorithm. The image quality won’t be altered at all.
2. Aggressive, a lossy compression algorithm. Stronger compression with a tiny loss of quality which, most of the time, is not noticeable at all.
3. Ultra, the strongest compression method using a lossy algorithm.
   • With the backup option, you can change your mind whenever you want by restoring your images to their original version or optimize them at another compression level.

In the coming days, they also plan on adding a feature to convert images into WebP format.

This plugin is also compatible with WooCommerce and NextGen Gallery.

Features:

• Supports JPG, PNG & GIF
• Resize images on the fly
• Resize based on percentage
• Support for PrestaShop, Magento, Shopify and Joomla coming soon
• Images above 5Mb will only be compressed with the paid account

Free account:

• 25 MB free every month
• Bonus 25MB at sign-up

Paid account (10,000 images):

• $4.99/month for 1 GB of data

Ease of use:

On-boarding is pretty easy & like other plugins, you need to create a free account & get your API Key.

The plugin is easy to use & once you have configured the settings, you can start using it right away.

You can enable or disable the option to compress thumbnails.

Apart from compression, one thing that I enjoyed the most about this plugin is the interface.

It’s sleek & feels like you are in a game.

Overall, this is a good plugin & since it’s from the same people as the WP-Rocket plugin, I believe it’s a good choice for anyone looking for reliability.

The only thing that you might want to consider before opting for this one is the price.

Download Plugin || Create Free Account

TinyPNG: Compress JPEG & PNG images

TinyPNG is a somewhat popular online service to compress images.

Features:

• Automatic compression for new images
• Supports JPEG & PNG files only
• Bulk Optimization
• Resize image feature
• Convert CMYK to RGB
• Single API can be used for multiple sites
• No file size limits

Free account:

• 500 images compressed each month

Paid account (10,000 images):

• 10,000 images costs $85.50 (One of the most expensive for heavy users)

Using the plugin:

After activating the plugin go to Settings > Media.

Get your free API Key from here, add it & configure any additional settings you want.

Go to Media > Compress all images & start compressing all your old images. You can also go to the media uploader & selectively compress individual images (which is a good idea to conserve your quota).

Create an account on TinyPNG || Download plugin

ImageRecycle

I talked about this one in an earlier post on online image compression tools.

While researching for this post, I got to know more about their WordPress plugin & I signed up for a free account.

One cool thing about this plugin is it lists down all the images in your theme folder. You can select individual ones or you can select all & compress those images. Preeeetty cool, huh?

Features of ImageRecycle:

• Supports JPG, PNG, GIF & PDF files
• All plans support multiple websites
• Supports sub-accounts & you can define a quota for it (good for agencies)
• Supports restoration of original files (images + PDF) for one month
• Compress all previous images in WordPress with one click or compress images selectively

Free account:

• 15-day trial
• 100 MB quota

Paid account (10,000 images):

• $30 for 10K images
• Valid for 1 year

Ease of use:

The plugin is pretty easy to use & in most cases it auto-detects your API if you are logged into their online portal from the same browser.

• Note: It directly leads to the media uploader for compression which might not be good for users. The first screen after activating the API should be the plugin settings.

Anyway, you can access it by going to Settings> ImageRecycle

When I was testing this plugin, I realized my blog slowed down a lot. This could have been for mulpltie reasons, so it should not stop you from trying it. But since it happened with me, I believe it’s good to at least let you know.

Once you have setup the settings, go to Media > ImageRecycle to start compressing.

One thing which I really like about this plugin is you can sort images based on size which is useful when you want to take care of really large images first.

Overall, their WordPress plugin is pretty solid & could be your next image optimization WordPress plugin.

Get 15-day free trial account for ImageRecycle || Download Plugin

Kraken

This is another paid plugin that is quite popular.

With 10K+ downloads & an overall rating of 4.7/5, it looks very promising.

Their web service lets you download & compress images from a web-page by downloading all the images into a single zipped folder.

Features:

• Supports JPG, PNG & GIF
• WP-CLI supported
• Keep backup of original image in the cloud storage
• Image resizing
• Preserve selective Image EXIF data

Free account:

• 100 MB one time testing only
• Maximum allowed size – 1MB

Paid account (10,000 images):

• $4.50/month (calculated relative to other services)

Ease of use:

The plugin is also straight-forward to configure like all the other image compression plugins on this list.

Here is what the settings page looks like:

The option to preserve specific data like Copyright is pretty smart.

It would be good if other plugins also follow this trend.

One big thing missing from this plugin is bulk image optimization. So it’s not ideal for those who are looking to optimize existing images. You will need to manually compress them.

Here is how to configure this plugin:

Download plugin || Create Free Account

(Since page speed is one of the factors for a better user-experience, and also a search engine ranking factor, we can expect similar plugins launching in the coming days. I will keep adding new WordPress image compression plugins as I discover them.)

Conclusion

I have compiled those services from above list that offer a free image compression quota every month. If you have a small or a starter blog, this should be enough to take care of your monthly need.

Services that offers free image compression quota every month:

Paid services based on features & pricing:

These are the paid services that I like based on features, user experience & pricing.

1. Imagify
2. Kraken
3. ShortPixel
4. ImageRecycle
5. TinyPNG

In my opinion, TinyPNG hardly deserves to be on this list due to it’s high pricing & limited features.

Imagify is what I would recommend for a paid image compression service.

Again, I will keep adding new WordPress image compression plugins in the future.

Which WordPress image compression plugins are you using & why?

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