5 Blogging Tips I learned From A Public Service Bus Conductor

Ideas are all around us! They said it right :)

If you pay attention to your daily life surroundings, there is always so much going on. Couple of days back i was going through a public service 'wagon' and some great blogging tips clicked me at the very instant. No matter what sort of surroundings that you live in, the way you interpret them is what really matters.

At the end of the day, its YOU who makes the day the worst or the best one of your life. Every thing is within your mind. The upper story. Take things positively, and you would notice how the world around you starts to shape up differently.

We all know the conditions of the public services in sub-continent. Once you get into the wagons, there is no way you could think of something positive. You are forced to get impatient.

How The Public Service Bus Conductor Brought Me Inspiration?

You don't always need some great heroes to get motivation or inspiration for the things that you wish to achieve in your life. Its just how you look let them effect your life.

Couple of days back, i posted two great inspirational posts that you may wish to get your hands on:

• Arnold Schwarzenegger's 6 Motivational Advices For Bloggers
• Top 10 Short Inspirational Videos For Entrepreneurs

Let me give you a brief flash back of the public service environment in sub-continent. There are certain routes defined. The vehicles used for the transport are Toyota Hiace. Every single high roof is allotted a route ID. (Say 21 number etc)

Likewise, every vehicle has a wagon conductor that deals with passengers that gets on the Hiace from the bus stops. Plus obviously the driver. The driver's job is kind of an elite one (as in their circle) and the conductor is somehow called 'Nika or Chotay' etc meaning 'young one or small'.

Blogging Tip #1 Work Your Butt Off / Dedication / Optimistic

So what i learned from them in a 20 minute ride? Well, these people know the real meaning of 'working the butts' off. The conductor doesn't even have the privilege of a seat, where he could settle on. The seats are supposed to be for the passengers (as each seat has its own rent/toll).

With the backbone bent all the time, the conductors would work more than 12 hours daily. And to earn a living, they are forced to do these shitty jobs. What more could they get in such a turmoil situation after all? With a total education of no more than 4-5 classes (grades).

Each time they get to a stop, their faces are so optimistic to get more passengers, that would determine their daily wage (in some cases). So in the same way, we as bloggers should work our butts of in making new content for our fellow readers. When we think about these people and the hardship that they face for earning their living, then it gets much easier for us to type few hundreds words daily while sitting on our comfortable couches in air conditions.

Blogging Tip #2 Reading The Minds, Getting Used To The Surroundings

The way these bus/wagon conductors read peoples mind is amazing. They could exactly tell before hand the guy would want to get a ride. We, bloggers could be just like them. We are the ones who need to know their readership well. If we wont, who else would?

Reading our readers mind is one those problogger attributes that we must start working on right from the starting. Once we get to know what our readers want us to write, we would automatically be blessed with more comments per post and the social sharing would likewise boost up too.

Secondly, what i found in these conductors was their ability to get used to the surrounding that they live in. This is their fortune and they are pretty much satisfied with it. So on the other side, every body of us may come from a different family background with different level of support from our families in terms of our blogging career.

Not every parent would let their kids 'waste' (as some may think) their time in front of PC. SO its one of the big challenges that we would face, and thats where are adaptability skills jumps in. We know, this is what we have and these are the conditions that we MUST pursue our blogging world.

DON'T get demotivated by the surroundings (in case they are not very pushing).

Blogging Tip #3 Being Patient

Bus/wagon conductors are surely a true roll model for showing up immense patience. Irrespective of the weather, (some times it gets 50 degrees out there), these people would not indulge in unhealthy situations keeping in mind the level of public dealing they go through more than 12 hours a day!

I could clearly read their face expressions showing frustration and anger. But if they wont be patient, they could not last long in the field of conductorship.

So likewise, is it more difficult for us to show patience in terms of waiting for the success to come by? Cant we wait and keep working hard for 6-8 initial months of blogging? Why do we have to jump directly to money making ventures (AdSense in most cases) right from the day 1?

Blogging has taught me great things among which patience stands out clearly.

Blogging Tip #4 Multi Tasking

Wow, they are great at it! These bus/wagon conductors are responsible to recall the up comings stop to the driver so that he could stop the vehicle accordingly. Plus he has to gather the toll in the mean time before the person drop out.

He would exactly know the people who entered the bus/wagon on each stop and would ask them individually to pay the fee/toll. Its just amazing to their multi tasking skills.

As a blogger, we could be a great multitasking machine too. On a single day, we think of writing new content (that's a 24 hours job to keep thinking of the new content that you have to built. Traveling in wagon couldnt stop me from thinking about my next post.)

Like wise, we keep an eye on our competitors, plus mingling with our social media followers. Answering the blog comments etc. We all carry on these task side by side. If not, then its time to learn from the wagon conductors for sure.

Blogging Tip #5 Are Always In Rush

These conductors could be frustrating to watch too. They would search for new travelers on the very stop in a rush. The hunt for the next aim (traveler) never ends for them. So why are we so lazy to achieve our blogging goals?

Why dont we show 'rush' in bring our blog to the next level. Why do we lack motivation?
 

These are some of the great qualities that i noticed in my journey, on the wagon the other day and really wanted to high light them with the help of such post.

Hope you liked it.

Now What?

DON'T forget to share your views about these admirable skills and how many of these do YOU lack? Would love to hear from you.

You may like to read:

• How I Increased My Blog Traffic By 16% In 3 Months
• 3 Tips To increase Facebook Fan Page Activity By 52.3% In 15 Days

Google Testing A New Label For Slow Websites In Search Results

Site load speed was all the rage a few years ago, and was considered as a plus point. In fact, it became an important search ranking factor in 2010. But what about all the SEO developments over the years? The paradigm must have shifted? Well, it sure has, onto content quality and usability. So should you still focus on a fast load speed, or will an average speed do the job?

Over the years, Google has released and perfected many pagespeed tools to help analyze and improve your page load speed. Fast loading websites lead to higher visitor engagement, retention and conversions. The first 3 seconds are extremely important for a website to retain a visitor.  The more visitors leave your blog, the higher your bounce rate grows and the lesser your ad impressions.

Now, it has become more important than ever to have a decent loading time. Google is currently testing out a new red-colored label within search results for slow-loading websites. This red label will indicate when a particular webpage is slow to load, thereby warning the users before they click over to that site.

Check out an image of search results below.

Note that this update is currently limited to the mobile version of search. If that remains the case, then mobile optimization could play a part here. Even if a website is loading fast on desktop, it may not necessarily be set up to load equally fast on a mobile device, and vice-versa.

First, let us look at the simplest scenario. If your website contains graphics, blocking scripts and heavy media content, it is bound to slow down the page. Such a page will be labelled anyway. However, even if that isn't the case, it could be that your website is not configured to handle mobile properly. In the wake of responsive design, too many extra scripts can weigh down the processor on a mobile, thus slowing down the loading speed.

So while you are being mindful of this notorious label (which, by the way, is still being tested), always consider the above two possibilities. If you need help speeding up your website, we have a lot of reference material to help you along. Just follow the link given below.

• Push Your Website To Maximum Load Speed

Good luck (:

Blogger Will Now Automatically Create Sitemap.xml File For All Blogs

There's big news with regards to sitemap files in Blogger. If you have a blog running on Google's Blogger platform, you no longer need to worry about creating and maintaining a custom sitemap and then submitting it to search engines. Google will now automatically create a sitemap file in your root directory, eliminating the need for third-party sitemap services on Blogger.

A good, high-quality sitemap is an integral part of search engine optimization. It offers a really simple way for site owners to share information with every search engine about the content they have on their site instead of having to rely solely on crawling algorithms.

Blogger limitations

Many Content Management Systems such as WordPress let you easily create a sitemap with either native or third-party support. This includes Blogger as well.

Blogger, as you might know, is pretty limited. Blogger users can not access the root directory of their blog. Their content remains hosted at Google even if they have a custom domain. The ftp directory your web hosts creates can allow you to only host files at sub-domains, and if you try hosting files at the root directory, Blogger will return a 404 error.

As a consequence, the only good way of submitting a sitemap for Blogger was to submit an RSS or Atom feed, since it does almost the same thing and is in xml format as well.

Automatic sitemaps

There is good news though. You no longer need to do all that to submit a sitemap. Google will now automatically create a sitemap for your Blogger blog, and that too on your root directory. You can view it at http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml (e.g. http://www.mybloggertricks.com/sitemap.xml)

Not only that, the sitemap file further contains links to pages like:

• http://www.mybloggertricks.com/sitemap.xml?page=1


• http://www.mybloggertricks.com/sitemap.xml?page=2


• http://www.mybloggertricks.com/sitemap.xml?page=3

I think this is a very welcome step, and I hope the Blogger teams will provide customization options as well for the sitemap. If you have any questions, or want to participate in the discussion, then please feel free to join us on our discussion form where we talk about creating a sitemap for Blogger.

Good luck (:

How To Get Your Content Displayed In Google Quick Answer Box?

Google's Quick Answer box - while useful for the casual searcher, creates a lot of challenges for webmasters. On the one hand, if your content is used by the Quick Answer box, you get prominence. But at the same time, if users can get their questions answered on the SERPs, why would they click through to your site, right? Their utility is debatable. Today, however, we will talk about how to get your content displayed on Google's Quick Answer box.

The Google Knowledge Graph is what powers certain components on a search results page, and the quick answers box is just one of those components. Semantic markup, like that provided by Schema.org, is just one way to help communicate what�s on a page to search engines. According to Schema.org;

On-page markup enables search engines to understand the information on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier for users to find relevant information on the web. Markup can also enable new tools and applications that make use of the structure.

Getting featured in Google Knowledge Graph

Here are some things that can help you get featured in Google Knowledge Graph. 

• Implement structured data on your website


• Use nouns (i.e., entities) in your writing when it�s natural to do so


• Link to relevant sites


• Get featured in Wikipedia

Wikipedia is an example of data organization done right - the way Google likes to use. Google likes organized, easily accessible data. That�s why merging everything you know about SEO best practices with useful content and structured data can help you show up in Knowledge Graph-powered results.

Here are some tips for optimizing for the answer box.

• Select a topic that�s interesting for your users


• Create quality content relevant to the theme (use �buyer persona� studies, focus groups, and engagement analytics to determine the content mix)


• Structure the page with user experience in mind


• Where relevant, clearly define a how-to list, including the phrase �how to� in content and bullet points clearly present answers


• Implement SEO practices like basic on-page optimization, theme-relevant cross-linking and technical SEO tactics

This is still a new feature, and optimizing for the Knowledge Graph in general is still fairly novel for many, We'll be sharing in-depth articles about optimizing for the Knowledge Graph. One I'd particularly like to talk about is Wikipedia and its importance for ranking well on Google. So stay tuned for some really useful posts :)

How To Add a YouTube Subscription Widget To Blogger - 1 Step!

If you've a YouTube channel you'd definitely be willing to increase your audience and subscribers fast. There are couple of strategies for that and the most basic and logical is to create quality, well edited videos that people would like to see.

I'll leave that to another post, though for today, we can implement a subscription widget on our blogs/websites that would encourage your blog readers to subscribe to you if you're running a YouTube channel.

Lets get right into the steps that would help you add a YouTube subscription widget to your blogger blogs.

Step #1 Visit Your Blogger Layout

Navigate to Dashboard >> Layout of your Blogger blog, add a new HTML/JavaScript Widget section and copy/paste the copy below.

<iframe frameborder="0" id="fr" scrolling="no" src="http://www.youtube.com/subscribe_widget?p=AddYourYouTubeUserNameHere" style="overflow: hidden;height: 105px;width: 300px;border: 0"></iframe>

Simply replace the text in orange with your YouTube username and it's all ready. Hit Save and you're all done.

You may like to read now: Uploading Videos Directly To Facebook Vs Sharing YouTube Videos? - Which Gets More Interaction?

Perfect Dimensions To Create a YouTube Channel Cover? - Free PSD Template

YouTube is amazing and I just love the concept of "Broadcasting your self" and utilizing a platform to see your dreams become a reality. I've had a YouTube channel before I started with BloggingeHow where I used to put random videos (ranging from video intros, to Adobe after effects tutorials, to 3D modelling, Auto Tune songs and what not.) Ever since then, I have a close affection with YouTube but I never utilized YouTube for BloggingeHow to extant I should have done.

I accept this and this is the very reason why I turned over a new leaf with YouTube to broadcast my fitness side with the help of YouTube and Facebook page, to inspire other fellows to stay healthy to change their life.

Well, this is going of topic here. With a great YouTube channel, there comes a well designed cover art, which is basically the main poster/cover image that defines the header of your YouTube channel.

A thoughtful YouTube channel cover can make or break the chances to increase followers. As I had to design my own cover for my fitness YouTube channel, I looked for the perfect dimensions in pixels which would satisfy the look on all the electronic devices, may that be mobile, TV, tablets or computer/labtop screens.


So I found out that the new YouTube layout has the following cover image dimensions that we can use to design our own. In fact, I have a link to a great PSD template (Photoshop) that you can use which has all the margins set.

YouTube Cover Art Dimensions

For TV: 2560 x 1440
For Desktop:2560 x 243
For Tablets: 1855 x 243
For Text and Logo Safe Area: 1546 x 243

There are in the above image that says "Text and Logo Safe area", is the best and most suitable section to put your tag lines and insert a logo. In fact, the entire horizontal orange section is the must add area that you should design on priority as this is what will be displayed on the mobile devices and laptops.

Below is the download link that you can use and make a stunning looking YouTube cover art that rocks on all the devices that it can be possibly view on. Personally, I only designed it currently for Mobiles, Desktop/Laptop screens, though there is always a room to improve and jump up the game.

You might see more iterations of the above YouTube cover on my Fitness Facebook page and my YouTube channel.

Download Link for YouTube Cover Dimensions

I hope this would help you out in coming up with stunning and marketing oriented cover graphics. Yesterday, I posted a post that went though  my typical day and how exactly I manage my time. If you're facing time managing issues, make sure you check it out.

• How Do I Manage My Time? - A Day In Life Of Hassam Ahmad Awan

How To Fix Your Website When It Gets Hacked?

It's not uncommon for sites - even large ones with lots of protection - to get hacked. Security is a major problem these days. And if your site gets hacked, it can get damaged in a number of ways. You could lose all your data, or lose its ranking due to malicious activity. So while you can take periodic backups, you cannot prevent someone from hacking into your site. The best and most practical thing to do in such an event is to recover your site as fast as possible so that the effect of the attack is neutralized/minimized.

Here are some tips shared by Google for getting your website back on track after it has been hacked.

Clean up malicious scripts

Hackers can target your site for any number of motives. From taking down your website and deleting its content to simply adding backlinks discreetly, there's a lot that can be done. If you notice suspicious content appearing on your website, delete those unnecessary pages immediately. However, don't just stop there.

Hackers will often insert malicious scripts into your HTML and PHP files. These could automatically be creating rogue backlinks or even new pages. Make sure you check your website's source code and see for any malicious PHP or JavaScript code that could be creating such content.

Maintain your CMS

Websites often get hacked due to vulnerabilities in a CMS that get patched with updates. If you're running an older version, your site is more susceptible to attack. Make sure you keep your CMS updated, and use a strong password for login. If possible, enable two-step verification to secure the login process.

www vs. non-www

www and non-www URLs are not the same. http://www.example.com is not the same as http://example.com - the former refers to a sub-domain 'www', whereas the latter is the root of your site. When checking for malicious content, verify the non-www version of your site as hackers often try to hide content in folders that may be overlooked by the webmaster

Other useful security tips

• Avoid using FTP when transferring files to your servers. FTP does not encrypt any traffic, including passwords. Instead, use SFTP, which will encrypt everything, including your password, as a protection against eavesdroppers examining network traffic.


• Check the permissions on sensitive files like .htaccess. Your hosting provider may be able to assist you if you need help. The .htaccess file can be used to improve and protect your site, but it can also be used for malicious hacks if they are able to gain access to it.


• Be vigilant and look for new and unfamiliar users in your administrative panel and any other place where there may be users that can modify your site.

Got any questions? Feel free to leave a new thread in our discussion forum. You can read the post from Google along with a couple case studies here. Good luck (:

How to Add a Page Break/Jump Break in Blogger

Have you ever happened to visit those blogs that show a small summary of each post on the homepage rather than showing the whole post content? If yes, then this has been becoming a latest trend of not displaying the whole content on the homepage or archive page. Blogger offers a feature called After the Jump which makes your large posts appear in the form of small post summary with a read more link that leads you to the full view of the post. In this article, we will show you How to Add a Page Break/Jump Break in Blogger.

Read more �

How Do I Manage My Time? - A Day In Life Of Hassam Ahmad Awan

Time management is one of the key factors that determines ones success. We all have 24 hours a day. That's where we all are equal. The way we utilize the most precious commodity we have, builds our pathway in the future. Personally I'm no where 'great' in managing my time, though there doesn't passes a single day where I would have a plan to follow and tasks to achieve.

It's been long that I have written any motivational post out here and this is the perfect time to do so. As many of you guys know, it's my final year in Computer Science degree, I've a huge challenge against time when there are gazillions goals to achieve.

Personally I love these challenges and I would like to put forward my typical day now days and what tasks do I look forward to achieve.

I'm not really into micro managing my daily activities and time spent on each, though I've a crude idea of how much time I need to spend on every single task I look forward to do.

Lets get into my typical day, my goals and how I look forward to achieve them. Our life is like worlds tallest building Burj al Arab. Every single day is a new opportunity to put in more bricks to it. If we would slack, our ultimate goal of what we wish to be will further get away from us.

My Daily Tasks & a Day in Life

So my typical day would be like waking up early (around 5-6am offering fajar), having breakfast with the family. Then I would take 1 hour after breakfast to read newspaper (just a short glance) and check my emails and reply back to my lovely BeH family. (If your email is still not replied, I'll get back to you InshaAllah asap. Sometimes I overlook some emails and you guys are awesome to remind me for that!)

Then I would recite Surah Yaseen, (If you're muslim, I would highly recommend you to do so as it has huge barkaah in it). Up till now, this is the routine I try to follow every single day, though here after, it depends upon my university schedule.

Generally, I have classes in the evening so I have like all the day to follow my dreams. Currently I had been slacking on posting on BloggingeHow as I was focusing on side projects and Alldaybodybuilding.com, which is rising fast.

As a side note, do checkout this post where I shared as to why I decided to upload videos directly to my Fitness Facebook page rather than sharing YouTube channel videos.

Post by BLoggingeHow.

I'll soon InshaAllah share it's statistics with you guys. After giving in about 2 hours to blogging (creating content, may that be post or a video), I would check my aweber account (premium email list management tool) and create specialized follow up messages for my email followers. If you aren't yet in my email list, you can do so for free and download my eBook 1000/per month blog.

Next up, I would have my lunch and head of to University. Once back, I would have a cup of tea that just refreshes me and prepares me for gym :P I don't take any pre-workouts so a cup of tea does the job pretty well as it has caffeine.

My gym is at about 10 min drive and it would take about 2 hours for the entire workout to complete including. Below is the latest workout session I did for back. If you're a blogger or a person who would sit all day long in front of these electronic devices, I would highly recommend and push you to join a gym or a fitness club around your vicinity to get your body rolling.

Post by Hassam Ahmad Awan.

When a person is young, a lazy life style doesn't seem to bother. Though it would all show up it's aftermaths when we grow old. So make sure you put in effort to keep you body healthy too.

Once back from the gym, I would take have my dinner with the family and spend an hour or so with them. Side by side, I would edit my workout videos that I shoot in the gym and edit and upload them out.

Finally at this point, the clock speaks out around 10pm and it's time for a labor man sleep. My sleep is like resistant to 'Malhamah' xD, so a straight 6-7 hours of sleep does the job for me to recover.

Dream, Goals and Objectives

This typical day of mine didn't mentioned my university stuff, Fyp project and any other unforeseen event. I've a very clear dream that I look forward to work for day in day out, which is to reach as many people as I can in the world and inspire them to believe in them selves and to think out side the box.

Since our child hoods, we're asked what we wish to be. A doctor, engineer etc and we have few more professions out there. BUT No one asks us what 'we wish to create' and which is the very reason we are born as a 'job seeker'.

I aim to motivate my brothers and sisters out there to be a source of inspiration for others and build your own empire in what ever you do. Entreprenuership is the best way to achieve that.

+Marc Fitt is a huge example of this. He's not only an inspiration in the fitness industry, BUT hes a great business man. He knows how to run his company and market him self. At such a young age, hes been able to reach millions of people and changed their life.

Hes a huge inspiration for me too and tons of people out there. This is one of the reasons I shared my daily routine so that I would be able to motivate my BeH family to stay thirsty for your dreams every single day.

I hope you're clear about what you want from your life and start following it from today! There is no tomorrow!

Stay blessed and I would leave you with this thoughtful quote:

�A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.� � George Patton

Google Labelled Your Site As Hacked? Here's How To Fix It

Is your website being falsely labelled in search results as a 'hacked' website even though there's nothing wrong with it? There isn't cause for concern, because it might not be something 'hidden' that you apparently can't detect. Google is reportedly working on a new hacked page classifier, and as a result, a number of websites are getting incorrectly marked as 'hacked' in search results.

This was acknowledged by Google's John Mueller on Google+.

We're slowly rolling out a new hacked page classifier and noticed a small number of misclassifications. We're sorry for any trouble this may have caused -- we are working on addressing the issues.

Obviously, this is a very serious problem, because nobody in their right mind would visit a hacked or malicious website intentionally, right? So if your website has been effected, here's what you do.

How to tell when your website is effected?

First, do a quick search for your site and see if a line of blue text appears underneath the title tag reading �This site may be hacked.� If you don�t see that line, you�re good. If you do see that line, and you�re certain your site is not hacked, here�s what you can do to fix it.

Fixing the problem

All you have to do is, fill out a Google docs form for misclassification of your website. The link is given below.

• Google docs form for misclassified websites

One you fill it out, someone at Google will review it and remove the label if your site is in fact safe. It is not clear how long you�d have to wait before Google removes the label on your site, but hopefully they are quick about it.

Mueller recommends getting someone who is experienced in working with hacked sites to double-check whether or not your site is really hacked, because that�s a whole other issue you�ll need to deal with.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to create a new thread in our help forum, and we'll try to help you our over there. Leave your responses in the comments section below.

Uploading Videos Directly To Facebook Vs Sharing YouTube Videos? - Which Gets More Interaction?

We often get confused between whether or not we should directly upload videos to our Facebook pages or share a video from our YouTube channel on Facebook. Today, I've got a great report to share with you guys done by socialblackers which pretty much sums up the conclusion in the favor of uploading videos directly to Facebook pages.

As many of you would know, I've a huge obsession with Bodybuilding and fitness in general and I started my Facebook page for that purpose in order to share my story and how I workout in specific. I intended to post out workout videos to my Facebook page so that I could inspire my other fellows to stay healthy all year along.

For this, I searched for couple of studies that would support that matter of Facebook Videos vs YouTube videos being shared on Facebook platform. I wanted to know which one works better in terms of user interaction.

Even though I had a gut feeling that Facebook native videos started to work out much better than YouTube videos being shared, as Facebook videos just felt more simpler and easier to play and interact.

SocialBlackers examined over 20,000 Facebook pages that included entertainment companies, celebrities, brands etc and found out that now videos uploaded to Facebook directly are comprising of 80% of all the videos traffic on Facebook. This is HUGE!

Earlier this year, socialblackers mentions that they saw a 50% increase in all the video interactions from May to June 2014.

What I Plan Now?

Looking forward to this study, I then planned on to record my workout videos frequently and upload them directly to Facebook instead of uploading them first to YouTube and then sharing on the Facebook page.

Post by Hassam Ahmad Awan.

Even though I thoroughly believe in "being everywhere" and utilizing all the great platforms out there, still to start of with, I'll stick to Facebook page and after 1-2 months, I look forward to examine how the progress is going with the native videos on Facebook.

I'll keep you guys posted on that and would share what I learned along the way.

Till, next time, Allah Hafiz. Peace out.

What To Look For When Hiring Ghostwriting Services?

Are you looking to hire a ghostwriter? As you know, there are a large number of individuals and service providers offering such services, and businesses are increasingly hiring them to write business eBooks or blogs to serve their marketing purposes. However, the question remains: how do you hire a ghostwriter? A recent post by Vorongo posted by Cameron on what do you need to look for when hiring a ghostwriter inspired us a lot and we thought we can share our experience on this subject to better help webmasters in hiring authors for their blogs.Check out these five must-have qualities your ghostwriter should have.

1. They Must Have Industry Knowledge

Your ghostwriter should understand the genre or industry you need them to write for. Having a firm understanding of the in�s and out�s will make your manuscript, blog post, or article stand out.

An exceptional ghostwriter is one who intentionally follows up on industry news and current trends. Your ghostwriter should not have to do a vast amount of research to take on your project. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, so it will not make them a bad person if they do not meet your qualifications. It just means they are not meant to work on your project.

2. They Must Sign and Respect the Confidentiality Agreement

You are hiring this person to be your writer and make your publication stand out. You, however, don�t want the masses to know that it was not you doing the writing. So signing a confidentiality agreement is a must and may not be a complication for them to do so. However, just because they have signed one, does not mean they are adhering to it.

Conduct a thorough interview with the potential writer. Remember, your ghostwriter must not only sign a non-disclosure agreement with you, but must adhere to prior ones they have signed as well. So in asking for their published articles, if you find they are showing you pieces of work they�ve completed for others, it means they would turn around and do the same to you. This is not ethical practices, and they are not the ghostwriter for you.

3. They Must Show Proof of Publishing

Now, although it�s been stated that they should not show off their ghostwriting work, they can, however, show you their own publications and other writing pieces. A ghostwriter does not become one overnight. In fact, they may have had a terrible time writing as a career for themselves so turned to ghostwriting. Ask to see their portfolio of which should include:

• Their current publications


• Articles, blogs, novels, and other literature pieces clients have given permission to use


• A list of references

You want to see proof they can write better than you can. Check for organization of their writing and if they have ideas to help you shine.

4. They Are Flexible and Able to Meet Your Needs

Flexibility is key in the writing industry. You have deadlines to meet and need your ghostwriter to help you maintain them. The ghostwriter that you choose should understand and be capable of showing you that your time is valuable. They should:

• Coordinate with you for interviews, transcription, and idea creation


• Work around your schedule


• Show patience with revision requests you may have

5. They Represent You Well

Finally, your ghostwriter should match your voice and represent you well. When someone reads your work, it should accurately reflect you to the point where a close friend or family member believes you wrote the piece. In the samples they show you of their work using their name, it should reflect one particular style. If they show you ghostwritten pieces, keep in mind it�s meant for that particular client, so the style of writing will change.

Remember, the purpose of your hiring a ghostwriter is to reflect your story on your timetable. Choose one that will compliment your unique style and respect the relationship you two must build to create the perfect story.

Questions and feedback is warmly welcomed! Do share your precious views on ghostwriting buddies!

How To Get Free 100 GB OneDrive Storage?

When it comes to online productivity wars, no one probably does it better than Microsoft. With their recent transition into this whole 'cloud first' persona, it has become harder for competitors to stand their ground. A few days back, we shared Google's offering of an extra 2 GB free space on Google Drive. Today, we were staggered to see Microsoft offering a humongous 100 GB of free space for OneDrive users.

This free OneDrive storage offer can be claimed before the end of February, after which it will expire. The free storage will remain with you until February 2017, so you have a good two years to enjoy your free storage!

As a Blogger, I cannot do without certain cloud applications. Be it a note-taking app such as OneNote or Google Keep, or a cloud storage I can host my personal website on. From backing up your website data onto the cloud, to keeping your photos synced across devices, there's a lot that can done with these productivity applications.

To me, just how Microsoft is giving away so much free space is amazing. A few GBs here and there are the norm. You get free 3 GB for turning on camera upload, and so on. Dropbox had a space race going an year or so ago, and even that gave you 25 extra GB at max. So for OneDrive, an extra 100 GB for free is a big deal!

How to get the free 100 GBs?

The free space is available, courtesy of Bing Rewards. It is a program where you are rewarded for using Bing and various other Microsoft services. Unfortunately, it is only available for residents within the U.S. Despair not, however. There's a workaround!

Step 1: Connect to a US-based proxy

If you live inside the states, you can skip to the next step. For non-US residents, you can use a VPN service or a US-based IP address. TorGuard is one such service that gives you lots of servers within the U.S. to connect to. VPN.CC is another example that offers free trials as well.

Step 2: Join Bing Rewards

You can claim free credits just for signing up with Bing Rewards using your Microsoft account. This credit can be used to get free storage and other such offers and services on OneDrive.

Step 3: Claim your reward!

All you now need to do is click on the reward offer within Bing Rewards dashboard, and 100 GB will be instantly added to your Microsoft OneDrive!

Which cloud service do you prefer, and why? Leave your responses in the comments section below, or post a new thread to our forum for further help! Cheers :)

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