Technology

How to start a blog in 2021

by

Featured Starting A blog

How to Choose the Best Topics for

Starting a blog in 2021?

You must decide what type of blog you want to write. You can decide to write about something personal, like your own life, or you can write about something general, like politics.

Some people find it challenging to choose what they should blog about because there are so many topics.

Choosing the best niche for your blog is an essential part of setting up your blog. It will reflect the style of writing that you are comfortable with and enable you to focus on topics relevant to your target audience. Would you mind keeping it simple but clear?

Remember that the attention span of your audience is limited, so you should supply them with an idea of what they’re getting into early on.

There are some things you can do to find out which blogging niche might be perfect for you. First of all, take some time and write down everything that interests or excites you. What do you care about the most? What are the topics that matter most to you? The solution is easy! Just choose one of the topics you love or are passionate about and blog about it. You can use popular blog-post topics if you wish or go for something original.

Affiliate Disclaimer: The links mentioned in this article may contain affiliate links. It means if you click and purchase through the links I may earn a small commission without you being charged extra.

Choosing The Best Domain Name For Starting a blog in 2021?

A domain name is the web address for a website. It may be derived from a business or personal name, or it may be entirely different. A domain name gives your blog its identity. It’s something people will search for, and it’s what people will use to find your blog in the future.

A domain name is not only used for branding purposes but also search engine optimisation (SEO). It can help you rank higher on Google or other search engine results pages (SERPs). The best way to come up with a good domain name is by using a domain generator tool.

Choosing the best domain name for your blog is one of the most crucial things to consider when starting a blog.

Before creating your blog, you’ll need to register a domain name and web hosting service with a company like Bluehost, GreenGeeks or Hostinger. I use Namecheap for registering my domains. Domain.com is also an excellent registrar for domains. Namecheap has the most competitive prices, so they are one of the most popular domain name registrars. 

NameCheap is a domain registrar that offers both personal and business solutions to its customers. They offer domains at competitive prices with affordable renewal rates, making them one of the most popular options for web creators. They also provide various top-level domains and hosting packages that allow you to set up your website with minimal fuss. NameCheap has been in the industry for over ten years, so they have a deep understanding of how domains work and the importance of obtaining a domain from an accredited institution.


Popular Domains for just 99 Cents at Namecheap!
Once you’ve registered your desired domain name and hosting service, you will have access to the necessary tools to create your website content in WordPress, Blogger or other blogging platforms.

Domain names can be expensive, so you must find the right one with these factors in mind! Also, keep in mind the domain and hosting service renewal fees. Most of the hosting services may carry enhanced renewal fees than the first invoiced amount.

How to choose a good web hosting company?

Whether setting up a blog, an online store or an eCommerce website, you need to have a web hosting company. You should answer the question, “what kind of website do you want to create?” It doesn’t require much infrastructure if it is just a static website, so that the cheapest web hosting will suffice.

If your goal is to create an online store, you need a web hosting company that offers eCommerce features like SSL certificates and shopping cart software. In today’s time, most blogging sites run on WordPress, and most web hosting companies provide managed WordPress hosting.

Some Recommended Web Hosting companies for beginners. 

Shared Hosting:

  • Bluehost: They provide hosting for over 1 million websites and work to protect your site with security, 24/7 monitoring, and performance. Bluehost is one of the leading web hosting companies in the United States. They provide top-tier domain hosting services to bloggers, small business owners, web designers and developers. The company has an impressive history in enabling entrepreneurs worldwide to boldly go where they usually couldn’t afford: A domain and website that can serve as a launching pad for an online business or hobby project.

 

 

  • GreenGeeks: Greengeeks has been around for a while, and we can see why. They offer affordable yet exceptional hosting services that are perfect for your website. Greengeeks is one of the best hosts out there because they provide quality hosting at an affordable price. They also have excellent customer service, and they’ve been in business since 2009. Greengeeks is one of the top web hosts for many reasons. They offer very competitive prices, stellar customer service, and reliable servers powered by wind energy! CNET, which is universally known for its technology and product reviews, has announced its top choices in the web hosting services industry. We’re excited to announce that CNET has rated GreenGeeks as one of the Best Web Hosting Services in 2021.

  • A2 Hosting: A2 Hosting is the perfect high speed and user-friendly solution for your blog or website. They are known for their new WordPress hosting solutions, ideal for small businesses, bloggers, and anyone looking for a high-quality WordPress hosting service. A2 Hosting has options to host your website with them on either Linux or Windows servers. We recommend that you host your website with them on Linux servers because it is faster than Windows servers and has better security features.

  • Hostinger is one of the prominent web hosting services providers in the field. They have been catering to a vast audience with their highly reliable and secure hosting services for many years now. They offer the cheapest rates with reliable service. Hostinger has plans starting at very reasonable rates so that anyone can begin their blogging journey and later on upgrade the plans for more benefits.


Hostinger

  • NameHero: Web hosting is a crucial component of any successful online business. NameHero provides cloud Web Hosting with 99.9% uptime to over 500,000+ websites. NameHero was voted World’s Best in the Web Hosting category for 2019 by Leading Reviews and was named a Top Company in 2018 by Entrepreneur Magazine while providing world-class customer service and 24/7 support. Black Friday Deals are Live now. 

Cloud Hosting Services: 

  • Cloudways: Cloudways is a cloud hosting service that offers managed hosting for Google Cloud, Vultr, Linode, Digital Ocean and Amazon AWS. They provide our customers with the tools to configure their server in less than 5 minutes. Their servers are built with CentOS 7. Cloud hosting services for small and medium-sized businesses. I use the beginner plan with Vultr (high-frequency server) from Cloudways and have hosted multiple sites. Try Cloudway Free for three days before deciding to subscribe (Use Code “NEELSWORLD” for a discount). Try FREE for three days.

 

The Ultimate Managed Hosting Platform

  • Vultr: If you are a bit more technically inclined, you can try Cloud Hosting services by Vultr and save some money compared to Cloudways. I highly recommend the Vultr High-Frequency servers to starter blogs at an affordable price point. You can try with a USD100 credit for a month below: 

 

 

The services above have been highly rated across many reviews and should offer a good starting point to dive into the world of blogging. Choose your service as per your budget and requirement and in future, you can always upgrade to suit the scalability.

Happy Blogging!

Get response vs ConvertKit: Which email marketing service to choose?

by

ConvertKit

The email marketing service ConvertKit is targeted mostly towards bloggers and content creators. Unlike most other platforms which focus on becoming a platform for all, ConvertKit focuses on bloggers and content creators. That is how ConvertKit has become a well-crafted tool for the marketing needs of bloggers and content creators. Important features such as visual automation, opt-in forms & landing pages all are a part of ConvertKit’s tools. Building an email list is very important vis a vis having dedicated landing page building capabilities. The reporting capabilities help to get insight into the performance of your list and forms. It allows Creating an Email sequence with a visual automation builder and the same can be done with forms. The seamless integration of the automation with both emails and forms sans the need to jump between options. 

Convertkit logo

But Convertkit’s simplicity comes at the cost of some limitations like filtering your subscribers is not easy as with some other platforms,  lack of spam scoring, and there’s no visual builder for emails.

But, if you’re a beginner to email marketing and need a simple solution without sacrificing powerful email automation functionality, give ConvertKit a try and you won’t regret it. 

Getting started with ConvertKit is easy! You can sign up for a free account, but we recommend signing up for a monthly or yearly plan to take advantage of our discounts and features.

Once you have signed up, your next step is to add a new list. This will be the list that you’ll send campaigns from to all of your subscribers.

In order to add a new mailing list, click on Lists in the left sidebar and then Create New List under Lists & Subscribers at the top of the screen. You’ll want to name this mailing list something descriptive so it’s easy for you to tell which one it is later on if you have

Convert Kit Trial

Key features:

  • Simple user interface – With an easy learning curve the tool lets you get started with your email list in no time.
  • Powerful but simple visual automation – The simple visual email automation builder helps you do a lot more than simple email marketing.
  • Ideal for those with multiple lead magnets – Multiple lead magnets can be delivered using each form or landing page.
  • Opt-in forms and landing pages included – You can easily create opt-in forms and landing pages without the need for any third-party software or service.

Pricing:

You can start with a free plan which allows you to manage up to 1,000 subscribers, create unlimited landing pages & forms, send email broadcasts, sell digital products & subscriptions and you get support via email.

Apart from the standard features that are available in most other email marketing platforms, ConvertKit also offers an amazing customer support system. They have 24/7 live chat support which means all the questions will be answered within one or two minutes. Users can also talk about specific topics with their customer success manager who is always available via phone or Skype for any queries related to conversion rates.

GetResponse

GetResponse has been a very well known service in the email marketing platforms. It is the veteran in this field. Started in 1998, and now they have more than two decades of experience. They have added a slew of new features of late to keep up their game in the field of email marketing and provide a comprehensive package. 

Email marketing is the core of their product and apart from that, they are trying to provide excellent solutions for visual marketing automation, landing pages, webinar creation and other features to become an all in one platform.

 They offer a great selection of email templates categorized by industry. AB split testing is available even for newsletters. They offer a drag and drop visual email builder with built-in preview and spam scoring.

The contact management has easy filtering options with list hygiene and reporting. The visual automation builder is functional and comes with templates to get you started easily. One of the latest features they added to the platform is Live chat to connect with your audience online. Push notifications can get you more attention from your audience than before.

Getresponse logo

GetResponse also offers an impressive Conversion Funnel and in conjunction with all other features they provide you everything that you require to build an entire sales funnel. To fill the funnel, you can create ads, landing pages, webinars, exit-intent pop-ups, sales pages, eCommerce integration with payment method integration. They offer a Mobile app to create ads and many other things on the go. You can also build your own storefront within GetResponse itself.

And since you can do this within a single tool, analytics & reporting are exceptionally convenient.

The only issue I have with GetResponse is its convoluted pricing. It seems designed to confuse. For example, some basic automation functionality such as segmentation, and on-site tracking isn’t available until you get to the higher plans.

Key features:

  • Powerful email marketing automation – The visual email creation tool with categorized templates is a powerful email marketing tool with easy deliverability.
  • Create attractive landing pages –Visual creation of beautiful Landing pages can get your traffic to convert into customers.
  • Built-in tools for store creation –You can sell digital products using the built in store

Pricing:

The plans start at $15 with basic features to get you started and can go upto $99 for a list 1000. The pricing can get more if the list size grows. You can also try all the features of GetResponse for free for 14 days before you take a plunge.

Email marketing has been around for decades and it’s one of the simplest and most effective ways to promote a business. With the rise of social media, marketers may have all but forgotten about email marketing- but this would be a mistake. Email remains one of the most popular and powerful digital marketing channels, and experts say that many marketers are not taking full advantage of its potential.

An email from a brand is an excellent way to reach out directly to those who might be interested in what you have to offer, as well as those who may have forgotten about you after an initial

New Plan Update: GETRESPONSE FREE 

Create a Freeze Frame effect using Kinemaster Mobile Video Editor

by

This is a short tutorial and I created a walk around video on YouTube. The freeze frame effect is used by many to create an effect where the moving objects in a video leave a frozen frame tail. Kinemaster is a smartphone video editing app and following some simple steps using video layers in Kinemaster you can easily achieve freeze-frame effect. This tutorial is created using the Kinemaster Pro app on android since we need support for video layers to achieve this effect. Kinemaster has powerful video editing tools to produce top quality video for professional or personal use.

How to download?

Get Kinemaster from
For  Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nexstreaming.app.kinemasterfree
For iOS: https://appstore.com/nexstreamingusainc/kinemaster

Steps to create Freeze Frame effect

The steps can be followed by anyone with a basic knowledge of video editing with Kinemaster. The same effect can also be created using other apps in a similar fashion.

1. Create a project and bring your desired video footage to the timeline.
2. Play the video footage to find some frames to freeze.
3. Take the cursor the desired frame and take a snapshot of the frame and add as a layer (Capture frame and add as a layer option)
4. Select the layer, go to Split screen and select full screen.
5. Adjust the duration of the layer and bring the opacity down to 0%.
6. Take the cursor to the desired frame in the video layer and repeat the process as in steps 3 and 5.
7. Once you have created the desired number of “freeze frame” layers, as above, bring up the opacity of each layer back to 100%.
8. Go to each image layers and change the blending mode to “Darken”
9. Your video is ready with the Freeze Frame Effect.

My video walkthrough

Here is my YouTube video for a screen recording of the entire process:

I hope this short tutorial will be useful for you.

Create your personal book catalog with My Library App

by
Featured Image

Locked down, aren’t we? We all are doing our bit to combat the novel Corona outbreak by staying indoors and working from home. Let us use our free time to create your personal book catalog for free using My Library App.

Android Smartphones allow users to use the phone in many productive ways. We all are now going through a tough time and most of us are staying indoors. Many of us are spending time by reading various books and novels. Students and educators are spending their time to prepare class notes and study materials from their personal collection of books and journals. I believe most of us can boast of a personal library of at least a small number of books if not thousands. Right?

Let me ask you something? How many have you have created a catalog of  your personal book library? By personal library, I mean the books on your study tables, bookshelves or anywhere in your homes. We can spend this #lockdown period in organizing a personal collection of books and journals. For this, I will use an App called My Library by Julien Keith. I am an Android user and you can find this app in the Android Play Store. This app allows you to store your personal library and perform a Quick Search within it. By creating a catalog, we not only organized our books, it also provided us a sense of richness about the collection that we own.

The main features of the app are

  • Add a book to your catalog by using the Barcode scanner inside the app.
  • Add a book via ISBN.
  • Search book in your library
  • Sorting options
  • Export to excel
  • Save export database to cloud storage. Only Google Drive and Dropbox are supported at present.
  • Importing of database.

How to use tools for anonymous torrent downloads real quick and easy [in 2019]

by

How to use tools for torrent download

  1. A VPN app to get access to Torrent sites. In my country, many torrent sites are blocked. The Torrent technology (P2P file sharing) is not only for illegal downloads but many legal software and videos are available for download via torrents as well. I prefer Nord VPN for anonymity. It is available for almost all platforms with some good servers. P2P is allowed. BTW, we will use a torrent leecher web service.
  2. A download manager, I prefer Internet Download Manager for Windows and Advanced Download Manager (buy Pro for ad free experience) for Android.
  3. An account in Torrent Leecher site like Zbigz , the premium service is good but has some cost. If the file size is not too big then seedr.cc also provides good speed and 2GB storage to start with for free.
anonymous torrent featured imag
Anonymous torrent download
The 1-2-3 of the process:
  1. Connect to VPN, for anonymous connection and access to Torrent site. The detailed connection process will vary from one software to another.
  2. Copy the magnet link of the torrent file from the site. Add the link to seedr or zbigz. There are a number of torrent leecher services available with different free and paid plans. I have listed only those which I personally have used and found to be working well. We can also paste to torrent file lik as well instead of magnet links. 3.The leecher service will start caching the file requested in its own servers. It is something like the leecher service download the torrent file in a similar manner as it is done in our own PC via Torrent Clients. We leave the leecher site till the caching is complete. Sometimes it takes longer time for the process to complete. Once the caching process is complete, the file can be downloaded as usual. Use the download manager of your choice to download it at maximum speed.
Note: This article is for educational purpose only. If you use this information for any illegal downloads, then the author is not responsible for any legal issues. This article was originally published via this Post.

I hope you enjoyed this short article

Thanks

Learn coding in Javascript with Grasshopper (by Google Area 150)

by

Grasshopper is a coding app for beginners. It lets users learn Javascript coding in a fun to learn way. The lessons progressively challenges the users into coding more and more in a systematic manner in their iPhone and Android devices. This app is released by Google’s internal incubator Area 150. The app name Grasshopper – is a tribute to early programming pioneer Grace Hopper.

Starting with “The Fundamentals,” Grasshopper offers a series of lessons where users can learn how code works, along with various terminology like functions, variables, strings, for loops, arrays, conditionals, operators, and objects. After that, advanced lessons follow.

image

In a nutshell, the app features are:

  • Visual puzzles develop your problem-solving skills and solidify coding concepts
  • Use industry-standard JavaScript with just a few taps on your phone
  • Real-time feedback guides you like a teacher
  • Collect achievements as you learn new skills

The app can be downloaded from the sources below.

iOS

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1354133284

Android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.area120.grasshopper&hl=en

I hope that this app will be found useful by some readers.

Have Fun with learning to code!

This post was originally published via Steemit Post

Dark web tools are not always used for illegal purposes.

by

Hi all, we all muat have aware of some tools used in dark web. One of the tools that is most widely used for illegal downloads of almost any kind, movies, music, books, software, porn (most popular, ?), etc. is torrent. We all have used utorrent for sure. Thepiratebay, kickass torrents, tirrentz.eu all have been (in)famous for illegal torrent files.

BUT, torrent technology is a beautiful piece of technology that allows efficient downloads via peer to peer file sharing. This technology can be used for legal downloads, which can allow downloading of large files with more efficient manner. Torrent is almost similar to the Blockchain technology, decentralized system of sharing a file.

I today would like to share a website which allows legal downloads of acaademic materials.

http://academictorrents.com

It is a distributed system for sharing enormous datasets – for researchers, by researchers.

image

The result is a scalable, secure, and fault-tolerant repository for data, with blazing fast download speeds.

As an avid android user I recommend Flud, a very good and efficient torrent client for Android OS.

image

Screenshots below:

image

Google Play link:

Flud Torrent Downloader
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.delphicoder.flud

Ad free version (no extra feature)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.delphicoder.flud.paid

This post is for informing my friends about the app and the site that I prefer to use myself. I don’t endorse them or affiliated to them in any way.

Sharing is fun.

This post was originally published via this Steemit Post.

Jurassic World Alive: An Augmented Reality (AR) game on the lines of Pokemon Go

by

This is a Pokemon Go like game where the players are supposed to find dinosaurs and catch them in real world. The gameplay includes real world mapping which encourages the players to go out and find dinos.

Price: Free but offers in-app purchases.

The gameplay is interesting and uses tbe latest AR tech. It allows players to take pictures with the captured dinos.

Use of drone, DNA sampling and creation of genetically modified dinosaurs are some interesting features in the gameplay.

There is also realtime battle between different player for a competitive gameplaying experience.

Some screenshots:

image
image
image
image

Overall the game is pretty interesting amd allows user to kill time in a fun way and also get out of the couch to a more engaging experience of mobile gaming.

The game offers membership.

  • Jurassic World™ Alive offers a monthly subscription at USD $9.99, please note prices may vary depending on sales taxes or countries.
  • The user will be asked to login to his Google account (if not already) prior to the purchase.

Playstore link:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ludia.jw2

iOS link:
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/jurassic-world-alive/id1231085864?mt=8

This post was originally published via this Steemit Post.

Thanks DropBox, I found some old Magestic Sunset images!

by
I am an ardent fan of smartphone photography. I use Dropbox to archive some of my old photos using the Camera Upload feature to save space on my smartphone. Luckily, I have around 26GB of Dropbox space most of which I use to store photos captured using the smartphone. Dropbox provides 2GB of free space as the starter plan and they have a referral system to increase the amount of free space upto 16GB. The paid plans are also pretty good deal even though I have not yet felt the need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Now let me show you some photos which I liked a lot while browsing through my photo archive at Dropbox.

ry1wbht5vh.jpg

You can try DropBox (It contains a referral link which will provide me with an extra 500MB space and also you can earn an extra 500MB if signed up through this link and the app is installed) if not already a member.

2arkp7ol29.jpg

I took the above picture at my village, a lush green paddy field. The shot was taken using a Samsung Galaxy Note (aka N7000) phone sometime in 2012. The picture was color enhanced with Adobe Lightroom Mobile on my current OnePlus 3 smartphone.

I, along with my family, went for some treatment at the Apollo Hospitals in Chennai, India during Sep-Oct, 2012 where I underwent a small knee surgery (an arthroscopic surgery) for some knee joint pain and during our stay we had a trip to Mahabalipuram (also known as Mamallapuram, a UNESCO World Heritage Site) which has many stone sculptures as well as beautiful sunsets. The following pictures are examples of the beauty of the place during sunset (my mobile photography is not that good to justify the real beauty of that place)

p5qa65inxf.jpg

now5tb29a0.jpg

oqvo6w3x4p.jpg
The above three images were taken at Mahabalipuram, Tamil Nadu, India which is around 50Km from Chennai.

Marina beach is a very well known beach in Chennai, and a major tourist attraction:
zpyvt0td61.jpg
Shot with Samsung Galaxy Note N7000, Marina Beach, Chennai.

To know more about Mahabalipuram, visit this Wiki Link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_Monuments_at_Mahabalipuram

~~~****~~~

All images used in this post were personally clicked by me (@dreamzchm), edited with Adobe LR Mobile.

# Thank you!

Preserve Nature, Preserve our heritage!

Pin It on Pinterest