Bankruptcy Law: Some Important Facts

As applying for loans, credit cards and other forms of credit are easier to come by, so are the bankruptcy rates in the United States. In a ten year period, between 1994 and 2004, bankruptcy rates in the United States nearly doubled. The government's reaction was to take a closer look at reasons parties were filing for bankruptcy, new laws were instated to ensure that individuals and businesses had valid reasons for applying for bankruptcy.

One of the primary laws regarding bankruptcy that was passed in the United States in 2004 is the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act. This law just went into effect in October 2005, but has already caused quite a stir in the financial and bankruptcy law arenas. Besides making it more difficult to qualify for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, or complete bankruptcy, the law imposes stricter rules and budgets on Chapter 13 debtors.

A major change the law makes throughout the United States is the need for debtors to have filed tax returns for four years in a row before qualifying for bankruptcy. As well, dischargeable debts, or those debts where personal liability is taken away by the court system, is more difficult to come by. The Act requires that debtors prove good reason for dischargeable debt and is even requiring more debtors to take responsibility with non-dischargeable debt budgets.

As far as the two major types of bankruptcy laws are concerned, Chapter 13 bankruptcy is that which allows the debtor to keep some assets upon proving only limited debt and a steady income. This bankruptcy is excellent for those debtors who have gotten themselves into major financial difficulty but still have means of paying for some assets. The court will set up a repayment schedule and budget that allows for full repayment of mortgages or cars within three to five years.

If repayment is simply not an option, the bankruptcy law requires that a debtor will file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. This is often referred to as complete liquidation of assets, except for exempt items. Exempt items in a bankruptcy hearing are determined by the court and are usually items that are a necessity, such as a car or work related items. As well, the courts will distribute debts into two categories: non-dischargeable and dischargeable debt.

Non-dischargeable debts also fall into two categories: non-dischargeable due to wrongful conduct on the debtor and non-dischargeable due to public policy. Wrongful misconduct by the debtor could mean theft or laundering money while public policy could include child support payment or court related judgments.

Keep in mind that in either type of bankruptcy, an individual is almost always required to still pay for taxes, student loans, alimony, child support or court related fees. This is the place where many bankrupt parties are misled in the Chapter 7 bankruptcy, as it is often referred to as "a fresh start". While the court can set up payment plans to help the debtor repay public policy debts, even Chapter 7 debtors will still be required to make payments.

Another major point regarding bankruptcy law is that a bankruptcy will stay on a credit report for approximately ten years. This will make it extremely difficult to become eligible for any type of credit, even a credit card, but especially for a car loan or a house mortgage. While some creditors will still offer limited credit to bankrupt individuals, the interest rates and finance charges are usually through the roof. This makes it even more difficult for debtors to get back on their feet.

Last but not least, keep in mind that bankruptcy law will require any co-signers to be responsible for debt payments. If mom or dad signed for a car loan when you were young and you still owe on that car, they are liable for payments. These friends or family members who were once doing you a favor may be brought into the bankruptcy law court proceedings, which can put a strain on friendships and family relations.

For specific bankruptcy law questions it is best to contact a bankruptcy attorney or legal aide in your county or state. Bankruptcy laws and proceedings may vary slightly from state to state, so be sure to make contacts in the state where you plan to file for bankruptcy.

How to Build a Print Business Without Owning A Print Shop

You can own a legitimate business and make top dollars by becoming a print broker or print specialist. This is a person who sells on behalf of an actual printer or a middle man who locates and serves customers. Print brokers are independent, as they're not directly employed by the printing companies they represent. Your number one arsenal to being successful as a print broker is customer service. See, you will need repeat customers to grow and build up your business even greater than any single printer who prints for you.

Look at it as printers working for you at their various locations. You hire a printer to print what your customers request, e.g. booklets, catalogs, brochures, business cards, flyers, etc. You may want to focus on specific items as there are so many different products out there to print. With the power of the internet, now you can hire a printer anywhere and sell to customers everywhere.

Ok, here are the basics for becoming a Print Broker:

1. Set up Shop
You will need to set up an office area to operate from. It should include a phone, fax, computer, and a file cabinet. Keep your work area as detailed as possible, this will keep you mind clear and allow you to be on top of your business. Make sure you have a good answering machine to take messages when you are not in office. You can use your same phone line for fax if you can't afford a fax line right now.

2. Find Printers who are willing to sell to you at Wholesale Prices
The easiest way to find these printers may be to search your local phone directory or just search the internet. Call them up and ask if they have a print broker program or if they would be willing to sell their print services to you at a wholesale price – it must be at a 15% discount or more. Most printers who already have a print broker program will have a contract ready for you to sign.

3. Choose the products that you are going to offer for printing and set your own prices.

The most popular products that businesses use are things like business cards, letterheads, envelopes, brochures, flyers, presentation folders, labels, inserts, postcards, etc. You could even get into printing promotional items like bags and pens, but that's a whole new area that you could explore. Remember I told you that customer service will be your number one arsenal in this business. So you don't have to marginalize your profits, just stress value and offer customer service second to none.

4. Promote your Print Broker Business
(a) Print and distribute business cards, flyers and postcards to places that people visit frequently (like restaurants, barber shop and salons, clubs etc.).
(b) Mail postcards to new businesses – you can get the new business listings at your local county court house or search online
(c) Word of mouth – tell everyone you know about your new business venture, friends and families. Give them one of your business cards.
(d) Website – put your website address on everything you use like business cards etc. You can get good advice on how to promote your website at http://www.AboutCityBusiness.com

5. Maintain and keep in touch with your customer base
One of the most effective methods that will build your business is word of mouth – when your satisfied customers tell others about you. So you will want to send your customers holiday cards, specials by mail or e-mail, call them by phone or whatever it takes to remind them about your great service. You could also invite your top customers out for lunch.

It's not unheard of to make 5000 to 20,000 dollars a month just being the middle man or woman. Just remember that you must be dedicated and have a willingness to act. Read, keep up to date with trends and increase your marketing skills.

Yoga Diet

One of the essential things about yoga, together with the positive attitude, is the diet. It is highly recommended to perform your yoga session after about 2 hours from a main meal. Many specialists agree that what we eat is reflected both in our appearance, as well as in our health state. In other words, it is important to mind the things we consume, in order to prevent illnesses and discomforts.

However, the question related to what does healthy food mean, remains a constant reason of inquiry for many people. According to reliable studies, a very diversified diet represents the ideal food for any human organism. However, fruits and vegetables, containing fibers and vitamins should be a permanent component of your daily meals. Furthermore, everything that can be defined as natural food is recommended, when it comes to preserving your state of well being.

Despite the fact that many people try to eat as little as possible, as they believe food can produce them harm, you have to keep in mind that your body needs nutrients, in order to properly function. Nevertheless, do not exaggerate when eating, even if you are consuming healthy food, because it will not have the same beneficial effect on you. Try to stop eating once you are not hungry anymore, or, even better, stop before reaching the full saturation state. By doing this, you will discover that the state of fatigue, which we sometimes experience after eating, is considerably diminished, while your energy level goes up substantially.

Another issue related to eating is how often should a healthy person eat? Should we have three meals a day? Should we avoid having dinner, in order to prevent becoming overweight, because we do not move sufficiently during the night? Or is it better not to have lunch, so that you do not have to deal, in the middle of the day, with the unpleasant sensation of fatigue, which we experience after serving a consistent meal? Well, the right answer to all these questions would be to eat whenever you are hungry, as your body needs to be fed in order to function at the standards you desire, but, nevertheless, pay attention to what and how much you are eating.

More than a simple energy source, food can be a way of purifying one's body and soul, which is why, together with the variety of exercises, yoga trainers encourage the practitioners to keep a wise diet, based mainly on natural food. This way, their body is protected from the danger of contracting toxins and it is prepared, at the same time, to find the synchronization with the soul and mind, which is actually one of the main goals of yoga practices.

As a final remark, when carrying out constant yoga practices it is important, in order to reach your goals, to meditate both on what you are doing to your own body, as a direct consequence of the food you are eating, and to what level you respond to your soul's and mind's needs.

Upload Dapat Dollar

Pada postingan kali ini, kita akan bahas mengenai mesin penghasil dolar dari Ziddu. Pada prinsipnya antara Bizhat dengan Ziddu terdapat kesamaan system kerjanya, ya beda-beda tipis lah...Kita upload file (apapun) ke Ziddu, trus didownload orang lain, kita dapat dollar. Nha tiap kali ada yang mendownload file tersebut kita akan mendapatkan bayaran $0.001. Walopun kecil tapi gak ada ruginya kok kita ikut program tersebut. karena Ziddu memiliki beberapa keunggulan yaitu :

1. Kapasitas penyimpanan yang tak terbatas. (kamu bisa upload file km sebanyak-banyaknya).
2. Batasan ukuran file yang lumayan besar (200 MB).
3. Tanpa ada batasan traffic.

Program ini sangat cocok sekali buat kamu yg memiliki web/blog yang isinya untuk didownload, seperti mp3, ebook, video, driver dll. Nha tunggu apa lagi, segera aja mendaftar disini

Monetize Blog Dari Ask2link

Bagi sobat yang sedang mencari bisnis untuk blog/web anda, saya punya satu yang informasi yang mungkin berguna bagi sobat. Walaupun ini bukan merupakan suatu barang baru, tapi saya coba mengajak teman-teman yang sedang mencari peluang bisnis atau peluang usaha untuk blog sobat.

Ask2Link adalah perusahaan periklanan online yang bisa digunakan untuk menghasilkan uang / monetisasi blog dengan hanya menyediakan sedikit space pada blog/website. Ask2Link berlokasi di San Fransisco Bay Area, didirikan oleh mantan manajer produksi dan insinyur eBay, Microsoft, Netscape dan Yahoo!. Seperti program lain yaitu Text-Link-Ads atau Backlinks, Ask2Link juga sangat mudah digunakan untuk monetisasi blog Anda dengan cara advertising dan Anda akan mendapatkan bayaran melalui akun PayPal.

Tidak peduli apakah Anda baru mengetahui tentang SEO, pakar SEO, konsultan SEO, Anda bisa mencoba Ask2Link sebagai alat untuk memperoleh pengunjung sesuai dengan target website Anda. Anda juga dapat mencoba Ask2Link sebagai alat SEO, karena mereka merupakan salah satu perusahaan yang menawarkan jasa SEO.

Yang perlu Anda lakukan hanya menyisipkan ad code pada blog, Anda sudah dapat menjual text link ads pada blog. Ask2Link yang menangani billing, pembayaran, dan ad-serving, jadi Anda tidak perlu mengurus kesemua hal tersebut. Anda diperbolehkan menentukan harga dari sebuah text link

Berikut adalah benefit/keuntungan yang diperoleh publisher:
1. Monetisasi space blog dengan sangat mudah (seperti pada bagian header, footer, atau sidebar).
2. Anda bisa menentukan sendiri harga dari setiap text link.
3. Ask2Link menerima publisher dari negara manapun, yang Anda butuhkan hanya sebuah blog/website dan sebuah akun PayPal.
4. Dan yang terpenting adalah Anda bisa melakukan setup pada slot ad untuk memberikan tag NoFollow.
5. Anda akan memperoleh $20.00 untuk setiap advertiser yang bergabung melalui affiliate anda, dengan minimum pembelian dari advertiser tersebut adalah $50.00. Ask2Link akan membayar anda setiap awal bulan, dengan payout minimum $10,00

Langkah-Langkah yang perlu dilakukan, jika anda ingin bergabung sebagai pulisher Ask2Link adalah

1. Daftar menjadi publisher Ask2Link DISINI

2. Isi form yang disediakan sesuai dengan data Anda

3. Tuliskan alamat email Paypal anda.

4. Masukkan Blog / website yang akan di jadikan sumber dollar.

5. Masukkan RSS feed dari ask2link ke blog/situs web Anda.

6. Promosikan link referral Anda.

7. Selesai dan nikmati pendapatan dari Ask2Link.

Jika tertarik untuk jualan link di ask2link, tunggu apa lagi, silahkan mendaftar disini. Semoga Sukses.

Monetize Blog Dari Berjualan Link

Satu lagi neh tempat berjualan link dan dapat menghasilkan dolar dari linkworth. sama halnya pada postingan sebelum ini mengenai berjualan link di ask2link, kali ini melalui linkworth. Bagi Anda yang mempunyai blog dan ingin mendapatkan income dari bisnis jual link, mengapa tidak mencoba bergabung dengan linkworth, siapa tahu rejeki Anda ada disini.

Sebagai salah satu program paid to review atau paid post, Linkworth terbilang lengkap dalam memanjakan penggunanya. Seperti program lainnya, Linkworth memiliki pilihan untuk membernya, mau daftar sebagai advertiser, partner atau combo (sebagai advertiser sekaligus partner). Selain itu, member Linkworth mempunyai banyak fitur yang dapat digunakan dan dipilih (menang sesuai pilihan gitu deh..)

Linkworth adalah perusahaan periklanan online yang bisa digunakan untuk menghasilkan uang / monetisasi blog dengan hanya menyediakan sedikit space pada blog/website. Seperti program lain yaitu Text-Link-Ads atau Backlinks, Linkworth juga sangat mudah digunakan untuk monetisasi blog Anda dengan cara advertising dan Anda akan mendapatkan bayaran melalui akun PayPal.

Bagi pemula seperti saya, maka hal terpenting yang harus dilakukan agar lebih berhasil dalam menghasilkan uang adalah merubah setting tipe akun dari basic partner menjadi preferred partner. Walaupun Linkworth menawarkan basic partner sebesar 70/30 komisi (means 70% penghasilan untuk anda dan 30% untuk Linkworth) tetapi mereka lebih menyukai partner yang memilih preferred partner yaitu 50/50 (fifty fifty lah..).Caranya: klik pada “account type” dan pilih “Preferred Partner Account (Commission split 50/50)”. Untuk menuntaskan klik “Convert”.

Kenapa menjadi preferred partner bakal lebih untung? Dalam detil yang mereka buat untuk tipe akun, mereka menjelaskan bahwa seluruh penjualan iklan yang mereka peroleh dari advertisers akan mereka distribusikan terlebih dahulu kepada semua preferred partner baru kemudian kepada basic partner. Walaupun mereka tidak menggaransi bahwa menjadi preferred partner akan secara otomatis mendapat iklan tetapi mereka akan mengusahakan yang terbaik jika kita memilih sebagai preferred partner. Logikanya: siapa sih broker iklan yang mau memberikan job untuk partner nya yang meminta split komisi 70/30? Mendingan dia ngasih job ke partner yang mau komisinya dibagi 50/50 atau sama rata kan? Hehehe.

Oce sob itu aja, kalo mo daftar klik langsung aja disini Linkworth

Watch Heroes Season 3 Episodes Online

Some grouping here the promise software and application and they now anxiousness "Field scares me and that's why I raise to pose with the cable or star companies" they say. Yet it is so human to operate the software and enjoy the benefits of broadcasting viewing freedom all that is required is make to a broadband relation, and thousands of television channels are yours for the vigil.

Erstwhile the purchase has been prefab and the software successfully downloaded and installed, then a entire new domain of vigil pleasure present be available to you and your stock. Not exclusive watching football on your computer lizard or TV block faculty become a matter of layer, but also a beamy range of other broadcasting programs and films as substantially as including watching heroes online of way. The day to day functioning is very direct and the software comes with a somebody amicable programme that plane the children testament get promiscuous to use.

You can beautify a echt unfilmed "Mathematician" to yourself and your house, by winning start in the succeeding discipline turning: See heroes online.

Heroes are one of the most hot series falsity and episode broadcast e'er to hit the video take. Since it was launched a year ago, it has really captured the imaging of the television viewing unrestricted of Region Land and all across the follower. You can now follow heroes online. The very concept that a unlobed aggroup of number group short discovering that they score been acknowledged caretaker powers is an heady construct, and one that all of us are tipped to imagine nigh. Heroes has metamorphose amongst the most-watched programs on broadcasting, and the actual periodical continues to attract disc who, for whatsoever understanding or other, cannot be around to timekeeper telecasting when Heroes is airing. You eff to wreak, you screw to play a journey for sector or pleasure. You can now vigil heroes online. Until new it was a straying entity and you had to inactivity for a transmit or hear to your friends and activity match informatory you how stylish nights broadcast was so interesting. And how it was a shame that you missed it

You will be glad to bed that these days can now be over for you and you can see heroes online asap. You may bonk detected if you wave the internet a new software curriculum that has been industrial that allows you to accession hundreds if not thousands of video channels unbent from the cyberspace. The name may acquire caught your eye, and in your sub-conscious you may bang said " too close to be unfeigned" You may steady hump entered their web site and show a slight and then definite " Why be a mathematician!" and rapt on. And you may make beautify one of the umpteen tens of thousands who change dollars to acquire and download has indeed beautify a concrete mathematician and blest with primary powers/ The primary state to disembarrass themselves from the shackles of the telecasting and equipment programs suppliers who feature been charging them a fortune for a little sophisticated variation of this software technology for years. All you mortal to do is tab it out and I ensure you gift be watching heroes online in no second.

No incertitude roughly it, with this new edition to your software collection, you can prettify a authentic "Hero" and view TV periodical, interestingness and underway concern and sporting events from all over the Mankind around the clock.

You can transport the line guy on his way never to darken your entree again. Get a Hero to yourself and your tribe by beginning a TV/PC connectedness.

Auto Insurance Online : The Easiest Way To Get Cheaper Premiums

If you need a car, as most families do, then you also need insurance for your car, which adds extra expense on to an already expensive item. It is hard enough for a family to make ends meet, so high auto insurance bills are a real pain.

However, this does not necessarily mean that there is no way out of this problem. Thanks to the Internet, shopping around for the best deal around is easier than ever before. We can compare all the different deals that are out there in a flash! So, what exactly do we need to do in order to find the best auto insurance deals online?

First off, we will need to find out which online auto insurance providers are offering what discounts. These providers normally come up with different offers for different types of customers. We can even look for some information on whether or not they have additional options to offer their customers. If they offer these, we can squeeze the most out of their offer and easily save ourselves more than 10-20% off their standard prices.

The next thing that we need to try to do is to find as many available online auto insurance providers as possible. It is essential to do this so that we can compare and contrast what prices and deals each of them has on offer. If you do not do this then you will probably not end up saving as much money as you possibly can. We need to compare even the little details so that we will not miss the service with the cheapest price but the most comprehensive coverage.

Last but not least, the third recommended tip is to make real use of the internet. Rather than going from one auto insurance shop to another, or making endless phone calls, just use the internet. It is able to save us a lot of time and money; not only in the long run, but on gas and time shopping around. With the internet, all we have to do is sit in front of a computer, do a search or two, follow a couple of links, and all the information that you need will be brought up right in front of you.

I know that these auto insurance plans can get confusing, and that there are so many you do not even want to read through them all, but taking the time to carefully read through them is important. Be aware of the fine print, and make sure that each plan is tailored to your specific needs. Remember that though you want to save money, you still need to get comprehensive coverage.

The good thing is that we can do this right from the comfort of our own home. Considering that today's economic situation has caused difficulties for lots of families trying to earn and save money looking for auto insurance I would say that finding it online is the easiest, best and cheapest way to go. Do you agree?

Guaranteed Unsecured Personal Loan

A guaranteed unsecured personal loan is a very fast option with high interest rates and a number of important things to consider.

There are still some requirements that apply to almost all of these deals, though for the most part they are pretty basic. You need to be at least 18 years old, a citizen of the country you are applying in, and you need to be employed. You also can not be in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings, if things have already been discharged or dismissed you are ok.

Now that you've decided you qualify, it is time to look at your options.

Since you are looking for a guarantee, you likely have bad credit. These deals will offer you the convenience of not having to shop around only to be repeatedly declined and wasting your time. The downside is that you really pay for this convenience. A guaranteed unsecured personal loan will have a higher interest rate and probably other fees that will make it so you aren't eligible to borrow as much as you would be otherwise.

A lot of customers do not care and feel the convenience is worth it, and that is fine. Others do have some other options to consider.

First of all, get a copy of your credit report and do correct any mistakes that you can. You can wait six months to a year and try to improve your credit before applying for any financing by getting a secured credit card and paying everything on time. This will greatly improve your options.

You can also offer the lender more of a guarantee that they will be paid back. You can do this by finding someone with better credit to cosign, or by offering some form of collateral like real estate, a vehicle, jewelry, or other collectibles of value This option will take a little longer to go through, however.

Whatever you decide to do, be sure to shop around! I recommend finding five companies to compare rates and find the best guaranteed unsecured personal loan.

Home Party Business Ideas

A home party plan business is the perfect business for a busy family. Frequently a family will need extra income to make ends meet and yet all the wage earners are already working full time. A home party business is perfect to supplement the household finances without taking time away from the quality of family life.

Why Direct Selling Party Plan?

There are two main reasons why a direct selling or party plan business is a good way to increase income for a busy family.

More Quality Family time

Reduce Tax Liability

The person who joins a home party company can work from home and therefore stay connected to the family. Normally when a family needs a second or third job the wage earner does not have enough good quality time at home because the second job takes them away from the family. When working from home the stress on the family and the stress on the direct sales consultant is reduced.

Direct Selling & IRS Home Business Deductions

Working from home also provides additional cash resources in the household budget due to a decrease in tax liabilities when the IRS home office deduction is applied. Even if the direct selling business does not generate a profit the family can still use the home office deduction to reduce taxes on the primary income source provided certain guidelines are followed. All businesses who maintain an office are permitted to deduct the expense of the upkeep of the office. Working at home is no exception. Frequently this will allow a family to reduce the tax liability of both wage earners IRS payments. Things like rent, utilities and household supplies are now shared by the "office" and the home. Certain guidelines must be adhered in applying the home office deduction. This alone will free up some money in the household budget to relieve some financial burden the family may be experiencing by just working a job. The tax structure in the United States applies to two basic types of income: the business owner and the wage earner. The IRS home business deduction allows regular people to move into the world of the business owner when working from home

Best Home Business Tips

The top 5 best business tips for new home party plan consultants are:

Write a schedule. Like any job you must work consistently to get paid.

Go to team meetings! It is different to have your own business than to "go to work" so you should get some training.

Don't depend on friends and family for business. It is okay to ask them to host your first shows but they can not keep your business rolling along forever.

Study marketing. If you hate sales then this is the wrong business for you. Marketing skills can be learned.

Be excited! If you can not be excited about your company then you picked the wrong company. People love to do business with excited people!

Success in any business including party plan requires commitment, determination and a willingness to learn. Anyone can be successful at the home party business, yet many new consultants never attain their dreams. Like any business you must put the effort into it in order to get paid.

Saving one million hours per week

Five weeks ago we rolled out Auto Pagination, a major milestone in our efforts to make Blogger faster for you and your readers. We are very happy to report a ten percent overall decrease in page loading latency across all Blogger blogs and a twenty-seven percent decrease on archive pages.

Just how significant is a ten percent latency reduction? It's not often that software engineers get to save lives, yet in just the past five weeks we’ve saved eight human lifetimes spent waiting for pages to load! Every week saves an additional:

1 Million Hours
114 Years
1.6 Human Lifetimes

Some of you have expressed concern over the change in how Blogger displays your blogs. Without addressing each individual case, the vast majority of blogs negatively impacted were not actually blogs, but were using Blogger as a kind of free web host. As today’s post makes clear, Auto Pagination has had an extraordinarily positive impact on how blogs are consumed — blog readers are spending less time waiting for pages to load and more time reading the posts you work so hard to write. (By the way: if your pages show fewer posts than you would like, we recommend using After the Jump to ensure that your readers can see more posts per page.)

If a ten percent improvement has such a major impact, what else can be done to speed up your blog? One area we’re looking at is third-party JavaScript. We remain one of the few blogging services to allow users unlimited ability to add JavaScript to their pages — but that flexibility comes at a cost. These JavaScript widgets often add several seconds to page loads — even on fast Internet connections. We’ll talk more about this in a future post; in the mean time, you can try out Google’s Page Speed to identify what might be causing a page to load slowly.

Express yourself with the Blogger Template Designer

We’re thrilled to announce that the Blogger Template Designer has launched to Blogger in Draft, our experimental playground where users can try out Blogger’s latest features. The Template Designer brings a new level of customization to your blog. Take a look:
In the Template Designer, you’ll find:

15 new professional templates to start from (and more on their way)

Custom blog layouts with one, two and three columns

Hundreds of professional background images from iStockphoto

Customizable colors, fonts, and more!

We have more details and tips in our Blogger Template Designer post on the Blogger in Draft blog.

We worked with iStockphoto, the leading microstock image marketplace, to put together a great collection of beautiful images and patterns to use as backgrounds on your blogs. The photos are stunning, and are free to use on your Blogger blog.

That being said, today’s launch is just the beginning. We’ll add more of our own designs over the coming weeks and months and, through the new Template Design Group, we’ll be working with members of the Blogger design community to bring their templates into the new Template Designer.

Help test drive the Blogger Template Designer by logging into Blogger In Draft, and learn more about the new features in more detail on the Blogger In Draft blog.

Auto Pagination on Blogger

Latency is a word you hear a lot at Google. We are always looking for ways to make our products faster, because we have consistently found that faster page loads mean more satisfied users. This post is the first of an occasional series that will discuss ways in which we’re working to make blogs load faster for all users.

A few months ago, we took a look at ways to improve the performance of Blogger blogs, and noticed that many pages — particularly search results pages, label pages and archive pages — were taking longer to load than they should.

This has lots of implications. Users suffer — pages take longer to load, and for anyone around the world who pays for their bandwidth, they can incur unnecessary charges as their browser downloads more content than needed. You suffer, because as latency increases, pageviews go down. (See here for a study Google did last year for this phenomenon at google.com.)

Starting today, we’re rolling out a change that affects how we paginate webpages on Blogger. We will dynamically adjust how much content to send to the browser depending on (a) the amount of HTML on the page being requested (in kilobytes) and (b) the number of images on the page. Users can continue to use “older posts” and “newer posts” navigation elements to see additional posts.

For major changes like this, we do incremental roll-outs so we can monitor performance as they progress. We expect the change to be fully deployed over the next week, and once fully deployed, we expect to see several results:

pages will load faster

pageviews, if impacted at all, may increase

We will keep an eye on things, and if we see anything unexpected, we will update this post. Otherwise, keep blogging — and we’ll keep working to make your blog faster for you and your readers!

How the Google Page Creator shutdown may affect your blog

A while back, Google announced that they were shutting down Google Page Creator and offered users the option to upgrade to Google Sites. In the past, some custom template designers used Page Creator to host javascript, a file type that Google Sites does not support. Since a number of bloggers use templates that rely on files hosted on Page Creator, we realized that links to those files would break once the migration from Page Creator to Sites was complete.

Fret not! Rather than see our users' templates break, we built a tool to preserve these links and host the affected files. To find out if your blog is affected, login to your Blogger Dashboard. If we've detected that your blog template contains links to Google Page Creator,

If you see this warning, click Update and review to access the Blogger Template Fixer and correct the links on your blog. (Note: you may not notice any problems with your blog until Page Creator shuts down over the coming days). Visit our Help Center to learn more about fixing your template.

Also, if you have issues fixing your template, let us know at the Blogger Help Group.

A quick note about music blog removals

Earlier today, word spread about some popular music blogs that were recently removed from Blogger. While we make it a policy to not publicly discuss individual users or their accounts, we wanted to clarify a few things about how and when Blogger enforces its Terms of Service as they relate to our DMCA policy.

Last summer, we updated our enforcement of the DMCA. Our current policy is that when we receive a DMCA complaint, we:

Notify the blogger about the complaint by e-mail and on the Blogger dashboard.

Reset the offending post to 'draft' status, allowing the blogger to remove the offending content.

Send a copy of the complaint to ChillingEffects.org.

When we receive multiple DMCA complaints about the same blog, and have no indication that the offending content is being used in an authorized manner, we will remove the blog.

Inevitably, we occasionally receive DMCA complaints even though the blogger does have the legal right to link to the music in question. Whether this is the result of miscommunication by staff at the record label, or confusion over which MP3s are "official," it happens. If this happens to you, it is imperative that you file a DMCA counter-claim so we know you have the right to the music in question. Otherwise, if we receive multiple DMCA complaints for your blog, this could very well constitute repeat offenses, compelling us to take action.

Update: Should have linked directly to the instructions for filing a counter-notification.

Update 2/11/10: We looked into this issue further and identified one case where a blogger did not receive notification of any DMCA complaints before their blog was removed. We're sorry about this.

We've contacted the blog owner and restored their blog, effective immediately, and we fixed the bug that caused the termination without prior notification. We're also looking into additional preventative protections. We know the DMCA process can be difficult to navigate, and we're working on ways to make this process as smooth as possible.

Create Pages in Blogger

Another top user-requested feature has just graduated from Blogger In Draft! Blogger now makes it easy to create Pages linked from your blog.

This feature lets you easily publish static information on stand-alone pages. For example, you can create an About This Blog page that discusses the evolution of your blog, or a Contact Me page that provides directions, a phone number, and a map to your location.

You create a page similar to how you write a blog post. From Blogger click the Posting | Edit Pages tab, then click New Page. (Note: you can create up to 10 pages.)

Once your page is published, you can link to it from the new Pages widget. The Pages widget lets you add links to your pages as tabs at the top of your blog, or as links in your blog's sidebar.

In the Pages widget, you can decide which pages will be linked and in what order they will appear. You can also choose whether you want new pages to appear automatically in the Pages widget by checking or unchecking the box to the left of Add new Pages by default.

Finally, for those of you that have custom templates, your custom template may not automatically support Pages as horizontal "tabs". If you are familiar with HTML, follow these instructions on how to add Pages to your custom template.

Looking forward to seeing all of the Pages that bloggers create!

Important Note to FTP Users

Last May, we discussed a number of challenges facing Blogger users who relied on FTP to publish their blogs. FTP remains a significant drain on our ability to improve Blogger: only .5% of active blogs are published via FTP — yet the percentage of our engineering resources devoted to supporting FTP vastly exceeds that. On top of this, critical infrastructure that our FTP support relies on at Google will soon become unavailable, which would require that we completely rewrite the code that handles our FTP processing.

Three years ago we launched Custom Domains to give users the simplicity of Blogger, the scalability of Google hosting, and the flexibility of hosting your blog at your own URL. Last year's post discussed the advantages of custom domains over FTP and addressed a number of reasons users have continued to use FTP publishing. (If you're interested in reading more about Custom Domains, our Help Center has a good overview of how to use them on your blog.) In evaluating the investment needed to continue supporting FTP, we have decided that we could not justify diverting further engineering resources away from building new features for all users.

For that reason, we are announcing today that we will no longer support FTP publishing in Blogger after March 26, 2010. We realize that this will not necessarily be welcome news for some users, and we are committed to making the transition as seamless as possible. To that end:

We are building a migration tool that will walk users through a migration from their current URL to a Blogger-managed URL (either a Custom Domain or a Blogspot URL) that will be available to all users the week of February 22. This tool will handle redirecting traffic from the old URL to the new URL, and will handle the vast majority of situations.

We will be providing a dedicated blog and help documentation to provide as much information as possible to help guide users through the migration off of FTP.
Blogger team members will also be available to answer questions on the forum, comments on the blog, and in a few scheduled conference calls once the tool is released.

We have a number of big releases planned in 2010. While we recognize that this decision will frustrate some users, we look forward to showing you the many great things on the way. Thanks for using Blogger.

Viglink: Easier Way to Monetize Links On Your Blog

If you spend as much time working on your blog as we do, you wonder if there's a way to get paid. Many bloggers monetize by selling ads on their site but now there is a way to get paid for your actual content rather than just the ads that go around it.

Any time you write about a product or service, you're connecting your audience to that product. If someone makes a purchase, the seller benefits from your written word—you influenced a purchase. There are thousands of websites that will pay you a fee for any business you bring them through a form of online advertising called affiliate marketing. With affiliate ads, web publishers are compensated for driving online actions.

VigLink is a content monetization company that makes affiliate marketing very easy for bloggers. We offer a simple snippet of code you can install in your blog that automatically and transparently does all the work for you. We've catalogued and signed up for more than 12,500 affiliate programs and we collect all the performance information and deliver you a single integrated payment. In return, VigLink takes 25% of the incremental revenue you earn.

There are no other costs or fees and nothing changes about how your site looks or behaves. Join VigLink and enroll your blog in less than a minute or learn more by watching this two minute video.

Get Related Content for Your Blog with the Zemanta Gadget

Guest post by Boštjan 'Bos' Špetič, Zemanta CEO

About a year ago this blog featured Zemanta, a tool that helps you get more out of blogging. Previously, Blogger users could install a Zemanta browser plugin to recommend content while you blog, enabling you to:

Read news to learn more about the topic
Link articles to improve the value of your post
Use pictures to make your post richer
Today we are pleased to announce that we've teamed up with Blogger to make it easier to use Zemanta on Blogger. To use Zemanta, just follow these three easy steps:

1. Click this link: Add Zemanta gadget. It will take you to a page to add the Zemanta gadget to your blog:
2. Select one of your blogs in the drop-down box, and click Add Zemanta. This will add the gadget to the post editor for your selected blog, and take you to a new post page.

3. You will see Zemanta is already turned on, waiting for you to start using it.

That's it! You are now all set up to boost your blogging. Simply write a couple of sentences and the recommendations will show up automatically. You can preview them and then simply click on an item to add it to the post.

To learn more about how best to use Zemanta, check out this video, browse through our tutorials, read about our selection as one of ReadWriteWeb's "Top 10 Semantic Web products" last year, or just get started and play around with it. We would love to hear your feedback or suggestions.

Happy blogging!

* Notes: Adding Zemanta gadget will automatically update your blog's post editor to the New Editor; Also, this feature is currently available only for English-locale users.

Make Money With Your Blog and Google AdSense

AdSense is a great way to get paid for doing what you love to do: blogging! AdSense allows you to show targeted ads on your blog and earn revenue from your traffic. It also helps your visitors find things they may be interested in, based on the content of your blog posts. Best of all, AdSense is free and you have the option to remove the ads at any time.

The AdSense system shows ads relevant to the content of your blog and you can easily customize the look and feel of the ads to match your blog. If your blog is about fashion, you may show ads for shoe designers or clothing stores. If your blog is about cars, you may see ads for car dealerships or auto shops. Using filters, you can have control over the content of the ads you display by choosing to block categories of ads or even specific advertisers.

With the free suite of powerful AdSense reporting tools, you can pull detailed reports that will help you track your revenue and identify opportunities to earn more money. You can see earnings by day, page, domain or specific ad unit and can also use Google Analytics to see the source of your traffic and earnings.

Adding AdSense to your blog is easy. Just follow these steps:
Log in to Blogger, choose your blog, and go to the “Monetize | Set up AdSense” tab.

Choose where you want to show your ads on your blog and hit “Next.”

If you’re new to AdSense, follow the easy online steps to sign up for a new AdSense account. If you already use AdSense, you can log in to AdSense and link your Blog to your AdSense account.

If you’re using a Classic template, you can add AdSense to your blog by following the steps outlined here.

To learn even more, come take a tour with Google AdSense.

New Share Buttons

Sharing is an important feature for bloggers. When your readers find an interesting post, they probably want to share it with other people; this in turn brings more traffic back to your blog.

Blogger now offers new share buttons. The new buttons can be placed under each post and let your blog readers easily share your post via email, Blogger, and popular social networks—we now support Google Buzz, Twitter, and Facebook, and we plan to add more services in the future.

Blogger also has a Share link in the navbar, but for improved convenience you can now have share buttons below the post (we also gave them nice rollover icons). For Twitter, we’ve also integrated the goo.gl URL shortener to give you the maximum space in the Tweet to add your own remarks.

You can start having the new share buttons show up under your posts by editing the Blog Posts widget and enabling Show Share Buttons in Design | Page Elements. Go ahead and turn the new sharing buttons on, and let some fun sharing begin!

Blogger Template Designer Now Available To Everyone

When we launched the Blogger Template Designer to Blogger in Draft in March, you gave us a lot of feedback and suggestions. Our blog post received nearly 1,000 comments and many of you shared your blog’s new looks on Twitter using #newbloggertemplate. Since the launch, we fixed many bugs and added even more themes and background images. But the Blogger Template Designer has only been available on Blogger in Draft, which is why we’re excited to announce that the Blogger Template Designer is now available to everyone.

Highlights

How you look online is important, and everybody wants to look unique. With the Blogger Template Designer, you can create your own blog designs through:

Beautiful new templates. We’ve designed 19 brand-new templates, with more on the way. You can quickly give your blog a great new style by selecting one of the new templates.[1]

Separating design from layout. Designs are completely defined in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), meaning that any design can be applied to any blog layout, making templates more flexible and unique.

Hundreds of free, professional background images. We've paired up with iStockphoto to offer you hundreds of gorgeous background images at no cost.

A single control to change all your design's colors. With other platforms, users have to define every color in their blog separately, making changing the color theme of your blog a tedious task. The Blogger Template Designer lets you change all the colors in your blog at once, by changing the Main color theme.

Pixel-perfect layout manipulation via smooth resizing. You can define your layout down to the pixel via sliders that update the blog's preview in real time.

A real-time preview sits below the design control panel. Watch your blog update as you create your template design.
Keeping it simple. Throughout the Template Designer we use hierarchy to hide complexity from you.

Complete control. Under the advanced tab, you can override a design's CSS and enter your own CSS in the editor and see your blog's preview updated in real time.

Cross-browser support. Blogger handles cross browser support for you, so you don’t have to. Want a design with rounded corners? We give it to you in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome

Try it now!

Anyone can try out the template designer here. If you like your design, you can apply it to a new blog or to an existing blog. You can also try the Template Designer on your blog (Design > Template Designer).

Feel free to spread the word with the #newbloggertemplate hashtag on Google Buzz or Twitter. If you are a template designer, you are also welcome to join the Blogger Template Design Group. If you have feedback or suggestions, let us know on the forums.

As always, thanks for using Blogger!


[1] Note: Selecting a new template will erase all of your customizations on the existing template, so if you have customized your template be sure to first save the current template at Design > Edit HTML.

New Comments System on Blogger

Commenting is one of the most integral parts of blogging: it’s what makes blogging a conversation, not a monologue. That’s why we are pleased to announce two cool new improvements to Blogger’s comments system: much better spam filtering and the ability to view all comments on your blog in one place.

Introducing Comment Spam Filtering

A blog is an open communications system, inviting conversations from all web users. Unfortunately, spammers have been finding their way into these conversations. To fight spam, some of you enabled moderation of all comments or required word verification or login. While somewhat effective, these checks limit real-time conversations around your blog.

To address this, we’ve integrated Google’s spam filtering technologies into the Blogger comment system. Some of you will notice the new “Comments” tab. (Note: We are gradually rolling this out to all users, so some of you may not see the new Comments tab yet.) In the Comments tab, there is a Spam sub-tab that shows all the comments that are likely spam.

The comments in the Spam inbox are not visible to your readers. Here, you can permanently delete spam comments by selecting them and choosing Delete. You can also mark comments as Not Spam that have been incorrectly classified as spam (what we call the “false-positives”). Choose Not Spam and the selected comments will be moved out of the spam list and will be immediately published on your blog.

These feedback actions also help us better identify spam on your blog. We encourage you to occasionally check your Spam inbox to see if any non-spam comments have been marked as spam. Please note that spam filtering currently only applies to new comments.

You can report any issues with our new spam system by clicking on the “Report spam filtering issues” link on the bottom of the Comments | Spam page, or by visiting this Help Forum page.

Comments “Inbox”

We also created a place where you can see all the comments that have been published on your blog. The Comments | Published sub-tab provides a similar view as your email inbox. This view comes in handy when you want to see all of the comments on your blog in one place. With the new comments inbox, it’s easy to find new comments on old posts.

In the Comments | Published sub-tab, you can select comments and mark them as spam or delete them. When you mark a comment as Spam, it will be deleted immediately from your blog. You can also Delete comments for editorial reasons or just Remove Content to leave a record of the comment.

Comment moderation has also moved under the Comments tab and has been extended to allow you to mark comments as Spam.

We hope that adding comment spam filtering and the new “inbox” user interface will be a good starting point toward improving the Blogger commenting system and we look forward to your feedback.