Top picks for replacing that old Windows XP laptop

Top picks for replacing that old Windows XP laptop

With support for Win XP ending, it's time to upgrade your ancient computer.

CNET/Dan Ackerman

If you're still running Windows XP on one or more PCs at home or at work, you're not alone. Even after 12 years, more than 25 percent of PCs still use the XP operating system, and many still will even after the April 8 deadline for Microsoft to cease official support.

For any XP system you have, chances are the hardware it's running on is very old, and it may be time for an upgrade, even without needing a new, more secure OS. Below are some picks, from inexpensive to premium, that will get you into Windows 8, or even (gasp!) a different operating system.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Acer Chromebook C720P, $299 A new, low-cost way to get online

A Chromebook is essentially a low-power PC that runs a Google operating system called Chrome. That largely restricts you to online tasks, but includes Gmail, Facebook, Netflix, and other cloud-based apps, sites, and tasks. This Acer model adds a touch screen, making it our favorite.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Lenovo ThinkPad 8, $399 A pocket-size full Windows tablet with a sharp design

Smaller eight-inch tablets running full Windows 8 are finally getting good enough to recommend. This Lenovo model is well built and has an optional, camera-friendly cover. Hook up an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and it becomes a usable basic desktop PC, as well.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Acer Aspire E1-472G, $599 An inexpensive way to get gaming

A perfectly fine budget-priced laptop that stands out from the crowd, thanks to the inclusion of a basic discrete Nvidia graphics card, making it possible to catch up on all the years of PC games you missed while on Windows XP.

Sarah Tew/CNET

HP Spectre 13 Ultrabook, $999 A slim, touch-screen laptop that hits all the right notes

A great example of the 13-inch ultrabook, this slim, lightweight system has a very bright touch screen, good speakers, and an extra-wide touch pad for all those windows 8 gestures.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, $999 A high-res hybrid that's easy to use

XP users are probably still scratching their heads at the idea of a hybrid that is part laptop, part tablet. The Yoga line from Lenovo is still our favorite because it doesn't compromise the laptop shape, and it includes an extra high-res screen.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Apple MacBook Air (13-inch), $1,099 
If you're looking to leave Windows behind

If you're still running Windows XP, then Windows Vista, Windows 7, andWindows 8 didn't sufficiently tempt you to upgrade. That might mean you're looking to jump ship entirely, and there's no better way to do that than with a 13-inch MacBook Air, which I consider to be the single most universally useful laptop ever made.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Asus G750, $2,999 
A giant gaming rig to put consoles to shame

Maybe you've stuck with that XP laptop for so many years just to save up for a big splurge. Different configurations cost more or less, but this $3,000 build of a high-end Asus gaming laptop gave us the newest top-end Nividia card, the GeForce GTX 880M, and benchmark scores that just about justify the price.

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How I Use Email Newsletters to Drive Traffic and Make Money

How I Use Email Newsletters to Drive Traffic and Make Money

Today I want to show you exactly how I do it.

Firstly a word about technology – I use Aweber to deliver my emails (I talk about why here). However you can use pretty much any email newsletter service (many also choose and highly recommendMailChimp) for the process I outline below as long as it allows you to set up an auto-responder or sequence of emails.

I should also say that the process I’m about to share has evolved over time. It started out very very simple and has slowly developed with time – in fact it continues to develop as I learn more and by no means is where I want to take it…. yet.

Lets start with a visual on how my process looks (click to enlarge) before I explain the elements:

Reader Subscribes

Because email newsletters are such an important part of my site I put a lot of emphasis upon getting this conversion moment with those who come to my site. There are a variety of places around the blog where I attempt to get readers to sign up – some are more subtle than others. Some are anything but subtle including a popup signup box that readers see 20-30 seconds after they arrive on the blog.

The pop-up is set to only show once per visitor (unless they’re blocking cookies) and while it is intrusive and I was very hesitant about adding it – it’s incredibly effective at getting readers to signup.

I switched to using this Pop-Up signup technique just on a year ago and at the time wrote up how it took me from getting 40 confirmed signups a day to 350 over night here. Since that time subscriber numbers have continued to climb – I now get around 500 new confirmed subscribers a day. This adds up to around 180,000 a year which is exciting growth. It does annoy a handful of readers (I get an email or two per month) but for the payoff it’s something I’ve decided to continuewith.

Welcome Email

When someone signs up and then confirms their subscription by clicking a link in an email they’re then sent (double opt in is required by law) the new subscriber is immediately sent a welcome email. This email is all about making them feel good about subscribing and giving them a quick introduction to the site.

I’m presuming that most people who sign up for the newsletter are new to the site so it’s a great opportunity to introduce myself, show them around and help get their expectations right about the site.

This welcome email has a site logo, my picture, some links to key parts of the site like the forum, some suggested reading for catching up on key posts in our archives (I send them to a few ‘sneeze pages‘ that send them deep within the archives and get them viewing multiple pages) and shares what the subscriber will receive in the coming weeks in terms of future emails.

The email also asks people to add the email address that emails are sent from to their white list/contact list to help ensure emails are delivered.

It’s written in a personal and friendly style and seems to connect as I get a lot of replies to thisemail from new subscribers thanking me for the personal welcome.

Weekly Updates

As you’ll see from the chart above – weekly updates are what readers get the most. They’re largely updates on what has happened on the blog/forums in the past week.

You can see one of my more recent ones here (although it loses some of the formatting in the web version) where you can see that these emails have a bit of a structure. I usually have the following sections in these weekly updates:

• Welcome: usually just a sentence that intros the week. If there’s something important I’ll often highlight it here. Sometimes I’ll also do a quick update on something cool that happened on the site during the week (record day of traffic, milestone in terms of subscribers, a mention in the press – this kind of update seems to build morale/momentum among readers)
• Quick Links: here I share the weekly assignment, any discussion oriented posts/polls, any competition announcements and occasionally a ‘featured post’ that I want to especially push traffic to etc
• Tips Tutorials and Techniques: new blog posts of a more general nature
• Recommended Resource: in this case it’s an affiliate promotion (a great product) but occasionally I swap this section to be a ‘message from our sponsors’ and have it as a sold ad position.
• Post Production Tips: updates from this section/category of the blog
• New Gear, Tips and Reviews: again, updates from this section of the blog
• Hot Forum Threads: a bit of a summary of key threads happening in the forum
• Reader Images: Being a photography site visuals are important and the images get clicked on a lot. They also give readers some incentive to post images in the forums as they could get featured in this newsletter that goes out to over 200,000 people..

I do mix things up a bit. Some weeks I’ll run a little promotion of our Twitter of Facebook accounts, other weeks I might throw in some older posts form the archives that people may not have seen and sometimes I’ll run a promotion encouraging readers to forward the email onto a friend. Really anything can go in these emails as long as they’re on topic and useful

The main goals of these weekly updates are to:

• Drive traffic to the site
• Build Community, reinforce brand with readers
• Make money through the promotions

Readers love these newsletters because while they’re largely links to the site the links are all content rich and useful resources. I title these emails ‘Photography Tips for Your Weekend’ and that’s how many of our readers use them – as a spring board into their weekend with their cameras.

Note: these emails are manually put together. They take me an hour or two a week to do. There are tools that will send out automated update emails (Aweber has one) but I prefer to do it manually to ensure that the emails are tailored for maximum impact and usefulness.

Themed Updates

I’ve written about this concept once before here on ProBlogger in a post titled How 24 Hours of Work Will Send Millions of Readers to My Blog.

The idea really came about when I realised that the majority of my blogs thousands of pages of content was going largely unseen by new readers to my blog. While I would occasionally link back to key posts most of my archives don’t get a lot of traffic.

These ‘themed updates’ are all about sending readers back to old but useful content around a single theme. Here’s how they work.

I use the ‘auto responder‘ or ‘followup’ feature of Aweber to set up these emails (Mailchimp also has an auto responder service). This means that they go out at pre-determined intervals to readers a certain number of days after their last scheduled email.

The first email in the sequence is the ‘welcome email’ that I mentioned above. 8 Days after thatemail goes out the subscriber receives the first ‘themed’ email. The topic is ‘portraits’ and is a newsletter that contains a short intro to the topic and then some links back to some of our most useful portrait photography tips. It also has a few recommendations of good books on portraiture (with affiliate links).

30 days after this portraits email they get another themed email (remember they’re getting weekly updates in between). This email is about ‘exposure’ (pictured right – click to enlarge) and contains links to some of our best posts on subjects like Aperture, Shutter Speed etc. It also contains a couple of recommendations to good books on the topic (with affiliate links to Amazon).

30 days later they get an email on composition (same format as above with links to archive posts and books). 30 days later they get another themed email.

The main goals of these themed updates are to:

• Drive traffic to the site – particularly older posts
• Make money through the affiliate links – while they’re not big ticket items they do convert

These emails do take some time to set up but once they’re set up they become automated and go out every day without me ever having to think about them. With 500 people signing up for my newsletter every day I know that 500 people are getting each of these emails on a daily basis. I have 6 of these emails set up in a sequence at present and add more to the list every now and again so I know 3000 people in total get them each day of the week – forever.

Promotions

This is the most recent addition to my sequence of emails and I’m still perfecting their use but the signs are very promising already.

I use the auto-responder sequence mentioned above to deliver these (they’re going to go out every month or two) and the content of these emails is to highlight a resource or product that I recommend to readers.

The products are affiliate products that I take a commission from any sale of. We disclose that relationship in the email and get a lot of positive feedback on the disclosure from readers.

The key with these promotional emails is to choose products that you genuinely recommend. The reason for this is that at any point subscribers can leave your list – if you push too hard or recommend dodgy products they can leave (with a bade taste in their mouth).

It can be hard to find quality products – I’ve found there to be a lot of junky products in my niche for example – but when I recently found a product that I believed in (123 digital imaging) I knew I had my first product to add to the sequence.

I only sent this first promotion email 17 days ago so it’s yet to go out to everyone on the list but it’s generated 500 or so sales and will continue to sell as long as the product is on the market as it goes to another 500 people every day. In many ways it’s become a nice little passive income with a few sales every day being generated.

When we release our first ebook in the coming weeks it will also be added to the sequence of emails in a similar way.

The main goals of these promotional updates are to:

• Make money through the affiliate links – the money these earn starts with a bang when you send it out to the bulk of your list on the first day but after that it becomes a steady trickle. The cool thing about it is that once you have a few of these set up in your sequence you can be having a number of affiliate promotions paying off each day.

Summing Up

All in all I find that the above mix of emails that we send out to our list gets very positive results. I work hard to keep them a ‘win/win’ for both our readers to get useful and relevant information but for me/the site to generate income. So far I think I’ve got the balance right – I regularly get emails from readers saying thanks for the newsletter and if I’m even an hour or two late sending it get people emailing to ask where it is. On a revenue front it’s increasingly profitable – between the sales of products and the ad revenue increases from the increased traffic it certainly has become a central part of my income stream to have this email list.

With the cycle as it is readers do occasionally get 2 emails in a week – however it’s never more than that and on most weeks it is just the one weekly email. I make it clear when they signup that it’s at least weekly to get this expectation right as I don’t want them feeling duped into signing up.

I also use Aweber’s scheduling feature for the auto responder emails which allows you to specify what days of the week they can go out. I schedule the sequenced emails (the themed and promotional ones) so that they never go out on a Thursday or Friday (the same day as the weekly ones).

Lastly I generally focus my efforts with this list on HTML emails. Aweber does give you the ability to send out a text email as well for those subscribers whose email system doesn’t allow HTML. For the text version I usually just send out a short email that links to a HTML version of the email. I did use to send out a full plain text email for these people but found that when I switched to a shorter email linking to the HTML version that most readers clicked through and appreciated seeing the images (this might be particular to my niche).

So that’s how I’ve set up my email newsletters on DPS. It takes a fair bit of work to get some of it set up but as I mentioned in yesterdays post – the pay off has been great and continues to grow as we recruit new subscribers to the list.

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How To Increase Your Page Views And Get More Blog Traffic

How To Increase Your Page Views And Get More Blog Traffic

Nowadays, Blogging is on demand. Every business website has started blogging to bring more traffic to their websites.

As like others we also want more traffic to our website, don’t we? We all would love to see our Google Analytics accounts filled with a high number of visits, right?

Of course, we all want successful blogs having an effective content. For some, having a high number of page views is critical – especially if you’re looking forward to make money with advertising or Google AdSense.

In this article, I’ll give you a variety of actions that you can apply to your own blog. When you start blogging, your main focus is to generate great content and get noticed.

But let’s know about page views first.

What are page views?

Page views are considered as the hits which your own page or blog will receive once visited by the users. More the visitors view your posts; more will be the increment in your page views.

Five Stages Of Effective Blogging

Effective Content

I know you’ve heard this a million times that “Content is King”. When new bloggers start creating their content for the first time, their blog looks small and they have a less number of subjects to write about. But as time goes on and they start capitalizing on the subjects, gather some great content their blog begins to grow.

However, if you’re thinking to start a blog – write 10 to 15 great articles first before you publish your blog. When you start promoting your blog readers will have something to see and will find something new to read.
Unfortunately, we didn’t do hard work and without effective content we post our blogs and wait for the blog to become popular. If there’s no content to share – your blog will not consider as meaningful. When you have over 50 good articles, your blog will start becoming popular and you’ll have some great audience and readers that will share your posts.

Visit sites like: Twitter, Yahoo Answers and read other blogs to see where people are having problems. Then start planning to write the articles that are related to their problems. Content that solves problems is always in demand. Look at the number of self-help forums and blogs that are very successful.

For making a good improved blog content from the start is the best way to come into the limelight.

Contribution

How are your levels of contribution these days? Do you give more of yourself? Successful bloggers and business owners’ contribute a lot more and offer more value. As a blogger, you need to contribute a lot more too.
There are a variety of ways to contribute. You can:

• Create videos.
• Host interviews with successful people.
• Create pod-casts.
• Create an eBook and give away for free.
• Write guest posts on certain blogs.
• Provide a content-rich newsletter.
• Develop a series of tutorials that provide great value to the reader.

Outstanding contribution provides: creditability; high quality service and further opportunities. Blogging is a long-term vehicle. This is not a “get-rich” scheme. It is a slow process but yet very effective.

Community

 

Successful people value their communities. A community is where people share and contribute: ideas; values; skills and beliefs. Businesses rely on their communities and networks to keep their business going. Serving your community is the most empowering way of becoming successful. The more value you add to your contribution and community – the stronger your blog will become.

Focus on lowering your bounce rate

A low bounce rate is a sign of a good blog. If I bounce a ball against a wall you’ll notice that the ball doesn’t stay on the wall for long. The same principle is applied to your blog pages. If I click on your blog page and don’t click on anything else – I’ve bounced off your blog. In essence, your goal is to attain my interest. A good bounce is about 25%-30%.

Make your home page like the front page of a magazine. Make it simple and yet effective. Include relevant things there and neglect the unnecessary part. You can also take the help of a magazine. Pick up a magazine and look at the front cover and see what grabs your attention? Apply the same concept on your home page as well. Moreover, you can use features like Facebook Like Button and Like Box on your home page to bring more visitors to your website.

Why should I stay on your blog?

The only thing I care about is: “If you can help me with my problems?” If you can help me with a problem I am more likely to stay. This is why the top bloggers succeed. Egos can destroy you if you’re a blogger. Focus on what’s important – the reader!

Now after creating a meaningful blog post let’s focus on other parameter.

How to increase your page views

1 – Create “pillar content”

Pillar content is informative that attracts most of the readers. Pillars keep buildings from falling to the ground and the same principle applies to blogging. Pillar content should have all in and out information that’s packed full of useful hints and tips. Usually the pillar content is over 1000 words and has lots of great value. In addition, pillar content is referred as link worthy. You want to make your blog as resourceful. Your aim is to encourage your readers to visit frequently your posts.

Focus on developing a resource for your blog that has useful information and provides the reader with answers to their problems.

2 – Interlink your posts

Wikipedia, the Internet’s most popular encyclopedia uses internal links constantly and consistently. Good referencing is an excellent method of obtaining more page views.

When you create a new article, review your previous articles and find out what content is relevant. The beauty of Wikipedia is that it constantly interlinks information. If you’re trying to increase your search engine ranking for a certain article, try to interlink your content together.

Google loves natural linking. You have the distant advantage of interlinking of your posts together and using key phrases rich anchor text.

Remember to strike a balance when interlinking your posts. Avoid applying too many links in your article – otherwise your reader will become distracted from the other original article.

3- Create a list post of your best blog articles

This is an easy method to round up a variety of articles that you feel are relevant to your reader. List posts also provide opportunities for your readers to click through further on your blog. Plus this method allows you to showcase some of your classic posts.

4 – Add a Sitemap

Usability is so important. You must install a sitemap plug-in. I suggest using the PS Auto Sitemap. It’s easy to install. You may have a monthly archive in your blog sidebar – it’s not user friendly – all it tells me how many articles you’ve created in a month. Blog readers are lazy. Help your blog readers out. You must be more concise.

A sitemap is the index of your website. A good site map is displayed in logical order to make it easier for you. Google loves Sitemaps too. The search engines can crawl your content faster and it’s a win-win situation for everyone.

5 – Use Relevant Categories

If you’re going to display links in the sidebar use categories, because it’s relevancy that your readers want. Don’t make the reader think! Thinking requires effort. Usability is crucial. A good blogger or web designer understands the importance of usability.

Relevant categories will provide clarity – not only for the readers but for you also. You must focus on making a streamline blog where articles can be linked. Categories are excellent for readers, because they can search for relevant criteria in one area.

6 – Give away something

To create a successful online presence we must contribute. Create something for free. Don’t even expect an email address back. You’re a new blogger and you’re unknown to the rest of the world. It’s going to take some time to come into the limelight. However, if you create an e-book for free and begin some heavy promotion, chances are you’ll become noticed, if the e-book is well written.

An eBook doesn’t require any hardcore design skills. This can be easily created in Microsoft Word. No need to use Quark Express or Adobe InDesign. Creating a successful reputation takes time to build. Giving anyway some freebies is a great way to promote your blog and traffic.

7 – Develop a series of articles

Just like a soap opera, each episode continues from the previous one and in proper sequence. Consider developing a variety of articles that become a series. If you’d made a 10,000 word article that could be ideally broken down into segments – break it down. A three or five part series will also give your readers an opportunity to subscribe to your RSS feed. Provide cliff hangers to your blog series articles and give your readers a reason to return.

8 – End with related articles

You’ve created an excellent post. You’ve engaged the reader and they’ve left a comment. You’ll always find that some readers want to know more about a certain subject. Help is at hand. Install the Yet Another Related Posts Plugin for WordPress – this handy plugin displays relevant links at the bottom of your article.

9 – Create an FAQ page

Every industry has its jargon and especially the Internet. Do you think your readers know what an RSS feed is? Create information that educates your readers. Plus interlink those jargon terms to a glossary.

Some readers won’t be familiar with terms like: PHP; conversion rate; bounce rate; SEO; Google Page Rank or PPC. A glossary can be an easy method to educate your readers.

10 – Display your popular articles

There are a variety of methods of displaying popular articles. You can use an: image slider or you can display popular articles in your sidebar. However, you choose to focus on highlighting great information for your readers.

11- Use excerpts

On your home page of your blog, avoid placing huge streams of text on your blog. You want readers to click further into your site. Remember your home page is like the front page of a magazine.

Usability is vital for a successful blog and to generate page views. Apply the above techniques to your blog today.

Hope, this article will help you and give you a clear idea to create a successful blog post. Keep sharing this post and let bloggers grow successfully. Feel free to share your comments below. I will appreciate your feedback.

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