Blogging is a lot of fun when you get to cover what you are passionate about in your pajamas. Video blogging is a whole other beast though. I have seen plenty of vloggers who make creating killer videos look easy. But it is far from that. Becoming successful on YouTube and other video sharing sites takes time and effort. People can be very harsh on your work if you don’t put your best work forward.

In order to produce videos, you need more than just great content. How you present your information matters too. If you plan to show your face in your video, you need to look somewhat professional (depending on the type of video you are producing). All these complications do make people think twice about getting started with vlogging. It is OK to be nervous when you are just getting started. Nobody is born a pro vlogger anyway. Here are 6 ways you can get over your fear of vlogging:

• cover topics you have mastered: you won’t look like a joke if you know what you are talking about in your videos. Many newbie vloggers make the mistake of covering certain topics they have not fully researched. That is recipe for disaster. Remember, credibility lost is very hard to gain back.
• keep it simple: those of you who are just getting started with vlogging should do your best to keep things simple. Trying to run when you have not learned how to walk may not work out for you. I personally have an easier time mastering new things when I don’t go too fast.
• don’t forget the basics: so you don’t have as much experience as a pro film maker? Big deal! Everyone knows the basics. When preparing your video, pay attention to your setting, sound quality, lighting, and other basic elements to make sure your work does not look too amateurish.
• avoid sophisticated tools: the key to having success with video blogging is going at the pace you can keep up with. Trying to pick up Adobe Premiere to prepare your videos when Camtasia can do the very same job you want is not smart (the Adobe software is much more advanced).
• relax and learn: it is OK to get nervous when you are doing your first set of videos. In fact, that will keep you in check. For beginners, video blogging is a learning process. They won’t become a master video producer overnight. But if they persist, they will get there eventually.
• avoid pursuit of perfection: aiming to create perfect videos will set you back immensely. Of course, your work should look professional and interesting to your viewers. But trying to get everything perfect could hold you back in the long run.

Becoming a master in video-blogging takes time and effort. You won’t get there overnight. If you work hard and are dedicated to learning new things about this each and every day, you will get there eventually.

Your turn: How did you get started with video blogging? What inspired you to make your first video?

The process is very simple. You should go to your Google+ account, grab the ID number in your URL, and provide this tool with it. What’s neat about MyGPlusFeed is the fact it turns the first few words in your post into the title for its RSS feed entry. Once done, you will be provided with a number of options to take advantage of your new RSS feed. You can feed the link provided to you to Google Reader to start tracking it.

MyGPlusFeed does not always have perfect RSS feed entries. At the same time, it makes the process of keeping up with your favorite Google+ users in Google Reader much easier. The process takes literally seconds to complete. Of course, you can always change how this works if you know your way around Yahoo! Pipes. There is a lot to like about this tool.

Getting up one morning to realize your site has been hacked is one of the worst feelings ever. Unfortunately, that is something most of us will have to experience to learn our lesson. I have been in the blogging business for years and never thought we could get hacked. But our host’s FTP database was one day hacked and things went downhill from there. That was something we could not prevent. But there are many steps you can take as a webmaster to make your site harder to hack. They are not that difficult to pull off either:

• Update your scripts: this should go without saying. Those of you who use WordPress know this too well. All the themes, plugins, and software that you run on your server should be patched up and up-to-date. Failing to do that will lead to catastrophic results over time.
• Remove unnecessary scripts: many of us have plugins and themes installed on our servers that we don’t use. Deactivating themes and plugins won’t make your site secure. You also have to remove everything that you don’t use. Many sites get hacked using holes in their inactive scripts.
• Choose strong passwords/permissions: if your password is easy to guess, you are going to find yourself in big trouble. Your passwords should be long and very hard to remember. Webmasters also need to make sure their files and directories have the right permissions to keep intruders out.
• Use a safe computer: you can’t expect your website to survive hack attacks if you are using an infected computer to access it. Malware is your enemy here. Never use a computer that may be infected to log on to your site.
• Secure your database: not only you should take time to secure your files and directories, you should also make sure your database is secure and clean of infections. Webmasters should make sure their database credentials are not easy to guess.
• Work with a secure web host: perhaps the most important step you can take to keep your site protected against hack attacks. You should do extensive research before picking a web host for your website. It is a huge decision. Web hosts that are terrible when it comes to handling server security will end up causing your business a whole lot of heartache in the long run.

You may not be able to stop all hackers. But you shouldn’t make their job easier either. The above steps help webmasters keep their websites protected against common hack attacks.

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Adam & Eve has a responsive design. It works great on desktop and mobile computers. Each individual gets to manage his/her sidebar. The sidebar for the homepage is highly customizable. The theme is social media friendly. It has a number of widgets (Twitter, Flickr, …) that make customizing your site easier.

Adam & Eve has a user-friendly options panel. It automatically resizes your thumbnails too! It is one unique theme for couples interested in sharing a blog.

The eList theme is designed for those of you who want to create an online directory from scratch. Your visitors can use it to submit their own listings. The theme is highly customizable and has a powerful Options panel. It has a custom form builder to give you the chance to customize the fields that are used for listing submissions. Planning to make money from your listing site? You do have the option to charge for featured listings.

eList has plenty of shortcodes and is ready to be localized. The theme manages your ads. You can always use the ePanel system to customize other aspects of this theme. Overall, this is a pretty decent online directory theme for WordPress. You are going to have to spend some time managing the content that gets submitted to your site though.

Most of us are in the blogging business because we are passionate about the things we talk about on our sites. But you can’t continue following your passion if you are not making enough money from your blog. Many bloggers do not have the right business model to stay in business for long. You can make a decent amount of money from ads if your site gets a lot of traffic. But you will have to come up with your own unique products (something that makes your site unique) to grow your business.

In order to make a decent living out of blogging, you need to have great content and amazing products people want to buy. Ads and affiliate offers will get you only so far. Here are 7 ways to increase the amount of money you make on your site:

1. Produce videos: so you are not making it big time with your articles anymore? Video marketing can be a difference maker for your site. Let’s face it. Many folks don’t do videos because they are lazy or don’t know how to produce videos. But YouTube videos can be great traffic drivers for your website.
2. Sell e-books: if you have followed blogging superstars lately, you have seen them use this approach to keep their business afloat. Your e-books need to go beyond what you offer on your website to sell though. Promoting your e-books the right way can make all the difference too.
3. Develop an app: developing an app for your website can give it more credibility and get more people to visit it. Of course, you can always develop premium apps that have nothing to do with your blog. If you have been doing your homework as a blogger, you probably have a few app ideas of your own already.
4. Create tools: developing free and paid tools for your blog can strengthen your offerings and bring you more revenue. Many top blogs start giving out free tools before making the transition to premium tools. That approach still works.
5. Increase your traffic: are you still in love with ads? Don’t get me wrong. You can make a living just from ads. But you are going to need a ton of traffic to make the numbers work in your favor. By optimizing your website for the search engines and building links you may get there. You will need to work extremely hard to achieve this though.
6. Speak publicly: you don’t have to be a superstar blogger to get public speaking gigs. Everyone has to start somewhere. You can always start with small, local events in your area and work your way up to bigger professional events.
7. Start new blogs: this approach works if you play your cards the right way. As long as you can handle developing new blogs with killer content, there is no reason you should not try this. You should make sure you have the right team at your disposal to manage your growing number of blogs though.

Blogging about what you are passionate about can be very gratifying. But you can’t keep it going if you don’t make enough money from your site. Rethinking your revenue strategy is must-do if you want to stay in this business for longer.

DomainsBot for iOS is pretty simple but effective. It lets you search for domain names by keyword. You can look up WHOIS information for taken domains to find out when they expire and who owns them. The history feature is neat if you are planning to buy an already taken domain.  The app does tell you if its domain suggestions are available.

I still like DomainBot.com on the web better. But this app is helpful if you plan to search for new domains on your iPhone. The app is free at the time of this writing.

Thank Me Later for WordPress is a useful tool to bring commenters back to your website. It is highly customizable. E-mails are sent after a pre-defined amount of time has passed.  You can have multiple messages queued up with different probabilities to make sure you don’t send the same message to every commenter. Your messages can be highly personalized to have the maximum effect.

Sending a “thank you” note to your commenters may not sound like a big deal. But it will make people remember your website. You do not want to over-do it. At the same time, this is a nice approach to keep people from leaving and forgetting your website.

Pinterest is one of the most addictive social networks around these days. It is quite a visual one and could bring you a ton of inspiration and fun every day. The community has the potential to be a great traffic driver for webmasters. In order to have success on Pinterest, you need to have a killer profile, add great content to it all the time, and stay active in the community. Here are 6 ways you can get started with Pinterest the right way:

• Create unique boards: this is key. I have seen plenty of folks who create boring boards. In order to gain traction on Pinterest, you need to create your boards carefully. Don’t forget to choose a killer name for each. I have had a lot of success with boards that target narrow topics. That strategy may or may not work for your situation.
• Add description/links to your profile: you can’t expect to have any success on Pinterest if your profile is not complete.  Don’t forget to add your website to your profile. It should also include clear description of what you are about. The more catchy your profile, the better chance you have of gaining followers.
• Keep on pinning/repinning: Pinterest is not a social network you can master by sitting on the sidelines. You need to be very active to enhance your presence. That includes pinning new content and repinning other people’s works. You should do this on a daily basis and throughout each day for the best results.
• Add Pinterest buttons to your website: already have a website that gets a ton of traffic? By adding a Pinterest profile badge to your website, you can leverage your existing traffic to build a more respectable presence on Pinterest. Adding the “Pin It” button to your site helps too.
• Comment and like: repinning other people’s posts is not the only way to stay active in this community. Users also get to comment and like entries. Commenting is a great way to engage other Pinterest users and build a more solid relationship with them.
• Promote your account on other networks: Pinterest is still a growing community. That means some of the people you are connected with on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter may not be too active on it. But it never hurts to ask your existing followers on those sites to join you on Pinterest.

Making it big on Pinterest does require some luck. But if you are active and can find killer content that Pinterest members crave all the time, you can achieve a lot of success in that community.

The purpose for this plugin is quite simple. It blocks selected posts and pages from getting pinned on Pinterest. You can block your homepage, front page, static pages, and individual posts. The latter is what I like the most about this plugin. All you have to do is check a box under Pinterest Block Settings to block pages from Pinterest.

There are of course many other ways to do this. But if you don’t feel like messing with your code, Pinterest Block is a nice plugin to try on your site.