This month's free phone wallpaper is here! When I first started making free wallpapers earlier this year, it was just a way to offer more to my audience, something they would enjoy perhaps. Now, I love making them every month, it's really nice to be able to offer these to you guys for use on your gadgets.
Don't forget to tag me @balkenistudio and show how you're using yours!
This month, I wanted to stick to my loves. The earthy tones, browns, and neutrals. Something about these colours feels like me. Feels like home. I hope you'll love this month's wallpaper based on these brilliant colours!
They are chic, sure to uplift your spirits and make you feel calm.
This time, I spent a few more hours carefully planning, so this set of feminine July wallpapers for your gadgets includes two sets, a dated one and an undated one. You can use them based on your preference.
Before I explain more about why this set is different than most wallpapers I've made till now. Grab your free phone wallpaper now:
IMPORTANT : These wallpapers whether the free version or the purchased set is/are only for your personal use, any commercial use is prohibited. Also, please be nice and don't claim my work as your own.
And finally, coming back to the wallpaper set for this month, here's what you'll get:
- Two versions of the same wallpaper - one dated and one undated
- A total of 12 JPG/PNG Files
- Two wallpapers for each gadget - phone, tablet and desktop
This wallpaper set is available to our premium members for free, for others, this set costs $3.00 USD in the shop. If you've ever donated to the Balkeni Studio and become a supporter, you'll get the dated versions for all gadgets of this month's wallpapers for free.
Want to become a part of the community? I love helping new bloggers and bloggers on blogger. So, I've got two facebook groups for you! Let's be friends there and help each other grow.
Michael is an owner of a saloon, to expand his business, he decided to create an online presence of his business. He started a blog in which he posted regularly but even after staying quite active, there were hardly any visitors showing up.
Michael was still enthusiastic and decided not to give up, he started searching for a solution to this on the internet. That's when he came across a term called "SEO" or "Search Engine Optimization". Now let's take a look at what exactly SEO is.
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice that is used for getting targeted traffic to a website/blog from a search engine organically i.e., without paying a single penny. It is a method that could help in improving the quality and the quantity of traffic coming to a website from search engines. It can help in improving brand awareness, attracting local customers, and improving the credibility of the website/brand. All of this is possible without having to spend any amount on it.
In simple language, while searching for something on the internet, you get various results from which you decide which one to open up. Have you ever wondered why a particular result is at the top or why one is at the bottom? Well, the answer to this is SEO, the ranking on the search engine results pages (SERPs) is determined by the SEO, the website with better SEO will have a higher rank while the others will have a lower rank.
How does SEO work and Why is it necessary?
At present, over 90% of the consumers search for a particular product/service in the Search Engines before buying it. Consumers put in a keyword and search for it and in return, they get a list of relevant websites. People mostly visit the websites that are at the top of these lists (the rank on the first page of Google's SERP) because they appear more relevant to what they searched for. According to some studies, if a website is not at the top of the list, it'll never be able to reach its customers online.
SEO helps a website to rank higher in response to certain keywords when they are searched, the search engine collects information about every page on the internet and then helps people in finding what they are looking for. When a website ranks higher, more people can discover it. To get this high rank, it is extremely necessary to make sure that a website has everything that a search engine is looking for.
This is where SEO comes into play, it looks for Text, Content, Links, Page Titles, and other relevant information that may be present in the HTML code of a website. This way when someone searches for "Flowers", the search engine will work it out and display the pages that contain the word that was searched for (search engines are now smarter and can tell when synonyms are being used). For driving more traffic, websites need to appear at the top for keywords that are relevant to their potential customers. Without SEO, a website can never be found online by customers.
Can you do SEO yourself?
You can definitely do SEO yourself, with some research and lots of practice you can learn how to do SEO for your website. When you start doing SEO, it is essential to take it step-by-step, you can even have a checklist to make sure you don't miss out on anything.
Generate an SEO Audit for your website
Before starting, the first step is to do an SEO audit of your website, you can use various online tools to generate a free or paid SEO audit, many people use Semrush for the job as it is a reputed name in the industry. This will help you in identifying where you need to focus and what you've been doing correctly so far.
Balkeni Studio also offers in-depth SEO audits using premium tools (More than $400 in value) in its SEO package for bloggers.
Once you're done with the analysis of your website, you need to prepare a strategy on how you are going to proceed. Search engine optimisation is a broad field, you have to keep a tab on multiple things to make a successful SEO strategy/campaign.
Once you're done with the analysis of your website, you need to prepare a strategy on how you are going to proceed. Search engine optimisation is a broad field, you have to keep a tab on multiple things to make a successful SEO strategy/campaign.
Let's take a look at some fundamentals of SEO that you should take into consideration while doing SEO yourself:
SEO is a time-consuming procedure that involves extensive research, ongoing maintenance, measurement of results, and analysis of your data. However, if you have a firm grasp on the above-mentioned SEO fundamentals and are prepared to make regular modifications to your content and SEO strategy. You can definitely do it yourself!
- SEO Research is extremely necessary for preparing a strategy, it includes Keyword Research, checking out your competitors and how are they performing, and also the latest industry trends.
- Keyword Research is the most important thing that comes under SEO, here you have to do your research and find out popular search terms that your audience might use when they're using search engines. For Keyword Research numerous tools are available such as KeywordMate, and more. Although the tools are extremely useful, it's all about thinking from the customer's point of view these tools help save time you may spend in coming up with keywords yourself, although it can certainly be achieved with some practice.
- On-Page SEO involves optimization of a website in terms of content, and the technical aspects which also include the HTML source code, Schema, Meta Tags, and more. Various tools can be used to find out the popular terms that customers search for such as Google Ads, Semrush, etc. Once the keywords have been identified, you can start using them in your content but try to do it naturally. Apart from this, adding images and videos can also help in improving the credibility and engagement of the website and ultimately influencing search engines to display the website to more people. After this, it is essential to optimise the meta tags, alt tags, and header tags which are all a part of On-Page SEO.
- Off-Page SEO involves doing things outside of your website to help improve the ranking in search engines. Doing this would improve the website's popularity, relevance, trustworthiness, and most important authority. All of this is possible with the help of established websites providing backlinks for your content, it can also be done by Social Media Marketing, Guest Blogging, Influencer Marketing, and much more. For making the content available to the people, it is important to promote it on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Apart from this, niche platforms like Quora, Reddit, and Medium can also be used to get a higher reach for the website as it sends higher social signs to the search engines, which will lead to the website being displayed as highly relevant for related searches.
- An Ongoing Process, SEO is not something you can do for some time and leave it when you've started getting the results, it will take no time and you will lose the audience. Once the basic SEO fundamentals have been implemented, it's all about observing the analytics to check the success of your work and adjust to them accordingly.
SEO is a time-consuming procedure that involves extensive research, ongoing maintenance, measurement of results, and analysis of your data. However, if you have a firm grasp on the above-mentioned SEO fundamentals and are prepared to make regular modifications to your content and SEO strategy. You can definitely do it yourself!
This is just the beginning piece of a vast area of study. The aim of this blog post is not to overwhelm you with information but provide you with a solid structure that will help you understand SEO better as a beginner.
We hope you liked this article and it has helped you, in learning more about SEO. Articles like these take hours to write, so both time and money are invested into bringing you trustworthy, credible and up-to-date content. We love writing these articles for you, and we want to continue doing it more often. So, please consider making a small donation and buying us a coffee if you feel this blog post has helped you.
If you have any other tutorial or article request, you can send it here. And we'll be happy to write on it for you. You can also consider joining our facebook groups for more support!
Been a week into June. Not being able to travel sucks I've not been anywhere in 2 years now thanks to the pandemic and well, the fact that we still have travel bans almost everywhere here in India, but it has definitely given me this oppurtunity to be able to create more for my lovely audience. I'm back with the freebie for this month. A beautiful, calm aesthetic. Something we all need inthese uncertain times. I hope this will make glancing at your phone an even better experience for you!
I hope you'll enjoy this freebie!
You can get your hands on this wallpaper for free. Or you can buy me a coffee and get the entire pack of matching wallpapers here. For all of your devices. If Golds and neutrals are your thing, you'll love this month's wallpapers.
OR
If you already support me on buy me a coffee (if you're a member), this set of wallpapers is free for you!As always, I hope you like the content I create for you and that it helps you. If there's anything, a tutorial, or a request you'd like me to address, get in touch with me or leave a comment below. Happy to hear from you.
IMPORTANT : These wallpapers whether the free version or the purchased set is/are only for your personal use, any commercial use is prohibited. Also, please be nice and don't claim my work as your own.
Some of you found this email confusing, and I know for sure it definitely put bloggers on the blogger platform in a panic mode the questions I've received were many, what does this email mean? How do we sort this out, what do we do, how much time do we have? And so on. Well, I've decided to answer all these questions for you to help you with this.
So what's happening to feedburner?
If you think Feedburner is dead, it's not. It's just being updated, and going into a transitioning phase as google puts it.
FeedBurner has been a part of Google for almost 14 years, and we're making several upcoming changes to support the product's next chapter. Here’s what you can expect to change and what you can do now to ensure you’re prepared. Starting in July, we are transitioning FeedBurner onto a more stable, modern infrastructure. This will keep the product up and running for all users, but it also means that we will be turning down most non-core feed management features, including email subscriptions, at that time.
Does this mean you can no longer use Feedburner to burn a feed for your blog?
The answer is no, it does not mean that. The email mentions that people will still be able to visit FeedBurner and burn new feeds, and existing feeds will still continue to function.
All existing feeds will continue to serve uninterrupted, and you can continue to create new accounts and burn new feeds. Core feed management functionality will continue to be supported, such as the ability to change the URL, source feed, title, and podcast metadata of your feed, along with basic analytics.
So what has changed?
The email mentions non-core features of the product to remain "turned down" one of the non-core features is the email that's sent out every single time to subscribers when you publish your blog posts. This feature will no longer be available or working starting July 2021.
This means you'll have a few options to choose from:
- Don't send emails about posts to subscribers anymore
- Choose another service that lets you send emails to subscribers when a new post is published
- Get started with email marketing, grow and build a list via a email marketing provider.
If you're going to stop new post emails to subscribers then that's that, and you're done. You won't need to take any action. But if you would still like to send out emails to subscribers when a new blog post is up, read on.
My List Of Feedburner Alternatives
You'll be surprised to find out that there are in fact many feedburner alternatives around. I'll be starting with my favourite first and then prioritise them according to similarity with Feedburner.
Flodesk and Follow.it
| Service | Flodesk | Follow.it |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $38/month(Get it for $19/month that's a 50% OFF forlife.) | Free basic plan, upgrades are available on paid plans. The free plan will show advertisements when emails are sent out to your list. |
| Features | Unlimited everything.And the emails you'll be able to design, whoo! It's just amazing and I 100% recommend it,no kidding.Having said that,they don't have RSS automations yet so you can not send out automatic emails to subscribers when you post a new blog post or article every single time. | You will be able to send email updates whenever you post a new post on your blog automatically. Best for those that are looking to replace Feedburner for their automatic email to subscriber functions, and it's a free alternative. |
INFO : Follow.it will show advertisements in the emails sent to subscribers if you're on the free plan. You can uppgrade to a paying one to get rid of these adverts.
Mailchimp And Mailerlite
| Service | MailChimp | Mailerlite |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free for upto 2000 contacts. | Free for upto 2000 contacts. |
| Features | Offers RSS to Mail service but you'll be charged once you reach 2000 subscribers. Apart from that it is a fully-featured list-building and nurturing email marketing platform. |
Offers RSS to Mail service. And much like MailChimp has the ability to work as an email marketing platform. In terms of cost, mailerlite is more cost effective when compared to MailChimp. I still recommend Flodesk over MailChimp and Mailerlite because of the amount of the amount of money it will save you in the long-run. |
In my opinion, if RSS automation is what you are looking for, go with follow.it but if you're looking to expand and start sending out e-blasts, newsletters and more Flodesk will be your best friend.
As MailChimp, Mailerlite and Flodesk work in the same manner, and are used for similar goals I find that having a truly unlimited plan via Flodesk is so much better, whether I have 2k subscribers or 20k I will only get charged one amount, that's not true for MailChimp and Mailerlite.
But If you're looking for something real simple, but with the ability to grow with you, then follow.it will be your best bet. It's free forever and once you upgrade, you can make it do more.
Not sure how to get any of this done?
I've got you covered. If you've got a template from me, I'm happy to help you with this. I'll take care of everything for you and set-up everything on the platform of your choice.
FeedBurner Transfer Service
I'm happy to offer all people that use my blogger themes a discounted rate for transitioning our of Feedburner into any of the platforms mentioned above. I'll make the process seamless for you so you you can focus on things that bring you joy rather than admin tasks that just threw themselves at you.
I hope this blog post has helped make things clear for you. I've written this with all my heart because I believe sharing is caring and since many of you in my blogger support Facebook group were troubled about this, I hope it helps!
If you have enjoyed the content on my blog please consider buying me a coffee. This helps us both! It unlocks exclusive content for you that is not available to anyone else, including freebies such as but not limited to:
- Blogger Tutorials
- Blogger Code snippets
- Free wallpapers every month
- Free printables for your blog
- Illustrations and much more...
And it helps me to keep the ads to a minimum, and it enables me to work harder and keep posting regularly and work on more tutorials and blog posts, and take in more requests. It also helps me feed a family of 4. Me, my mum, an adopted half-paralysed cat - Lulu, and my elderly pet dog - Ego. (Thank you for supporting us! You're a gem! 💎)
You can choose to add this blog to your reading list, alternatively you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter that goes out every Tuesday and is filled with updates, promotions, discounts and more only for my VIPs on the list.
I know the feeling of starting a blog and wanting to make a living from this new baby of yours. I know you want it to be successful and I know it brings you joy to work on it either every single day or at least when you have free time.
And I want you to be a successful blogger, someone who makes a good part-time and/or full-time income from their blog. As new bloggers, you'll soon understand that in the blogging world there is no such thing as instant gratification, and with intense competition each year the road gets just a little tougher every single time.
Don't worry though, I don't say these things to make you feel like you'll never make it, I would rather tell you the truth from the get go. I want you to be prepared for the hard work, and I don't want you to feel that you will start making money the minute you start your blog. With that said, I've been receiving a lot of emails about the "right time" to start monetising a blog.
The ideal time to start monetising a blog
My personal advice for this would be to not wait for a later time, when you finally get around to monetising your blog. This is also the advice I usually give to most of my blog coaching clients. I understand why some bloggers, and coaches feel like it's better to wait for around "x" number of sessions or visits monthly before you monetise but I feel, if your blog is able to get accepted into affiliate programs or be approved for showing ads then you should just go ahead with it.
Sure you won't see a lot of money rolling in, but the small amounts you do see will benefit you.
Why?
Because it will motivate you! It will help you to keep blogging, and help you believe that this goal or dream that you have can be turned into a reality. I see so many bloggers calling it quits after an year, because they never earned anything from their blog. And honestly, I feel sad for them. I feel sad for every blogger out there who has had to quit simply because they couldn't afford to blog anymore and were not earning from their blog anyway.
And to be completely honest with you right now, I hate it when that happens. You see, I love blogging. I've been in love with blogging since late 2014 when I hadn't even started this blog. When I used to blog about all the random happenings in my college life... I liked blogging so much, I decided to not take up a job, to study design and development which I'd never done before and then in 2016, I launched this blog.
I want to make sure you will be able to blog long enough to start making an income out of it, but do you know you're leaving a few bucks here and there on the table when you don't monetise your blog from the get go? And that seeing those few extra dollars, or whatever currency is used where you are can really help motivate you be consistent and keep working hard? Not to mention you can use the extra cash for investing in your blog at a later date.
I remember when I first made my first $100 blogging, it was not a huge amount but it made sure that I didn't quit, it motivated me. And as a blogger, self-motivation will help keep you going in the first few years of your blogging journey where you'll probably only be making a part-time income.
I'm in my 5th year with this blog at the time of writing this blog post, and my blog helps me bring in clients every single month that help me run my small home-based business. I'm so thankful for it. I don't monetise too aggressively on this blog, as I don't want you to have a bad experience reading content on my blog, so I politely ask for donations to help fund this blog.
So, if your blog has a decent amount of content on it I suggest you apply for Adsense, and affiliate programs to start making an income, no matter what the amount is right away. Another reason I like the monetise early method is because when you monetise early you won't have to go back to old posts (one less task to do) to update them all with affiliate links all the time.
Wondering how to monetise your blog?
Generally speaking, most bloggers will monetise their blog in the following way:
- Advertisements
- Affiliate marketing
- Sponsored posts
- Selling a service or a product
- Donations
As you may have already guessed it, for Balkeni Studio, I sell my services and products as my main income bringer. Apart from this, you'll see me monetise this blog with a few advertisements and a bit of affiliate marketing (I'm picky with this as I only want to recommend something I use and really like). But as advertisements and affiliate marketing on this blog is negligible, I rely on donations to help fund the blog.
Depending on your blog and what your aim with it is, you'll be relying on these methods to monetise your blog. I'll be writing on these means of monetisations in depth in an upcoming blog post, so you might want to subscribe to the blog to receive these blog posts directly in your inbox.
Let's be inbox buddies!
Want to fast track your blog's growth?
The best way to quickly learn all the ins-and-outs in the blogging world is to learn from someone whose already been doing it for quite some time. I've been a blogger for quite some time and have helped many bloggers go from $0 to $500 per month. You can choose a one-on-one coaching package from me or a more affordable solution ($50/year membership) depending on where you are on your journey.
I hope this blog post has helped you and you've enjoyed reading it. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to leave them down in the comments section below. Oh and help support this blog by funding it if you've liked the content. I put in hours ever month to bring you lots of freebies, advice, tutorials and tips.
INFO : If you donate via buy me a coffee, you'll automatically get access to all future supporter exclusive content such as more tutorials, freebies etc.
I hope that you've benefitted from this blog post as I've written it from my experience and with lots of love. You can request a tutorial or a blog post that you'd like to read about from me in the future here.
It's March already! Ever since I decided to to say "I'll start next month" to the gym membership I'd been planning to enroll myself in 3 months ago... time sure has flown me by. Jokes apart, I'd like to bring you the wallpapers for this month. As always the smartphone/iPhone version is free for download for all as a token of thanks for supporting my small business.
I hope you'll enjoy this freebie!
You can get your hands on this wallpaper for free. Or you can buy me a coffee and get the entire pack of matching wallpapers here.
OR
If you already support me on buy me a coffee (if you're a member), this set of wallpapers is free for you!As always, I hope you like the content I create for you and that it helps you. If there's anything, a tutorial, or a request you'd like me to address, get in touch with me or leave a comment below. Happy to hear from you.
IMPORTANT : These wallpapers whether the free version or the purchased set is/are only for your personal use, any commercial use is prohibited. Also, please be nice and don't claim my work as your own.
This tutorial has been highly requested. The first request for the tutorial landed in my inbox through the tutorial request option that I have available on my website. However I did not get around to publishing it until now due to lots of client work and personal projects.
Not to mention, I started a membership that bloggers on blogger could enjoy. Many of these things kept this tutorial as a draft in my post. But here we are and I'm happy to bring this tutorial for any of you who need/needed it. And that too in 4 easy steps:
01. Navigate to the backend of your blogger template
Make sure that you are logged in to your blogger dashboard. Then go to:
Theme > Customise (Click the dropdown instead of the button) > Edit HTML
02. Search And Add Code
Once you are in the HTML editor of your theme, click anywhere on the code once and press Command + F (For Mac users) or Control + F (for windows users), this will open a search dialogue in the editor, now, search for this code:
.post-body
TIP : Copy this piece of code and paste it directly in the search box.
You will now hit enter once and add the following code right after the curly bracket ("{"):
line-height:1.6;
TIP : increase or decrease the number in the code (1.6) above to experiment with the line height you think is best for your blog posts.
03. Save your work
Once yo made all these changes, make sure to click the save button and save your template to commit to the changes you just made.
TIP : Remember to back up your blog before you start tinkering around with the theme HTML, it's generally a good idea to keep weekly backups of your blog content and theme. Also, please work in a fresh window, I know some of you have multiple blogs and you don't want to edit the wrong blog! Always check to see if you are editing the right theme.
That's it, you're done! You'll now notice that the distance (spacing) between the lines of a paragraph in your blog post has increased. Obviously a lesser or greater number will decrease or increase this spacing respectively. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!
I tried to make it very simple so that even people that are not tech savvy can approach this tutorial and follow through with it easily. If you have any questions and/or doubts, suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments down below. And as always, comments with links and/or spammy comments will not be published.
Don't wish to put up with the hassle of doing this all by yourself?
Custom Work - Minor Customisations
Let me take care of making any line height and blog post text related issues and problems for you if you find the tutorial too complex. Just sit back and relax while I work out the styling kinks for your blog. Trust me, I love working wih blogger and have helped 60+ bloggers with their blogs till date. This number inceases every month by God's grace. I'd love to help you out as well. Still not sure? I've been a product expert for blogger in the official forum for years now! Let's touch base and help you with your blog.
If you have any other tutorial or request for a blog post for me, please feel free to submit it here. If you have any issues you'd like me to personally check for you, you can take a look at my services or get in touch directly.
If you like you can even follow my blog by adding it to your reading list and stay up-to-date with all my posts. Or simply sign-up to receive my blog posts directly in your inbox.
Let's be inbox buddies!
Want to be part of my community?
I currently run two free groups on Facebook. One is exclusively for bloggers on the blogger platform, where we discuss everything blogger, I help people in my group with their requests, offer free consultations and more. The other group I run is for bloggers that are currently trying to build up their blogs, if you're either of those or both, I'd love to connect with you there!
P.S. If you like reading content on my blog please help me keep the good work up by donating to the blog. If you choose to support me, you help me put out even more content than before, freebies and tutorials because not only does that support the studio it also compensates me for hours of work I put in to these blog posts. As you'll notice, I don't heavily monetise this blog because your user-experience matters to me, your donation helps make up for the lack of aggressive advertising on this blog. I'll be super thankful if you choose to donate!
You can make a one-time donation or become a supporter on buy me coffee and grab even more freebies and unlock premium content.
This year I decided to start a free resources section for all the wonderful readers of this blog. I love writing for you but now it's time to start offering free wallpapers! I love making them and have been designing my own for a very long time. Ever since I learned to design I believe?
I hope you'll enjoy this freebie!
You can get your hands on this wallpaper for free. Or you can buy me a coffee and get the entire pack of matching wallpapers here.
OR
If you already support me on buy me a coffee (if you're a member), this set of wallpapers is free for you!As always, I hope you like the content I create for you and that it helps you. If there's anything, a tutorial, or a request you'd like me to address, get in touch with me or leave a comment below. Happy to hear from you.
IMPORTANT : These wallpapers whether the free version or the purchased set is/are only for your personal use, any commercial use is prohibited. Also, please be nice and don't claim my work as your own.
Let's be inbox buddies! I'll only e-mail you when a new blog post goes up, there's a freebie up for grabs or it's something you might be interested in.
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