Thank you Sarah, this blog post is for you!
“As you sow so shall you reap” This is the Law of Karma. This is what Wikipedia had to say to my question. But why this post? There are several reasons really, but the main one is that life is in essence the flow of karma. We give - we receive. This in its real meaning must not be done consciously, but rather just coming from the heart, because we love helping others.
I do very much believe in karma and the great feelings associated with it. I always get a buzz out of helping others expecting nothing back in return. At the same time it feels great to receive karma by a helping fellow blogger. This has just happened to me.
The karma blogger who finally helped me to get my blog looking like I wanted is no other than Sarah from over at StuffBySarah. She is a PHP specialist who runs her own successful web design business in the UK. Sarah developed a great Plugin recently which helps us to display other blog posts. The Plugin is called “what others are saying” and it works via the blogroll links and RSS feeds.
You can see it in action as of yesterday in my right hand side bar. It is a great way to give back some link love to your most frequent visitors, commenter’s or simply your friends. If you are interested in Sarah’s Plugin, then please visit her site and download it for free.
Thanks to Sarah, I finally have my new logo and some other much needed “cleaned up” code installed. For Sarah it was a good deed she did in her own valuable time for somebody like me who she didn’t even know.
When I got my logo designed I happened to come across a very unhelpful coder. I paid him for the work and I might say good money but unfortunately he wasn’t willing to help me with some issues I came across. This saddened me and for a while I was totally at a loss as of what to do to get the blog looking finally like it should. It was half finished and to be honest I wasn’t very happy since I paid for the privilege of having a unique blog theme.
Luckily for me I happened to come across Sarah around the same time and from there things just kept getting better! The end result is what you see now.
Isn’t that amazing and fantastic at the same time?
Sarah helped me by expecting nothing in return and that is the real power of blogging karma. If we as bloggers can offer our help to others on a daily basis for the same good reasons, then blogging is worth pursuing in the real sense of being a social platform.
So is there an effective way to inject some blogging karma into our everyday action plan, or should we not bother?
I truly believe that we should - our life will be the richer for it and by helping others, it creates a good and endless stream of positive energy that flows around the Internet.
I would love to hear from you my readers on how you give out karma to others? Is it a daily good deed you aim for, or do you not bother because you don’t believe in karma?
Before you leave, here are some ideas on how you can give out karma to other bloggers:
- Submit their latest post to a social networking site
- Write a friendly review of their site
- List their best 10 posts in your eyes
- Link to them
- Offer them something they want but don’t expect from you
- Help somebody with blog design
- Offer them a guest post for free
- If their blog lacks in design offer to do a free logo, banner, graphic..
- Give away your product for free to 5 random people a day
- Send them some worthy information about something that suits their blog or niche which they can use for their content for example
Monika
Technorati Tags: blogging karam , blogging help , giving
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Monika,
It all boils down to making friends online and you know that better than most - If anyone practices what they preach it’s you. You may well have more friends than anyone I know and you will go places because of it.
BTW thanks for zooming my last post - I didn’t as it was more fluff than anything else. Ha.
Griz
ps. forgot to mention I love the new header and look you’ve put together. Very clean. Kudos
Hi Monika, what a lovely post. Karen sounds like a wonderful person and she deserves your kind words for what she did for you. You know, I might even add my voice to this, as I also believe in karma and the law of attraction.
When you give something of your self without asking anything in return, you’ll receive something of equal value when you’re least expecting it and it could come from anyone - someone you know or someone you will know.
This is quite a profound piece of writing coming from me! I’ll have to hold this thought and get another post (or two) written quick while the inspiration is here!
Terry
PS: I stumbled and sphunn you!
…oops, couldn’t sphinn you as my account is less than 7 days old and I can only do one a day - and I already did it! I dugg you instead!
Terry
This is a great post! I loved it. Makes you really want to help others while expecting nothing in return. Great ideas for giving out karma as well.
I stumbled it, dugg it, and saved it to delicious. Doing my part in the karmasphere! LOL.
Trent
Wow, I think reading this was worth it all! I’m very touched. I’m just glad we got it how you wanted and you’re happy
The logo looks pretty catchy - you would do well to add some padding in places on the sidebar IMHO.
You’ve got a good setup here - congratulations!
I’ve got several things I do such as offering free, in depth, blog reviews, interview posts, numerous link posts on OpTempo while I also stumble any interesting posts I find while surfing.
Very practical AND effective. Nice way of putting it.
Grizzly: It’s nice to have friends like you. Glad you like my new header.
Terry: thank you, I know what you mean and Sarah (not Karen) is very nice indeed. Bet you got this one mixed up. Thanks for the votes too.
Trent: cheers, it is nice to give without expecting anything back.
Sarah: you bet I am - happy that is.
Karthik: thanks, I’m actually quite happy with ho it looks. Not sure what you mean by padding?
Frank: that is great. We need more bloggers like you. Keep it up
Mark: Thank you, and welcome to my blog, it’s nice to see new faces.
Monika
Padding is the white space between the content and the outline. You could read this for some more info.
It would make the sidebar elements look more spaced out - for instance, right now, the email subscription box seems to be touching the border of the sidebar window - do I make sense?
Karthik, you do make sense
I wondered about that myself when I was cleaning up the code in the 1st sidebar. Padding isn’t the issue, the sidebar needs to be a little wider to accomodate the width of the email subscription box, ebook signup and the book graphic. I just didn’t want to alter the design too much.
The padding and spacing looks just fine on my computer. It could be the browser or resolution you are using. Sometimes sites do look differently on certain computers.
Karthik: Yes, got you now.
forgive me but when it comes to CSS and PHP I’m lost. That’s why Sarah kindly stepped in to help.
As she said she didn’t want to mess up the set up which I appreciate. I might have to learn this stuff myself and change it sometime.
It doesn’t look bad on my own computer, maybe 1 mm out on the sides.
Sarah: maybe I can change the size of the optin boxes instead, make them a little smaller?
Trent: thanks, I guess you are right. Browsers do matter a lot.
Monika
Help me with my header! pls!
Nitos: I’m happy to help if you give me some more details.
[...] 10 Ideias for Giving Blog Karma [...]
I love the idea of blog karma! While I’m still pretty new at blogging, I liked your 10 ideas and saved them so that I can remember to help others.
I have a wonderful person who’s helped me. Her site is http://virtualimpax.com/. When I have problems, Kathy is always there. She even helped one day after dental surgery!!
Newbie bloggers need guides and I do appreciate you and the many others who give us helpful information!
Sara