The Digital Face of India' s Elections

How was India's General Elections affected by Facebook and Twitter. Can social media be effective enough to reach the one Billion mark? Find out everything about the Digital Face of India's General Elections through this comprehensive report.

India has long poised to be a super power. Change, in a country of elephantine (over 1.3 Billion or 130 Crores) is difficult unless it is aided by external agencies. 

With the influx of social media in the general population of India, It is hardly a coincidence that Digital media played an important role in the General Elections.

Just because of Elections, Hundreds of Firms started, Thousands of “Popular at the moment” Websites (This article is one of them) were created and millions of pages on election proceedings were created to capitalize on the awareness about the politicos. Numerous social media accounts were created, from twitter to Facebook to even Pinterest, Spam flowed like Water, Search Engine Optimization specialists were hired, Some even had a personal digital/IT team. In short, the political leaders never left a stone unturned to connect with general public. It is worthy to note that surprisingly Electronic media wasn't in much use in the last General elections sans some occasional Website advertisements by websites monetizing their content.

Last Elections : The Dawn of Digitization

Until 2009 Shashi Tharoor was one of the handful of Indian Politicians who had a twitter account and could manage to garner 6,000 Followers, a number currently risen to more than 2.1 Million (21 Lakhs). 

With India's top politicos taking advantage of public's new found love for digital networking, We see people like Narendra Modi having 3.9 Million (39 Lakh) twitter followers and Arvind Kejriwal at 1.7 Million (17 Lakh). It seems the one who embraced the digital sphere most effectively, got the spoils. 

Current Elections : The Plunge into Digitization

D S Rawat of the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) had once said that political parties spend about 30% of their total budget on advertisements of which near 15% is spent at Social media. 

If you have a look at Google Trends, a facility for determining the current and historical search trends for any term, You would find that the election commission received nationwide attention (because of one reason or another). 

Twitter, 140 Characters shouted into a Microphone

Twitter actually played an important part in the elections because of its unique feature of certified identities (Similar to Website certification). If you follow @superstarrajinikant or @barackobama, you know that the twitter account in question is actually of the celebrity or politician you want. 

When you receive a tweet from their account, you feel the rush as the words were actually written by them. There is no sure shot way to find that out in Facebook. But then again not all accounts on twitter counts, a study by Twopcharts claimed that "30% of existing Twitter accounts have sent 1-10 tweets and only 13% of the accounts have written at least 100 tweets." 

Google's Labours

Google too had left no stone unturned to capitalize on the situation. Its brand new Google Election Hub received thundering response from Google users in India. With its “Know your Candidates” section, Indian Voters from across the country can find out every little detail about the leaders at their constituency. 

For example you can see all the details about Mr. Narendra Modi in the image given below as stored by Google. The election hub has obviously helped users nationwide with its “Trends Section” depicting information in ever so tasteful manner, through info-graphics and tables and finally the “Hangouts” section quenching your thirst for more detail through videos.

Some things were not directly affected by Google. Some had a more subtle approach. Android games by unaffiliated developers like "Modi Run" or "Kursi Cricket" and some by Officials like the Election Commission App for voting killed two birds with an arrow. First by making voting a pleasurable experience and second by creating awareness or at least piquing curiosity about political parties.

The spike was most pronounced in this year's election as the EC was pelted with a handful of controversies. However out of the four, it was Modi who could capitalize on the elections perfectly and time its digital prowess. Modi Received a Spike during 2013 during his campaigning for a second term in Gujarat elections. He received second spike when his name came up for the post of Prime Minister during General Elections in India and the third one because of the results. 

Rahul Gandhi enjoyed a peak during 2013 but somehow failed to regain that caliber again. Arvind Kejriwal on the other hand was practically nonexistent some months before the Delhi elections but rose quite quickly.

Facebook, The Blue Giant to the rescue

Facebook too started an "I am a voter" feature on their page, where facebook users of legal age would receive reminding them that voting process has started in their constituency. Facebook with a total number of users at 1.23 billion (123 Crores) has a largest market in US with 183 million (18.3 Crore) users. India comes in hard by crossing 100 million (10 Crore) recently. Like Google, the Blue Giant also launched “Election Tracker app” which tracks political candidates and provides real time information to general public.

At Facebook the number of likes received by Facebook pages of major Political parties too played an important role in determining the results of the elections, For example BJP received 4.5 Million (45 Lakh) Likes until the end of this monstrous democratic exercise. AAP at 2.1 Million (21 Lakh), Congress at 3.3 million (33 Lakh) etc.

The Future : The something-something of Digitization

In both developing and developed nations, the desktop users for the social Giant is surely increasing but the growth is not as admirable as the ones through mobile network. With the advent of better, smarter and larger Phones and PDAs, the approach towards social medium like Facebook and twitter has never been so wide. Now, one can access the website through ones mobiles (Android, IOS, Firefox OS etc.), through tablets, desktops and even smart Televisions either with an app or a browser. 

With Indian Smartphone users growing from 750 Million (75 Crores) in 2013 to Four Times in 2020 the amount of Facebook/Twitter users through a Smartphone is sure to increase manifold.

The final verdict, social media is soon going to take place of word of mouth communication and slowly but surely, several nations will follow. One cannot pin high hopes for developed nations like US because of their current total population is 317 million and they cannot increase from 183 million any faster. 

However, what one can pin on is that the number of users in Digital India is sure to increase. This is not because we just reached 100 million (10 Crore) Facebook users out of a whooping 1300 Million (130 Crore), but because we have just seen the power of digital media in influencing the world's largest democratic exercise.

Related Reading

Business Standard ran an awesome article on the 6 types of Social Media Abuses in Elections,

ESocialSceiences conducted a study on the effects of Social Media on Lok Sabha Elections.

Simply 360, an India based web analytics firm released a presentation on the Elections.

We showed you

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What are blog / website cookies

Nowadays, A lot of websites display a message saying, "By browsing our website you agree to our cookie policy.” Many of my friends are baffled by this sentence. They often ask what are cookies and what do they do?

First it is important to note that a cookie, contrary to what the name suggests is just a text message that a Web server sends to a Web Browser. To understand why we need a cookie, I think we need an example.

The Example

Keeping cookie in mind let us have an example of an ice-cream vendor (mmm.. desert). The vendor has a shop where every day scores of people visit and buy ice-cream from him. His store has just about every flavor under the sun.

Little Sam and Susie have been coming to the store for the last 2 weeks. Their mother had once handed out a list to the vendor about the things Sam has allergies to. Sam can eat only chocolate with sprinkles and Susie likes plain strawberry. Whenever they approach the store, without asking, the vendor begins to prepare the ice-cream cone beforehand.

Why? After seeing them at the store for so many days, he knows their likes and dislikes. He knows that Susie will not eat anything other than strawberries and Sam will not have anything without sprinkles. So he modifies any order given to him likewise. This way Sam and Susie always get what they like.

The Relation

In our story, the recipe given by their mother is a cookie (Not an actual cookie but the internet one). The cookie does the important job of giving information of the preference of a particular browser, thereby helping it display content that is relevant to the visitors. The vendor would never give Sam anything listed on the paper that his mother gave. Hence Sam and Susie will always be happy and revisit him every day.

Why do Websites use cookies?

The Design of a website is important in terms of visitor experience. Your blog is adorned with awesome layouts and dynamic and slider templates with exquisite patterns (Chosen in consultation with a design professional). But in the end, what matters is "Does the User likes it?". Similarly, in the internet world, preferences and personalization often matters. When a mail that you receive has your name on it, you are bound by curiosity. When a commerce website offers you range on cheap shoes you are delighted because that was what you were searching few hours ago. 

In short, cookies help you get a really personalized experience from a generic website and that is what gives you an edge over your competitors. It might even reduce your bounce rate (though bounce rate are not that important)or keep visitors longer at your website leading to higher revenue.

Know the cookies in your computer

Even you can check about the cookies stored in your computer with some simple steps.

Types of Cookies

Now that the concept is clear to you, we shall go forward and understand what the differenct types of cookies are. Essentially there are just two types of cookies,

Session Cookie (Temporary one) 

This one gets deleted once the browser is closed. They cannot collect information from your computer and is stored in temporary memory.

The persistent cookie (The permanent one) 

It is stored on your hard drive and stays there until you delete them manually. (We shall discuss how to delete cookies manually)

Hope you've understood the concept of Cookies.
If you have any more questions, Drop it in as comments, we'll update.

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7 Ways to check if a guest post is bad

Matt Cutts in his recent post took out all his artillery and beat down on Guest posts warning or so to say cautioning publishers and webmasters to stop using Guest posts as a link building exercise (Though he Himself used it). The Article was a real marvel but what it lacked were clear instructions. 

He reminded web owners that the websites with high quality guest articles would be exempt. But, there is no tangibility towards High Quality. 

What if the article is of better quality or of good quality? So here are some instructions for webmasters to determine if they should allow a guest post on their blog or not.

Tight Filter

First enforce a really tight filter on which guest posts to accept. 

In short publish only the best of Guest posts. When you target the best, you might not come under Matt's Purview.

Think and Label

Wordstream.com came up with a really weird strategy, asking publishers to not label Guest posts as "Guest Post". Empirical evidence for its working is not available but logically, it still makes sense.

Article or the Link

Any Webmaster aiming to be one of the top players of the internet world knows that External links and Internal Links play a pivotal role in determining the PageRank of the website. 

So site owners write guest posts for high page rank websites. Not for the information but for the links. But does the article you receive rely on making relationships or bringing back traffic? 

Ball-park a topic, 

If yours is not a personal blog, it is understood that the articles posted would be pertaining to a single topic or revolve around a topic. If tomorrow you receive a mail saying how awesome your site is or how amazed they are with your blog and would like to add something to it, ask them what they are writing on. If it’s a topic away from yours, decline respectfully.

Ctrl+C, 

This one is an understood one, If someone offers you some text for publication you would first check if it has not been plagiarized (You know there are some pretty good blogs around there). Simple steps to check are taking a snippet and Google it. For a more detailed method you can check out this Duplicate Content tool.

Check the content, 

The information sent by them should be synonymous with your website's content. It should cater to Google's Quality Guidelines. If you use blogger, it should be conducive to Blogger's content policy. All the more it should not try to pull visitors away from your website (Might be selfish). It should not promote itself; rather it should just provide quality information. Grammatical and semantic errors should also be checked.

The Thumb Rule,

One comment at Matt's Blog always inspires me. It said, "Before you agree to post some one's article on your blog, try and answer this question, Was the article written for your readers or for a search engine". I feel this point will always help you when you're confused.

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Do Pages with questions as title receive more clicks (Part 2)

This article is the complete study conducted by codemakit Website Research. If you feel that the contents are too technical for you, you may want to read the simplified summary presented at part I of the article first. Based on the data obtained from 190 Web Pages and their page views, the following observations were found.

The data available were the number of views, and the date of publication of page. Since the pages were linearly published (i.e. one page after another), the difference of the number of days were found and Cumulative number of days were found. Cumulative number of days helped in determining the number of days a webpage was present on the website as published. As a page's page views and the number of published days are directly proportional. 

The Data Set

The complete Data Set containing information in pdf for all the blog posts is available for perusal here. To probe this even further, Consider Page A has 200 page views and Page B has 20. This cannot be called as the complete indicator of the actual worth of the page, As Page A might have been published a year ago and Page B just a week ago. Hence a balanced base is needed to determine whether a webpage is performing well or not.

V/D ratio was found out. The V/D ratio is the ratio of the number of page views per unit cumulative day. The ratio is a perfect indicator of the number of how well did the page do in terms of garnering visitors. Using V/D ratio the index for page A would be (200 page views/365 days) and for page B as (20 page views /7 days). The ratio for Page A comes to be 0.548 and for Page B comes to be 2.85. The page A which at first looked better in comparison to Page B, now doesn't look worthy at all. Hence a normalized base would help in determining the true worth of a page.

Types of Webpages

The complete analysis was done using V/D ratio. Graphically, V/D = 0.2 was obtained as the value to be used for determining if a webpage performed well or not. Complete Data was divided into three parts 

1. The lesser ones,

Now all Web Pages which had a V/D ratio less than 0.2 can be safely said to perform worse than its counterparts. Hence all Web Pages with a V/D ratio less than 0.2 come under its purview. There were 53 lesser ones.

2. The Greater Ones

Just like the name suggests, all the Web Pages with a V/D ratio more than 0.2 were called as the greater ones or the ones that performed better. There were 123 Greater ones.

3. The questions

Each webpage which contains a question in its title text is a question type webpage. There existed 63 question type Web Pages on the said website.

How did we arrive at V/D=0.2 ?

Note. It must first be understood how the value of 0.2 was obtained. The complete analysis being a really simple one, It was thought that the sample could be plotted on the graph based on its frequency. The graph was then created taking V/D ratio on the abscissa and the frequency at ordinate. 

The resultant graph was a sharp bell shaped curve. The sharpness was due to excessive variations among the sample group with different number of Web Pages having inordinate differences in their V/D ratios. Hence, The Graph was then magnified at its peak in the hopes of arriving at the dividing value. This graphically came near 0.2.

The Observations

Summarily, It was found that, The Webpages with questions as their title text that performed poorly was 21.21%. However, The Webpages/Articles/Blog Post with questions as their title text which performed poorly was just 21.21%. In Short, if you put your title text as a question for any webpage, you have 50% more chances of making it more famous. 

			Greater Ones	Lesser Ones
		Total Number of WebPages	123	66
		Number of Webpages with Questions	39	14
		Percentage of Webpages with questions	31.71	21.21

Disclaimer for the study, 

It is however pertinent to note that, the study took 197 webpages and had to exclude some to maintain the sample's integrity. The study was conducted on a single type of website with a single Page Rank and hence same results cannot be expected for any other.

The study could be extended to cover other types of websites too. These could be analysed and results displayed. Also, one must understand that the criterion for determining if a webpage performed good or poor, was created based on the overall performance of the website itself. Hence, there exists a need for determining independent criteria for websites of different types, page ranks and visitor interaction.

Also, you can bring people to your webpage, but making them stay there is wholly dependent on how you present the content. Bounce rate isn't too irrelevant you know.

Is the Study too technical for you?

For a much simpler version of this study you can visit the part I of the series. 

If you still have doubts or would like to share your own story, comment below, we'll be happy to answer.

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Do Pages with questions as title receive more clicks (Part 1)

There exists a very contended view that, If you write an article with a question as its headline or title, it will receive more clicks and the webpage as a whole would be more successful. 

codemakit in the past has published material on improving the readership of any blog like, using specific publishing schedule, controlling Spam, creating apps, organising your blog content etc.

Though some are of the opinion that it plays no part in determining the popularity of an article. However, Online marketing experts disagree, Several studies claim an increase of 100% (Though there are several more probable methods of doubling your website traffic) traffic to the website, i.e. "Double Your Traffic!", some claim a modest 10% increase.

The truth isn't inaccessible, its just hidden. Gregory Ciotti, who oversees marketing at Help Scout and is the founder at Sparring Mind, believes, there exists an information Gap Theory based on a paper by George Loewenstein, on "The psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation" 

The Online marketing geniuses often claim that once a person glances on the headline, She/he frames their question as per the one displayed. For example, You need to know how to plant a eucalyptus tree in your backyard. You put the search term as "Plant a big eucalyptus tree". Suppose you stumble upon the headline, "How do you plant a large tree", though the queries are different enough, you must understand that the person finds it irresistible not to merge the two and experience that Aha! moment where you feel "That is just the damn thing I was searching for! How cool is that, I must check this out!"

Codemakit Website Research performed a study and analyzed Web Pages to answer this question. Since the study can prove to be too technical for some, It has been included in the second part of the article.

In the study, We took 197 Web Pages and collected just two information from them, Their number of Page views and the number of days they had been public on the web. We divided the complete set into three parts. 

1. One was the Greater ones or the ones that performed really great. 
2. Second was the lesser ones, i.e. those that did not perform up to the mark. 
3. Third set consisted of those which contained questions as their headlines. 

You can take a look at part II of the article if you want to know how did we divide the articles/blog posts into good and bad (complete Data Set containing information in pdf format for is available for perusal here). Once that was achieved, We analyzed and are now presenting our findings. 

Read carefully, The Web Pages which performed really good had 31% of them as questions. However, The ones that performed really bad had 21% as questions. In short your webpage has 50% more chances of performing good if it has a question as its title/ headline. 

For more information on the study you can visit the part II of the series. If you still have doubts or would like to share your own story, comment below, we'll be happy to answer.

But, Don't you wanna know how did we arrive at this conclusion?

Check out the second part of the series. 

Also, tell us how much better did your website perform?

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How did a sentence reduce Spam comments by half

Comments are by far the most important and the most useful social media engagement technique used in blogs. A comment has the ability to spark a discussion and give a new meaning altogether to the article. 

A comment can motivate the author and can also act as a critic thereby controlling the quality of the articles proceeding. But there is a downside to commenting scenario. Most blogs do not allow anonymous commenting; this is because of the extra time and energy they will have to spend in moderating the comments if they allow. So they ask the reader to login or register with the website to post a comment. Or they would ask the visitor to leave their email id, which is again no cool for the reader. A casual reader who wants to show his appreciation for the exemplary work done by the author, cannot do so if he/she is pestered by the site before leaving a comment. True comment is always extempore. 

An ideal situation is that the reader goes through the complete article and reaches the end. After reading the article he is tempted to post a comment. He just writes it and posts it. The comment is published and the user is happy. Such is the case with anonymous posting.

The Case Study,

The following is a case study on how a simple method was enough to stop spammers and give more readers to the blog as a side effect.

Codemakit had some problems in the past regarding lower comments. As is evident, low or no comments give ‘low quality’ jibes to the readers. So to increase the comments and increase the social interaction at the website, codemakit started anonymous comment. In short anyone who knew how to read and write could write just about anything in the comment box.

The First Day
The first day, codemakit received 24 comments all of which were basically spam. The number reached 57 on the third day and was not stopping. The only thing standing between a spam comment and unsuspecting readers was the blogger’s comment filter which did its best in keeping spammers at bay.

It was sufficiently clear, why websites do not keep anonymous comments. It was becoming simply impossible to keep up with such large numbers. The process of comment moderation took more than an hour daily, which ate up the time required in the maintenance of the website. Each and every comment had to be read properly before coming to any conclusion.

Some were straightaway spam which could not be filtered by blogger’s systems whereas some were cloaked up pretty good and some were even funny. But there was a plus side, the true or legitimate comments increased to five on the third day.

The Solution

As the days crept on, it was becoming increasingly difficult to moderate comments in such huge numbers. From SEO’s perspective, if a particular article has a PageRank of suppose 3, then this will be distributed to each and every link hosted on the page. So in short codemakit was leaking PageRank to the hyperlinks in the comments. 

One solution to the SEO problem was to hire personnel for filtering spam, which was expensive. Also you cannot post an ad on a newspaper or a website saying, "Wanted, an enthusiastic and intelligent individual for sorting spam at my petty little blog! I'll pay you in installments :-)"

Solution Two, Another solution was to hire a freelancer, which was too convoluted solution for such a simple problem. The blog at that time was a one person project which obviously didn't need another person just to sort spams.

Solution Three, Last solution was attaching a nofollow attribute to the complete comments section, thereby taking off the load of moderating by the author

The third solution was finally implemented. So the SEO problem was resolved (i.e. the rankings of the website will not be affected due to the low quality links in the comments section. But another problem on the softer side was too large to be overlooked. What will happen to the image of the blog when readers see fifteen to twenty comments, most of which are spam? This will affect the image of webmaster and the blog. 

The Process

So the second problem which floated was that comment moderation was still needed. One unique solution was to display a custom message instead of the default ‘Thanks for your comments’, another message was planned thinking if spammers are warned that their tactics will not work here, may be they'll stop.

‘Spammers Kindly remember, any hyperlink in the comments will not be indexed by search Engines because of NoFollow attribute. http://www.codemakit.com/2013/01/add-nofollow-to-your-blog-comments.html’

The message was specially crafted keeping in mind the mentality of spammers. Since blogger does not allow any hyperlink in the message section.

The URL of the methodology of adding NoFollow attribute was also added. Another important thing included in the particular webpage was a proof that Nofollow was added to the comments section with the help of a Firefox add-on.

The Results

It was thought that spammers who once add a spam comment would be greeted with the particular message and this would deter them from adding any more comments. But, the particular solution did more than what was expected.

The comments reduced to just the legitimate ones and since the message was displayed, there was not a single spam comment on the webpage. The Number of true or legitimate comments actually increased and so did the total number of comments.

Another side effect of the message being displayed was an unusual increase in the visitors of the website. It is not wrong to say that nearly each and every visitor of the NoFollow Webpage within 3 to 4 days were all spammers. The webpage which received 200 visitors in 15 days received 2300 visitors in just 2 days.

The following are the screenshots of the anomalies observed on the site.

The particular article on adding a NoFollow attribute became famous overnight, garnering 3075 followers in just 3 days.

It even surpassed the previous most read articles like remove youtube logo from embedded videos and Animated Flash Tag Cloud or even the article on Faults in your SEO and how to rectify it.

The peak observed was pretty amazing as the site had never encountered such amount of traffic before. The following is a screenshot from blogger dashboard.

So in a nutshell the complete procedure did more good than expected and can be used by webmasters for their respective websites.

 Try this and post your anonymous comments. I'm sure we'll be thrilled to receive your results.

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Why Online Forms? Best Online Form Creation websites (A Study : Part I)

Forms are tools by which any web owner/developer/designer wants to communicate with its intended readers. So having a form on your site is as important as having a label system or a subscribe button (Which itself is a form). 

codemakit ran an article on "How to create easy online Forms with Google Forms?" when the service was first Launched. By far google is one of the most easiest and most economic ways of creating an online form. But, free services are bound to have drawbacks and lower fucntionalities. And so comes the need for other form creating websites which shall be discussed in the next article. But first we must understand why do webmasters need online forms? Why aren't they happy with their websites? What more are they trying to achieve? Consider the following examples.

1. You need to determine which photo or image would look great on your website. You put up a form collecting votes by showing both the pictures together and asking the users which one do you like. You put up a voting form on current topics to attract visitors showing interaction.

2. You need to put up a survey for your visitors as you need to know what age group do they belong to, what do they like, what don't they like. So that using these questions you could mold your website content to suit your readers. Result? increased visitors who are content with your content. No need for SEO, keyword study or best content practices.

3. You need a form which collects email addresses and related information from users in exchange for premium information.

4. You need forms so that people may comment on your articles which they found interesting. More comments would surely attract more comments (even the spam ones).

5. You might have a plethora of content and would like to share the same with other users, but the website is too large for them to find just be clicking.So you create a form which takes inputs from the users and displays a list of those pictures/videos/content which matches the most.

6. You want some extra functionality added to your website making it more interactive and user friendly, by adding a tool/calculator. E.g. Financial calculator, bond returns calculator (A really great example is tabelizer which itself is a tool for converting xl data sheets into html code)

7. There are yet smaller forms available with just one or two fields like, the subscribe us form, change language form (Which has been incorporated on codemakit since 2011 or change currency form etc.

Related Articles, Create an Auto-Responding Google Form

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Why is it wrong to start a "popular at the moment" blog?

Bloggers are of many types, Some are the argumentative type and some are stickers, but recently one more type of blogger has crept up. The opportunist Blogger. Such people are not a rare sight on the web nowadays. 

Their creations are not hard to miss. Even you might have seen some of their creations. Okay lets see, a blog on the recent chess tournament, or on certain hot political topics, or on current trends, infamous actors, musicians, or famous personalities, award functions, high profile parties and even viral videos.

The opportunist blogger seems to find the most intriguing and the most happening idea at present and converts it into a highly talked about website with a lot of agglomerated content from different sources. One more thing worth noting about opportunist blogger is that their websites might, at one point of time, be swarming with visitors, filled with seemingly unending comments and discussions. Little do people know the PERILS OF BEING AN OPPORTUNISTIC BLOGGER!!

The Process

Let us first see the process of Opportunistic blogging. A person (The opportunistic Blogger) sees a trending topic. Lots of users discuss about the topic and forums are filled up with discussions on why one side is better than the other. The blogger takes up the topic, Finds and collects as much information as he/she could and spends the rest of the day churning the information.He then spends the rest of two days preparing the blog and publishing the information so produced. Then it is just simple work of maintaining the blog with small pieces of gossip that he finds in the foreseeable future. He does not care for a blog posting schedule, or what would happen if he stops the posts, just because he/she has the content, he thinks he can enslave the search engines and control the flow of visitors.

The Brighter Side

Let us see the bright side of Opportunistic Blogging, The person receives a lot of visitors during the time the trend is hot. The sudden surge of visitors often surpass the number of visitors a well to do blog manages to sustain. The blog becomes one of the most talked topics on the web (Of-course after the phenomenon it was made on). The blog manages to gain visitors in six digits with bounce rate as low as 25%. It garners back-links from the most respectable of websites and gains the trust of most cautious of webmasters.

After the advantages, I bet you must be feeling nauseated and green with envy, I felt it myself as we spent hours working on topics churning concepts, creating beautiful and marketable designs, but he takes all the credit? Why? 

The Dark Side

Webmasters, control your heat, cause here comes a string of disadvantages. A popular at the moment blog as the name suggests, is just popular at the moment. There comes a time when the water dries off and the merriment comes to an end. Since the popularity has been diminished why would someone in their right mind would want to come at such a blog.

In simple words, the blog would have lost nearly all his visitors. Bounce rates would first increase of-course (As people would come to revive a dying trend but would return due to lack of content) but then the values wouldn't matter. Pages per visit would decrease to 1 or zero and then the blog (after a long struggle) could have said to finally rest in peace. What use would such a blog cater, when the fame is short-lived? 

"What is glory if not eternal?"

The missed call

How ever there are moments in internet history when a blogger does not have the time to capitalize on the situation. This situation can be known as the "missed peak" situation. This is because by the time, blog is prepared and made, peak has ready passed, public interest has already reduced. It is worth noting that sometimes blogger do gain some advantage from the peak by forecasting the peak in advance, but that is not common and hence cannot be replicated by most.

Consider the case of a very popular Indian Song "Kolaveri Di", The song was released two weeks prior to its actual release and became a hit instantly. Take a look at the graph from Google trends. It is conspicuous from the graph that it was next to impossible for a regular blogger to capitalize on the situation. A potato blogger however, would obviously miss the peak.

So, when should you start a popular at the moment blog? When you are looking at a trend which you know would die. When you are looking for some quick money and quicker fame. Now, when you decide and know the risks, you can go an buy a domain for 3 months, 6 if you're optimistic and just crack-on.

Top Image Credit VR Marketing Blog

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