It was 8 am when I wake up. A gentle gush of wind came filtering in through a half-open window, and with it came flickering sunlight of cool February morning. I woke up. Stretched my limbs, and went ahead to grab today’s newspaper instinctively moving towards my personal computer to check my mail while calling my wife for a cup of strong tea. I opened the mail, fed in my username and password, and boom. I was flat on my chest gasping for air. It was hard for me to control the cup I was holding, I almost threw it aside—PayPal has done it.

All the payments I was expecting to reach my Indian bank account today was reversed and sent back to the clients who made the payment. All the money I earned in the last one month was gone. It is just the beginning of the month. How will I pay my bills? I was terrified, and hastily called up PayPal customer service; good lord, I was greeted by a machine asking me to call on Monday, if I want any real help.

For two days, I have to contend with depleted bank account and a negative credit card balance of $2,500. $2,500 may not be a lot of money for some people, but you know it and I know it too, it is a heck lot of money for us. And now it is gone without any trace whatsoever. I am trying whatever I can: calling PayPal, searching Google, reading forum posts, reading RBI guidelines, etc,. I don’t know what else to do.

Did I tell you that PayPal has confirmed that the last transaction has been successful, but still I have not received any money?

This is not just an anecdotal tale of my suffering; rather, this tale more or less summarizes the story of every freelance worker and small in-sourcing company that depends on PayPal for their cross-border financial transactions. It raises several questions in my mind:

• Why Paypal delayed information on reversals?
• Why an standard copy paste reply to all, it’s looks like we are misguided?
• Why Transfer To Bank Account Status shows completed, where as no money reaches to our bank?
• What will be PayPal’s stand on negative balances and what will be their policies to restore the same?
• Who will pay for losses incurred for charges and Forex conversion at the time of payment reversals?
• And above all how they will restore their trust with Indian account holders?

Even though Paypal is not a bank, It’s Paypal’s fault that they took such dramatic decision overnight without any prior notice. It seems Indian users are unnecessary harassed, who will pay for inconvenience caused to them in terms of loss of profit, bearing unnecessary mental trauma and business insecurity.

It’s an surprise reversals for us, even though:

• We have a proper Tax ID (Pan No.) which is duly updated at Paypal
• All transactions at Paypal has been added to our books of account.
• Our Bankers are registered at NEFT, also a Bank controlled by Government of India, not a private bank.
• Our bankers has IFSC nos. so no question of any statutory compliance issue which Paypal and RBI.

What happened?

PayPal claims that the company is having some technical glitch (a certain no) some one said it’s an issues with its “Business partners” and RBI regarding personal payments, so they are reversing the personal payments. But the fact of the matter is they have reverted every single penny earned by an Indian service provider, even though it is against an Invoice for Goods and Services.

Not only that, many people have complained that their PayPal account is showing that the money has been transferred, but they have not received any money in their bank accounts till now.

Where did all the money go and why it is still in the air?

On Monday I will be visiting NASSCOM’s office as well as try to get feedback from RBI as my bankers already requested to provide information if NEFT is holding the payment issued by PayPal?

Is it a racial discrimination?

No. Impossible, I do not think so, regardless of what other thinks. But, indeed it is an economical discrimination. It is not the big companies of India as well as the United States that are suffering; it is the small service providers of India, whose life depends on the earnings from freelance works.

It is an economic discrimination!

Who is involved?

Everyone is. Well at least those people who render small services to small to medium size businesses in the UK, and the USA.

Not everyone out here is rendering thousands of dollars of services to clients in far off countries; a large number of people take small assignments. Will it be feasible to ask each one of your client to go to bank, fill the form, pay service charges, and wire the money to you in India? It may be for you, but I am sure my clients will not do that, and if somehow they are made to do that, they will leave me. Thus, for people like me the only solution was PayPal, which at present has gone awry.

I wonder if something else is happening behind the curtain!

The who suffer most are work from home workers, small companies you may call them as an “unorganized ITES ( IT Enabled Services )” sector.

What about PayPal?

Well first and foremost, PayPal is an economic entity that has a sole motive of doing business, so it will not want to rob off its customers.

Then what is the issue?

A possibility and assumption: Issue is Indian banking system and Indian law regarding inward and outward movement of foreign currencies, which is not very business-friendly. India has a quite a stringent foreign currency act in place that makes the movement of foreign currencies difficult, and since Paypal allowed Indian sellers to verified by their Bank Accounts puts it in strange position and as I can see it this could be the reason behind the current crisis.

This is the darkest hour in the history of outsourcing!

The question I would like to ask with PayPal’s Management is exactly where is the fault of Indian account holders or what have we done wrong, or they really deserve such pathetic treatment as well as issuing refunds of their hard earned money without any notice?

Why?

Quote: RBI has no control over PayPal and it cannot monitor every PayPal transaction, and nor can Indian government, it becomes a potent source of money laundering or terrorism funding, as PayPal allows anyone with an account in Indian bank to open and verify their PayPal account. This policy has rubbed the RBI just the wrong way.

Let’s say, I live in India and I open an account in the US account—anyone can do that even without setting ones foot on the US soil—and I start playing with the money. Who will notice it? Who will control it? No one.

Not at least till the money touches the Indian soil in any legitimate bank account. If money transferred to any Indian Bank, it’s legitimate and legal because no company account can be opened without registration details or personal account can be operated without PAN No. which is also a tax identification no. So I am ruling out this possibility.

This was a big loophole in the PayPal system, which needed to be plugged. But, wasn’t there any other way? It is hard to believe.

Why not make opening a bank account a little more stricter in here?

What should be done?

There is very little that we can do! All we have to wait and watch, but we must file a claim with paypal, why money is refunded and why a negative balance created if we don’t have funds in our bank accounts?

The question is how they will restore negative balances and how they add funds to sellers account?

This incidence, if prolonged for days, will weaken the trust of Indian people in PayPal, and its sister companies like eBay, Skype, etc. And even if we assign a value of mere $1 to the trust of each Indian, then PayPal will lose $1 billion in revenue.

Blocking Indians do not make business sense for PayPal!

It is hard to understand why PayPal, the oldest payment processing system in world is offering lame excuses like internal problem, system glitches, issue with banks, etc. And why it is not doing something to resolve it soon?

For the leader of a pack, it will be not that hard!

What’s the alternative?

On the face of it, services like moneybookers, AlterPay, Xoom, Payoneer, etc. look like good alternatives, but think again: what is the reason they will not go the PayPal way? After all, they are also dependent on NEFT. We should embrace wire transfer, but will it be viable for small freelancers?

But please consult your Chartered Accountant (Similar to CPA) and read the RBI circular stating that NEFT can not be used for Foreign Inward Remittance, before you signup with any other service.

Let’s call our clients, and fellow freelancers, and join hands to crush the ugly head of “economic control” and those behind it who want to steal from us an opportunity to earn our living. We get clients because we give better product.

What now?

This question has given many sleepless nights to everyone who depends on PayPal to pay their monthly bill. And to those who has negative credit card balance of thousands of dollars due to this? There are many such questions that need answers, and more than answers they need the solution. I hope, PayPal will understand this and will solve the issue as soon as possible. Until then we cannot do much except trusting PayPal, and waiting for things to turn our way.

In this tough time, Patience is the key!

Popularity: 5% [?]

For years, marketers have misinterpreted the game. They seriously believed that the only way to keep the cash account in the bank ringing was to convince customers using the sheer power of objective logic, spiky graphs, and jaw-dropping numbers. Thus, the marketing plan they constructed was dry and lacked vitality. It was devoid of any juice.

The time has changed and so has the rules. Now, the goal is to drive your customers crazy.  Make them fall in love, so the marketing plan that we need to attain this kind of job has to be different. In this article, I will tell you how to develop a marketing plan that will move your customers.

Old elements of marketing plan may work for you, but they need to be trimmed, twisted, and repackaged to make them effective with the new customers who are more perceptive, sophisticated, street-smart, and connected than the customers of yesteryear when the idea of creating a marketing plan as developed. There are things that you need to keep in mind while developing a marketing plan for the new-age customers, which I am going to present here, but before that let me put down the elements of marketing plan.

Elements of marketing plan

A marketing plan consists of activities (actions) that an organization needs to undertake in order to achieve marketing goal. The process begins with deciding the target market (primary as well as secondary) and goes until the return on Investment (ROI) is figured out. The marketing plan includes:

Product and Services Description

• What product or services you have to offer?
• Features and benefits of the product.
• What makes the product different from others?
• Why the customer will buy your product?
• How many people need the product (data from demand analysis)?
• What is the price of your product or service?

Target Market Description

• Who is going to buy the product or the service
• Age
• Sex
• Education level
• Profession
• Income level
• Area she lives
• Occasion of use
• Mental makeup
• Behavioral
• What she does?
• Where she hangs out?

Competition analysis

• With whom will you be competing directly, and who are your indirect competitors?
• How many players are there in the market?
• Who have taken the number one and two slots?
• What strategy do they have and how successful they are in implementing it?
• Strength and weakness of competitors?
• How similar or different your product is from your competitors?
• At what price points are the competitors offering their products?

Marketing Budget

• How much are you planning to spend in a year?
• Will you evenly distribute the budget across the months or quarters, or there will be any impact of seasonality on the budget?
• How much money will be allocated for each marketing activities (promotion, distribution, etc.)?

Goals

• Marketing Goal: What attitude or behavioral change do you expect to bring?
• Sales Goal: How many units of your product or services you want to sell in one year? Divide the yearly sales goal in manageable units (half-yearly, quarterly, and monthly goals).
• Profit Goal: How much money you want to make in profit at the end of the fiscal year? Divide your yearly profit target into half-yearly and quarterly goals. How many units do you need to sell to register profit?

Marketing Strategy to reach goals

• What route will you take to achieve your goal?
• What message will you communicate to your customers?
• Which marketing tools will you use to communicate the message?
• Which communication vehicle will be used?
• How well you know your customer?
• Do you know where they spend their time? Doing what?

Review

• Monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, and annual reviews should be done to find out how close did you go to the goal set for the month?
• Which tool was more effective?
• What is ROI for the year?
• Can you increase the ROI by making small adjustment in the marketing plan? Or are you getting the optimal return on the dollar spent?

Focus elements in the marketing plan

You need to don the customer’s shoes and think from her perspective and fee what she is feeling, if you are to make her come close to you. I know stepping into the customer’s shoes is not easy, it even bites, but once the positive results starts coming, you will like it here.

Each element of the marketing plan is important, but some of them are more important than others, in terms of consumer focus. It is on those elements that you should focus on, if you want to win the heart and the mind of your customers:

• How does the product you are selling will solve the problem customer is into? Which void will it fill?
• Why do you think the price you are offering will suit your customer?
• More than anything focus on the lifestyle, psychological makeup, and behavioral attributes when creating a target customer profile.
• Figure out ways to engage your customers. While researching the competition, keep a close eye on how the competitors are engaging your target audience. Try to find a need gap and fill the void, or you can also try to meet the same need but to a higher degree. Augment the engagement.
• Find out the places where your target audience goes to, and make your brand greet them there, unobtrusively.
• Instead of adopting top-down approach of communication (Read advertising and public relation), use bottom-up engagement tools like Facebook, twitter, etc.

You have to be a part of the tribe or tribes that your customers belong to. You cannot stand with a big loudspeaker in a stranded corner, and expect them to come near you and listen. They will not. Do not attempt to pull them closer, go near them, and which is only possible, if you are focusing all your marketing effort in the direction suggested above.

Popularity: 3% [?]

There are bloggers and then there are A-listers, the hugely successful ones. What makes them more successful than others? Why they have made it to A-list while rest of us has given up after trying for a few years? These are some of the questions that prompted me to dig the surface a bit deeper and find out what makes them so successful. My hard work paid well, and I came up with the 5 traits that every A-list blogger shares. I was astonished to see how simple those were:

Successful bloggers are good communicators

Blogging is nothing if not communication in written words, and I have found that every successful blogger has more than average verbal and non-verbal communication skills. I think this is the reason why they are so successful in building a natural bond with the readers, which pushes the readers to post comments after comments on each of the posts.

It is the inherent ability of successful blogger to communicate effectively that makes them so successful.

Successful bloggers are active learners

Another thing I have noticed about these a-list bloggers is their eagerness to learn new thing every day. Show them something new and they will get as excited about it as any kindergarten kid will get on seeing candies and cookies.

A successful blogger is a lifelong learner. He never stops learning. He was born as a student, he dies as a student, and remains student throughout his life.

Successful bloggers have distinct personality

Successful bloggers are not me-toos. Each one of them is different from rest of the pack in a meaningful way. A successful blogger never strives to become like someone else. They find what is unique about them, develop it, and blow it out of proportion to turn it into a complete business.

When starting out, if they do not have a distinct personality then they develop one, but never do they stoop to become just like others. They do not want to be what they say “just another WordPress blogger [blog]”.

Successful bloggers are agile and adaptable

A Successful blogger is not too fat, too big, to move. It’s not IBM of ‘90s. They are quick, nimble, and work out a way to keep pace with the changing wave. A-listers are not loyal to a technology or a way of doing things. They are loyal to their visitors and their changing needs, and they can bring any changes to meet the demand posed on them by their readers.

Speed is the tool that A-list bloggers uses most effectively. They are quick to change and always ready to adapt. If you feel you are too old or too big to change then change this thinking. Any elephant can dance, all it need is a willingness to do so. Jack Welch showed that.

Successful bloggers do not throw attitudes

Successful bloggers know that they need to maintain a healthy attitude throughout their blogging career, if they wish to remain in business. They know that one bad day on work means hundreds of lost visitors.

They know that if they become immodest, not even angry, in replying to one misdirected angry comment they will push 10 cementers and 20 readers away. The cost of writing an angry reply is huge.

Bad word spread even faster on the internet. It takes just some minute -not hours, or days or months – to spread the word on the web. If you have this habit to cornering the angry commenter then you should stop this all at one.

Conclusion

As you saw, the difference between a successful blogger and not-so-successful blogger lies in simple little things. It is not about knowledge and ignorance of some big fancy blogging concepts. And acquiring the traits of a successful blogger is not rocket science. It may take time, but if you work on it, it will come to you.

Popularity: 6% [?]

2009 was a remarkable year in many ways, and it was also a big year from SEO’s point of view. Microsoft and Yahoo signed a search deal, Bing got launched, and Google changed its tune. From the onset, these things were all set to change the way SEO companies operate, which very few people knew at the beginning of 2009. In this article, we will talk about 10 biggest SEO tunes that changed the way SEO world danced.

No. 1: Local search get listed today.

In 2009, Google started churning out local result for the keywords that even vaguely relate to local searches. With Google embracing local results, SEO world went Glocal (Globally local, the concept that has been buzz word for business management and marketing people for many years). Now, more and more SEO companies are looking to create value by optimizing website for local search queries (like electrician in Miami, or Plumber in Gold Coast, etc.).

No. 2: Google Map results

Google Map results for specialized local query also got on the front seat in 2009. If you are searching for say Chinese restaurant in the New York City, then on top of the organic listing, you will see Google map listing with the address, phone numbers, and locations (on Google maps) of restaurants specialized in Chinese food in the New York City. Top 4 or 5 results will appear here, and for more, searchers can anytime click the “Local business results for restaurants near New York City” or “More results near New York, NY, USA »”

No. 3: Personalized search

Like everything else, search has become personal as well. For a user who has signed-in to use Google’s product (Gmail, Picasa, Orkut, or any other), Google will show him the result on the basis of how he interacted with Google’s search result in the past. Your usage behavior is going to play a big role in the result that Google shows to you. Let’s say you frequently search for “free web-based games”, and most of the time you clicked Yahoo Games link then for you Yahoo Games will rank at the top for the keyword “free web-based games”. This has been done to improve the user’s experience.

No. 4: Now you can use JavaScript

JavaScript was a big bone of contention between a website developer and an SEO expert. Former wanted to use JavaScript to give cool effect to at least site’s navigation, while latter always put a gun on developer’s temple to stop him from using JavaScript, and then came 2009. The year when Google taught its bots to crawl even the fancy JavaScript links. Now JavaScript is no more opaque.

No. 5: Even Flash is no more taboo

Gone are the days when Flash were looked upon with disdain by a seasoned SEO expert despite its cool features. In 2009, Google updated its algorithm with the help of Adobe to make Flash content crawlable. Now onward you can use Flash in your website without being worried about Google bots, they are more educated now than they were in 2008. Old Flash websites may not get indexed, but properly laid new Flash website stands a chance to get crawled.

No. 6: xHTML and HTML 5

It’s not yet time to give a tight hug to HTML 4.1 and bid farewell, but the process certainly has started, and with this the struggle for SEO-friendly designs will come to an end (well, almost).

For a starter, HTML 5 has sized the Div element down, which has been ubiquitous in HTML 4.1, and replaced it with a wide range of elements that will help search engine bots understand the site’s structure quite well, and they will also help web developers in creating SEO-friendly web design with ease.

For example:

< div id=”header” >, < div id=”nav” >, < div class=”article” >, < div class=”section” >, < div id=”sidebar” >, < div id=”footer” > structure of HTML 4.1 will be replaced by cleaner and easier structure of HTML 5.0, which looks like: < header >, < nav >, < article >, < section >, < aside >, < footer >.

No. 7: Content duplication issues.

Content duplication is not welcomed by Google or any other search engines, but there are times when even the noblest of soul cannot avoid but duplicate the content. Previously any such effort was treated with vengeance by Google, but from 2009 things has changed. Google now offer cross-domain support for the rel=”canonical” link element, which means you can avoid duplicate content issues when moving your website from one place to another, or when creating a 301 redirect is not possible.

No. 8: Content variety

For Google, quality content has always been the king, but the search giant likes most if the king dons different kinds of dresses. That is to say, Google now shows images, video, news, and other results against the searched keyword, therefore it is desirable for SEO expert to get variety of contents created for the keyword for which he is optimizing the site. This is one of the most remarkable changes of 2009.

No. 9: Get ready for Link trade penalty

Reciprocal links, Two-way links are not good anymore. Now it invites Google penalty. Trading links with each other or exchanging links (you scratch my back and I scratch yours type) will not go well with Google. The search engine has black listed this practice and anyone found guilty of such practice will be banned. Google has done this to cut off irrelevant results from its SERP (search engine result pages), which eventually will enhance user’s experience.

No. 10: SEO automation tools, Time to bid farewell.

Good SEO experts do not come cheap, and the SEO expert that comes cheap is of no value. Many online entrepreneurs are realizing this fact, so either they are going for established SEO experts or are using automation tools to analyze and execute their SEO plan. This is one of the major shifts in 2009, which in my view is not necessarily good. Machines can do anything but think creatively, and if you do not have a creative SEO thinker in your team, your effort is not going anywhere. Regardless of what I think, this trend caught up in 2009.

With this the list of 10 things that rocked the SEO world in 2009 is complete, looking for more? I like you to read my previous blog posts on E commerce SEO and SEO for Wordpress blog.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Firefox may not be the most used web browser, but it is the best. It is based because it is supported by various free-to-use plugins. With Firefox, you can do whatever you want to do, within the scope of Internet access. Every year lots of free plugins are introduced and lots of them fade away in the oblivion. In this article, we will not concern ourselves with what dies out, but our focus will be to find ten best Firefox plugins of 2009.

No. 1: NoScript

NoScript plugin is the best security available for a web browser. It disables any script, rich media, and other unwanted codes from automatically running when you open a website. By default, NoScript will block all scripts on the websites you visit. You can enable scripts on your trusted sites, while, leaving it disabled for the websites you are not sure about. Earlier, NoScript had problem in working with iFrame, but this issue has been resolved. If you want to keep your computer safe from virus, trojan horses, or other types of malicious codes then you got to use NoScript.

No. 6: Personas

The plain-Jane days of Firefox is long gone, now everyone is busy dressing up his or her browser. Thanks to Personas, now even you can dress up your web browser. This plugin gives you free and easy-to-install skins to decorate your Firefox. You can choose from 30,000 cool designs to decorate your browser. Around 11 million people have shown their confidence in this plugin, which has secured it the Number 2 slot in the list.

No. 3: Adblock Plus

Flashing banners and gaudy flashes not only irritates us, but it also sucks the bandwidth away. How many times have you seen that the content of the websites has been loaded, but the ads and banners have not? Adblock Plus plugin solves that problem. Just right-click on the banner you want to block, and choose Adblock. This is all you have to do to stop unwanted ads from loading up.

No. 4: Video DownloadHelper

We all watch videos on YouTube and other similar websites, and at times we want to download them to our desktop so that we can watch it offline or on our portable video devices. Video DownloadHelper will help you do that. 51,717,982 users have shown their confidence in this plugin. It helps you download and convert videos from hundreds of video sharing sites.

No. 45: Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey does nothing so exciting on its own. It works as a platform that enables you to use small JavaScript snippets to customize the look and feel of your browsers. Usercripts hosts many scripts that you can use with Greasemonkey to personalize your web experience.

No. 6: Xmarks Bookmark and Password Sync

Memorizing passwords, and keeping backup of bookmark on your system is one way to keep your bookmarks and passwords, but this is not the right way to do so. The right way is to install Xmarks Bookmark and Password Sync to backup and synchronize your Bookmarks and passwords (optional) to Xmarks’ secure server. You can use Xmarks to keep bookmarks and Password synced on multiple computers or multiple browsers on same PC. Xmarks allows you to sync bookmarks and password of your Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari browser. It was formerly known as Foxmarks.

No. 7: WOT – Safe Browsing Tool

Web is not a safe place. There are lots of threats out there waiting for us. How do you plan to handle it? There are two ways, either to abandon the web altogether, or use WOT – Safe Browsing Tool with Firefox. Web of Trust (WOT) warns you about the malicious sites that cheat their customers, install malware, send spam, and steal their private information. WOT is a community-based tool used by millions of WOT user who rates websites based on their usefulness. This helps us add extra layer of security to our web browsing.

No. 8: Firebug

Firefox is known as Geek’s browser. It may not be true on its own, but this plugin certainly will make it look like a geek’s browser. Firebug is a must-have plugin for web developers and web designers. You can find, analyze, debug, and even edit HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc., of a web page that you are surfing. This is nice little tool to find and fix the troublesome area of your website. You can do this in real-time.

No. 9: Flagfox

This is a nice little plugin that helps you find the location of the website’s server. This plugin sits in the address bar and displays the flag of the country where the website you are visiting is hosted. This tool can be very useful for SEO guys, and those involved in web development research. This plugin does not leave a heavy footprint on your system, and it uses IP address of TLD (top level domain) like .com, .org, .uk, .net, etc., to locate the server.

No. 10: Cooliris

Cooliris brings photos and videos from the Internet to your desktop. This little plugin adds a 3D wall to your browser that makes it easier for you to search and fetch images and videos from Google, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Picasa, and hundred other similar websites. The infinite 3D-Wall enhances the experience of watching web-based visual content. No more clicking next page, just scroll up or down and you will see images and videos for the search term you have entered. It is a must-have plug-in, if you are more into consuming visual contents.

This brings us to the end of the top 10 plug-ins of 2009 list. The above plugins were chosen not solely on the basis of total download, it was chosen based on the usefulness of the plugins for Firefox users. It was a tough call, but I am glad that I could take it.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Blogger is there, Movable Type is there, b2evolution is there, Livejournal, Joomla!, and Drupal is there, but nothing compares to the power of WordPress. This is by far the best blogging platform in the market. It is the free plugins and themes that make WordPress the best blogging platform. In this post, we will talk about 10 plugins that kept WordPress users hooked in 2009.

No. 1: All in One SEO Pack

Many SEO plugins came and went, but no plugin could take the place of All in One SEO pack. This is by far the best SEO plugin available. It is quite simple to use, but very effective. You can use this plugin to insert title tag, meta description tag, and meta keyword tag to your blog posts. This plugin has no compatibility issue, and it can be used without any customization. Click here to download All in one SEO Pack.

No. 2: Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin helps you generate XML sitemap for your website, which helps search engine bots to better index your blog. The XML sitemap generated by this plugin will assist all search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, etc.) crawl each page of your blog. This plugin works well with all kinds of page generated by WordPress as well as custom URLs. It also notifies the search engine bots about the update, as soon as you make it. Click here to download Google XML Sitemaps plugin.

No. 3: WPtouch iPhone Theme Plugin

Gone are the days when people used to access web through computers only. Now a lot of people use handheld devices to access the net. The plugin WPtouch has been designed with this in mind. It will make your WordPress blog accessible from Android, BlackBerry touch, iPhone, or iPod touch mobile devices.

Once installed, this plugin transforms your WordPress blog into an iPhone application-style theme that will have AJAX loading articles and effect when accessed from the handheld devices we discussed above. Click here to download WPtouch iPhone Theme Plugin.

No. 4: Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Once this plugin is installed, it shows the posts and/or pages related to the entry viewed by the users. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin is a nice way to keep the visitors on the website. It also helps you promote your old post. You can control which pages or posts should show related posts and/or pages by disallowing the tags and the categories you wish to hide. Click here to download Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

No. 5: Google Analytics for WordPress

There are lots of Google Analytics (GA) plugin for WordPress, but no one stand a chance with Google Analytics for WordPress. This is simple to use GA plugin that helps you track every part of your blog. You can also track your AdSense clicks, image search queries, blogroll links, and all outbound links from within posts, etc.

This is a must-have plugin for all WordPress users who want to see the number of visitors, their entry, their exit, and bounce rate, etc. You can use this information to improve the surfing experience of your visitors. Click here to download Google Analytics for WordPress.

No. 6: WP Super Cache

Google and other major search engines do not like dynamic pages, as it is hard to index the pages that have dynamic URL, session ID, etc., and generating pages each time a visitor places a request is time consuming. To help you solve these two problems, Donncha O Caoimh has developed a cool plugin called WP Super Cache. This plugin generates static HTML files and serve these when visitors post a query. This will work for most of the users, but not for those who have logged in to post comments.

Click here to download WP Super Cache.

No. 7: WordPress.com Stats

There are many free plugins that track different aspects of your WordPress blog, which is good, but there are times when you do not need detailed analysis of users behavior, all you need is information on some important aspects. Data from Google Analytics and like will overwhelm you. In situation like that a tool like WordPress.com Stats comes handy. It just tells you what you need to know without serving to you too much data. The popularity of this plugin is enough to prove how much people want simplicity in user data.

Click here to download WordPress.com Stats.

No. 8: NextGEN Gallery

This is a wonderful full-integrated image gallery plugin for WordPress. It has an inbuilt Flash slideshow option as well. It has a simple-to-use administration back-end that helps you handle multiple photos, galleries, and albums. This plugin also allows you to add Cooliris effect to the images on your WordPress blog. You can have different authors for different galleries, and you can also add custom template to your theme as well as cool JavaScript effects like Highslide, Lightbox, Shutter, or Thickbox to your gallery. This is by far the best image gallery plugin for WordPress.

Click here to download NextGEN Gallery.

No. 9: Sociable

Sociable fulfill the social needs of your WordPress blog. It helps you add links to social bookmarking sites in the posts as well as in the RSS feed of your blog. This plugin helps visitors share the posts with others. It supports 99 social bookmarking sites, which in my view is good enough. You are not going to need more than this many links in your post, and the social bookmarking sites that failed to make it into top 99 is not good enough. This is must-have tool for any WordPress blog. Click here to download Sociable.

No. 10: WP to twitter

No discussion about 2009 can be complete without mentioning Twitter. WP to twitter is a cool plugin that helps you update your twitter status message automatically with links and information related to the post you made. This plugin uses Bit.ly or Cli.gs URL shortening services to shorten the URL to post in your twitter status message. You can use this plugin to promote your posts as soon as they go live. This is a must-have tool for every WordPress user.

Click here to download WP to twitter.

I hope you like our list of top 10 WordPress Plugins of 2009, I will be back with some interesting facts on stuffs like blogging, social media and website promotions.

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