Blog 4 Bloggers

funny umberella video

2006-09-06T04:03:00.000-07:00

This is the final post of the Adding Videos to Blogger Blogs mini-series, and whats can be better than ending the mini-series with a laugh. You can read How to add DailyMotion Videos to blogger platform if you need more information on posting DailyMotion videos.

Umberella Shelter

Technorati Tags: DailyMotion, Umberella Shelter, vSocial Video, Blogger, Blogspot, Blog, YouTube, Google Videos, Bloghacker

vSocial video - CROCODILE HUNTER TRAILER

2006-09-05T05:34:00.000-07:00

I could not believe for some time when I read that Steve Irwin or better known as Crocodile hunter is no more in this world. Life can be so cruel. For some time I wanted to test vsocial videos and today when I visited the site I saw this video from PORSCHE911TURBO which I am posting here on my blog as part of much delayed Adding Videos to Blogger Blogs mini-series, you can read rest of the posts here.

Technorati Tags: crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, vSocial Video, Blogger, Blogspot, Blog, YouTube, Google Videos

SEXYBACK (Justin Timberlake)

2006-08-29T00:50:00.000-07:00

This post is part of Adding Videos to Blogger Blogs mini-series, you can read rest of the posts here.

SEXYBACK (Justin Timberlake)

Technorati Tags: Justin Timberlake, Sexyback, Music Video, Blogger, Blogspot, Blog, YouTube, Google Videos

webratsmusic video: Danity Kane - 'Showstopper'

2006-08-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

This post is part of Adding Videos to Blogger Blogs mini-series, you can read rest of the posts here.

Danity Kane's latest video :"Show stopper"
(#1 position on MTV.com Top 20 Video Streams)

Technorati Tags: Danity Kane, Show Stopper, Music Video, Blogger, Blogspot, Blog, YouTube, Google Videos

Shakira - Hips Dont Lie spoof - adding Google video to Blogger blog

2006-08-18T01:26:00.000-07:00

Shakira - Hips Dont Lie spoof


This post is part of blogger tutorial explaining how to add Google video to your blogger blog. Currently testing on old blogger blog. To see step by step tutorial you can visit How to add Google videos to blogger platform

If you wish to add other type of videos you can visit BlogHacker's mini-Series Adding Video to Blogger blogs

busy as a bee

2006-08-15T12:59:00.000-07:00

I was very busy from past few weeks. I was able to make some more money with this blog and finally baught a nice domain "www.BlogHacker.net" and a decent hosting. I was spending most of my time working on my new blog. You can find detailed review of recently released Blogger.com Beta on it. I would be posting on both here and on BlogHacker in coming time. First I wanted to move this complete blog over to BlogHacker but that would have been hugh work without adding anything new, so I decided to drop the idea.

Do visit BlogHacker for Latest Blogger Tutorials, Templates and Tips. See you all there.

Making money, 1 dollar at a time

2006-08-07T22:38:00.000-07:00

Finally I made my first purchase with my online earning.

Recently I sold couple of links on this free blog and got a total of $6.54 in my Paypal account (thanks to Paypal fee I could not make it to $7). I wanted to register a domain but since most of the sellers were asking for $6.95 or more I could not buy even after using those discount coupons :( . Anyway during the same time I made a bid on one catchy domain name and to my surprise I won the auction. Now I am a proud owner of 'www.cheatgeek.net'. Of course with just $2.5 left in my account I can't afford a hosting so right now I am using a free hosting, have uploaded a game cheats script(a free script) and adding cheats to the site. The site is not complete in anyway (call it beta if you like) since there is lot to be done there but I am working on it.

I know this is very small thing but I like to see it as one step closer to my goal of earning a living from this free blog, earning with zero investment(of course excluding my time), being a professional blogger and leaving my full-time job.

Its a long journey ahead but I am very excited about it. If you wish to stay with me on this journey then you are most welcome to visit this blog anytime.

Jack

Can we make good money from free blogs? Answer is Yes!

Tags: making money, paypal, game cheats, domains, free blog, blogger

Adding Adsense Ads in Blogger blog post's body

2006-08-03T10:15:00.000-07:00

If you are not sure what this little blogger hack do then take a minute to look at this gardening blog, you would get the picture.

Few months back I came across this cool hack which lets you put adsense ads in the body of your blogspot blog posts. Doing this not only gives you more flexibility with your ad placement but may also lead to higher CTR. So what are we waiting for, lets jump right into the good stuff.

Getting the ads in the body of your blogger posts needs your to change your blogspot template little bit. Please remember that depending on the template you have the code might be little different but the main idea would be same. I would advice you to copy your template code in your favorite text editor for easy searching.

First find the section in your template where you need to make changes - this section is usually labeled by following comment:

and

Now that you have found the section which needs to modify, next you have to find that single life which needs to be replaced by the code I would provide later in this article. This is usually the 4th or 5th line from the top of this section containing the tag <$BlogItemBody$>. Just search in the text editor if you can't find it. The line that needs to be replaced is

<div class="text"><$BlogItemBody$></div>

Once you have searched this line just replace it with the following code:

<div class="boxblog">
<div id="prv<$BlogItemNumber$>"></div>
<div style="margin:10px 0 -10px 0">


<script type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script></div>
<div id="fst<$BlogItemNumber$>"> <$BlogItemBody$>
</div><script language="JavaScript">
var obj0=document.getElementById("prv<$BlogItemNumber$>");
var obj1=document.getElementById("fst<$BlogItemNumber$>");
var s=obj1.innerHTML;
var r=s.search(/<adsense>/igm);
if(r>0) {obj0.innerHTML=s.substr(0,r);obj1.innerHTML=s.substr(r+9);}
</script></div>

This is all you have to do. Now just save the template and republish your blog.

But you may wonder where exactly will your ads appear in the post. Well you can choose the exact location for you ads. Simply put the "<adsense>" tag (without quotes) in your post's body and the adsense ads would appear in its place. If you forget to put the tags for some post then the ad would appear at the top of the post.

That's it. Give it a try, put it on your blogs. Come back here and post a comment about your experience.

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7 'must have' Blogger tips and tricks for blogspot

Can we make good money from free blogs? Answer is Yes!

2006-08-02T23:40:00.000-07:00

This was my first blog in the blogosphere. I had no money to buy a domain of my own or paying hosting bills. So like most new guys I started a blog on blogger.com. My main aim was to write about the things I learn on the web, things that are related to blogosphere and webmasters. I joined Digitalpoint forum and started posting my doubts there. I learned a lot from fellow members. I implemented what I learned in my free blog, which was little difficult given the small amount of flexibility given by blogger. I kept on posting here whenever I got time and learning tricks of the trade at the same time.

With time I came to realize that many bloggers prefers a domain of their own to blogspot blogs. They said that it looks more professional. That it brings more respect. All these comments and suggestions gave me an idea. I decided to work on a project to make money from free blogs. I worked on this blog, learned many template hacks and searched the web for best tips and implemented them here. I decided that I won't spend a single dollar on the web. I decided that I would build my online business from this free blog. I kept posting and nothing much happened. After some time Google PR updates took place and my promoting strategy gave me a page rank of 4 for this blog. I was happy. very happy. Now my blog was more mature then when it started some four months back. I contacted some members on DP for link sale and one replied with a positive response. I sold by first link for 3 dollars. It was for one month. I was very happy! I got my first earning in my paypal account. I know this is very small but I am optimistic. This is just a beginning. I wish to make some more money just like this and spend that money to buy a domain of my own. And I wish to keep this blog with me and would show that we can make money out of nothing :)

Now the goal for this blog is clear. I wish to make it an example for all bloggers that we can earn even from free blogs. And to contribute to blogger.com I am going to make this blog the best resource site for blogspot templates, tips, and hacks. You can find latest news and best adsense optimizing tips for blogspot right here. BTW I am expecting my first adsense check in next few weeks :-)

I am interested in buying some more domain names, maybe a music domain.

If you also believe that I can make big here without spending a penny from my pocket then keep visiting and I would keep you updated with all that's happenings around me

B4B reincarnation - Single Resource Blog for blogger templates, tips and everything geeky is here

2006-07-25T02:39:00.000-07:00

If this blog were to die and reborn again then many things would be different here. I have learned a lot in last few months. In the beginning I did lot of things wrong, mostly due to my ignorance. Lot of these things that I want to do is mostly related to how my blog is organized. Let me point them out:

The Goal: I started out this blog as my voice in blogosphere but I lacked any goal, I just wanted to talk about stuffs that I learned and used this blog to share that knowledge to everyone. I just kept walking without any knowledge, but soon I realized that I must focus on something, something that I liked, something specific. Just as time passed the importance of some goal became even more important. Here I am not talking about the goal as in The Goal to reach $1000 per month within next 365 days, but I mean to say something bigger than that, the final goal of this blog. The "objective" of this blog. If I want to start this blog all over again that first thing I would do is to set some fixed goal.

Am I Alone: I know, no one wants to be alone. But I want to be alone. No its not a bad feeling, as a matter of fact everyone wants to be alone in blogosphere.Oh! by alone I mean unique, one of its kind. I started talking about things that I liked but soon I realized that there are many who know more about them and can express them in much better way then me. Repeating them and not giving anything from my side was not the reason I started this blog.

Now that I have spent quite some time blogging I can answer Darren's question: If I had to start my blog again then the first thing I would do is get this the this blog's goal clear - To be THE BEST resource blog for blogspot blogs. There are many blogs which gives tips, templates and lot of things for blogspot blogs, but they are scattered all over the blogosphere. I wish to make this blog One Stop blog for all their needs. I know most of the bloggers reading this use Wordpress, Typepad etc but I want this blog to cater to new bloggers needs. I like programming and I have interest in designs, so I can safely say that I would be able to do justice to my work.
This post is written as part of If I had to Start My Blog Again - Group Writing Project

Tags: blog, bloggers, blogspot, tips, templates, resource site, problogger

Marketing new sites and forums with contests

2006-07-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

Recently I came across Earners Forum, a relatively new forum started by Lee Dodd. The thing that amazed me about this forum is its surprisingly fast growth. The credits for this goes to the great marketing strategy of EarnersForum team. Apart from usual SEO and off-line marketing they are also having one really big contest which ends on July 31th(sorry for the late announcement) Having a contest to promote a site or forum is not a new one but this contest have lot of flexibility and really exciting prizes. You can checkout the contest page for full details. Here are some important things to know about the contest:

There will be a total of 5 winners, each winning: $1,000, a content site with 500 pages, 1 hours consultation with Lee, and more. Total value of all prizes, as given on the site, is over $20,000. You can see the full list along with forum rules at their contest page.

These contests play a very important part in launching any site but for the contests to really get the attention of the crowd it has to be interesting and innovative.

ISP removes ban on blogspot and typad blogs

2006-07-21T09:31:00.000-07:00

Finally ISPs are allowing access to blogspot and typepad blogs. This is a good news for all those bloggers who were getting affected from this ban.

From now onwards only the following sites would be blocked by the ISPs:

www.hinduunity.org
mypetjawa.mu.nu [American right-wing blog]
pajamaeditors.blogspot.com [American right-wing blog]
exposingtheleft.blogspot.com [American right-wing blog]
thepiratescove.us [American right-wing blog]
commonfolkcommonsense.blogspot.com [This is isn't even in English!]
bamapachyderm.com [American right-wing blog]
princesskimberley.blogspot.com [Long defunct]
merrimusings.typepad.com [Defunct American right-wing blog, but now at http://www.merrimusings.mu.nu ]
mackers-world.com [American right-wing blog]
www.dalistan.org [They actually mean www.dalitstan.org which is currently down]
www.hinduhumanrights.org/hindufocus.html
www.nndh.com [Dead URL]
bloodroyaltriped.com [Dead URL]
imagesearchyahoo.com [Dead URL, but it wouldn't be a blog!]
www.imamali8.com [They probably mean imamali.com but somebody mistyped]
www.rahulyadav.com [Computer geek at IU Bloomington - not a blog at all - banned merely for his links to the BJP, RSS, etc]

The Indian Government is also holding ISPs responsible for the inconvenience caused to innocent bloggers at blogspot, typepad and Geocities and might penalized them for this.

see my older posts to learn more about this situation.
Indian govt banned blogspot blogs
New hope for banned blogspot, typepad blogs

new hope for banned blogspot, typepad blogs

2006-07-21T00:11:00.000-07:00

Bloggers, who's blogs are hosted by sites such as Blogspot, Typepad and Yahoo! Geocities can relax now.

On last Wednesday Amitabh Singhal, a spokesperson of the Internet Service Providers Association of India told that this ban would be lifted in next 48 hours. according to this news-

"An advisory is being sent from ISPAI to member ISPs saying they should configure their Domain Name Servers (DNS) in such a way that they block only the sub-domains DoT wants blocked," said Singhal, adding, "It would help if, in future, DoT could also mention the mechanism by which sites should be blocked."

According to the latest developments these ISP might also be penalized. From one press release -

As such the DoT has now directed all the ISPs to strictly comply with the order dated 13th July 2006 and provide unhindered access to Internet except for the websites/webpages which have been specifically mentioned in its orders issued from time to time.

The DoT has further sought explanation from the erring ISPs as to why action be not taken against them for blocking unintended websites/webpages.

Now that 48 hour deadline is about to end all we can do is wait and watch DoT's next step.

Tags: blogger blogs banned, india isp, typepad, geocities

indian govt banned blogspot blogs

2006-07-18T22:19:00.000-07:00

From last couple of days I am not able to see any of blogspot blogs. First I thought that the problem was with blogger(usual updates) so out of curiosity I posted about it in digital point forum, but the fellow members checked and told that it looked all fine to them. Then I thought that the problem might be with my network setting, but that was also not the case, now from another thread I came to know I am not alone and that it seems that the Indian Government might have asked some ISPs in India to ban the blogger.com.

So I decided to do a little checking myself. And surprisingly when I tried to ping the blogs I could not reach the site.

click image to enlarge

next I did a trace route to the blog and as expected the site was unreachable.

click image to enlarge (some details blurred for security reasons)

And blogger.com is not the only site that got banned by ISP but geocities and typepad blogs are also not accessible at the moment.

IF BloggerCollectives groups is to be believed that this banning order came from non-other then President's office. One of the members wrote that:

Today, I received a call from AirTel, and they confirmed that enquiries to their Delhi head office had revealed that they indeed had received instructions to block certain sites. When I asked where the directive to block sites came from, I was told that it came from the President’s Office. The caller did not have any information on the specific sites that were to be blocked.

I wonder what might have caused this action. Some says that the reason behind this is because of the blogs that are bad-mouthing Indian Government, while other believe that its just a temporary issue. Whatever the case many, the fact is that Indian bloggers are stuck at the moment. Lets see how this thing affects Google's adsense. If a blogger is targeting only U.S visitors then it would surely benefit him but on the other hand if all those adsense publishers cannot access their blogs then its possible that Google's earning would also go down.

And all this happened the day before I received my adsense PIN :(

ps: I am posting this with my editor so lets hope that it gets through the ban successfully. (keeping fingers crossed)

Technorati Tags : blogger, banned, blogspot, isp, president, blog, india, indian government

Google PageRank Update for month of july 2006

2006-07-13T19:24:00.000-07:00

Google has finally started updating PageRanks on its various datacenters and many sites (including this blog) has seen a nice jump from PR0 to PR4-5. This was first reported just few hours back on DP by dkessaris. According to some forum members this pr update is affecting mostly PR0 sites though some old sites have also seen some changes but not as much as the new PR0 sites. Since backlinks shown by google is not even close to what some sites expect so it can't be said if this PR is final. Also many sites have gained backlinks but lost PR at the same time.

Only time will tell if this PR update is going to stay or not but for now I am a very happy man!

How to add YouTube video to blogger blogs

2006-07-03T03:19:00.000-07:00

This tutorial has got a new home!

Redirecting…

You should be automatically redirected. If not, visit BlogHacker: blogger tutorials and update your bookmarks.

2006-07-03T02:31:00.000-07:00

funny video: korean girls singing

funny korean girls video

Google will give you money -- for free

2006-07-02T09:15:00.000-07:00

You just have to ask and google would send you $100 check, or at least that's what these publishers are thinking. Many publishers are trying to make some easy money by click frauds. And no, they are not doing this in some hush hush manner but they are inviting everyone to join their i-click-your-ad-you-click-my-ad kind of club. And the most funny thing is that all this is happening right under google's own eyes. Think about it - Most of these publishers start their blog on Google's Blogger.com, then they as put Adsense Ads to make easy money and finally they are using Google's social networking site Orkut.com to get the clicks.

The chain is very simple. All they have to do is visit the blog links given in the most current comment, click some ads, then post their own blogs links for next one to follow. And this chain is not even new. It started on 10th of Jan and on the day of writing this post there were 144 post in total. Here are some snapshots of the page for those who don't have Orkut account.

first page of the thread (click to enlarge)

144 comments at the time of writing this post(click to enlarge)

Technorati Tags : google, adsense, click, fraud, orkut, social, network

Video Ads for profit

2006-07-01T21:31:00.000-07:00

Recently I came across one of the post at Google Adsense blog where they talk about some positive feedback from Terri Wild who participated in the beta test of google video ads. According to them "Not only did Wild see a revenue gain from the click-to-play video campaign itself, but switching to the larger Medium Rectangle format resulted in an additional jump in clickthrough rate and a 42% increase in eCPM."

Though not many publishers have seen video ads but still I am interested to see some on this blog. I wonder what kind of "contextual videos" would be suitable for this blog. I believe more media oriented your blog is more likely you would get those ads. Sites on cars, workouts and music seems to score more in adsense video ads.

If you are also interested in having some video ads then make sure you are showing one of these three video format ads:

336 x 280 (Large rectangle)
300 x 250 (Medium rectangle)
250 x 250 (Square)

Technorati Tags : google, adsense, video, ads, format

Click Per Action Google Adsense ads only by invitation

2006-06-26T10:07:00.000-07:00

Many publishers are getting invitation from Google Adsense team to join their new Cost-per-action program. According to the mail some of the points that one might find interesting are:

Right now the program is open by invitation only. So you have to wait if you wish to join.
You get paid whenever a visitor clicks on the ad AND performs a specified action, such as generating a lead or purchasing a product (hence the name cost-per-action).
Ads would run on a separate network - the Content Referral network and would not compete with contextually targeted ads.
You are allowed to put text like "Try BeachDating today" next to CPA ad unit.
Earning report is on weekly basis only.

If would be interesting to know how many more publishers have received such invitations from Google.

Technorati Tags : Click, Per, Action, Google, Adsense, ads, only, by, invitation

Blog Templates for Blogger platform

2006-06-19T11:21:00.000-07:00

I always enjoyed experimenting with blogspot templates. So here I am going to share some of the templates created by me. Enjoy!

Download and Setup instructions:

Click the "Download" link just below the template snapshot.
You will see a text file with html code in it.
Select All and copy the code.
Post the code in your blogger.com account's template editor.
Save and republish.

See! It was not difficult at all. If you stick around you might learn to make your own templates. Now how cool is that!

Ok So this is my first template in "Nature" theme.
Click Image to enlarge
click here to Download template

BlogExplosion has been sold again

2006-06-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

In less than two days after going back on the market, BlogExplosion has found a new owner.The new owners are a large group that have extensive blogging background. And unlike the last time this time the new owner have "definitely has the experience and the resources to take BE to the next level. They have a large development team that will produce better site functionality and have the means to raise the awareness of BlogExplosion moving forward."

Adsense Survey from Google?

2006-06-17T04:30:00.000-07:00

It seems that google is sending mails to adsense publishers and conducting survey and to make the whole process exciting they are also giving away gift cards worth hundreds of dollars. From the past experiences I can say that not all publishers would get that kind of emails as google is known for sending emails randomly.

Links for June 16, 2006

2006-06-15T22:12:00.000-07:00

Bill gate steps down, announces retirement.
Google launches Google U.S. government Search. Find everything you always wanted to know about your taxes.
Maximize ad profits with eBay's 'Get Contextual Keywords' tool.

Does bad design good for your site

2006-06-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

Probably the most talked about site in dating circle is Plentyoffish and no its not because of the fact that this site, run by a single person Markus, is making around half a million dollar per month only from google adsense.

Plentyoffish is discussed for its design, or should I say for its lack of any design. Yes, if you visit this site you will see that its probably one of the worst designed site which is making such huge money. Many webmasters believe that the high earning might be because of the bad design and not inspite of it. According to them visitors are more likely to click on ads when they are on a poorly designed sites. If thats true then I might have to change this blog's design very soon :-(

Are YPN publishers at risk because of football world cup

2006-06-13T00:13:00.000-07:00

You have a well established site about football and you are running Yahoo ads on it and even making good money from it. Everything sounds so great. Except one thing, you might get banned before you know.

The problem might be with your keyword. While in the US what we call "soccer", millions of fans worldwide calls it "football". So if you have a site on "American football" (which is known in US simply as 'football') which is optimized for keyword "football" then it might be pulling in lot of international traffic. Many YPN publishers got banned in February for getting non-US traffic and again few weeks back on getting "low quality traffic".

Many banned publishers received mails like this from YPN:

We have terminated your Yahoo! Publisher Network beta account [ACCOUNT ID] for breach of the Terms and Conditions and/or Program Policies. Your breach includes but may not be limited to sending traffic from users located outside the United States, in violation of Section 11(l) of the Terms and Conditions. In accord with Section 6(a), we will not include such amounts in your payment. We have refunded amounts generated from the non-US users to our advertisers and will pay any remaining amount owed to you in accord with the Terms and Conditions.’

So in my opinion its best to check the kind of traffic your site is receiving. You can never be too careful.

Google is going to listen to your tv

2006-06-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

If you want to see maps, movie updates, news or even relevant ads of Europe on your PC then all you have to do is switch-on your TV.

That's right, google's new research paper which also won 'Best Paper' award at Euro ITV 2006 which took place couple of weeks back, focuses on using broadcast viewing to automatically present relevant information on a web browser. In other words its going to collect sound from TV and parse it to get some keywords and going to present the surfer with real-time forums, ad-hoc chat rooms, actor profile and even maps of locales within the movie.

This is real exciting and I can't wait to see google implement it. I wonder what's going to happen when you are surfing for latest gadget and tech news and your wife is watching "Desperate Housewives" ;-)

BlogExplosion up for sale again

2006-06-10T05:56:00.000-07:00

In the last week of April BlogExplosion announced that they have been sold for in excess of $100,000 but the recent update is that the buyer is not able to complete securing financing.

So its up for sale again.

Links for June 08, 2006

2006-06-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

Meet Ivan the optimiser -- but please, no paparazzi.An interview with Ivan Heneghan, a Dublin-based AdSense optimisation specialist, to learn how 'optimisation' differs from 'optimization'.
Meet Mike Gutner, AdSense Optimization Specialist.An optimization specialist here at AdSense.
So you're a successful, savvy AdSense publisher. Want to work for Adsense? Well, AdSense is hiring.

Google giving away 1000 Rs worth of Adword vouchers for free

2006-06-07T19:34:00.000-07:00

If you are a thinking of getting a new Adword account AND if you are from India then there is some good news for you. Google is giving away 1000Rs Adword vouchers for new accounts. Go on and register here and hey.. don't forget to buy me a beer :-)

source Shoemoney

links for 7th June 2006

2006-06-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a Mac Video Player. Mac version of Google Video Player.
Viral Videos that Swept the Nation. A look at 8 videos that have exploded on the Net.
Why zero impressions?. Mystery of new or edited ads which receive no impressions gets cleared.

365 days left to kill this blog - this is what I call a killer Blog Goal

2006-06-07T05:09:00.000-07:00

Do you like to set a target for yourself or do you prefer to take every day just as it comes. While living without a goal can be fun, hassle-free and without any guilty feeling many people prefer to have a goal in life. And they don't stop just there. They breakup that goal into many small goals - goal for the year, goal for the month and even goal for the week. They claim that it keeps them organized and helps in reaching that bigger goal without actually thinking about it all the time.

After reading some inspirational books and articles I have decided to give this 'goal thing' a shot. And the timing could not have been better, here I got free from long vacations and there Darren Rowse started a new Group writing project - Blog Goals, where he suggests all his readers to "making some of your blogging goals public as a way of adding accountability and motivation to reach them".

Now what should be my goal and what should be the duration? Money seems to be a nice motivating factor... so.. how about getting that magical '4 figure per month' earning from Adsense within next 12 months. Sound great.. but like all big boys suggests, one should not blog just for money. So lets modify this goal into something more 'reader oriented'. I am sure Darren would be glad to know that I am putting my readers before money :-) . So lets see.. if I wish to earn 1K a month then I should be getting around... (top secret mathematical calculations here) .. 10K visitors daily.

This is where I got headache, went back, checked my earnings, read some forums, re-calculated the 'top secret data'. Man.. this figure is really scary. This is next to impossible, even ProBlogger.net gets around 4K/day visitors. I must have made some mistake. I need to do more. Ok, what other options do I have - start some more blogs/sites, get a day job, write ebooks a la Joel Comm :-)

I guess I would give this blog 12 months before trying any other options. Many bloggers have said in past that most of the blogs do no survive more then first few months. So I have decided to give this blog 12 months and even if I don't reach my goal I won't kill it before next june 2007. So lets get back to the task on hand. Yes goals!.

Now that Big Goal of 1K a month is decided, lets break it into following smaller goals:

Get More traffic. I am sure most of the readers can break this into even more smaller goals like: Get more backlinks (submit articles, comments and more), write more posts, do research on the topic, tag posts etc.
Organize blog. I still remember one of Darren's post where he talks about how he like to visit 'about' page and how important is that page for a blog. There are many such small changes that I need to make on this blog to build loyal readers.
Build relationship. Just like any community even in blogosphere you need friends, and I plan to make some real good friends here. This is more to do with make blogging fun and exciting and less to do with money.
Learn something everyday. There is so much useful information on the net. People share so many interesting tips on their blogs and in forums. I wish to learn at least one new thing everyday from these people but at the same time I would try not to get addicted ;-)
Unlearn everyday. I am going to maintain a record of my blog's performance and would keep adding something new and removing something old that don't seem to work. Not only the blog's content but its design and layout would be constantly changing and evolving.

If I complete above 5 sub-goals then I am sure I should be able to achieve my Big Blog Goal for next 12 months.

To keep you updated this is what I am going to do. I am going to post my Adsense earning stats(updated weekly) in the top right corner of the blog for everyone to see.

wish me luck guys!

ps: Before posting this post I updated this blog's 'About' section with the help of 'expand' trick. I am so sincere :-)

Google Analytics Invitation Code - about time mister

2006-06-06T19:58:00.000-07:00

Finally the wait is over, This morning google has accepted my Google Analytics account request. Lets see how this thing really works. I am very excited about all this especially because I got this mail after one full month while many of my friends have said that i might have to wait for as long as 3-4 months. So if you are interested in how this baby works then stick around.

Chao

Publishing gets easy with Adsense Calendar

2006-06-03T02:20:00.000-07:00

Google's latest launch is Adsense Calendar.

To make long story short here is the list of things you can do with it:

You can find monthly payment schedule.
record of AdSense blog posts.
Future system maintenance periods and upcoming events.

How to get it:

You can subscribe via Google Calendar.
You can also view it using a feed reader or iCal-compatible program.

Get it now from here.

Google Adsense API beta - mean money making machine

2006-06-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Great news for web publishers! But first let me tell you a story and if you are a newbie then you should definitely pay attention.

Couple of weeks back when Google introduced a new referral Picasa I noticed many blogs that wrote about it and in the end added a line saying "if you want to download Picasa and also if you wish to help this blog then you can download it from my referral button". I know, it was a big mistake and totally against TOS but many innocent bloggers including myself used to belief that referral buttons are like selling something so you can promote them.

Anyway long story short now you don't have to worry about such issues because now you can use Google Adsense APIs which enables you to integrate Google AdSense into your website offerings and increase your revenue without risking getting banned from Google. Think of it as a bonus.

ProBlogger Readers Definitive List of Habits of Effective Bloggers

2006-05-30T11:54:00.000-07:00

Last week Darren of ProBlogger fame started a ‘Habits of Highly Effective bloggers’ group writing project which got a very good response from the readers. In fact the response was so good that most visitors were finding it little difficult to read through all the 80 articles writing for the project. Robert also had similar problem and so he decided to make a list of all the habits. The thing that I found most interesting in this list was that the top 20% of habits makes for almost 50% of total submissions and even though Robert has done a nice job of combining overlapping habits I think there are still few that can still be combined, taking it well above 50% mark.

The point I want to make here is that you don't have to implement all 50 habits at one go. Just start with first 10 habits and then as your blog matures keep including remaining habits one by one. And before ending this post I wish to give credit for this post's title to Darren.

7 'must have' Blogger tips and tricks for blogspot

2006-05-27T20:13:00.000-07:00

Last week I had some adsense problem with this blog and I had to search for some template tricks to solve it. On my quest I came accross many interesting template hacks for blogspot platform which I am listing here for all my readers comfort. Feel free to experiment.

Make your latest post your blog's landing page. This trick redirects visitors from homepage to most recent post. Link
Category. For basic category function check my old post. For more complicated methods you can read this article.
Author comment highlighting hack. external link
Expandable post trick. If your post is very long and you wish to have "click here to read more" kind of link to your blog then this trick is for you.
Archiving posts with latest post on top of a drop down menu.
Trackbacks by Haloscan. Much needed feature that Blogger seems to ignore. One little warning, this hides all your old comments and I didn't like the look either, so removed it.
Previous Post Hack. As the name suggests, add a link to the your previous post.

Thats all for now folks. Actually I have few cool hacks for you but I haven't tested them yet. So you have to back come some time later.

seven days seven stories

2006-05-26T20:57:00.000-07:00

Wow! I took a week's break from all worldly matters and more then half of things around me changed, its amazing how much can happen in just seven days! As far as blogosphere is concerned seven of the most happening events in last seven days:

7. NETGEAR WiFi Phone for Skype
6. Canon considers halt to film camera development
5. Interns? No Bloggers Need Apply
4. House Committee Approves 'Net Neutrality' Bill
3. Google AdsBot to assess your landing pages
2.Yahoo, eBay form Web advertising alliance
1. Google introduces Video Ads.

ps: of course this list is not complete and I might have missed many more interesting news :-) these

Learn Quick then Earn quick

2006-05-21T08:05:00.000-07:00

On may 19th Darren Rowse of problogger wrote about Adsense video program, just like all other post from Darren this was also very motivating article. In Darren's own words - "(I) came across a product that I wish I'd stumbled across in my first months of blogging" and "Michael earns over $19,000 USD per month using AdSense (that's more than $600 a day) and has obviously spent a lot of time researching how to get the most out of the ad network." I never trusted such "get rich quick" products so on reading the article I told myself that why a respectful blogger like Darren Rosse is writing about it. On reading the comments from old visitors to his site I found that I was not alone in doubting such product, one Andy Merrett also wrote a comment (cynical?) expressing similar doubts.

~~But Andy was out numbered, corned and was called an ass and finally was made to apologise (for his mistake??).~~ Anyway Andy took others' advice, bought the product and reviewed the product. He concluded his review by stating -

"This course is not for even moderately competent AdSense users and website publishers. If you are an absolute beginner, with no website, no content, and no way to generate revenue, then you will probably get a lot from this information.

If you've read a few free Internet marketing sites, looked at successful websites, and are confident in testing on your own site, then I don't think you'll find much here to help you."

But of course, even a broken clock shows the right time twice a day and if its been recommended by A-list bloggers then I think a new adsense user can learn a thing or two from it. You might quote Brian and say that the product is backed with NO RISK, 100% Money Back Guarantee, so you have nothing to loose. But how true is that ? Even if you spend two hours watching those videos you have wasted twice what you could have earned in an hour doing regular work (note that you are not suppose to skip any videos). Then there is an issue of your blog's credibility. If such product doesn't delieve what they (and you) promised then how many readers you expect would go through all the trouble of ordering and getting refund for your next referred product.

Like Brian wrote recently - money is not in being on the A-list, money is in fan list. So if you don't want to loose your royal readers you should give enough importance to the things that affect your readers.

I am week 30 SOB award winner

2006-05-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

Life is full of high and low moments, while I was spending my last couple of days trying to figure out why google ads are not getting displayed on this blog and getting no results what so ever, my hard work that I put in creating and running this blog finally got recognized and I was awarded this week's SOB : Successful and Outstanding Blogger award by Liz.

Liz is the owner of successful-blog and SOB concept was started by her 30 weeks back. And this is how she puts it:

The idea was that anyone who took the discussion back to their blog would let me know. Then I would give that blog recognition on Successful-Blog for extending the conversation into the blogosphereÂmaking the community larger, the dialogue bigger, all of us smarter, better and our businesses stronger. Most folks forgot the part about letting me know. So I kept watch and found out on my own.

She is very hard working, is't she? There are eight other winners of this week's SOB awards and I am going to go check them all today itself. If you are also interested in winning this award then I would suggest you to do the same and even if you are not interested then also its going to an interesting read.

Week 30 SOBs

Google Adsense behaving strangely

2006-05-20T07:16:00.000-07:00

Today I noticed something strange on this blog. Google is not showing any ads on it. Its not that I make a living out of google adsense revenue but not displaying any ads for no reason is a matter of concern and so I decided to do little investigation on my own.

After checking each and every post one by one I zeroed on this post. Its highly unlikely that Google is not displaying ads because of some banned words because I can see ads on this post.

This is what I did to correct the problem:

I tried to see if there is any problem with my browser (firefox), so checked with IE and even with Digital point's Sandbox tool, but still couldn't see any ads on my blog.
I tired removing all negative words , nothing happened, still same blank space.
I tired to remove whole text, still nothing happened.
I even wrote couple of keywords just in case google doesn't displays ads on blank pages.
Finally I posted my problem on Digital Point Forum.

This post is causing lot of problem to my main page and if this issue is not solved soon then I have no option other then to delete this post.

updates: I have mailed to google adsense team and explained this problem. I believe they are going to reply me back in next 48 hours (and hopefully with a solution). In the mean time I am trying to do modification to template so that the problematic post's effect can be neutralized.

updates 2: Temporary solution: Since the problem was with one post so I thought that if the blog homepage could be redirected automatically to the latest post then my work would be done.

So after searching the net for couple of hours I found this small blogger template trick which did the work.
ps: Google Blogger search doesn't seems to work as efficiently as google search even for blogspot.

final updates: Today after I got reply from Adsense team, I must give it to the team for being so fast and prompt, I expect around 2 complete days for them to reply back but they beat my guess by full 5 hours (and to top that I mailed them on sunday!).

Anyway here what say wrote back:

Hello Jack,

Thank you for your email. When I reviewed
http://blog4bloggers.blogspot.com, I noticed that targeted Google ads were
appearing on your site. However, if you're still having trouble viewing
the Google ads on your computer, there are a couple steps I'd recommend
taking:

1) Please try clearing your browser cache and deleting your cookies before
trying to access your site again.

For more information, please see
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23767
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=35730

2) Please also make sure that JavaScript is enabled and any ad blocking
software is disabled. For more information, please see
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=10036.

If you're still unable to view the Google ads after following steps 1 and
2 above, please reply to this email with a detailed description of the
problem and I'll be happy to investigate further. Specifically, could you
please provide responses to these questions?

- Can you send me a screenshot showing this problem?
- What browser version are you using?
- What operating system version are you running?
- What is the exact URL that is causing you trouble?

We appreciate your cooperation.

For additional questions, we encourage you to visit the AdSense Help
Center (http://www.google.com/adsense_help), our complete resource center
for all AdSense topics. Alternatively, feel free to post your question on
the forum just for AdSense publishers: the AdSense Help Group
(http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help).

Sincerely,

Abc
The Google AdSense Team

With the help of small trick I was able to correct the problem temporarily, maybe the team just checked the homepage (as they still asked me to send the exact URL) but still I checked the URL in question and found it to be working properly, maybe google takes some time to make changes (initially it had some words like w a r and b o m b that I deleted later). Well I must say I am satisfied with Adsense team's reply and I would advise you all to be careful when using such words in your news articles.

DOs and Don'ts of write good headlines

2006-05-19T19:16:00.000-07:00

You can write the headlines for search engines or you can write it for people (if you are not sure what's the difference between two then read my last post Headlines - do they matter in SEO world?). Today I am going to list out some points that everyone should keep in mind before writing a headline. Without wasting anymore of your time here they are:

DOs

Use short words and meaningful words, but avoid abbreviations unless its very common like NASA or US. Try to use short synonyms for long words.
Use "Active Voice". Active voice is when something does some something (actively). Passive voice is when something is done to something. for example DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN is active while TRUMAN IS DEFEATED BY DEWEY. This is the most important point one should keep in mind when writing headlines because it not only takes less words then Passive Voice and hence less decoding but it also feels simpler and keeps the "verb and object" order.
Use Present Tense to convey a feeling of immediacy.
Use figures only when its necessary. Avoid them if you can. This may sound little difficult to believe if you read too much into SEO. But like I said in my last post, you have to decide whether you are writing for search engines or your visitors.
Headlines should be written from a neutral point of view. As the name suggests, the neutral point of view is a point of view, not the absence or elimination of viewpoints. It requires views to be represented without bias.
Be Accurate and specific but try not to make it dull.

Don'ts

Avoid repeating keywords. It not only makes the headline long but also looks confusing in eye of visitors (both human and search engines). Use synonyms and try to rephrase the sentence.
Avoid contrived headlines.
Avoid exclamation marks. Use strong, accurate verbs to drive your point home.
Avoid Articles and verbs like 'to be', 'is' and 'are'. This is done to save space and improve action.

Writing headlines can be lot of hard work but remember that most of the successful writers spends more then half of the time on writing headlines out of the total time they have for an article.

Headlines - do they matter in SEO world?

2006-05-15T02:01:00.000-07:00

MAN WALKS ON MOON
DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN

Name one similarity among above statements(answer is at bottom of this post)
What is the difference between "good headlines" and "attention grabbing headlines"? While former just tells you about the quality of the headlines but the later tells you "how good" is it.

You can write the headlines for search engines(SE) or you can write it for people. You may ask whats the difference between two. Well the difference lies in how your pages gets indexed in SE, look at the permalink of this post, what do you see? All the words that forms the headline goes into this permalink which is why it becomes very important from SE's point of view to from a keyword rich headline.

On the other hand when you write headlines for readers you don't try to pack in as many keywords as possible but you tries to make it interesting for your readers. They can be short and snappy.

The best path is the middle one - include 1-2 keywords and try to make it interesting and relevant to the post.If you have really catchy but totally irrelevant headlines, they would attract the visitors but won't be able to convert them into your frequent visitors.

answer: these are some of the most famous headlines of their time.

source wikipedia

Victory

2006-05-14T18:27:00.000-07:00

Finally I won Liz's link love. It was not easy for a me, had to try twice, but with some help and guidance from ever sweet Liz I finally won (I guess). The Game was simple - Liz posted her link lust list on one of the three blogs, and all you have to do is find who linked her back. It just like treasure hunting with a twist. On winning I get to suggest one blog of my choice which gets linked by Liz's successful-blog, I picked heavenlyankh for its fresh look and touching posts, I am sure this would bring smile to andrena face over at heavenlyyankh.

And yeah, I almost forgot to tell you about my link lust -
1)Seth Godin - I like the bald pic in his blog, no seriously its one of the finest blog out there.
2)Liz - for being so caring.
3)Mike of simplenomics - for speaking his heart - always!

Sex, lies and videotapes - google trend tells it all

2006-05-13T20:46:00.000-07:00

Google trend is old news - well anything 2 days old in blogosphere is old. From the day one I got hooked to this smart tool released by google recently. For some its no more then just another tool to find most search words but if used smartly it can be of great help in deciding your future business plans.

After experimenting with many words I finally found some cool results. Two of the top searched keywords are se x and videos. Yes they beat other increasing keywords like blog by a huge margin. If you don't believe me then just see for yourself.

Click image to enlarge

Click here to see some more interesing search results(external links)
Good and evi l
God and google

New changes in google adsense policy

2006-05-13T06:58:00.000-07:00

Google Adsense has recently changed its adsense policy. The changes are mostly in ad placement section.

According to this new changes (actually backdated policy by 2 months to march 14th)-
A single referral button per product may be placed on a page up to a maximum of 4 buttons, in addition to the ad units, search boxes, and link units specified above. Referral buttons are considered to be ‘Google ads’ for purposes of these program policies.

Click here for rest of policy or here for rest of the story
Also checkout Google's Quality Guidelines

high paying keyword poetry for fun and profit

2006-05-12T05:12:00.000-07:00

There is a new trend catching up in the blogosphere, no its not about link leak virus or a new google tool, its about poetry. Yes! more and more bloggers are writting poems with high paying keywords. The bloggers got this idea after reading a list of high paying keywords at CyberWire.

YankeeFrog have aready started a series based on such poems and DigitalPoint forum members have started threads where they are posting their very first creations. Read similar post at Boingboing.net.

Maybe I should also give it a try (bear with me :-)

Three little piggies, went to countrywide car race
they had to win money, for mortgage refinance

One litty piggy met with an auto accident
car accident lawyer said - "it was a wrongful death"

Two little piggies hired a Personal injury attorney
to milk the insurance company of its money

no sir! two little piggies didn't get single dollar of america
cos' little dead piggy had peritoneal mesothelioma

Jack

follow up on link leak and link lust fight

2006-05-10T20:54:00.000-07:00

As they say - All's well that ends well.

Darren and Mike have made peace. No blood bath or hard feelings what so ever. Looking at Darren's replies you should give him benefit of doubt that when someone as busy as Darren who gets tonnes of mails daily have to write a post then its very linkly that details like who has written such posts recently might not come to his mind.

Darren also have a point when he said that "I’m not sure I got 3 emails, 2 emails, 4 emails or whatever. I do remember getting at least one and I do remember thinking that it wasn’t something that fitted with the rhythm of ProBlogger that day (I try to limit numbers of types of posts - get the mix right). After that I promptly forgot about it." Doesn't this happen to you all the time. Sometimes something important comes to your mind while you are doing some other work and so you decide to write in down as soon as you finish it, but in few minutes it totally vanishes from your mind.

We should not think of this whole issue as a weakness of blog community which is fighting over credits and back links but we should think of this as its strength to solve any kind of issues peacefully and as Mike puts it "Darren and I have not resorted to name calling, ugly adjectives, profane words,etc. Nor have we gone into sheer attack mode. Please try to handle your difference with dignity, respect, room for the other persons opinion and forgiveness."

Darren gives Mike link leak credit in his Link Lusk post's update and we all get on with our lives.

Related posts
Two big cats fight over spilled link-love

Latest "Google Health" Updates - 4 new categories - 19 new labels

2006-05-10T19:25:00.000-07:00

It's not even 9 hours since my last post on google health where I wrote about google health features, it's interface and six categories, and google health has already changed its look even further. As Of now Google health have For new categories - Condition info, Drug info, For doctors and info type and each category again have 4-5 lables like Symptoms, side effects, patient handouts and support groups.

click image to enlarge

It seems that they are in real hurry to launch Google health. Check out the Google Co-op Page for current face of google health and similar new launch from google. In last 9 hours or so they have added 11 more labels takes it to 19 and I have a strange feeling that this page is going to be hot-spot for coming days with changes taking place every couple of hours. Well I plan to keep you updated with here on B4B none the less. So keep coming back.

old post
Google to launch "google health"

Two big cats fight over spilled link-love

2006-05-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

It really breaks my heart seeing two top bloggers fighting over credit for link love. The issue is - should Darren of Problogger (why no link from me today?) give credit for his new post on "Link Lust" to someone who genuinely deserves it or should he claim the whole idea as his own?

Mike Sigers of simplenomics.com insists in his emotional post that Darren should give the credit to rightful person, not because its going to benefit him but because that's the only right thing to do.

Even though Darren is my favorite blogger and I have learned a lot from his blog but here I must say that Mike is right and Darren is plan wrong. I have followed Mike's blogs (especially link leak virus series) very closely and I saw how he and Liz tried to spread this nice message across blogosphere. I was there when they submitted link leak virus entry to wiki and I was there when their submission got deleted.

Irrespective of whatever comes out of this fight the damage has already been done. Blogosphere would discuss this for long time. What we write here remains long after we are gone.

Does Link Love causes Spam Blogging

2006-05-10T10:27:00.000-07:00

Recently I have started seeing an image verification option whenever I tries to publish a new post here on blogger.com. In the starting I thought it to be some sort of new feature and never bothered to check it (frankly I don't feel comfortable clicking anywhere just before publishing a post). But day by day it was getting really annoying to enter all those letters so I decided to checkout.

click image to enlarge

To my surprise I found out that it was not any feature but a check to control spam blogging. But what's spam blogging? According to blogger.com

As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

click image to enlarge

But from when have Link Love become "link spamming"? Or is it something else that I am missing. Anyway I have filled a small form and now waiting for the blogger.com's reply.

Related post
"Link Leak Virus" - Problogger's gift to blogosphere

Google to launch "google health"

2006-05-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

Even when "Google Finance" is not able to make its mark on the internet, there is a strong rumor among bloggers that google is going to launch "Google Health" - a health related search engine that would give competition to Yahoo Health and MSN Health.

Google Health interface would have six categories - treatment, Tests/diagnosis, symptoms, Causes/risk factors, alternative medicine and "from medical authorities".
It is going to further divide the readers into two sub-groups - "For Patients" and "For health professionals"

click image to enlarge

As of now all this news is unofficial and only when Google makes its official announcement we can truly know how much of this is facts, but one thing is clear - Google, Yahoo and MSN is not going to leave any stone unturned to win the world wide web.

Go on, enter "cold" in google search box, see the top results and then come back here and tell me what u think about it.

You may also find these post interesting
Song of Money

song of money!

2006-05-10T03:44:00.000-07:00

While Darren of problogger fame plays a joke on his readers by posting a "newspaper photo" of a local newspaper "The Age" covering sale of his blog for 5 million dollars on front page using this nifty tool; Brian, of copyblogger, explores new (old?) methods of making money from blogging - from fan list.

These two incidences happening next to one another have made me think about the future of websites in general and blogging in particular. While Google and Yahoo are fighting over the control of online advertising market, most of the small fishes are struggling to make their ends meet. And now that google has decided to jump into high paying romance, video, finance and real-estate the profit scope for smaller players has reduced further.

I am worried about this whole situation, have you given it a thought?

Yahoo's New Keyword Ads System to challenge Google

2006-05-09T12:54:00.000-07:00

Yahoo continues to give tough competition to Google. Yahoo's new platform will add a range of features not currently available to marketers running their campaigns with Yahoo Search Marketing and its distribution network. These include keyword grouping enhancements, IP-based mapping features to support geo-targeting, better scheduling capabilities, the expression of business goals such as cost-per-acquisition, and indirect conversion tracking. It expects to launch this in third quarter.

With the new service, marketers will be able to see IP-based maps that can associate neighborhoods to zip codes. That will assist in local search marketing, a growing sector of paid search that is stretching into the billions of dollars.

Ad campaigns can be "paused," the report said, with no loss of ranking information. That can be done with a single ad or a group of ads. Also, a slider bar on the pricing page will let marketers view their likely number of clicks given a particular keyword bid.

Power of adsense to destroy Internet Explorer

2006-05-08T13:25:00.000-07:00

A group called explorerdestroyer has taken the war against Microsoft's Internet Explorer in open and this time their weapon is Google's adsense program. This group of open-source activists has begun a controversial campaign to encourage Web surfers to switch from Microsoft's Internet Explorer to the open-source based Firefox browser. The plan? Pay Web site owners $1 for each user they convert to Firefox. The tactic takes advantage of Google's AdSense Referral program.

How it works: you need an adsense account to get started. After getting the account you can download a script from the explorerdestroyer website and install it on your site. When you install the script on your site, you can decide how much force you want to use to convince your users to switch away from the dark side. You can choose between 3 settings: Gentle, Semi-serious and Very-serious:

Level 1: Gentle Encouragement
Visitors using IE see a message encouraging them to download Firefox (with a download link) running across the top of the page.

Level 2: Semi-serious
Visitors using IE get a friendly splash page encouraging them to download Firefox. There's a download link, and a link to continue on to your site.

Level 3: Very serious
Level 3 will not allow people using IE past a splash page. This level is very useful for sites that are not IE6 compatible. And there's never been a more important moment to switch people to Firefox

For more information visit explorerdestroyer

Yahoo! catching up with Google - experts

2006-05-08T11:24:00.000-07:00

After Microsoft's last week announcement about its ad platform's "exclusive targeting features" which allowed registered users to select "whom, what time of day and to what geographic location" their ad would be shown, Yahoo! has announced that it will be rolling out a "completely redesigned" search advertising platform in the third quarter of this year.

This new platform would enable marketers to more quickly launch search advertising campaigns across the search giant and its distribution network, "and help better overall return on their search advertising investment."

Related posts (external links)
Yahoo Is Unleashing a New Way to Turn Ad Clicks Into Ka-Ching, New York Times
Yahoo unveils overhaul of online advertising, Financial Times
Yahoo’s New Search Advertising System, Search Engine Journal
Yahoo to Disclose Details of System For Keyword Ads, Wall Street Journal

things i did to get banned from google adsense

2006-05-08T03:26:00.000-07:00

Just like any new adsense publisher I also did many mistakes which was against TOS. After so many days I started believing that I know everything that has to know about adsense TOS. But today only someone pointed out one of my mistakes that I was doing unknowingly. Though I didn't make any profit from it, but non the less it was like paying with fire.

From my past experiences and knowledge I am listing some common mistakes that publishers do knowingly and unknowingly so that you can also learn from them.

Clicking on your own ads - this is least common now that people are aware.
Asking your friends to click on your ads - people stops 1 and start doing this.
Making a small group to click on each others ads.
Downloading firefox, picasa and other products by referral on lab computers.
Placing images pointing to the ads - like arrows, pen, pencil etc.
Placing ads and images next to eachother WITHOUT any gap between them.
Choosing only image ads to display and then placing similar looking pictures next to them.
Asking your visitors to use your referral to register adsense account thinking that you are promoting them and its not like pay-per-click ads.
Using scripts to increasing traffic.

These are the most common mistakes a newbie is likely to make. Though this list is not complete by any means and there are many other google terms and conditions like not placing ads on adult, gambling sites, or placing similar ads from others. But this post focuses the methods that people implement to cheat knowingly or to make more money thinking that these are some great tricks and tips.

Feel free to suggest any more that you might have seen or done in past.

PS: I didn't get banned finally, just corrected some mistakes today.

Future of blgging - asia !

2006-05-06T07:11:00.000-07:00

Yahoo drops MySpace publishers - what cr#*, thats old news.

Yes I know that its old news but do you know why they did it? They did it because .. shut up you mo#$n!! we know why they did it.. because "the traffic quality" was not good, this is really a cr%#y post, "I am going home".

Ok wait.. just one question - do you know what YPN publishers are doing now to avoid getting banned? They are using all sort of GeoIP targeting and phpadsnew mumbo-jambo to target YPN ads only to US visitors... so what, thats smart thing to do. other visitors are useless.

I don't think thats correct. Look at Technorati tracks - more then two-third of posts are from non-englishing speaking bloggers. Yes, english is not even most used language of blogosphere, its Japanese. No wonder you won’t make much money by showing ads ONLY to US based visitors.

And according to a recent report China expects 100 million bloggers by the end of year 2006.

Yahoo sees huge potential for growth in India. According to Jerry Yang, founder & chief, Yahoo, internet in India is in nascent stages. He says that "we see internet growing beyond the one billion users and lot of that growth will happen in India. And it’s not just more numbers, but the kind of applications, companies come out with. The game has just begun here.”

"Link Leak Virus" - Problogger's gift to blogosphere

2006-05-05T19:17:00.000-07:00

Mike Sigers of Simplenomics has started a new phenomenon - "Link Leak Virus", but before I talk about it let me tell you that its a good way of spreading link love in blog community.

Link Leak Virus is already spreading like a wild fire and bloggers are dropping it here and there like bad habits. If you have your own site or blog and you feel interested in link leak virus then maybe you can also be part of this Link Leak Virus and it might happen that those three of among your links would spread it even more wider in blogosphere.

Here how you can be part of link leak phenomenon - take any three blogs/sites of your choice and drop links on your next post. Why three? In Mike's own words - "since all good things, except wives, come in threes, like my three daughters".

Anyway I have dropped three on this post and lets see how this chain follows.

Related post (external link)
What is link leak?

Get your 10$ back from google

2006-05-05T18:16:00.000-07:00

We all know that we have to reach that 100$ earning to receive our first check. In the banking world, that is called a "float" and according to some experts $100 minimum earnings float is HUGE and guess where does all that money goes - in google's pockets.

Most of the sites that starts never reach that 100$ mark. Millions and millions of sites gets stuck at 60-70% only. If you believe the figures, google is getting about 3.5% of its revenue from this practice, it doesn't sound much, is it? Well with number of blogs starting every day this figure adds up to $267 million in the first quarter of this year and if same trend follows then google is going to earn $1.068 billion in one year.

But here is the juice. If you happened to read the fine prints of google adsense TOS then you can find the part where google talks about sending your money in 12-13 weeks time IF you terminate your google adsense account and inform them with an email at adsense-support@google.com. There is a small catch here too, your earning should be more then 10$ for this to work. But that threshold is fairly achievable

Now go get your money back!
If this blog helped you in any way please let me know! Everyone needs motivation!

Jack

Get instant revenue jump with google referral picasa

2006-05-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

Google is regularly experiemnting with its referral products. It was hardly a week before when google introduced "text link refeerals" for its all products like - google adwords, google adsense and google firefox and now it has introduced a new referral for its publishers - Picasa.

"Picasa is a Windows application that allows users to find, edit, and enjoy the pictures on their computer in seconds. Picasa also makes advanced editing and picture sharing simple with fast one-click fixes." And not to forget that its totally free.
What's in it for publishers?
When a user downloads and installs Picasa through your referral, Google will credit your account with up to $1.00.

I am using this software from long ago and I can say that the best feature of Picasa is its ability to send batches of pictures from you computer without the hassel of attaching and resizing. With my gmail account it takes be couple of clicks to send 20-30 pictures instantly.

If you decide to take a tour of Picasa click here (external link)

Yahoo joins click fraud club

2006-05-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

According to a lawsuit filed this week, Yahoo is charging advertisers for "premium" ads that are displayed on typosquatter sites.

The complaint alleges that by placing ads into illegal platforms such as spyware programs, [Yahoo] wrongfully collected high search engine advertising fees for ads that are actually shown in contexts that are worth far less, if anything. It is well known that spyware advertising is much cheaper than search engine advertising.

Typosquatters runs web sites with domain name which are very similar to more famous genuine sites hoping that someone would make a mistake of mis-spelling the domain name and visit their web site. Such sites does not contain any content and mostly works as parked sites hosting ads only.

Related articles (external link)
Washington Post

Yahoo advertising on Google's AdWords network - but why?

2006-05-04T09:51:00.000-07:00

I don't know about rest of you but yesterday I saw this for the first time and I felt like sharing with my visitors.
When I first saw familiar smiley jumping on my screen on this very blog I thought - wow! google adsense is now showing animated ads too. And to my surprise i noticed that it was non other then our beloved yahoo messenger's ad.

I wonder what YPN advertizers would think of this ad.

click image to enlarge

Yesterday I discussed this on DigitalPoint and cldnails suggested that "Maybe somebody created an ad campaign and instead of having the target url their website, it's an affiliate link." and that its highly unlikely "that a corporation like Yahoo is using a competitors service?"

He had a point and so I decided to do some research before commenting anymore on the topic. I went to google and started entering random combination of yahoo related words like yahoo, mail, messenger etc.

On searching for "yahoo messenger" and "yahoo voice" (both without quotes) I found yahoo ads on google. Check image or search for yourself.

click image to enlarge

Any comments?

updates: Felt like checking yahoo search and guess what - even yahoo is showing google adsense ads! It seems that the are not rivals afterall

click image to enlarge

Is pixel advertising dead?

2006-05-04T02:57:00.000-07:00

Steve of www.stevepavlina.com has recently written a very informative and long article on How to make money from your blog. The one thing that I liked most in his article was a reference to Alex of Milliondollarhomepage fame who became millionare in few months time with his clever idea of selling pixel for hosting ads.

Alex was in his 3rd year of college and was in need of money to pay for his studies. This is when he came up with the idea of selling one pixel for a dollar as ad space. It was a combination of new idea, great thinking and planned marketing that made it a huge success.

But just with like any other great idea even as soon as news of Alex's success spread on the net, many such similar sites came up over night selling pixels at a discounted prize. Many forums also came into light to support such sites. But while Alex's idea was fresh, most of these sites are no more then a shameless copy, no wonder they are struggling to sell even fraction of their pixel even after many years. Most of these sites are started by lazy people looking for easy money. They don't want to put in any hard work and that's the reason that most of such sites are down within few months of time.

This leads to another discussion of whether the pixel advertising era is finally over. I personally believe that just like google took the idea of search engine and to it to a different level by putting in hard work and implementing innovative ideas, pixel advertising can also work given that it have some freshness to it, and not just a copy for making easy money. Selling for a discount is not a solution. Great idea works, not cheap copy.

Does credibility counts in blog community?

2006-04-29T22:03:00.000-07:00

Darren Rowse of Problogger has recently written some nice articles on importance of credibility of a blogger in blogosphere. Its a 4 post series where he cleverly describes how longevity, experience, expertise and design affects your credibility and your blog's future. you can find complete article here

Market your blog Cartman style!

2006-04-28T15:18:00.000-07:00

Have you seen south park? In one of the episodes Cartman wons some huge money and he decides to buy a theme park.But he didnt want to share it with anyone so he didnt allow anyone to enter. But soon he needed money to pay techicial, operator and gateman. so on first week he started allowing only 2 visitors, on second week he allowed only 4 visitors.. this made everyone soo curious that everyone wanted to see cartman's park and nothing else.

And remember those mails and sms that we sometimes receives which says "don't scroll down" or "read after one day". They never fails to create enough curosity among readers to make then read it.

I believe that if you do what Cartman does and keep these two examples in mind while writing your next article you will have better success.
By the way don't come back on this blog for some days because ....[continued]

Which type of blogger are you?

2006-04-25T03:08:00.000-07:00

Do you have a blog? What kind of blog? What? You don't know what kind is your blog? ok. no problem. Let me help you. Tell me something about your blog? Do you like to spill all your creative thoughts on your blog, something that comes from your mind or have to taken to the task of exploring the big bad internet and posting the useful links on your blog so that other innocent souls don't have to wander aimlessly for hours?

If you fall into the first category then you are a "experiental" blogger - the rare kind, but if you can corelate yourself to the second kind then you are a "referential" blogger - not so rare but hard working kind.

But most bloggers falls somewhere in the middle. Even if they all had started with the idea of posting original content only with occassional links here and there, sometime later they run out of ideas (unless you are maintaining a personal blog) and end up posting links about news and other blog posts.

Nifty little trick to put "Category" section in you Blogger page

2006-04-23T06:32:00.000-07:00

While visiting blogs on wordpress and similar other sites you might have noticed a section called "categories" where you can sort your blogs. I always wanted to have that feature in my own blog but blogger.com doesn't provide. So I came up with this nice little trick which does the job.

Here how you can also put categories in your blog, just follow me:

Open the Template of your blog and scroll down to "Begin #sidebar" section.
Copy the entire "Links" section and paste it just below it. (yeah you will have two links section one after another, check it in the preview to make sure)
Now change the title "Links" to "Categories" in lower code.
Here is the small trick. Open your blog page in a new window.
Enter the Keywords that you want to use for sorting blogs and hit enter or click "search this blog".

I wanted to have a category "Google" where I can keep all my post that relates to google in one place. So I entered the word google. (you can enter more then one word, you will get best result by trial and error)Now in the result window sort the results by date by clicking on the "Sort by Date".
Copy the url of this page from the address bar on the top of the page.
Paste this address as a link in your template and give the name of your choice. I named it Google Hacks.

Repeat the same for any other categories you wish to create. I plan to do the same for yahoo in near future.
Save the changes and republish to make the changes take effect.

Some more free blog sites to get you started

2006-04-22T18:53:00.000-07:00

My first post about choosing the right weblog hosting site was by no mean a complete guide on that topic and I always wanted to add more for new readers like you because there is so much more choices that I wanted you all to know about. I recently came across a year old article from Pcworld that talks about some very famous blog hosting sites including Blogger.com, MSN Space, Yahoo 360 to get you started. I decided to add some new sites which are not included in this article.

Rediff blogs: The service is run by Rediff and its free. It has very simple template and basic features, so you need to know html to make your blog stand out. The good thing about this service is that it is very easy to setup and get started. And you get a very targeted audience.

Wordpress: Very nice free blog hosting site which doesn't require writer to know html codes. Very nice templates and it uses plugins to customize your blogs. The only downside is that in the free version you are not allowed to post any of the ads like Google Adsense.

My Journal: "Blogs by adults for adults". User must be above 18 years old to register for the account.

Xigna: This is another 100% web hosting site which offers some nice features like ability to get backup of your blog, getting detailed statistic about your blog traffic, blog search feature like one offered by google search engine and many more software. The downside is that it puts your blog as "http://xignablogs.com/blogs/your_blog_name" that really turns me off.

iBlogs: "Publish your thoughts, post your photos, all for FREE!". A Blogger.com look-alike blog hosting site with cool features like posting to your blog from mobile phone.

Businessbloging: A free and paid blog community for business bloggers. "Everything you need to quickly and easily publish online - whether it is pictures, video, documents, opinions or more, is included."

Blurty: Another Adult blog hosting site. They say - "Ok, so our standards aren't very high, but that's what makes reading some of the journals so much fun. You'll see" , sounds hilarious.

CrimsonBlog: You have the choice to host your free blog at either crimsonblog or on your own server. But I must warn you that it is pretty outdated.

Blogsome: Another free blog hosting site with Wordpress themes.

Xanga: It offers both free and paid service and according to them "Xanga is obsessed with one thing: helping people publish content to the web", quite a catchy phrase. I don't know much about it because both the time I tried to register on the free service the page never loaded, its just too slow.
Updates: finally signed up at Xanga, really bad experience, bad templates and what not.

This list is by no mean complete in itself and the reader is encouraged to explore the blogosphere to find the site best suited for his or her interests and requirements.

Blog visitors are young, wealthy and tech savvy

2006-04-22T11:31:00.000-07:00

According to the study ""Behaviors of the Blogosphere" conducted by comScore Networks and published by PCWorld, the blog readers belong to wealthier household, thus increasing the prospect of earning more money from the blogs.

According to the same study "Blog visitors are 11 percent more likely than the average Internet user to have incomes of $75,000 or more, and are 30 percent more likely to live in households headed by someone between the ages of 18 and 34, the study found."

Blogger template Hacks - How to put adsense!

2006-04-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

Lets get down to the point. You want to earn money from blogging. You have setup blog on blogger.com. But now you don't know how to put google adsense to your blog. Here is the simple and dirty guide to putting those ads WHEREVER you want in your template so that you can make more money from your blog.

Step 1.

Very simple. Just Click the "Template" tab on top and then click on the "Adsense" tab.
Now choose the format size of your choice from the top down button (ok! ok! if you have seen this before but wants to have all the ad formats then just wait till we reach step 2)

click on the picture to enlarge

You can toy with the "select color" button but i suggest you leave it as it is, the Blend Template suits best.(as a matter of fact this is the only reason for THIS extra step;-)

Click on Save button.

Choose the "Adsense for content", then click on "Ad unit" or "Link unit".

Now choose any ad format you like. Have a look at the html code in the bottom of the page which says "Your Adsense code". (if you don't see it then just click on the "continue" button at the bottom couple of times)

click picture to enlarge

The main trick here is to put exact color values in this ad as that of your template.

Now this is the trick I am going to tell you which would allow you to do that.

In a seperate window login to your blogger.com account.

Click on the Template tab and click on "Edit current" if not selected already (this is where you see html code for your blog d0od).

Select all html text, copy it to your favorite text editor (I do it in Notepad).

Now look for google script which look very similar to the "Your Adsense Code" in last section of the Google Adsense setup.

Note down the "google_color_bg", "google_color_text", "google_color_url", "google_color_link" values and enter these into the Google Adsense Color.

Congratulation. Its almost done. Now just copy the "Your Adsense Code" into your template wherever you want to place.

Click on the preview and adjust by trial and error to your taste.

Wall Street Debate - Can Bloggers make money?

2006-04-20T00:41:00.000-07:00

News From BlogoSphere

Longtime Internet entrepreneur Alan Meckler,who is chief executive of Jupitermedia Inc. and Jason Calacanis, co-founded Weblogs Inc., a network of blogging sites that was acquired last year by AOL. Mr. Calacanis debates on the future of blog and money bloggers can make.

Read full story in The Wall Street Journal.

8 things to keep in mind while writing a blog!

2006-04-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

Many bloggers spends their valuable time and energy in writing the articles but hardly anyone seems to be interested in reading them. They ask themselves - Why no one visit my blog? what's missing in my articles? If these questions sounds dangerously familiar then read on.

8 things you should keep in mind while writing a blog are:

topic. Choose some interesting topic. people are hardly interested in reading about your person life. they want something spicy and happening.
long term blogging. after choosing a topic ask yourself - will you be able to continue blogging on this topic after a month with kind of excitement and interest you have right now. will you be able to find new topics to blog ever after two months.
theme. It is observed that a blog which have got some theme - like gardening or camera review, gets more number of repeated visitors compared to those blogs which tries to cover everything.
be different. Don't choose a topic that's covered by 20 more blogs. surfers would visit your blog again only if something is available only on your blog.
be original. Copying others' material won't take you anywhere. sooner or later people would find out!
presentation. its all about how you present your article. if its about reviews then include lots of pictures. pay attention to details but don't make it look all cramped up !
be concise. According to some studies a reader spends around 90 seconds per blog. you don't expect him to go through a 1000 words article, do you? moral of the story - keep it short. and break it into a series of articles if you can't reduce it.
be regular. though there is no fixed rule on how many posts one should have per week. But you should keep in mind that readers will only visit if they find something interesting on ur blog on regular basis.

How to put Google Adsense Code in "Rediff Blogs"

2006-04-17T00:08:00.000-07:00

Putting google adsense code in Rediff Blogs is a very difficult tasks for people who don't know html programming. This small tutorial is for helping the fellow bloggers put the Google Adsense Code in there Rediff Blogs.

Login into your Rediff Blog account and click on your blog's name.
Click on "Template" button on the top left corner of the page.

You can decide any place you want to put your google ads in you blog. The best place is just above your articles and just next to your "links" on the sidebar.

I am going to show you how to put ads on sidebar.

Now this is the tricky part.

First copy whole template code in your notepad and save it.
Now scroll down to 4/5 of the code and look for comments that says "Favorite Link ends here" or try finding the word "link" or something similar that appears in your template.
Make some empty space JUST AFTER this line by pressing enter key couple of times.
now copy your Google Adsense code from your google account and paste it in the empty space.
Copy whole code in the rediff's Edit Template section.
Click on the "PREVIEW" button on the bottom. And check for the changes by scrolling the preview window.
If you are satisfied with the location of the ads then click "SAVE".
Changes are saved but would not be displayed unless you republish the blog. To do that click on the "Publish Blog" button on the top right of the page.
Check your new blog by clicking on the "View Blog" button.
You can always get your old template by pasting the save code from notepad to the template window and republishing.

If you find this article useful, then bookmark the page. Come back for tips on adding new ads and buttons.

How to setup your google adsense account - tutorial for beginners

2006-04-16T23:02:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my tutorial on How to setup Google's Adsense account. This is more of a walkthrough where I am going to help you through every step. So Its better if you don't just read it but start creating your own account as we go through this tutorial. You don't need to have a blog ready to create your account. You can always add it later.

Step 1
Visit google adsense page.
Step 2
After step 1 you will be greeted by friendly Google adsense page.
click on the "Click to Apply" Button

On clicking the button you will be taken to the application form button.

Step 3
Filling the Form. Starting from the first column start filling the form as follows:

Account Type : If you are applying a part of the company then choose Individual type.
Country or territory: click the "Select a country or territory button once and choose your country name.
Website URL: type full path of your blog or web page. For example I entered 'http://www.blog4bloggers.blogspot.com ' .
Website Language: Select the language in which you are going to write in your blog or site. I selected English.
Products: By default both "Adsense for Content" and "Adsense for Search" is selected (ticked ). Don't change it.
Contact Information: Enter Your full name and address , as it appears in your bank passbook or school card. This is important because you will get your checks mailed at the address you give here and to the person named here. So if you don't have a bank account give your family member's name or open an account in the mean time. Give all the information about your city, state and pin number.
You don't have to fill "Country or territory" here again.
Phone Number. Give your personal mobile number or home number.
Policies. Select all the 5 boxes, read the policies if you like, but you can read my blog on "How not to get your google account blocked" for more details.
Give the email address where you will get the information about your account like renewal of lost passwords etc.
Password. Select a big password with alphabet and numbers.
Click on "Submit Information" button.
On clicking the above button you will be taken to next page where all the informations you have entered will be displayed.
Check the informations one more time for any mistakes.
If there is some mistake then click the "Edit Account Information" button.
Else if everything is fine then click on "Create Account" button.
Congratulations. You have successfully created your google adsense account.
Now just one more step is left. Go to your email account and click on the link given my google adsense to confirm.
Google Adsense takes around 48 hours to verify and activate your account. So till then relax and keep blogging.

If you found this page useful then bookmark it. Post your comments and doubts.

Google helps you make money too

2006-04-16T22:55:00.000-07:00

Now you can make money sitting in your home. And this is happening in India also. Check out the Story covered by Times of India. A guy from rajasthan is earning more then 60,000 Rupees per MONTH, thats more then 7 lakhs per year. And whats the biggest surprise! he runs a cyber cafe for a living. So If he can do it then so can you.

Read full story in Times Of India

According to Jupiter Research, the online advertising market is going to grow to $18.9 billion by 2010. Now you can be part of that industry by starting right now.

Now that you are here feel free to explore my blog for various tutorial and tips.
This blog is updated regularly and I recent time I plan to write articles on how to add your blogs to various search engines like google and yahoo and other articles to increase traffic.
A good place to start would be my tutorial on registering on google's free adsense account.

Jack

3 tips to choose the best site

2006-04-16T21:44:00.000-07:00

You have the idea, and you are ready to blog!

But where to start!? Many sites are offering free and paid weblog hosting facilities. So which one should you choose?

some of the points you should keep in mind while choosing your weblog hosting are:

Paid or free. For a beginner I think free is just as good as any paid site. Though paid ones have their own advantages like more flexibilities, more tools, better speed. So if you can afford a paid one then go for it, and if not then join a free one.
Templates, Blog Managers and customization. I must admit that w****p***s beats the rest in templates and easy-of-use department. But..but… but b*****r beats it in customization and speed. And you can't post ad in w*** p***s
Last but not the least - blog address. More a hosting site is famous, lesser is your chance of getting your favorite blog address.

My advice. Try couple of weblog hosting sites sometime. See what need and what you can live without. What you like and what not. Then decide. Its better to spend some time in the beginning then moving to a new host later on.

Lets get started man!

2006-04-16T21:42:00.000-07:00

so you blog for fun ? great!

Nothing sounds better then earning some extra bucks while doing the things you like most - writing about things you like, discussing about new gadget you baught, sharing new advice - in short, blogging!!

An advice - this is not a page to sit back and read, you need to work with it. Follow various series step by step and in no time you will blog like a pro.

So what you waiting for?? lets start!

but first a little advice!

Don't start blogging to earn money. Why? because blogging over a long time needs lots of stuff, stuffs you like to write, stuff that you find interesting.. so if you are here for money you would loose interest in no time!! Its just like doing yoga or walking, you know its good for your health but still you don't do it. Thats Why!!