Ask the Blogger

Submitedge

2008-07-08T09:32:00.000+08:00

SEO stands for search engine optimization and submitedge.com stands for excellent SEO services! Submitedge.com has been proven one of the best service providers in the industry. With excellent team of professional, they do a splendid job in internet marketing. The most highlighted SEO services provided by the submitedge.com hold its uniqueness. The keyword research SEO service by the submitedge.com has lifted many businesses to its peak. As the content filled in your websites play a major role, keywords needs to be selected carefully. Submitedge.com does the job profoundly for you assuring you with excellent results.

Submitedge.com shows professionalism in the field and are the best considered for the SEO services. They choose keywords based on the index analysis of the search spiders. They drive traffic to your website more efficiently and more importantly, in a legal manner. The price package for the keywords research is very attractive and cost effective for the service buyer.

It is always to better to outsource the keyword search to an SEO service company and submitedge.com stands first in the choice! The directory submission service is also done with dedication by submitedge.com where amazingly they do manual submissions. Anyone can be sure of better results for manual submissions. As promised by them, their services provide a high return on investment (ROI) to their clients. To get high page rank and make your website to win the search race, submitedge.com is the right place!

"Manage Ads" Enables You to Adjust Color Scheme Easily

2008-04-30T10:11:00.003+08:00

After releasing their latest feature about Allowed Sites, Google AdSense introduce their upcoming feature again. This new upcoming feature will let publishers easily manage the AdSense ad units from within their AdSense account. That means, publishers can make ad changes without replacing code inside their pages. Though this feature isn't live yet, but Google provide a sneak peek for publishers so publisher will know what to expect in the coming weeks from AdSense.

This new ad management feature from Google AdSense means that the ad unit settings (such as colors and channels) for new AdSense for content ad units will be stored inside AdSense account every time publishers generate AdSense ad code. Then, if publisher would like to change any of these ad settings in the future, publisher will no longer need to manually replace the AdSense ad code on all of the web pages. Publishers can manage the ads and make the update within their AdSense account. For instance, with just a few mouse clicks, publisher can quickly change the borders of all 336×280 large rectangles ad from black to green. Fantastic! This new feature will help publishers save time and will simplify the process of optimizing AdSense ad units.

Unfortunately, the ad management feature isn't yet available in any publisher accounts. Google AdSense will be rolling it out in phases in the next few weeks, and they'll follow up with another post at that time to help publishers more understand about how to use the new feature. The feature is available to use when publishers see the "Manage Ads" page appear under their AdSense Setup tab. Here are the screenshots for the new AdSense feature:

How to use Section Targeting in Adsense?

2008-04-07T10:03:00.005+08:00

After you create a new post/webpage I your site, you will then insert AdSense code on that page and published it. Oops! Google is displaying ads of irrelevant ads there. As your potential visitors are visiting your site for learning more about the subject you are talking about, they might not be interested on those irrelevant ads, and hence they tend not to click on your AdSense ads since they are non-targeted to your content. Hence, you are losing some potential visitors who may generate few clicks for you. Because of irrelevant ads, you are losing some extra cash. At this moment, what you need is the section targeting which consists of several pieces of HTML tags.

Section targeting allows you to suggest a sections of your content that you’d like to emphasize or de-emphasize when matching ads to your site’s content. It will help you to improving your ad targeting and CTR.

It's simple. Just add a set of special HTML comment tags to your code which will mark the beginning and end of whichever section you'd like to emphasize or de-emphasize for ad targeting and use it for as many sections of a page as you like.

The ads will now be targeted on content between these tags, and if it lacks adequate keywords and content, you may see Public Service Ads.

The HTML tags to emphasize a page section take the following format:

If you would like to designate sections you'd like to have ignored by adding a (weight=ignore) to the starting tag:

Notes:

It may take up to 2 weeks before our crawlers take into account any changes you’ve made to your site.
Include significant amount of content within the section targeting tags. Otherwise You may get less irrelevant and or public service ads.

Explaining CPC and CPM ads

2008-03-31T09:58:00.002+08:00

How does Google determine our earnings? You may encounter some occasions that you got one or two clicks but no earning, what is happening? What is the difference between CPC ads and CPM ads? Today, I am going to explain the difference between the two.

For CPC ad (that is the Cost-per-click ad), you will get paid whenever there is a click on this kind of ad, provided that the click is valid. The CPC is the amount an advertiser pays each time a user clicks on his/her ad. In Google Adsense, most of the ads is CPC ads, and you will get paid when there is click on it. Most of them pay in a range from 0.01 to 2 dollars. However, I couldn't say all text ads must be CPC ads.

For CPM ad, it means Cost Per 1000 Impression. It is a kind of placement-targeted ads that the advertisers running CPM ads set their desired price per 1000 ads served. You will get paid whenever there are 1000 impressions for that CPM ad, but no the click on them. CPM ads compete against pay-per-click (or CPC, cost per click) ads in Google's ad auction system, so only the highest performing ads will be served to your pages.

Advertisers will need to bid a higher CPM than the existing CPC ads in order to show. Both image ads and text ads can be paid on CPM basis, and both of them are always site-targeted. CPM text ads will expand to take up the entire ad unit. One thing that you should always bear in mind is that, for CPM ads, your earnings are associated with impressions only, rather than clicks. Google pays you each time a CPM ad is shown on your page, rather than when a user clicks on the ad and views the advertiser's site. Again, it is hard to tell whether a specific ad unit is a CPM ad or not. Also, you cannot select only CPM/CPC ads to be displayed in your site.

So, you may wonder how you can check the earning performance of your CPM ads. Actually, the statistics (ad impression and clicks) of CPM ads will be shown together with that of CPC ads in general report in your account. Sometimes, you may notice that even though you've received impressions for CPM ads, you're not displaying any earnings. No worry. This is because an advertiser may pay as little as $0.50 for each 1000 impressions of an ad. With each impression worth $0.0005, you could receive up to 9 ad impressions for total revenue of $0.0045 without any clicks or earnings appearing in your report. So, you may afraid your earning will be lost when it cannot come to a significant figure. No worry. Although Google will only show earning that is more than one cent, all the earning from impressions of CPM ads that is below one cents will be recorded and accumulated. It will then show whenever it reaches one cent.

Since CPM ads are paid on the number of ad impression, the location of the CPM ads highly affect the overall earnings for you. For example, if you put your CPM ad on top of your site, you definitely receive more ad impression for that and have higher income, and vice versa.

So next time, when you have a click but no earning, don't be panic. It could be a click on a CPM ad for which you will not get any earning for that.

How to Get Your Competitor's Adsense Account to be Terminated

2008-03-30T15:00:00.001+08:00

The point of this post is not to play dirty. The point is to expose a fatal flaw in the way Google Adsense does business in hopes that they will fix the problem.

Background

We already know there are a variety of blackhat tactics that can be used to get a competitor's site banned or penalized in Google’s search listings (e.g. spamming backlinks in bad neighborhoods, duplicate content on multiple domains, etc.). All of these methods are off-site, meaning the webmaster has no way of stopping anyone from setting up hundreds of domains scraping his content and plummeting his SERP ranking. But what about sabotaging your competitor's Adsense account?

There is always the obvious "go crazy clicking your competitor's ads" tactic, but at least Google makes some attempt to combat this problem by tracking IP addresses and cookies. Publishers are being banned from Adsense at a steadily increasing rate, but I tend to think that usually it is the publisher's own fault for encouraging clicks, providing adult content, or utilizing "shady" methods of driving traffic to their site.

When you signup for an Adsense account, you are approved based solely on the original domain you submit for review. Once you are approved, then you are allowed to instantly place your Adsense code on any number of sites that you own without having to have get them approved, or even put them on file with Adsense. As a publisher myself with hundreds of domains, I find this to be very convenient. But…

The Problem

Since you have never submitted any of your domains to Adsense (beyond the initial domain), Google just ASSUMES that you own all of the domains that display your Adsense code. Consequently, your account will be held responsible for the traffic sources, promotional methods, spammy content, illegal ad placement, or poor click-through rate of a site that you may not even own (as long as they display your code)! And no, its not that easy to just signup for another account (you need a new SSN/EIN).

The How-To List

So with that in mind, I present to you a step-by-step guide to getting your competitor’s Adsense account banned:

1. Identify your competitor's website.

2. View the source code of any page that displays his Adsense javascript code, and copy it to your clipboard. It will look something like this (the section that reads pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is his unique publisher ID):

3. Copy the javascript and paste it into any website that you own (I am assuming you know how to "replicate" your competitor's whois info for your site, or at least make it private). It should instantly display your competitor’s ads on your site without any problem.

4. Write a little note to your visitors: thank them for visiting and let them know that they should "check out our sponsored links." Bonus points if you can rig up an animated gif arrow pointing to the ads.

5. Blog about dildos or whatever sex toy you happen to fancy. Adsense loves adult content for sure!

6. Spam your site to Craigslist every single day in all 400 cities (though 30 will probably do just fine), or hire someone from India to do it for you (it will only cost you about 15 cents per post).

7. Buy bulk amounts of traffic on eBay! And I'm talking like a million hits to your site in a few weeks. If this shitty traffic doesn't kill his Adsense click-through rate, nothing will. And who knows what kind of zombie computers or sneaky redirects are conjuring up your mystery traffic. (The Adsense javascript can relay to Google the HTTP_REFERER attribute, which more or less reveals the source of your traffic.)

8. Optional: Advertise your site via unsolicited email. This is illegal in many countries and people will hate you for this. The wise ones may even report you to Adsense (let's hope!). Of course, they will probably report you to your host first, so I don't recommend this one.

9. Keep doing this for a month. Actually, you probably only have to do ONE of these methods for a month, but multiple ones won't hurt. Every month before payment, Adsense quality control reviews accounts for… quality. You can be sure your site now has an extreme LACK of quality and is ready to get banned.

10. Report your site to Google. Email adsense-abuse@google.com or click on the "Ads by Goooooogle" link to give them some helpful feedback on how their ad network is being abused.

Google Adsense and Affiliate Marketing

2008-03-27T15:49:00.003+08:00

If you are now engaging gin online business, you may want to know what kind of methods can bring you the most revenue? Affiliate Marketing or Google Adsense? I'm going to discuss each of them in details.

Google Adsense
It is the most common and well-known money-making model nowadays, and is very suitable for those who does not want to deal with other people. With Adsense sites, you can have a virtual passive-income that requires little maintaining.

Below are the pros of Google Adsense:
- They are perfect for people who run information sites that have no related affiliate product
- You can set it and leave it. With Google Adsense, you can create a content page, and there is little need to update the content.
- Adsense sites are easy to scale. Since they require little upkeep, you can easily create multiple websites that each make a nice income.

Below are the cons of Google Adsense:
- They are not a great long term solution. Instead of getting your visitors to subscribe to a mailing list, you are focusing on getting people to click on ads. Real online businesses concentrate on building assets that can use for long-term growth.
- These sites are dependent on search engines. Most Google Adsense sites make the mistake of depending on search engines for the majority of their traffic. If the SE algorithms change then your income might drop significantly.

Affiliate Marketing
Being an affiliate marketer is great for those who want build a theme site. With this type of business, you can easily create web pages around a topic and get people to buy products through your products. If done correctly, you can easily build a loyal following that will help you make money for years to come. But can affiliate marketing make you more money then Google Adsense?

Below are the pros of affiliate marketing:
- A great advantage of affiliate-marketing is that you can build a long term business that will bring in a revenue stream for years.
- With affiliate-marketers you need to focus on building an email list. This list is a major asset of your business. Every time you have an offer, you can go to your list and increase your profits.
- Unlike Google Adsense sites, which only concentrates on high paying keywords, an affiliate marketing site can be centered on a topic that you have an interest in.
Below are the cons of affiliate marketing:
- You have to learn how to write persuasively and get people to purchase the product that you are recommending. For many people this is a difficult skill to learn.
- Each affiliate marketing site requires a lot of effort. You must spend a lot of time writing product reviews, building your email list and creating web content.
So which is better: Affiliate marketing or Google Adsense? The answer is that both are great solutions for an online business. Instead of choosing one over the other, you should create websites that can take advantage of both.

Here is some tips and tricks how you can do this:
1. Create a content site on a topic that you are interest in, while paying a good amount per Adsense click.

2. Integrate your Adsense into the menu bars and the top of your web content.

3. Add web pages for affiliate-products and your opt-in email list. But, make sure that you leave out the Adsense blocks on these pages. This way you are ensuring that you are building your long-term assets.

4. Create optimized web page articles that focus on a specific keyword phrase. Place your Google Adsense in these blocks.

5. Provide your email list with good content and product recommendations. Once in awhile, email your list and provide a link to some of your web articles. That way, you can earn a little bit of money from your subscribers while giving them good content.

By focusing on both affiliate products and Google Adsense, you will be able to have a successful internet business and generate hundreds of bucks every month. Good luck.

Avoid Getting Banned by Google

2008-03-18T10:52:00.001+08:00

Google is placing a high importance on the quality and relevancy of its search engines, and become the indisputable leader in search engines from then until now. Most especially now that the company is public property. In order to keep the shareholders and users of its engines happy, the quality of the returned results are given extreme importance.

For this same reason, doing the wrong things in the Adsense and other forms of advertisements, whether intentionally or unintentionally, will result in a severe penalty, may get you banned and even have your account terminated. Nothing like a good action taken to keep wrongdoers from doing the same things over again.

So for those who are thinking of getting a long-term success with Adsense, you should not just think of the strategies you will be using to generate more earnings. Consider some things first before you actually get involved.

Hidden texts
Filling your advertisement page with texts to small to read, has the same color as the background and using CSS for the sole purpose of loading them with rich keywords content and copy will earn you a penalty award that is given to those who are hiding links.

Page cloaking
There is a common practice of using browser or bot sniffers to serve the bots of a different page other than the page your visitors will see. Loading a page with a bot that a human user will never see is a definite no-no. This is tricking them to click on something that you want but they may not want to go to.

Multiple submissions
Submitting multiple copies of your domain and pages is another thing to stay away from. For example, trying to submit a URL of an Adsense as two separate URL's is the same as inviting trouble and even termination. Likewise, this is a reason to avoid auto submitters for those who are receiving submissions. Better check first if your domain is submitted already an a certain search engine before you try to submit to it again. If you see it there, then move on. No point contemplating whether to try and submit there again.

Link farms
Be wary of who and what are you linking your Adsense to. The search engines know that you cannot control your links in. But you can certainly control what you link to. Link farming has always been a rotten apple in the eyes of search engines, especially Google. That is reason enough to try and avoid them. Having a link higher than 100 on a single page will classify you as a link farm so try and not to make them higher than that.

Page rank for sale
If you have been online for quite some time, you will notice that there are some sites selling their PR links or trading them with other sites. If you are doing this, expect a ban anytime in the future. It is ok to sell ads or gain the link. But doing it on direct advertisement of your page rank is a way to get on search engines bad side.

Doorways
This is similar to cloaking pages. The common practice of a page loaded with choice keyword ads aimed at redirecting visitors to another “user-friendly” page is a big issue among search engines. There are many SEO firms offering this kind of services. Now that you know what they actually are, try to avoid them at all costs.

Multiple domains having the same content
In case you are not aware of it, search engines look at domains IP's, registry dates and many others. Having multiple domains having the same exact content is not something you can hide from them. The same goes with content multiplied many times on separate pages, sub domains and forwarding multiple domains to the same content.

Many of the above techniques apply to most search engines and is not entirely for Google only. By having a mind set that you are building your Adsense together with your pages for the human users and not for bots, you can be assured of the great things for your ads and sites. Not to mention avoiding the wrath of the search engines and getting your Adsense and site account terminated altogether.

Privacy Policy For Adsense

2008-03-13T15:17:00.002+08:00

Privacy Policy

Ask The Blogger takes your privacy seriously. This privacy policy describes what personal information we collect and how we use it. See this privacy policy primer to learn more about privacy policies in general.

Routine Information Collection

All web servers track basic information about their visitors. This information includes, but is not limited to, IP addresses, browser details, timestamps and referring pages. None of this information can personally identify specific visitors to this site. The information is tracked for routine administration and maintenance purposes.

Cookies and Web Beacons

Where necessary, Ask the Blogger uses cookies to store information about a visitor’s preferences and history in order to better serve the visitor and/or present the visitor with customized content.

Advertising partners and other third parties may also use cookies, scripts and/or web beacons to track visitors to our site in order to display advertisements and other useful information. Such tracking is done directly by the third parties through their own servers and is subject to their own privacy policies.

Controlling Your Privacy

Note that you can change your browser settings to disable cookies if you have privacy concerns. Disabling cookies for all sites is not recommended as it may interfere with your use of some sites. The best option is to disable or enable cookies on a per-site basis. Consult your browser documentation for instructions on how to block cookies and other tracking mechanisms. This list of web browser privacy management links may also be useful.

Contact Information

Concerns or questions about this privacy policy can be directed to roxybie@gmail.com for further clarification.

Improve Your Site Ranking with Tagging

2008-03-13T14:11:00.001+08:00

The following tips and article on how to increase website traffic and improve site ranking, always related to made most of tagging..., tagging..., tagging, tagged the key word in every post with tagging of Technorati, del.icio.us or icerocket.

One of the tip of tagged every key word in each of every posts more important to increase website or blog traffic. Found that by tagging in every post post effectively they were getting a lot more attention then their untagged counterparts, and as an added advantage by getting focused, quality traffic to the site!

To make simple and helping make a tagging, there is so many tools can help us to make easier tagging key word in every posts.

1. One of useful tool to tag keyword in Technorati, del.icio.us or icerocket in keotag.com. Just put a key word or some key word and keotag tagged every key word related to tagging of Technorati, del.icio.us or icerocket.

2. Other tool is tag generator at http://www.egmstrategy.com/ice/tag-generator.cfm, this tool help us to translate key word to tagging of Technorati, flickr, del.icio.us, furl.

3. Another tool is Fintan darragh's Technorati Tag Generator, this tool only translate and helping to tagging key word to Technorati tagging.

Found that by tagging every post effectively, they were getting a lot more attention then their untagged counterparts, and as an added advantage I was getting focused, quality traffic to the site effectively.

Get Free Blogger Templates for Your Blog

2008-03-12T14:06:00.001+08:00

Launch a blog not just about how to write interesting idea and topic, content is just still an importing one. But template is another side how to make display of our blog more interesting to see and people come and reading with enjoying feeling.

After walk around in internet, there is so many place that offer a free blogger template. Where is it? There's so many site have a nice free template design and colorful in the net, Gecko and Fly is one of nice design free blogger template. In fact, the templat of this blog also comes from Gecko and Fly. I really appreciate him a lot.

Free blogger template from finalsense in this link is more interesting, too. More than 10 templates and more colorful template scheme we can get and place to our blog site. Some absolutely amazing templates designs are out there if you have the time to find them. Creative artwork, interesting color schemes and even animated templates from blogger-templates.

Check this jackbook site to find a number of templates converted from WordPress. You can get and download it easily here. Thanks for site that can deliver free blogger template.

If you like some customize template and want to effort more to create and design template by your own way, see in psyc.horm.org (in another article of this blog). By design your own, definitely it make more satisfied. Other tool to create CMS template for blog site is drupal, open source content management platform.

Compiled List of Pay Per Review

2008-03-11T13:36:00.001+08:00

Review sites have been a valuable source of income for a blogger. Blogger write about product, website, service and the advertisers will pay to blogger depend on the quality of blog site. Here is some of review site and its page rank (PR) to identified how popular the review sites.

Feel free to navigate through the links and if you know of other sites that pay bloggers to blog give a comment to enrich the list of review sites. Let's us try to know it.

PayPerPost (PR : 6)
Get paid for blogging. You've been writing about Web sites, products, services and companies you love for years and you have yet to benefit from all the sales and traffic you have helped generate. That's about to change. With PayPerPost advertisers are willing to pay you for your opinion on various topics. Search through a list of Opportunities, make a blog posting, get your content approved, and get paid. It's that simple.

ReviewMe (PR : 6)
In the ReviewMe publisher system, advertisers choose which specific blogs to review their product or website. So basically, sit back, and let the review offers come to you. In the ReviewMe advertiser marketplace, advertisers create specific campaigns for bloggers. Bloggers can find out what review campaigns are available for their blog by checking the Advertiser Clearinghouse or the View Campaigns tab in their account.”

Smorty (PR : 6)
Smorty is a hub between advertisers and bloggers. The system is very straight forward to use. You create your blog advertising campaign, Smorty reviews it and delivers it instantly to its vast blogger network. Each blog post is checked automatically by Smorty smart review. All approved posts appear on your admin panel for optional manual review, posts must comply with blogger rules”.

WeblogsInc (PR : 6)
Looking to get paid to blog about subjects you love? Tell us what you’re passionate about and let’s find out if there’s a fit!

B5Media (PR : 6)
We’re one of the largest blog networks in the world. We want to be the biggest. Want to help? It’s easy to apply. Just visit our application page.

BuyABlogger (PR : 5)
Create a profile and get advertisers to directly contact you about paid blogging opportunities.

Blogvertise (PR : 5)
Our Advertisers want YOU to mention and talk about their websites products and services in your blogs and journals. They want the publicity, the exposure, the Buzz! that online bloggers and internet journals can generate for their web site products and services. In exchange blogsvertise pays YOU in paypal per task/blog entry, for writing / talking about / mentioning their website in your blog!

PayU2Blog (PR : 4)
Blog Advertising. Bloggers in our network get paid to blog. Making money with your blog is very easy when you are a member of the Payu2blog network. Bloggers in our network blog about many topics and have fun making money while blogging.

LoudLaunch (PR : 4)
Earn more with your blog. Get paid to independently review LoudLaunch Campaign Releases. You’ve earned your audience, now be compensated for your opinion.

SponsoredReviews (PR : 4)
A Sponsored Review is an article you write for an advertiser. You review their products and services and then post the review on your blog. Each advertiser has his or her own requirements (i.e. length, link info, etc.). You write the review in your own tone, and can be as critical as needed. Constructive criticism is encouraged, but rude or hateful reviews will be declined.

BuyBlogReviews (PR : 3)
Advertisers meet Bloggers to have their products or services reviewed, or to buy contextual ads. Advertisers can post different opportunities or searches through our Marketplace while Bloggers can avail these opportunities or get selected directly.

Bloggerwave (PR : 3)
More and more people have got their own blog. No wonder. Its so easy to get started.Surf by blogger.com. Its just one of many places where you can make/ host a blog and its for free. Now you are ready to air your opinions on the net. And to make money! Your opinions could quickly turn into gold. But first you need to register with us here at Bloggerwave.

BlogtoProfit (PR : 3)
Now you have a way to make Guaranteed Money for posts to your blog! No Kidding! Join this exciting new program and get your first order after your blog is reviewed! How does it work? We connect you with advertisers that are interested in sponsoring your blog, you post to your blog and get paid!

BloggingAds (PR : 3)
Well, we are serious. We are looking for bloggers to post one-time ads on their blog sites for money. Blogging Ads is an easy way for you to earn money by doing nothing more than you already do - post to your blog. We pay through Paypal. You must have a Paypal account to be paid.

PayMeToBlogAboutYou (PR : 3)
Pay Me To Blog About You is an online market place that enables Advertisers to find Bloggers locally, nationally or globally and contract with them for placing links and creating BUZZ about products, services, events, issues, etc.

Traffic from Myspace and Facebook

2008-03-06T11:12:00.002+08:00

If you a pop youngster, you must be a member of Facebook or Myspace. Both Facebook and MySpace is well-known for its huge online community and the way to do social networking, but it also can be a way to get your message out about your service or business if done in a non-pushy casual way. In this generation has seen so many ads and can block it out in a flash. What's important to remember that MySpace and Facebook are talking about making friends all over th world and casually mentioning what you do, what you've found helpful etc.

After setting up your profile at MySpace you can explore using the various feature which include adding friends, sending out bulletins, joining a group, blogging, writing comments and sending e-mails to your friends. Also when you set up your profile you are assigned a number but it's nice to change it to a catchy phrase because that will be part of the url or website address people use to find you.

The group tab on MySpace is wonderful to browse because you can find groups that are targetted on your niche and join them. For instance, if you study the pets and animals tab you'll see there are several groups available for dog lovers. The Dogs are the Best group has 31,901 members. There's another group titled My Dog Rocks that has over 54,000 members. There's also specialized niches as well such as a pit bull group that has 9000 members.

After joining a group, you need to wait a week to post and then you can either answers people's posts or post your own topic or question. It is best to put your offer in your signature file and to build up relationships with people in the group rather than be an aggressive marketer. Some groups also have a bulletin section which allow ads and you use that section as well in a more direct way. I have found that being anecdotal and talking about my own interest in the topic help builds connections with other group members. Think how long it would take you to grow a newsletter list yourself of 54,000 members and you'll get a glimpse of the potential this has to let others know about your product or service.

Another great feature I like is the commenting aspect. You can leave a comment on your friend's profiles that everyone who goes to their page will see. It can be worth it to make or buy a pretty banner so that you can include that within your comment. I always study someone's page before I make a banner so I can customize my remark to their personality. It takes more time but again it helps to build the relationship. If I see that the person likes a certain book I like or hobby I will mention that in my comment and then put a link to my site using a banner or a text link.

Blogging using the MySpace blog system is also a very good way to get traffic to your site. I usually post something in a diary or casual way and have a link to my site. I then will send out a bulletin to tell people I've updated my blog. Don't neglect MySpace in your marketing campaign as it has wonderful opportunities to help people get to learn about your website, service and business. If you are not a member of Myspace or Facebook, go and register now!

Tips for Increasing Website Traffic

2008-02-19T14:32:00.002+08:00

If you sell products or services over your web site, then traffic to your site is the name of the game. It's simple: if you want more sales, you better get more traffic. To do that, make sure that you've covered all the bases of driving traffic to your site.

First, optimize. Make sure your search engine listings are all they can be. This means that you need to make sure that you're on the key search engines and second that your site is associated with the best searching key words. Check to ensure you are included in Yahoo!, Google, MSN and the Open Directory Project. After that, look at some private or industry-specific directories. If you're not listed, submit. But before you do make sure your keyword tags, description tags, and content have been optimized for being "find-able."

Second, advertise. Tell people about your web site. You can do this by email, pay-per-click advertising, print advertising or almost any other means of advertising. Whatever it is, point it to your web site. Experiment with the linkage between your ads and your site – e.g. make different offers and see what the effect is on traffic.

Third, collateralize. Collateral is the paper materials you use to conduct business. Yes, include this in your traffic building efforts, too. Make sure your web address is on your signs, your stationery, business cards, brochures, invoices and any other material that goes to the public.
With every change or addition you make to your web site, just remember: Optimize, Advertise, Collateralize. Your web traffic is directly related to these three activities.

About the author: Mark Fortimer, Download the free ebook, Steps to Internet Marketing Success.

Traffic Methods I Used before Christmas

2008-02-01T14:37:00.000+08:00

Last time I talked about the traffic to my blog has increased a lot. Although I am not a professional in driving traffic yet, I am willing to share what kind of traffic strategy I am using. These are not the secret ones, and I am sure you also know them very well.

1. Keep your blog fresh. I made a one or couple of post every week starting December 25.

2. Participate and give comments to high traffic blogs as you can expect some of their visitors will be coming to your backyard. Remember, commenting putting a one way inbound links.

3. Make a post discussing the post made by other high traffic blogs then use trackback.

4. Submit your post to digg, reddit, and netscape. And when you submit, make sure your title is something intriguing

5. Use Ping and ping after every new post.

6. Do link exchange with complementary theme blogs and websites.

7. Use technorati tags and use it abundantly.

8. Be hunger and keep learning about blog promotion.

There are other traffic building techniques I used but there results are not immediate but long term. One of such technique is article submission. I will discuss more about these techniques in the coming posts.That's all friends. Thank for being part of my statistics. I hope you got something here. Continue building your blog traffic. Remember...Traffic comes before the money.

My Adsense Blog Surges in Blog Traffic in Christmas

2008-01-25T13:13:00.000+08:00

Gadget focus websites and blogs, eGreeting card websites and blogs, gift focus websites and blogs and other Christmas theme related websites and blogs are enjoying tremendous raise of online visitors. Their visitor's statistics is at peak, Christmas is a great season for them. But did you find it strange if a non-christmas theme blog (like this blog of mine) surges online traffic during this holiday season?

This is no strange to me. It happens to this blog. Look at my statistics. The volume of visitors is not impressive but the raise is remarkable. I learned some lessons here and hope to share this positive experience in building blog traffic. Before I talk about the lessons I learned from this event, please allow me to give you some facts about this blog and me.

- Ask the Blogger is approaching its first birth day.
- I made my first post last November 14 and manage to have a total of 7 post for the month of - November.
- I made 13 post this month (not including this one), 9 of which are posted on the last week of this month starting December 25.
- Most of my post is about blog traffic building.
- I am just a new guy in town and not a good writer.

While my post talks a lot about building blog traffic, I am not an expert on this area. Yet, I am very willing to share what I've learned and what's work for me. I am going to sahre more with you on what are the successful factors to me to get such remarkable volume of traffic.

Get the Most Active Ingredient for Successful Blogging

2007-08-17T10:35:00.000+08:00

I’m sure you had been around (months or years) surfing the net. Over time you have found your favorite blogs. These are the blogs you visited frequently if not daily. But have you asked yourself, what made these blogs your favorite? One prime reason is because they offer you fresh content, regularly and consistently. Offering fresh content regularly and consistently made you their regular reader and that made them too, successful.

What will you feel if one of your favorite blog made no new post for a day? Maybe, you say - it’s fine. What about a week or couple of weeks? If you are like me, I will drop the blog from my favorite list if no new post will be made for two weeks. But most people will drop it in one week time.

The same is true with your blog. If you made no post for a certain time, your readership will drop and that goes with your traffic. What is ironic in the online world is that, it is so easy to lose readership and traffic but it’s hard to build them.

Commitment is greatly involve in writing fresh content regularly and consistently. And if you want your blogging to be successful, you must make the commitment to blog consistently for a stretch of time. It’s insufficient to blog regularly for few days and then stop for few weeks.

If you’ve been convinced blogging is work and blogging makes money, then you must hurdle to overcome the notion that blogging is for the short term. In fact, to grow your blog, you need to write for the intermediate-to-long term to see some kind of return on your time.

There are other great reasons for blogging regularly and consistently over a stretch of time. Having built a body of content allows Google and other search engines time to find you and get your blog out of the Sandbox, thus increasing your blog traffic from the search engine more. This will also allow you to prove to your readers that you’re in it for a longer term and you know what you’re talking about. Most of all, the time and commitment of blogging regularly and consistently will make your blog attractive not only to the search engine and readers but most especially, this will open new gates for your blog to multiple online stream revenues. Remember, build traffic and money will just come.

So, how to possess the most active ingredient for successful blogging? Simple, write regularly and consistently.

At the end of the day, the reality of blogging, is that to be successful, you’ve got to write regularly and consistently, and you’ve got to find the time to do it.

Blogging for Profit: The Most Profitable Types of Blogs in the Blogosphere

2007-08-15T10:35:00.000+08:00

Have you heard of the phrase 'Blogging for Profit'? Yes, some people are making success driving profits from blogs. The good news is, this can happen to you. If you love to write, blogging might be a profitable business model for you.

Just as you can start with any topic to blog about, there are topics that are more profitable than others. If you are eyeing to drive some profit from your blog, you should pick a niche topic that has some solid affiliate programs and search revenue behind it. And if you have existing blogs, see how you can increase your earning capacity.

The hottest topics to blog nowadays are those fall under internet marketing, cutting edge technology and politics. Arts and music related blogs also tend to draw a large audience.

Aside from selecting niche topics, two types of blogs are immerging to be more profitable. They are the product review blogs and informational blogs.

Product Review Blogs

Product review blogs are popular and profitable. They can be monetized with Adsense, Chitika eMiniMalls and affiliate marketing as some products have affiliate programs associated with them. Two successful blogs of this type are Gizmodo and The Gadget Blog. These blogs focus on news and reviews of the latest gadgets on the market and

You don't have to create blogs exactly like the above example as these blogs requires tremendous amount of search effort. Instead, you can narrow the theme to something like "the latest digital cameras" or "the latest mp3 players".

Narrowing the theme will make your job easier, and assure you a much greater change of finding merchants who carry these products and have affiliate programs.

There's virtually no cost to you to conduct product review and there's plenty of affiliate opportunities for them. Just describe the product, put up some product images and then, link to the website using your affiliate link.

Informational Blogs

Most internet marketing blogs fall under this category. An information focused blog is usually centered around news and "how to" information. Let's take for example this blog of mine. My "front end" product is the content I provide. As you can see, my blog is primarily information focused, rather than product review focused. I share "how to" info centered on online and affiliate marketing.

On this blog, I'm able to link using my affiliate link to products and services with just a mention of their titles, or in keywords associated with them. I also have the blog monetized in other places by using Adsense ads, affiliate banners and etc.

You can do the same thing for other niches. Just think of the areas that interest you or in which you have some knowledge to share. Your post doesn't have to be novel length. All you're really doing is writing short articles.

There you have it, the two most profitable types of blogs in the blogosphere.

Monetize Your Blog with Chitika

2007-08-08T01:30:00.000+08:00

Chitika eMiniMalls is another type of ad that you can use to monetize your blog. The ad comes in a range of sizes but usually have a picture of a product and then some tabs running across the top that say “Description”, “Reviews”, “Best Deals”, and “Search”. As you put the cursor over the top of these tabs they change what the ad shows.

The ad comes with a customizable advert box which can be targeted either by keywords input when the ad code is generated or contextually in much the same way as Google’s AdSense program does.

Just like AdSense and YPN these ads pay out on a per click basis. The value of the clicks depends upon the product being featured. It can range from $0.10 to as much as several dollars.

When Chitika eMiniMall ads are set to be on non contextual and to target specific keywords, you can used it conjunction with AdSense.

Chitika eMiniMalls also offers a referral program. They pay out 10% of any clicks your referrals generate in the first 15 months. All the links to the Chitika site from this page contain my affiliate link, however that will have no impact on your earnings if you do decide to sign up here.

The program allows you to choose between different Ad formats. They also allow you to make some changes to the design of your ads by changing colors of borders, title and text to match your blog.

Chitika will pay you 30 days following the end of the month that your commissions are earned. You can opt to have Chitika either pay the money direct into your paypal account at the end of each month, as long as the monthly total has exceeded $10, or you can have a standard cheque when your earning reach $50.

Chitika is a best choice for those people who want to show some products like Digital Cam, Laptops, PC Monitor and etc. on their blog because Chitika’s ads are totally product based.

Personally, I would recommend you to try this program; even if you find it's not for you or that it doesn't really fit with your site's theme it is still worth an attempt.

Monetize your blog. Sign up now!

How to Turn Your Adsense Earning from $10 to $800 a Week

2007-08-01T21:12:00.000+08:00

I was inspired on the disclosure made by Chris with his Adsense income. Chris is 21 years of age and a university student from Brisbane, Australia. Over the last 12 months he has taken his sites from $10 to $800 a week of Adsense income.

He disclosed how he unfold the true potential of his sites, not just in terms of AdSense but also in terms of SEO and the importance of building a good quality site.

I like to quote his answers to the following questions:

How did you get serious?

I took a bit of a risk, bought a few books about AdSense, SEO and general website development and dropped down to part time uni and started dedicating more time to my websites. I started writing articles that were on topics that people wanted to know about and topics that people were searching for, and I placed these articles into a highly optimized template that was just designed for these articles, then I went about building a few backlinks for these articles to help with the SEO. I’d have periods of maybe a week where everyday I would sit down and write an article two, often three or four, and I’d just keep writing, sharing my knowledge, sharing my expertise.

Why were articles successful?

These articles each focused on an individual search term or topic within my industry. The articles were informative and useful. They were 100% original and completely unique in the industry. They were my thoughts, opinions and beliefs on topics that I was very knowledgeable on. They were detailed and lengthy. And the search engines loved them.

Why did the search engines love them?

Because they were original and unique, and because they were getting backlinks and they were on my established sites which I believe have a fair amount of "TrustRank" because at this point my sites were well over 2 years old and had thousands of backlinks, because I had slowly but surely developed them over the previous two years. Plus the articles were all on niche topics that there wasn’t that much competition for, and I had employed very basic, but very solid SEO techniques. Things like:

- Giving each article an individual highly relevant page title.

- Using meta descriptions and keywords, but not abusing them.

- Using H1 and H2 tags.

- Using good keyword density and specific phrase targeting.

- Using good quality, unique, original and focused content.

- Building some well anchored backlinks.

- With a good navigational system between articles.

- Using an aged domain with good TrustRank.

You can read his story along with the question and answer session that transpire in the following post on Digital Point forums: My 2006 AdSense Summary - From $10/Week to $800/Week. Go, read and learn from him.

He indeed turned his sites into money making machine. You too can!

Eight Benefits of Blogging

2007-07-29T01:11:00.000+08:00

There's a reason blogging is so addictive! Whether you blog for a hobby or a career, you're sure to be enjoying some of the many perks and benefits of maintaining a blog or two. Here are the top eight:

1. Community
Where else can you meet so many great, like-minded people? Blogging is a great way to share ideas and enter into discussions with people who share the same interests. Nothing makes up a successful blog like a thriving community. Whether or not you share the same opinion doesn't matter. If you have an active community, you're never alone!

2. Recognition
If you want to establish yourself as an expert in your field, blogging is a great way achieve recognition and turn others on to your point of view.

3. Employment Opportunities
Blogging can open many new doors, many bloggers have been able to quit their day jobs to blog professionally, while other receive job offers as a result of their expertise.

4. Revenue
If your blog is popular, it can also be profitable. Some bloggers earn millions each year.

5. It's Fun!
Blogging is fun! Even those of us who do it for a living enjoy what we do.

6. You're Part of Something Special
The blogging community is a special one indeed. Even those who feel as if they never belong, find a place among bloggers. From the social networking to the sharing of ideas, there's nothing like the world you'll encounter blogging.

7. Find Other Great Blogs
Blogging helps you to findother great resources. Your community members are sure to have recommendations, plus you'll find lots of great stuff while researching your niche.

8. Swag
Sometimes businesses will send you products or books to review. Many bloggers receive great swag.

Important Skill in Blogging - Creativity

2007-07-18T19:43:00.000+08:00

Do you face challenges or road blocks to success? How about on turning your blog into money making machine?

Some one says, creativity is a million dollar skill and I believe on this. Without creativity you lost your greatest leverage for producing value. In turn, this will cripple your earning potential as earning in most cases is a function of your ability to product value.

Creativity transforms good ideas into great ideas. Creative thinking can give insight into overcoming challenges. Creativity enhances the ability to problem solve. And the good news is – everyone can be creative.

Tapping into self creative ability is vital to maximize results. Even if you’ve never considered yourself creative, there are proven techniques and approaches to help anyone claim their own creativity. Along with the techniques and approaches to help you become creative, Steve Pavlina defines clearly the ground rules for maximizing your creative output.

Remember, creativity is a million dollar skill and can be learn. Use and maximize your creativity to turn your blog into money making machine.

How to Make Your Blog Unique

2007-07-13T12:03:00.000+08:00

How Do You Make Your Blog Unique and Stand out from 55 Million Others?

There are 55 Million blogs out there and every day this number is still keep growing. They said, blogosphere is still in it’s infancy. So, how do you make your blog stand out from the rest?

As regards money, for example, 99% of blogs don't make a penny and most soon disappear.

The blogging winners will be those who persevere, adapt and keep on learning and try to be creative.

Your blog post maybe speaking the same thing with hundreds of others. This situation demands maximum creativity in order to stand out. In one of the post made by Steve Pavlina, he gives us a sneak-peek at his flowing creativity experience. Learn from one of the top blogger, read his post entitled "My Experience in Creativity".

I hope you can get lessons from Steve on how to make your blog stand-out through creativity.

Monetize with Affiliate Marketing

2007-07-12T00:52:00.000+08:00

What is Affiliate Marketing? How can your blog make money from it? Affiliate Marketing is a widespread method of promoting a website, in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber and/or customer provided through his efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying finder's-fees to individuals who introduce new clients to a business. Here, your agrees that your blog will feature buttons from an ecommerce site, and you gets a compensation based on performance such as on sales, clicks, registrations, or a combination of all.

Yes, you can make money online by publishing websites and featuring the offers of merchants in the content of your blog. I build content rich landing pages. Within the content I build links to my affiliate merchant’s products, and I make money online when visitors make purchases. It's really a simple process because affiliate programs are abundant online. The best thing about this is that there are absolutely no limits to how much you can make money.

Some companies pay you 75% or more. You can even make $100 from just 1 sale, for doing nothing but placing an ad on your blog. And if you have a free blog like mine, then it's literally money for nothing.

But how do affiliate advertising really work?

Let's say one of my friend was advertising www.adultfriendfinder.com and was being paid $1, each time she bring them a unique visitor.

She would place something about adultfriendfinder on my blog - either a small text ad, a banner ad, or a video ad. The ads are generally provided by the Advertiser so you don't need to worry about making your own. In this case, all she have to do is copy and paste some code into your blog. That's easy.

Each time someone clicks on her ad, she would be paid a commission. And due to the program policies of Google Adsense, I cannot display this affiliate banner.

Some affiliate programs will not going to pay you for the clicks but for the subscriber and/or customer you bring. The good thing about affiliate marketing is that the visitor doesn't need to make a purchase on that day. Some affiliate program will still pay you for the lead even if the visitor you introduce will become subscriber and/or customer say 2 weeks or 30 days later.

Join a merchant's affiliate program, publish websites about the offers of that merchant and make money. There are a number of Affiliate Marketing Networks that bring you a wide rage of Affiliate programs. This makes things much easier for you as you don't need to go to each merchant individually. These are: Clickbank, Commission Junction and Clixgalore.

So there you have it. Your blog can make money from affiliate marketing. Start looking for affiliate programs related to your blog's theme or blog post. Remember, the best thing about affiliate marketing is that there are absolutely no limits to how much you can make money. So, Turn Your Blog Into Money Making Machine though affiliate marketing.

Monetize Your Blog with ReviewMe

2007-07-05T01:37:00.000+08:00

Many of you have surely heard about blog advertising site PayPerPost. PayPerPost allows bloggers to make a few bucks by blogging about a product, service, or another website. The only problem (according to many) is that PayPerPost does not require the blogger to disclose the fact that the post was paid for. And they also require that the post be more or less positive in nature about the reviewed product or service. Needless to say, this opens the door for some questionable ethics.

Comes into play the newcomer ReviewMe, a PayPerPost (PPP) kind of ad network, with a twist. The contract between the ad network and the blogger makes it mandatory to disclose the fact that you are blogging for money but certainly not this one because I am not paid to write this post. I find my blog too young to join ReviewMe.

But that's not the only difference. Whereas a single fee per post is charged to advertiser for any bloggers, ReviewMe determines the set price by using an algorithm based on Alexa, Technorati and other statistics. The asked price varies, from 30$, up to an enticing 1,000$ per post, depending on your blog importance in the blogosphere.

And there is more. The blogger can share his/her honest opinion and still being paid. Of course, I have some doubts personally about how this can really be implemented. It is obvious to me that ReviewMe is trying to give a non-partisan flavour to their ad network. This way, it gives it more credibility. However, looking at it from any angle, since we're being paid by a third-party to talk about them, we can't truly bite the hand the feeds us. Anyway, the fact that we have the illusion of that choice is still a nice feature.

The only other requirement has to do with the review length and time limit to come up with a review, 200 words and 48 hours for this particular assignment. Payment can be made by check or by PayPal.

Getting Started

Signing up is extremely easy, taking literally one or two minutes to fill out a small form. You are then automatically logged in and ready to go. The next step is to submit your blog. This is done by entering basic details of your blog such as Title, Description, RSS URL, Keywords, and of course, your URL. Your blog is then either automatically approved or declined. This is based on Alexa ranking, Technorati ranking, and RSS subscribers. Publishers may have up to 6 different blogs attached to their account.

If approved, you're completely set up and ready to go. There is very little to actually read in terms of instructions on the site, but a FAQ section is there to help answer some of the questions you may have.

Reviewing

Reviewing is quite simple. ReviewMe's system works by advertisers choosing which blogs they'd like to be reviewed by. This is most likely determined by what topic and niche your blog lies in. You get to decide if you'd like to review them or not, the choice is completely up to you and you're not forced to review anything you don't want to.

Once your have finished your review and posted it on your blog, you simply return to ReviewMe and submit the URL of the post with the review and you're done.

Payment Details

Publishers are paid 50% of revenue, which may sound high, but is pretty standard. Also, ReviewMe's prices to advertisers are somewhat expensive so publishers are really getting paid quite well.

Price is automatically recalculated monthly, based on factors including theme, estimated traffic, link popularity, and estimated RSS subscribers. Publishers are paid the first of every month via PayPal or check.

Additional Information

Publishers may publish an unlimited number of reviews.

Reviews do not necessarily have to be in English. ReviewMe asks for reviews to be written in the Publisher's "normal" language. If their blog's category is German, for example, advertisers will generally expect the language of the review to be German.

Have You Ever Heard of JohnChow.com?

2007-06-25T11:15:00.001+08:00

An hour ago, I come across a post from John Chow Dot Com entitled Review My Blog & Get A Free Linkback. John Chow has organize a review contest where you can win a MiniTV USB from him by writing a review for his blog. Besides the MiniTV USB, you can also get a linkback from his blog too.

The contest is now over but he said, he will continue to offer linkbacks for reviews.

I am more interested to the linkback than to the MiniTV USB. I know that getting a linkback from a blog with a Google Pagerank 4, Alexa Ranking 3,297 and Technorati Ranking 1,393 is definitely a plus specially for a blog like mine which is just 3 months old, enjoying a daily average traffic of 30, Google Pagerank 3, Technorati Ranking of 246,904 with 82 links from 15 blogs and having made 30 post so far.

Basically I would like to know the impact of his linkback to my blog. So I will give it a shot to review johnchow.com. I hope that after a month from getting his linkback I shall be on better position to evaluate the value of his linkback. I shall then make another post in here entitled “The Impact of the BackLink of Johnchow to my blog” so everybody will have an idea of the value of linkback from a popular blog such as this.

Johnchow.com is a technology blog. Even a car is considered a product of technology; I find his banner a little bit misleading. If a first time visitor spend just 5 seconds to his blog and right after ask about the theme of the blog, the visitor will probably answer the blog is all about cars. I also find his banner bigger than the average. It occupies greater space than the average banner size without giving any benefit.

The navigational feature of his blog is fare. But I find his category too broad having only 8 against 700 plus number of post. While the blog has a search function, it maybe more beneficial to the visitor to break down a little bit the categories.

I find his post valuable for anyone who wants to succeed online. Most of his topic center on marketing, traffic building, advertising and technology. .

While his blog earnings are high coming from multiple online streams, I still find his earning below his blog true potential. There is still a big room for him to engage to other revenue source.

I don’t find all his post interesting but generally all of them are informative while some are empowering.

So that’s it this is my review but remember this is not just a review but the beginning of an experiment to measure the value of the linkback from a blog like his.

I hope that after a month from getting his linkback I shall be on better position to evaluate the value of his linkback. I shall then make another post in here entitled “The Impact of the BackLink of Johnchow to my blog” so everybody will have an idea of the value of linkback from a popular blog such as this.