First of all, you’ll need these libraries:

use SOAP::Lite;
use Digest::MD5 qw(md5_hex);
use Data::Dumper; # just for these examples

In order to perform any requests, you must first build your authentication parameters, which are a salt, a hashed password, and your budget (a hexadecimal number that you get from the API tab in the Textbroker admin area — you set that up already, right?). This is how you create them:

sub get_login_args {
   my $salt = int rand 2000000000; # I'm not really sweating about the security of random number generators here.
   my $password = "YOUR_SECURE_PASSWORD";
   my $budget = "YOUR_BUDGET_HERE";
   return @login_args = ($salt,md5_hex($salt . $password),$budget);
}

To test your ability to log in, here’s a simple snippet:

my $soap = SOAP::Lite->new(proxy => "https://api.textbroker.com/Budget/loginService.php");
my @login_args = &get_login_args;

my $result = $soap->doLogin(@login_args);
if ($result->result == 1) {
   print "login success!\n";
}
else {
   print "login fail!\n";
}

Before you create a post, you’ll need to know the category_id, which unfortunately is not a simple text string. You’ll have to look it up using the getCategories method. Note that you don’t have to use the loginService ever.

$soap->proxy("https://api.textbroker.com/Budget/budgetOrderService.php");
my $result = $soap->getCategories->result;
print Dumper($result);

which should give you a result like this:

$VAR1 = {
          'categories' => {
                          'literature' => '1120',
                          'law' => '1153',
                          'arts and crafts' => '1132',
                          'children' => '1141',
                          'hobbies' => '1133',
                          'economy' => '1166',
                          'jobs' => '1140',
                          'media' => '1144',
...
        }
}

Now to create a post. A basic request needs a title, description, min/max wordcount, quality, category, days to work, and an optional note. The response will contain a budget_order_id which you will use to get status updates and accept/review/reject articles.

sub create_order {
   my ($title,$description,$min_words,$max_words,$quality,$category_id,$days_to_work,$note) = @_;
   my $soap = SOAP::Lite->new;
   $soap->proxy("https://api.textbroker.com/Budget/budgetOrderService.php");
   my @login_args = &get_login_args;
   my $soap_result = $soap->create(@login_args,$category_id,$title,$description,$min_words,$max_words,$quality,$days_to_work,$note);
   return $soap_result->result->{budget_order_id};
}

At this point you have to poll Textbroker for status updates until your content is ready. When your budget is in test mode, you can just keep polling and the status will progressively update until it is ready at which point you can preview/accept/etc. They helpfully provide some lorem ipsum text which an appropriate number of words when you pull test articles. Here’s how you do status requests:

sub check_status {
   my ($budget_order_id) = @_;
   my $soap = SOAP::Lite->new;
   $soap->proxy("https://api.textbroker.com/Budget/budgetOrderService.php");
   my @login_args = &get_login_args;
   my $result = $soap->getStatus(@login_args,$budget_order_id);
   return $result->result;
}

at this point result will contain a bit of useful information, which should look like this:

$VAR1 = {
          'budget_order_created' => 'XXXXXXXX',
          'budget_order_status_id' => '1',
          'budget_order_id' => 'XXXXXX',
          'budget_order_status' => 'placed',
          'budget_order_type' => 'OpenOrder'
        };

When your article is ready you can preview/accept/revise/reject. The return values are pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll just leave this brief code here:

my $result = $soap->preview(@login_args,$budget_order_id); # the text is in $result->result->{text}
my $result = $soap->accept(@login_args,$budget_order_id,$rating,$message); # rating is 0-4, both are optional, the text is in $result->result->{text}
my $result = $soap->revise(@login_args,$budget_order_id,$message); # message must be over 50 characters and should explain what is wrong
my $result = $soap->reject(@login_args,$budget_order_id);

403. That’s an error.

Your client does not have permission to get URL /tbr?features=Rank&client=navclient-auto-ff&ch=XXXXXXXXX&q=info:XXXXXXXXXX%2F' from this server. (Client IP address: X.X.X.X)

Please see Google’s Terms of Service posted at http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html

If you believe that you have received this response in error, please report your problem. However, please make sure to take a look at our Terms of Service (http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html). In your email, please send us the entire code displayed below. Please also send us any information you may know about how you are performing your Google searches– for example, “I’m using the Opera browser on Linux to do searches from home. My Internet access is through a dial-up account I have with the FooCorp ISP.” or “I’m using the Konqueror browser on Linux to search from my job at myFoo.com. My machine’s IP address is 10.20.30.40, but all of myFoo’s web traffic goes through some kind of proxy server whose IP address is 10.11.12.13.” (If you don’t know any information like this, that’s OK. But this kind of information can help us track down problems, so please tell us what you can.)

We will use all this information to diagnose the problem, and we’ll hopefully have you back up and searching with Google again quickly!

Please note that although we read all the email we receive, we are not always able to send a personal response to each and every email. So don’t despair if you don’t hear back from us!

Also note that if you do not send us the entire code below, we will not be able to help you.

Best wishes,
The Google Team

Not too helpful.  I looked at the code, and it was entirely undocumented.  Clearly it had worked for someone before, but it wasn’t working for me.  To make a long story short, it turns out the code had been written on a 32-bit version of Perl and the hashing code had never been tried on a 64-bit machine.  In hopes that this saves someone a few hours of their own lives, here’s the toolbar API and how exactly you’re supposed to calculate the hash.

To calculate the hash you

1. load the hash with its initial value (0×01020345)
2. for each byte of the url
   1. XOR the nth byte of the URL with the (n mod len)th byte of a static string (“Mining PageRank is AGAINST GOOGLE’S TERMS OF SERVICE. Yes, I’m talking to you, scammer.”)
   2. XOR that result against the hash again
   3. rotate the bits of the hash left by 9 bits
3. prepend “8″ to the hexadecimal representation of the hash

In the implementation that I found, the author assumed that it would always be on a 32-bit machine, so they rotated the bits like this:

result = ((result >> 23) & 0x1ff) | result << 9;

That’s fine on a 32-bit machine because result << 9 overflows and simply discards the higher bits.  On a 64-bit machine, however, they stick around.  In order to work properly, you need to mask off the bottom 32 bits.  Here’s some working Perl code to do this:

use LWP::UserAgent;
sub pagerank {
   my ($url) = @_;
   my @seed = map { ord($_) } split //, "Mining PageRank is AGAINST GOOGLE'S TERMS OF SERVICE. Yes, I'm talking to you, scammer.";
   my @url = map { ord($_) } split //, $url;
   $result = 0x01020345;
   foreach my $i (0 .. $#url) {
      my $seed_char = $seed[$i % ($#seed + 1)];
      my $url_char = $url[$i];
      $result ^= $seed_char ^ $url_char;
      $result = (($result >> 23) & 0x1ff) | $result << 9;
   }
   $result &= 0xffffffff;
   my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;
   my $uri = URI->new("http://toolbarqueries.google.com/tbr");
   $uri->query_form(
      client => "navclient-auto",
      ch => sprintf("8%08x",$result),
      features => "Rank",
      q => "info:$url",
   );
   my $response = $ua->get($uri);
   if ($response->is_success) {
      my $content = $response->content;
      chop $content;
      my @results = split /:/, $content;
      return $results[2];
   }
   else {
      return undef;
   }
}

There’s a common saying among Internet Marketing gurus – “Nobody ever fails at Internet Marketing, they just give up before they find success”.

There’s a lot of truth in that saying; as with any industry Internet Marketing is not for everyone, so many people will naturally move away from Internet Marketing into other areas, however there are a huge number of people who walk away from a potential career in Internet Marketing without realising just how close they were to succeeding. If you’re thinking about quitting Internet Marketing because you’re not making enough money quickly enough, you should really read this post.

The main reason why people give up so quickly is because when they start trying to make money online they expect the Internet to be a magical place where anyone, even those with no relevant skills, can easily earn six figure salaries by working only an hour every week. There was an element of truth to this a decade ago, although the media greatly exaggerated the possibility, with the term “dot com millionaire” used to describe almost anyone with an income-generating website. The reality is that today there are vast numbers of people across the World competing to earn a living online, and it is becoming more difficult by the day.

Taking Action

So, what is this magical piece of advice which can kick-start your journey towards making money online? It’s simple – take action. Do something about it. Pick a way of making money online, and stick to it. It doesn’t get much simpler than that, and yet every day people are giving up on Internet Marketing simply because they are failing to follow this simple instruction.

Most people who are failing to make any money online are struggling because they’re trying to use every technique all at once, and never really mastering any of them. The problem is that there is a wealth of information available online which help you to start making money, and people suffer from information overload. People tend to read one technique, and half-heartedly put the method into practice while still reading other methods. They then find another technique which sounds good, and so the first project is abandoned while they start on their second project. However, they continue looking for more information and eventually find another technique which sounds like it may be the golden method which they need, and so the second project is abandoned while they work on this new, exciting project. This cycle continues until they give up, usually deciding that trying to make money online is a waste of time and that the Internet is full of people trying to scam you.

Those who take action and find success will usually find a method which is not highly profitable, but generates some earnings for them. They will then look for ways to make more money, either by adding a twist to this method, or combining it with another method. As they learn more about Internet Marketing and gain more experience, earning money online becomes easier for them, and online earnings becoming their primary source of income becomes a more realistic goal.

Don’t Waste Money

Worse still, many people are investing money in buying domain names, hosting, software, outsourcing and buying eBooks, without having a real need to own them. Internet Marketing has a steep learning curve, and it is easy to get carried away and want to build hundreds of websites at once, own every piece of software on the market, and read every eBook which promises instant riches.

However, the only result of taking this approach will be huge expense and very little income. Building up your online assets should be a gradual process, taking the time to experiment with any new purchases before investing further.

Becoming A Full-time Internet Marketer

Giving up your day job and becoming a full-time Internet Marketer is not an overnight process. The Internet Marketing world is ever-changing, so any full-time Internet Marketer must be adaptable and quick to respond to any sudden decline in earnings, otherwise they could find themselves struggling to maintain a high enough level of income.

While the idea of being your own boss and working from home sounds appealing, the reality is that 16 hour days are normal, particular when starting out. In addition it’s important to remember that Internet Marketers don’t get sick pay or pensions paid for by employers. If you can hack it as a full-time Internet Marketer it’s a great way to earn a living, but it’s not for everyone. If you do decide to become a full-time Internet Market, remember the golden rule – stop reading, and take action.

For any website owner, making money from their adverts is key to their website’s success. As a result, the majority of people find themselves frustrated that their adverts are not generating enough income, usually because their click through rate is too low.

There are two ways in which people generally deal with this issue; one way, which is the approach which most people take, is to complain about it, and say that it is impossible to make decent money from websites. The other, more successful approach is to put in some work to improve the earnings.

Most of the time, people will simply leave the adverts in one place, never bothering to experiment with the adverts to try to improve their earnings. This is particularly characteristic of people who are new to websites, but even experienced people with many websites often put up with mediocre earnings rather than spending some time trying to increase their earnings. In most cases, people will stick with a particular theme which they like, and place the adverts wherever thetheme’s default ad placement is.

One of the main ways to experiment with adverts is to change the placements, and then monitor whether the earnings increase or decrease. Google Adsense’s channels are a great way to do this, as you can easily track the performance of each advert, rather than having to try to monitor the change in the overall earnings for the site every time the layout is changed. For example, if an advert at the top of the page is not generating any income then try moving it further down the page.

If your website displays text adverts then it’s worth experimenting with different colour schemes; often adverts which blend in with your site’s theme will attract more clicks, as visitors believe they’re clicking on an internal link as opposed to an advert.

There are two main tactics when placing adverts; either make the ad stand out so that visitors will want to click on it, or blend the ad in with the theme so that the visitor doesn’t realise they’re clicking on an advert.

With visitors becoming more blind to advertising by the day, there is no standard layout which will boost earnings; the optimal layout will vary from site to site and niche to niche, and even then can change regularly. Experimenting with different layouts and even different types of adverts is the only way to stay ahead of the game and ensure that advertising income is maximised.

Shall we forget about engaging?

I believe that engaging should be an inseparable part of tweeting behavior. Why? Let me ask you a question: How many people you follow on twitter and how many of them you really listen?

There is definitely a couple of those in your following list who stand out, who bring you something extra. You can ask them for help and you know they will be here for you. Such connection creates the real engagement on Twitter. You value these people because they care about you and therefore you are willing to listen what they say.

More links more followers?

But of course, sharing links is a huge part of the tweeting game. In fact learning about breaking news and about interesting articles is one of the reasons why I am still on the twitter although I have already abandoned other social networks. And I think there are many people on the twitter because of the same reason.

So, what is the point? The point is that the quality and NOT the quantity matters. Tweeting out useful links that provide a real value that is the reason why you will be followed. Spreading out useless urls will bring you nowhere. People get tired of you and press Unfollow button sooner than you would think.

It is always about the quality you deliver through your content.

Whatever opinion you have, I think lots of us somehow expect that a blog we are reading is PRed. Why? It gives us some kind of confident that a piece of online world we just landed on is safe and worthy to get your attention

What happened yesterday?

Yesterday I got quite excited and if you were reading the first paragraph closely you probably know what happened. Yes, I got PRed and to be more specific Google assigned me the PR1. I know, I know nothing huge, but if you are struggling to get your Page Rank you might find this article helpful so keep reading.

Now, if you are wondering how much time I spent on my backlink building or what strategy I used to get my blog PRed? Here is the truth…

How I gained my PR1?

Maybe I will disappoint you now but I did not use any specific backlink building strategy that I could share with you. There was no willful method I would be following. In fact, the only thing I was doing was behave normally. What does it mean?

For me that mean to visit other blogs and when spotting on an interesting article just leaving a useful comment. What else? Well, from time to time I get my content published on other blogs.

As there was no other strategy I was using I guess commenting and some guest posting should be enough for you to get your rank. I told you, nothing special but it seems like it still works.

However there is one thing I consider really interesting. During the last couple of months I left hundreds of comments in the Blogosphere. So, as I got PRed I was wondering “How many of my links were counted to my PR?”

You can find this out if you write to Google following command: link:http://moremoo.com/

The result surprised me. It seems like only six links are considered by Google bots and only one of those 6 links has its own PR (3). The rest of backlinks are pointing to my blog from the pages with zero PR.

My conclusion?

It is most likely that it is enough to have one strong backlink. However I still believe that more links pointing to your blog (it does not matter whether Google bots visibly count them) the better chance you have to get your PageRank.

Let’s talk…

What do you think about the Google PR? And do you consider it while browsing?
What are your experiences with link building strategies? Do you use any and did any work for you?

When it comes to all those online staff I consider myself quite skilled. I have purchased quite a lot of things and services online. As far as I remember I have never had any significant issue with cancelling anything what I did not wanted to use anymore. But with the GoDaddy it was a bit different story.

How I tried to cancel my GoDaddy Auctions account

I logged in to GoDaddy looking for the Auctions tab. It was not that difficult to find it in the left navigation menu. Once I was there I went for the Settings option. I expected to find there an option to manage my renewals. I was quite surprised not to find it there. I spent like 10 more minutes browsing in this section hoping to find the desired option. I lost my patience and returned back to My Account starting with the whole searching all over again.

I tried few things. I believe I explored the whole members’ interface from all possible angles wasting about an hour without any success. I gave up… and turned on the Google.

What I found on the Google?

The Google revealed that there are also other people confused about GoDaddy’s unclear cancelation procedures. One might think that this is not just a coincident but a well-made system with only one goal – To make it harder for people to unsubscribe from GoDaddy?

I was quite surprised. Although it is understandable that companies don’t like to see their customers to go I would not expect to see that a well-respected company like GoDaddy would have such feedback on the Internet (or would not try to fix this).

How I turned off auto-renew for GoDaddy Auctions account?

While browsing the Google I found no working guideline nothing that could help me to cancel the auto-renewal of my auctions account. My final shot was to contact GoDaddy customer services directly and ask for a help.

I must admit that GoDaddy’s staff was really helpful they got back to me with couple of hours with the proper answer how to cancel my Auctions account.

Here is the procedure advised by Jacob D. from the GoDaddy Online Support team (thanks Jacob!):

“To modify the auto renewal options for domains and services:

• Select ‘Payments and Renewing Items’ from the ‘Renewals’ menu.
• Check the box next to the item that you would like to modify
• Click ‘Auto Renew’.
• Make the desired change.
• Click ‘Save Changes’.”

This advice definitely helped but there is one more method that I think is even clearer.
• From My Account click on the My Renewals (in the top menu).
• Go to the My Products tab and follow the instruction on the picture below (sorry for my poor drawing I got no mouse with my laptop:)

Once you know how to cancel your account you might think that it is not that hard after all. I agree it could look easy now. But the question why GoDaddy hides the Auto-Renew field which appears only if you check the proper box or why there is no available guideline on the GoDaddy stayed unanswered.

Does GoDaddy really rely on such business practices or it was simply my fault? Who knows, but from what I read on the Internet and from my experiences GoDaddy might not be that innocent in this.

Your opinion?

What is your experience with the GoDaddy when it comes to cancelation of services?

Just think about all the celebrities that were revealed just thanks to their videos on the YouTube. In the world Before Social Media they would probably never got on the top. But today is the situation way different.

Now I am not going to talk much about what could make you viral and what could not. But the single gold rule I would like to point out is that your content must distinguish from anything that is common. It must be something that makes people laugh, shock or simply make them think like: “Hey, this guy is insane! Let’s share it with my friends I am sure they would love to see this.”

I think the most fascinating thing about getting viral is the simple fact that there is no rule what will work and what will not.

I really doubt that the proud daddy who shot the video below would ever imagine that it will receive more than 340 millions of views. Check it out it is really hilarious:)

Or who would guess this “noki-noki” girl would be viewed by more than 170 millions?

Simply said the viral might make you famous no matter who you are or what you do all you need is originality (or insanity:). There is no other rule.

Becoming viral is the number one priority in the Blogosphere as well. Thanks to the social bookmarks your content can be shared with thousands of people within an hour. Just imagine the traffic that could be generated this way?

But the gold rule about becoming viral applies on the blogosphere as well. There is simple no guarantee that your article will become viral no matter how much you believe your article deserves it. Your text simply “has it” or not.

Forcing viral?

But people do not like to be out of control they always want to take over, to understand everything. And that is the reason why they want to bind the online viral-ity as well. That is the reason why we have here all those tools that promise you hundreds of twitter followers every day. Yep, you will get your follower but would they listen to you? Would they care about your content, would they share it? No, no, no. You can not simple bypass the gold rule of becoming viral.

FB Like Viral plugin could it work?

Recently I stumbled upon a WP plugin called FB Like Viral. This tool acts similar as a pop-up window that suddenly appears as you are scrolling down the article. This widow interrupts your reading and asks you to share the content through the social bookmarks.

Does this make people click on the share buttons more? I don’t think so.
But this is just my opinion and I would love to hear your voice on this.

So what do you think, it is possible to force someone to make your content viral? And my second question on you. Do you think that tools like FB Like Viral could help you to share your content more or just scare your audience away?

The reason is simple and it is called market saturation. This is the natural stage of every market in every industry. In this stage the initial huge interest in the product is gone as all people who wanted the product already got it. In this stage companies have to adjust the product, expand the market or come up with a new product.

The main problem with all social networks is the fact that they are limited in the services they are able to deliver. They were born to make information sharing a question of couple of clicks. This was the reason why they become so popular. People were suddenly able to share anything immediately with all people they know (or don’t know). This was the reason of the boom but what is next? How to develop this product once the market is saturated? How to make people to stay excited about the social networks? These are the main questions of upcoming years.

The LinekdIn recently announced a new service called LinkedIn Today. This new service extend the main focus of the network – to get business people together and to establish new connections – in a new service – providing the latest and most discussed news available on the Internet. The LinkedIn still more realizes that it needs to offer additional value to its members as getting together in the way LI is able to offer is simply not enough anymore.

Although LinkedIn Today is a nice tool I really doubt that it will make people excited. The reason is that this feature offers nothing new. No unique or never-seen-before feature that could make people obsessed about LinekdIn again.

It is like a little Pete who gets a new toy. He plays with it all the time, takes it everywhere. It seems like this is the best toy which Pete could get and it will stays with him forever. But as the time passes Pete plays with the toy still less until he gets weary of it and threw it away. There is nothing wrong with the toy, it stays the same, it just does not develop with Pete and this is the reason why he is not interesting in it anymore.

I am not talking that the “big boys” of social networks will be gone in 5 years the point I am trying to make is that the excitement about the social networks is declining and if they want to ignite the fire in people’s hearts again they will need to offer them something special, get even closer, become inevitable part of daily living. Underestimating of this basic fact is probably behind the fall of many new social networks such as Google Buzz or Orkut which brought nothing what people could not find at Facebook, LinedIn or twitter.

So what is next? How should social networks evolve? I can see two major trends which could influence the way all social networks will go. First trend – The shift from the cell to smart phone. These smart devices change the way how people interact with their phones. They are still more used for internet browsing and email communication. Second trend – The shift from sharing all personal information with all people to more specific information sharing with closed groups of real-life friends.
If we would take these trends in consideration the Social network 2.0 might be smarter and more private. People will use it as they go through the smart phones, iPads and other handy devices which you can take anywhere. Although this is already happening, the link between the smart phone and social network will be much closer in upcoming years. This network would consist of small separate groups of people who could share important information that are relevant also to other members of these private groups.

You can find Jason’s article here.

Talking about the stats, I am sure many of you have already experienced that great feeling of accomplishment when the number of your feed readers is climbing up. You feel that your blog is going the right way and all that hard work is slowly paying off. On the other hand the feeling of “despair” when this number suddenly drops down without any particular reason might discourage many new bloggers.

“How come that the number of my feed subscribers dropped that much over the night?? Is it because my last article was just a piece of crap?” Questions like this were bugging my mind quite a lot in the past.

So, I decided to get to the root of this problem and find out why is this fluctuation in the number of Feedburner subscribers happening. After some research I found out I am not the only one with this problem…many people were reporting this issue. So, what is going on here?

After all I found the answer…but before I will be talking about the reason of this fluctuation let’s have a look at the small infographic below. It shows how Feedburner count the number of your RSS feed readers.

So, why the number of mine (and yours) Feedburner subscribers goes up and down?

First of all there is nothing wrong with the Feedburner. As you can see at the picture above there are two main types of feed readers: Web-based and Stand-alone feed readers.

Their purpose is the same, to deliver you the RSS feeds of blogs you are interested in, but the way they do it is different. While web-based feed readers such as Google Reader, My Yahoo fetch feeds every 24 hours no matter if you log in to your feed reader or not.

Stand-alone feed readers such as Feed Reader3 or AmphetaDesk fetch feeds only on the user’s request. This means, if person would not request the feeds yesterday Feedburner would remove this person from the list of your feed subscribers. If this person would request the feeds the next day again…Voila! Feedburner would count this person to the list again. And that is the main reason of all that fluctuation.

How to solve this?

Well, I have no special advice how to avoid these sudden ups and downs in the total number of your RSS subscribers you just have to get used to it. The only advice I could give is to stay calm and don’t take it too seriously. This fluctuation does not have to reflect the real number of your RSS readers so before you start to panic try to recheck it in couple of days.

My questions for you

Was this article useful for you?
Have you noticed the fluctuation of your Feadburner subscribers as well?
Are you going to subscribe to my blog?:)