In the quest of searching for the most suitable passive income stream, I’ve landed on something new and very interesting. I’ve discovered how easy it is to setup my own Social Community Network. Oh well, setting it up and getting members hook in are two different things, the former is the easy part.

Let me tell you how the idea light up. As I was browsing different threads at bloggeries, I bumped up into an idea brought up by a certain forum member. That particular member is asking if it is a good idea to blog about your city, so I thought of why not to give it a try. So I think, and think, and think.. If I’ll be blogging about my community, do I have lots of topics to blog about? And then I think and think and think again. In the midst of my thinking, I remembered my cousin introducing me to a Ning.com community of my High School Alma Mater. And voila! Ideas came bursting like there’s no tomorrow.

So I made a few searches on what software I can use to start the project, and it wasn’t hard finding one. Gladly it is free to use too! I’ve studied the basic information that I have to know, tested it in my free webhost, and eventually failed to set it up because of the incompatibility of my free webhost to the software. I’m using Dolphin of Boonex.com btw. I found out that this software consume lots of resources and is needing a webhost that supports FFMPEG, so I’ve made searches again.

I actually got discourage of continuing the project at first because the webhosts that I’ve found is too expensive for me. But as I was starting to lose hope, I’ve discovered a webhost that I can afford. I instantly registered and started uploading my files. Below is my current webhost for the Social Community Network project that I’m conducting.

There’s how it goes. The website is now running and I’m currently recruiting members, which is the challenging part. The community is existing, all I have to do is to make people aware that the website is live. I’ll keep you all posted on how it goes. I’m giving myself 6 months for evaluation. Good Luck to me!!

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As a blogger that came from a free hosted blog, the transition of transferring from a blogger.com blog to my own self hosted wordpress blog was a very terrible experience. It was really frightening at first because of the unfamiliarity that the transition brings, what makes it very frustrating during those times is that I can’t find any help, oh, I found one, but guess what he told me. “I only offer blog setup for people who have signed up for hosting through my links”, wow, that’s really sweet. So what happened is I kept the struggles by myself, and learn things the hard way..

Anyways, it took almost three days for me to finally get the grasp of installing wordpress in my own domain. It wasn’t that hard actually, but for first timers, it’s not that easy also. Because of that experience, I thought of sharing a simple guide before you host your own domain and take that uncertain transition.

• Before making a purchase of your own domain and web host, utilize the services of free web hosting companies to get a preview of what you are about to face. I recommend using the one that I’m currently using, visit this free web host. Register for a subdomain account, don’t worry, it’s free. From there, you can have a first glance of how a control panel of a web host company will look like.

• On your free web host account page, navigate and click the control panel link of your registered subdomain account, it will further lead you to the control panel page. Then look for the Fantastico Deluxe icon and click on it. On the Fantatico Deluxe page, choose wordpress and follow the succeeding instructions, and presto! You have your wordpress account setup.. I told you it was very easy.

Okay, just in case you are using a different free web host and it have no Fantastico Deluxe function, please follow the procedures below.

1. What you need to do first is to download the latest version of wordpress. Download it here.
2. In your webhosts control panel, select MySQL database ( the one with the blue dolphin logo). From there, create a database, then create a database user. After that, proceed to “Add Users to Your Databases” and find the privileges checkbox and put a check in the “ALL” selection (I believe it is located at the left side of that column), then click “Add user to database” to confirm.
3. Back to your downloaded wordpress files. After you have unzipped the file, open the file wp-config-sample.php, open it in your text editor (notepad or worpad will do), fill in your database details (now use the database username and password that you have created earlier), and save it as wp-config.php. Don’t forget this last part.
4. Now open your FTP client and open your domain’s FTP account (if you don’t have one, download it for free here). **Remember that you still have to create an FTP account in your webhost’s control panel. You can do that by accessing the FTP manager**
5. Upload all the files from your wordpress folder (only the files inside it, not the single wordpress folder itself) to the public_html directory.
6. Off you go. Just open your domain’s url, http://yoursite.com, then follow the necessary steps to finish the installation.

What’s important here is you know where you will upload your files, in this case, the public_html directory. From that directory also, you can upload your wp themes and your wp plugins…

I hope this helps. Don’t hesitate to ask me questions by using the comment form below.. Good Luck!!

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So the title says it all, you are getting paid to do your normal internet searches. From my own experience, I get an average of 1 cent in British Pounds per internet query. That’s some money considering your just doing your normal internet searches, which I bet you always do.

The PayPerSearch Program that I am talking about is MySearchFunds. This is a UK based company who pays it’s members just by simply using their search box in making searches through the internet. Getting paid just by doing almost nothing, sounds good isn’t it? Well, I know that your very skeptical about the legitimacy of lucrative programs like this. Thank yourself for reading my post, I have something for you. I’ve made a search (through this money making search box of course ) and found a comprehensive forum discussion about MySearchFunds, visit this link. Please come back here and tell me if it’s a scam or not..

During the first few days of this program, which was during the early January of 2008, it was partnered up with Ask.com, which made searching a bit of sacrifice because the search results are not so relevant, compared to Google’s. Fortunately, during this week, MySearchFunds is now displaying searches from major search engines, and as of today, it is Google.co.uk. Of course, that made me use their search box more often now, increasing my earnings cent by cent.

After you reached the minimum payout of £20, you will be receiving payment through your Paypal account. Payouts are released every 30 days, every 45 days, end of the month, etc.. MySearchFunds‘ search box is compatible with Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer 7.

So what are you waiting for? Try this money making program now and give yourself a cash return from the thousands of internet queries you make. Do me a favor, join the program using my link below. Goodluck!

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This is a quick tip to increase your blog’s link rankings, oh well, as far as technorati is concern. All you have to do is to be an entrecard member, then drop on the Entredroppers plugin users that I have provided below. Please take note that you will feel the link boost when your link is still in the entredroppers list at the time that particular blog is updated. If your in a hurry, use Ping-o-Matic to update the directories. One warning though, slow down in pinging cowboy! So what’s the moral of this? Keep on dropping on them. But don’t forget to apply the entrecard dropping etiquette huh! Read the latest post of the blog, and if possible, comment on them..

The plugin creator:

• Owen’s U-G-H.com

Entredroppers Users (with no particular order)

1. Pinoy Biz Blogger
2. First Door on the Left
3. Simply Stating the Obvious
4. Table for Five
5. Blogging Over Coffee
6. PlotDog Press
7. Whooah.biz
8. Fabulously Jinxed
9. The (Other) End of the Internet
10. Money Maker Times
11. Foolsville 2.0
12. My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings
13. Colloquium
14. Mummified Times Five
15. On the Horizon
16. The Original Mx5
17. Blogging Over Coffee
18. Multifarious Mushrooms
19. Not Just Mama
20. Mixed Metaphor
21. Dream-Act-Plan-Believe
22. PinoySkull Dot Com

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As I go along with this Affiliate Marketing Campaign, I am beginning to see how broad and extensive it is. I’ve learned that there is more in affiliate marketing than just by integrating affiliate links in my blog. Keyword research, niche selection, and Search Engine Optimization, this is becoming very overwhelming for me. I’m not losing hope though, I will take it one step at a time. I will keep you updated, dear readers (if I have any), to all of my failures and progress towards my quest in gaining the grasps towards making wealth through affiliate marketing.

Regarding the previous Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign I have conducted few days ago, I think that was a very careless, newbie move (I just can’t get away of such a newbie status). Engaging on something new without gaining sufficient knowledge is a sign of stupidity, does that make me one stupid jerk? I have no regrets though. I take every failures an opportunity to learn something new, take it as advantage, rather than a disadvantage.

No doubt, my PPC campaign is a complete failure, getting 18 clicks for $27 with zero (0) leads. I don’t know the policies regarding PPC campaigns that’s why I was surprised on how expensive it was. I used Bidvertiser. I really don’t know if the system of Bidvertiser or my own choice of Affiliate programs to promote is at fault. I guess it was more on my part.

The failure of my previous PPC campaign didn’t stopped me in continuing my Affiliate Marketing. With a very tight budget for this project, I turned to Project Wonderful to promote my affiliates. Comparing to my Bidvertiser campaign, this one is far too inexpensive. I got 30+ clicks with 70000+ pageviews with this campaign, in addition, I got a few sign up for my affiliate. For how much?? I didn’t spend a dollar, it just cost me less than $.50. One thing though, I don’t think the lead results is incomparable with my Bidvertiser campaign because I used another affiliate program, but I think I’m gonna stick with Project Wonderful. What’s good about project wonderful, aside from an inexpensive advertising is that you can control lots of factors in your advertising campaign.

I also used forums to extend my affiliate marketing. I took advantage of a small online money making forum and got a very surprising results. Got a descent number of referrals, enough to say that I’m somewhat successful on that part. It really surprised me how responsive such small forum was.

So these are the tactics that I will use in my current affiliate marketing campaigns:

• I will be maximizing the benefits of Project Wonderful. I will study the most converting combinations of factors to take the most out of my campaigns.
• I will keep on searching for responsive forums. Small forums are my target.

I hope this works pretty well, I’ll update all of you on how it goes.

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I have told everyone that I’m conducting a blogrush experiment for my personal skill development, so here’s a brief update on what happened and what’s going on.

As of today, the experiment has gone in a long path of nowhere. Out of an almost 3,000 page impressions (aggregate), I got an enormous Click Through Rate (CTR) of 0.067% or two massive clicks. Is this time to conclude that the Blogrush widget is 99% near to being useless in bringing some traffic? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not yet concluding this experiment, as I have said, this is just an update. The technique that I used in my previous blog post titles is in between being cautious and aggressive, although much nearer to being cautious. I tried making strong titles such as “Gaming StumbleUpon: Exploiting the Traffic” which gave me 152 unfiltered views, excluding my own page views, and two clicks from the blogrush widget, which represents 100% of my blogrush clicks. The results are not enough to conclude anything, so I’ll still continue conducting these experiment.

There are few constraints that may lead to unsuccessful results of this experiment. The most limiting factor is my blogrush credits. Due to the very little traffic that I’m getting from this blog, I was unable to gain sufficient credits to syndicate all of my posts. An average of 600 page impressions is very small. My target is to give my posts 2,000-3,000 page impressions each, which is still far out of my league. Anyways, I’m trying to work on that.

On the other hand, there are few things that keeps me from using the blogrush widget. Although blogrush failed in bringing a considerable amount of traffic, it is somehow successful in introducing to me quality posts. There are few articles here in Pinoy Biz Blogger which are inspired from articles syndicated through the blogrush widget. For that particular reason, even though my experiments goes out to nowhere, I’ll still be using blogrush for discovery purposes.

I’m not done yet with this “Title Making” experiment on blogrush, so expect a few updates regarding this one.

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During my previous post, I featured a widget called “You Drop, I Link” widget that acts like a blogroll that ticks the latest 50 droppers of your entrecard widget. Ok, I must admit that I liked the idea of giving links as an incentive to my regular droppers, but I didn’t install that widget because I didn’t feel it appropriate in my blog’s theme, and it seemed that it will just clutter in my sidebar. Also, another thing that I pointed out there, is that the free-of-any-nofollow-attribute feature is useless because it just points out to entrecard’s page, and not to the dropper’s blogs. That won’t contribute anything to your rankings.

Earlier today, I saw a similar plugin that has the same idea, the same function but a little better (I would like to thank myself for not giving up with blogrush ). First things first, yes, this is a wordpress plugin. Sorry for other blogging platform users because you may not enjoy the functionality of this great tool.

As a fan of simple designs, the first thing that indulged me in using this plugin is it’s simplicity. It really doesn’t look like any special widget in your sidebar, unlike the first widget that I have introduced. If you will look at the bottom of my sidebar, just before the Meta and Akismet widgets, you will notice that it is just like your ordinary blogroll links, aside from the “EntreDroppers” label, you can’t really differentiate the this plugin from your ordinary blogroll, which is really great in keeping your sidebars neat. Another thing that you will love with this plugin is it’s ability to link directly through the dropper’s blog and not to the dropper’s entrecard page, in which, if this plugin is free from any nofollow attribute, will help in increasing your blog’s inbound links.

Try this one! It’s really a great way to give your droppers more reasons to keeping dropping on you. I’ll be using this one until a better plugin arise, if there would be any.

Visit Owen’s page to take advantage of the functionality of this plugin.

Update: I’ve found a similar plugin in the Entrecard Blog, visit them here.

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The use of StumbleUpon has brought great wonders in my blogs, bringing me an immense load of hits (phrase relative to my newbie status ) and a number of subscribers. Taking this blog for example, as of the date I have published this article, I have 706+ visitors (I’ve just started last week), of which, almost 600 was brought to me by StumbleUpon alone. That’s over 80% of my total traffic to date. From there, I gain a few subscribers, a few comments, and well, a lot of hits enough to boost my alexa rankings from the 5 millionth spot to the 1,200,000+ rank. Because of that, this blog was instantly approved in SponsoredReviews, an addition to my online money making portfolio.

The best thing in the traffic that StumbleUpon gives is that they are relevant to your content, the highest quality of hits. With that quality, hits can eventually turn into leads or sales, with a very high possibility. As I have read as I was stumbling through the net, StumbleUpon produces 32% of bounce rate compared to other social networking websites, like Digg that produces 75%. That means the traffic that you receive from StumbleUpon are people who are really interested in what you offer in your website, staying longer in your site and not just surfing through.

Because of that, webmasters and advertisers are making ways to maximize the potential of StumbleUpon, and ending up to gaming it or making money through the system. Here are some of them.

Gaming StumbleUpon

1. Selling and Buying of stumbles. SubvertandProfit is an example. Mashable has something to tell about this one. Please read the comments there, it’s very interesting.
2. Beneficial arrangements in Stumble Exchanges.
3. Building a network of StumbleUpon users so that you can collect stumbles from them. The purpose is to put your stumbled page in the Stumble Buzz webpage. (doshdosh.com)
4. Stumbling pages that links and blogs about you. The intention is very simple, the traffic brought by StumbleUpon to that particular webpage will eventually follow the link and will be brought to your website. (doshdosh.com)
5. Using the power of redirect. After stumbling a domain that you own, setup its redirect attributes and point it to the website you want to promote. Just make sure that the tags you used is relevant to site that you wanted to promote.

That’s all that I have collected on how people game the system of StumbleUpon. There are no guarantees on how effective they are, and also, by using the said tactics, your website may possibly be banned from the StumbleUpon network, so I advice you to take the proper precaution so that your site won’t get exterminated in such a promising service.

Please use the comment section below to let me know how you think about gaming the system of StumbleUpon.

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So you’re really inlove with the flexibility of your Google Adsense ads huh? Still overwhelmed with the complexity of the algorithms’ Google uses on these ads? Well, have you ever asked yourself if you really need such complexity? Such flexibility?

The very high minimum payout is the main reason why most bloggers tend to search for other adsense alternatives. Though there is no doubt that the Adsense has one of the best systems fo pay per click programs, the very high minimum payout limits small time blog owners. But come to think of it, if you’re running a niche blog, this blog for example, do you still feel the need of the greatest feature of the adsense program? Do you still need the algorithm that tells the adsense server on what ads appear on a particular page of your blog? For a niche blog like this, the answer is a BIG BIG NO!!

The smart rotating ads of the adsense program is irrelevant, and useless if I termed it right, in blogs that covers only a particular niche. Why? For obvious reasons, relevance is preset. In a niche blog, topics discussed is based in a single category. Because of that, the functionality of smart rotating ads will be less helpful, if not, meaningless, comparing if it was used in a blog that covers a wide variety of categories, a personal blog for example. Makes sense huh?!?

That’s the same reason why I don’t use adsense here. First is the very high minimum payout, and the second is the uselessness of it’s function in a niche blog like this one. As you can see, I am using Bidvertiser here. I honestly hated bidvertiser a few months ago because of the very stiff advertising system, far behind compared to Google Adsense. But as I was thinking of ways of maximizing my earnings, believe it or not, eliminating the use of adsense buy replacing it with Bidvertiser became a priority. The most attracting feature of Bidvertiser is it’s minimum payout. With just $10 balance in your account, you are already eligible for payment, which is what a small niche blog needs. Although Bidvertiser has a very limited advertising partners, I think it is a very great choice for small time bloggers.

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ough I have dumped my blogrush widget long time ago ( I actually find it to contribute very minimal traffic), I find myself using it again for a small experiment, so to speak. My purpose is not to increase my traffic, though I’ll be very happy if it does, but to check out and improve my skills and techniques in creating a very powerful title. There are lots of articles out there that gives advice in making a very powerful and attractive title. Through this experiment, it will not only try how effective those hints are, but also, I’m hoping to formulate my own style in creating titles.

I got the inspiration from an article from ManuelViloria.com when the blogger gave his views in using the Blogrush widget. So maybe his right, it could probably a very useful tool if only you know how to maximize it.

As I was thinking of it, I made myself believe that the Blogrush population can somehow be a good sample for the total population of the blogging community, meaning, reactions that I might get from the blogrush community could be the same possible reactions that I might get from the blogging community as a whole. That’s where I thought that this experiment would give me results. Instantly, I registered for a blogrush widget for this domain, and incidentally, got approve within a day or two. Then, I downloaded and installed the Blogrush Maximizer plugin so I can have better control of what goes out in the widget. The plugin will keep me company through this experiment.

Now, all I have to do is to be very creative in creating titles as much as possible.. I’ll be posting updates on how this goes, so I hope you’ll watch out for that.

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