Webtalks

Looking back on my experience of posting on this blog

2019-11-14T09:05:00.001+05:30

My last update on this blog was more than 9 years back which itself was after a hiatus of two years. In the meanwhile, I have completed college, changed countries and started working full time. I have also started blogging on my own personal website - ashwinikhare.in I recently published a post on that website about my experience of blogging on Webtalks, included some fun statistics and rough estimate of monthly AdSense earnings. Let's connect if we haven't already - It's been a while

Update

2010-09-21T16:51:00.000+05:30

Its been a long journey which began a couple of years back for me. As I had mentioned in the post due to academic reasons I had to quite blogging at Webtalks in lieu of preparations for IIT JEE, a competitive exam in India to get admission into the prestigious IITs at undergraduate level. With God’s grace, I was able to make it to the top 5,000 at the country level with more than 4,72,000 appearing for it, henceforth, I am currently pursuing my B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee which is the oldest technical institution in entire Asia. This institute has produced many world-class engineers and also the first problogger from India, Amit Agarwal, who runs Digital Inspiration blog is an alumni of this institute .Two years of complete inactivity did have an impact on my enthusiasm of blogging impact, but it steel feels great to publish a post and be back again. As for my current situation, my parents bought me a brand new Dell laptop via which this post is being published. Apart from that, along with my academics, I’m actively participating in hobby clubs relating to Software Development and various other workshops to enrich my knowledge base. I’m really pleased to see the encouraging atmosphere here at IIT for co-curriculars. As for my planning for my near future

• With so many new ventures, I’ll be engaged in learning new languages for web development and then working on projects

• Webtalks is not up for sale. This blog was buid for learning purposes, though it uses monetizing services of Google AdSesnse, but the sole reason behind it was just to get some experience.

• There’s no Blogger>>Wordpress migration for Webtalks in the recent furture.

Apart from that, Blogger has really grown up, The Template Designer tool is awesome(even though it has kick assed my template business) and stats widget makes the thing less messy in terms of code implementation for non-geeks. A sincere apology to all those mails shot at me for any error/ suggestion regarding my templates and which were un replied. I would be looking for your cooperation in the future.

Blogger introduces inline comment form

2008-10-28T23:12:00.002+05:30

The most annoying feature of blogger, the commenting system, has been finally been looked upon by the blogger team as it pushes out much desired inline comment forms out of the draft version of blogger. Good move, I would say though and as I anticipated, this would create a bit of mess for people like me who completely revamped their widget templates.With the help of some html tweaks, thankfully this blog now runs inline comment forms which I hope will increase the participation of those lazy people who simply hated that popup

If you too are running a heavily modified template, following html tweak might work for you
Important: I'm giving directions for widget templates and not for classic templates

First of all follow basic instructions given on blogger blog.Check your post page, if comment form is visible then no problems, but if not, then the following steps may help you out.

Step 1: Open your dashboard, Follow the Layout link, Select Edit HTML

Step 2: Backup your template(don't be lazy, this may prove very costly)

Step 3: Look for this line

<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'> <a expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><data:postCommentMsg/></a> </b:if>

and replace it with

 <b:if cond='data:post.embedCommentForm'> <b:include data='post' name='comment-form'/> <b:else/> <b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'> <a expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><data:postCommentMsg/></a> </b:if> </b:if>

There may be one/ more than one places where u'll find this code, just be sure where you want comment form to be dislayed

Tip: For saving time, you can copy the html code to notepad, save it as a text file first and then use the find option to quickly jump to the required code.

Step 4: Save the template code, and have a look on any of your bog's postpage.

Should work, if not, comments welcome.

Why I do not shift to a custom domain

2008-02-02T19:54:00.000+05:30

If you are seriously engaged in blogging, it is always recommended to have your own domain and preferably Wordpress hosted on it.Many Internet friends and some blogging professionals recommended me to have my own domain.Webtalks is making enough bucks for me to buy hosting and a domain for it.I'm a big WP fan and I too want to join the self hosted Wordpress community.Still there are few reasons that restrict me

Domain Age.With the blast of links everyday towards this blog (say thanks to templates), I believe Google will put this blog in the Sandbox.Since I'm currently on Blogger, Google counts the domain age of blogspot.com which well is a pretty old one(1999).
Time.As a student it isn't easy to come online everyday.Which leaves me with two alternatives.Either sell off my blog like Rishi did or keep the posts on blogger till I pass out.I'm not comfortable selling this blog as this is connected to my Google Account.So keeping it live on Blogger is the only option(Don't say that I can also delete the blog).
Hosting.Though many web hosting providers promise 0% downtime, still there is a risk.On blogger, I haven't yet encountered any downtime for this blog.Blogger currently gives undisclosed bandwidth to its blogs, so no problems how much traffic I receive when I'm absent

The shift will definitely take place
You read it right.I will for sure move Webtalks to a custom domain.All I can currently tell you is that you'll have to wait a bit for it.I believe by May 2010.Yes I know its long after.But I will continue posting on Webtalks when I'm free.I had already bought a domain (ashtech.info) back this summer.But afterwards I came to know (.info) domains are full of spam, so next time I'll buy a (.com) only

I'm currently looking for a good domain name (.com). If you have any thoughts, feel free to share them in comments.By 2010, I hope it will gain some age and then we'll shift Webtalks to it.

During this period I will go through intensive studying as these 3 years will be determining for my career.If you are an Indian you would be quite familiar with IIT-JEE which is what I'm going to be preparing for.But still I need wishes from all you for cracking IIT isn't possible without your blessings.

Will miss you all.

Do you really need to update blog everyday?

2007-11-28T19:40:00.000+05:30

It has been well over a fortnight since I last posted on Webtalks [you can still be with me and my mates at the Ashtech Blog]. It would have been a prediction that this blog did experience a traffic slump, a decrease in feed count and obviously a decrease in earnings.I'll say a big NO to it.There was a slump but nominal one and has fully recovered now.

Instead of decreasing, the feed count is showing its highest yet(125)

As for earnings, Google AdSense team narrowed down the click able region of AdSense which had its effect but not that big. But now, accidental clicks are negligible and hence we prove we are promising :)

Now let me tell how did the poor posting frequency didn't effect my blog

Evergreen Posts As a part time blogger(or I must say occasional blogger) it is essential for me to write posts which are useful to for visitors even though they are reading it after a long time.
For eg, posting about new AdSense feature will not be as effective as a review with your personal touch of that feature.

Give your blog a break. Some of your posts are really good and deserve to stay on the homepage for long, so why to refuse them?

Google Juice. No new pages(post pages) gave Google a chance to index this blog deeply, which I believe it didn't do previously even though having a blast of back links

Be evil. (Just a personal opinion) No new updates I believe would have forced the regular passerby visitors either to subscribe to the RSS feeds, or to forget this blog.Losing such visitors isn't that costly because they hardly click on any of the ads and just contribute towards the page impressions, which hardly matters to a growing blog. If they would have subscribed to the RSS feed to receive the update automatically, I got few more readers.

You might be also interested in reading what to do when your internet server is down

Manage Ads: A promising feature in AdSense

2007-11-09T11:34:00.000+05:30

Google AdSense, few days back added a new feature in their AdSense program for all publishers.You may be knowing about this feature from a coming soon status message in your AdSense dashboard or from a sneak peek previous post from the AdSense Blog or from a Breaking news post from Problogger still here is a quick definition for it

This new ad management feature means that your ad unit settings (such as colors and channels) for new AdSense for content ad units will be saved in your AdSense account every time you generate ad code. Then, if you'd like to change any of these settings in the future, all you do is make the update within your account -- you'll no longer need to manually replace the ad code on all of your pages. For instance, you can quickly change the borders of all your 300x250 medium rectangles from red to blue with just a few mouse clicks.

As a blogger I think the key lies in experimenting with your Ad slots.For even changing the border of an Ad unit, I had to generate new ad code, parse it and then finally add the script to my XML template.This was a bit time consuming and a hectic process.This feature just makes the same results available with a few lesser mouse clicks.

I found this feature interesting and gave it one of my blog's slot.I always thought that perfectly blended ads performed much better than one having a distinct border and when I tried border for one day, the results amazed me(I only changed the colour pal latte). I saw a good spike in CTR and CPM.

Concluding it...
Likes

A short and simple process for changing the look of the Ad unit
Import feature which allowed me to import ads from other channels.
Preview Ad feature.
A bit short script :)

Dislikes

It permits to change the colours of the Ad unit but not it's size.
Once the script is uploaded, it takes around 10 minutes for the Ad slot to deliver Ads.

I will be giving more slots to this new feature soon and I recommend you to do the same and experiment.

Site Report for October, Perfomance report of AdSense referrals

2007-11-01T18:14:00.000+05:30

Its the first of month again, so here comes my site report.We got 8,037 visitors who get generated 11,452 page views with 81.65% being the new visitors.Again Google organic search brought me the maximum number of visitors with the templates post being the most popular.During this period, Webtalks crossed the 100 RSS readers mark...

Blog Income Report
This time, I can see a good rise in the the Blog income.Here's a report

AdSense : 26$
Template business : 100$
Widgetbucks : 25$ + 4$ + 8 referrals
Reviews : 60$
Other :15$
Total : 230$
This time the earnings have tripled itself from the last month's.I draw three major reasons for that:
-Pagerank export.We got a PR of 5 while many others got slapped
-100 RSS subscribers.
-Alexa Rank in top 200,000

Google AdSense Referrals 2.0 performance Report
As some of you maybe knowing, I changed few Ad units on my site from AdSense to Content to Referral Ads.They have been up for a long time and here is a performance report.

I would say a big disappointment for me. I almost tried everything.The conversion ratio was extremely poor, more then 75:1.Still I got something in store for you if you still want to go with them

Text based Ads perform better then Image Ads
Smaller Ad units like a vertical banner 120 x 140 perform better than 300 x 250 Ad units.
If available, go for Text links.They have a higher CTR.
Always check the Pick Best Performing Ads Option.
Don't give them the prime Ad Spot.A referral Ad in less visibility region will be ok but you shouldn't neglect them completely.Ideally, a small Ad unit in the lower sidebar.

If I were to talk about successful conversions, I'll say I only received one and Google still has the default limitation on me.

Conclusion-Referral 2.0 Ads sound interesting but their performance isn't up to the mark.Google AdSense team should consider the Referral section again.If you are a webmaster/blogger, implement them only when you have around 100k page views per month to get the best results.

Webtalks Pagerank 5

2007-10-27T14:21:00.000+05:30

Greetings.Google today, rolled out the snapshot of current pagerank.This blog is getting a PR of 5 this time.This is a good jump from PR 3 which had been there for quite long.Surprisingly, this time there was no BackLink export, but who cares? Its party time here as I have over taken some top-notch blogs like john chow(4) and dosh dosh(4).

This update is accompanied by the feed chicklet getting into 3 digits.Currently, it is showing 101 readers.Thank you for subscribing to the feed and if you haven't yet, please do so:they are fast and ad free

The secret
Nothing.Avoid too many links on home page.Get relevant quality backlinks.Focus on content quality more than on PR and last but not the least follow Google Webmaster guidelines.

The Webtalks Effect
I'm not going to talk about traffic.Its about a single site wide link on my blog which linked to the domain(ashtech.info), I bought few months back.The result? Its now Pagerank 4.You can check, its not even indexed by Yahoo!

See how powerful my link is?

Widgetbucks outperforms AdSense

2007-10-26T22:10:00.000+05:30

WidgetBucks, a newly launched monetizing service is these days gaining popularity as a worthy AdSense alternative.Officially, you can call it that WidgetBucks features pay-per-click shopping widgets that help their customers make money fast. They instantly display the most popular products based on buying trends of 100 million shoppers. Thus they are highly engaging, which means instant dollars for our customers.

I was keen to know how it performs on my blog.I implemented a skyscraper few days back, and the results, well, it outperformed AdSense who had that spot before.The 25$ sign up bonus adds spice to the whole program.

The Ads had a visitor attracting animation but unfortunately, the loading of this blog got double.I wasn't alone in this problem.Soon they announced fast loading widgets.Though, its better now but still below perfect.Soon, they came up with a new format, 300 x 150 which perfectly flushes in my sidebar.The loading time is now half of what it used to be earlier.The new format is more compact and a visitor magnet and the results say speak of it.

I don't think so that running Widgetbucks widget alongside AdSense should have any problems but you can confirm so by the AdSense support.I have already shot them an email but I don't know why, they take about a month(sometimes even more) to reply.

Lets draw a fair bit of Conclusion
Likes

I like their animation,visitor appeal
25$ sign up bonus.
Payments by Paypal
Active support
Referrals embedded in normal ads
High eCPM

Dislikes

Loading time.Though they have worked upon it, still it needs improvement.
Limited Formats
Payments are sent 45 days after you cross minimum payout,i.e 50$
Referral program.You don't have an estimate how much can you make by referring a blogger

Google does their bit of part
Google axed Widgetbucks from their normal indexes, though they still show up in the sponsored links section.Probably, because earlier Widgetbucks widget, when running without Javascript used to have a hidden link to the Widgetbucks homepage.But Bidvertiser has the same kind of referral tools and they have never been penalized.

So, has a fire broken out at the Googleplex?

Lets prove Google we are promising publishers

2007-10-23T18:01:00.000+05:30

I was a bit sleepy today.I used to check my AdSense earnings on every odd day since I was in the nervous nineties. today, when I logged in, I felt happy that my gross earnings are now in 3 digits( for some of you, you can do so in a day) but for me its a good experience to be there for the first time.

Now, as I have crossed the minimum payout limit, I want to be nice with them.Earlier I was a naughty chap creating hundreds of channels and changing ad placement almost daily.I want to prove that this blog is visited by a high quality traffic.The best way to do so is to put up referral Ad units instead of the normal AdSense for Content Ad units.

I'll be going for non-Google referral 2.0 Ad units.Recently they implied a limitation on first few successful conversions done by a publisher.So far I have done one only one successful conversion.They will be probably remove the limitation once I do 5 more to to enable me full payments.

I'll be replacing the most visible Ad unit, the post inline one with a referral 2.0 Ad . If I don't receive any successful conversion till 31st October, I will opt out.If I do, I'll publish a report about it in this month's site report.

What others are saying?
Problogger Amit Agarwal revealed that Referral 2.0 Ads are doing a good job for him.But Amit, then why did you remove those ads from your entire network?

Should you Digg or Sphinn it?

2007-10-21T12:45:00.000+05:30

The Digg effect, everyone's familiar with it.Just in case you don't know, being brief, it will bring just around 30,000 hits if you somehow get on the first page.But with millions of blogs out there looking for the same, your chances are low unless you are blogging live or have a got an ultra creative post up on your blog.

Sphinn on other hand is a quite new social site out there.Their about page defines it as

A social site for search and interactive marketers. It's designed to allow you to share and discover news stories, read and take part in discussions, discover events of interest and network with others.

In short a BINGO for make money online blogs like Webtalks

Sphinn uses almost the same scripts as digg and has nothing new as a social site but it's biggest advantage is its topics.For digg, if I have to submit a article about Google AdSense, I dump it in the Tech Industry News section.Fortunately, Sphinn has a special directory dedicated to AdSense itself.

Sphinn doesn't receive much traffic as digg does but you can take it to your advantage.A post I submitted 28 hours before still is in the upcoming section page #2.If it would have been digg, my post was nowhere to be found after a day even in the deepest directory's upcoming page.

To get into the homepage of digg, you need around 800 + diggs but for Sphinn , 40 Sphinns will do the job

I tried submitting the most popular post on Webtalks so far, the New Blogger Templates one, to both the sites.The results are:
I got 10 hits from digg and 3 diggs
I got 13 hits from Sphinn and 4 Sphinns plus the story is still on the second upcoming page so I expect more.
The post is live on Sphinn here and on Digg here.So its your turn to digg or give it a Sphinn

For me, I'll chose Sphinn most of the time along with Stumbleupon[My Profile] but I won't forget to digg if I've got an extraordinary story.

Anything new?

2007-10-16T22:00:00.000+05:30

Quite a few things have been happening in the blogosphere.I'll just sum them up.

Today's Blog Action Day when bloggers write to promote environment.My contribution is today I wrote a poem on a chart for my class soft board on Nature title "leisure" by William Henry Davies.Its a good one.

AdSense team has blogged about a quality control over the inventory by placing a restriction for publishers monetizing Displaying non-Google referrals.In this case, you'll just earn a little less than the price you get for a successful conversion for the first few times, after which you'll earn normally.If you don't display Google AdSense referral 2.0 ads, its out of your business.This happened just a few hours after I received my first successful conversion :)

Webtalks has been experiencing a poor posting frequency over th past few days.The reason is here.I was busy with the launch of another Tech Blog, And now I'm proud to announce that we just launched the Ashtech Blog (Go grab the RSS).Reason, Wordpress is a much better blogging platform for tech-savvy bloggers like me.While Webtalks will continue its normal routine on the same *.blogspot subdomain , I will be joined by my classmate, Harshyt Goel at the Ashtech Blog.Harhsyt has got some writing skills.He previously used to blog at the Review Blog.Check out the Blog now!

Google Pagerank gave a so called teaser trailer on 13 October.All sites reporting changes have got a low pagerank than their previous ones while some are complaining about their non-involvement in link business.Webtalks remained unaffected with this partial update.It looks like Google are really after it.Some folks are saying about a new algorithm change, When I searched for it, I concluded it was the Orion algorithm which Google bought a 17 months before from an Australian Scholar.Going by the data, I think the Quarter 4 export should happen by the end of October but this time its not going to be exciting as Google have tested our patience upto an extent from where no excitement about the next export is left.This teaser update was a big enough news to get a Sticky Post on DP forums.

Remember Top 100 Make Money Online list by 45n5.com? Jason Blanton a has made a list of feeds of all top 100 blogs right in one post.It must have been a painful task.You can also check out The Webtalks feed there somewhere in the middle.Advertisers maybe this is a good opportunity for you.

Make Money Online with Tnx

2007-10-12T21:23:00.000+05:30

With Google reducing pagerank of sites selling links (Eg .Stanford Daily) the Link business has a got a big threat from it. If you don’t know what I am talking about, Google is strictly against paid links or in Google terms “selling PR” .Probably, this is the reason why the Pagerank export hasn’t happened for over a five months now. But the subject of our today’s post is about another Web service called TNX which lets advertisers buy links and thus improve search engine rankings and publisher generate revenue from his site by selling links, but in a different manner with a mission to

Assist website owners in attracting targeted visitors and clients from search engines and relevant websites.
Reduce the dependence on search engines.
Improve quality of the search results for those websites that join TNX system.
Increase the income of every webmaster who joins TNX system.
The working

TNX combines the benefits of Contextual Advertising, Text Link Brokers and Relevant Exchange of permanent non-reciprocal text links.
It’s a bit easy to speak these lines but the folks at Tnx have done their best to give the desired results. Search Engines like Google want high quality relevant back links for higher Search engine ratings.

TNX allowes publishers to sell links from each page on their website, and for advertisers it allowes to buy millions of links from other sites in few clicks. TNX is a convenient tool that allowes publishers and advertisers to save time, efforts and money: in just a few minutes you can have thousands of links from hundreds of high quality relevant sites linking to yours.

All links are direct, they are located on main pages and inside pages that are also very important. Ads are displayed mostly on well-noticeable spots so they can attract visitors.
The system can be used to promote main page of the advertiser's site as well as inside pages.
Site publishers can not only use TNX.net to earn money, they can also use it to promote own websites by taking advantage of our system as an advertiser (balance in the system is unified).

The point system
TNX is probably the first monetizing web site using the point system.Its a very complex , so I tried sorting out a bit.
If you are an advertiser, you can buy 20,000 points with 20$ (1,000points = 1$)
With these 20,000 points you can buy static links for a month on (subject to availability)
- 20 000 different PR0 pages from different websites (1point/link)
- 400 different PR1 pages from different websites (50points/link)
- 200 different PR2 pages from different websites (100 points/link)
- 100 different PR3 pages from different websites (200points/link)
- 40 different PR4 pages from different websites (500points/link)
- 20 different PR5 pages from different websites (1,000points/link)

Lets take, you have a got a PR 3 blog and Want to sell 5 of its links. Selling it directly to advertisers would require a lot of effort and luck too.Instead,you will get 1000 points /month in your account . Then you have got a choice, buy targeted links from other sites with the points you earned or sell the points to Tnx itself. The price for 1000 points is 0.63 $ currently but it has an weekly inflation of 2 % .So far you earned only 0.63 $ for the links but here, the key lies here:

The Bonuses
For whatever site you sign up and get approved, you’ll get 7000 points as a bonus if you signup now.Now, head off to the DP forums post, paste your ID and get 2,000 more points in your account.Note:Offer for a limited period.

Which makes the tally:1,000 + 7,000 + 2,000 = 10,000 points = 6.3 $
An Impressive 6.3 dollars by no extra efforts

A newly launched affiliate program is just as interesting...
When you bring a new webmaster to the system, you will receive 13.3% of all "TNX-points", he/she will earn in the future (a reward for referring an advertiser is also available). This amounts to almost half of the system's commission! Interest is paid for the lifetime.

Example: When you refer a webmaster to TNX and advertiser pays 100 TNX-Points for a link on your referral's website, your referral (webmaster) gets 75 points and you get 10 points which is 13.3% of his income.No bans , no restrictions, No over changes makes this program a stand out.Text Link Ads referral is a high paying one but how many advertisers/publishers get approved in it to bring you the commission? For me, 1 out of 100* referrals of Text Link Ads gets approved.Google AdSense has some restrictions over promoting the referral products.This program has much scope from the referral point of view for bloggers which doesn't has a wide influential audience.

Its good that they have worked on the minimum site requirements page so that Webmasters can come to know how to increase their chances of getting approved.

In addition to the criteria (number of visitors, PR) we also look at the following:

- site’s idea. There is a huge number of sites in the Internet, and each of them was created for a certain purpose. We want the sites participating in our network to be created for people and not for search bots.
- design, navigation simplicity. We would rather accept a site with plain white background without any graphics rather than a site with irritating composition of sharp colors, blinking banners and dozens of buttons on pages.

- actual and unique content – is the main criteria for an Internet project’s success. Without it the site will become invisible for search engines that might decide that it’s just a mirror of another site.
- domain name. The best names are resonant and short, easily rememberable. We prefer second level domains COM, NET etc.
- site’s theme. We do not welcome entertainment-erotic sites, sites about earnings, pyramids, etc.
- lack of forbidden methods of promotion of site in search engines (for example, link bank, because search engines can delete such sites at any time as soon as they find a violation).

Security:This site wins it here.Google is strictly against paid reviews, and if you perform a quick site search on Google with ReviewMe.com for lets take John Chow Dot Com, you'll see the inventory right in the search results.Once you are caught by a Googler, you are the next John chow.TNX doesn't reveal all details of the link selling site to the advertisers , so now the Webmasters can sleep freely

Tip for TNX owners:Give ready made widgets that are compatible with most of the blogging platforms as of current Php, only supported by Wordpress is mandatory.

Conclusion:TNX system has tried to innovate the Link Buying /Selling market.A service newly launched and has got 27,646 users already.If you want to earn some bucks by selling links, are lazy, fear of Google, don't get direct advertisers then TNX is the right choice for your blog

Sign up for TNX

Is Google facing Hacking Threat?

2007-10-07T15:34:00.000+05:30

The big G seems to have landed under trouble.My newspaper daily, Times Of India reported that Picasa, Gmail, Blogger and the search engine itself are vulnerable.Indian Computer Emergency Response team has warned users against a virus called "googbot"

It has been observed that a mass-mailing worm named Googbot is circulating in the wild. It propagates by exploiting software vulnerabilities.
The worm has its own SMTP engine to send mass e-mails. It harvests the e-mail addresses from the infected system and sends malicious e-mails to the collected addresses. The e-mail body contains a malicious link which entice the users to click upon using social engineering technique.
The e-mail contains the following :

Subject : (any of the following)

Someone has sent you a Private Message!
You have just recieved a NEW message!
You have (1) NEW messages!

Body : (any of the following)

You have just recieved a new Google Message!
You can view your message here: http://www.google.com/gmsgid=4289472
Note: If you do not already have Google Message Viewer installed, you will be prompted to install it.

Sounds interesting doesn't it? But they have a valid reason .I use Gmail,Blogger and Adsense daily and if these services are hacked, I'm gone!
And to add Google AdSense website has gone down at around 10:30am GMT today.Neither the AdSense blog nor the Official Google Blog has any detail of it

Thanks Amit for a great post on How to backup your blogger blog which has helped me to deal with this situation

How many jackpots does your inbox win everyday?

2007-10-01T21:22:00.000+05:30

They are OK in the SPAM section but what will you do if you win millions or maybe even more than that twice or thrice a day.As a normal blogger, I've left my email address at countless places causing automated messages to be sent directly into the inbox.You cannot do anything instead of reporting as Spam but that won't be much effective as such SPAMMERS can riddle the basic algorithm

Basic Characteristics of Such Emails

Text would be bold and capitalized
Urgent Claim required
Fake Email IDs
Reply to different email address than the one which actually sent that message
Your information such as Name,Address,Age,Contact Number,Age,Occupation,Nationality required

What next?
I took up the challenge and did as directed.Not to mention, I gave all false information.Then their Email came saying that my money is in ***** Bank with **** Account number.As a security, they would be requiring some money (they asked for 4,000$) for smooth transaction.Their intentions were clear.They had just found a fish in a trap but I was smart enough to deal with the situation.I said, I first wanted to meet them somewhere in my country where I will give all cash.They haven't replied yet nor I'm expecting it.

A fooled fish
In my daily newspaper,Times Of India, I read about person who assumed that he had one a million $ lottery and did as directed.He also deposited the amount required in the bank.But he never received his lottery.

Fortunately, he acted at the right time and involved the judiciary in it and the Spammer who is a Nigerian is behind the bars now.

The best option when you receive such emails is to simple ignore them and remember at no cost give them your private info.(I wonder how these many people are running after money blindly)

Hold on, I just won 170,000$, how about a trip to space? :)

Site Report For September

2007-10-01T18:38:00.001+05:30

Its the first month after holidays, but with a day less.So here's my site report

Statistics

We got 10,486 pageviews according to analytics by 7,289 visitors.Interestingly Adsense Dashboard says we got 11,140 pageviews while statcounter says we got 9,000 pageviews!

Google Organic Search continues to dominate the referring source while most visitors were from United States and were after Templates!

We have done pretty well in Technorati as we currently rank #400

Blog Income Report
Adsense :31$
Test Link Ads :25$
Template business :20$
Kontera :1$ (lolz)

Which adds upto 77$.Ther has been a certain dip from the previous income report reason being I have removed 2 Adsense Ad units.Adsense has displayed consistence performance while I managed to refer one advertiser to the TLA network.I have done 2 design makeovers 15$ and 5$ respectively.While Kontera has been a poor perfomer.

I am thinking of removing Kontera from this site, its making the things confusing.I have temporarily removed the Advertiseing Link for I think it requires some proper attention.

New Feature : Last night, I added a new feature called as Table Of Contents in which you'll see all posts published on this weblog on simply clicking a link.Its using API so the list would be listed on the same page.You can also toggle between Post Date,Labels and Post Title.The Table Of contents Link is visible in the right sidebar.

Best online tool to relax your mind

2007-09-30T14:24:00.000+05:30

While stumbling upon, I noticed a very nice little tool, so I thought to blog about it.Shark Break is simple online javascript & a funny tool, which helps your mind to relax.Before coming across this site, I was designing a web template and it had some little css error that was making the whole site looking crap.My mind was irritated.I was about to throw my monitor in the dustbin when a thought of stumbling struck my mind.First few sites were spam, this was the third one.Believe me, it is a very simple tool but it will definitely bring smile on your face and let your evil mind relax.

It also has a mini version that can be integrated in social sites like Orkut, and even blogs.Just try out the mini version below!

www.SharkBreak.com

View Alexa Traffic graph for any rank

2007-09-29T22:52:00.000+05:30

Alexa data is still being used at many money making places like Text Link Ads, Review Me,Sponsored Reviews and so on.Alexa shows only graphs for those sites which rank above 100,000 (means any site below 100,000).Getting into top 100,000 is a quite difficult & time consuming process as Alexa calculates using an average of last 6 months.

The current numbers for Webtalks are 231,570.All I used to see when I visited the Alexa site was this embarrassing graph

I did a bit of experimentation with my evil mind, and here I come up with a simple trick.
Goto your Alexa traffic graphs page (you can use mine).Then compare your site with another site of a nearby Alexa rank.For instance, I took Techzilo.com .Enjoy your Graph!

Related:Increase your Alexa Rank

Review of a Review Site

2007-09-29T16:00:00.000+05:30

I was a bit surprised to see a Review Me review application (I normally receive from sponsored posts & smorty).Coming back to the review, this review is about another review site called Online casino blue book which has reviews on Top 10 Online Casino Sites.Being inexperienced in Casino business,I will review the field in which I am good at

Design

The Webmaster I think, has used Macromedia Dreamweaver for designing this site.It has a simple all text design.I think a site of this kind needs a design makeover from a quality Web Designer.There are few cheap ones out there.They may also consult a Logo designer as there present logo is of text and a such a wide used site requires to have its own trademarks.The above screenshot has been took by using Mozilla Firefox.However the border colors change while in IE.Why so? 40% net suers are using Firefox.The Firefox/IE problem would be for sure solved by a good designer

Organization
This website loses it here also.I can see 4 links from the homepage pointing towards the contact page which creates a 'mess' on the homepage.Adding to this, there is a huge sidebar 'blue' space in the center of the sidebar from the Inter Casino banner.I was pretty satisfied to see a HTML site map at least.

Miscellaneous
This site has some loose ends.There are many spelling errors and few pages haven't been updated yet.For example, the homepage footer consists of a statement " Please read are casino Disclaimer and Privacy Policy."Some pages still contain 2006 copyright message

Popularity
This site has a good amount of links pointing towards it.
Google:2,3450 but,
Alexa Rank:779,237
Seeing the huge difference in Alexa rank and no. of backlinks,I suspect that few of the links are paid (this one's gonna be added next time)

Online Casino Bluebook has so far reviewed many services out of which Inter Casino has been adjudged the best.

Online Casino Bluebook can be helpful if you want to know & compare gambling sites.This site includes Casino News,Casino Directory,Casino Reviews along with gambling sites.

*This is a Paid Post*

View the best review we had so far...

2007-09-28T22:04:00.000+05:30

Thank you so much Charles Lau for reviewing Webtalks visually and that too free of cost! Charles Lau has an excellent screen casting software called HyperCam 2 with which he reviews the sites.Its really an awesome experience to watch how do my visitors behave when they visit the blog.Enjoy the 10 minutes video below.Infact, this is not the end he must have spent long time typing about Webtalks too, roughly about 400 words.To be frank, even I couldn't have done it that well.

Jealous? Your blog too can have a decent video review but you need 10 paypal bucks from Charles.More details
But from my opinion its worth more than that!

We love you Charles Lau!

Make Mooney Online

2007-09-27T22:39:00.000+05:30

Ever visited John Cow dot com ? What I say about them is that they are creative instead of a ripper.Just because of there creativity, they were featured on many high profile blogs like the link building blog. Now you got the reason why, all successful make money online blogs have evil marketings behind them...

One more interesting fact is that this is the first blog that I read ahead of John chow dot com and infact I am writing this post ahead of the review of john chow dot com for winning A LCD monitor.Sounds good.eh?

John Cow is a blog on making money online and rank #29 in the top 100 make money online blogs without any PR!

Actually this post is for an entry into their $500 cash giveaway contest whose deadline is the end of September.If you too are interested in earning big bucks you only have to write a post of 200 words like this one, link to micfo.com with the anchor tag Web Hosting,and a link back to the contest post.

Thats real Making Money Online!

What will I do with the amount?

If I somehow get that cash, I'll save it. I have a target of buying a notebook (Laptop) for myself within a few months with my blog income. I currently work on a HP pavilion out of date computer and would be really happy if I can myself a Laptop with the money I earn online.

#1(10$) I'll register myself a beautiful .com domain.A sub domain turns away most advertisers so I think a 10$ unique domain will be much more advertiser friendly.Not to mention , I've thought of cow friendly address. Moogulmakingmooney.com

#2(30$) I'll buy a premium Web Hosting Plan for the next two years and set up a self hosted blog there.I really need one! Blogger has limited features...Wordpress themes will let me add the moo flavor in it.

#3(100$) A million Euro Wiki page please!Its getting popular and I'm in the race for the ***** keyword(why shall I tell you the keyword?)

#4(250$) I'll be one of the sponsors of John Cow dot com.To get targeted cows in my farm

#6(3$) Fresh & Healthy Daily Milk for me.John Cow exclusive

#7(100$) Get myself a cheap design makeover with the cow touch.

#8(7$) Set up a 'moo-welfare association' for encouraging sites to be cow friendly and we'll send them traffic!

John Cow dot com recently went under a design makeover and what I said after viewing it for the first time- "Moo-lah" .The Mad Cow effect!

Did you miss the action? I did...

2007-09-27T15:06:00.000+05:30

Over the past few days, our blog went without any updates, reason is I had few exams on head.Now, they are over but I'm expecting more of them soon.Incase you missed out, I'll just summarize what happened in the blogosphere in the last few days.

Google adsense have anounced Adsense for mobile.A very useful feature for those websites who won't to monetize the mobile version of their website.I've not started yet with Adsense for Mobile because I am already using Feedm8 services to monetize the mobile version of Webtalks.
Google Adsense have also anounced Google Gadget Ads.It goes just like video Ads.For that you need an advertiser whose using Google Gadget Ads feature with Adwords.Don't forget to enable image ads option.
Yahoo bought Zimbra... Lots of cash involved
John Cow, have launched a MillionEuroWiki similar to MillionDollarWiki on their success and look what, they 've already sold 25 pages.Now how about a MillionRupeeWiki ?Don't forget to have a look on their design.
Natewhitehill's busy designing blogs and has already earned well over 13,000$ after the John Chow redesign.Wow!
Google have added a feature of slides in Google Docs.Simple but useful.

I try to deliver the best content to you, so it maybe that I'm not able to update this blog for a while.Make sure you have our RSS feeds to keep in touch

Keyword Targeting- Patience & Planning

2007-09-15T22:25:00.000+05:30

My Blog offers some blogger templates. I had included a link back to this blog so that visitors can know from where the template has been downloaded. The good reason, the page had a good SERP rating so my templates are being used at many blogs.Some of them are having high PR's. A thought about keyword targeting struck my mind when I saw my blog reactions in Technorati.First, I included a link back to the template post with different keywords on different templates.I got the keywords from the Google results itself for "blogger templates" .

There are some other good sites targeting :"blogger templates" , to knock them of in the first page was quite a difficult task.So I started with smaller keywords like "new blogger templates" , "blogspot templates" & "3 column blogger templates".It took time for my post to get a decent ranking even with some 400 back links to the post itself.I also changes the default from "Download three column new blogger templates" to "New Blogger (XML) 3 column templates.The reason is here

Over the past few days, I have experienced a lot of Google DanceLast month I cracked into the first page result & mind you, it wasn't an easy task.2 weeks before this post got an ranking of #1 for term "new blogger templates".But the Google dance continued.We slipped from#1 to #2 and as I write this post, I saw it at the third place.But believe me, I have taken over some reall biggies like stopdesign.com {PR8} & blogger-templates.blogspot.com {PR6.Technorati Rank #4}.

As we all know Pagerank is continuously being changed and its only history that we see in the Google toolbar, does this give a hint where the template post would be in terms of PR? I am keeping my fingers crossed...

Make Money Online with Webtalks!

Not all blogs get some really good back links.I have included the keyword "Webtalks" for the homepage of the blog and I rank #1 for it{At some bad times, I slip to #2}.Webtalks itself makes no sense{if it does, I don't know what it is}I just wanted to keep the title easy.With the Blogger Title hack , I changed it to Webtalks-Blogging,Online Money Making,Tech tips. But that too was a waste.Now I'm thinking of the ever popular "Make Money Online" keyword.So in your next visit to this blog, don't be surprised to see the title "Make Money Online".Cool isn't it?

Points to be kept in mind while keyword targeting

If you get lots of links with the same keyword.You may rank better in Google.Because Yahoo & Live Search takes take domain age into consideration.

Don't Google Bomb.Be slow but efficient.
Google will also take some time to give you an appropriate rank.Till then,experience the Google Dance.
Before choosing a keyword, just go through Google Trends to find out whether the number of queries are enough
The title of the page dominates the SE ranking.

So which Keyword are you targeting?

Are you Addicted to Blogging?

2007-09-14T19:25:00.000+05:30

Recently a special show on NDTV attracted my mind.The topic was about Internet Addiction.Wikipedia defines Internet Addiction as

A pattern of internet use, leading to clinically significant impairment or distress as manifested by three of the following occurring at any time in the same 12-month period: -1- tolerance, -2- withdrawal, -3- internet is often accessed more often or longer than intended, -4- there is a persistent desire or unsuccessful effort to cut down or control internet use, -5- a great deal of time is spent in activities related to Internet use, -6- Frequent talks about the Internet in daily life, -7- important family, social, occupational, or recreational activities are given up or reduced (3).

Some people are addicted to IM services, some others are addicted to social networking sites like orkut & mypsace.Some love sharing emails while some can't live without Youtube videos.Some run after Internet Gaming.And many of them love blogging & reading blogs.

Blogging till a hobby is alright.When you'll be involved in blogging, you'll automatically have some dreams about posts & what would be new tomorrow.Such people {leaving full time bloggers} can't even live a day without it.It has become their habit to surf for long hours on the net. Reasons, they ignore environment, your health & families.You can take yourself's a test of blogging addiction by answering to some simple questions.The results may be scary.

Here are my results...

60%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Mingle²

How to get rid of this Addiction ?

From my experience,I believe taking a holiday without laptops or mobiles and enjoying the outside world is a must for such people.Spending time with your families can also reduce your stress.

But My Blog Traffic, Feed Count will go down.

I don't say that you permanently go to long vacation (until you desperately require one).Leave a minimum gap of one day between your pervious blog update & the next one.

What I can say,is that if your content is original & interesting, nobody would un subscribe your feed.By changing your posting frequency, you will give appropriate time for your posts to be on the homepage which may be useful for SE indexing, and also may be visitor magnets.

If you are really addicted to internet, one day will come when you'll have one friend & one family, your PC.

Feedvertise on a blogger blog

2007-09-11T19:31:00.002+05:30

You can easily sell off RSS ads if you are using self hosted Wordpress by Feedvertising program of Text Link Ads or can directly sell some text links in the your post bottom if you have got a wide RSS audience with a plugin.

Blogger too has got a similar feature but involves a game playing with it.You need to go to Settings > Site Feed > Feed Item footer .And add the desired HTML in the Feed Item footer text area.Remember to redirect your feed to feedburner, enable post pages and a full site feed.

You can also add Adsense for Feeds code here if you are participating in it.Remember Adsense for content and Referrals ads will not show up using this trick.

This method can also be used as a copyrights measure

I have added a copyright message which includes a link back to this blog from where Technorati reactions tracker could be used.

The copyright text is shown up in feed.

And the the person who used my site feed to put the exact content is caught using the technorati tracker.I have visited and flagged the blog.Hope, Blogger tem takes an action soon so that visitors get information from original source.