Hi Mr. Decarn, I'm Jeanette from SocialMatic Team. I'm pleased to inform you that your site http://myblog-log.blogspot.com/ had been featured and submitted to SocialMatic.com. Your site was submitted for the useful and interesting contents that you have posted at your site, and we would like to share it with other users online through SocialMatic. SocialMatic is a Social Bookmarking site which not only allows users to submit and share their bookmarks but also help them to submit their bookmarks to 13 more popular bookmarking sites. In another words, it actually help to drive more traffic and exposure for your site, and save your time from submitting to other social bookmarking site. Hence, I would like to invite you to join SocialMatic Network for free. Therefore, do visit www.SocialMatic.com to find out more about us, and sign up a free SocialMatic account to join the SocialMatic network. Feel free to contact us if you have any doubts or question by sending a mail to Socialmatic.team@gmail.com and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Hope you to hear from you soon. Thank You for your time. Yours sincerely, Ms. Jeanette Tan Marketing Executive, Team SocialMatic Submit To 13 Over Social Bookmarking With SocialMatic Today!
In my post last week, I talk about SocialMatic who claimed that they have added my blog into their site but till now I still could not find it in their site. The funny thing is that when I first replied thanking them for my blog inclusion, they replied in 3 days. However when I query about not being able to find my site, they become silent for almost 2 weeks. Hence, I can easily say that SocialMatic is a dud. I have pasted their email to me. I wonder how many people receive the same email and not have their sites included.
Sign Up For Your FREE account at www.SocialMatic.com
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Update on SocialMatic
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
PremiumThemes.net Contest
I guess it must be pretty weird for a premium wordpress theme to be feature on a blogger platform but to me it doesn't really matter because everyone benefits - the owner gets more exposure, I stand a chance to win a theme for my finance site and the readers get to know of a quality site that sells wordpress theme.
Get a free copy of any Premium Theme
As a part of the promotion of more than 25 themes listed on this site, I am glad to announce a competition wherein the winner will be given a free copy of any theme of his/her choice, listed on this site. Here’s the quick details.
What’s the competition/rules? : To win, all you have to do is, to post an article in your website letting your users know about the PremiumThemes.net website (feel free to include the picture above) and post that link here in the comments of this post. Your site could be on any topic, in any language. It doesn’t matter. Once done, please don’t forget to post that link in the comments below.
Prize on offer: The winner will get personal version of any theme of his/her choice listed on this website.
When the results will be announced? : The competition will be open from June 1, the winner (chosen randomly) will be announced on June 30, 2008 .
So, what are you waiting for? Get started now.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Content Architecture
I was talking to my friend who's a web designer on revamping my finance website - http://thefinance.sg. Besides improving on my layout, she shared with me on what else I should do.
Step 1: Content Architecture
This means re-organizing my information and links. As I'm using the older wordpress version, migration might be a problem if the information is not organized properly.
Step 2: Information Architecture
I currently have about 20 categories in my finance website which is too many. I need to reduce that further. In addition, I will have to re-label my categories into something more 'user-friendly'.
Step 3: creating wireframes
This will also set a structure for my friend to start on my blog's design. Most importantly, it sets the content and the way that it is presented and how my displayed content can retain my readers and authors.
Last Step
Designing my blog according to step 2 & 3.
While I'm always constantly searching for good content/authors and link exchange, I will have to firm up my internal stuff first. Building a solid and reputable web presence is important to attract and retain both readers and authors.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Think again before you dump your old blog
I was comparing My Blog Log's traffic statistics when I was actively blogging against the time I was non-active and the results were very surprising.
My first blog entry was in 22 May 2007 My traffic hit a peak in June 2007 partly because I was actively promoting my site. Traffic begin to decline thereafter as I updated my blog less frequently before completely stopping on 9 October 2007. This results were expected. However, I have expected my traffic to fall even further after October but to my surprised, it actually begin to increase steadily.
I did a quick calculation: during my active period from May 07 to Sep 07, I had a monthly average of 375 page views and 284 unique visitors. During my non-active period from Oct 08 to May 08, my monthly average page views and unique visitors are 371 and 304 respectively. While The number of returning visitors drop, the page views remain constant but the number of unique visitors actually rises!
This made me ponder. There must be something in my blog that I'm actually doing right. As of now, a smart guess is my URL (it is very similar to the mybloglog social bookmarking website) and the other could be some of my articles must be really sort after. I will have to investigate further but a simple manner to identify my most popular posts is to check how many comments I received.
If you have any old blogs that you have been neglecting for a long time or simply forgotten about them, my advice is to dig them out and take a look at them. It won't take you much time or effort but the results in discovering a gem among them is priceless.
And if that isn't enough incentive for you, here's my current page rank now. :)
Monday, June 2, 2008
The Return of My Blog Log
It has been 8 months since I last updated My Blog Log and I have almost given it up for dead. However, out of the blue I received an email from a social bookmarking site - SocialMatic that my site has been featured. Naturally, I was dubious. How can a blog that has been stagnant for 8 months be suddenly featured in a website? I visited SocialMatic and my doubts were proven true.
On first look, the website is littered with Google Ads and the all familiar box asking you for your name and email address. It's not difficult to guess that it's just another site trying to squeeze as much advertising money as possible. I did a search for my site and I couldn't find it. Before jumping to any conclusions, I'm waiting for Jeanette (from SocialMatic Team who notify me on the inclusion of my site) reply for the URL link that shows my site.
While registering for an account, the site seems distinctively local. It's not hard for a Singaporean to spot his fellow country man and I decided to do a quick check. The results were right. SocialMatic is registered in Singapore under the name Alvin Phang. If you have not heard of him, simply do a quick search on his name. Hats off to him, Google rank him #1.
It's getting obvious that SocialMatic is nothing more than another tool for Alvin to make more money online. I've nothing against SocialMatic since my blog is also about making money online. In fact I'm pleased that he's probably one of the first few locals to start a site like this. However, the presentation of his site and the manner in which I was contacted makes me feel that he is more interested in making as much money as possible rather than building a quality site that can really help improve bloggers' traffic. Nevertheless, I will still like to thank SocialMatic for rekindling my interest in this blog.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
My BlogRush Account
I got my BlogRush account approve within 48hrs.
Below is an abstract of their email to me.* We have already rejected a lot
Sounds like boasting to me but I do believe that many blogs have registered to be part of BlogRush network. "Free" is indeed a very attractive factor.
of blogs (several thousand) that do
not meet our strict quality guidelines
and we will continue to enforce our
detailed criteria in order to protect the
integrity of our network.
Some comments:
- Their Dashboard is still under construction.
- I tried clicking on the links in BlogRush and some of them took a very long time to load - maybe its a sign that that the site is swarming with traffic or that there's a problem with BlogRush.
- As for the relevancy, it's still alright but I'm beginning to think that BlogRush uses the Blog Category that you select rather than your content for matching.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
BlogRush
Everyone has been talking about Blog Rush - a FREE service that will enable your blog to reach out to a wider range of audience never before possible. It may sounds too good to be true but since it's free, I've nothing to lose. I have just registered for My Personal Finance blog and I should be hearing from them within 48hrs.
Below are some tips for Using BlogRush to Generate Traffic for Your Blog. (Courtesy of ProBlogger)
1. Optimize Your Titles - there are a number of things that will increase the chances of getting someone to click on a link appearing in someone else’s blog - but the title of your post will be most important. You have around 40 characters only to play with (before the widget cuts off your title) so think carefully about what you’re communicating about your post - particular in the first few words.
2. Choose the Right Category for Your Blog - when you sign up you’re given a list of categories to assign your blog to. My hope is that BlogRush will add more (as the more focused they become the more relevant ads will be). If your blog spans a couple of categories run with one for a few days and then swap to the other. I suspect that some categories will out perform others significantly due to the type of readers that they have and their tech savvyness.
3. Promote it Early on - this system is one that will be most beneficial to early adopters. While some are already spamming their referral links out to other bloggers via mass emails - one way to promote it and possibly pick up a few extra referrals is simply to place it in a reasonably prominent position on your blog and even to draw attention to it in a post. If some of your readers have blogs they’re likely to check it out too - which will exponentially increase the benefits for you. Just be aware that if you get spammy with your promotion of this (or any) service you could actually do more harm than good to your blog.
Like the author, I suspect that BlogRush will be using more of the title then your content to match the relevancy to your blog. It's still in its beta stage and is too early to say how good it is. I believe BlogRush future plans may to add in Ads or some form of affiliate marketing.
Kontera ContentLink
A wonderful opportunity from John Chow to allow smaller blogs to have another channel to make money online. I'm giving it a shot and I hope I my My Personal Finance Blog will be accepted.
Kontera ContentLink
Abstracted from John Chow's blog.
Kontera ContentLink allows you to make money from advertising without giving up any current advertising spots. Their technology reads your post and turns certain words into an ad. The highlighted words are double underline and an ad pops up when you hover over it. Normally Kontera requires a site have a minimum 500,000 page views per month before being accepted into the program. However, I have a partnership with Kontera that will allow smaller blogs to use their ContentLink service.
Fill out the application and enter “John Chow Kontera partnership” into the Comments field. The application is sent to my personal account representative. He will approve you based on your blog content and not your traffic level. This is a great way to use a service that is normally only available to high traffic sites.
Sign up for Kontera with John Chow
My First AdSense pay check
My first paycheck earned through the internet. Not much but nevertheless a little reward for my work and more importantly spur me on to greater things. I will be setting up a forum and maybe moving my blog to a web host. It has also been a long time since I last visited blogcatalog, mybloglog and other social networking sites. It's time for me to pay them a visit.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Google AdSense - Creating Custom Channels
When I first started with AdSense, my plan was simple. I will put the maximum number of ads allowed base on the "heat map". However, I'm beginning to wonder which of my ads are my main money makers and which ads are making the least if not nothing at all. Another reason is the introduction of referrals - I would like to know where is the best placement for them.
Channels ain't new but many like myself usually do not use them. The main reason I feel is that we are too focus in driving traffic to our sites - more traffic means more clicks on our ads. However, this may not necessary be true. I have come across sites with low traffic count with equally impressive ad earnings.
Creating Custom Channels
The following is extracted from Google AdSense Help but I customize it to my own requirements. You can refer to the original post here.
Scenario: I have a site on personal finance. My homepage currently has three ad units and two link units, and I want to find out which of the units is performing most effectively. To do so, I'll create a separate custom channel for each of the five units to monitor their performance.
Creating and implementing custom channels requires a more involved process than that for URL channels. No worries - we'll show you how to create custom channels in 4 easy steps:
- Start off by logging in to your account and clicking the AdSense Setup tab, followed by the Channels link. For this scenario, we'll be looking at AdSense for content custom channels, so make sure you're on the right product and channel subtab. Then click the Add new custom channel.
- The next step is naming your channels.
It's important to be precise and consistent when naming custom channels. The more information you provide in the name about where and how the ad unit is being used, the easier it will be to identify later, when you're generating your channels reports. (*Note that you are allowed only 30 characters for the naming convention).
For the example used here, I used names like:- MyPF_Left_160x600_#eeeecc
- MyPF_MiddleTop_480x60_#eeeecc
- MyPF_Middle_300x250_#eeeecc
- MyPF_Top_728x15_#335577
- MyPF_Right_200x90_#558866
- Now you can create your channel-specific ad code. Once your names are in place, click the AdSense Setup tab, then choose AdSense for content as the product.
Continue to choose the ad type, ad format, and color palette as you would normally, then in the Channels section, select the name of the channel(s) you'd like to add by clicking the Add>> link (you can add up to 5),
and click Continue to see your choices reflected in the ad layout code.
- Finally, you'll copy-and-paste the code into your webpages. The channel identifier within your code will immediately begin tracking performance. If you already have ad code on these pages, you should replace it with the new channel-specific code.
Repeat the process for each of the ad units you'd like to track.
You'll notice that all of these names follow the pattern Blog Name+Location+Ad Format+Color Palette. This is a pattern I've found useful, but feel free to use whichever method works best for you. You will also notice a "Show this channel to advertisers as an ad placement " - I will skip this for now until I have read up more about it.
Enter the channel names into the new channel box and click Add channels.
I will give myself 1 week to collect the relevant data and will do a post on generating channel reports.