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.
Monday, June 2, 2008
The Return of My Blog Log
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.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Disable Copy and paste
Thinking of a way to make it more difficult for people to copy the contents of your blog? Here's a neat little JavaScript that will disable Copy and Paste.
<!-- Disable Copy and Paste-->
<script language='JavaScript1.2'>
function disableselect(e){
return false
}
function reEnable(){
return true
}
document.onselectstart=new Function ("return false")
if (window.sidebar){
document.onmousedown=disableselect
document.onclick=reEnable
}
</script>
Insert the code between the <head> and </head> tag.
However, there is no guarantee way to prevent your contents from being stolen.The JavaScript above can be easily bypassed by an experience internet user. E.g. If the browser's JavaScript is disabled, the code will not work.An alternative way to protect your work is to use Copyscape. You can read more about it here.
Monday, June 11, 2007
My Blog Log (Mon 11 June 2007)
Been a pretty busy week. I have finally set up My Personal Finance Blog. Traffic is pretty ok. I get about 50 unique visitors a day. On top of my tracking my own finance, I hope to provide more information on everyday financial products, stocks and investments. I have contacted a few like-minded bloggers and has obtained permission from them to post their articles in my blog.
I have added Nuffnang ads into my finance blog so that I can do a comparison between Nuffnang and Advertlets. One difference that I have discovered is that you must put your Nuffnang ads in specific areas of your site. It takes a longer time to load and I think it looks really horrible on my finance blog. I will decide weather to take it down only after I receive the amount Nuffnang will pay me - that will take a week.
I also started on another few sites.
The Best Of Clickbank
The Worst Of Clickbank
Men's Fashion Blog
While I would like to concentrate on all of them, time permits me to only concentrate on a few. I'm not going to sacrifice quality for quantity.
Recommended: Super Affiliate Handbook.
Creating A Blog Poll
Creating a poll in your blog is a good way to generate views and opinions for your blog or a particular question. This works well especially for readers who do not like to be identified or find it a hassle to leave a comment. Here are a few popular free blog polls that I have personally tried. Free free to add on if it is not listed here.
blogpoll
If you do a search for "free blog poll" in Google, blogpoll is listed number one. It's not difficult to understand why - no registration needed and a simple and user-friendly interface (3 simple steps and you are done). However I did not use this in as I had some problems in blending the design to my blog.
polldaddy
It has a very sleek webpage as compared to the others. What makes it unique is that they can create your own custom style (using html) or choose among the 14 (as of 11 June '07) different designs (polldaddy call it skins). It even has a RSS feed for your poll and offers a poll in flash. I had a problem adjusting the column width and I only realized recently that I have to edit the html code. Customization may be a little difficult but definitely an interesting prospect for the future.
blogflux poll
The poll that I'm currently using for my personal finance blog. It does not have as much features as poll daddy but it doesn't offer something interesting - a map of where your voters came from. It can be a useful tracking tool.
bloggaries
I have not tried this but if you interested in setting up a poll in a single page, this is the one for you.
BlogPolls.com
Not to be confused with blogpoll. This will be of particular interest to monetizing bloggers' - When your readers vote, they’ll see the results where you placed a banner ad (such as BlogAds), or a network banner ad (such as Google Adsense). However, I strongly recommend that you check with the respective advertisers if it comply with their terms of service before putting them in your blog.
Which blog poll to use depends on your preference, if you want something simple and straight forward, blogpoll is the one for you. If you want a something extra, you can choose between polldaddy and blogflux poll and if you want to have more ad space, you can try BlogPolls.
Recommended: Online Survey Software for Online Business
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Copyright Explained
I have been blogging for sometime now and have come across many interesting articles. I know that copyright laws forbid me from using any of them but yet I have seen many blogs and sites posting exactly the same articles. Is there a loop hole in somewhere?
Not wanting to break any copyright laws, I read up further and uncovered several interesting facts.
“Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information. At its most general, it is literally "the right to copy" an original creation.”
Wikipedia
“If I don’t see a copyright notice, it means I am free to use them.”
No. This is the most common misconception and I myself thought so too. Base on Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic, every new work created will automatically be copyrighted, even if you there is no copyright notice. The Berne Convention is the de facto standard of Intellectual Property and many countries have adopted it. You can check if your country is included here.
“How much of someone else's work can I use without getting permission?”
Under the fair use doctrine of the U.S. copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work including quotes, for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting, and scholarly reports. There are no legal rules permitting the use of a specific number of words, a certain number of musical notes, or percentage of a work. Whether a particular use qualifies as fair use depends on all the circumstances.
“Can I change someone else’s work and claim it as my own?”
No. Only the owner of copyright in a work has the right to prepare, or to authorize someone else to create, a new version of that work. Accordingly, you cannot claim copyright to another's work, no matter how much you change it, unless you have the owner's consent. See Circular 14, Copyright Registration for Derivative Works.
“Emails sent to me are mine and I am free to use them."
Wrong. The email that you receive is intended for you only and not to the general public. If you receive stock reports like I do, there will always be a copyright notice at the end of the email. With that said, I do not think that anyone will be crazy enough to sue you if you were to forward or post an ordinary email message of no commercial value.
The information is from the United States Copyright Office and is generally free to publish.
Further Reading: 10 Big Myths about copyright explained, What is Copyright protection?
There will be many other questions like “I’ll be fine if I give credit to the author”, “I’m not charging anyone for the article”, “The internet is free, hence everything in it” etc, but as a general rule of thumb, always assume that everything is copyrighted unless stated. If you are still unsure on what is allowed and what is not, ask the author or publisher.
Recommended: Email Promos Exposed.
