Out from the depths
Being a WordPress SEO student has been the cause of much joy in my life. I also find that it consumes a lot of my life as well. I have had so many projects the last year, including an international move. Things were nutty. They still are, as I have added photography to my list of hobbies that I want to master.
I also have a dark secret to admit….
I
Have
Been
Using
Drupal.
There. I said it. Drupal is the main CMS for any larger community oriented sites I have created. They seem to take a lot of time to police as well so that equals less time for WordPress blogs.
Some current projects I am involved in are:
North Carolina Real Estate
Water Front Homes
Long Island Photo Blog
Fire Fox and Youtube Mulitiple Video Uploader Problem
Since the upgrade to Firefox 3 a few weeks ago, I haven’t been able to add videos to Youtube anymore. It kept asking for a title and description even though I had entered one. I was stuck with no way out. I did find a solution though. as Internet Explorer had no problems. I installed the IE Tab addon to Firefox, right clicked and switched to IE while still in Firefox, and then re logged into Youtube and voila, problem solved.
sex.asia domain name
I’ll admit it, I am a bit sad today. My golden goose failed to drop even a nugget of love my way. I was informaed today by the domain registrar I applied through that I was rejected in my bid for the www.sex.asia domain name. I was hoping i could hold on to it and make a proud site that I could pass from generation to generation, but alas, my dream is dead. Also, that 40 dollars I spent has been rattling around in their bank account for nearly 8 months, along with the fees from way to many others that were chasing this golden goose. Here is the email, where it doesn’t offer me any option of an auction or anything:
We regret to tell you that SEX.ASIA could not be registered in your name because your application was denied by the registry. Your registration fee will be returned to you in the original form of payment.
We value your business and thank you for choosing GoDaddy.com, Inc. for domain registration. If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to call us at (480) 505-8877 or email us at support@godaddy.com.
Sincerely,
GoDaddy.com, Inc.
Starting a few new projects
Things have been rolling along now. I have had 2 requests for new websites recently so I will be making them as soon as my clients get me the information for the pages. One site is for a new restaurant, and the other is for a yoga center. Links to those pages will be available as soon as the sites are presentable.
Disco Kidz
Unfortunately, the disco kidz website needs to be shelved for a while because of a conflict between the founders of the program in Taiwan. I hope it can get back on its feet. If you visit it now it will show a maintenance page meaning you can’t get inside the site without the proper clearance.
Disco Kidz Taiwan
I have started a new WordPress website for some friends called Disco Kidz. They will be having dance parties in Taipei, Taiwan streap pokertournois poker onlinecomment t?l?charger jeu de pokerpoker en ligne gratuites texasgagner poker en lignetelechargement jeu pokerpoker gratuites macle jeu poker gratuites fran?aisjeu de poker en lignecasino poker texas holdemtelecharger poker comdirect pokercomment jouer o pokerpoker a telecharger gratuitementregle jeu pokerforum poker en lignejouer online poker tourjouer au poker gratuitementjeux gratuites poker texasjeux 7 card studtexas holdem flashpoker comjouer de pokeracheter jeu pokerla r?gle de jeu pokerle poker t?l?chargement gratuitesgagner poker internetpoker gratuites gagnerpoker en ligne 3domaha holdemjouer poker texas holdemworld poker tours,world poker,world championship pokerpoker en ligne sur macpoker ligne gratuitespoker 3dmeilleur jeu pokerpoker en virtuelpoker school onlinepoker en ligne bonustelecharger jeu poker texasworld class pokerapprendre jouer au pokerjouer o poker gratuites7 card stud gratuitesjouer poker omaha gratuitesjeu video poker gratuitesstud poker onlinecomparatif poker onlinejouer poker tour gratuitesjeu poker gratuites mac at bars or discos in the afternoon on some weekends so mom, dad, and the kids can go out and enjoy some music and dance. The biggest issues with this site is getting the theme to work properly with the shopping cart plugin, and also in getting the wp-shopping-cart-3.5.1 plugin to work properly. I think the best option will be to make a shop page directly via Paypal and forget using a middle man (a plugin) to complete the task.
Out of site, out of mind
This site hasn’t been getting the attention it deserves lately, as I have started another project that uses Drupal as its CMS. I will be starting another Wordpress blog though soon for a friend, and will be writing about my experiences with that soon. Until then, hang tight and have fun blogging.
Increase Your Blogs Pageviews
A friend of mine linked to a slide show in my photo gallery and it became semi popular. The topic was a bit spicy too which didn’t hurt its popularity. I picked up many hits from his site, and many of the redirected visitors were viewing the slide show option on gallery which he had linked to directly. I noticed that my site cracked Alexa’s top 100,000, and the average page views were through the roof at 25.
Wow, this is a nice way to increase your page views, I thought, as each photo counts as one page. It is automated and easy too which is great. The slide show just scrolls them through as many photos as are there before the photos run out or the user quits watching.
If you have or take a lot of photos or even just have some cool photos that get some hits through links on your blog, try linking to the slide show of the album rather than just the gallery image URL or album URL. You will get an increased page view count every time someone clicks on it.
Not posting
I have been in a lull, checking in on the site occasionally to see what the bare minimum I could do to it is. I have lost a little steam as I reapply myself to photography so this site as well as my sports blog have fallen off the radar a little. It is an interesting experiment to see how many people come to this blog based on the past work I have done. I see around 20 – 30 people a day coming in checking out my blogging about Wordpress mainly and widget bucks too, the advertising system that has me kind of pissed off now. I’ll comment more on that later…. So for now, hang tight, and await the next splurge of a zillion posts from me.
Maximize Your Widget Bucks CTR: Lingerie Advertisements
With a little push from my friend at Filination, I have decided to elaborate a little more on my choice for lingerie ads on my therealtaiwan.com site. I felt the original ads that were coming up were a bit off the mark (coffee maker ads), perhaps a bit to do with the age of the service as compared to giants like Google Adsense and the like.
I do however, as many webmasters have found out before me and will find out after me, know that that sex is a big part of the Internet. So, I found while searching Widget Bucks’ widgets that they had lingerie ads with photos of woman wearing the lingerie. I though it was worth a shot as the coffee maker ads were performing poorly. Little did I know, it may be the start of a revolution.
Here is an example of the Lingerie Ads:
The concept of sex selling products is not a new one by any means, but I haven’t found many advertisers willing to put pictures of chicks in maid lingerie outfits in their ads. That is, until now…
What these ads do is two fold. The first thing is they draw attention (which the flashy widgets do in the first place, but a semi nude woman will bring even more attention than say a coffee maker, right?). The second thing is, they procure clicks from men and woman that like to see hot girls in lingerie, and I feel that honestly, if the lingerie is hot enough and the girls are hot enough that they will sell that product. You don’t need to go to the store yourself and browse the racks in a potentially embarrassing situation. You can buy it right off of any Widget Bucks enabled website in the world.
The other side of the coin is that you just get perverts clicking through to see hot chicks wearing lingerie. Either way you look at it though, you are getting clicks and making money on your site. Let’s hope they actually buy some products, just for the sake of continuing a good program.
It has created high CTR rates for Fili’s website (not the site he published the article on), and it has been commented on by another site as well. You should try it out if you haven’t been able to find products that support your niche very well. At the minimum, if you have a site that has decent traffic, you likely can add 5 – 10 dollars a day income on your site(s) and still not be breaking any rules.
You can make the widget by logging into your account and going to the new widget page. Then, after you fill in the other details like the size of the widget, color, name (for record keeping, and the website you will be putting it on) You should search under the You choose a category of products. (e.g. Books ? Non-Fiction) section, then under Clothing and Accessories, and then Women’s Lingerie.
Have you tried Widget Bucks yet? Click here to sign up and let me know what you think. You get a 25$ bonus for signing so you are half way to your first pay out…
I hope this helps you guys. Let me know if it does!
Widget Bucks Complaints
I have been using widget bucks for a little while now, and I have a few complaints that I hope they will address.
Here is a Widget Bucks sample ad:
First, it is so slow to load, and using Firefox 2.0.0.6 it pauses the browser for a few seconds while loading. Everyone surfing the net has varying degrees of patience to wait for things, but we all know the faster the better. They have upgraded their code, and it requires a trip back and remaking your widget, but I honestly haven’t seen much of a difference by doing that.
The second thing is in the statistics they keep. They show a pending Revenue Per Click (RPC) in red that is different than the actual RPC, later shown in black. This keeps you up to date with how many clicks you have received, but the RPC isn’t updated as quickly. For me, this has been occasionally higher, but for the most part, it has been lower than advertised. I think I speak for everyone when I say that we’d like to be shown a lower amount and then get more rather than the opposite. It is always better to be surprised with extra income.
The third thing is a lack of ads for my Taiwan site. Coffee makers are what they choose for my site if I let the MerchSense function crawl my page and automatically put up “relevant” ads. I have it set up with lingerie now so the CTR is higher but the RPC is lower. I hope they will get better ads in the future.
All in all I would recommend Widget Bucks to date. I feel they are woking hard to creat a better program, and they are definitely catchier than other programs. The fact you can use them in conjunction with Adsense make them a wise option as your Adsense Ads will be of higher value, and you will have a cool alternative to make extra cash!
Have you tried Widget BUcks yet? Click here to sign up and let me know what you think. You get a 25$ bonus for signing so you are half way to your first pay out…
PR Update: Google penalizes sites for text link ads
Google has officially taken Page Rank away from sites selling Text Link Ads on their site. This site, however, to the astonishment of myself, has jumped from a PR 0 to a PR 3 after only 2 months of blogging.
My main site, which has 1 Text Link Ad on it was looking good for a jump to a PR 5 from a PR 4 but was bitch slapped to a PR 3. All for $12 a month. Of course that amount fluctuates monthly, but that has been the norm for the last few months. My other sites have remained the same.
The Page Rank purge wasn’t only for sites selling text link ads. Some sites were hit for deserving it, while others are being speculated to being hit for being involved in social bookmarking groups. I haven’t heard enough about that to know, but I do know the advantages of using social bookmarking to drive traffic. When I make a post, the traffic here rises form about 30 visitors for the last 24 hours to about 1- 200 hundred. Not astronomical by any means, but still a substantial increase. Check the sidebar of this site, and see what the Firestats sidebar stat counter has to say when you get here.
What does this mean? It means Google is serious about not letting anyone profit on the transfer of Page Rank through back links selling operations. It really amounts to ca$h. Everyone is signing up for these programs because they pay, and they aren’t paying Google… So, if Page Rank is the drug, and Google is the dealer, is selling text link ads like stealing from your dealer? I guess so. I’ve never heard of any dealers sitting by idly while their stash was being robbed. Now that they are finding the PR sellers and stealers, they are promptly kicking them in their Internet balls, ie their PR rank.
For those of us that see the web as an opportunity to enhance our income by doing things we love and writing about them, it is a nice break from the standard 9 – 5 job and we can dictate our own schedule. Most people don’t make enough to live on, but I would say most people can pay for the costs unassociated with blogging or website management like hosting and .com name purchases. We also might be able to take a sweet vacation or by a new toy that wouldn’t have been available if we pursued other hobbies.
There is a lot of power we give to Google by using them. It is our choice, and I personally find many of their tools useful (Analytics, Maps, Webmaster Tools, Adsense, etc…). It is a shame though if I should be penalized for making a mere $12 a month for doing something that isn’t illegal … Time will tell what scars or issues I will encounter in the future regarding this. I really assumed they would go after the bigger guys only but it just goes to show how much even people that follow this news religiously know…
Shopping Ads For Wordpress
I was sent an email today for a new ad program from Patrick Gavin at Text Link Ads for a new ad server called Shopping Ads . It’s easy to set it up for WordPress (you can see it at live on The Real Taiwan website) Just like the growing myriad of Cost Per Click advertising, you go to the site, enter your information, and presto you have an account. You set up the colors that you’d like to see (it’s best to match them with your theme) and then copy the code they give you into one of your widgets (a text widget will do, as the code is Javascript).
This is the first day I have used this program, and I’ll be letting you know how it goes. Since it is ok to use it with Adsense, it is a good way to reduce the quantity of your Adsense ads, thereby creating a higher CPC for your them while offering a variety of ads for your visitors. I have been using Widgetbucks (another new CPC program) on the same site for a few days and the clicks are paying nearly 3 – 4 times as much as what I am used to with other programs. Let’s see how long that lasts for though…
Godaddy custom .com names and hosting for WordPress
Go Daddy.com is the company I have used for all of my domain names purchased to date. I decided early on that I wanted full control of my website and that buying my own site name(s) was the way to go for me. You may want buy your own .com name for your WordPress website, or buy name and have your website transferred to your own .com name on a Wordpress website. How do you know this is right for you?
Well, you should know it doesn’t cost much, roughly $7 US dollars for one dot com name for a one year period. You will also need to buy hosting, which can go for anywhere between 6 – 200+ dollars a month, depending on your needs. I have been using Host Gator for my needs and to date they have been fine. I have heard a lot of stories about different servers having problems, but if you are only doing (up to several) basic WordPress blogs (mostly text with occasional photo or embedded video) Host Gator will be fine. I have had up to 20 sites going on my baby package with them and still had lots of bandwidth and hard drive space remaining (and I had several thousand photos online). My hosting package is only $10 US a month.
My cost for a .com name, and a host for 1 year is about $130 US. A typical blog with about 100 – 200 visitors a day should be able to make this money using Google Adsense alone. If your site makes more money than your costs, then you are taking your first step towards professional blogging or earning money for doing something that you are passionate about. It is a nice concept right?
What are the advantages of hosting your own blog and having your own name? First of all, it is yours! You can do whatever you wish with it. You can tweak, pull, prod, and poke all aspects of web design on your own. You can get a dot com name with the right keywords for your site and get a head start on your site’s SEO. Using Wordpress, you can use any theme or any plugin you wish, and cut or add any piece of code you would like. You are only limited by your own ability, and there are so many sites these days that are made to help WordPress users succeed! (This is site is a GOOD example of this 
).
A typical blog will need the minimum hosting package, but if you do a lot of video or photography and wish to host the files yourself you may need a larger hosting package.
Clear Cut Blogging is as transparent as can be, as I have posted and will continue to post all of my stats and post about all of the things I am doing to create a powerful WordPress blog. As such, I figured it was about time to post about some of the basics of creating YOUR own blog, and helping your carve out a piece of the newest real estate boom; dot com names on the Internet.
Text Link Ads for Wordpress
Text Link Ads are an easy way to monetize your Wordpress site. If you want to make some money online with your WordPress blog, this is an avenue to take. Of course, you don’t need to be using WordPress to work with them. They support many different platforms. They only accept sites that have some rankings already, so your new site will likely be rejected. The nice thing about this program is you get paid per day (monthly really, but it is prorated based on how many days they are on your site and can leave at any point). TLA keeps 50% of the revenue for their part of the deal.
This is integrated with WordPress, and you can download an easy to install widget to place in the sidebar of your site. Another nice thing about their program is they do the selling, so you will wake up some days and see more clients advertising on your site(s).
Drawbacks: Google has been coming down on big sites that use Text Link Ads because they are artificially influencing search engine rankings with the links being sold. It isn’t a huge concern for little sites.
In a nutshell, back links highly influence your Google PR ranking, and since TLA is selling links including high PR links to any site, it has been a way to game the google search system and BUY decent search engine rankings. Not fair for the little man or the poor man or the unknowing man. Google has penalized several sites for doing this now. The TLA program is more difficult for Google to learn about, but as seen nothing is impossible and they have made a few statements with some larger websites.
The Great Firewall of China
I recently came across a site called The Great Firewall of China. They claim to be able to tell you if your website is blocked in China by the Chinese government. We’ve all heard stories regarding how all forms of media are monitored and how certain web sites have been banned for this or for that. I checked Clear Cut Blogging out, and found it was also blocked. I have seen other websites speaking of how they are banned, and how freedom of speech isn’t global by checking their website on the Great Firewall site.
Then I took it a step further and submitted the site for Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China.
I found that this site was banned as well. Could it be the Chinese government doesn’t trust itself or has some electronic monitoring system that has banned itself? It’s possible, but the likely story is that the monitoring system is defective. It is very possible to believe your site has been blocked though. Such an interesting scenario. I can hear the cries of , “My site is banned in China!”. I checked China’s version of Google, Baidu and found they were banned as well. Could that really be?
Seems like this website is either playing on everyone’s fears regarding freedom of speech and China, or just has a functionality issue, either way, as of now, I feel that the website is propagating anti Chinese government sentiment by displaying inaccurate data. I’m not saying you need to like what the Chinese government has done or is doing, but at least give the government a fair trial…
Widget Bucks
As you know we are always looking for ways to better monetize blogs and websites, and we have learned about a new program. Widgetbucks is a new affiliate service that allows you to make some money by placing ads on your site. You can use it along with Google Adsense so why not give it a shot. You can can make money selling products or referring others to the service. Check it out. You can earn money for a year if you refer others to them.
It is easy to sign up and they give you a 25$ sign up bonus, which puts you half way to your first payout! Go for it. It couldn’t hurt that much!
Ultimate Gallery2 Slideshow
The Ultimate Gallery 2 Slideshow Plugin is a nice WordPress plugin to use if you want a random picture from your gallery 2 embedded in your WordPress sidebar. I have been using this plugin at The Real Taiwan (check it out if you’d like) for some time and it is a popular feature of the site as I have thousands of photos in the gallery. One thing I don’t like and haven’t been able to find out about is preventing albums form being presented (as I host pictures for others and don’t want those pictures presented). Using image block in gallery 2 also has no bearing on the output.
So how do I get this plugin?
1. Download the Ultimate Gallery2 Slideshow Plugin here.
2. Re upload it to your plugin folder on your server.
3. Activate the plugin.
4. Create a php widget (if you don’t have any you will need to download the Samsarin php widgets)
5. Add this code to your widget and place it where it needs to go.
<li>
<h2>Slideshow</h2>
<?php ug2slideshow_print(); ?>
</li>
You should shortly be seeing random pictures from your gallery 2 album in your site.
Gallery 2
I have been using the free photo hosting application Gallery 2 to use alongside my WordPress. I spent some time using a different free program called Coppermine because I wasn’t happy with Gallery 2 a year ago. Then, I wasn’t very happy with Coppermine so I switched back and they have made some nice leaps forward in their integration with Wordpress and in the design of one of the themes.
How can you use Gallery 2? First things first, you need to have an account with a server, basically space on the web to host your photos and website data. If you use Fantastico, you can easily add it where ever you like on your server. It is quite simple to go that way, otherwise you will need to download, and then re upload the files and set it up using the Gallery 2 online help guide.
I spent nearly 10 hours setting up the Taiwan Photo Gallery. It took so ling because I went through each photo renamed it (for more useful indexing by the image programs out there ie Google images). I also had to figure out how to set things up and use the WPG2 plugin. I use that, as well as the Ultimate Gallery2 Slideshow plugin. There are several thousand photos, and uploading them all just took a lot of time.
You will notice some areas with Google Advertisements on the site. Photos are becoming more and more popular, and if you have a few “hot” ones they can drive hundreds to thousands of visitors to your site daily. You may as well advertise it because it will help you to pay for the cost of personally hosting the photos.
Don’t forget to use the Sitemap plugin for Gallery. You want the search engines to see your site and start showing off your pictures to the world. Right?
I am a little put off by people stealing, but gallery 2 has two nice features, one being a watermark plugin that you can activate, and then upload a watermark jpg to be placed on all of the photos you add after you activate it. It doesn’t actually put it on the file though, so your pictures are safe and also are protected a bit from theft. The theme I use also has an option to disable the right click so it is very difficult to steal pictures from my site. And it is all done from options within Gallery.
The theme I use is called X_treme from Pedro Gilberto. There aren’t many themes available, and this is the most flexible (with seemingly a bazillion options) and by far the best in my opinion. You can easily download this theme, or any plugins from with the plugins tab within the site admin panel. Things are getting so easy I just love it.
Clear Cut Blogging’s First Month Birthday
Clear Cut Blogging is set up as a transparent way for people to learn how to set up a WordPress site of their own and watch it grow up into a successful professional blog. We have successfully blogged here for a full month. Now, that isn’t much time but we have made some nice gains in viewers and discovered some key methods for driving traffic. First things first. Here is a view from our Firestats WordPress plugin.
Here is the data from the Awstats from my Cpanel.
Here is the data from Google analytics, which is only for 3 weeks because I didn’t start that program right away.
service Unique Total
Firestats NA 632
Google Analytics 281 378
Awstats 395 575
You can see they are all different. Which one are you going to believe? I think That Google Analytics puts up good numbers, but take them all into consideration when determining what you think about a site. The Awstats look like they are in line with GA, and since GA was started a week later, it would make sense that it is below.
I have had between 0 and 3 subscribers for my RSS Feed.
I have made 68 posts this month. Wow! That is a lot. I hope they were useful!
I will say I want my traffic for next month at least double, but my hope is it will increase by 400%. The site is getting a little stronger everyday, and that will draw more new visitors in via searches. The social network sites are working very well at getting my sites more visitors and a larger crowd, and also gets more visibility from the people who liked the sites and linked to them on their sites.
My guess: Next month I will get between 1000 and 2000 visitors. Hoping for 2000 or more though.
I would also like to see the feed subscriptions of this site grow. I was hoping for 100 over 3 months, but now after one month I have 1…
My Adsense earnings for the first month are a whopping $1.38. I know sites are like… See how much I have made this month and post tall tales of tens of thousands in income… I won’t lie to you. I made less than 2 dollars. for a lot of time and effort in getting the site out there. Things are set up fairly well though. Let’s hope for a nice second month!
