Archive for March, 2008

How to gain 2000 RSS subscribers in 7 weeks

by Ades on March 17, 2008 in Blogging Tips with 14 Comments

AdesBlog’s weekly guest-blogger Alan Johnson of theratingblog.com crossed 2,000 RSS subscribers mark just in 7 weeks. Very impressive. Congratulations Alan!

He says his success was not due to any luck whatsoever, but due to 100% hardwork. You can read his post on how he did it here.

He has written the following guest posts:

Keep up the good work Alan!

PayPal has a blog, mmhh… now you can complain directly to CEO

by Ades on March 17, 2008 in paypal with 9 Comments

We know that it is almost impossible to get hold of anybody from paypal. Most of their emails are also auto-generated, making it difficult to voice your opinion and send feedback.

But, now it seems like there is a window of opportunity for everyone to talk to them directly. Apparently they have official blog (which I didn’t know) since August 2007.

So fire it away, your comments, suggestions, complains…etc to http://www.thepaypalblog.com

LinkWorth offers “nofollow” option for publishers

by Ades on March 15, 2008 in Make Money with 9 Comments

Text-link ad selling service LinkWorth now allows publishers to choose “nofollow” option for their links if they want to.

You can do that by going to My Sites » Manage Sites » Edit Site and choosing “I will use rel=”nofollow” tag for all my links” under Additional Website Settings section (see below).

What does this mean to publishers? It means a lot! It’s a very timely feature from LinkWorth. It means that, those publishers who have stopped using LinkWorth for “nofollow” reasons, now they can start selling text links again.

As you well know, Google punished (and still punishing) tons of blogs and sites for selling text links. So, now, if you want to have a Google friendly blog, but still enjoy using third party text-link ad selling service, then, LinkWorth is the answer.

I think LinkWorth is the only service that offers this option so far? Sites like Text-Link-Ads, ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews.com are still defiant.

Advantage of using “nofollow”

Your blog/site stays Google friendly

You will retain your PageRank (Google won’t decrease your PR)
Your blog/site won’t be banned from Google’s search index

If you had stopped using LinkWorth for “nofollow” reasons, now you can use it back (opportunity to make extra $$$).

Disadvantage of using “nofollow”

Moderate risk of losing your advertisers (especially those who were chasing your pagerank). Because most advertisers are interested in both pagerank and traffic.

So, that’s the news. What will you do? Those who are already using LinkWorth, will you go “nofollow”? As for me, I won’t be opting for “nofollow” just yet.

Subscribe to RSS, learn how you can make more money with your blog. click here.

Using Scribd as a source of traffic for your blog

by Ades on March 14, 2008 in Blogging Tips, Marketing, Online Advertising, SEO & Promotion with 12 Comments

I am sure many of you know Scribd right? Scribe in their own words: “Scribd is a Silicon Valley startup creating technology that makes it easy to share documents online. You can think of Scribd as a big online library where everyone can publish original content, including you!”

Basically, you can upload your documents and it will be available to other members of scribd, as well as to anybody who searches for them online.

Scribd as a promotion tool

One thing you can use srcibd is – as a promotion tool. In fact, it can be a great promotion tool if you write great, useful articles. Before I wanted to post about this, I gave it a try and uploaded 14 documents of mine to scribd. Eleven of them were photoshop related tutorials and 3 were blog articles. Documents were uploaded on 10th and 11th of February, so has been roughly one month.

As you can see, so far they have been viewed 2053 times. That translates to average 146 views per document. Most viewed article was 356 times, and the least viewed was 27 times. You can view list of all articles here.

Ways to promote your blog on scribd

First of all, if you write good articles people will click on the author link on that particular article and view your profile. Therefore, you must have a proper profile page. What I mean is, try to put some info about yourself, your picture, and most importantly your blog URL. Start building your brand from your profile page.
Secondly, end the articles that you published with your blog URL. You can have a one line sentence like “for more articles go to yoursite dot com“.

Thirdly, try to join groups and communities that are relevant to your niche. If there is no group available in your topic, you can create yourself one.

But most importantly do not spam! Just share your best articles with other scribers and start building your repuation in scribd. start here scribd.com.

I hope you found this article useful. Subscribe to RSS to read upcoming useful articles. click here.

al-Rajhi Bank’s Debit Card works with PayPal

by Ades on March 12, 2008 in paypal with 52 Comments

A week ago I opened a bank account with Al-Rajhi Bank (Malaysian Branch), it’s the largest Saudi based Islamic bank in the world. Since it’s operations are Shariah compliant, they do not provide Credit Card, instead they give Charge Card. It’s basically a VISA enabled Debit Card.

This card is linked to your account, and you use your own money. That means, if you do not have any money in your account, you simply cannot purchase anything. (Bank won’t be lending you any money, and of course won’t be able to charge you interest. So, it’s an interest-free bank). Other than that, it has all the functions of a Credit Card.

Paypal Withdrawal

Upon receiving my debit card, I made a test withdrawal of $20.00 from paypal, -$5.00 for transaction fee (see below). So, I was supposed to get $15.00 . The transaction was successful.

So, those who couldn’t withdraw with PublicBank Debit Card should try Al-Rajhi Debit Card. You can open savings account with just RM20 ($6.00). Both savings and checking account comes with Debit Card.

al-Rajhi Internet Banking

Al-Rajhi offers internet banking where you can keep track of your transactions. Here is a screenshot of the paypal transaction that I made. It was processed on 10th March, it took about 4 days to process.

So, here you go. Another card that works with PayPal in Malaysia.

Al-Rajhi Saudi: http://www.alrajhibank.com.sa/en/
Al-Rajhi Malaysia : http://www.alrajhibank.com.my

Related:

The Building Blocks of a Successful Website

by Ades on March 11, 2008 in Articles, Guest Posts with 17 Comments

Author info: This guest post was written by Alan Johnson. He teaches you how to build a profitable website in 10 days over at TheRatingBlog.com

Are you interested in achieving worthwhile results as an online entrepreneur? Are you interested in getting on top and staying there? Then, my friend, making sure that your project is built on a solid foundation to begin with is simply a must.

Let’s assume that you did your share of brainstorming and have come up with an idea you consider great. The natural reaction in such cases is getting started right away. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, we are all humans and such a reaction is perfectly understandable. That doesn’t mean that you should let it get the best of you.

Due to the fact that they are eager to get started right away, most webmasters end up neglecting the building blocks of a successful website and, there’s no doubt about it, this approach will come back
to haunt them down the road. You should never let the initial excitement keep you from analyzing things objectively if you are serious about long-term success.

So you have an idea which you think has excellent potential? That’s an important first step, but rushing into something is never a wise decision. Everything should start with a solid business model and
solid goals. How will you be providing value through your website? How do you plan on approaching your market? What do you want to achieve with this project in the long run? These are just a few of the
important questions you should be asking yourself before even thinking about publishing a website.

Alright then, now that you have a business plan and your goals as a foundation, it’s time to get started. From content to design, you should make sure that you do everything right before launching your
website. You may want to get started right away and feel tempted to just write some content for the sake of it and set things in motion. Never make that mistake. Creating quality content is definitely a
must, and doing it in advance is always recommended. Of course, you shouldn’t create content for the next century and use that as an excuse for not getting started, but you should always have something
set aside just in case. After all, you don’t want to be taken by surprise in case you will not have time or inspiration in order to create content at a certain point, do you?

You have a solid business plan and goals, a working website and content, now what? Since you are ready to get started, you can do just that and now it’s time to give it 110% in order to promote your website and let the world know about it. Having a great resource is indeed extremely important, but achieving worthwhile results without promoting it is next to impossible. After your website is live, it is extremely important that you always find the right balance between publishing quality content on a regular basis and website promotion.

From business plan and goals to content and promotion, the building blocks of a successful website should never be neglected if you are serious about long-term success. What about you? Are you paying enough attention to each and every one of them?

Best wishes,
Alan Johnson

Checking PageRank of your site’s internal pages

by Ades on March 10, 2008 in Google, Software with 32 Comments

This is a great, small and free application (standalone exe file) that can check your entire website and show corresponding PageRank for every page. It was developed by SEOJunkie on the request of one of his blog readers.

Recommendations:

I wish the application had a “pause” button. Currently there are only “start” and “quit” buttons on the toolbar (see screenshot above). The problem arises when the website has too many pages, when this happens, there is no way of pausing the program. It goes and goes… only thing is to quit the program.

Also, “export to text file” feature would be great idea. (just a thought SEOJunkie ;) )

Download: click here

P.S File is now hosted on my shared folder, because the page at http://www.seojunkie.com doesn’t exist anymore.

WinningTheWeb Contest – win $5,348 in Cash & Prizes

by Ades on March 10, 2008 in Contests with 9 Comments

Gyutae of WinningTheWeb.com is organizing a contest. Prizes comprise of Cash (AzoogleAds – $650, PepperJam Network – $500, NeverblueAds – $250, Bidvertiser – $200), Conference Pass (Affiliate Summit), SEO Memberships (3 Month Membership to Aaron Wall’s SEO Training Program, 6 Month Membership to SEOmoz Pro) and a bunch of more prizes. Check out the contest page for details.

ReviewBack – you blog about me, I blog about you

by Ades on March 8, 2008 in Online Advertising, SEO & Promotion with 19 Comments

Don’t want to spend money on ReviewMe and similar networks purchasing paid reviews? How about exchanging free reviews with other fellow bloggers then?

Well, ReviewBack does exactly that. You browse among 1,659 blogs in the ReviewBack network, choose a blog that you want your review to appear on, send the owner of the blog a request and if he/she accepts, you write a review about that particular blog on your blog, and he will write a review of your blog on his. Sounds good? Check it out http://www.reviewback.com

Mimbo – Free WordPress Magazine Theme

by Ades on March 7, 2008 in WordPress, WP Themes with 25 Comments

This is one of the best free WordPress themes I have came across on the net. Since it is free, I thought I would share it with you guys.

It’s called Mimbo Magazine Theme. It was developed by Darren Hoyt (dot com).

Template looks great, it can also generate sub-menus as a drop down menu. You can see it in action here: view demo. You may download the theme here.

Real life example of a blog that is running on Mimbo is PlagiarismToday.com.

Note: If you are looking for a better premium magazine theme, check out Revolution Theme. It’s the best so far on the net!

P.S: For a list of other great free and premium wp themes go to http://www.flowgram.com/p/f4xhdtkgp7usnv

Optimize your 404 Error page, retain those visitors

by Ades on March 6, 2008 in Blogging Tips, Usability with 24 Comments

Have you optimized your blog’s 404 Error page? Some of you may ask what is that? It’s a page that is not accessible at the time of the browsing. Reasons for the inaccessibility may vary, it can be temporary or permanent.

For example, if you delete a post, then its address becomes permanently inaccessible. When you are doing some changes to your blog, some of your posts might be temporarily inaccessible. In both cases, users who wanted to view those particular pages, would be displayed 404 Error page instead.

Optimizing your blog’s 404 page

Error Pages on most sites are usually very dull and geeky. They are not so user-friendly to non-IT users. Actually, users do not need to know what error number it is when the document cannot be found on the server. They just need to be informed in a simple human language, e.g “page not found” or “file not found” etc. They couldn’t care less if it was a 1001 error page!

Recently, some websites started to come up with creative and interesting 404 pages, particularly Twitter and Technnorati.

But there is a better way of optimizing 404 pages for blogs, instead of just having a “cute” picture of porcupine fixing your blog, instead integrate some of your interesting posts below the 404 error. At least that way, you have a better chance of retaining that (lost) visitor.

Because if he came looking for something in your blog, probably he will find your other articles interesting too!!

Where is my 404 page?

Depending on what theme you are using (default or custom), you might and might not have 404 page in your blog. However, by default WordPress’ 404 page is located inside your theme files (see below).

So, just open it and edit it in your theme editor. You can manually integrate links to some of your popular articles or you can use plugin to call your popular posts in 404 pages.

WP Plugin: 404 Notifier

Want to track how many 404 hits your blog receives every day? Sure, there is an excellent WP-Plugin called 404 Notifier by AlexKing. This plugin tracks 404 hits; where the user came from (referral url) and what page it tried to access but failed.

It can send the stats to your email or you can access the RSS feed that is generated by the plugin. Choosing RSS feed is a wise option, because email option keeps sending you notifications every time there is a 404 hit.

My blog gets about 70 hits, so guess what I found in my inbox the next day after I installed this plugin?

I wish Alex could introduce a new option; daily digest. That would be great.

Invest in R&D, it’s vital for your business’ survival

by Ades on March 5, 2008 in Advice to Businesses with 12 Comments

If your business is running smoothly and if you have some great products that sell like hot cakes, should you stop investing in R&D? Maybe reduce the investment in R&D and reap the profits that is generated from your cashcow products? The answer is “No”. You should keep investing in R&D, you should keep coming up with great innovative products. Because success lies in continuous innovation, not in one-time innovation.

If Xerox stopped investing in Research & Development, it would be earning 60% less revenue:

More than 2/3rd of Xerox’s revenue comes from products launched in the past two years. source

Some companies like Sony believe in innovation so much, that, they would introduce new products even if those new products are going to kill its own current (cashcow) products. Because, Sony believes in creating “new markets” and not creating products for the existing markets.

Between 1950 and 1982 Sony successfully built 12 different new-market, disruptive-growth businesses. These included the original battery-powered pocket transistor radio, launched in 1955, and the first portable solid-state black-and-white television, in 1960. Plus: videocassette players, portable video recorders, the now-ubiquitous Walkman and 3.5-inch floppy disk drives, launched in 1980. source

So, as you can see, continuous investment in R&D is very important. Unfortunately, many small-to-medium businesses and some startups are usually stuck with few products. After developing few successful products they simply stop investing in R&D and stop coming up with new products. Rather, they resort to fixing and polishing the existing products. In some cases, years would past and the company would be still working on the existing products. What a sad situation that is.

If you start your own company don’t make this grave mistake of not investing in R&D!