(November 19th, 2008)  nuffnang - malaysian publisher program for bloggers has entered australia http://www.nuffnang.com.au. i guess they are doing good. (comments:0)

(November 17th, 2008)  Joke: - Balance sheet of US Investment banks: On the left side, there is nothing right… And on the right side, there is nothing left. (comments:0)

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November 16th, 2007

Using Google Calendar as a to-do list application


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Do you use Google Calendar? If yes, do you use it as a “visually enhanced to-do list” application? I do, and in this post I will share with you guys how do I do it. I am sure some of you must be already doing it.

Create a new calendar

First thing is to create your own new calendar, in fact create two calendards. One - for things to be done (to-do). And another - for things that are already done (completed). After you have created and named them properly, give them distinctive colors. So that, when you look at your calendar, you know what is done and what needs to be done.

Here is how my calendar looks when viewed by month (see below). Red colored items are things that I need to do, when the time comes. And light brown colored items are things, that I have already completed.

This is how it looks when viewed by Agenda (see below). Notice that there is one red item among the light brown items. That is the Top5 sites that I was supposed to update. I am planning to get it brown these coming few days ;)

After you are done creating your calendars, you are ready to post some to-dos. So, go ahead and post them. While creating your to-do items, do not forget to assign them your “to-do calendar”. Otherwise tasks won’t look colored and you won’t know if it is a “to-do” item or “completed” item.

Setting Reminders

Another important thing while creating your to-do items is, to set reminders. Usually for weekly tasks or tasks that repeat often I just set one reminder. But for the things that happen once a year, or once in 6 months etc, I will set two reminders. One is, one week before the task, and another, one day before the task.

This way, it gives me enough time (one week) to get prepared for the task. So that on the second reminder, I will be ready to do the task without delay.

When it comes to advertising, one week notice also allows me to send emails to my advertisers notifying them of their advertisement expiry. It’s a good thing to send early notices, because not everybody may check, reply or decide last minute whether to renew the ads or not. So, one week notice will give them ample time to think about the renewal (e.g checking stats, click-throughs, ROI..etc)

Note: There are two types of reminders; email and pop-up. Please choose the option that suits your needs best. Personally, I use the email option.

Task is done!

Finally, when the task is done, don’t forget to assign your “done calendar” to the completed task (see below).

That’s it! I hope you found this article useful. So, will you be using Google Calendar as your to-do list?

Why gCalendar?

Some of you might ask why use Google Calendar when there are many other softwares and web applications specifically developed for to-do lists. I use Google Calendar because it has some advantages that other softwares or to-do programs do not have. Some of the advantages of gCalendar are:

  1. I can access my to-do lists from anywhere on the net
  2. I can visualize my to-do lists right on my calendar, and not just as a list with some dates
  3. I can get reminders right into my email
  4. It’s secure and private when necessary

… an many more.

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November 14th, 2007

Blog life cycle, and how success kills the content


Every blog (in the Make Money Online category) goes through a “blog life cycle”, some blogs go through all stages and others experience only some of them, i.e they do not reach the end. These stages of the “blog life cycle” (defined by me) are:

  1. State 1: blog creation - new blog gets created
  2. Stage 2: blog recognition - blog starts to get recognized in the blogosphere and often gets linked by other blogs, success is near
  3. Stage 3: blog authority - blog becomes authority in certain field, traffic soars and money pours in…
  4. Stage 4: after success - blog either turns into community based blog that is run by the original blogger, or is run by the same blogger but loses the usefulness that it once had

High traffic often leads to content-kill

When your blog starts to get high traffic and your readership expands, it often leads to positive changes for you (the blogger) and not so positive for the readers.

Because when your blog is getting hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a month, you will be approached by dozens of different types of advertisers. Most of them will be direct advertisers, and you will rely less on the traditional publisher programs that most of the blogs in the blogoshpere are using.

That means, if previously you were writing on various publisher programs and how they performed on your blog, after Stage-4 of the blog life cycle, you won’t be talking about them anymore. You won’t be citing different publisher programs and how much money each made for you. This types of posts are usually a good indicator to your readers about various publisher programs’ performances.

But when you are running direct advertisers, and no longer using normal publisher programs, you won’t be posting such posts anymore. And that, diminishes some degree of usefulness from your content.

Content turns into news about latest conventions, expos, gatherings…etc

Another sign of the blog riding on the waves of the success is that, the posts will turn into news about the latest blog conventions. You will be reading a lot of “I will be attending this convention….”, “I am in this expo now, here are the pics….”, “I have attended that gathering, here is the pics….” posts.

Again, it’s a great thing for the blogger, but not so great for the readers who want to learn something. During this time, daily great posts that user used to take for granted will be a thing of the history.

Blog turns into launchpad

Success will also attract lots of new businesses, every new business will want to advertise on your blog. Consquently, your blog will turn into a launchpad that has little benefit to the ordinary blogger.

How to control the damage of the success

The decision would depend on what you want to do with your blog, once it has reached Stage-4. Whether you want to keep it relevant to the bloggers or to take it to the next level and turn it into something different - something BIG!

If you want to stay relevant to your readers, then the better option would be to turn it into community based blog. Darren of problogger.net has chosen this way. He often asks his readers questions, makes polls, conducts researches and gets tons of feedback from his readers. After that, based on the provided answers he constructs well written posts (publishes results) that will be beneficial to the bloggers themselves. He also allows guest bloggers to write articles in his blog. The result is a hugely successful, relevant, community based blog, that is steered by Darren himself.

On the other hand, if you want to take your blog into the next level, you could become the next TechCrunch, having tons of your own other networks. Obviously you would be venturing into new fields and that would mean that you will be loosing some of your previous community members. But at the same time, you will be acquiring new community with new interests.

So the decision is in your hands. You are the captain of the ship and you decide to which shores it should take you. Just remember that, if you are going to be successful one day, then you will have to deal with this situation at one point in the future.

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November 12th, 2007

Why poll results on most blogs are skewed?


Have you ever wondered why poll results on your blog come up overwhelmingly supportive of what you do? This is especially true when your own opinion precedes the poll. e.g. I think this way, how about you? And the results would be in your favor. Why is that?

  • Why your readers respond in the way that you want them to respond?
  • Does this skew the accuracy of the polls?
  • And if it does how the polls should be conducted?

This post will tackle all the above questions.

Readers supporting the author

Here is an example from my own blog, this was the time when I used to write short posts, I asked my readers if they wanted to read short posts or longer posts. I did mention my own preference in the post, which was “writing short posts”. Since the readers read the post first, they did know my preference. So, the answer was of course “write short posts (66.67%)”.

But writing short posts for more than a year didn’t make this blog successful, the success came when I started writing longer posts. If I had followed the poll results, AdesBlog wouldn’t be where it is now. RSS readers would be 50+ instead of 500+.

So why readers support the blogger?

One of the reasons, why your readers are reading your blog in the first place is that, they find your blog interesting. They like what you write, and agree with you on many grounds. At least the majority of your readers do.

And the ones who do not agree, are actually not your core readers. Usually these people do not follow your blog regularly. They just pop in to make some comments and leave. These people eventually stop reading your blog altogether.

So the regular readers of your blog, are people that have similar mindset, similar thinking with you. And it is only natural for these people to support their fellow blogger in his/her endeavor. They are the ones who will tell you to keep going and show support. And that is actually something nice.

But when it comes to polls, this same support can actually give you wrong perception (which can result in unfavorable outcome for you in the future). And that leads us to next question.

Does this (the support of the readers) skew the accuracy of the polls?

Depending on how the poll is conducted, it does. For example, if you let your readers know about your own preference before the poll, then it skews the results.

Like in my case, I did say I want to post short posts, and the poll results reflected my preference.

How the polls should be conducted?

Polls should be conducted in a neutral ground. Of course it depends on you, what you really want to get from the poll results. If you are looking for support to back you up on something, then promoting your own thoughts first (before the poll) wouldn’t be a bad idea after all.

But, if you truly want to know your readers opinion on certain issues, it’s important that you do not reveal your own opinion beforehand. This would eliminate the bias voting that results from readers’ subconscious support towards you that we talked in the first part of this post. And the results that you will get will be the true results!

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November 5th, 2007

Aftermath of Google penalty


Aftermath of the recent Google penalty on blogosphere has not been so bright for many bloggers. It created a lot of discussion in the beginning, but then it was time to take action. Bloggers had to decide whether they want to be on the Google side or against the Big-G. Some thought very hard and after a lengthy discussion decided to play by Google’s rules. Obviously it was not an easy decision to make for them, because they had to forgo hundreds of dollars (if not thousands) in order to be Google’s friend.

Number of blogs up for sale increase

Another interesting phenomenon after the penalty on the net, is the increase in the number of blogs up for sale. Many blogs, especially in the “make money online” category are being sold in many auctions. For example: Blogging Fingers was sold for $6000 recently, even the blogs with personal name in the URL such as Ryan Ramsus was not spared, it was sold for $2,500, and OneMansGoal is up for sale with BIN $8,500, so far the highest bid is $6000. And some blogs sold for mere $110 dollars (sure the stats play major role here).

This shows how powerful the Big-G is, Google can and will change the internet if they want. It can destroy your business in one day, even though they believe in “do no evil” philosophy.

One thing I noticed that the number of RSS subscribers decreased sharply after the above mentioned blogs were sold. Some by 100 percent. I guess many people do not have confidence once the man behind the blog is no longer in charge.

Defiant bloggers

Finally, some bloggers simply ignored Google’s demands and continue to make more money… of course, JohnChow comes to in mind. Even he managed to pull the highest revenue on the penalty imposed month. I don’t think the next month earnings will be any less.

When can you fight Google?

If you are a website that sells products, then you want Google to be your friend. Obviously in this case, even if you do not like the better decision would be to comply with Google’s demands.

But if you are a blog that have thousands of regular readers, why need Google? That’s exactly why JohnChow can ignore Google. Because he simply does not need Google traffic. Most of his traffic comes from direct visitors, and from the blogosphere mentioning his blog (like in this post). But I am sure John will consider abiding Google’s demands for his other sites.

So, here, emotions and being hero does not count. And decisions based on just emotions wouldn’t be the right decisions. Therefore, your next course of action regarding getting back your PR (if you were penalized), should be based on logical factors that can benefit you in the future, rather than just on emotions and anger. As I said, if you are a website that sells something, you will probably need Google’s traffic. And the wise decision would be to abide by Google’s rules of game.

What AdesBlog will do?

I am going to wait for few things. First, I will wait for Text-Link-Ads‘ and LinkWorth’s official stance on this issue. I will wait if they will consider including “nofollow” tags on their text links. Because I am sure they are loosing many publishers (thus lots of money), so they have to make a big decision soon. Secondly, I will wait for my direct advertisers’ stance on how important is PageRank for them. This will be known in the coming few months. Two outcomes can happen: they will either stop advertising on this blog or keep running their text links. Thirdly, I will wait if Google’s penalty has had any affect on my SERP (search engine result page) positions. This shall be known in the next 1-2 months as well.

And depending on these factors, I will decide if I have to abide by Google’s demands or defy them and continue making money by selling text links.

How about you?

Have you already decided what you will do about selling text links on your blogs? Will you keep selling text links or will you remove them so that you can be Google-friendly?

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October 27th, 2007

How to blog in your style


One of the mistakes new bloggers do is to end up talking exactly what other established bloggers are talking. Not only on topics that are “the current events” in the blogosphere, but even going as far as reporting their daily life posts. You need to take into account that people have already read those popular blogs, so they don’t want to read it on another blog from a secondary person.

Visitors want to read something original. And if you want to increase your readership you should give them original, new, and interesting posts. So how do you do that? Here is some of the suggestions to keep your posts original:

  1. Take notes, write draft posts, and record ideas when they strike you
  2. Taking notes and writing draft posts is very important. It will help you to save time when you want to blog. Because when you sit to blog, there will be a draft post that you can continue right away. This way, you won’t have to think about what to blog.

    I do have up to 10 draft posts at one time. If you are not using draft posts, then I strongly recommend you to use it.

    Carry a pen and notepad when you are not near to your PC. This way, you can record the idea when it hits you. Most of the ideas will be forgotten if you do not record them. And it’s very difficult and time consuming to remember them back.

  3. Do read other popular blogs but do not be their carbon copy
  4. It’s good to read other popular blogs and to keep yourself up to date with what’s happening in the blogosphere. But do not let these other blogs affect your own style of blogging. Do not be their carbon copy. Unless it’s necessary to blog about what other blog has posted, refrain from blogging about it (in a dedicated post). If you just want to repost what someone has posted then it’s better not to. Just remember people have already read about that!

    However it’s okay to mention others’ post for analysis and critique purposes, especially if you want to take it as an example to prove a point. It is also okay to refer your readers to interesting posts of other bloggers. Link-love is always welcome by fellow bloggers.

  5. Be opinionated!
  6. Don’t be afraid to write your own opinions. People usually read blogs because of the author’s personal opinions on various topics. Without the personal opinions, your blog will be just another news-reporting blog.

    Don’t be afraid of what people might think of your opinion, what is important is - what you think! And don’t forget that it’s your blog (not someone else’s) and in your own blog you are entitled to voice out your own opinions.

    Read here how my blog’s traffic started to increase when I started posting more opinionated posts. Please remember that you need to strike a balance here, voicing out does not mean you can start criticizing everybody. If you do that, you will make a lot of not friends (enemy would be too harsh a word here) very fast. So choose the middle way and blog responsibly.

I hope you will find this post useful. If you have not subscribed to my RSS. So that you won’t miss another useful post from AdesBlog. Subscribe to RSS here.

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October 27th, 2007

5 Easy Ways to Fail in IT Projects


I was reading this article by Joel Spolsky called “How Hard Could It Be?: Five Easy Ways to Fail” and found it very true. Because I had worked in IT companies and have seen numerous times projects being failed, either not meeting deliverables, or not meeting the deadline, or being a total mess somewhere in the middle.

When reading this article, I also couldn’t stop but relate it to Agloco’s case. I think Agloco made lots of mistakes that are mentioned in this article.

If you ever going to make your own software then you should read this article, these 5 main mistakes could save you from making lots more mistakes. And if you are a big company then you could save huge amounts of money.

Here is the excerpts from the article:

Mistake No. 1: Start with a mediocre team of developers.

Designing software is hard, and unfortunately, a lot of the people who call themselves programmers can’t really do it. You’ll never hear anyone say “the team was just not smart enough or talented enough to pull this off.” Why hurt their feelings? …

Mistake No. 2: Set weekly milestones.

Say you’re remodeling your kitchen. That guy you hired to do the work has done a lot of kitchens before, and can estimate the cost of the job without having detailed blueprints. But software developers are building things that they’ve never built before. If they had, they’d just sell you another copy of the CD-ROM. So rough estimates are impossible…

Mistake No. 3: Negotiate the deadline.

…Think of it in these terms: Mama walruses deliver their calves at the end of a 15- to 16-month pregnancy. You might ask the mother to commit to 15 months and she might say, “No problem!” Or you might say, “Fifteen months? Are you crazy? We need this in eight months!” Of course, haggling like this can’t possibly make things happen any faster…

Mistake No. 4: Divide tasks equitably.

If Mary has too much work, give some of her tasks to John. This sounds completely sensible, so you won’t be challenged. But I promise you, in the long run it’s sure to cause problems. That’s because when one developer steps in to replace another, it’s reasonable to assume that the new one will work at about one-tenth the speed. John’s going to have to spend untold hours figuring out all the things that Mary already knows about her area of code…

Mistake No. 5: Work till midnight.

…Software development takes immense intellectual effort. Even the best programmers can rarely sustain that level of effort for more than a few hours a day. Beyond that, they need to rest their brains a bit, which is why they always seem to be surfing the Internet or playing games when you barge in on them…

You can read the full article at www.inc.com/magazine/20071101/…

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October 11th, 2007

Guide on blog posting frequency - part 3


Case Study: AdesBlog’s performance

I hope you have enjoyed the previous two parts, if you haven’t read them, please read them first.

Guide on blog posting frequency - part 1
Guide on blog posting frequency - part 2

In this part, I will be discussing my blog’s performance. I will talk about how posting frequency and other things affected the traffic and number of rss subscribers.

A bit of history

I started this blog in April 2005, blogged about various web technologies and online tools. Posts were short, factual and impersonal. I didn’t even have an about me page then. I blogged in this manner for a year. And after about one year plus, I had only 50+ RSS subscribers. That was the time I had to do some changes!

Changes I have implemented in early 2006

I have put up my “about me” page and personal info (together with the photo). I also started to write more personal and opinionated posts. But the posts were still short. All these while, since the blog was started I was blogging regularly, can say I was writing at least one post a day. But as you can see there was no success, I had only 50 RSS subscribers and I was not even in Alexa Top100K sites.

Lesson: Posting regularly alone won’t increase your traffic and readership. Your posts should have your own flavor, personal touch, in order to stand out from the crowd.

In late 2006, I got my PR7. (I will post about the possible factors for getting PR7 in a separate post).


Next step, 2007 changes

Early 2007, I made more changes. This time I decided to write longer posts. But before that, I asked the readers if they preferred longer posts. The answer was “no, we prefer short posts“. Eventhough, only 12 people answered the poll, 66.67% of them said they preferred short posts.

Lesson: Don’t always follow what people tell you. Instead, follow your own judgment (gut-feeling, intuition..etc).

So I went against the poll results and started posting longer posts. I posted more opinionated posts. The results were very encouraging. In May 2007, my blog entered Alexa TOP100.

Now the blog was riding on very smooth waves. As you can see above, the traffic was increasing steadily.

Then came my one month trip backhome. Before going to my trip I had written some posts using time-stamp and I thought I will be free enough to fill in the gaps and blog once in a while. However I wasn’t able to blog regularly. I also made a mistake of not arranging any guest-bloggers beforehand. And I learned my lesson from that.

As you can see above, from this irregular posting during my holiday, my blog traffic suffered a huge blow. It went down like crazy.

Lesson:

  • Post regularly at all times! Even if you are going for a holiday.
  • Arrange somebody to take over your blog when you are not around. Arrange guest-bloggers beforehand.
  • Plan very early for your trip. Write time-stamped posts that are not bound to any time limit, the posts that people can read any time (i.e today, tomorrow, after one year..etc)

Back on track

After my trip I have been posting regularly (at least one post a day) and the traffic is increasing steadily. As I said posting regularly alone won’t guarantee an increase in your traffic, but when it’s combined with good articles, you can be guaranteed that the traffic will jump higher and higher.

About the RSS

As I said earlier, my RSS count was about 50 something back in 2005 and early 2006. At the moment it is 536 as you can see to the right. RSS subscribers did increase 10 fold since I implemented 2007 changes, that was when I started posting longer posts. Longer posts that not only had facts in it but my personal opinion and predictions too.

Summary

Now that you read the case summary you can derive your own lessons from it. In summary, if your identity is not visible on your blog, and if you are posting short posts that are factual, and if your posts do not include your own personal opinions on them. Then you might want to make some changes. Do small changes at a time and track the results. Sometimes something that work on one blog won’t necessarily work on all blogs. So try to find what works for your blog best.

I hope this post was useful to you all. How about you? What worked for your blog? Share with us.

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October 7th, 2007

Guide on blog posting frequency - part 2


Guide on blog posting frequency - part 1
Part 2 - Current post
Guide on blog posting frequency - part 3

Yesterday I talked about blog posting frequency for sites that want to increase their traffic, RSS subscribers and PR. If you have missed it, I recommend you to read it, just scroll down the page or click here for part 1.

In this part I will talk about the remaining two objectives 2 and 3 respectively:

  1. Increase traffic, increase RSS subscriptions, increase PR (talked in part 1)
  2. Establishing authority in certain field
  3. Diary, ramblings, personal blog, hobby

2. Establishing authority in certain field

If your objective is to establish authority in certain field on the net, i.e if you want to become the expert in your field, then you don’t need to write everyday, let alone post up to 3 posts a day. Instead you should concentrate on producing very well researched articles, guides, and books in your field. Writing one post a week would be more than enough.

Please note that, if your objective is to establish authority then you are not after traffic to your blog, neither after increasing your blog’s pagerank. So posting everyday actually will be a disadvantage for you. Because, due to time constraint (given 24 hours) you wouldn’t be able to write well researched article every single day.

Take Jakob Nielsen, web usability expert for example. He produces one or two articles per month. That’s right, only 2 articles a month.

But how about my traffic and pagerank?

Well… you shouldn’t worry about them, just let them take its own course. Because these elements (traffic and pagerank) will always follow the quality work. For example Jakob Nielsen’s site has a PageRank of 8 and it’s in Alexa Top 15K. His conferences are attended by hundreds of people and he makes tons of money too!

Therefore, if you want to establish authority in your field, you need not to worry about the frequency of your posts. Just keep on publishing quality work whenever you can and let the traffic and pageranks take their own course. If you are really good in your field, then rest assured your blog/site will turn to a beehive soon - attracting web traffic.

3. Diary, ramblings, personal blog, hobby

Most web diaries and personal blogs about ramblings and hobbies are updated daily. And in other times they are left without any new posts for days. That’s a normal phenomenon in this category. Because there is no obligation from the owner of the blog to post regularly. And for this reason, there is no post limit on this category. It should be totally up to you when to post and when not to.

When you don’t post, people would just assume that you are busy and expect you to blog about it later. Your regular readers also would be a close circle that is related to you or your family. Since it’s a personal blog you can blog about anything too, unlike other niche blogs.

For example family blogs will usually update when there is some events going on. Some family blogs would just update once a month, when there is another new baby in the family ;)

Personal Money Maker Blogs

How about personal blogs like mine (AdesBlog) that are in “make money online” category? The blogs that are personal but chasing traffic, rss subscribers and pagerank?

If your blog is a personal blog with this objective, then you should read part 1 of this article. Then as concluded in part 1, you will need to post at least one well written article per day.

And if you want to see a result (in traffic, rss or pr), post regularly for the next 3-4 months and I am sure you will see a lot of positive results. You need to take into account that the positive results will be directly related to your:

  • quality of the posts
  • expertise in the field
  • style of your writing
  • design of your blog (professional or crappy)
  • does your blog have it’s own domain name (yourblog.com or yourblog.blogspot.com?)…etc

In Part-3, I will discuss the progress of AdesBlog and how blog posting frequency and other changes affected the traffic and number of rss subscribers.

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October 4th, 2007

Entrepreneurial Death Traps


I was reading this article called “Entrepreneurial Death Traps - How to avoid the classic entrepreneurial mistakes”. If you are ever going to start your own business in the future then you should read this article and take into account the advices given. Because you don’t want to repeat those problems.

It discusses about the partnership issues that start with a simple trust between friends and turns into a major problem later on. For example: Two friends launching a start-up together with 50/50 share. After few years one works and another simply looses interest and doesn’t work. The one who does not work still gets paid every month, and owns 50% of the company. Without his consent no major decision cannot be taken, and that includes firing him. So they are trapped.

Second example:

What about the three (or four) (or five) musketeer’s death trap. Although in one sense it’s a corollary of the 50-50 partnership deathtrap, in some ways it’s even more insidious. You know the story. Three friends decide to start a company. They split the ownership absolutely equally, they draw identical salaries, they’re going to make decisions “by consensus.” It’s the logical, “fair” thing to do. One of them (perhaps the oldest or the one whose idea it was originally) reluctantly assumes the presidency because state law requires there to be one.

What a recipe for failure! There are three primary problems with this set-up. First, this company has no leader, no one ultimately responsible for its success or failure. Second, sooner or later a major, honest difference of opinions will arise. What do they do then? Third, the reluctant president will almost inevitably come to see himself as “a little more than equal.” If they have any success, for example, and get written up in the local or trade press, guess whose picture the reporter will want? Guess whose quotes will be plastered all through the story? Guess which other two people are going to hang the article on their family room dart board?

The solution? Pick a CEO and treat him like one. Give him the largest equity position and salary, even if they are only symbolically larger. Somebody has to sit where the buck stops.

There are many more advices and examples, read the full article at www.vcinstitute.org/bookstore/deathtraps.html

I think it’s really important to make everything clear before you set out for a business with your friends. Discussing all the financial things might sound a bit money minded first, but that can actually save your friendship later on. What do you think?

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October 2nd, 2007

PageRank update on the way?


People have been waiting for the PageRank update for so long already. Last update was in April 2006, this makes it the longest delay in PR update history. There are also talks on blogosphere and forums that Google might be thinking to abondon PageRank system altogether.

Why would Google abondon its PageRank?

The possible answers for this would be: One: To stop the manipulation of their PageRank algorithm. Currently people are manipulating their algorithm to get higher PR, mainly this is done through buying text-links, link exchanges, paid reviews..etc. To most websites, higher PR means higher advertisement prices.

Two: To improve the SER (Search Engine Results). Due to the manipulation of PageRank algorithm and extensive text-link buying and selling among websites on the net. Google claims that their SER are being indirectly manipulated too. Because when someone purchases a link from high ranking site, Googlebot spiders it and gives more importance to that link. And as a result of this, places this particular website higher in search engine results page.

To prevent this from happening, Google has been forcing people to use rel=”nofollow” on their paid text links. In simple words, Google said: “if we detect that you are selling text-links on your site or blog, we are going to punish you…” But majority of the people didn’t listen and resorted to hiding the paid text links under different headings. This made the usability of the websites and the search engine results even worse. Because now, when you see a site, you wouldn’t know if the text links were advertisements or just a recommended links. So Google somehow affected its own algorithm adversely, when it started to force them to declare their paid links.

Signs of PageRank update?

There are some signs of Google PR update though, but it might just be PageRank revoking only. Google sometimes does PR revoking independently of PR update. Latest victim of PR revoking is JonhChow dot com. He lost his PR6, and now has a PR5. But being the *evil* that he is, he already started counter strategy to combat this. And that is - to increase his RSS subscribers instead.

Number of RSS subscribers is already being included in the quoting of the advertisement prices. So the more the RSS subscribers, the more money you can charge for your ads. Mhhh… good thinking John!

AdesBlog’s future

So far future pagerank predictions for AdesBlog has been stable PR7. Inshallah it will stay the same. I got my PR7 on October 3, 2006. Tomorrow it will be exactly one year since I got my PageRank 7, first anniversary ;) It’s been great to have a PR7 blog. During which I tried to share its benefits with my readers.

I get so many questions about my PR7. How did you get it? What is the secret? Tell me and I won’t tell anybody…etc. Even JohnChow asked me to guest blog about it in his blog, but I humbly declined. Because there was nothing special about it. First of all there is no secret. Secondly if it stays the same - PR7, after the major PR update, then I will post about it as a separate post. I will reveal the so called “secrets” at that time ;) So stay tuned!

Conclusion

Did you notice any PR updates on your sites? If so, has it been positive or negative? When do you think PR update will occur? Do you think Google will abandon its PageRank system? What is your opinion on these pressing issues of blogoshpere? I am sure many readers would be interested to know your thoughts.

Also consider AdesBlog’s advertisement opportunities if you want to increase your chances of getting higher PR ;)

Source for the screenshot above: click here

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