Thursday, January 31, 2008

Start With a Good Plan

For anything to work well, care must be taken to make firm, workable plans to execute it and the same goes for website designs. With a well thought out website design, you will be able to create a site that generates multiple streams of revenue for you. In fact, many websites turn into online wasteland because they are not well planned and do not get a single visitor. Gradually, the webmaster will not be motivated to update it anymore and it turns into wasted cyberspace. I know because I've been there before and that was the reason for my 1 year hiatus. Time is money and I can't imagine how much I lost because of poor planning.

The crucial point of planning your site is optimizing it for revenue if you want to gain any income from the site. Divide your site into major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages and subsections in those blocks. For example, you might have a "food" section, an "accomodation" section and an "entertainment" section for a tourism site. You can then write and publish relevant articles in the respective sections to attract a stream of traffic that comes looking for further information.

When you already have a broad and better-defined scope of themes for your websites, you can start monetizing your site with programs like Google's Adsense and Yahoo's YPN. You can also sell space on your pages to people interested in advertising your page. For this very reason, the advertisement blocks on your pages need to be relevant to the content, so a themed page fits that criteria perfectly. I also use TextLinkAds on my sites when they already have established traffic and PageRank.

As Internet becomes more widespread, advertising on the Internet will bear more results than on magazines or offline media. Hence, start tapping in on this lucrative stream of profit right away!

By the way, as of Jan 31, 2008, this site is not yet well planned. I simply don't know how to do it with Blogger/Blogspot.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

5 Important Rules in Website Design

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Take note that you only have 10 seconds to capture the interest of your visitors.

Here are five important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.
1) Do not use splash pages
Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter" and sometimes with glittering effect. In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements
Don't be pushy. Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation
You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is
When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site
Aside from slowing your site's loadtime, you will want to make sure your visitors are not by some audio looping on your site while reading your content. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Google PR Update Ongoing

I woke up this morning realizing that the pagerank of some of my sites reduced by one notch. At least, that's for those with PR rank. I first read about it late last night while browsing SEO.PH. Some of the members said that their sites now have PR0 especially those with paid posts for Smorty, PayPerPost, ReviewMe, etc. Of course, some members reported an increase in PR.

This is the first PR update by google for 2008. Oh well, it's another buzz that a lot of SEO specialist will talk about for the next couple of weeks. For sure, google has implemented another set rules (remember the NO FOLLOW rule?).

Follow the discussion in the following URL:

http://forums.seo.ph/showthread.php?t=2491

How about you? Have you noticed the change? Or does your site now have a PR rank? I check mine at http://checkpagerank.net

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Blackhat SEO Goes to Jail

I've read in Matt Cutt's blog that Matt Marlon, the CEO of TrafficPower.com has been arrested. His company is infamous for allegedly implementing black hat techniques for search engine optimization for their clients.

The funny thing is that Marlon is not arrested for his blackhat antiques but because of Forclosed Housing Scam. His SEO techniques has resulted to removing of Traffic Power domains and domains of their clients from Google index. Same thing happend with Yahoo and MSN. This is due to violation of webmaster guidelines.

You may read the news about it here. Hmnn... I guess nobody is going to jail yet because of Black Hat SEO.

Thursday, January 3, 2008

Importance of Templates

When I started blogging early last year, I more concerned on the overall layout of the theme. Just like anybody else who are just starting, I like fancy stuffs without thinking about the size of the template and how fast it would load into your browser. I don't even think about how I would make money from it.

But of course I learned some techniques as time went by. I got to implement some tips on Search Engine Optimization and began to realize the importance of template. Though content is still the King, it's not everything. There's a lot more things to do than just the content. You also have to think the user experience on your site, how to drive traffic to your site and most importantly, how to make money from it. Oh yeah, suddenly earning money online is no longer an easy task. But that should not deter you as there's a lot of themes out there that would help you on the user experience side as well as making money. That means you only have to worry about creating the content and marketing your site to drive traffic.

Actually, I got to find a wordpress theme that really converts well. The templates created by ScaredCrow are really good. I got to contact him and he sent me some of his works. I used one of his templates and it did help raise my CTR. I plan to use more of his templates. He hasn't published all his works yet, though. And he only have wordpress themes.

So there, if you want to lessen your workload in blogging, find a template that will suit both your taste and your visitor's.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Effective yet Simple Way to Join Adsense

We now know that adsense is the easiest and effective way to earn money online. Heck, this blog even has adsense in it. But Google is also strict in accepting new applicants and a lot of people have their accounts suspended or terminated due to violations.

So what's the best way to join adsense then? The answer is through Blogger or Blogspot(they are now one and the same). Yes, you read it right. Some people don't realize that Blogger has the facility to allow you to join adsense without the fuzz. If you already have a Blogger account, that's good for you. In few simple clicks, you have your application sent to Adsense for processing. But first, you should put in mind the following :
1. Your blog must be in English.

2. You must have at least 200 words in your blog. Or better yet, you already have several posts.

3. You have a valid mailing address (where Google will send your PIN and later, the cheques!)

4. Read the Adsense Terms of Service!!!! Very important if you don't want to lose your account. Treat it as a goldmine if you get accepted.

Some people says that within 48 hours, your account may be approved. But if you don't feel creating yet another blog in Blogger, you can alway choose to signup directly at Adsense. There is a link on the sidebar of this blog if you want to join.

For the uninitiated, here's the screenshots on how to join.
1. First, go to template/layout editor
2. Edit Posts Widget



3. Click on Sign-Up

4. Follow further instructions.
5. Wait for the confirmation/approval of your application.
That's it! Simple, eh!

Winning 1000 Entrecard Credits

It's my first time to join online contest of this kind and I won! Thanks for DulceNegosyante for simply commenting in her blogpost. It's as simple as that!

I don't know what to do with so many credits yet but maybe, I'll buy a spot from her blog or other popular blos. Who knows, I might conduct my very own contest.

Again, thank you DulceNegosyante. It's definitely a very good way to start the year!

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