Blogger, the best blogging platform

I like Blogger, most of you should know by now. It is free, but it is not of low quality. Other bloggers used to compare Wordpress against Blogger and many of them had given thumbs-up for Wordpress. I am not against Wordpress. But ...

Yes, I am not against Wordpress. But, I personally feel that Blogger is much simpler, easy to use and comparatively powerful too. Add to it that Blogger is from the Google family; probably you are getting a little edge over other blogging platforms on Google's search results (This is just my guess and I have no proof to show you. So, don't ask me how and why did I say that?)

Initially, I started with Blogger close to about 4 or 5 years ago. That time Blogger did not have any great functionality. It was simple and easy to use. For me, as a beginner, it made sense. As time went by, I read comparisons that said Wordpress is better by a long distance. So, I wanted to give it a try.

I did work on a Wordpress blog for some time. No offence, I did not like it. May be I was already used to Blogger. So, I did not bother to work on Wordpress any more. So, I concentrated on Blogger. All my blogs today were on Blogger platform. I like it and love it.

Recently, Blogger started to add some powerful functionalities to its interface. Initially, I did not notice it. But, recently, I started to realize the additional features and I am pleasantly surprised. Well done Blogger team! Keep it up!

Just to have a feel of the new features, I have listed them below:

(1) Comments tab in the dashboard that shows all your comments, including spam detection
(2) Very useful Statistics
(3) Adsense reports
(4) Template designer, that makes life so easy to create good looking layouts without a sweat (sorry to those people who were creating customized Blogger templates, you may have to close shop soon or look at other niche to continue your business)
(5) Ability to create pages

I would like to write about each feature in detail. But, I will stop there as I am running out of time. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Type of Traffic Determines Adsense Success

In my earlier post, while replying to Sandy’s comments, I told you that I don’t use Adsense in this blog. In spite of me supporting Google’s Adsense regularly in my posts, why I don’t use it here? I thought I should explain to clarify the doubts that might have cropped up in you.

I have three main reasons for not using Adsense on this blog:

(1) I primarily get traffic from social networking sites

(2) This blog deals with topics with other bloggers as the target audience. The topics generally revolve around blogging tips and make money online.

(3) The poor performing Adsense ads on this blog affected the performance of Adsense ads on my other blogs

How does type of traffic affect Adsense income?
The traffic to any blog generally falls under two major categories, traffic from social networks and traffic from search engines. Likewise, blogs can also be classified into blogs with primarily social traffic and blogs with primarily search engine traffic.

Please take note that Google Adsense does not perform well on blogs with traffic primarily from social networks. This might be one major reason why bloggers like John Chow, Darren Rowse and the likes have not been using Adsense on their blogs. Even though you get huge traffic through social networks, it is not going to convert into clicks. Even if it does, it is not going to produce good returns for you.

Blogging Niche
If you see advertisements related to blogging from Google on your Adsense block, it means you are not doing well as far as Google is concerned. So, the scenario gets worse if your blog itself is on blogging niche. It might look like you are getting targeted ads. Of course, I am blogging about blogs and I should expect ads related to blogging, right? But, Google will still pay you very minimal rates per click. So, it is a proven fact that blogging niche does not perform well with Google Adsense.

One poor performing blog affects the entire network
If you have many blogs under your Adsense account, then you need to watch the performance of each of your blogs closely. Google has a peculiar way of degrading blogs, called “Smart Pricing”. If one of your blog performs badly, then all your blogs will be slapped a kind of penalty and the returns from well performing blogs will start to dwindle. So, if you notice a blog with poor performance, immediately remove the Adsense ads from that blog. This will help in getting good returns from your other blogs. It is a good idea to regularly test all your Adsense blogs for smart pricing.

Conclusion
So, the above reasons summarize my decision not to use Adsense on this particular blog. But, I have other blogs where I still use Adsense and they perform particularly well. Hope that clarifies my support for Google Adsense and still not using it here in this blog. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Do I follow what I say?

I just wanted to address a comment from Sandy regarding the content of my earlier post titled "Keep it Simple for Adsense Success". Please read Sandy’s comment before we go further:

Sandy’s Comment on “Keep it Simple for Adsense Success”

"You don't see to practice what you preach...in that you say keep it simple and don't distract readers with subscriptions; but right in your post you say if you want more information to subscribe?

I'm not doing well with adsense, but everything I read say join join join, subscribe etc. Get your name in directories, get links out there. You post is the first I've seen that says do adsense and nothing else, so I wonder about it. Just really not sure what to make of it."

Why Sandy is frustrated?
I appreciate Sandy for being straight to the point. I can understand her frustration and I felt that her doubts should be cleared. I could have answered this as part of the comments, but I felt the answer should reach most of my readers who may have similar questions.

Why bloggers contradict?
You cannot learn the intricacies of blogging without reading other blogs or learning from the experience of established bloggers. But, the difficulty is you get contradicting suggestions/ advise from different bloggers. What should I do? One blogger tells me that Stumbleupon is the best for blog traffic. Another guy tells me that Google is the best source of traffic. Where do I stand then? Do I follow blogger A or blogger B? As it always happens in real world, you have to filter good information and weed away the bad information. Most importantly, you have to choose the right information that applies to your blogging goals.

Reply to Sandy
1. Sandy, when I said "don’t distract readers" I meant only for blogs that use Adsense ads. If you take a close look at this blog, I don’t use Adsense on this blog. So, the rules I have listed in the earlier post does not apply to this blog. If you are using Adsense on your blog, keep the distraction minimal. I do this on my blogs which use Adsense. The idea is to get the attention of the reader on the Adsense ads, rather than splitting his attention between an Entrecard ad, ten Adgitize ads, four CMF ads and a row of Project Wonderful ads. What is the probability of someone clicking on your Adsense ad?

2. Regarding joining blog directories or getting links, it is fine. The amount of incoming links from quality sites with keyword-anchored text is very important for you to move up in the search engine rankings. Getting links is certainly very important. I did not say “do nothing else”. But, while you spend time on off-site optimization you should also concentrate on your on-site optimization. Your primary goal should be to get search engine traffic.

I am just trying to share my experience with my readers and fellow bloggers. I have made mistakes and learned from them. Blogging is trial and error. If you are not going to try something, you are not going to learn. I always try many things. If it works, fine. If not, along the way, I may fine-tune my strategies.

Conclusion
Sandy, by the way, I would like to add much more on your comment. But, I have little time to add further. I will come back with further content on this in my next post. Feel free to shoot further questions that you may have.

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Keep it Simple for Adsense Success

The success of Adsense relies on the simplicity of your blog. If you want to make money with Adsense, then keep it simple. I will get down to the details below.

Bad Placement of Google Adsense
I visit lot of blogs that have too many advertisements distracting the reader's attention. I can understand their eagerness in maximizing the available space. But, Adsense is not about maximizing your advertising space. You need to use the space intelligently and place the advertisements strategically. I will show you an example which I feel is not the right way of using Adsense. (Note: This is an example and if it resembles any existing blog, it is by coincidence and not intentional.)



Look at how the 125 by 125 advertisements are distracting the attention away from Adsense ads. If you are good at probability, work out what is the probability of someone clicking on the Adsense ad.

All Adsense or No Adsense
Let me tell you something. If you are using Adsense on a blog, do not put any other advertisement on this blog. If you want to put other advertisements on your blog, then do not use Adsense. As simple as that. You may ask why. Google does not prevent us from displaying other advertisements. True. But, from my experience, you cannot make money with Adsense if you concentrate on other advertisements too. You are splitting your visitors between your different ad networks. This means that your CTR is pretty low as far as Google is concerned and it will reduce your earnings.

The problem here is getting the attention of the reader to your advertisement and getting him/ her to click. Just think about it. Do you want your reader to click on an Adsense ad that brings you $1 or even 25 cents per click or you want him to leave the site clicking on a Project Wonderful ad that fetches you 0.01$ per day?. I am not trying to compare advertising networks nor I am concluding which is more profitable for the blogger. The idea is whichever you choose to go, you should do the right thing.

Good Placement of Adsense
I will you show a good display of Adsense ads in the following example.



Look at how the 468x60 Adsense ad is neatly arranged on top of the post and a 160x600 ad runs all along the height of the post. If a reader gets bored with the content of the post, the first thing he/ she will do is to click on the Adsense ad. There is nothing distracting the reader from not doing so. The picture below shows how the ending of the post can help you.



Look how nicely a big rectangle ad is placed at the end of the post. If the reader completes reading the post and still unable to get the information he/ she wants, they are most likely to click on the ad below.

Ideal Layout for Adsense blogs
In all my Adsense blogs, I like to have a 468x60 ad at the top of the post, a 160x600 ad running along the right side of the post and a 336x280 or 300x250 ad at the bottom of the post. This type of placement has worked wonders for me. This has increased the Click Through Rate. I won't confirm that this is the best combination, you may have to try it out yourself and find the ideal combination for your blog. But, generally, this is a good combination.

Conclusion: Keep it Simple
To conclude, keep your blog as simple as possible to make money with Adsense. Minimize the number of outgoing links; do not use any other advertisements other than Adsense; do not cramp your blog with information that distracts the reader like your blog statistics or page rank or subscribe button.

Finally, will I get good earnings from the click after doing all these? I don't know. That's a completely different topic. This post has concentrated mainly on improving your click-through rate and not on your earnings. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Make Money with Today.com

Today.com is a blogging platform that makes writing and maintaining a blog easy. It pays you for blogging, without restricting you. When you sign up, you are given a VIP Blogger status that allows you to earn money based on the page impressions your blog generates. Here is my trial blog on Today.com, Cricket and India; take a look if you are interested.

Who should write for Today.com?
Today.com is suitable for bloggers who are unable to make significant money with their normal blog, be it on Blogger, Wordpress or self-hosted. Today.com pays you $2.00 per one thousand page impressions. Compare this with your Adsense earnings. If you struggle to reach $2.00 eCPM, then Today.com is worth a try. All you have to do is concentrate on your blogging and promotion of your blog. The advertisement part is taken care of by Today.com.

How to generate traffic to your blog?
I personally prefer search engine traffic. I find that Today.com blogs are generally doing well on search engines, similar to Blogger blogs. So, you have to get enough backlinks for your primary keyword and while blogging target your primary keyword and secondary keywords. Look at the picture below. This is a screenshot from my trial blog.


As you can see, I am not trying any blog promotion other than getting traffic from search engines like, Google and Yahoo. All I did is to create a blog, get some keyword-anchored backlinks and wrote content targeting my keywords. I am not getting tons of traffic, but I am having enough to keep the blog going. If you take a close look, I did get some traffic from Entrecard and Stumbleupon. But, I have removed Entrecard widget since, as I do not have enough time to drop cards. What I want is traffic without any effort, or simply to put, I want Search Engine Traffic.

Can I use Entrecard?
Of course, you can use it. But, ensure that you disable paid advertisements in your advert settings of Entrecard. So, if you are a dropaholic with 300 drops a day, then probably you could easily get thousand of unique visits to your blog. Today.com has no restriction, so far, on where the traffic comes from. You can get traffic from Entrecard, Digg, Stumbleupon or any social networks. It does not matter.

Important Points

• Spend time before deciding on your topic. It is better to have a topic that is less competitive, but have significant amount of search traffic.


• Once you decided your topic, choose your URL. Ensure that your primary keyword is included in the URL. This is very important as you cannot change your URL once you have committed.


• Post few articles and start looking for backlinks. Backlinks helps to quickly get indexed by Google.


• Keep posting regularly with your primary/ secondary keywords until search engine traffic starts to flow in.


• Now, you can slow down your posting frequency and post only when you are free. Search engines will take care of sending regular traffic to you.

How to sign up?
You can sign up by clicking here. This is an affiliate link and I thank you for signing up through me. Today.com pays $5.00 for every successful referral, if the referral goes on to post at least 30 individual posts on 30 individual days.

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How to succeed with Adsense?

How can I succeed with Google Adsense? Many of us have this question. I had been using Adsense for more than three years. During this period, I have learnt many do's and dont's of Adsense. Let me share my experience with you.

Adsense Setup and Implementation
Adsense is one of the easiest to implement. Google does not have a very strict policy on approving blogs for Adsense. So, the first step is clear. We do not need any articles on the blog. We do not need to show substantial traffic to start using Adsense. So, the setup is simple. But, how much can you make with Adsense? Is it easy to make money with Adsense? No, it is going to be a very difficult task. If you are using Adsense and expecting results immediately, you may be disappointed. So, what is the trick or secret behind blogs with successful Adsense returns?

Secret of success with Adsense
The secret is simple. "UNDERSTAND how Google Adsense works". Yes, as simple as that. If you don't understand the way Adsense works, you might not be making substantial money with Adsense.

Let me put it in a simple way. Have you played chess? Let me say, you don't know anything about the game of chess. Let me give you a chess board and the necessary coins FREE. Can you win a game straightaway? No. You need to know the rules of the game first. Secondly, you should learn the tricks to make an impact on the game. If you are playing Viswanathan Anand, Garry Kasparov or Vladimir Kramnik with no knowledge of the game, you are going to fail. The success with Adsense is similar. Google provides you a free blogging platform and an easy-to-setup advertising network. But, to succeed, you need to understand the rules and learn the tricks.

Targeted Content Means Targeted Advertisements
Enough on the importance of understanding Google Adsense. My first suggestion is to plan the content of your blog. Google automatically displays advertisements based on what you write. So, the advertisements are going to be related to what you write. The algorithm keeps fine-tuning the advertisements as your blog grows bigger and bigger. If you write about cars, then keep writing about similar content. You can target reviews of cars, news about new cars in the market, compare different brands of cars, write about Toyota, Honda or Mazda. So, Adsense will start to display ads related to cars on your blog.

This is called "Targeted ads". While you establish yourself on the topic you have chosen, you are also moving up the search engine results page and more traffic starts to flow in. These are genuine people who searches for information and comes to your page. If they find the information they want, they just move on. Or, they may click on any related ads. Let me say, I came to your page looking for a review on Honda Civic. If I see an advertisement saying "Good offer for Honda Civic", I might most likely click on this ad. The blogger will be paid a good rate for targeted audience. So, Google will be happy as you are sending a reader who is really interested in the ad.

Conclusion
So, to conclude, choose a niche and write content within that niche. Never work on topics from all around the world in one blog. If you are going to do that, then do not use Adsense. Adsense is for targeted content. Understand this and you have crossed the first obstacle.

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What is SEO?

SEO is one of the often heard words in blogging circle. If you are blogging for a while, you would have already known what SEO means. For new bloggers, SEO is something alien. In this post, I make an attempt to introduce SEO for beginners.

What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Are we going to optimize the search engine then? No, we are actually going to optimize our blog or website to gain some traffic from search engines. You can achieve Search Engine Optimization by improving internally (on-site) and externally (off-site) in order to increase the traffic from search engines.

What is a search engine?
A search engine is basically a tool or program designed to search for information on the internet. Examples of search engines include Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, Excite and so on. Each search engine has a proprietary algorithm that is used to extract relevant information from web based on several factors. Google is widely recognized as the biggest search engine currently.

How SEO helps in blogging?
A new blogger will know how difficult it is to get visitors to his/ her blog or web site. An experienced blogger knows how difficult it is to sustain visitors/ readers. Search engines provide a regular flow of visitors to your site if you can get on to their search engine result pages. To appear on the search engine results, you have to optimize your blog for search engines. Some of you may already be optimizing your blog without realizing what is Search engine optimization. A well written blog with focussed content will automatically achieve SEO. But, with a little bit further effort, the blog can go a long way in establishing substantial amount of traffic from search engines. The idea is if you can regularly feature in the first page of Google’s search result for a few keywords, then you need not spend time in promoting your blog.

How to achieve SEO?
SEO needs you to change your writing approach. You have to look at each and every aspect of your blog from the viewpoint of search engines. Some bloggers are of the opinion that a blog optimized for search engines are not good for reading. It is not always true. You can write a blog with readers in mind as well as search engines in mind. It is in your hands to understand the needs of the two groups and address them effectively.

When should I start SEO?
You need to have SEO in mind even before you commence blogging. The URL of your blog also plays an important role. But, if you already have an established blog and your URL does not reflect what your blog is about, don’t worry (My blog URL has very little relation to what I write). There are other areas you can improve on. For example, your blog title, blog description, post title and the content of your blog.

Let us start with internal tweaking of the blog and then move on to external tweaking to achieve some sort of Search Engine Optimization. I will address some of the SEO techniques in my future posts. I am not an SEO expert, but I would like to share some of the simple techniques that have proved successful to me. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Want to Become another John Chow?

Let me continue the discussion on my decision to stop writing sponsored reviews. I did some justification why writing sponsored reviews is not going to help you in the long term. I wanted to clarify further on two issues, raised by fellow bloggers, on this sponsored reviews discussion.

Issue #1: Mixing of Sponsored Content and Original Content
Some of you feel that it is alright to write sponsored reviews as long as you write original posts in between. The mixing of sponsored posts and original posts is a requirement by the paid reviews companies in an effort to dissuade bloggers from completely writing paid content. But, as far as Google is concerned, the mistake is the same whether you write one sponsored post or many sponsored posts. The best practice is to keep away from paid posts.

Issue #2: John Chow Wannabes
Some of you argue that you can follow bloggers like John Chow, who continues to write for ReviewMe. He earns very good money in spite of Google’s penalty. JohnChow.com now has a page rank of only 3. If his page rank is so low, then how can he make substantial money from sponsored reviews? In fact, I understand that John Chow charges as much as $500 for a review on his blog. In his last monthly income report I read, he declared that he made $4000 from reviews made in the month of October 2008.

Let me tell you something, not every one of us can become John Chow. John Chow has as much as 45000 subscribers on his blog. So, a review by John Chow is worth for the money spent by the advertiser. Considering $500 for 45000 readers, the advertiser can reach to about 90 readers for every $1 he spends on the review.

Compare yourself with John Chow; do you have so many readers on your blog? I have just about 150 readers. Using John Chow’s standard of $1 for 90 readers, I could demand only about $2 for a review on my site. Can I do this? No, it is not worth. Neither for me nor for the advertiser. Hope you get what I mean.

Conclusion
Writing purely for money doesn’t seem to work well either for the publisher or the advertiser. The advertiser who pays you money for getting some ride on your PageRank loses when Google pulls your blog down to PR Zero. So, the advertiser is not going to get any help for ranking higher on search engine results page.

Let me conclude that I will commence sponsored reviews again when I have close to 45000 subscribers and I can demand $500 a review. And of course, the review is to reach my readers and not for ranking higher on Google results. So, all the links will be no-followed. In short, I will go for sponsored reviews again when I become another John Chow. Until then, I will maintain “No” to sponsored reviews. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Google sends me traffic again

Last month, I wrote about my intention to completely stop writing sponsored reviews. I started to slowly add the no-follow tag to all the sponsored reviews links (any way, these links will be of no use to the other party as my page rank went down to zero). I also started to remove all affiliate links to the sponsored reviews sites.

Response for my decision on Sponsored Reviews
In the meanwhile, I received mixed response for my decision to stop writing sponsored reviews. Some of you told that I made the right decision. Some of you still think that paid reviews will provide a good source of income. Even some of you suggested that I will write paid posts again after getting back the page rank.

Success of Sponsored Reviews depends on Google PR
Let me tell you, you will get the opportunities only until you have some page rank attached to your blog. Once Google finds that you are writing for sponsored reviews companies, they will penalize with a PR zero. That’s it. You will immediately see a drop in the number of opportunities available for you and a drastic cut in the offer amount per opportunity. The same guys, who wanted you before when you had a good Page Rank, start to dump you now. Why they cannot support you now? Nothing has changed in your blog. Your writing skills are the same. But, they don’t want you now just because you lost your page rank.

Sponsored Reviews Leads to Dip in Search Engine Traffic
The other side effect of Google’s penalty will show up when your search engine traffic slowly and steadily goes down to almost nothing. This is where you will start to feel the pinch (like me). The graph below shows what could happen to your blog. Look at the graph dipping down very fast.


This started to happen to this blog since end September 2008. I didn’t really notice this until recently. Once I saw this, I wanted to make it clear that I am not writing any more paid reviews. That was the reason for my outright post explaining why I said no to sponsored reviews.

Google sending Traffic Again to my blog
Once I declared my intention clearly, removed some of the affiliate links to sponsored reviews sites and no-followed those paid reviews posts, I could see slowly the search traffic coming back. I could not definitely say that Google started to send me traffic due to the above actions. But, most likely, it is true that Google recognized my efforts. My Google Page Rank still stays at zero, but at least I am getting back on to the search engine results pages. That’s good. If you don’t believe me, look at the graph below.



Contribution of Search Engine Traffic in 2008
The graph tells you the clear picture. I will breakdown how search engine traffic contributed to the overall traffic to my blog.

Jan 2008 – 36.80 %
Feb 2008 – 52.12 %
Mar 2008 – 33.84 %
Apr 2008 – 40.87 %
May 2008 – 45.65 %
Jun 2008 – 56.75 %
Jul 2008 – 56.28 %
Aug 2008 – 50.33 %
Sep 2008 – 33.24 %
Oct 2008 – 3.12 %
Nov 2008 – 1.08 %
Dec 2008 – 15.30 %

Look at how the search engine contribution dropped to single digits in the month of Oct 2008 and Nov 2008. In the first 9 months of the year, the search engines contributed about one-third to one-half of the overall traffic to the blog. The traffic went down dramatically in October and November. But, you could see a good recovery in December 2008.

Conclusion
I think I made myself clear here. But, if you still have any doubts about the impact of writing sponsored reviews, I am not going to push you further. Decide whether you want short term benefits or you want to establish a blog that brings in a steady income for a longer period. The ball is in your court. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Is PageRank the best way to measure the success of a blog?

In my earlier posts How much is my blog worth? and 63/100: That is the grade of this blog, I have discussed the importance of evaluating blogs based on some systematic approach. This would avoid the controversies and discussions about who is the best out there.

While PageRank is used predominantly as one of the measures, I had seen some excellent blogs with a PageRank zero. One such example would be BloggingTips.com. I have enjoyed the tips and tricks from BloggingTips.com, but surprised to learn about the PR status. PageRank, in a way, favours older blogs and it is not dynamic enough to reflect day-to-day changes.

Today, I got a lead to one of the posts written at Courtneytuttle.com (thanks to the little BlogRush widget). The author expresses similar sentiment as mine and has written an interesting article How do you measure your blog’s success? He compares the strengths and weaknesses of PageRank, Technorati Rankings, Alexa Rankings and RSS count. Take a look at the article and you will appreciate the discussion.

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A quick round-up of September 2007

Only in September, I started to look at this blog seriously. The statistics show that I am just going in the right direction.

1. I did apply a new template to this blog. While there are still many glitches to this template, the nice look keeps me stuck with it.

2. I also got the approval from PayPerPost for this blog recently.

3. The hot newcomer to blogosphere this month is certainly BlogRush. While it is still in its early days, it is a potential winner for bloggers. We will wait for few more months to see the impact of BlogRush.

Some of my popular posts written in September:

• New Template for this blog


• How much is my blog worth?


• 63/100: That is the grade of this blog


• Blog Review: Calling All Palauans


• Recent Posts Widget for Blogger

Some of the interesting posts from other bloggers written in September:

• Make Money Online with Youtube from JohnChow.com


• Forget About Page Rank and Build a Better Blog from ProBlogger.net


• Using Categories and Tags Effectively on Your Blog from ProBlogger.net


• How to make visitors not come back to your blog - 5 Tips from BloggingTips.com


• Typo Tips from BloggingTips.com

Enjoy blogging. Best of luck to all bloggers for a better October month.

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