Google Chrome is great

I've had Google Chrome installed on my laptop for some time now and so far, I've grown to like it more than Firefox.

I got the link for the Google Chrome download at Webstats Motigo.

Unlike other internet browsers, Google Chrome opens with thumbnails of the websites you've visited the most.  With Internet Explorer and Firefox, the only option you have is to assign what page it opens up to when you start it up.

This feature of Chrome is quite convenient for me as I normally open not only my e-mail but also log on to Facebook, Blogger, Inquirer.net, gmanew.tv, and a few other websites when I log on to the internet.

Another feature of Chrome which I found a bit magical is that I don't have to configure the browser's proxy settings when I change locations from home to my workplace.  With Firefox and Internet Explorer, I usually have to open up 'options' and tinker with the settings a bit so I can connect to the wi-fi at the office.

I have been visiting all sorts of websites using Chrome and I've had no problems viewing the pages I've visited so far.  There were a number of time that it did give me the option of 'killing' the page, but I think this has a lot more to do with the speed of my internet connection.  (I use a dial up connection at home and that's when I usually get the 'kill' message or 'DNS error'.)

The Chrome also has a neat option that allows you to report a broken link.

A friend at work, though, says that Google Chrome doesn't work well on his laptop.  I'm using Chrome on an old Neo (It's a relatively low priced laptop that I've had for around 2 years now.  It has an Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor at 1.6GHz 590 MHz, 504 of RAM, and that's just about all I can tell you based on what System tells me.)  My friend's laptop is on the higher end and so I don't know why he said that it Chrome runs slower on his laptop.

Bambee Dela Paz: Justice or Bust.

Apparently and for now, it seems bust.

The last bit of news I found on Google was a news report on the ABS-CBN news website saying that the NBI had concluded their probe sans any recommendation as to what action should be taken.

Here's an excerpt of that report posted on abs-cbnnews.com on 01/16/2009:

the report on the incident did not contain any recommendation from the NBI-National Capital Region (NCR) since the two parties have already filed cases against each other in the courts. The decision not to include any recommendation, the NBI said, was to avoid influencing the court's decision on the cases.

NBI-NCR chief Atty. Edward Villarta, in a phone interview with ABS-CBN News, said the report included a chronology of events in the brawl, which occurred at the Valley Golf and Country Club in Antipolo City last December 26,

All people involved in the incident, including witnesses, also submitted affidavits.

Villarta said they hope their report would help the DOJ find out what actually happened in the brawl.

Sylvia L. Mayuga who writes "For Better or Worse" in INQUIRER.net posted her own observations on 01/18/2009

The chink in Bambee Dela Paz’s blog account of the incident has been revealed to the indignant audience. Her dad lost his temper first, poking Nasser Pangandaman, Jr. with a golf umbrella on his tummy or his bottom, depending on which caddy you talk to. Here’s a roundup of the story thus far. Note how Mrs. Dela Paz carried a knife and her son carried a baseball bat.

I mention this as another evaporating tempest in a teapot to make a point – it pays to verify before getting emotions all riled up in crusade, a power media wields regularly but not always wisely. In his column, old hand Mon Tulfo, macho police reporter-turned-opinion- columnist, has been man enough to acknowledge jumping to conclusions. Here’s hoping more of us, media and otherwise, remember the present blush of embarrassment and the lesson that came with it.

Other mentions in Philippine online newspaper websites include:

Gloria, Mike can learn from Obama inaugural
Philippine Star, Philippines - Jan 21, 2009
I refer to the media madness that followed the blog-posting by golfer Bambee dela Paz of her account of the December 26 brawl at Valley Golf involving her ...

The darker side of media
Manila Times, Philippines - Jan 19, 2009
Of course, the slant was that the teen-age children of Mr. de la Paz—Bino and Bambee—were at the receiving end of the punches from the mayor-son of ...

Manila Times columnist Alito Malinao writes:

After investigating the incident and based on the testimonies of eyewitnesses, the Valley Golf and Country Club finally came up with its findings that showed it was the de la Paz family that started the scuffle and the Pangandamans only acted in self-defense.

As a result, de la Paz was expelled from the club but Pangandaman was only given a slap on the wrist by suspending him for two years.

Are the self-righteous columnists and commentators now going to admit that they were unfair to Pangandaman? I don’t think so.

Comments in Bambee's blog seems to have topped out at around 2,000.

The "Updates and Thank you" post has become the host of a troll fiesta of sorts with commenters arguing over the point of whether Bambee's camp was completely innocent or not.

I was of the opinion that while Bambee's family seemed to have been on the losing end of the brawl, it was clear in all accounts of the Valley Golf Brawl that her father had started the fight and at least in one account, said that Bambee participated in the fisticuff by attempting to gouge out the eyes of one of the Pangandamans.

I shudda known better because for my efforts to inject intelligent debate in a sty of self confessed sodomites and quack doctors, I've earned the ire of a blogger who is now impersonating my Blogger profile. Quite funny to those who know me personally but really quite damaging if it gets used to do something illegal -- in addition to Identify Theft I've already notified Blogger several times about it but it seems they are taking their time to notify me about what action they are taking.

Yugatech's review of Blogger had already warned others of its flaws -- one of them being that it is commonly used by spammers and unscrupulous people. Blogger moves quite slowly on complaints, particularly with regard to IDENTITY THEFT and there are no visible safeguards against it.

Other bloggers have put up blogs supposedly to keep the Dela Paz' quest for justice alive, but so far, the posts are stale with nothing new about them.

News about the court cases the Dela Pazes and Pangandamans against one another are hard to come by.

The last bit of information I got directly from one of the parties involved was that settlement was being pursued. The way the Dela Pazes are pursuing the settlement, as one described it, was similar to someone running in front of a Mercedes Benz in order to get hit and later demand exhorbitant reparations from the driver of the vehicle.

Pinoy Biz is now Pinoy Buzz

Laurence a. k. a. Words for Moolah, Angry Manileno, and Pinoy Media Insider drove home a very good point about my blog's title.

My blog, as it is now, doesn't having anything to do about business in the strict sense of the term and this may be misleading people, thwarting return visits.

Several things confirm this.

Both my bravenet and webstats motigo counters indicate that less than 25 percent of my visitors return to my blog.

The reports from Google Analytics were better at explaining this because it indicated that a fair amount of visitors bounced or clicked away when I posted the articles about blogging for money. The visitors that did stay and read a couple of pages were the ones that had to do with current news (the Pangandaman-Dela Paz Valley Golf Club Brawl).

So, considering my friend's opinion and looking at the data, I've decided to change my blog's title while keeping the URL for the meantime.

The content, as it has been for the past couple of days, will be about my own quirky views about Philippine politics and the media that covers it.

Blogging for Greenbacks (Part 6): Finding content that drives up traffic

I have stumbled upon a way to get free traffic to my blog that bothers the conscience of my good, old friend who writes Words for Moolah. It is effective but, if you have the same kind of scruples as Words for Moolah, then you should probably not try it at all.

It's not like I posted naked pictures of Charice Pempengco or Manny Pacquiao or Miley Cyrus.

His beef with this approach is this:

my good friend paul has been encouraging me to link up with blogs that feature posts concerning hot current events. one such issue he recommended that i ride (sakyan) is the one about that much talked about fight that cemented the philippine's reputation for producing world class boxers, the de la paz-pangandaman brawl.

...riding on hot issues by posting on relevant blogs is one way of harnessing the power of networking. but there's a problem...

i don't want to appear like i'm criticizing how other bloggers drive up traffic to their sites because i'm not. i'm simply saying that this approach is a little too cheesy for my taste.

don't get me wrong i love cheese. in fact, i can recommend cheese as a topping for any viand except maybe for "paksiw." but, i digress.

the simple fact is i'm just not yet comfortable with the idea of commenting on another person's blog if my dominant motivation for doing so is to boost traffic to my own site.

A good number of people posted entries regarding Bambi Dela Paz Blog and commented on that blog. The number of omments on her entry on December 26 titled The world has gone crazy reached 1,301 as of January 9, 2009 4:20 PM and the number of comments will continue piling on.

I don't know how many people reposted Bambi's entry in their own blogs but certainly, a lot of people I know through Facebook read the notes posted on it. Former ABS-CBN TV reporter Weng Orejana even posted an appeal on Mar Roxas' Facebook wall asking for him to do something about it.

Which actually gets me to wondering why other politicians didn't speak against the Pangandamans -- well except Senator Aquilino Pimentel. Are they afraid of political retribution in the 2010 polls? Lanao Del Norte, after all, is vote rich -- even the dead and newly born vote there. If I am mistaken about this, please correct me.

In any case, before I digress further, the point is that of the 1,301 people who commented on Bambi's entree there were a number who left their blog's URL in the comment and ostensibly even asked others to go to their blog.

Besides the bad karma one reaps from capitalizing on the misfortune of others, one other thing that Words for Moolah may really be ranting against is the unsophistacation and lack of subtlety of some commenters when it comes to blog spamming. Because, in essence, that is what it really is.

Sure, leaving your URL or link in high traffic blogs will get people to visit your blog. But what happens when somebody your link and finds that your blog has absolutely nothing to relevant to whatever it is they are interested in?

No shit Sherlocke! They will navigate away from your blog and probably not visit it again.

Having talked about the wrong thing to do, let me tell you about the right thing to do when trying to get traffic from hot items on the blogosphere or in the news.

One good source of web traffic, as I have said, is the news and another is the blogosphere. Put those two together and you've got a good place to search for ideas for blog entries that will generate traffic.

Here is how I figure it, if something is on the news, it indicates that a lot of people should be interested in it. More to the point, referring to news items automatically gives you current, popular words and names in particular combinations that people are looking for.

You have to bear in mind that when people log on to Google or Yahoo Search, they won't type the name of your blog. Duh! By using current and popular searched for words, you will increase your chances of getting someone to stumble upon your blog.

Figure out number of people log on to search engines, then figure out how many people are typing those search words, and figure on just one percent of one percent, then you'll probably arrive at pretty enormous number which indicates potential traffic. Between that number and the number of hits you actually get is another matter all together which will depend on a number of factors, including your ranking in search results.

Search words are different from keywords as it is used in SEO.

What I do to figure out what news item would be a good source of traffic is to look at several news sites. I look at what online newspapers are posting are posting in their headlines or top stories and after that, I look at what is in their breaking news.

I am an avid visitor of at least four news websites and they are (in no particular order) the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, GMA News dot TV, and ABS-CBN News.

The next thing I look at are other blogs, particularly those that are written by Filipino journalists, columnists, or people of equal celebrity or authority.

After looking at what's hot on the news and what is hot on the blogosphere, the choice of topics should be apparent.

The formula for this is simple enough:

Look at what's high up in the news. Not all headlines will drive traffic to your blog. The best bets are usually running stories and ones that involve some drama.

Post an entry reacting to it. In posting reactions to news, it would help to make short but concise reference to the news article first.

Also, it is good practice to include a link back to a source article (a page which has the news report). After that, you can blog away about it to your heart's content.

However, apart from sharing your personal opinion on the matter, it would be better if you can offer information or ideas that a lot of people may find valuable if not interesting.

The best thing that you can write about is how this particular news affects you. It can turn you into a chronicler of sorts of how big develops such as, say, the Global recession is affecting jobs in your home town. Honest, factual, and personal accounts that are well written are very valuable.

Despite being criticized for being a lopsided account (and this is understandable), Bambi's blog entry on the Valley Golf Brawl got a lot of attention precisely because it seemed to be an honest personal account of a tragedy involving a fight with a big name in government.

But, of course, intentionally picking a fight with cabinet members and their children would be an extreme, absurd, and wreckless way of promoting your blog.

Post comments on higher traffic blogs. When you do this, it helps to be subtle about leading people back to your blog. There is nothing more irritating than a blogger who is virtually screaming 'Looky! Looky! Me got blog!'.

The comment sections of some blogs allow you to put in your URL and others don't. Some only allow you to log in with your blogger profile ID, Gmail account, or Open ID.

People who find your comment interesting will naturally want to read more about you and in the process, find your blog. The best thing that can happen is if the owner of the blog visits your blog and decides to link his or her blog to your blog. It is as good as an endorsement as any that your blog matters, at least to them.

Also, when you do post a comment, try to be polite and courteous. Sharing your views doesn't necessarily involve shooting the views of other people down.

The best approach to commenting is to do so with the sincere intention of being helpful.

Do you have information that others don't have or may have overlooked? Do you have insight that may help others figure out what to do? Share that.

(Next up, the 2008 Year-End Google Zeitgeist and how it can help target your blog)

Blogging for Greenbacks (Part 4): Getting rid of the barriers to higher traffic for your blog

Blogging for greenbacks is a nifty idea and people are really earning from it.

Getting a blog up and running is easy as one, two, three. Registering with Google Adsense and installing ads on your blog is also almost a no-brainer.

But between you and the hundreds or thousands of dollars are two problems:

1. Getting people to visit your blog
2. Getting people to click your ads

Up until this point, I have told you about the various methods I have tried and how they failed to get me the results that I wanted. I have also told you about the methods that I doubt really works and the methods that are sure to get your blog banned from search engines. This is the part where I tell you about the methods that seem to be working for me.

At this stage, I cannot claim to be a successful blogger in terms of the number of people who visit my blog and the amount of money I have earned.

If you are just beginning to blog for money (or just came from under a rock or just anded from outerspace), then my series of articles on blogging for greebacks is just for you.

If you are a professional blogger and who claims to have made thousands of dollars from blogging, show me the money. Or better yet, just give me the money.

With that said, the next question should be, what should you focus more energy on first? The answer, as far as I am concerned, is that you have to prioritize getting web traffic or visitors first. This is an objective you have to pursue on a number of levels.

I think that the first things you have to do to ensure your blog gets traffic is to eliminate the reasons that keep visitors from finding your blog.

1. The title and URL of your blog

The very least that a title should do for your blog is to tell or suggest what you will be blogging about.

After this, you can consider if it is:

• Made of commonly used words
• Easy to remember
• Easy to spell
• Easy to type correctly
  

Whatever it is you decide to call your blog, you should get a URL that is the same or as similar as possible to your blog's title.

2. Registering your blog's URL to Search Engines

Even if you have a great title and URL, you shouldn't count on people typing it directly into their browser's search bar. Registering your URL with a search engine will give people an additional way to find your blog (intentionally or unintentionally).

To make it easy for you, just click these links and accomplish the online forms. Don't forget to click submit.

Add your URL to Google

Add your URL to Yahoo Search

Add your URL to AOL Search

Add your URL to MSN Search

3. Registering your blog on blog search sites

Blog search sites are websites that are devoted to keeping track of blogs and rank them according to the number of visitors it has, the number of people who link to it, the number of people who vote for it as their favorite, etcetera.

The thing is, you should count on the fact that your visitors will most likely be other bloggers.

For a list of blog search engines, you can go here

As for me, I have only so far registered with Technorati

4. Employing feed services for your blog

This is how Feedburner describes what a feed service is: If you publish a blog, you publish a feed. A feed is the format that allows your content to be delivered (and subscribed to) on the Web.

Translate this to mean that more people will read your blog more often.

5. Cross-feeding your blog to Multiply, Facebook, Friendster and other social networking sites

If you have an account in Multiply and Facebook, you ought to know that you can import your blog into these social networking websites. Meaning, that if you post an entry in Blogger it will be automatically displayed in your Multiply and Facebook accounts.

Ask yourself, who else but your friends will be interested in whatever it is you have to say about anything.

(Next up: Generating traffic through content)

Blogging for Greenbacks (Part 3): Google Adsense, "SEO" techniques, and other sure fire methods of getting traffic

Here is an entry in the Google Adsense support site that describes what it is all about:

Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant, unobtrusive Google ads on their website's content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your users are looking for on your site, you'll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages.

It's also a way for web site publishers to provide Google search to their site users, and to earn money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages.

The program is free, and combines pay-per-click and pay-per-impression advertising - meaning you get paid for valid clicks on the ads on your site or search results pages as well as impressions on your content pages. So go ahead and try this program.

The mechanics of earning money through blogging with the use of Google Adsense seemed simple enough to me.

1. Put up a Blog using blogger and fill it in with a couple of posts.

2. Register it with Google Adsense.

3. Paste Google Adsense codes in areas of your blog that will most likely get it some attention.

4. Wait for the money to come rolling in.

What I didn't realize then was that between steps 3 and 4 was a virtual chasm.

Money doesn't automatically come rushing in after you put up the Google Ads. It isn't like putting up a billboard and renting it out to advertisers, selling space on a printed page or selling time on radio and TV broadcasts.

You only get paid if the advertising on your page is seen, if the advertising gets clicked by your visitor or worse, only if the advertising gets the visitor to buy what is being advertised.

Being the stunted garden variety internet dolt that I was, I figured out that in order to get my advertising clicked, people other than myself had to visit my blog first.

Duh-oing! Ding! Ding! Ding!

Without knowing much about how to get people to visit my blog, I first pursued the objective of getting visitors by telling friends about my blog for about a month.

Telling them about blogging for money was an ordeal in itself because at that point, all they knew about the internet was limited mostly to the e-mail sites that they used.

When I first mentioned the word blog, they thought I was referring to parts of my nether regions. And I bet you can guess what they thought when I said I was monetizing my blog.

After explaining what a blog was and what monetizing it meant, friends became more curious and started asking, "Who'd want to read your stuff and why would Google pay to advertise on the stuff you wrote on the internet?"

The most disappointing response I got was, "So, is this like the networking business you told me about last month?"

In any case, the idea of promoting my blog door to door and through word of mouth sucked egg big time. It hardly got me more than a dozen visits in two months.

So I searched for better ways of getting people to visit my blog and found oodles upon oodles of websites that gave free advise on how to promote websites and get visitors. A lot of sites have claims that were too good to believe but there were a number that had good and free advise.

The first advise that I implemented was to register my blog's URL with search engines like Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN. This didn't take much figuring out because all I had to do was to fill out and submit an online form.

The almost immediate and awesome effect this had was that I now could find my website using these search engines. The effect this had on the number of visits to my website was a remarkable and outstanding ZIP.

So I searched for other better ways and that was when I stumbled upon Search Engine Optimization or SEO.

Wikipedia describes what SEO is all about:

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks," the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

Originally devised as a way to make websites turn up at the top most part of the results page of search engines and thereby get traffic, some websites claim to have adopted effective SEO to drive up traffic for blogs.

Some sites give free advice on how to SEO your blog but also claim that for a fee, they'll ensure that your blog gets higher traffic and either more clicks on your Google Ads or higher paying Google Ads plus clicks on those ads. These are the ones that give SEO a rather dubious reputation as they are most likely pseudo SEOs.

One trick that I got for free was that of tinkering my blog's meta-tags and like a freak, I implemented what I thought to be a pretty great trick.

Lo and behold! Tada! My ranking on Google and Yahoo didn't improve one bit as I was still on the Next Page and I had set up my preferences to display search results for100. Moreover, the number of visits I was getting went south, from 6 a month to about 2 a month.

Apparently, the use of meta-tags to manipulate page rankings had already been rendered futile as search engines began adopting techniques to ensure that searches produced relevant results. Wikipedia says:

Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB.

Meta tags provided a guide to each page's content.

But using meta data to index pages was found to be less than reliable because the webmaster's account of keywords in the meta tag were not truly relevant to the site's actual keywords.

Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in meta tags caused pages to rank for irrelevant searches. Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.

By relying so much on factors exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation.

To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters.

Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search allowing those results to be false would turn users to find other search sources.

Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.

Moreover, Wikipedia warns that:

By 2007, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals. The three leading search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Live Search, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages.

I am not saying that SEO for blogs cannot be done. There are pretty reputable website developers out there and SEO is one of their services. However, it takes a lot of expertise to figure out how search engines collect and organize information on websites.

This expertise is something that people have to pay for and so, freebie SEO advice is more often than not just a come-on or worse, it may actually be set up to steal traffic from your blog.

If the advise you stumble upon promises almost magical results immediately, you ought to doubt it.

The thing to resorting to trickery or webfoolery is that it sooner or later, it will get found out. The consequences are catastrophic as your blog or website can be banned from search engines.

The Wiki lists various forms of webfoolery:

Keyword stuffing

This involves the calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page. This is useful to make a page appear to be relevant for a web crawler in a way that makes it more likely to be found.

Example: A promoter of a Ponzi scheme wants to attract web surfers to a site where he advertises his scam. He places hidden text appropriate for a fan page of a popular music group on his page, hoping that the page will be listed as a fan site and receive many visits from music lovers.

Older versions of indexing programs simply counted how often a keyword appeared, and used that to determine relevance levels. Most modern search engines have the ability to analyze a page for keyword stuffing and determine whether the frequency is consistent with other sites created specifically to attract search engine traffic.

Also, large webpages are truncated, so that massive dictionary lists cannot be indexed on a single webpage.

Hidden or invisible unrelated text

Disguising keywords and phrases by making them the same color as the background, using a tiny font size, or hiding them within HTML code such as "no frame" sections, ALT attributes, zero-width/height DIVs, and "no script" sections. However, hidden text is not always spamdexing: it can also be used to enhance accessibility. People screening websites for a search-engine company might temporarily or permanently block an entire website for having invisible text on some webpages.

Meta tag stuffing

Repeating keywords in the Meta tags, and using meta keywords that are unrelated to the site's content. This tactic has been ineffective since 2005.

"Gateway" or doorway pages

Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases. They are designed to rank highly within the search results, but serve no purpose to visitors looking for information. A doorway page will generally have "click here to enter" on the page.

Scraper sites

Scraper sites, also known as Made for AdSense sites, are created using various programs designed to 'scrape' search-engine results pages or other sources of content and create 'content' for a website.[7] The specific presentation of content on these sites is unique, but is merely an amalgamation of content taken from other sources, often without permission. These types of websites are generally full of advertising (such as pay-per-click ads[7]), or redirect the user to other sites. It is even feasible for scraper sites to outrank original websites for their own information and organization names.

(Next up: The real deal to generating web traffic for your blog)

Blogging for Greenbacks (Part 2): My own experience with Google Adsense

The lure of blogging for green backs, as I have said, proved to be irresistible for me.

The barriers to entering this endeavor were basically nil. You could set up a blog for free (the most popular being Blogger and Wordpress), register it with Google Adsense for free, and find loads of free, helpful advise on how to maximize your Google Adsense earnings.

Also, I believed that I had more than the necessary level of expertise. One blog hype that I read said that if you could write a letter, you could write an interesting blog.

By the time that I had discovered Google Adsense, I had already been making a living as a writer for television and print for about ten years. I was confident that given the breadth and depth of my stock knowledge, I could churn up pages and pages of addictive content.

This got me to imagine my blog attracting thousands of visitors who would all click on my Google Ads.

So, like most brave idiots who spot a rainbow, I set off to find my pot of gold.

I started this Blogger blog in April or May 2005 with the unfounded and totally ridiculous assumption that people will care more for my opinions than their own.

Of course, I wasn’t completely foolish and I spent some time thinking of a pretty good way to build in attributes that give my blog a pretty good chance of getting attention.

First, I thought that it should appeal to people who have more or less a natural affinity to me and the things I care to write about. So, I thought of using the word ‘Pinoy’ as part of my blog’s title.

The second idea I had was that of people combing the internet for information, a significantly large number of them would most probably be looking for a way to ways to earn money.

Hence, Pinoy Biz and this is why my URL is http://www.pinoybiz.blogspot.com
It was originally titled as Pinoy Business and Leisure Stories. I think it was in one of my first posts that I promised my readers that I would clue them in on various ways of earning money over the internet. I made a couple entries about Adsense, Feed Burner, and other stuff. Then I made a foray into topics like credit repair, multi-level marketing, Filipino inventions, and a host of other topics.

My readership, for the first couple of months, stayed below a hundred a month. Google Adsense revenues didn’t reach beyond a few cents a month.

I visited almost every website there was in an attempt to figure out what I was not doing and what I was doing wrong. What I discovered basically boiled down to two things:

1. Creating traffic or getting people to visit my blog.

2. Getting people to click the Google Ads on my blog.

I chose to tackle the first of two problems.

As with most things in the internet and in life, there is a high road (high tech) way of getting traffic and there is a low road (low tech way) of getting traffic.

Before taking you on the low road, let me point at what I think is the high road because that is all I can do being a low road traveler.

(Up Next: Search Engine Optimization and other ways to generate web traffic)

Blogging for Greenbacks (Part One)

A long time friend Yet Abad for pointed me to Technorati's State of the Blogosphere 2008 report. It is a hefty and hearty article about how blogs are continuing to change the way people interact and do business on the internet.

One section of the report which caught my attention is Blogging for Profit. It points to the established relevance of blogs to the field of marketing and advertising.

Tehcnorati says:

Blogs are an increasingly attractive platform for advertisers. The majority of bloggers we surveyed have advertising on their blogs. Marketers realize that bloggers are creating high quality content and attracting growing, loyal audiences.

More than offering testimonials, blogs sometimes give more involved and more personal analysis of products, services, events, and personalities from a credible source. As far as blogs are concerned, credibility is not solely based on one’s expertise but also the strength and span of one’s connection within a community.

Blogs sway popular opinion

A blog by your friendly Tito Boy (as in Rex Navarete’s Tito Boy) ranting about the virtues of Adobo oil as a lubricatant can be as influential as say Yugatech’s blog raving over the virtues of his I-Phone. In anycase, this means that blogs have a greater ability to convince people to use of a product/service or support a movement/personality.

A local (Philippine) and more recent (December 2008) case that illustrates this point is the firestorm that exploded over Bambi Dela Paz’ blog. The entry basically told about how Masiu Mayor Nasser Pangandaman allegedly beat up her father and brother at the Valley Golf and Country Club. More than three hundred people commented on the post and with scores of bloggers linking up their blogs to Bambi’s.

Perhaps Bambi’s blog created the media storm or perhaps it was main news media organizations that popularized her blog. It could be part blog buzz and part tipping point, because certainly, somewhere in Bambi’s circle is a news reporter or media personality of some importance.

However and whatever happened, the conflagration in cyberspace apparently created enough pressure to get government agencies such as the Department of Justice and the National Bureau of Investigation to issue formal statements regarding the matter.

Moving public opinion is one thing, but earning money from blogging is a whole different ball game.

Earning money from your blog

I am one of the probable millions who have fallen for the lure of making money from blogging. For some time now, my failed attempts of realizing a significant level of income have laid the basis for substantial personal doubt on the matter.

Technorati’s 2008 Blogosphere report, however, shows some proof that people actually do earn from blogging. It says that:

The average annual blogger revenue is more than $6,000. However, this is skewed by the top 1% of bloggers who earn $200k+. Among active bloggers that we surveyed, the average income was $75,000 for those who had 100,000 or more unique visitors per month (some of whom had more than one million visitors each month). The median annual income for this group is significantly lower — $22,000.

Bloggers with advertising invest an average of $1,800 annually in their blogs. U.S. bloggers earn an average of $5,000, though bloggers in Asia earn 50% more on average and European bloggers earn an average of 75% more than U.S. bloggers. High revenue bloggers skew the mean revenue. The median revenue for U.S. bloggers is $200 annually (and the median annual investment is only $50).

Most of blog earners in the survey conducted by Technorati for its report receive income by carrying search ads, display ads, and affiliate marketing on their blogs.

Among the more popular programs is Google Adsense which basically pays blog owners a few cents to a couple of dollars when their visitors click on the Google Ad displayed their site.

(Next up: My Experience with Google Adsense)

Pinoy Biz Online is 1 year old

I'll be opening a couple bottles of San Mig Light some time today as I celebrate my blog's first year anniversary.

Google Adsense earnings = $10.00
Visitors as measured by Bravenet : 1654

Christmas 2005

Perhaps this would be the millionth time that you've read a post beginning with "I haven't attended to this blog in a while..." bladi-bladi-blah... and it would go on with reasons why he or she hasn't posted anything worthwhile for the past few months or so.

Well, as it happens, I haven't been blogging for quite a bit and that's mainly because I have been busy trying to earn money.

The whole idea of earning through Google Adsense has fizzled out. Its basically quite like the proposition of carrying out an expedition on a skiff or whatever it is you call that small boat with oars. There are a lot of blowhards out there who'll promise to give you the secret to making thousands of dollars a month through Google Adsense and yet, at the end of it all, zilch... Nada... Zip...

On the onset, I was counting on making just over a hundred dollars a month... I have so far earned $10.00 for all of 6 months or so. HAHAHAHAHHA!

Anyway, Christmas is here and my visit counter has reached the 1,000 mark. Hurrah!

There must be a lot of really bored people out there.

I am planning to start using this blog to post pictures I will be taking with my new digital camera. (Expect more hot chicks on this blog!)

Whatelse?

Well, I have got nothing profoundly interesting to say. So there.

Christmas 2005

Perhaps this would be the millionth time that you've read a post beginning with "I haven't attended to this blog in a while..." bladi-bladi-blah... and it would go on with reasons why he or she hasn't posted anything worthwhile for the past few months or so.

Well, as it happens, I haven't been blogging for quite a bit and that's mainly because I have been busy trying to earn money.

The whole idea of earning through Google Adsense has fizzled out. Its basically quite like the proposition of carrying out an expedition on a skiff or whatever it is you call that small boat with oars. There are a lot of blowhards out there who'll promise to give you the secret to making thousands of dollars a month through Google Adsense and yet, at the end of it all, zilch... Nada... Zip...

On the onset, I was counting on making just over a hundred dollars a month... I have so far earned $10.00 for all of 6 months or so. HAHAHAHAHHA!

Anyway, Christmas is here and my visit counter has reached the 1,000 mark. Hurrah!

There must be a lot of really bored people out there.

I am planning to start using this blog to post pictures I will be taking with my new digital camera. (Expect more hot chicks on this blog!)

Whatelse?

Well, I have got nothing profoundly interesting to say. So there.

Looking back at Mount Pinatubo

FYI: Total earnings from Google Adsense for the last 4 days: Zip, nada, zero, a big egg!

Just got back from shooting two days straight for a short documentary on Mount Pinatubo.

Although the people living in the towns most affected by ashfall, floods and lahar seem to have come back from the brink, you can still get a sense of the magnitude of the destruction wrought by one of the smallest 'mountains' in the country.

The mood in the towns and cities (like San Fernando, Bamban, Porac, Guagua, etcetera) is decidely upbeat and optimistic (as the people of Pampanga seem driven to put on a brave front in the face of almost insurmountable odds and even in the direst of circumstances).

Things are much much better. Angeles is bustling with commerce once again, minus the stripjoints and hordes of ugly American Naval base personnel that used to patronize them. Clark Airbase is a ghost town but looks better that way (there is a great place to eat Bulalo and sisig there). Porac looks so much better.

God, it is so hard trying to construct sentences for all the impressions I had taken in. I wish I could show you the video now (they are at First Video right now, I guess or is it at the Philippine Information Agency -- the government agency that tapped me to write the script for the documentary).

Oh well!

Tomorrow, I shall upload pictures and tell a few more stories.

Tonight, I am going to have my back massaged.

busy day for a scriptwriter

Suddenly, I am just too busy to keep up with this blog.

Okay, for starters and I have mentioned this in a previous entry, I am doing a new TV show called Slipstream which will begin airing on September 7. It's for car and racing enthusiasts but will most definitely features a lot more racing as it goes trackside to cover the Philippine National Touring Car Championships in Subic and BRC (Batangas Racing Circuit) -- and did I say babes? Okay, we are also featuring 4 of the most mmmm mmmm mmmm babes this side of the pacific.

We are currently shooting for four episodes with Dominic Uy (no, he is not Chinese) and Carlo Tirona (he's a DJ, bar manager) as hosts. We're getting a girl too but not yet, if you're looking for work as an oncam host and you are a girl -- just e-mail me at spindroid@yahoo.com

I will tell you more about the show as the week progresses and hopefully, there'll be time for that around Thursday or Saturday.

The Philippine racing scene is very hot, despite the fuel price crunch and what not...

Another project which is ongoing a PIA audio visual presentation... I had sworn off doing more government work but I really need the money and okay, call me a whore for doing this but I am a whore with pretty big bills to pay...

So there...

And one more thing, it seems my Google Adsense revenues have been zero for the past few weeks... I am wondering, does this have anything to do with having registered with feedburner? I noticed this happened just a few days after joining feedburner and activating a feature which they claim would allow me to earn from my feeds using Adsense. Since then, zilch.... Oh well, not zilch but 90 percent less and on most days absolutely zero... Why's that?

Bloggers at Venetto: On Adsense

Given a chance during the small meeting of bloggers at Venetto, I would have had this to say:

Initially, the prospect of earning money through Google Adsense was one of those great ideas that would somehow change the blogsphere for years and years to come.

Suddenly, people who registered with free blog services like blogger-dot-com could, upon enrolling with Google Adsense, receive some money for blogging their brains out and sharing with the world glimpses of their lives -- their most honest thoughts and feelings about their inner and outer worlds. At last, in a way, these people could call themselves 'publishers' in the sense that they were churning out content people would read and earn some revenue whenever people reading their stuff clicked through the Google ads strategically posted on their page.

Under the Google Adsense program, bloggers and website masters could earn $100 or more from click throughs. In the Philippines where the exchange rate is Php 55.00 to $1.00, this presents a tantalizing proposition. A hundred dollars a month could pay for a DSL connection and monthly installments on a brand new computer or a digital camera. Or help pay the electric and phone bills.

But the reality of earning through Google Adsense comes as a bit of a let down for the following reasons:

1. The blogger/website master/publisher has no control over what ads are displayed on his or her page. While the Google Adsense program says a lot good things about its contextual ads and the technology behind it, it is not as responsive as one would want it to be. Bloggers who blog about various topics will most definitely have ads that are not relevant to their most current entries. Moreover, it will increase their chances of getting ads that pay zilch for any click through and this creates some pressure for bloggers to limit their blogging to certain topics, if they want to earn money from the products of their intellect.
2. The blogger/website master/publisher does not know how much each particular ad pays. It would be great if, under some arrangement, publishers could be given a choice among ads even if their choice of ads would bind them to certain conditions -- such as having the proper background to qualify as an authority of some sort, limits on the topics that one can blog about, etcetera.
3. The hundred dollar quota is simply too high to be reachable in a months time for most bloggers who earn just a little above three cents a day if at all. For all practical purposes, most blogs are just one long page and under the Google Adsense program, your are only allowed to display three Google Ads per page. The law of averages are on the side of website masters who have more pages to put Google Ads on and therefore more chances of earning through click throughs -- not to mention the fact that the content of the webpage is static (remains unchanged for a period of time), immediately making it friendlier for contextual ads since the context for the ads doesn't change as often as blogs.

Despite these drawbacks, I still think Google Adsense is worth a try but don't quit your job yet.

There are a host of ads that promise enormous sums of money if you buy their secret strategy for earning Adsense Millions. But really, if you buy into this, you might as well buy a barrel of snake oil from me.

Bloggers at Venetto

It was the dedication ceremony of Hazel Recheta's four month old kid, Chaz, at Venetto along Visayas Avenue in Quezon City.

For those of you who are wondering what a dedication ceremony is, I can probably arrange a one on one seminar with Hazel's Pastor and he'll dutifully explain the intricacies of the ceremony as well as give you all the relevant passages in the Holy Bible.

Going through the ceremony was as close to an out of body experience as I could get -- my body was there but my mind was definitely in the resto's kitchen conducting an investigation of sorts and interrogating the chef.

Among the notables were fellow bloggers, Jove Francisco, Alwyn Alburo, and Joseph Morong. Avid bloggers all.

Right after the second round (by my count, since my wife Arlene and I arrived unusually early), after the small talk about what everybody was doing now, the discussion turned briefly to blogging and journalist bloggers.

Jove talked about it as if it were a movement among journalists, at least in Metro Manila, and how the community of journalist bloggers were THE THING nowadays. Personally, I have yet to find out if this is an organized movement or a social phenomena such as those described in Gladwell's The Tipping Point (which is a very good read, if you are wondering about how the dynamics of social interactions can be harnessed for marketing products and ideas).

Apparently, according to Jove, there are a number of journalists (both in print and broadcast) who have taken up blogging for a number of reasons and among them was to provide an inside take on their lives as journalists -- some personal snippets of the day behind the news that either don't get recorded on video or can't get printed or aired.

Jove, for example, writes entries on the scenes behind the news from Malacanang... There are days when his blogs are updated as many as three to five times in a single day providing a running account of the various goings on in the Palace -- from the Malacanang Press Corps dealings with the information bureaucracy headed by Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye to his observations on unfolding events such as the recent 2005 SONA. What is great about reading Jove's blog is that his entries come from the perspective of a reporter in Malacanang who has been through at least three Presidents -- though, Jove is certainly younger than a certain trilobite reporter who has been there for ages -- his accounts are tempered and disciplined as well as amusing.

Alwyn's blog is more personal in nature as well as those of Tina Panganiban Perez.

I have yet to see Joseph Morong's blog and something tells me this might be an interesting read.

My wife just started here blog a few days ago, as a way of recording her progress in painting her second reproduction of Van Gogh's irises.

Among the many things discussed, one thing that cropped up but was not fully discussed was the idea of bloggers earning some money through advertisements placed in their blogs.

Jove had said that in a recent blogger's conference (there are 8,000 Filipino bloggers, according to Jove) that it the idea of blogging for a few bucks through advertisements was acceptable, perhaps in the vein of subsidizing internet time and what not.

Of course, those of you who have been reading my blog will know that I have been using Google Adsense and have been writing about various ways of earning money through this affiliate program.

What Jove had broached, I think, was the possibility of local advertisers (Philippine companies) advertising directly through Filipino bloggers. This is a tantalizing prospect, in my view, because it holds the promise of providing bloggers with advertising revenue under a more transparent system.

Bloggers who really do come up with useful content (such as real accounts of current events, intelligent commentaries, reviews on various products/services, and such) deserve to get paid for their efforts.

One thing for sure is that a number of global companies subscribe to RSS feeds and to some extent use bloggers' writings in a number of ways -- among them is to gain feedback which can be used to fine tune their product or service, provide data for marketing and public relations, etcetera. This is a good thing for them because they can get it for FREE.

(MORE LATER)

Back to the business of writing about business

All right now! I guess it is time I returned to the business of writing about business.

I am done with writing about the politics of this land. I am through with writing about President Gloria, her State of the Nation Address, and the other controversies she is involved in. I believe others can tackle these issues better, though I really like sharing my opinions about Gloria and her follies to anybody who'd care to listen. It is in this sense that I am at time an empty tin can rolling down a rocky hill and unless I wear out whatever credibility I may have (which is not much, I suppose), I better just shut up about it for now.

So if you are looking for commentaries on the state of Philippine politics and other burning issues, please let me refer you to the blog of Joy De Los Reyes, Malaya's Editor in Chief. And if you are looking for interesting stories on tourist destinations in the Philippines, visit Jane Subang' s blog because she's a really good read and a native of Visayas, which happens to be where you can find some of the most beautiful beaches this side of the earth.

I am currently preparing a series of articles on small business loans or so called SME or Small and Medium Enterprise development loans.

When I was still working for Manuel "Mar" A. Roxas II at the time when he was still Secretary for Trade and Industry in 2003, SME development had been something like his "mantra" for economic development and he did push for SME development through SULONG or the SME Unified Lending Opportunities for National Growth. Later on, when I got hired by Luis P. Lorenzo Jr. when he was appointed as Presidential Adviser for Jobs Generation, I encountered the same "mantra" for economic development; but this time, it was being espoused as a means of generating 6 to 10 million jobs.

While I do believe that providing small and medium enterprises with all the help and support they need to thrive is a very good thing indeed, I am also given to certain doubts about the rosy numbers being reported as a way of describing the Arroyo Administration's accomplishments in this area. Perhaps I may be wrong about doubting government figures and while they can always be challenged, proving the figures to be wrong is not only a monumental undertaking -- it also serves no purpose. I suppose, I am content knowing what I know and letting the economic spindoctors spin their yarns.

Regardless of what I think about the government's reports on SME development, there are still a lot of loan programs in the private and public sector that needs to be mentioned in this blog.

After all, if you have decided to go into business, there is a possibility that you might be looking for sources of financing and the drive for SME development had actually made a number of loan facilities more accessible.

My role here is not to endorse one loan program or another but to show you where you can find information on these loan programs. I've been busy looking these things up on the internet and will save you the trouble of having to google them. Needless to say, the next post will contain links and brief descriptions on the websites/webpages that the links point to.

SO WATCH OUT FOR IT!

Relevance of google ads to postings

My concerns about the relevance of google ads to my postings has been answered! I don't know why I didn't notice it before, but thankfully I did just now.

The ads that appear when I access my blog through www.pinoybiz.blogspot.com appear irrelevant, but when I look at one post by clicking a particular post on the sidebar under "recent posts" the ads shown there appear to be more relevant.

Thanks Google!!! Sorry for doubting you.

Great blogs of FIRE!

(a short note on blogging as the ads on my page keep promoting blogging, I may as well jot down a few notes about blogging.)

I've been writing this blog for nearly a month now and happily, others have joined me in blogging out their experiences.

It'll be quite obvious that most of my posts are about blogging, earning money through blogs, current events, and occassional news commentaries. I am journalist by trade and not a techie, though at least two techies have visited my blog (Randy Morin and no less than the President of Feedburner dropped by to post a comment on one or two of my concerns).

Hah! Would you believe that, this blog community is really great and if only for the kindness of strangers at Blogspot as well as the entire blogging community, I'd delete my friendster account. (I wonder if friends circle is any better?)

As I had told Jane Subang earlier today through a text message or SMS, blogging makes me feel like a newspaper publisher and it really thrills me no end to find out that my visit counter has logged another 40 or more visits a day.

Yesterday was SONA day, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's 2nd State of the Nation Address, and for some reason I got dozens of visits because of yahoo searches. I kept turning up in searches for "President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo 2005 SONA" because I had posted a couple of commentaries on the SONA. The lesson here is that the probability of getting visits increases when you post something that is related to a big news item and SONA was huge here in the Philippines. The only problem I have is that it didn't produce a lot of click throughs, perhaps the ads weren't relevant. Oh well! Can someone please tell me how to get either higher paying ads or ads that are more relevant to my freshest posts?

I've been advised to write to the people at Google Adsense to request changes in the ads that keep showing up, but I wonder how it would turn out and how often I can ask them to change my ad preferences.

Oh, and by the way, I do have to credit Feedburner for a slight increase in the traffic I am getting. You better sign up with them if you want to get serious about blogging. Jane has promised to sign up after I told her about it. Others will follow too, I suppose.

Right now, I am not so much into blogging for money, but I am blogging as a journalist would chronicle ongoing news events of great importance.

Feedburner

I've recently signed up this blog with Feedburner.

I am a bit apprehensive as there are some horrid tales of Google Adsense police shutting down accounts that have used RSS services.

If this works well for me, I'd suggest you to follow my lead. Give it a few weeks and the results should be in.

Free Ways to increase your blog hit rate and Google Adsense stats

Here are some techniques which I have read about, tried, and found to have some perceptible results (a 200% to 300% jump in my daily hitrate and more or less the same effect on my Google Adsense stats).

Submit your URL to Yahoo and Google. These, of course, are free services so getting listed with these search engines are mostly a matter of luck. Paid services may offer more assurances, but who wants to spend that much money? Really?!

Do this by clicking on these links:
Yahoo http://submit.search.yahoo.com/
Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

Inrease your page ranking. A simple tip from web programmers and web designers is to make your title, your web page description, and your content more consistent with a single topic. That means, if your title says "Business", your description should carry the same word or related words, and your entries should also carry the same or related words.

Fiddle around with your metafile keywords. There is a simple html hack made for blogger.com templates, find it near the bottom of the page of http://www.pinoyblogger.com/ . Honestly, I have yet to conclude whether this has a substantial effect on my hitrates or not, but used in combination with other efforts to promote your blog, it will not hurt much to try it.

On deciding what key words to use, you can try logging on to http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/ and using their FREE keyword tool, you can see just how many people search for certain words. The higher the number of people searching, the better the keyword.

However, a word of caution, words like "sex", "porn", "girls", and others may have a high number of searches but using them as key words may trigger the Google crawlers to ban your blog or website from their service.

More importantly, this is no guarantee that you'll increase your hit rate or your google adsense statistics substantially. You have to do this in tandem with efforts to increase your page ranking with search engines . To get optimum results, after selecting a key word with a high number of searchers, try searching it one google or yahoo... The closer the ration is to 1:1, the better.... For example, if your keyword of choice has 100,000 searches made for it a day and Google lists around 1,000,000... you may have a 1 in 10 chance of getting clicked through the search engine... This is so far, just a theory of mine.... Test it out, see if it works for you as it has for me....

Oh, and by the way, don't pay for services that promise to get you high hitrates and thousands of dollars through Adsense. Not until you have figured out how they do it and have a reasonable assurance that it will not get you banned from Google Adsense. Otherwise, you may just end up wasting a whole lot of money.

Last note: On Really Simple Syndication or RSS I do not know if this is a safe or unsafe method, but getting a robot to produce entries on your blog is bordering on the fraudulent. It might be effective (as attested to by some) in driving internet traffic to your blog, but it may be doing so in a dishonest way and you know, honesty is always the best policy. Right?