Delirium Propaganda

Google does it yet again, this time the catch was JotSpot. The company informed its users today that it had been snatched up by Google and that the acquisition process had already been completed. Read more… »

One thing that surprises me is the number of people that only rely on Adsense to make monetize their site or blog. When visiting any Webmaster forum there are endless threads started by Adsense junkies complaining about how little they are earning.

So what are they doing wrong, why aren’t they cashing in?

There is actually a very simple answer to this question. Adsense is great for high-traffic sites that generate at least 50 clicks or more per day, if this isn’t your case you just won’t get rich of Adsense. This statement is so true that even the Adsense team admits that only 1% of all publishers make more than $50 per month, now that’s something to think about. Please understand that I’m not encouraging anyone to stop using Adsense, what I do want is to explain to you that there are better ways of making money. I use these three Affiliate programs to further monetize my blog.

Read more… »

I have been thinking about writing a tutorial on how to maximize Adsense revenue for some time now but never got around to actually doing it so I did the next best thing, borrowed one. I found this article on Maximizing Adsense revenue with 6 easy tips which was exactly what I was looking for. The tutorial was made available by Tutorials Database who kindly let me use it here for your reading pleasure.

We all want to receive large cheques from Google Adsense, but without taking into consideration certain important factors this is unlikely to happen. Throughout this article I will discuss six tips which shall help to increase your Adsense revenue. These include: ad placement, blending, targeted traffic, general traffic, ad formats and keyword based ad targeting. Read more… »

Most of you will already know this, especially if you are a blogger, that WordPress has released version 2.0.5 of their very popular blogging CMS. I updated my blog today and everything is functioning without any problems, which is definitely a very good thing. The WordPress team affirm that their have been about 50 or so bugfixes, which you can be reviewed here. 

[tags] WordPress, blogger [/tags]  

There has been a lot of talk all over the internet about the possibilities behind Google developing their own Operating system. I myself have pondered about this many times but always ignored the idea. As I sat down and mulled over the notion further and further, I started to construct a list of plausible scenarios that could be possible if Google ever choose to capture a chunk of the Operating System market. To better digest my thoughts I created a list of feasible scenarios that I think will never be a part of Google’s Operating System.

Invest in Linux

There are a few very good reasons why I think Google won’t take the Linux approach.

1- Developing an OS based on Linux could generate some legal issues for copyright infringement. Sco owner of UNIX claims that its code has been illegally recycled into Linux by thousands of programmers who helped built the free Operating System.

2- Another factor to take into consideration is that there are already two big dogs operating in the Linux market, Red Hat and Novell Suse. These two Linux vendors have many years of experience and won’t let a new comer, especially Google, take a piece of their pie.

3- Many distros have tried to capture the home PC user with very little success.

4- Ordinary users see Linux as a Geek OS that is complex and very non-user-friendly.

5- Everyone has heard of Linux so it won’t create a big buzz for consumers. People will see it as another recycled Linux system.

Create a conventional OS

I don’t think Google will waste its time creating a normal conventional operating system and here is why.

1- The future is the internet, creating a normal OS that is based offline is like reinventing the wheel.

2- Microsoft is constantly striving to integrate its OS with the internet, not to do the same is just plain stupidity.

3- Google outrivals in online technology, they will surely use this factor to gain advantage over competitors.

4- Google already owns a lot of the physical hardware necessary to create such an OS.

5- Creating an online OS gives Google the opportunity to bundle all its applications in one ready to user interface.

6- Google knows very well how to make money online.

A low budget Google PC

The idea of a low budget Google personal computer is another speculation that has gained many supporters. I don’t believe Google will opt for this strategy, these are my reasons for thinking so.

1- There are already many cheap PC’s on the market, some are being sold for little more than $300.

2- Computing is becoming a more fashionable hobby therefore people will prefer to buy expensive top range PC’s “bragging” although they might never use them to their full potential.

3- Cheap computers mean fewer profit margins for manufacturers, retailers and Google.

4- Once again this idea is not new so won’t create a lot of buzz.

The further I got into the Google Operating System brainwave the more I became conscious that this concept might involve additional factors that I wasn’t counting on. If Google wanted to grab a significant amount of users it would have to role out something really extraordinary, some new cool hardware would do the trick. Bear with me on this.

The Google PC/Terminal

Google could create a new Terminal PC with OS specific hardware. These are some advantages of a new PC and why I think Google is opting for this strategy.

1- The PC would de design to function solemnly with Google’s OS. This would create a barrier for competitors that wanted to create alternative products.

2- Selling a new cool PC would bring in a few bucks for Google.

3- If Google wasn’t intending on releasing a PC it would have bought or created an Internet Browser by now. This concept eliminates the need of a Browser.

4- These PCs would be designed for online activities like buying movies, buying music, buying software, buying services, buying Ads , etc…

5- Only one PC with standardized hardware means that creating compatible software/products is easier.

6- The OS would operate much like Itunes, only works with Ipods.

7- The conventional PC would become outdated, competitors like Microsoft would see their traditional business model threatened and would be forced to create an alternate product.

Now, lets move on. We’ve established that Google will most probably create an online OS and that the only means of accessing it will be via a terminal computer. This new OS would be available for free and the only thing consumers would have to buy would be the PC. Let’s see how Google could cash in from a free product.

Making money from a free OS

1- Information is king. Selling sensitive information to businesses could bring in a few bucks. Where you buy what for how much, how much time you spend online, what bank you use, what services you use, etc…

3- Sell quick links to on-line stores, banks, etc…

4- Offer extra services like more hardrive space, special OS features, etc…

This concludes my little theory. I hope that I haven’t bored you to death, this is just one of those things I had to do. If you have any suggestions or different views please leave a comment because I would really like to create something tangible that is the best prediction of what Google is planning to do. Any opinions that are likely probabilities for Google’s OS will be added to this post so please let me know what you think.

[tags] Googles OS, Adsense, Microsoft, Ipod, Itunes, Novell, Suse, PC, Redhat [/tags]

I would just like to announce that I’ve release my first WordPress theme. Unfortunately I did not code it myself but I did pay someone to do it for me which is nearly the same . I wanted to create something simple that could be easily customized by anyone that wants to have a more unique looking theme. For many months I looked all over the internet for something like this but was never able to find anything quite right, so I decided to create it myself. You can download it from the Theme Viewer. I hope you enjoy it.

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[tags] WordPress, Theme [/tags]

John Chow’s blog has a very interesting article on his blog about how to make money from domains. Needles to say that this notion was totally new to me so I thought it would be interesting to share it here with everyone.  The article describes how people known has “domainers” make money from buying domains and using them on parked pages with ads. The money comes from PPC services especially catered for parked domains like Google Adsense for Domains. A few days ago I also wrote a post about how to make money from parked domains but I think John Chow’s might be more profitable especially for those people that have many domains. Read the full article here.  

[tags] Domains, Google, Adsense, blog, PPc, domainers, [/tags] 

Lately there has been a lot of chatter about Google’s Page Rank (PR) and how it has lost a lot of its weight on search engine placement (SERP). To better understand what exactly PR is I quoted this summery from wikipedia.

PageRank is a patented method to assign a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).

PageRank was developed at Stanford University by Larry Page (hence the name Page-Rank [Vise and Malseed, 2005]) and Sergey Brin as part of a research project about a new kind of search engine. The project started in 1995 and led to a functional prototype, named Google, in 1998. Shortly after, Page and Brin founded Google Inc., the company behind the Google search engine.

The dilemma resides in the fact that many webmasters buy links for their sites in an attempt to increase their PR and for other search-engine optimization purposes. Generally links from high PR sites are more expensive because they are thought to be more valuable. This method can be very effective simply because buying links on relevant sites can drive valuable targeted traffic which represents a very effective marketing strategy.  However, Google has publicly warned webmasters that if they are or were discovered to be selling links for the purpose of conferring PR, their links would be devalued and ignored in the calculation of PR.  Google officially advised that users should place rel="nofollow" on such purchased links.

PageRank has lost its weight on the search engine placement algorithm and therefore became less valuable an asset for webmasters.  This represents a big issue for many site owners that see the selling of links as a quick way of making money. This change could further affect advertising businesses like Text Link Ads which claim that link building “helps your link popularity which is a top factor in organic search engine rankings”.

So where do we currently stand? Well from reading Google’s own Technology page things look to have remained unchanged which could be because nothing has changed or the fault of some slacker worker that never got around to updating the site, you decide.[tags] Google, PageRank, PR, Lary Page, webmasters, Technology, Search, Engine [/tags]

Today I was reading a very interesting article about how The Internet Society of China pretends to filter sensitive content on the countries blogs. What the regulatory entity is planning to do is to end bloggers anonymity by forcing internet users to give their real names when trying to create a blog. China has currently some 130 million Internet users of which 17 million are bloggers.  You can read the full article here.

[tags] Internet, Society of China, Internet, bloggers, blog, china [/tags]

That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Especially since there are thousands of books on sale all over the internet stating that they know all the secrets necessary for you to rank well on Search Engines “SERP”. So what do I think about SEO books? Well it depends on the book.

A few months ago I decided to read Aaron Wall’s SEO Book to see if the information contained in it was really useful and worthwhile spending the money on. Needless to say that shortly after receiving the book I started reading it only to stop when I had finished it. Never had I thought that there was so much to be learned about SEO. If you have any doubts about how to go about optimizing your site/blog the only SEO book that I can honestly advise anyone to read has to be Aaron Wall’s SEO Book. It’s worth every penny.

[tags] SEO Book, Aaron Wall, site, blog, serp, search, engines, optimizing [/tags]