Archive for February, 2008

Well, words says much more right but in this new era, I was always fascinated by Voice Recognition Software because I am a lazy bum. About in 1996, I came across this feature that was only compatible with IBM with less than perfect Artificial Intelligence AI because I had to speak very clearly and slowly mainly they have a little bit on the dictionary in itself.

Now, the speech recognition software is so far better that even huge companies utilize these speech recognition system in initial customer service interaction. Thought for those who are disabled or less than sensible, companies like BT and E-Trade used them to ask you to input your account number or social security number.

Which is good on paper but with idiots like me who can’t correctly pronounce all the ‘R’ or some others, it’s a really painful way to do things as the human is the best way forward for that kind of people. Imagine me speaking 6543 1234 and the system thought I was saying 6853 1434!

But it’s a good way forward anyway, as once the fuzzy logic started to learn on your larynx, it will work to perfection so that you can dictate your thesis of 500,000 words and it will type it for you like what I did with my last projects. That’s why I am so interested into it.

Well, I did like to take short cuts..and this was written by a human…not by MS WORD! My gang who had to write their TESL dissertation will sure be angry with me especially when they had to explain phonetics and the sort.

Alot of you will be fretting to why you don’t get even enough earnings from the web? Some even get less than $5 a month from advertising on their blogs that these don’t even cover the basic cost of Internet Hosting of $5.77 and the cost of a domain. Ever wonder why LiewCF and Jason Ooi made thousands a month when you can’t even hit that dollar? Don’t think of those cheap tricks, but it comes back to basics.

1) YOUR OWN DOMAIN NAME.

Without it , you are basically sharing or not even getting any credit for your work and ideas. Each Domain has it’s own value, to it’s own keywords and it BELONGS TO YOU. Some are as low as $2 a year if they are on sale, and some are given free, if you sign up for some freebies or take up a hosting package.

2) Divide and Conquer.

Each domain can be sub divided to a sub domain to your own liking.A sub domain may talk about like My Kitchen Disasters (or do it directly as MYKITCHENDISASTERS.AZRIN.INFO)

So each sub-domain has it’s own agenda to talk about. Don’t garble it all on one single site as it’s devaluing your site. Page Rank relevancy is as such.

3) Flow it, Smoothly does it.

Content. Content. Content. It’s what drives your site to the masses. Information, up to date is best. As much as possible, as frequent as you can get it to be, not just chunking it all at one go. If you have some to lash out, throttle or schedule the dissemination by a few hours so the aggreators , RSS FEEDS managed to be delivered out, otherwise you may be spamming people.

Remember, bots are made by human, they don’t like to visit too often, usually once a day or 5 hours at max, so make it worth their while.

4) Costing and Pricing

If you use ad pricing system like Adbrite or Aductions, remember to set your pricing to be competitive. No Advertiser want to advertise without knowing that they will get value for their money, in terms of sales or clicks.

Competitively, set it to these limits:
10c per click
25c-$1 a day based on impressions (the norm is about $1 per 1000 visitors)
70c per 100 directed views (targeted dermographics etc)

Put it too high you won’t get any advertiser traffic coming to your site(s), set it too low, they will think you are not worth it.

5) Check your stats.

Remember, a Hit does not mean a Visit. Use reliable stats like Google Analytics URCHIN.JS system and of your own to see if they visit long enough, they click something else, or who they are, if you use Yahoo’s MBL system. Always if possible visit their own pages so you build a rapport.

6) ANSWERABLE TO YOUR ACTIONS

Remember, every reply or comment , how nasty it is…is a positive feedback to yourself, in terms of content or even your style. Listen and if possible , reply.

Visitors like to see you reply to your actions.

7) Aesthetic Values.

Having too much ads is an eyesore. Too little means it bare..and it’s a balance of both to the eyes and to the pocket. Some pay nothing. Nuffnang Singapore pays only when you have ads running, so it is best to minimise or don’t show at all, as that will just slow down the loads.

Text Link Ads stay at the side or you can mod it to show horizontally if you write your own PHP MOD.

Right now, colorful and attractive 3 column themes are best, so you can place a leaderboard, skyscraper and a large square/ rectangle inside them

Knowledge is Wealth

But so is sharing it. Sharing knowledge gets you better off, people mention about you and you get the traffic needed. Sharing it with places like Helium gets you paid. the more you share… the more you get. You get publicity and also some royalty. As much as $90 has been paid for an article which has demand. You never know when yours is mentioned in Wall Street Journal.

9) Community

Well, things happen when there is a crowd but bad crowds are something you should steer away from or being in a clan or something. If you love cars, it’s ok to talk about cars and be in car modding forum sharing your thoughts, but not becoming an illegal drag racer on the street, becoming a nuisance or cause harm to others.

10) Compliance.

By complying with the regulations, like censorship or so, you are acknowledged better and you have less of an issue with firewalls or Cyber Nanny. Listing in DMOZ and other directories helps alot too by building you back links and once you are on one, the rest will follow suit.

That’s my 2c , so enjoy the flow of traffic. It works, at least it pays the bills.

One thing bloggers make mistake in the world of incentive Content Creation is in the writing itself. Many of you complain the lack of income surging to the site or even paying for the basic stuff like rent or even the cost of the domain itself. Many, in itself gets about $100 from Google Adsense after more than 18 months.

So how to make a decent return out of the investment? One thing is that to separate each theme or focus per subdomain or domain in itself, like if I say SNAPSHOTS.AZRIN.INFO , it should show pictures or something talking about snapshots. One thing is also the focus of the Meta Tags and the Permalink to each side; if it talks about finance, it should have a slug entitled to the focus.

So how to bring the traffic in? Other than talking about in-depth and hoping for someone to drop by or a mention by a celebrity, you have to pull the traffic in. Some look for plain stuff which will get your blog censored..like pornography or the talk of the latest amateur porn artists. Others link bait or even buy traffic to drive the hordes in.

Will it work? Maybe. How much you want depends on what you have to offer…like the pictures you take (make sure you place the ALT of it) …or food recipes.

Oh well, that’s my 2 cents.

Like it or not, Blogspot or Blogger is the common platform for alot of Spam Blogs or SPLOGS as they deem it and with the Malaysian General Election just days away, there has been alot of speculation, criticism among alot of independent and related Parties.

One off note is that I got a small buzz from someone in charge of Network Management and Control at the Government side and one particularly was that the suppression of Information and Censorship of Content by means of keywords and also domain names. One thing does stick out : BLOGSPOT.

I mean how on earth can you block the entire operandi of Google? With the Nameservers based in the US itself, they really mean that you have to block Google in itself. How could you do that?! It’s like putting the Great Fire Wall of Malaysia… which just sounds like the way Singapore is separated off, by a small Straits.

So, what does it mean to the Blogger who is trying to make money by means of BLOGSPOT?
Well, you will eventually get slower packet transfers and means they will be throttling the bandwidth to those sites. Means that your ads and script will slowly load.

What can you do? One is that to have your own domain, and two import everything from your old blog to the new blog, and wordpress does it well!

How much? Domains are as low as $1.99 for some TLD plus hosting fees. I am a domain registrar and reseller myself and many of them opt to pay a nominal setup fee for the basic blog with next to no limit on the bandwidth. More info will be at my Domains Service.

How does this affect you and what do you have to gain? Mainly the Page Rank will be worth more on your own domain and you have full control over what you want in there. You can even install galleries and subdomains to befit each theme or concept you focus on, but make sure that you don’t get too side track otherwise if your blog sucks.. you bear no traffic which literally means no money!

What does it mean to me…in monetary terms is that you can do link selling or advertising campaigns. Advertisers pay as low as $1 per day for your skyscraper a day to the unethical Sponsored Link Advertorials which can be as low as $100 for a PR 4 site *(I have one which is quite dormant…so let me know if you want free mention…terms apply ah) to as much as $2500 a review for some heavy traffic ones like XBRAIN and the cronies.

So, just be prepared to be blocked off with Blogspot.. but before that, get yourself ready and avoid the rush.

Good luck!

I was having some fun today when a fellow kaki working up at Pageranks in Google Development team back in the US and actually told me that I am eligible to get back my Page Rank Value of 5. I was honestly gob smacked but the requirements are not that easy to comply anyway for me.

1) Content.I must add in the next month or so about 500 + RELATED post! Gosh! It’s bad enough to churn up content but 500? That works to about a post for every hour or so, and they gave extra points for IMAGES!

Yikes! Where on earth will I find content related to SEO and Technology every hour unless I …..do a RSS SPAM. Nah…. I will try.. but it’s not hard because I can churn them out, especially talking about Linux Based, with PHP, ASP and Scripting

2) Related Links. I must be relating the links too. Getting people to link me about my post gives a good boost. Thanks to a list of friends, they do link me often even though it’s not that enough, but every little helps.

3) Traffic. I should be getting a driven profile of over 1000 unique US visitors every day! That is really hard unless I talk business. And making more money and of course, the traffic drive for Malaysia, Video Lucah Melayu 3GPP. That will surely boost me to over 35,000 daily in Malaysia alone. I might want to, but looking at pageranks, I may loose my page classification.

4) Link Community. Having linked in Blogrolls will greatly help, but internal reviews about me will do just as well.

5) Well, of course, my own domain. Without SEO tricks in use. So,there goes BLOGGER!

Will you do this for PR 5?