21 December, 2006

Shameless begging

Hey, I've been reading a lot about the new Windows Vista. And I have to tell you, it looks so cool, and what's better is that my machine will actually run he version with the phat new Aero styles. I've been drooling for a couple of months over it. It's supposed to come out in February, so I thought I'd start scraping the coinage together now. If you look to the left there is a "PayPal Donate" button. If you'd like to contribute to my "Upgrade to Windows Vista" fund, please feel free. Every penny counts!

And thanks for visiting!

17 December, 2006

Technorati referrals

I am starting to think that claiming the blogs on Technorati was a good thing. In thinking about the Google Analytics data, I can't see where the visitors for Japan, India, Venezuela and Belgium could have come from if not from technorati.

As always, thanks for visiting!

16 December, 2006

Shameless plug

Time for a shameless plug. As you know, this whole blog is about being able to make just a little more income by blogging on the web. I'm no naive enough to believe this blogging thing will amount to anything substantial, but in the past week I've pulled in a whopping $17.01 with only three ads. That's enough to pay for family pizza night, so it's all good.

Anyway, if you visit and sign up for PayPerPost (I'm still waiting to hear from blogsvertise, not assignments yet, probably because my page ranks are zero) - please enter my email as the person who referred you. The email to use is bigsibling2k5 at gmail dot com (of course, turn all that into a 'real' email address - I just didn't want all the spam that will come with posting a real live email to this blog).

You can either go to www.payperpost.com or just click the snazzy graphic on the left there.

Oh, and welcome to my new visitor from Belgium! My grandfater came over from Belgium with his dad when he was just a tyke. His father was a cabinet maker named Charles Ablert Mouthuy (you're not related to him are you? I know it's a small country and all). Anyway, welcome and I hope you find good information here, and come back and tell all your friends!

As always, thanks for visiting!

Adding a domain to Google Analytics

When you first sign up for Google Analytics, it takes to the are where you add your first domain. You also setup a profile. You can have different profiles for different domains, multiple domains in one profile, and one domain in multiple profiles.

I think this is originally designed to monitor specific advertising and keyword returns for your website. You can add filters (to filter out your own IPs while looking at your own site), and set goals and monitor ROI (Return On Investment). But I really don't use any of that stuff, heck, I barely understand 3/4 of it. The real kicker is being able to see where people are visiting, what they are visiting, when they are visiting and what keywords and referrers were used to get them to your site. In case you didn't know, a referrer is when they click a link on another site, and it leads to your site. For instance, if someone does a keyword search in Google and your site pops up, and they click the link to get to your site, then Google is the referrer.

Okay, back to the tutorial. If you already have one or more domains in your profile, you'll want to click on the "Add Website Profile" link found in the upper right hand corner of the "Web Profiles" section of the GA screen you see when you log into GA.



This takes you to another page where you select "Add a Profile for a new domain".

Then enter the URL of the domain, your country or territory and your timezone. Then click "Finish."

Now it gives you the code required for GA to find your site. It is JavaScript and looks someting like this:

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-1027491-8";
urchinTracker();
</script>


If you have a blogspot blog, you can edit the template (this is for the new beta blogs, I don't know about the old stuff because I don't use them...sorry). Add a new HTML/JavaScript element, put the code in that element (in HTML mode, not in RTF or 'Compose' mode), save it and VOILA! the code is now added to your site.

If you host your own site, put the script between the head tags of the default page (or on a module that is displayed on all pages). The domain that I registered here is really just parked, it is forwarded to my family domain, so I put this in the head tag just before I tell the browser to redirect to the other site.

You might see that it says "Tracking Unknown - Check Status" in the right hand column of the the row containing the domain you just added. Click the "Check Status" link. It should tell you the code was found. When you click "Done" again, the grid should show "Waiting for Data" instead of "Tracking Unknown".

I do have one site, My Home Town that does not seem to be found ever. I have added the code several times, but to no avail. I am going to delete it from GA in the next couple of days, and re-add it to see if that helps. It's a blogspot site so it should be found (blogspot is owned by Google).

15 December, 2006

Who is visiting, and from where?


There is an exceptionally free tool from Google (of course, who else offers so much for so little?). The tool is Google Analytics. You use your Google account (if you dont' have one, you need one - so when your finished reading this, head on over and make yourself one). I wasn't sure what it would be all about when I first set it up, but it has some excellent stats about your blog (or any other website you set it up with).

Now, if you are using a blogging service (i.e. blogger, wordpress, typepad or any of the other umpteen million blog hosting services available), you probably don't have access to the server logs. That is, there is no way for you to see who is visiting your blogs. Which ones are being read the most, where people are coming from, what keywords are used and what search engines are serving readers to your blog. If you host your own blog, you can get all of this information from the log files (but it can be a pain in the rear if you don't have a log aggregator to put it all in readable format).

Enter Google Analytics. It takes a day or so to actually get it up and running because after you put the code in your template, Google has to go out and find it. So, you put a little snippet of code in your blog template, it's a small javascript.

After putting that somewhere in your template, and getting it synched with Google - remember, it may take a day or so to get it actually cranking out data. You can look at all kinds of metrics about your site. For instance, with this blog, I found that while I don't have many visitors, I do have some from India, Venezuela and Japan. How cool is that? Foreign folks, reading little old me. I am still trying to understand all the data in GA and maybe I can find out how these visitors found little old me.

As you can see, the tool is very visual, but the charts, etc can be turned off so all you see is the raw data (I don't know why you'd want to, but there are all kinds out there aren't there?)

I wanted to kind of introduce you to Google Analytics in this post. I am going to put my family domain in the GA tool to see what it looks like. It has a PR of 1 for some reason, I don't know why because nothing links to it that I know if, but then again, it has been active and serving pages since about 1997, so maybe it has that simply based on it's age. Another one I'm going to do is a parked domain of a similar name. It used to be loaned to a bull fighter in spain (who happens to share my last name) so that might be interesting to see what it hitting that domain.

Anyway, over the weekend I'll add those two domains and walk you all through it so you can see what it takes. Not that it's complicated and you couldn't do it on your own if you wanted to.

As always, I sincerely appreciate your visits. Come back soon! -- OH, and a big WELCOME to you folks from Japan, India and Venezuela (tell your friends ok? - ok, thanks)


12 December, 2006

Technorati Tools

Technorati link count widget is pretty cool. This little bugger displays (according to technorati) actual real-time links to your blog. This could be a cool feature if you have a popular blog and you want visitors to be envious of the number of links people make to you. However, in my case, the number would be so low it would simply look pathetic.

Technorati uses tags to categorize and sort blog content. Using tags pointed to technorati in your posts will certainly help people find content on your site from the technorati website. However, I don't know how much help that really is since until I started this whole blogging thing, I hadn't heard of technorati at all. And, not to toot my own horn (okay, maybe a little) I started programming in HTML, and my first website had a grey background and black text (that was all that was available to web programmers at the time). The format for adding tags to your post is as follows:

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/[tagname] rel="tag">[tagname]</a>

There are a couple of places that can auto-generate (to an extent) tags for your post. Looking at these, my favorite tends to be Fintan's Web-based Technorati Tag Generator. There are also a couple of desktop apps that will do this for you as well. But I like Fintan's because it is quick and simple and you don't have to worry about downloading anything and running code from people you don't know.

Most of the tools are fairly self-explanatory. Unless you actually use the technorati site as a portal (which I'm certain they want you to do), I don't see a whole lot of point in them though. All in all, other than being able to see how many, and which, blogs link to your blog, there isn't a whole lot at technorati that really floats my boat.

Technorati information

According to the technorati.com "About Us" section, they are:

Technorati is the recognized authority on what's happening on the World Live Web, right now. The Live Web is the dynamic and always-updating portion of the Web. We search, surface, and organize blogs and the other forms of independent, user-generated content (photos, videos, voting, etc.) increasingly referred to as “citizen media.”

Armed with this information, one who is interested in making any kind of money by blogging, it seems, should setup a technorati account and claim all of their blogs. It is a quick and easy way to view how many (and what) other blogs link to your blogs. This can be useful to see where things are coming from, and probably who else is reading your blogs. Sure, you can get all of this informaiton from your server logs (if you have access to these). I haven't yet found a way here in blogspot to see who visits and from where. There is probably a way to do this, but I'm new to all this blogging stuff, and quite frankly, haven't delved too deeply into this aspect yet.

For instance, in my main blog, Bigsibling, I can view the server logs and see that someone actually connected to it via a nokia phone. That is sooo cool. I only wish I could tell who it was and why they visted my blog on their phone. But I digress.

I'm not 100% certain of technorati's data. For instance, for this here blog here it shows there are "3 links from two blogs" but under that it says "No Links". You can see for yourself here. And then again, just because someone says they are the end-all-and-be-all of blog tracking, does that really make it so? Probably not, but I figure it couldn't hurt because, heh, its free!

The cool thing is, you can put any website in their search bar and see what blogs link to it. I have one that isn't really a site, just pretty much parked, but some garage in Spain has linked to the address, I believe it to be a mistake because it is supposed to link to some city council site for a city in Spain.

At any rate, it's a cool place, there are some tools there that can be used. Those will have to be discussed in greater detail in later posts. I just wanted to get something up since it has been several days since my last post (hey, gimme a break, I been sick....sheesh).

As always, thanks for visiting!

09 December, 2006

I got bling!

Today I scoured the PayPerPost website, and found an offer that didn't look too bad. They made no mention of any required PageRank, so I took the offer. I wrote a 50 word advertisement for the site, and banked $6.01! w00t!!!

I mean, I know, $6.01 for a 50 word piece of advertising, that's only 12.02 cents per word (actually a little less because I ended up with like 60 words, but I'll let it slide). I don't know if 12 cents a word is good or not, but it only took me about 15 minutes to check out the clients website and slap some words down saying what a great place it looked like. And, seriously, they have some cool stuff there (like thermal and heat seeker scopes).

You can read the advert here.

If you look at the advert, I would really appreciate any feedback you might have regarding my stunningly brillian copy.

As always, thanks for visiting!

08 December, 2006

PageRanks in a nutshell

Now that my oldest blog has been accepted by PayPerPost, I start looking through the offers available. I see quite a few with a restriction for "PR 4+" or "PR 3+" etc. I'm thinking to myself "what the heck is a PR and how do you get one?"

I start looking at the PayPerPost site and can find nothing. I check the help and everywhere else I can think of, but nothing on what PR is or how to get it. Then I run across another offer that wants blogs with a "Google Page Ranking of 1 or better." Okay, Page Ranking, PR that makes sense. Then it hits me, "what the hell is a page ranking and how do you get it?" That's when I look at the Google Toolbar in my FireFox browser and notice a little white and green rectangle under the words "PageRank". AHA! That is what they mean, of course, as I mouse over the white box while my page is displayed, it says 0/10. Well that stinks.

A quick Google search of "Google Page Rank" brings me several pages describing how page ranking works and the formulae that goes into it (like I would understand all that math stuff...I get confused just watching commercials for Numb3rs).

The best definition of how PageRank works I found at Wikipedia. This gives some good history, an layman's explanation as well as all those formulae and sigmas about how the rank is acheived. In simpleton's terms, your page is ranked based on how many pages link to it, in addition, the rank of the pages that link to yours is taken into account. So if a page ranked 10/10 has a link to your page, it carries more weight than a page ranked 1/10 that has a link to your page. You get a couple of extra points for big pages being linked to your site than for lesser-known pages being linked to your site.

In trying to find how to increase your page ranking, I came across some of those that are peddling ways to improve your page rank. These programs seem to run about $150. No way am I going to do that (the whole idea here is for extra income, not extra outflow). I don't know how well these work, and I'm not going to fork over the money to find out.

There are a couple of sites I did find that appear to have some steps to help improve one's PageRank.

Web Rank Info - they also have some other areas about Search Engine Optomization (SEO) that I haven't dug into yet.

WebDesign & Review - I think they guy also has an SEO site.

Long story short, the only valid way to get a higher PageRank, is to somehow get other people to link to your site. Preferably people with high page rankings. I don't know if blog rolls can help with this, but they certainly can't hurt. So try to get on as many blogrolls as you can would be my guess.

07 December, 2006

PayPerPost update

w00t! I just got an email that says my website (http://www.bigsbiling.com) has been approved. It seems like the archive work-around worked (just don't tell them PayPerPost folks, ok?).

As for Blogsvertise, I'm still waiting for any assignments. Although the Prince of Thrift tells me it can take a while for Blogsvertise to get in touch. We'll wait and see what happens (what else am I gonna do right?)

And thanks for visiting!

05 December, 2006

Things to come

Some things I want to post about in the near future (I have to write these down or else I'll forget).

  • Technorati
  • Blogitive
  • Feedburner
  • Blogrolling
And I think there are a few more which will get added to this list as I remember them.

Thanks for visiting!

04 December, 2006

Blogs of Topeka

I've started a "Topeka Blogs" blogroll at Blogrolling. If you would like to display this on your site, enter the following javascript into your blog template:

JAVASCRIPT:





RSS:





OPML:





PHP:





If you'd like to have your site added to the Topeka Blogs blogroll, just drop me a line at bigsibing2k5 at gmail dot com and we'll get you listed!

Blogsvertise experience

Another pay to post site is called Blogsvertise. This site on the surface appears fairly easy and straightforward. You sign up, submit your website, and they will give you assignments. However, it has been close to a month since I signed up and still not one assignment. I check most every day but haven't heard a peep from them. Unlike PayPerPost where you can browse the active assignments and pick and choose the ones you want, with Blogsvertise, it appears you have to wait for them to assign something to you specifically.

A lot of these trails I picked up from 'supermom_in_ny' at squidoo.com - but I think she might be exaggerating her experience just a little. Nothing wrong with that per se, but while she talks about places to make money, and calls them tutorials (at least they show up when I google something like 'blogsvertise tutorial') - however there is actually very little information there on how to get things going.

PayPerPost archive work-a-round?

In researching more about PayPerPost, I ran across this entry at The Daily Hook. Which lead me to this page which discusses how to 're-activate' an old disused blog. I do have an older blog on which I put a couple of posts way back when I started it in May of 2006, and about maybe 10 between then and November. I had aready submitted this blog to PayPerPost and was rejected because it said there had to be 20 entries in the last 90 days, so I started on the entries and through the month of November and the first couple of days in December I was able to get the 20 posts required. Then I re-read their rules and discovered that the 20 posts could not primarily be in one month, and there could not be a 30 day period in the past 90 days where no posts were made.

So, in reading the above mentioned article I went back and moved some posts from July up to September, and posts from September up to October (I hand't posted anything in the whole month of October). Now I have a sprinkling of posts over the past 90 days and have resubmitted the site for acceptance. We'll see what happens, and I'll let everyone know!

02 December, 2006

PayPerPost Info

Ok, found a site that looks like it pays not too bad for blogging. The site is http://www.payperpost.com and it seems legit. However, there are some issues with who they will pay to blog. They won't pay for posts to sites designed to pay people to blog. PPP lists the following sites (I'll follow up on them in the near future):
blogcharm
bloggerparty
writingup.com

I have heard of blogcharm, and started a couple of blogs there (At The Top Of My Lungs and CSharp Follies) although I've tried to keep them updated, I haven't seen 1 red cent (or a copper cent either for that matter). But I'm nothing if not peristant.

The other two I know nothing about, but like I said, I will research those.

Okay, back to payerperpost.com. Several other items in their service agreement that gives a newbie pause are some restrictions.

The blog must be older than 90 days, and must have at least 20 posts in the past 90 days, and must not have gone more than 3o days without any posts in the past 90 days, and the 20 posts in the past 90 days cannot have been in the same month.
Blogs must be live for a minimum of 90 days, counted from the Blog's first post, with at least 20 pre-existing posts prior to using our service. Verification of existence will be provided via third party spider.

A submitted blog must have no more than a 30-day gap between posts in the past 90 days.

Blogs must have 20 posts over the passed 90 days. The majority of those posts may not be in one solid month.

So, there you have everything I know about this one. I do happen to have a blog that is older than 90 days and submitted it, but it was refused because it didn't have 20 posts in the past 90 days. So I started posting like crazy, and in the past 6 weeks, I've been able to get about 30 posts for the past 90 days.


However, I think I didn't post anything at all during October. So I expect the resubmit will be denied as well. If it is, I will resubmit it at the end of January and see what happens.

I'll keep ya'll posted.

Supermom's good stuff

Cruising around trying to find information on making money via the web, I ran across this lady at squidoo.com, which led me to some of her other blogs about making money. I haven't tried these yet, but I'm going to definately try some and let you know about the experiences.

Looks like she has some pretty good information, at least on the surface.

Still trying to figure out all the linkage and the like and how to get things rolling with being linked to other things.

Technorati claim

I put this in to claim it in my Technorati Profile

02 November, 2006

For starters

Okay, so I am reading some other places about how people are making money blogging. Not much mind you, but a little bit here and a little bit there. And hey, for a family of five with a single income because my wife is disabled, and having to commute 130 miles round trip to get to work, and with the gas prices fluctuating they way they are, even with a little 65+ MPG car like the Honda Insight, every little bit helps right?

This site I'm going to talk about my experiences in the attempts to earn a little extra bling by doing this whole blogging thing. I'm all new to this, so this is going to take some learning. Granted, I am a software developer, but I'm not very knowledgable in the world of blogging. I read blogs all the time, mostly news blogs - but I have been reading more and more non-news blogs. It was one of those blogs that got me to thinking if I can really get an extra $50 a month or so by doing this.

Like I said, there is a learning curve. For instance, at Technorati, they can tell you how many blogs are linked to your blogs. I currently have several blogs that I have setup and one that is real active, the others are updated two to three days a week. This one I hope to update daily as I wind my way through the avenues, side streets and back alleys of the blogosphere. Ok, back to what I was talking about. At Technorati they have this deal that is supposed to tell you what blogs are linked to your blogs. So I put in a post in my seperate blogs with a link to each other. But Technorati says none of my blogs are linked to by any other blog.

Then again, I only did all this today, so maybe it will take some time to filter through. I just don't know. See, this is one of those learning curve things I have to get used to.