New blog directory - sign up early!

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It looks like the Google PageRank system has updated the rankings of pages and blogs. As stated here, my other blog, the one no one has visited (as far as I can tell by the analytics tools) used to have a PageRank of two. Now it has a PageRank of zero. I don't understand, but I have to accept it.

In the quest to up page ranks and get a better PageRank, Alexa score (more on that in another post) and Technorati Rank, I believe it is advisable to get the blogs out there as many places and as oftem as possible. That is where HighFivez.com comes into play. They are yet another blog listing service. One can submit their blogs, then people on the site can rank them. Giving a positive review of blogs and posts (a "high five") or a negative review (a "pound").

Mayhaps I'm a bit out of touch with the lingo of the kids these days, because while I understand what a high five is, I have no idea what a pound is. Signing up at HighFivez.com is completely painless. The worst part was waiting the three or four minutes it took for their email checker to email me a message with a verification link to click on. From then on out, adding blog was simple and straight to the point.

The site appears to be new, there aren't a ton of people signed up yet, so if one hurries, they could get a good position where their blog(s) won't get lost in the shuffle of millions of other (but far less intersting) blogs than yours!

Welcome aboard

I want to take a moment here to welcome Jim from I'm forty-what??!! as the newest member of the Topeka Bloggers blogroll.



If you are a blogger in Topeka, let me know so I can add you to the blogroll. No requirement to put the roll on your site - but it would be nice of you to do so and give us all a little more exposure :)



Follow this link for more information.



Thanks for stopping buy - and again, welcome to Jim!





Technorati Tags: blog, blogroll, Topeka, Kansas

Still hanging in there

I know, I know, it has been a while since I posted anything here. Let alone anything helpful. I will make every effort not to let this blog slip between the cracks of a rather hectic life.



Something I am currently researching is the Alexa rating. I'm not certain how that works, but PayPerPost is now using them in addition to the Google PageRank rating. I have been to some pages with Alexa ranks of...say...15 and others with Alexa ranks of 0 and still more with ranks in the millions. As of yet I do not know whether a larger number is better or not.



Stay tuned...and thanks for sticking around and reading this ( and don't be afraid to click and advertiser or two ).









Technorati Tags: Alexa, Google PageRank, PayPerPost

Saving on the family vacation

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As everyone probably knows by now, I am all about making the coinage. That is why this blog exists after all. It is documenting my attempts to use the internet, and blogging in particular, to generate a little more income.

But part of having more money is also saving money. One must be able to save what they earn, or they have nothing to show for it. Vacations used to be difficult and expensive. With the advent of the Internet, and the World Wide Web specifically, booking Hotel Reservations has become much easier, faster and more penny-pincher friendly.

Where ever you are going, what ever you are doing when ever you are going there and doing it, you can find the cheapest rates anywhere for hotel, air travel, car rental and just about anything else online. You basically become your own travel agent.

For instance, last summer the 5/8s and I went to Cancun, Mexico for several days while the kids were at Boy Scout summer camp. We booked out vacation at an all-inclusive resort online (through a company I won't use again because I just didn't like the way some things were done).

Next time, I will more than likely use Hotel Reservations. After looking around their site, and pricing a cost for a full week in Cancun, it was just a few dollars more than what we paid for only four days with the other online site. It did take a little time to hunt down Cancun in their extensive list of cities. It wasn't in the initial drop down box of destinations, and I had to click the "addition destinations" link to get to it.

All in all, the Hotel Reservations site is easy to navigate, and loads, changes pages and displays the information you want quicker han the other online travel sites I have visited. And their gallery of pictures of different hotels and resorts seems nearly endless. you can really get a feel for what the place you are looking at will look like in real life.

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Technorati Tags: Cancun, Vacation, Hotel Reservations, Mexico

Google PageRank confusion

I simply cannot understand the whole Google PageRank deal. Seriously, it makes no sense to me. I can't get rhyme or reason from it. I...okay, out of cliches now, but still I do not understand it.



Here, I have my main blog at Bigsibling.com, I have this blog and I have another blog, which is a personal blog, talking about family and life and what not at My Home Town.



The oldest of these blogs is Bigsibling.com, followed by My Home Town, and finally this one. The most posts by far, is the Bigsibling.com blog. This blog has the highest traffic (thanks guys, I love you all visiting...really, I do). And the blog with the least posts and the least traffic (zero in the last month according to Google Analytics) is My Home Town.



But, My Home Town has a Google PageRank of 2/10, where Bigsibling.com and this one - which both have more traffic, links and posts - have a Google PageRank of 0/10.



I just can't figure it out. Maybe when I die I can ask the Great I AM and He can tell me.



As always, thanks for visiting (really, I do appreciate you all taking a look around - feel free to drop a comment).





Technorati Tags: Google PageRank

Firefox plugin for easy blog posting

A cool tool I have discovered if you are using the FireFox browser is the Performancing plug-in. This adds some items to the context (right-click) menu in FireFox.

You add your blogs to the Blogs list. I can vouch that it works great for Blogger.com blogs and blogs using the WordPress blogware. With the WordPress ware, it will list all of your categories. With the Blogger blogs, it does not, but it does let you add tags to the blog.

Also, it gives the option to insert technorati tags. That is cool. What I like most about it I think, is that you create the blog entry in a pane in the lower half of you browser. There doesn't need to be a connection. The Advanced Options button gives you the ability to define your technorati tags, bookmark the post at del.icio.us (I'm still trying to find out what that is all about - I'll get the research done and get something about it up here soon I hope). Also define what ping services to hit with the new post.

Sometimes, when I'm creating an entry, I am aslo doing other things (like working) and it might take me a couple of hours to get one small post up. When working logged into a blog, there is always the possibility of a lost connection, or of the login timing out. You usually won't find that out until you go to post at which time you could lose that profound thought that you had worded so eloquently, but couldn't remember to save your life.

I will say that I didn't get this to work at all with one of my blogs that was running on DotNetNuke. Okay, sure, DNN is not blogware, it is portal ware, but I was using it as blogware (have recently changed that to WordPress blogware). I don't know how easy it would be to use with any other blogware than Blogger and WordPress.

Oh, one thing not to be fooled, by is the "Metrics" button at the right of the blog editor window. Performancing no longer offers metrics. So that really does nothing except give you an error after you enter your Performancing username/password.

Performancing.com | Helping Bloggers Succeed

Performancing for Firefox | Performancing.com


Technorati Tags: Performancing, Metrics, FireFox

Blogsvertise starting to come through

As previously stated, I hadn't been doing much with Blogsvertise. I've been waiting for referrals from them because they don't have a list of opportunities to choose from the way PayPerPost does. Some time ago, I submitted another blog of mine for advertising with Blogsvertise.

Just yesterday I received a task from them for that blog. It paid $10! That's cool. I had pretty much forgotten about them altogether until I got that task. Then, while looking at my data on Blogsvertise, I found that next to my Bigsibling blog, there was a graphic of a bag. The mouse over tooltip displayed the words "Grab Bag".

So I do what any good curious American would do, I clicked it. WOW! It seems that for my Bigsibling blog, I can take one task per day from a grab bag of tasks. These are tasks that were assigned to other bloggers, but they did not complete them in the allotted time. I don't know what the allotted time is for completing assignments, I have always completed them the same day as the assignment was received.

So yesterday I did one of those grab bag tasks for $5 and today I did another one for another $5. There was one left that I'll look at doing tomorrow, that is only a $3 task, but what the hey, I'm going for it anyway!

Thanks for visiting (honestly, I really do appreciate your visits).