Warning from Entrecard

I had been away from blogging for quite some time. I just noticed that my last post here was more than 100 days ago. My last post was published on July 30, 2009. I was attending a part-time course for about two months and had very little time to look into anything else. My plate was full with my full time work, part time course and family. So, I was not surprised when I received a warning from Entrecard.

Entrecard warned me to update my blog to avoid deletion. So, this update is in a way prompted by them. But, with the current work load, I am not sure I will be updating my blog regularly. I am also going on a long holiday in December and won't be back until Christmas.

Entrecard needs lot of effort and it looks like I am not up to it at this stage. I do not want to lose my Entrecard account before consuming all my hard earned points there. So, probably, I will be sending my points lavishly on advertising. Then, most likely, I will leave my Entrecard account to die unless something changes drastically over the next couple of months.

Here is the warning from Entrecard, for those of you who might be interested:

Your account 'Widgets for Blogger' on entrecard.com has been warned. The administrator provided the following message:

Please update your blog to avoid deletion from the Entrecard system. Thank you

Please contact support@entrecard.com if you have any questions regarding this warning.

PLEASE NOTE: You are expected to resolve this issue promptly. Failure to do so will result in the removal of your Entrecard account.

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Want to Become another John Chow?

Let me continue the discussion on my decision to stop writing sponsored reviews. I did some justification why writing sponsored reviews is not going to help you in the long term. I wanted to clarify further on two issues, raised by fellow bloggers, on this sponsored reviews discussion.

Issue #1: Mixing of Sponsored Content and Original Content
Some of you feel that it is alright to write sponsored reviews as long as you write original posts in between. The mixing of sponsored posts and original posts is a requirement by the paid reviews companies in an effort to dissuade bloggers from completely writing paid content. But, as far as Google is concerned, the mistake is the same whether you write one sponsored post or many sponsored posts. The best practice is to keep away from paid posts.

Issue #2: John Chow Wannabes
Some of you argue that you can follow bloggers like John Chow, who continues to write for ReviewMe. He earns very good money in spite of Google’s penalty. JohnChow.com now has a page rank of only 3. If his page rank is so low, then how can he make substantial money from sponsored reviews? In fact, I understand that John Chow charges as much as $500 for a review on his blog. In his last monthly income report I read, he declared that he made $4000 from reviews made in the month of October 2008.

Let me tell you something, not every one of us can become John Chow. John Chow has as much as 45000 subscribers on his blog. So, a review by John Chow is worth for the money spent by the advertiser. Considering $500 for 45000 readers, the advertiser can reach to about 90 readers for every $1 he spends on the review.

Compare yourself with John Chow; do you have so many readers on your blog? I have just about 150 readers. Using John Chow’s standard of $1 for 90 readers, I could demand only about $2 for a review on my site. Can I do this? No, it is not worth. Neither for me nor for the advertiser. Hope you get what I mean.

Conclusion
Writing purely for money doesn’t seem to work well either for the publisher or the advertiser. The advertiser who pays you money for getting some ride on your PageRank loses when Google pulls your blog down to PR Zero. So, the advertiser is not going to get any help for ranking higher on search engine results page.

Let me conclude that I will commence sponsored reviews again when I have close to 45000 subscribers and I can demand $500 a review. And of course, the review is to reach my readers and not for ranking higher on Google results. So, all the links will be no-followed. In short, I will go for sponsored reviews again when I become another John Chow. Until then, I will maintain “No” to sponsored reviews. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Google sends me traffic again

Last month, I wrote about my intention to completely stop writing sponsored reviews. I started to slowly add the no-follow tag to all the sponsored reviews links (any way, these links will be of no use to the other party as my page rank went down to zero). I also started to remove all affiliate links to the sponsored reviews sites.

Response for my decision on Sponsored Reviews
In the meanwhile, I received mixed response for my decision to stop writing sponsored reviews. Some of you told that I made the right decision. Some of you still think that paid reviews will provide a good source of income. Even some of you suggested that I will write paid posts again after getting back the page rank.

Success of Sponsored Reviews depends on Google PR
Let me tell you, you will get the opportunities only until you have some page rank attached to your blog. Once Google finds that you are writing for sponsored reviews companies, they will penalize with a PR zero. That’s it. You will immediately see a drop in the number of opportunities available for you and a drastic cut in the offer amount per opportunity. The same guys, who wanted you before when you had a good Page Rank, start to dump you now. Why they cannot support you now? Nothing has changed in your blog. Your writing skills are the same. But, they don’t want you now just because you lost your page rank.

Sponsored Reviews Leads to Dip in Search Engine Traffic
The other side effect of Google’s penalty will show up when your search engine traffic slowly and steadily goes down to almost nothing. This is where you will start to feel the pinch (like me). The graph below shows what could happen to your blog. Look at the graph dipping down very fast.


This started to happen to this blog since end September 2008. I didn’t really notice this until recently. Once I saw this, I wanted to make it clear that I am not writing any more paid reviews. That was the reason for my outright post explaining why I said no to sponsored reviews.

Google sending Traffic Again to my blog
Once I declared my intention clearly, removed some of the affiliate links to sponsored reviews sites and no-followed those paid reviews posts, I could see slowly the search traffic coming back. I could not definitely say that Google started to send me traffic due to the above actions. But, most likely, it is true that Google recognized my efforts. My Google Page Rank still stays at zero, but at least I am getting back on to the search engine results pages. That’s good. If you don’t believe me, look at the graph below.



Contribution of Search Engine Traffic in 2008
The graph tells you the clear picture. I will breakdown how search engine traffic contributed to the overall traffic to my blog.

Jan 2008 – 36.80 %
Feb 2008 – 52.12 %
Mar 2008 – 33.84 %
Apr 2008 – 40.87 %
May 2008 – 45.65 %
Jun 2008 – 56.75 %
Jul 2008 – 56.28 %
Aug 2008 – 50.33 %
Sep 2008 – 33.24 %
Oct 2008 – 3.12 %
Nov 2008 – 1.08 %
Dec 2008 – 15.30 %

Look at how the search engine contribution dropped to single digits in the month of Oct 2008 and Nov 2008. In the first 9 months of the year, the search engines contributed about one-third to one-half of the overall traffic to the blog. The traffic went down dramatically in October and November. But, you could see a good recovery in December 2008.

Conclusion
I think I made myself clear here. But, if you still have any doubts about the impact of writing sponsored reviews, I am not going to push you further. Decide whether you want short term benefits or you want to establish a blog that brings in a steady income for a longer period. The ball is in your court. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Happy New Year 2009

It is time to bid good bye to 2008, the year that started promisingly and ended disastrously. Year 2008 will be remembered for the financial crisis in United States of America and its after-effects everywhere in the world. This year will also be bitterly remembered for one of the worst terrorist attacks, in Mumbai, that took India and the rest of the world by grief.

On the positive side, United States of America elected Barack Obama, the first African-American to become the President of America. China staged a wonderful and colourful display of Beijing Olympics 2008. Singapore won the right to host the first Youth Olympics Games. Singapore also hosted the first F1 car racing during night.

Hope we will have a better year in 2009. Though the outlook looks bleak now, let us all pray together and hope that it will improve. As we all know, every year is the beginning of new hopes.

Forget about SEO, blogging, Adsense, Entrecard and similar terms for a day and enjoy the advent of New year. Wishing everyone a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2009!

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Say No to Sponsored Posts

I have decided to put an end to writing sponsored/ paid reviews. In fact, I had not been writing any paid posts for the past six months. I also recommend my readers/ other fellow bloggers to stop writing for payment. To start off, I have removed the affiliate links to paid posts site from my "Money Makers" list on the side bar.

Why "No" to Sponsored Posts?
I am not going against any particular company. But, generally, I lost interest in the paid posts arena. I had built up this site from scratch and went up to PR4. But, now it stands at PR0. But, you may ask, who cares about Google PR? Many of us, including me, have argued that we can survive without Google. Let us acknowledge, friends, it is not easy to get traffic without the help of the biggest search engine.

I had been ranking in the front page for many keywords, but Google slowly de-indexed me from the Search Engine Results. Now, I had to work hard for each and every visitor. Yes, I am still getting considerable traffic through other sources like Entrecard, BloggingZoom, myLot, and so on. But, I have to earn each visitor. To get a visitor from Entrecard, I have to drop a card. You cannot survive ever this way.

While I am still getting some money through affiliate links for sponsored posts site, I felt it is not right to sell something which I don't like myself. You might still see posts related to Smorty, PayPerPost and similar sites here. But, I will remove the affiliate links eventually so that no one goes through me.

Believe me, Google is All. If you want to survive in the blogging world, play by the rules of the biggest search engine. Otherwise, the chances are high that you will perish.

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150 Posts On My Blog

Yes, this post marks the completion of 150 posts on this blog. The journey on this blog started on 9 May 2007. I am happy that I could come so far in this blogging world, with a little success to cheer about.

Strange Coincidence
I wrote a post on Oct 3, 2007 to mark the completion of 50 posts on this blog. That was my first major milestone, in fact. And, exactly one year later, I am here again on Oct 3, 2008 putting together an article to mark the completion of 150 posts on this blog. Thats 100 posts for a whole year (Hmm... Surviving somehow!)

It took quite a while for me to write the last 50 posts. I hit the 100 posts mark on Nov 21 last year.

I would like to thank all my blogging friends and readers for the support, encouragement and guidance to keep me going.

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Blogs Don't Make Money

Do you agree with me that blogs don't make money? Some of you would say yes. Millions of you would say no (otherwise, why do I see so many advertisements on every other blog?).

Myth about making money
The truth is blogs can make money. But, there is no easy way out. Don't get trapped by the word "make money by blogging". Its not as simple as that. When I started off, I wrote a few posts and inserted Google AdSense ads at all possible locations and waited for people to click. It didn't happen.

On the right path
It took me nearly a year to realize that it is not easy to make money by blogging. For a while, I started to purely concentrate on my blogging and forget about making money with blogs. This is the period I started to get many backlinks and started to build up my reader base. I got good ranks on Google, Technorati and Alexa. My blog was as high as PR4 at one stage.

Never write sponsored reviews, unless you are John Chow
This is when I was swayed by sponsored reviews. I started to make some good money by writing sponsored reviews. There were lot of offers as my blog had a good ranking. Then, Google slapped the penalty for writing sponsored content. So, this blog went down to PR0. The sponsored content companies immediately stopped offering any good review opportunities to me. I realized that Google Page Rank is the king here. Even though everyone tries to play down Google's ranking system, they certainly have the say in your blog's success. I learnt a lesson the hard way.

How to make money?
So, here's my advice to newcomers (who has an intention to make money by blogging):

1. Start off with a good and interesting topic to write about. It can be on car buying, advice on bikes, gardening, diabetes care or even on a celebrity. But, ensure that you write about the topic consistently. No point in writing about everything under the world.


2. Get your blog indexed by Google. Please click here to find out how you can get indexed and rank #1 in Google


3. Get backlinks from blogs with similar content/ from your own niche. Please click here to read why links are important.


4. Once you have few posts, include Google AdSense advertisements. If you are going to use AdSense, do not join in any traffic building networks. It doesn't help. These networks will increase your traffic, but will reduce your Click Through Rate (CTR) and eventually your earnings per click.


5. Concentrate on specific keywords and improve on your Search Engine Page Ranking. Please click here to read how to write your content for search engines.


6. If you are making money already, then it's fine. If not, try to change the location of your ads or change the colour of your links. Experiment and see whether you have any improvement in the clicks


7. If you still don't get clicks and your CTR lies below 2% mark, it's time to consider other modes of advertising. I suggest Project Wonderful at this point of time. Project Wonderful is based on "cost per day" advertisements compared to "cost per click" approach by Adsense. I have started using this recently and looks good so far. If you start using Project Wonderful, then probably you can look at improving your traffic through networks like Entrecard.


8. Sponsored Reviews are good for short term benefits. Do not use them if you have an intention to stay in the blogging world for a longer period

I have touched on few controversial issues above and certainly there will be views that are for and against them. Feel free to share your views. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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I am going on leave

Dear readers,

I am going on a holiday trip for about three weeks. As such, you will not be able to see any updates to this blog in the next three to four weeks. I may need one more week to settle things when I come back to office. So, just be patient and I will be back with more useful content. I have planned a few posts, but unable to spend some time to write it down. Will do so after my holidays.

Until then, Good Bye. Cheers!

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Feedburner Subscription Feed Error

If you have subscribed to the e-mail feed from this blog, you would have received an e-mail containing all the previous posts. This is not an error made by Feedburner. Feedburner normally sends only the latest posts from this blog. It is, in fact, due to an error on my part.

Two days ago, I was editing my blog’s feed details in Feedburner as part of some testing. Unfortunately, I didn’t restore back the settings before leaving Feedburner. I noticed the error only when I received the post update from Feedburner. I would like to apologize to all the readers for the error. I have corrected the error and you should receive only the latest posts hereafter. I assure you that I will do my best to prevent any recurrence. In case, if you notice any errors please feel free to leave a comment here.

Lesson Learnt
Please ensure that you subscribe to your own blog’s feed. It is not to show off an increase in your subscriber count. But, it helps you to monitor what exactly goes to your reader. You will be able to monitor whether the feed works properly. It gives you a chance to correct any errors in the feed as quickly as possible.

Have you faced any similar challenges before? Share your views here. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Spotplex is going offline

It seems like Spotplex is closing down. I was notified about this by one of our readers. So, I dropped into the Spotplex’ home page and this is what I read:

"We regret to inform you that Spotplex is going offline. This was a very hard decision for us and we are sure you will miss the service as much as we do."

That means Spotplex has decided to quit after being around for about a year. I had been using the Popular Posts widget from Spotplex since December 2007. My detailed post on the steps to install the Popular Posts widget for Blogger is also one of the most popular posts until now.

To be frank, I am a bit sad to let the popular posts widget from Spotplex to go off from my blog. But, I could do nothing about. If you have installed the popular posts widget from Spotplex on your site, then please remove it. It will not work from now on or you may even get some errors. Also, remember to remove the Spotplex tracking code.

Certainly, I will miss the service from Spotplex. Anyway, I take this opportunity to thank the Spotplex team for providing a wonderful widget and the analytics so far. We will discuss about the alternatives available soon.

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Is Google updating Page Rank (PR)?

It seems that Google has started to update the Page Rank again. I am not sure whether any one else has noticed the changes in the Page Rank. My search on Google did not really show any blogger writing about this. But, I noticed a drop in this blog’s Page Rank yesterday.

Yes, the Page Rank of this blog has dropped from PR4 to PR2. I was a bit disappointed when I saw the Google toolbar showing PR2 for my blog. To confirm, I did check the page rank of this blog using some of the google page rank checkers. Sites like prchecker and blogflux confirmed this. I tried MyPageRank.net to see the results on the various Google data centres. All the data centres consistently show a page rank of 2.

So, it is clear that this blog is penalized by Google by 2 page rank points. While that is not good news, I am just hoping that it is a temporary glitch in the Google PR update. How good it would it be to wake up with a PR5 or PR6 tomorrow? Not all dreams come true.

How about you? Do you see any change in your blog’s PR? Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Technorati Rank: In the Top 100K blogs

Assess My Blog is currently ranked by Technorati in the Top 100,000 blogs. To be precise, it is ranked at 99,658.

I have not followed my Technorati rank very closely. Initially, I did notice that Technorati rank could be easily manipulated by link trains or viral links. I had been taken by surprise when I saw a pretty average blog in the Top 10 Technorati blogs sometime ago. In spite of this, I could not contain my excitement when I saw my blog in the Top 100K blogs.


How does Technorati work?
Technorati uses two terms primarily to describe a blog, Technorati Authority and Technorati Rank. I will explain both terms.

Technorati Authority defines the number of incoming links to your blog in the past six months. Only one incoming link from a blog is counted. That means, even if you have two or three links from one blog, it will still count as one. If a blog has linked you about 180 days ago, then that link will not be counted. So, the more number of blogs linking to you, the more will be your Technorati Authority. This blog currently has an authority of 72.

Technorati Rank is a little bit more straightforward. If you have Rank 1, then you are the number one blog according to Technorati. As far as this blog is concerned, Technorati considers this as the 99,658th best blog in the world.

Since Technorati takes into account only links created in the last six months, your blog should be regularly updated and linked by others to keep the ranking. Let me see whether I can sustain this ranking.

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Google Page Rank Update: PR2 to PR4

I am glad to inform you that this blog has moved up the ladder in the recent Google Page Rank update. Yes, the Page Rank of this blog has gone up from PR2 to PR4.

Here is the proof, thanks to PRchecker.info:



While the page rank of one of my other blogs went up from PR2 to PR3, the page rank of my second blog went down from PR2 to PR0. A new blog I launched last month is also given a Page Rank of 2. This blog has less than ten posts so far. Surprising one! To be honest, I still can not figure out the intricacies of the Google's Ranking system.

How about your blog? Did you notice any change in your Page Rank by Google?

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A Quick Round-up of December 2007

December 2007 was a month when this blog achieved further heights. I could not actively blog as I would have liked to. This is reflected by the count of posts, only 15 last month. That is about 50% of what I was posting in the months of October and November 2007.

Irrespective of the number of posts, this month had good posts that drew some hot discussion. The one on BlogRush, Does BlogRush bring any traffic?, was discussed in detail and had a follow-up post Why my posts were not syndicated?. Following that, I did remove the BlogRush widget from this blog. I might use it in some of my other blogs, but I do not see much traffic to this blog from BlogRush.

I did a post on another useful service BloggingZoom, Does BloggingZoom bring traffic?. While I could not spend much time later this month on BZ, I had a good flow of traffic earlier this month.

As usual, I have written some posts on my favourite topic Blogger Hacks/ Widgets for Blogger:

• Quick Search for Blogger Blogs


• Popular Posts Widget for Blogger

The following is the current standing of this blog:

Marco’s Top Blogging Blogs List: #68 (November Rank: 66)
Google Page Rank: 2/10 (No change from last month)
Alexa Traffic Rank: 416,356 (November Rank: 664,445)
Technorati Rank: 132,066 (November Rank: 174,961)

My sincere thanks to all those regular readers and visitors for the support extended to this blog. I may not see any rise in the rankings in January and even there might be a drop due to less activity in December. But, I do hope to get back in action as soon as possible.

I wish all my readers a VERY HAPPY, PROSPEROUS and SUCCESSFUL New Year 2008.

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Alexa Traffic Rank: In the Top 500K blogs

My blog is currently ranked by Alexa among the Top 500K blogs. I have written about Alexa Traffic Ranks before. I have discussed how my Alexa Traffic Rank has increased in two of my earlier posts Alexa Rank: My blog jumps up by 2 million spots and My blog continues to grow in Alexa Ranking.

I have read many negative discussions that Alexa’s ranking system can be manipulated and is not useful. I do not want to go into that discussion now. I personally feel that Alexa Traffic rank has consistently followed the trend of my traffic. Whenever the traffic of this blog increased, Alexa Traffic Rank followed and went higher up. If I could plot my blog traffic statistics against Alexa Traffic Rank, they should correlate very well.

Let me give you an example. My current Alexa Rank is 440,817, which is based on the 3-months average. As I have told you in my last post, I have not been really active for the last two weeks. This has brought my traffic to a relatively low level. Alexa Traffic has accurately captured this in the ranking. The 1-week average shows my blog down at 767,529. How great?

Forget about tweaking the Alexa Traffic Rank. It is a very useful number that warns you of a drop in your traffic. It is very dynamic unlike Google’s Page Rank, which is updated only once in 3 months; sometimes it takes longer like the last update. In my opinion, it is better than Technorati Rank. I have seen blogs in Technorati Top 100 list that have lot of links from inactive blogs.

What do you think? Do you see anything good in Alexa Traffic Rank? Please share your thoughts. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Blogosphere This Week: Week No. 51/2007

Let me share with you this week's compilation of posts that I found useful, from the blogosphere. If you find anything interesting, please share your thoughts here.

1. Install a web server and Wordpress from CK Marketing: Here is a post that explains how to install a web server, wordpress, themes and plugins. If you are thinking of having your own blog, this post provides some excellent information.



2. 170+ Must-Have Tools For The Beginning Blogger from Elite By Design: A great list of tools for bloggers. The author has categorized and arranged the tools in a nice order for beginners to follow. Even if you are an experienced blogger, it is worth spending some time on this post.



3. Why Bloggers Don’t Stumble Other Bloggers from Elite By Design: "... I, for one, can tell you that I visit the site of everyone who comments on a post of mine. I might not always like their content or their blog, but I do like to find out who is reading my blog..." I just lifted those phrases within the quotes from this post. This is what can happen to you if you start commenting on other blogs, of course no spam. As I have always suggested, spend some time on reading other blogs and comment them.



4. Blogging Zoom - 5 Tips To Get Your Next Post Zoomed from Monetize Your Blog: Good tips from the author on how to get traffic to your blog from BloggingZoom. The 5 tips would help to get more zooms that will propel your post to the top.



5. 10 Forums to Make You a Better Blogger from NewestontheNet: Forums provide great resource points for bloggers. It helps to build your network, get extra traffic and share knowledge and experience. This post gives you a list of some good forums on blogging.

Do check next Monday for another list of insightful posts from the blogosphere. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Blogosphere This Week: Week No. 50/2007

Let me share with you this week's compilation of posts that I found useful, from the blogosphere. If you find anything interesting, please share your thoughts here.

Everything from BloggingZoom
I am getting very much involved with BloggingZoom. Recently, I found some of the bloggers offering free backlinks just for participating in BloggingZoom. So, I thought I should do my part to promote BZ. So, all the links in this post are extracted from BZ. I selected a few discussions from the Blogging category, read their posts and provided a link here. Hi Zoomers, this is how I thank BZ and the bloggers who visited me through BZ.

Get a Freee Link From This Blog
Here is an opportunity for you to get a link from this blog. If you think one of your articles is good enough to be featured here, then leave a comment here or send me an e-mail (a_manick@rediffmail.com) with the url of the article. If I find it related to the topics of this blog and interesting, then I would include it in my next week's Blogosphere This Week Column.

1. 35 Guaranteed Ways To Increase Your RSS Subscribers from NewestontheNet: A very good article. Most of the points discussed were familiar and known to us. But, sometimes we forget the basics of blogging and here is one blog that reminds us what we should do.



2. BloggingZoom Stats - It Works from How to Make Money Online for Beginners: In my previous post, I wrote about the traffic I get from BloggingZoom. It is such a good program and I don't want my fellow bloggers to miss out. So, here is another proof that it really works.



3. How to Get More Inbound Links and Visitors to Your Blog from Blogging Web 2.0: A good article that outlines 5 ways to get more inbound links and increase the traffic to your blog.



4. How I Increased My Alexa Ranking By Nearly 2.5 Million in 7 Days from Jason A Clark: An interesting article where you can find useful tips to improve your Alexa traffic ranking. I remember that I wrote a similar post few months ago with a jump of 2 million spots in Alexa.



5. Bloggers Are Self Centered Bitches from Blogger Unleashed: You can never succeed as a blogger alone. You need the help of other bloggers and readers to survive and grow. I have stressed the importance of this in many of my previous posts. Vic comes very hard on the bloggers who do not care about other bloggers.

Do check next Monday for another list of insightful posts from the blogosphere. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Blogosphere This Week: Week No. 49/2007

Here is this week's compilation of posts that I found useful, from the blogosphere. Please share your thoughts on the posts listed here. Do you have anything to add on, that you might have come across in the blogosphere? Feel free to add any interesting topic from your own blogs.

1. You’re Banned from JohnCow.com: Most of the bloggers complain about lack of commenting on their blogs. But, it seems like John Cow has a different set of problems. He is banning a reader for commenting too much.



2. Blog Income Report – November 2007 from JohnChow.com: John Chow once again starts the month with his income report. His latest report shows an earning of $27,240.83 in the month of November.



3. Introducing Windows Live Writer: A Desktop Blog Publishing Application from BloggingTips.com: I regularly hear that Windows Live Writer is a wonderful blog editor. I had some problems with the installation a few weeks ago and gave it up. It seems I need to make an attempt again.



4. 50 Great Widgets For Your Blog from money-gold.blogspot.com: This post lists a good collection of widgets for bloggers. A few sentences that describe the widget gives a clear indication of what the widget can do.



5. How Much Money Do Bloggers Earn Blogging? from Problogger.net: Darren has conducted a poll on the monthly earnings of bloggers. His poll result reveals that about 49% of the bloggers earn less than $100 per month. I am one among them.

Do check next Monday for another list of insightful posts from the blogosphere. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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A quick round-up of November 2007

November 2007 was another eventful month for this blog. Continuing with the trend over the last two months, our blog went further up in popularity and rankings. During this month, we achieved the 100 posts milestone and continued to post at an average of one post a day.

It was the Google ranking in October 2007. In November 2007, this blog took pride in being listed among the Top 100 blogs on blogging. As I said in my October roundup, this blog broke into the top one million blogs in Alexa traffic ranking. The blog also got ranked in RealRank by Izea. The following is the current standing of this blog:

Marco’s Top Blogging Blogs List: #66 (New Ranking)
Google Page Rank: 2/10 (No change from last month)
Alexa Traffic Rank: 664,445 (October Rank: 1,062,298)
Technorati Rank: 174,961 (October Rank: 415,686)
RealRank: 1,057 (New Ranking)

I have written the following posts on building traffic to your blog:

• Where do I get the traffic from?


• Build your traffic with BloggingZoom


• Spotplex: Can challenge Digg?

The regular weekly updates included some great posts from the blogosphere. While I have not written anything on Blogger hacks or widgets for Blogger, there are some wonderful widgets listed in the following posts. If you have not read them before, take a look at it now.

• Blogosphere This Week - Week No. 45/2007


• Blogosphere This Week - Week No. 46/2007


• Blogosphere This Week - Week No. 47/2007


• Blogosphere This Week - Week No. 48/2007

The following posts concentrated on the blogging tips:

• Inbound and Outbound links


• Meta Tags for Blogger: Part 1


• Meta Tags for Blogger: Part 2


• Meta Tags for Blogger: Part 3


• Meta Tags for Blogger: Part 4

We also had some fun along the way:

• How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

While I am happy about this month’s performance, I feel a bit guilty about not being able to accede to some review requests made sometime ago. Even though I have drifted away from the original intent of this blog, I would still finish of my commitments made earlier. I apologize for the delay, but I will clear all those blogs in the review queue by the end of December.

My sincere thanks to all those regular readers and visitors for the support extended to this blog. Please subscribe to my feed if you like this post

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Spotplex: Can challenge Digg?

Spotplex is an online congregation service that dynamically provides an instant ranking of web content. Site features such as user comments and sharing capabilities turn Spotplex into an interactive community.

Looks like another Digg?
Initially, I thought this is similar to Digg or BloggingZoom as the front page looks similar. But, there is a major difference. Digg or BloggingZoom requires the visitors to vote for an article. The pages are ranked based on the number of diggs or zooms. With Spotplex, internet users are not required to change their behaviour to generate content rankings. Spotplex monitors each blog on its network and automatically ranks the pages based on the number of page impressions.

How Spotplex works?
To join the Spotplex network, a blogger should insert a piece of code on to their blog. Whenever an article in the blog is read, the code reports Spotplex server that the article is read. The article shows up on Spotplex and the view counter reflects the change.

Positives of Spotplex:

1. The blog's specific page lists all the popular posts ranked according to the page views, the blog standing in the network and a graph that displays the dynamic change in page views. Each post, that has been ranked, also displays the major source of the traffic. This can be a quick and very useful information for bloggers.


2. No need to login to the account every time. No user id and password. Anyone who types your blog url will be taken to the blog’s page.


3. Basically, a blogger need not spend any time in promoting the blog. A one time installation of the HTML code is all that needed.


4. Provides a nice widget for bloggers that can be integrated on to the blog to display the popular articles.

Negatives of Spotplex:

1. Blogs with good traffic would have an edge over smaller blogs. To overcome this, Spotplex says it judges an article's popularity relative to the traffic that a site normally gets. But, I am not sure whether it works well to help smaller and medium sized blogs.


2. Normally, blogging blogs receive traffic from other bloggers. This model might make it difficult to get traffic for blogs on blogging. There is no need to network, make friends or help other bloggers here.

Conclusion:
Overall, it is a good service that might help normal internet users. As far as bloggers are concerned, they could use the analytics support and use the popular posts widget to guide their readers. As it requires little time in investment, go ahead and install the code on your blog. You may get some benefit in the long run. Please click here to visit Spotplex.

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