February 2006

Monthly Archive

SEO : Monetizing Your Blogsite

Filed Under Uncategorized

You might have heard or read somewhere or from someone that you can make money from your site and even from your own blog. I would say this is true to some extent. If you are just beginning and you see an article or blog that says that their site is reaping at least US$1000 it would make you think that it could actually pay your bills! But before you fall into this trap, I would have to remind you that it’s not as easy as they say or you might think. But if you would like to take a try, I might give you some tips to start with.

There are several ways to monetize your site. You have the ad programs, affiliate programs and of course, selling an ebook or something from your site. There may be some other means of cashing in on your site but we’d concentrate on ads and affiliate programs.

So what are the things we really need? Here they are:
1. A Site of Your Own
Naturally, those who own a site of their own, be it a personal website or a blog, has a better chance of making money. Those who posts their blogs through friendster.com or blogger.com or any other site that offers free blogs will have a quite limited chance. Why? Because those who own their site has the free hand on changing the outlook of the site, posting ads anywhere on their site and they are not dependent on the website that hosts their blog. Of course, you’ll have to shell out some money but that would be part of your investment.
PrivateShelter.com is offering WordPress Blog for free on a first-come,first-served basis. You better start emailing the webmaster before the slot is fully occupied.

2. Ad/Affiliate Programs
This will be your money generator and as I have said, there’s a lot of ad programs in the net. There’s google adsense, yahoo overture, kontera, search speed and a lot more. I’m currently using google adsense as it pays better than the others. For affiliate programs, there’s Link Connector and tons more. Obviously, I’m using Link Connector. I call these as Money Makers and some of them are posted on the right side of the screen.
Actually, making money is not just about having a good number of visitors but by driving your traffic to click on your ads or buy/join on your affiliate programs.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
There’s a lot of online articles that tackles this matter. To make it easier for you, I’ll be posting a series of SEO tips and tricks that is targeting google, yahoo and all the search engines in general. Naturally, having your site at the first few pages of the google search results of your chosen keyword would be very handy in terms of driving traffic to your site. Naturally, the number of Click-Through-Rate (CTR) is proportional to the number of visitors of your site.

4. Some Knowledge on HTML
Basic knowledge on HTML would be very handy to effectively promote your site. For more advanced users, knowledge on PHP would be very helpful as most of the free codes available in the internet are written in PHP. You may not really need it but additional tweaking of your site needs some PHP coding. Again, that is for advanced users who have some knowledge on programming or are willing to have some programming background. THIS SHOULD NOT, IN ANY WAY, DISCOURAGE YOU FROM LAUNCHING YOUR OWN AD PROGRAM.

5. Articles to Read
To be able to drive traffic to your site, you should have some interesting articles for them to read. I would suggest that you focus on something you have a passion for. Of course, it could be anything including your personal life. The bottom line is, give your readers something to read on.

This site isn’t making money as of this time. Besides, that’s not the main purpose of my blog. I already told early on that I just want to share my experiences in my life. However, making some money out of something from your mind isn’t a bad thing.

HongKong GetAway - Summary

Filed Under Travel

HongKong is a great place. It is a symbol of development in the region and , along with Singapore, is the envy of its neighbors. A small country as it is (chinese province), it’s almost unbelievable that they have made so much development and progress in a little over a century. As I have said, the British must be very proud of what they did and achieved for HongKong during their occupation of the city. I think that the discipline of its people and the will power of their leaders contributed well, if not the main reason, why they achieved their current status.

In general, we enjoyed the vacation well. We’ve visited a lot of places and shopped in different places. It must be noted that this is also the first time I went out of the country wherein the only purpose is leisure. I had a great time visiting HongKong and surely, my wife and I will be back in the near future. It was really a great experience coming here. It was already the end of the winter season and summer is fast approaching. I’m sure summer is a better time to visit HongKong.

The HongKong Getaway Part 2

Filed Under Travel

Victoria Peak (85%)
Ok. This is actually one of the few places where you can see a real house… i mean, mansions if you call it. Land in HongKong is so precious and scarce that everybody is living in condominiums and those who can afford to have a mansion must be really rich… as in exceptionally rich.
So to get there, you’ll have to take the Peak Tram bus (top-down double-decker bus) from Central going to the Tram station. You then have to queue and buy the ticket to ride the tram going to the peak. Of course, you can ride a taxi from Central to the Peak Tower but you’ll miss the experience of riding the Tram. I think it is part of the thrill. The view from the top is amazing, it’s like looking at a large postcard but it’s real. The view is breathtaking.

Shopping
I guess everybody will agree that HongKong is the shopping haven of the world. No one should leave me in Sham Shui Po alone and with lots of money because for sure, I’ll spend them in a flash. You’ll find there electronics items, electronic parts, power tools, cellphones, computers and most especially… remote controls …helicopters, airplanes, trucks, heavy machines, robots… oh my, I can’t believe I’ll see so much interesting items!
Errr, for ladies, Sasa is everywhere in HongKong. There you can find perfumes and cosmetics all in bargain prices. And what’s more? They are all originals! For shoes, bags, shirts, jackets, etc, I suggest you visit Tsuen Wan area. It’s at the end of the MTR’s Tsuen Wan Line and since the area isn’t as known as Sham Shui Po, Mong Kok and Temple Streets, the price is lower. My wife even saw an item 50% cheaper than the price in Temple St. Generally, the price in Tsuen Wan area is 30% lower than in Temple and other downtown street markets.Try to check out shops of branded apparels like Bossini, Giordano and Baleno because for sure, you’ll grab one or two items for yourself at very low prices you can’t imagine the items sell at that prices.
I suggest you give yourself at least 5 hours for each of the shopping areas in Sham Shui Po, Mong Kok and Tsuen Wan. Goodluck if you can scour the are in a day.

DisneyLand (95%)
Ok, this may not be as big as the one in Florida and Tokyo but it sure will still entertain you a lot. If you want to take a lot of pictures and enjoy site seeing, this would be the place for you. Though it is a little bit pricey (HK$295), I think it is worth it. I never really thought I’ll be able to go to a DisneyLand in my lifetime but I just did. We arrived at Disney at about 2pm and left at around 9pm or so. The park closes at past 8pm but visitors can still go and shop around. We enjoyed having pictures with the Disney characters. Pooh and Tigger are the best though we would have loved to have picture with Minney Mouse. The queue is quite long so you better make the most of your time.
There’s a lot to see around the park but one must not forget to see Adventure Land and a ride with the Disney Train. Oh I’m really tempted of writing everything we’ve done inside the park. It just shows how I enjoyed it but I have to limit myself with it. Maybe next time…For now, that would be enough. Oh, make sure that you are full before you go here and bring some snack because food in Disney has a stardust in it, you can barely afford them. haha!

Ocean Park (80%)
This theme park at the edge of a hill is the best place for thrill seekers. However, be ready to be patient with long queues on each rides. With a HK$185 price tag, it’s a little bit affordable and it’s near downtown Hongkong, too. Since time is of essence, we just selected some of the attactions inside like the Dolphin Show, Sea Lion, Reef Atoll and most especially, THE CABLE CAR!!! There’s a lot of interesting things to see in this theme park. There’s a lot of food stalls here especially in the BoardWalk area. However, I still suggest that you take your lunch first before you come here. They closes at 8pm so make the most of your time.

Transportation : MTR (90%)
The amazing Octupos card will help you on this. Hongkong has such a very efficient transportation system that you wouldn’t want need to have your own car. Besides, living in a cramped condominium will mean additional cost for parking. We used MTR mainly but there’s another line which is KCR east and west. MTR subway will get you everywhere in downtown HongKong. Those that you cannot reach by subway, use the bus. The British must be very proud of how they transformed HongKong to where and what it is now from its humble beginnings before and during the time of the Opium wars.

The HongKong Getaway Part 1

Filed Under Travel

OK, before I veer away to a totally different topic, let’s go back to discuss my HongKong vacation.

I’m actually with my wife and three of her friends when I toured HK. We booked a regular package from Holiday World Tours via Active Travel. The Cebu Pacific package is already sold out so we were forced to choose Philippine Airlines which is just fine since they are using the NAIA Centennial Terminal. Of course, PAL comes with a higher price. To make this analysis easy to bite, I’ll post it in several chunks. Each item will be graded and they are as follows.

NAIA Terminal 2 (80%)
At first, I took a turn that made me end up in NAIA Terminal 1. I should have not turned right in Sucat Rd so I immediately proceeded to Terminal 2 after asking directions from the guards. Our friends are already waiting in the terminal for 20 minutes already and they can’t enter the terminal because we have their tickets. It’s not a good day to start a bad hair day for any of them so I pressed the pedal to the metal.
Arriving here from HKG didn’t gave any problem except for a few minor hitches like the arrogant scrutiny of the Custom official. Hmnn… I think I’m already used to that. Airport Taxi will sure ruin your already empty pocket so the four of us (the other one, Lhei was fetched by her mother) just packed all our baggages inside the compartment of my car. We were fortunate that we were able to fit the baggages in and my brother was kind enough to fetch us at 11:30pm. So since terminal 2 is clean and orderly compared to terminal 1, I would give it a fair enough rating.

Airline : Philippine Airlines (80%)
Pricey compared to Cebu Pacific. Used a B747-400 from MNL-HKG. You can feel the turbulence with a Jumbo jet and I guess it’s not about the way the PAL pilot flew the plane but because of the plane itself because when I flew via Cathay Pacific last July, 2005, I experienced the same. Going back to Manila, it was a breeze. We flew on a PAL’s A300 and the ride was smooth. I’m not sure if I just slept deeply but I think I didn’t feel anything until the descent when I felt like my ears are popping out. They served filipino dishes during the flight and they tasted good.

HongKong Airport (Chek Lap Kok) (90%)
This is admittedly one of the most beatiful airports I’ve ever been. It’s better than KLIA and Schipol. It’s huge but clean and orderly. The immigration area is very large and there’s a lot of online counters. I’m all praises to this airport. It’s so huge, you can get lost. :)
Hotel: Panda Hotel (60%)
Panda Hotel is a 3-star hotel somewhere in Tsuen Wan area. It is quite far from the downtown area where most of the shopping area are located (Mong Kok, Sham Shui Po, etc) but it is still very accessible via MTR. We just used the hotel as a base since what we do there is just sleep and bathe. The rest of the days, we are out shopping!!! However, I wouldn’t recommend you to book on this hotel. Just book here if you can no longer get other hotel. It doesn’t necessarily sucks but with their price, you can get a better one in HongKong that’s near any of the MTR stations. Panda is about 300 meters away from Tai Wu Hao MTR station. That’s quite a walk and remember that all day, you are already walking and 300 meters is not near. No, there’s no pedicab or tricycle that will ferry you to the hotel.

The Power of Faith

Filed Under Personal

There’s saying “Faith is the substance of things we hope for, the evidence of things not seen“. I’m not sure where I heard that or if it is a verse from the Bible but it sure means a lot to me.

Faith and religion has been the foundation of great civilizations. It was used and most of the times, exploited by the leaders to advance both

HK Trip

Filed Under Travel

Since I can’t wait

Email Subscription Code

Filed Under Technology

Okay, this would really show how easily I get excited even with small and simple things. It is just too enjoyable to learn someting new.

I’ve finally able to make the “subscribe me” feature of one of the sites I’m maintaining, ihmanian94. With the help of the codes of SubscribeMe2 plugin for wordpress and WordPress itself, I was able to create my own simple code. So here’s what I just want to achieve…

User Requirement:
Allow user to subscribe to the kamangyanan eGroup in Yahoo by just entering their email address in the frontpage of the webpage.

Technical Details:
1. Webpage should have a form where visitors can enter their email address
2. Sending of email must be triggered when ENTER key is pressed
3. Email address must be valid
4. Email request must be sent to kamangyanan-subscribe at yahoogroups.com
5. Provide a confirmation page
6. Lastly and most importantly, the email address of the user must appear as the sending party (FROM_EMAIL).
To implement all of these, I used the surprisingly powerful and easy to use command of PHP — mail. Here’s the syntax :

// mail(EMAIL_TO_ADD, SUBJECT, BODY_TEXT, HEADER_TXT);
For the requirement #1, #2 and #3, I placed the following code somewhere in the main page.

Main Page:

For the purpose of showing you the codes, I replaced < with

Link Bait

Filed Under Uncategorized

Subnixus has created a very clever way of driving traffic to his site with their raffle for the Vegas Getaway promo as I posted earlier. The mechanics is surprisingly simple, all a person should do is to post a backlink to the Vegas Getaway post. It’s that simple and one may think, what could he get in return? Well actually, a lot IN THE FUTURE. The site is gaining popularity now. Together with other tried-and-tested formulas for SEO and Site Design, the number of visitors to his site is steadily growing.

But why did I say “IN THE FUTURE”? Well, because the author has take down all of his ads. If he did not remove them, he must have been generating bigger revenues from his affiliate and other ad programs. ‘The last days of nine to five’ must be starting to become a reality. But because of one of his posts that stirred some of the online forums he is visiting, he took all his ads down. As I view it, his post is another kind of Link Bait. And he did it well.

The Wowowee Carnage

Filed Under Personal

I did not intend to post anything with regards to politics or anything about the society we live in. Besides, there’s a lot of people who do that and I think they are in a better position to give comments on national issues.

However, I can’t help but post my thoughts about the stampede that happened this morning in the PhilSports Arena (ULTRA) in Pasig City for the supposed celebration of the first anniversary of the show. Depending on where you are standing, you may view the tragedy in different ways. You might say it is ABS-CBN’s fault or a product of the network wars raging on. Maybe, you may say it is because of the supposed opportunity of the masses to have a shot for a quick money, a quick way to the riches. You may say it is a product of

IntelliTXT and Kontera

Filed Under Uncategorized

I’ve tried to join two contextual advertising services by IntelliTXT and DynamiContext of Kontera. Unfortunately, this blogsite did not qualify. First with IntelliTXT, the site did not qualify to their number 1 criterion which states :

“Your website must receive a minimum of 500,000 content rich page views to qualify for IntelliTXT. “Content rich” is defined as a page containing more than 50 words.” Come on… half a million views per day is just too much for me. I don’t expect my blogsite to generate such volume so I didn’t bother continuing with the registration. I saw their services work with PlanetSourceCode.com and I find it nice and non-intrusive. For Kontera’s DynamiContext, they don’t have that kind of requirement and knowing that my friend is already a member, I thought this site will Well I guess I have to stick around with Link Connector and Google Adsense for the moment. I’ll just follow most of the tips in Subnixus to generate more page views once I announce to the world that I have this little blog I’m maintaining. I just find Subnixus tips realistic and really working. I’m crossing my finger that it won’t terminate adsense account.