Google Page Rank Dropped

Google has dropped my Bosnia site’s page rank to 0. Zip! Understand zero! Because I have a couple of sold text links on my site. Geez! Am I supposed to spend countless hours researching for information, writing and editing my posts for nothing? Eh when I am rich, I will provide information for free.

Someone has to stop Google. Microsoft and Yahoo better catch up fast in the search engine competition, otherwise Google will monopolize the Internet just like Microsoft used to monopolize the computer industry way back.

Read Daren’s post about Google’s latest crusade on page rank.

Mind Mapping – Thinking and Organizing Creatively

Mind Map’s mastermind, Tony Buzan, developed the concept of Mind Mapping out of frustration for the ineffective traditional note-taking which was difficult create and review. Jotting down speaker’s words line by line or even summarizing keywords are done linearly and chronologically, meaning that notes relating to the speaker’s point X somewhere on page numbered Y can be on another page numbered Z. At the end of the lecture, we might not even remember the connection among related ideas. I have years of collection of useless college notes to backup this claim.
With Mind Mapping, a big-picture snapshot of your thinking process, your brainstorming session or your summary of a topic is laid out on one single piece of paper. Key points and important ideas are recorded in a way that show their ordered and connection to one another. The seen diagram is a summary of Michael Faraday.

I have applied this Mind Mapping technique to brainstorm my travel, to prioritize tasks for flat moving and to learn the grammar of a foreign language in addition to taking notes of horribly boring technical and procedural presentations at work. My work productivity increases as rehashing my knowledge and looking up forgotten points take only minutes.

I currently use are Concept Draw Mindmap, Mindjet Map Manager and free-version web-app MindMeister.

/>> See more samples of mind-map diagrams and view a list of mind-mapping software.

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Flickr – Show off Your Pictures and Get Paid

Up until now, Flickr was simply a photo-sharing site where I showed off my pictures until out of the blue, Pricelss.com contacted me and asked to use some of my photos taken in France.

Wow! Was that for real? For a while, I’d been searching for photo competition and submitted my pictures to a few sites and did not get any response from them. Then now, without any effort searching for buyers, I earn from those photos enough money to pay for my Flickr hosting around 20 years.

Many of my friends have better cameras and accessories than I do, cost up to thousands of dollars. They also have far more technical skills and knowledge. However, in this information era, skills and talent though important but do not matter as much as the ability to marketing oneself. My photos on Flickr have far more chance to be noticed by interested parties than my friends’ photos which sitting on their computers.

Not only Flickr is an exceptionally cool photo-sharing website, it is an increasingly popular internet marketing tool which you should definitely try out.

Google Click Click and Tick off MSN

Google’s newest 1 billion-plus acquisition has been splattered all over the news. On many blogs I regularly read, I saw variations of “Google Bought Doubleclick.” The speculation, analysis and sizzling discussions reminded me of Google’s buying Youtube not so long ago. I did not care about this news becase at the time, it wasn’t relevant to me. Then I recevied a newsletter from Performics, an affiliate network I have recently promoted, spreading the same news and disclosing that it was owned by Double Click. (No matter what you do, there is Google. ;-D)

MSN, like Yahoo!, is desperately trying to compete as if they can even catch up with Goole when it comes to online advertising. I occationally read news from MSN site and sometimes peek down to the bottom of the screen to behold their ads. These financial-oriented ads are nowhere irrelevant. The much-anticipated MSN’ Contextual Ad Program has not yet opened to public.

So what was MSN’s next step? Well, it brought an … antitrust case against Google. Ummm, do you see the irony of this action or want me to spell out to you?

For the moment Microsoft is being a sore loser. Along with AT&T, it was quick to cry antitrust wolf upon hearing that Google had won the bidding for DoubleClick-sweet irony, given that Microsoft and AT&T have both fallen foul of antitrust regulators in the past for abusing their monopolies. “Advertisers don’t want a Wal-Mart-isation of digital advertising,” where one firm (like Wal-Mart in retailing) becomes so big that it can dictate prices, says Tom Chavez, the boss of Rapt, a firm that analyses online-advertising data on behalf of publishers and advertisers.

You might think that if other software and hardware companies could plays (they did) the same antitrust card against Microsoft and won handsomely, why can’t the former defendant do the same thing now?

Of course, they can. However:

That said, Mr Chavez adds, Google is still far from becoming a Wal-Mart-and even Wal-Mart is not facing an antitrust investigation. Unlike AT&T and Microsoft, both of which exerted a strong technological “lock in” over their customers, Google operates in a more open market that is easier for competitors to contest. Regulators will scrutinise the Google-DoubleClick deal, as they should. But Google is not a monopolist-just a company that is, for the moment at least, ahead of its peers.

I am not sure about the non-monopolist statement, but a deserving winner, definitely.

[The Economist, Apr. 21 Edition]

Easy Online Payment with Paypal

If you are starting out or thinking about making money online, you should first open a Paypal account.

What is Paypal? – PayPal is an account-based system which that allows you use your email addresses to send and receive money.

How does it work? – You sign up for an account, supply an email address, credit card and bank information. This registered email is the one you use to send and receive money.

What are the rules and catches? – You send and receive money completely for free with a personal account. However, your senders have fewer payment options to send you the money. When you upgrade to a business account , you still send money for free, but are charge from 1.9% – 2.9% plus $0.30 per received payment, regardless of how your senders fund their payment. (Please go to website to see the current rates.) With a personal account, Paypal charges 4.9% + $0.30 USD (limit of 5 transactions per 12 month period) or 4.9% plus $0.30 USD for card payments received using PayPal on Skype.

Why should you use Paypal? – To simplify your online business transaction. It’s fast and convenient to receive money without the stress of supplying your sensitive banking information. Many online revenue networks choose Paypal as payment options, and some have lower minimums payout if they can pay through Paypal than issue a check.

Examples of how you can use Paypal

1. Bid and receive money for eBay items.
2. Get paid by your ad-nework, review-network, affiliates and other online-revenue sources.
3. Pay for purchase from an online store you don’t feel secured enough to give out your credit card’s information.
4. Pay for and receive money from services/companies/people which only deal with Paypal.
5. Pay off a mutual friend for eating at his party.

I’ve done all the above.

Paypal is available to users from more than a hundred countries. Invoice efficiently and get paid faster with PayPal’s Free invoicing tool. Sign up now!

How about a Revenue Stream from Ebay Auctions through AuctionAds?

I saw AuctionAds on Shoemoney’s blog for awhile and kept wondering if I could implement this new revenue stream on my web sites.

Surprise, surprise! About a week or so later, I received an email from Text Link Ads, another monetize source for websites, announcing AuctionAds venture and invited me to join. Without hesitating for even a split second, I jumped immediately at the opportunity.

A joint venture between TLA’s parent company, MediaWhiz and ShoeMoney Media, AuctionAds allows webmasters to monetize their websites from eBay auctions. When visitors click on the ad, they are redirected to the auctions on eBay. Publishers make money each time a user clicks on AuctionAds and then signs up for a new account on eBay, place winning bids or just perform an action.

Example – See an example of AuctionAds in action on PragueBuzz.com. This particular page promotes Bohemian crystals, rare works of art from the Czech Republic. At the bottom of the page, I include AuctionAds code showing Bohemian Crystal auctions from eBay. The ads have been displaying the right products most of the time. However, once in a while, you will see totally irrelevant ads, e.g. computer or electronic gadgets. This is one big issue with Contextual Ads in general though, not only AuctionAds. It is difficult to get the right ads all the time.

You probably know Google Adsense, don’t you? They are contextual link ads which match (or try to match) the website’s content. Similarly,AuctionAds are contextual image ads showing eBay auctions based on keywords associated with the code. The difference between Google Adsense and AuctionAds is that the former is pay-per-click advertising where you get paid from users’ clicking on the ads while the latter is an affiliate program which pays only when users make a purchase or perform some action after clicking.

Implement AuctionAds
1. Image ads – You choose a keyword, for example “Bohemian Crystal”, which best describes either the content of a particular page or the entire site or simply anything you want. Then you generate the code for the ads. Ads are available in many formats: leaderboard, skyscraper, banner, half banner, various sized rectangles and more.
2. Link ads – You target a page on eBay, supply the page’s URL and then generate the code.

I really appreciate the fact that pages from AuctionAds load very fast, which I can not say the say the same for many other affiliate-networks. Getting highly-targeted ads for my sites can be done very easily and quickly.

If you are small webmasters with niche site, you should check out AuctionAds. They most likely accept your sites as they do not reject based on the sites’ traffic. Click here to join.

Dropped eBay from My Making-Money-Online Experiment

I decided not to do any more auctions on eBay, open an eBay store or anything eBay related for my online experiments for the following reasons:

1. Lack of valuable items – So far, I’ve been auctioning my junk items, mostly books. Their values don’t justify my effort and my time.
2. Time consuming – I’ve spent a lot of time doing administrative stuffs like list the items (writing descriptions, taking pictures and so on), replying to the auction’s winner, emailing and calling my mother to ship the items, and many other overheads.

Not worth it.

I thought about creating an eBay store to sell local crafts, Bohemian crystals, Czech glasses, ceramics and willow baskets from the Czech Republic. I later decided against this idea:

1. High-risked – Crystals, glasses and ceramics break easily. They need extra superb handling care. I will have little control when these items leave my hands.

2. Import/export taxes – These items are shipped from another country, thus I have to deal with international taxes, another hassles,  which I don’t want to deal with right now.
3. eBay store – A friend of mine runs an eBay Store, selling Cisco routers. It’s his full-time job. He has an office, stays there more than 8 hours a day, and takes all kinds of calls from vendors and buyers. This is not something I want to spend my time on as eBay was initially a mere hobby project.

By dropping eBay, I have more time to focus on other activities I enjoy much more: updating my blogs frequently, promoting my existing travel sites, writing quality reviews and articles, researching and sniffing for new online trends, and possibly tempering with making-money-offline experiments.

If you have the time and lots of good items from your garage, eBay might be a good side business for you.

Reviewing Blogs and Websites

I’ve been experimenting with doing reviews for websites to see how it compares to my other online money-makers. So far, it has brought me the most money. However, reviewing is good for short-term growth. Selling ads, links and affiliates are hotter over the long run.

Metacafe – Youtube’s Arrival?

I found out about Metacafe.com from a CNN’s article about 25 new startups to watch. I immediately visited Metacafe to search for new video on Bosnia and found a useful, fairly unique video for my site.
And this company offers something Youtube has not yet done: paying the authors for their works.

The auteurs get $100 after 20,000 viewings and $5 for every 1,000 subsequent views. Since September, Metacafe has paid a total of $250,000 to 200 contributors.

Wait! There is more. Metacafe even has an affiliate program which pays blog/site publishers to host a customized Metacafe player. Read what Metacafe says about its affiliate program:

You can become an affiliate partner of Metacafe simply by hosting a Metacafe video player on your site. The video player can be customized to fit the interests of your audience so that each day your visitors can watch fresh, high quality and engaging videos without ever leaving your site.

This sounds like a good idea, but Metacafe doesn’t have many videos to make this model effective. Those who publish unpopular topics won’t be benefited this method as there are few or even no video to customize for the player.

I’m anxious to know if the business model will succeed. I recommended Eefoof for those who want to make extra money from their creative works. However, I think Eefoof will sink due to its mediocre GUI and low quality submissions. I also suggested MSN’s Soapbox, which is currently available as beta version and does not include any monetizing program. On the other hand, Metacafe has a professional user-interface and sounds much more promising. It might not beat Youtube but can be a mighty competitor.

I will watch this company very carefully. Stay tuned.

[via cnn]

Why You Should Switch To or At Least Try MSN’s Soapbox

If you receive one of those emails asking you to try Soapbox Beta, you should.

And here is why?

1. Be an early adopter – The early birds get all the worms and the early adopters enjoy all the fun.
2. Share the ads’ revenue - Currently there is no ad. But expect to see a lot of contextual ads in the future. I bet I will be MSN’s own Adsense. Do you think MSN develops Soapbox just for fun? Google bought YouTube to exploit this website’s huge traffic for their Adsense/AdWords market. Sooner or later, MSN will use Soapbox as one of their advertising media for their Adsense to compete with Google. (I heard about MSN Adsense for a few months now but don’t know anything about its public availability.) Recently, Youtube announced its plan to share the advertising revenue with video content creators, owners and publishers. As the late commer and challenger, Soapbox has to the same if not more to compete for users and top users. Not convinced? How about Jason Calacanis offered to pay top Diggers to ditch Digg and jumboat to Netscape.
3. Uploading - Actually I didn’t tried out SoapBox because of reason #2. I’ve been annoyed for the past few days because I couln’t upload a video of type .mpg on youtube.

Some minor grievance about Soapbox

• It loads a bit slow compared to Youtube.
• The Menu bar on the left side is not very intuitive.

Uh, by the way, this is not a paid review by MSN. I like trying out new stuffs and ideas not yet popular with the mainstream as well as ocassionally admire Microsoft and its founder Bill Gates. I hope my last mention won’t get my blog attacked by other Interneters.

Ad: AGLOCO – Get Paid to Surf the Net!

Technorati Tags: Bohemian Biz, Social Sharing, Youtube, Soapbox