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Archive for June, 2006

Performancing Partners Ad Network

Performancing is launching an Ad Network specifically for bloggers. Dubbed Performancing Partners, the main goal of the ad network is to open the floor for bloggers to generate more passive income on top of direct income from their blogs.

The ads will be non-contextual so you can run them alongside your Google AdSense or YPN ads. Two revenue models are being put in place — Direct advertising on a monthly flat fee basis based on recommended CPM for category type, and CPA (cost per aquisition).

Success of such a niche ad network will highly depend on the people behind it and how they can attract advertisers already scattered amongst dozens and dozens of exiting competitors — AdBrite, BlogAds, Chitika, AzoogleAds, etc.

Maybe a higher publisher revenu share? The standard right now is about 50-50%. What I’m more interested is how this new network will be able to help monetize blogs that are only getting less than 500 uniques per day.

This is one ad network to watch out though and we’ll see once they roll it out soon.

How not to send a Business Proposal

I’ve been doing online business for years now, getting business proposals and job offers from people/companies halfway across the world since 2000. It’s nothing new to me now so whenever I get emails from people who say they’re coming over from the US to talk to me about a certain arrangement, I approach the situation with a certain level of sincereness but with minimal expectations.

Anyway, I got this email the other day and the person did not introduce himself completely (no last name) and even avoided mentioning his company. He tells me that he knows we are a web hosting company here in the Philippines and he would like to directly hire a bunch of sales and support people which we will manage for him. He followed up with a couple more questions about me and my company’s background.

I would have answered his email thoroughly but there were red flags all over the email which made me think this could be shady backgrounds:

  • No complete information about the sender, just the first name.
  • No clear information about the company (no company name, no website url)
  • Uses free email service instead of official company email.
  • Email was adress back to the sender and not actual recipients (used blind carbon copy, BCC)

Clearly, the person who sent this did not do any background checks except for the email address posted on our website.

I did a background check on him using his email address and only found one old website containing a similar email composition address to an Indian company where he’s looking for ASP developers and another one on a freelance/job site where he posted an ad but did not follow-up on requests for more info.

In doing business online, the very first thing one should take into account is transaparency in order to build trust between two parties. Not being upfront about such basic details as company information only solicits suspicion and distrust.

Google Checkout is no Paypal-killer

Google Checkout came out yesterday and though I had a blog entry for it in draft, I’ve revised it and changed it to this one.

Checkout is practically just another payment gateway for merchants and shoppers, and has been predicted to be the next Paypal-killer. Um, maybe if you live in any of the 50 states (and 1 district) of the US.

google checkout

Google Checkout is tied up with your Google Accounts so all you need to do is login and then fill out the credit card information page. But wait, look up at the screenshot and you will see that the CC info needed needs to have a US billing address.

That spoils every bit of excitement I had about the new service. Still, even if you have one, it doesn’t have that person-to-person Paypal transfer feature either.

Oh, well.

P.S.
A response from a Google rep posted on Digg stated :

At this time, only merchants with a United States address and bank account can integrate and process transactions through Google Checkout. You also must have a United States billing and shipping address to buy with Google Checkout.

We look forward to making the service more widely available in the near future.

I hope that future is near.

The Acer Service Center Inventory Sale

Just found this in my Yahoo inbox.
Acer Ferrari
Acer Service Center is running an Inventory Sale of up to 50% off on laptops, desktops, lcd monitors. I normally shrug this off but take a good look at these great deals:

Acer Ferrari 3400WLMi
(AMD Turion 64, 512MB RAM, 80GB HDD, DVD, 128MB Radeon X600, 15.4″)
Before: Php 118,000
Now: Php 59,000

Acer TravelMate C112TCi
Before: Php 109,000
Now: Php 59,000

Acer Aspire 1692WLMi
Before: Php 69,900
Now: Php 55,000

Acer TravelMate 4651LCi
Before: Php 89,900
Now: Php 45,000

LCD Screens as well are on sale:
Acer LCD monitor
AL 1751 (17-inch)
Before: Php 16,500
Now: Php 10,000

AL 1511vsm
Before: Php 11,200
Now: Php 7,900

Sale starts from June 29, 30 and July 1, 2006 only.

For more details, you can call:
Service: 564-1841
www.acer.com.ph
Acer Philippines, Inc.
Service Center
1651 Paz M. Guazon St. Paco, Manila
Email: service@acer.com.ph

SearchStatus: The Ultimate SEM Firefox Plugin

For the Search Engine Marketing (and SEO) enthusiasts out there who loves Firefox and Mozilla, check this out: Search Status.

SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for users of both Firefox and Mozilla, designed for the highly specialised needs of search engine marketers. The toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar.

For every site you visit using Firefox or Mozilla, SearchStatus lets you view its Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN – all in one place. This combined search-related information means you can view not only the link importance of a site (according to Google), but also its traffic importance (according to Alexa), so providing a balanced view of site efficacy.



firefox
mozilla

Just click on the icons above if you want to install the plugin. Now you don’t have to go to Alexa or fire up IE+Alexa to check on the Alexa ranks of your sites. And a whole bunch of other SEO stuff you’d like to check on.

Take note of the Privacy Policy here.

Demographic Prediction from adCenter Labs

{ Got this from Darren. }

You can use MSN’s adCenter technology to predict a customer’s age, gender, and other demographic information according to his or her online behavior—that is, from search queries and webpage views.

Here’s on I got for this blog:

MSN Adcenter

That’s 51% male and 49% female with average age range of about 25 – 34 years old. Interesting predictions, eh. Hi to all yah ladies out there! ;)

I did another one for PTB:

ptb-adcenter.gif

PTB, on the other hand, is heavy with male readers (62% vs. 32% female) but wiht a much lower age range of 18 to 24. That’s strange. *hehehe*

Note: The statistics are based on undisclosed size of sample data and are for proof of concept only. Actual results may vary.

Wufoo: Instant Ajax Form Creator

Got my Wufoo Beta invite last night so I tried it out on PTB’s contact form. Pretty neat and easy to use actually.

Wufoo is a web-based tool to help you build and host amazing online forms. In only a few short minutes, you can create a mailing list, a marketing survey or even a complete customer management system.

You can try the demo here. Here’s a screenshot of the form I made:

Ajax Form Generator

What you basically do is layout your form, label them, add properties with options to require field inputs and then you’re done. It will generate a code (in iframe) which you can copy and paste into your webpage.

Data is stored in their system but you can opt to have each submissions emailed to you as well.

Bong Austero is 2nd Filipino blogger-turned-columnist

Most of the people out there who are closely watching the Philippine political blogosphere will probably know who Bong Austero is.

For those who don’t know him yet, he was the blogger who published the “Open Letter To Our Leaders” last February 27, 2006 which became so popular it might have been passed from one email to another thosands of times over (I got one but didn’t read all of it). It was eventually used by opposition groups and published on major newspapers. Mr. Austero even got a TV interview on The Big Picture (ANC) with Ricky Carandang.

That 60 minutes of limelight has made the previously unknown Bong Austero from a mere blogger to a columnist at the Manila Standard Today (officially starting June 19):

Starting today, and every Monday and Wednesday thereafter, my byline will appear in the opinion pages of the Manila Standard Today. My maiden column is about something close to my heart as a Human Resource Management practitioner: wages.

Although it was that letter that gave me my 10 minutes of notoriety, it was this blog that caught media’s attention. Yup, bloggers out there, it looks like mainstream media is indeed keeping a keen eye on the blogosphere. Manila Standard Today has another blogger on its roster of columnists, Sassy Lawyer.

I know that there are bloggers out there who will see this move as a form of selling out. I don’t.

Lessons learned from Isulong SEOPH Contest

Just one month into the Isulong SEOPH competition and I’ve learned a lot of things I didn’t knew about before. The SEO Contest has been a good exercise for me so I’d like to list them down here and share with everyone.

Continue reading ‘Lessons learned from Isulong SEOPH Contest’

How to be noticed and get TLA ads?

In our meet-up last Saturday, Markku and I discussed about how to be noticed and get ads from TLA.

First, when advertisers will look for an appropriate site on TLA to put ads, they’ll do a search or browse on the categories. Due to the huge volume of TLA affiliates, you’re listing might not be easy to spot.

Once in a while, you might notice some referrals from the TLA website. This is good since it means potential advertisers are checking your site. But before they could check your site/blog, it needs to show up in their search. This is where you need to optimize your listing.

Login to your TLA account and go to the Publisher Program panel, click on the “Edit your listings” link and select which site/blog you want to optimize.

There’s a new section there that’s been recently added by TLA — Keywords listing. Add as many relevant keywords on that form that might describe your blog. One best way to go about this is use your blog categories as your cheat sheet.

TLA has it’s own listing categories so you could copy them as well.

Getting noticed (or showing up in the search listing) is just the first step. The harder part is getting the ads.

We’ll discuss mroe about that later.

[tags]tla, text ads, link ads, niche topics[/tags]

Anybody still watching Digital Tour?

I remember about 2 or 3 years ago, one of my favorite local shows to watch was Digital Tour on Studio 23. They’re practically the only other TV show that’s pretty heavy on the tech side. There’s also Convergence on Net 25 and this Wikipedia entry says they’re consistently No. 1 on that category. (I wish they’d do reruns of TechTV.)

Anyway, both of these shows aren’t really showing anything new these days. Bunch of really old stuff and more old news. It’s like a three-month old delayed telecast or something.

Well, I guess, their average viewer isn’t as updated but to me, the show has become too boring nowadays. Hope they could do at least a segment or two that aren’t oh so too cheesy.

P.S.
Wait, now I remember. They did a feature of PinoyTechBlog September last year. :D

[tags]techtv, tv shows, technology, television, studio23, net25[/tags]

Relaunching PinoyBlog v3 Beta

Been hacking away for about a week now with the migration of PinoyBlog from EE to WordPress. It’s not a 100% complete based on my original expectations, feature-wise, but I thought I’d launch it this early and add the nitty-gritty details along the way.

PinoyBlog

So, I’ll just have it online and ask people to update their profiles and test out the new site for bugs. I hope I could get away with the beta label. ;)

Blogger Meet-up this afternoon

We’re pushing thru with the Blogger Meet-up and Networking Night this afternoon.

Where: Starbucks, MetroWalk
When: 5PM, June 24, 2006

If you’re free and nothing to do, join us. :) Free beers by Jayvee! :p

Consolidate all your email accounts in Gmail

Or what I would have titled as “One Gmail to rule them all!

Anyway, this tutorial was meant for someone who asked about it but I thought I’d post it here as well for future reference.

This simple tutorial will enable you to use your GMail account as your catch-all inbox for all your other email accounts. The idea is simple — be able to receive all messages form all other email accounts into your GMail and then send emails or reply to emails from the originating recipient.

Here’s how you do it. (Note: This tutorial assumes that you other email accounts are on cPanel or have a Forwarding Option)

Setting Up Email Forwarding

This step will show you how to setup the forwarding option for your other email accounts. It assumes you’re running on cPanel/WebMail. If you have a different platform, it should still be almost similar to this.

1.) Login to your WebMail. You will directed to a landing page just like below. Look for the “Forwarding Options” link.

2.) You will then be prompted with a form asking for the address you want to forward your emails. Type in your GMail account. Click Add Forwarder.

3.) You will get a message that the Forwarding has been successfully completed. We’re done with this stage.

OK, let’s move on. Login to your GMail account.

Setting Up Email Accounts in GMail

The following steps will show you how to activate email accounts in Gmail. We’re assuming you already have GMail; if not, get one here.

4.) Inside GMail, go to Settings -> Accounts -> click on “Add another email address”. See screenshot below:

5.) A pop-up window will appear, asking you what email address you want to add. Type-in the desired account name and email address you used above (in step 1). Click Next.

6.) A new page will ask you to Cancel, Go Back to the previous page or Send Verification. Click on Send Verification.

7.) The verification email will be sent to your other email account. Since, it was set to forward all messages to your Gmail, just go back and check your Gmail Inbox for it. Follow instructions by clicking on the link provided. You’re all set and ready to go.

8.) To send email with the new account, just click on Compose and on the composer panel’s “From:” field, you’ll see a drop down allowing you to select which account you are using to send.

9.) By default, all outgoing mails will be sent/replied-to by your Gmail account as the Sender. You can change this so that the originating recipient is the one replying to the email. Change this in the Settings -> Accounts page as shown below:

Take note that your signature will always appear at the footer of all composed emails no matter which email accounts your use. The Inbox of the forwarding emails will still have a copy of the messages but you may want to check in and empty them once in a while to save inbox space.

Likewise, you won’t get any forwarded emails if the other email accounts are down, though you can still send emails thru GMail.

Disclaimer: I do not guarantee that this method will work on all types of email accounts.

Google’s new Content Referral Network

Google is currently testing it’s CPA campaign called Content Referral Network. CPA means cost-per-action and differs from the regular AdSense CPC method because CPA requires that a visitor clicks AND performs an action — like filling up a form, buying a product or service.

A copy of the Google invitation to the network can be found here: Google Launches ValueClick Killer.

Of course, a whole lineup of existing companies will become direct competitors of the Content Referral Network which includes ValueClick, Commission Junction and Direct Track, among others.

What will this mean for site owners, webmaster and bloggers? Well, it’s another campaign everyone can try and it promises higher returns, IF you can get your visitors to buy the advertised product/service. It will be hard to do that if a majority of your audience don’t have credit cards. In a way, you’ll need to have a site where users/members are pre-disposed to buying something. This could probably be good for forums about cellphones, accessories, gadgets, and stuff.

Will it work? Maybe for a few publishers and internet marketers. Not as successful as Adsense though. It’s easy to get people to click on an ad but not as easy to get them to do something else after that, much more to make them fish out their credit cards.

Ranking for non-existent Keyword

I must admit that I still suck at spelling that some of my readers politely remind me of it (thanks to them). Other times, I just discover them days or weeks later when checking for search referrals.

Continue reading ‘Ranking for non-existent Keyword’

Wanna be a BlogSitter?

BlogSitters for hire! (You mean probloggers?) This is from their website:

Are you a blogger? Do you face some no-internet-days, holidays or something else that keeps you from updating your precious blog? And you know that a blog without daily updates dies very fast?
Don’t worry any longer! blogsitter.net is the plattform for bloggers who need caring people to sit their blogs. Register and place your advertisment to search for a fitting blogsitter. Someone who has your skills in the field of your blog, someone who is trustful and eager to care about your blog.

If you want to participate please register yourself as Blogger looking for a Blogsitter, or Blogsitter looking for a job.

It’s like e-Lance for bloggers. Rates are not yet up but I think it’s dependent on the blogsitter. Would you get one for your blog if the need arises? Depends on what kind of blog you got.

I’d rather go for bloggers I already know, friends, or regular readers. It’s all about trust, baby. You don’t want your blogsitter thinking about his/her own interest and dropping links left in right.

Advertising your Blog

Darren Rowse asks “Do you advertise your blog?“.

Why of course, everyone does. Its just a matter of up to what extent people advertise their blogs. Most people want free advertisements so they sign up with blog rings, blog forums, traffic exchange programs. Others are a little subtle but they’re pretty effective with leaving trackbacks and comments on other blogs within their niche.

The better question would be, how much are you willing to spend to advertise your blog? Some people spend some money on running contests or sponsoring one. Others do direct advertising. A lot of us around here do that.

I once got $30 in free AdWords (last year) account so I used it to advertise my blog. JAngelo used to run AdWords and I often see his ads on Inq7.net as well as Marc during the first few days of the V7N.com contest. Same with Rickey for his Live @ USA podcast; used to see his ads around here for entries related to “pinoy/filipino”. I’ve also seen BryanBoy buying BlogAds over at XiaXue’s blog and another Gawker Media blog (forgot which one). And those are ad spots in the hundreds of dollars.

More interesting to know though is how effective these ads are for their blog. If they earn more than enough from their own blog, I think it is wise to invest some of the revenues back to advertising and increase traffic.

[tags]adverts, advertising, blogads, adbrite, tla, adsense, adwords[/tags]

Level-Up! gives in to underground Mafia

Just read this news from Inq7.net about “Level-Up! surrenders to underground economy”.

Almost all online virual games such as World of Warcraft (WoW), Ragnarok Online and Second Life suffer from such massive violations. Blizzard responds by banning tens of thousands of accounts caught cheating the system. Level-up! gave in to the mafia and reasons out that:

…online game community has become so organic and so diverse that it would be hard to control people from going beyond the bounds of game rules. It’s not cheating anymore because everyone is doing it already and it’s becoming beneficial for everyone.

This is according to Level-Up! Chief Operating Officer Sheila Paul. Nice one! *hehehe*

What she may have meant there was since everyone is doing it and cashing in on the system, why exert more effort to curb it and spend money when they could join the crowd and possibly increase sales. *heh*

[tags]mmorpg, online games, levelup[/tags]

FNF’s Blogging & Podcasting Seminar

Got a request from Anne of FNF to post it here:

“Express Yourself” Reloaded

Join the Friedrich Naumann Foundation’s workshop on Weblogs and Podcasts as political tools in 4-6 July 2006.

“Express Yourself” is a three and a half day activity with hands-on tutorials on blogging and podcasting. Well-known Filipino personalities of the Internet will be invited as speakers and instructors.

You will learn about:
a. The best practices in the field of blogging and podcasting with a special emphasis on the Philippine political context
b. How to craft a clear message that will define your blog
c. The basic editorial and writing guidelines regarding online communications and how to apply them
d. How to produce and maintain your own blog and podcast

As our workshops tend to get full fast and only 15 slots are available, we encourage you to sign up now.

Send your résumé, a letter on why you want to participate, and samples of previous work (if any) through email at liberal@philippines.fnst.org or by fax at (+63 2) 8103189. Applications will be accepted only until June 23, 2006.

View the blogging and podcasting program from last March.

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