Making a Niche out of your Blog!

We all have our special area in life whether it be Life support, computer support, and many other specialties in life. I thought we talk about how do you decide what your will talk about on your blog or website. We all have our own experiences and our own education. No single person can know everything and we all have our flaws and we call all learn from that in one way or another.

How Can I figure out what my blog/website niche is?

You could use keywords to see what the search engines suggest. I say that because if the blog or Website talk about “Making money” or “Computer Repair” or even “Cellular Modems” then you know what you could become even better at your niche. You can find that out by what using Google Analytics to find out what people are searching for to find your blog. This is how your audience finds you by putting in the search in keywords.

Now if you haven’t started a blog or website and you would like to come up with your niche before hand. This is even easier to do. You would need to figure out what you want your blog or website to talk about and then you will want to add them in your posts.

Google Work at Home Scam.

Is Google Hiring Americans to Work from Home??

This is a site located in the URL [http://news8chicago.com]. It tries to fool you into thinking this is actually a news article from a credible source, like a Television station. The actual TV station URL for the Chicago news Channel 8 is [http://www.news8.net/]. This seems to be popping under advertisement and makes you think it is a legit news source but many people are falling for this scam. Snopes even reports this a scam and you should not buy into this legit looking website. The video on the fake website is Google Adsense people talking about how they can add Adsense to your website, the people who created this scam, seem to cut parts of the video to make it seem like they are talking about about the product in the fake article. Here are a few thing to think about before you do anything else:

• Check the Terms of Service — Most of these website that are a scam will tell you in the terms of service what you will actually be charged after the trial period. Each site usually only gives you a time period that is unrealistic and gets your money before you have chance to cancel.

Adblock No more!!

If you are a returning visitor to my site you may notice that Adblock Plus isn’t blocking my advertising.

Let me start off saying I use Adblock Plus and enjoy it when it comes to those Annoying Pop ups and Pop unders that happens when you visit sites that aren’t that bright.  Even those annoying ads that come and speak to you saying you have won something.   These types of ads I am so glad to block.

When it comes to my site, I have worked hard on creating this content and it will help me pay for the server and domain name.   I fully understand why people want to block ads but on the flip side I also know about how they can help support a site.

Often times, I turn Adblock Plus off for places like HULU to make sure they stay free.   This is one way I can support having free shows is watching ads because there might be something I could be interested in.   This is how I show respect for advertising publishers.

I know how hard these places have worked to get people to use there service and respect the idea of having the service paying for it through ads.

Why website should Hide their Affiliate links

Yes you heard me right, lately I’ve been trying to figure out why some of my click were not used in my links. So I went to Google to find the answer. I found the answer to some of this. According to some other websites 40% of affiliate links are stolen or switched with spammers and scammer who are trying to make money. You see the virus writers have been trying to make money with there Fake Antivirus software and they will do anything to earn money. I have also though about how people would boost they have made Millions from Affiliate links and that is where this stilling would happen.

How to make your Affiliate links look like they come from your site:

I decided the easiest way to prevent link theft is create a directory called “go” and then used the program Profit Protector to encrypt and hide my affiliate links.  Then all you have to do is upload the created html file to the “go” directory. for Example:

http://www.affiliatesite.com/product.html?affid=1234

changes to

http://www.mysite.com/go/affiliatesite.html

Now all you have to do is change all your links like the example above and you would use the “http://www.mysite.com/go/affiliatesite.html” for your active link.  This would help reduce programs from stealing your affiliate links with there own.

Misconceptions of Affiliate Marketing

Earlier today I was chatting with Mike Smith, from Miketechshow.com. Mike was saying how unreliable it is to have links being displayed on his site. He also talked about how he wasn’t making a lot from those links. He also talked about wanting a sponsor and not affiliates.  I say if he could affiliate market on his podcast he’d start earning money.   So I figured I would offer some great tips to get the Click through conversion rates that work for me:

• Cater to Your Nich market — If you don’t know you audience how can you know what they are looking for.   Having a site for famous Gossip could cater to Clothes and Jewerly.  This is the first thing you ned to do to start making some kind of money from affiliate marketing.
• Keep reminding your Audience about your Market — Like Me I keep reminding people about all those good Anti-virus software that can be valuable.  To get people to click on your link you sometimes have to remind them that it is there.   This helps get a residue income from your niche audience.

Mac Malware on the Rise drive by Downloads

More and more there seems to be a building trend with Malware writers are developing ways to find both Mac systems and PC Systems. In a diary talking about that one mans journey leads to a site that can detect which system you are on and offer up Malware for that system. He also has some other examples of this on a Mac Trojan in the wild.

Now more and more Apple users think they are not vulnerable to the types of antics that the PC users have to deal with day by day.  This however proves they are “WRONG”.   I will keep telling people whether PC or Mac that you need to have Anti-virus and Firewalls installed to help protect yourself from be victim to this type of stuff.  Just a last week Sopho’s issued the OSX/Tored-Fam worm to their databases.   Sopho’s even talks about this in detail on their blog.

Blog Success Spam — What not to Do!!

Lately I’ve been getting spam emails with the titles:

• Earning thousands blogging? You could be.
• Bloggers Paid for Posts
• Bloggers Wanted
• Learn to blog for paychecks using this freebie video.

Each link sends me to blogsuccess.com, and looks like this:

“Blog Success founders Jack Humphrey and Peter Lenkefi created this to help bloggers make money.”  This is what I read in searches.    I’ve got to wonder if this is so successful they why do an email spam?   Most emails lately have been about scams and virus exploits.   I am going to stick to the only way you should advertise by getting people to click links to come to my site.

According to Symantec:

Symantec reported that nearly 58 percent of spam is now coming from so-called botnets –networks of hacked computers that can be misused by criminals to steal financial information, launch attacks or send spam.

Hijacked Accounts being used to spam

I just read this from Security Fix and Thought I should talk about it some to better help people fix this:

Dear Friend,

New shopping new life!

How are u doing these days?Yesterday I found a web of a large trading company from china,which is an agent of all the well-known digital product factories,and facing to both wholesalers,retailsalers,and personal customer all over the world. They export all kinds of digital products and offer most competitive and reasonable price and high quality goods for our clients,so i think we you make a big profit if we do business with them.And they promise they will provide the best after-sales-service.In my opinion we can make a trial order to test that.

Look forward to your early reply!

According to Security, they are advertising the Easylifeing.com domain and have compromised GMAIL and Yahoo Mail.  This resembles the ones that happen to some other Accounts.   Check Yahoo article and the Hotmail Article for other example of compromised accounts.

Hotmail accounts get compromised!!

I received an email on a list and wanted to warn people:

Dear friend,
i would like to introduce a good company who trades mainly in electornic products. Now the company is under sales promotion, all the products are sold nearly at its cost. They provide the best service to customers,they provide you with original products of good quality,and what is more,the price is a surprising happiness to you! It is realy a good chance for shopping.just grasp the opportunity,Now or never!
The web address: http://www.nekcn.com

Seems this is being sent from Hotmail accounts. There are a number of ways someone could be getting a hold of your email address. According to Microsoft forums this seems to delete your email contacts and also send out this in the same time. This seems to be a new spam campaign for this one company. I would guess someone bought advertising from this company and the advertiser is doing some really unmoral things.

5 Steps in Finding the right Affiliates!

So you want to make Money with your blog but don’t know how? I thought I would share with you what I’ve learned in the past few months to earn enough money to pay for the space and web address. I’ll go through each step talking about steps:

First you will need to explore all the great Affiliate programs like OpenX, TMIWireless, Adsense,  Converseon, and Commision Junction.   There is of course even more out on the Internet, but these are ones that I like and have given me some insight as to Commission and Affiliate marketing.  I have been using TMIWIRELESS and Converseon more and more.  I still have Adsense but you have to get a balance on Advertising and what people are wanting.

Find the right fit for you blog and talk about the products you like the most.  I like TmiWireless because you give out free phones and still get money in return and Converseon for recommending Cell Phones. You should figure out what does better, and always keep looking. There are more than a few out that will work for you better. If you know one that I should look into let me know.

Twitter Spammers are getting more smarter

I got an interesting email about someone following me. I went to go check out there profile and Guess what I see:

As you cann se this account only had one post but people seem to be following back due to the picture and the bio.   I checked the account about 30 mins later and here I will show you:

It seems that if people see it has a picture and a bio that doesn’t sound like it is is advertising anything, they will simply follow them back.  That really isn’t a good idea.   Sooner or later they will start sending out spam to people who are following just because they haven’t been caught.   I also checked out the Web site they have new there bio and it leads to http://www.squidoo.com/twittertipstricks. I hope the website knows their link is being used by a spammer. Although this could be a 2 for one deal for having there link also being used for spammer so they can get traffic to there site. I would be worried my ISP doesn’t cut my website due to THE TOS. Although I serious doubt it would happen I do know it could happen. So users are being fooled by spammers, and people aren’t looking hard enough into the account. Users should be warned they shouldn’t just follow back if it looks like it is a person. I know this is a robot and expect it soon to start sending out spam to all those people who are following.   I just thought I’d share what I found out.  If you clicked on the tinyurl.com it sends you to Partnerwithpaul.com website which talks about making money like all other spam.   Just be careful you don’t end up having regrets on following people who are bots.

Understanding Adsense for the Beginner

So you have a website and you’d like the site to pay for itself. That can be arranged it however depends on your website performance. You see you won’t make a lot of money if you don’t have several things going for you. I thought I share with you my experience with making money through Adsense. As you saw, I made enough money to pay for the website for 5 years. It isn’t hard to make money it is however very difficult to keep getting the money. Most people don’t know the tricks to making money with Google’s Adsense.

I’m here to help you out a little with understanding it and getting even more money from your adsense.   So here we are 3 months into to putting Adsense seriously on my site and let’s take a look shall we:

Superbowl 2009 Ad’s are on HULU

Now I don’t have to watch the Superbowl to see all the ads. The Day after the Superbowl, Hulu releases the ads that were at the half time. So here they are:

So what ones do I like:

• Firestone : Taters
• Star Trek Trailer — I can’t wait for the movie to come out.
• Monster’s VS Aliens (3D Glasses required) — Dreamworks is now only doing 3D.
• Transformers 2 Revenge of the Fallen Trailer
• Race to Witch Mountain Trailer
• Alec in Huluwood — Hulu gets even more people to come to their site.
• Up Trailer

These where the ones that I liked, they had some other ads for like Monster.com and Cars.com, and also Careerbuilder.com. I see they had some Budweiser advertising in there too but really don’t get me interested as for trailers and the really funny ones. Hope you get a laugh like I do.

5 ways to improve your chance of getting hired.

Having seen the economy this week, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is time to redo all the important essentials and get all my ducks in the order as they say.   I’ve been thinking of how best to be ready in case the dreaded day comes when my employer no longer needs my assistance and what could I do to be prepared.

• Get Someone to Critique your Resume — This is the most important step because this is the first place employers look when they want to hire someone.  So how do you get it critiqued?   Here are some good links to help you start off with:  Careerbuilder Critique, Mind of Root Peer Critique(Last until Oct 30, 2008).
• Have your Resume Ready to upload to Resume sites –  You should always register at all the important resume sites just in case.  The Sites that I recommend are : Monster, Career Builder,  Hot jobs, Dice, US jobs, Best Jobs USA, Computer Jobs, and Nation Job.
• Use your website as a place to put your Resume – Have your resume available in case some contacts you and tells you they know someone who is looking to hire people.  Have this resume hidden and only give it out to people you know.   This is also known as networking.
  

Meebo Has Ads

Two years after launching (in my living room at a TechCrunch event), web chat startup Meebo has begun to monetize their service.

Normal ad units don’t work on Meebo. While users stay on most sites for just a minute or two before leaving or creating a new page view by clicking on an internal link, the average user session at Meebo is 2.5 hours without any page refreshes. And 20% of Meebo user have sessions of 10+ hours – they basically never close the application. Selling ads based on page view doesn’t make sense at Meebo; instead, they had to invent a new kind of ad.

What they’ve done is create a persistent ad unit combination that allows users to click and add new buddy icons and background themes, watch videos, listen to music, etc. Or simply get rid of the ads. See the screen shot for a visual, and click for a larger view. Ads are charged a negotiated rate, at around a $10 “CPM.” In this case, Meebo will occasionally change the ads during a user session, up to five times per session. Each session is an impression, and a thousand of them are $10. If a user clicks to close an ad, no new one shows up in that session.

Verizon Shares Your Call Data Unless You Opt-Out (Update!)

The folks from Skydeck just received a written notice from Verizon Wireless for an opt-out system for sharing your call records to third-party advertisers. Unless you call them and opt-out, Verizon will sell what numbers you called, how often you called, and your call length with “authorized companies,” which includes their “affiliates, agents, and parent companies.” Although it doesn’t include your own name, number or address, something like this should be opt-in, not opt-out. If you’re a Verizon customer, call 1-800-333-9956 and tell them you want to opt-out. Why should you let Verizon get even richer off your data for nothing in return? [Skydeck via Crunchgear]

I hope people realize just how bad this is for you!! Would you like them to know who you called? What if your number is Private, It isn’t no longer!!

Warning: Big advertisers hate forums

As soon as your forum is generating huge amounts of content and traffic every single day, advertising networks will be desperate for your business, right? Sorry, it doesn’t work that way – many advertisers hate your website, regardless of how good it really is.

I kind of figured that. They do not like UGC at all, they just don’t know what they are missing!!