SEO Blog and Web Hosting News

Archive for January, 2010

They are calling him the million dollar man. Jason Calacanis recently revealed in his blog that he is on track to earn a million dollars from AdSense over the year ahead.

And if that number doesn’t wake you up and have you sitting on the edge of your seat, consider for a moment that he reached this level in less than a year. His company only started using AdSense in September 2004.

Calacanis runs Weblogs Inc., a network dedicated to creating trade weblogs across niche industries. And he’s quickly proven that AdSense is a credible advertising partner.

As their network has grown, so has their AdSense revenue. In January 2005 they earned an average of $580 per day. In March it was $737. In May it was $1,585. One day in July, just before he made the blog entry referred to above, they earned $2,335. Remember that is just for one day. If they can take that daily average to $2,740 they’ll be earning a rate of $1 million for a year. And Calacanis predicts that reaching daily earnings of $3,000 or even $5,000 is quite achievable.

That’s quite an achievement. Keep in mind that Calacanis has 103 bloggers on the payroll and nine staffers. Even so, many webmasters would give an arm or a leg to have even a third of that.

Google’s AdSense has been revolutionary. It has become firmly established as the darling of the online advertising industry. Although rumors are heard of major competitors launching a similar service, AdSense’s premier position seems secure for now.

In essence, AdSense has made it possible for almost anyone with a web site or blog to earn some revenue from advertising, without having to employ sales people or spend precious time searching for advertisers.

AdSense works like this. Webmasters sign up for an account in just a few minutes. They receive a small snippet of code to include on their web pages. Google will then automatically serve advertisements that are relevant to the content on the webmaster’s pages. When someone visits the webmaster’s site and clicks on one of Google’s AdSense advertisements, the webmaster earns a fee. Advertisers can pay anywhere from five cents to a hundred dollars per click, and the webmaster receives a percentage of that fee.

Many webmasters are content with earning five to ten dollars from AdSense to cover the cost of web hosting. But many, unsurprising, have higher ambitions. At a popular WebmasterWorld forum, participants share tips and encouragement on reaching a goal of $300 per day from AdSense. So it is no wonder that Calacanis created quite a buzz when he made his million dollar blog entry.

Google have proven once again that they excel at designing innovative Internet services. If you are in the web industry and have not yet used AdSense, then perhaps you should try it out. Or if you are already using it, perhaps Calacanis’ impressive results will encourage you to track the performance of your AdSense units more closely, fine tune their positions and formats, and take your earnings to a new level.

Calacanis’ million dollar blog entry can be viewed at: http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000403051129/

If you have been looking for web hosting on the internet, you have probably observed the abundance of ads for dedicated servers. If you are a novice when it comes to computers and website hosting, you may not understand what a dedicated server is.

A dedicated server hosts only your website. You are, in essence, hosting your own website. You have total control of the bandwidth, space and security of the server. In most cases, the provider will give you the equipment that you need as long as long as you continue to use their service.

You can usually get a better deal with a dedicated server if you pay annually for the service instead of monthly. Most service providers ask for a monthly fee. Monthly fees for a dedicated server usually run a couple of hundred dollars. If you pay annually, you may be able to save a bit of money.

There is a risk of paying annually, however. If the provider goes out of business and the equipment becomes obsolete, you may be out of luck. If you become unhappy with your service provider and their customer service, or the actual server, you may find yourself stuck with them for a year.

To get the best dedicated server, you need to shop around. Make sure that you find a service provider that will give you quality service. If your server goes down, it will be imperative that you can contact someone for help immediately. The longer your service remains down, the more money you lose.

A budget dedicated server provider may offer such attractive incentives such as no start up costs. In order to get your website going, you will have to upload it onto the server. Most server providers will charge a fee for this. The fee to get your server going and your website up and running may be substantial. This sometimes puts some people off, but it is a one time fee. Once your business is up and running, you only need to only pay the monthly fee to the service provider.

Although it may be seem prudent to reduce costs as much as possible when starting up your website on a dedicated server, this is one area where you do not want to sacrifice service for cost. The best dedicated servers are reliable, offer excellent customer service and have large bandwidth and space. While you may find some budget servers that offer a low monthly rate, take a look at the bandwidth and space that they are offering. In some cases, it may not even be as much as what you can get on a shared server.

To find the best quality dedicated servers, shop around on the internet. It may also help to talk to other website owners that you know to find out if they can recommend a provider. Remember that good customer service is as crucial to the maintenance of your business as is the expanded bandwidth and space afforded by a dedicated server.

Copyright 2009 Chonticha Marijne

So what is blogging really all about? First off, let me tell you that it’s a lucrative business to blog and that blogs are easy to set up and manage. Imagine getting paid to write about subjects that interest you, whenever you want, wherever you are! The flexibility involved allows you to maintain your blog at your own pace, and with Internet cafés easily accessible all over the globe, even your vacation won’t get in the way of your blogging… Or should I say: even your blogging won’t get in the way of your vacation?

In this article, let’s take a look at the profitability of a blog and set up one of our own, free of charge! Interested? Read on!

First, you need to get yourself a blog. There are several options – host a blog on your own domain or get a free one. For starters, let’s talk about the free blogs. You can obtain one at http://www.blogger.com or the newer (and better!) http://www.wordpress.com. WordPress is a free blog engine that is robust and infinitely expandable.

Blogger is actually owned by Google, so it will be detected by Google’s radar faster and you will be indexed more quickly. WordPress.com, however, is a relatively new option so I have no comparison on the speed of getting indexed by search engines. However, WordPress is better in the sense that it has more advanced features such as Trackbacks and Categories. You can also manage your sidebar links more efficiently (more about this later).

Get a free blog at either Blogger or WordPress. Then, familiarize yourself by publishing your first post on your blog and tinkering around with the options and templates.

Here are some words to start expanding your blogging vocabulary:

Permalink – Permalink stands for permanent link, which is a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) that leads to an individual post that you make in your blog.

Trackback – When you post about someone else’s blog post elsewhere, your post will show up in their “trackback” section. This feature, however, is not available with a Blogger account.

Pinging – Blogging seems to be paired with pinging almost every time either one is mentioned nowadays. Pinging is actually the action where a certain aggregator is notified whenever your blog is updated, so that the aggregator may show the newest post of your blog on their website. This is a useful way to gain traffic, which I’ll discuss in a future article.

Content

Next, let’s look at the type of content that’s suitable for your blog in order to make it profitable. You need to understand that there is no fixed scope that your blog should have, which means you can write about whatever you’re interested in. Mind you, the difference between a profitable blog and a non-profitable one is the way you write. What would you prefer: reading your university professor’s lecture notes or the latest novel by your favorite author? People prefer to read “light” items most of the time. When they check out your blog, they are not only looking for information, but they are also looking for information that they can access easily.

So, to attract more visitors as well as to keep your current readers coming back for more, it’s very important to add a personal touch to your blog posts. This can be done by simply imagining that you’re talking with your personal friend. An extra bonus for your readers would be a great sense of humor, so try to add funny comments in your articles where relevant.

Another important point is to avoid addressing your reader as a plural unit. Don’t write as if you’re preparing a speech. Instead, write as if you’re having a conversation with a single person, an equal friend, because this will make your reader relate to you more easily.

Besides that, it’s also very useful to establish your own personality through your words. We’re very curious creatures, so naturally your visitors would want to know as much about you as the information you’re offering them.

Having a distinctive personality in your blog will make a world of difference between your blog about gadgets and all the other blogs about gadgets out there. This is a lot like creating your own brand name, where people immediately remember your blog’s name when they need information about gadgets, just like how people immediately think of McDonald’s for fastfood or Nike for sportswear.

There will be more on the subject of content the next time.

When word gets around about your command of blogging, others who need to know about blogging will start to actively seek you out!