Google PageRank update 2013 News.

PageRank is one of the factors webmasters considers in measuring their progress. Newbies are so obsessed with this PageRank thing that they Check PageRank almost weekly although they are familiar with the fact that its not gonna change until the next PageRank update. 

Google Page Rank update 2013

Google has updated PageRank quarterly in the year 2012: 

▌ 7 February 2012 

▌ 2 May 2012 

▌ 2 August 2012 

▌ 7 November 2012 

The only update in this year has been on 

▌ 4 February 2012. 


Going by the trend, the next update would have been in the 1st week of May. However, there is no still sign of it.

Google has updated it at a consistent base in the last year. There are predictions all over the internet with PageRank update rolling in the last week of June, still no one is sure of it. 

Now what if Google do not updates PageRank this quarter? 
This may provide a relief to blogs that have used black hat SEO and link building strategies like buying backlinks. However, for a small publisher like me and thousands other who are practicing healthy link building strategies,  its a sad news. An increase of 0 to 1 in PageRank is really a motivation to small bloggers. The delay or cancellation of Update this quarter will only make us wait for another 3 months to measure the progress. 

Hoping for the next update to roll out soon. Fingers crossed. !! 

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How to change Blogger's default Template.

Blogger's worst thing you may have noticed is its years-old templates. The dashboard has been revised but the templates remains same. However, with time, there has been hundreds of third party templates designed and released for free to blogger.com users. These third party templates needs to be manually uploaded to blogger.com. Here is a quick tutorial to change your bloggers default template.
 

▌ Go to Blogger Dashboard > Template. 

▌Select Backup / Restore option from the right hand side upper corner of the template dashboard.

▌ Download full template before uploading any third party template. You don't want anything wrong with your already developed blog, so keeping a backup is always a necessary thing. 
 

Blogger Template Backup / restore

▌ Now, browse through your PC and select the template you wanna upload. The template will be uploaded. 


How to customize your already applied Template: 

▌ Go to Blogger Dashboard > Template. Select Customize. 

▌ Blogger Template Designer is open. Now you can adjust Widths, size, Background Images, Templates Fonts and many more. 

If you know HTML and javascripts, you can manually modify your site's design by going to 
Blogger Dashboard > Templates > Edit HTML. 

Important: Don't forget to keep a backup of your template before making any change. Always preview your template if you edit its HTML source, if its loading correctly, you are in right direction, else, you need to revert changes. 

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My personal Media.net review and experience.

Media.net is a contextual advertising network similar to AdSense with Yahoo! Bing network 
shaking hands with media.net to provide better revenue earning systems to publishers. Its relatively new to AdSense and is seen as better AdSense alternative. However, my personal experience till date is not so encouraging. 

▌How I got approved. 
There is no sign-up process. You request an invite from their website filling out all the details and they will manually review every site / blog. If they find your blog complying with their policies, they will accept you. I didn't have much problem getting approved since I already have optimized my site in accordance to AdSense program policies and more or less, its same for Media.net. You may want to read how to get approved by AdSense. 
 
▌Whats benefit of Media.net? 

○ The Ads are very much targeted and contextual. So you don't have to worry much about bad User experience. 

○ A very good customer support. Mail them any problem you have, and they will reply you within 48 hours. That never works with AdSense. 

○ Really less chances of getting banned like AdSense. Even if you are, you have someone to ask the reason, and most probably you will be replied. 

○ Ads are new. Visitors have become blind to AdSense ad units. Media.net provide new Ads sizes and units and customization is much easier and better. 
 
▌After Approval, 1st week. 
I placed one Ad unit each on 2 of my blogs. The earning was simply amazing. Yeah!! The minimum RPM was $2. i earned an RPM of even 18$ for one particular day. I was damn excited. I started replacing AdSense ad units with Media.net units, downgrading AdSense to second choice for earning. It went the same for almost 2 weeks. 

▌What Next!! 

zero RPM media.net

RPM dropped to zero! I thought it may be due to any traffic problem or my blog may not have generated quality traffic. But the RPM never really increased till date. I am still keeping one ad unit on each blog, but RPM is still zero. For the last 2k visitors, I have earned zero.


▌Why I switched Back to AdSense. 

○ With AdSense, at least I know how i get paid. How much clicks I received and CPC. Media.net is not transparent enough. They don't tell you how you earned, whether it was Clicks or impressions that increased your balance. 

○ Each site needs to be approved. If i maintain 10 blogs, I have to apply for each blog separately. With AdSense, if you are approved once, you can place ads on any blog/websites that complies with AdSense program policies. 

○ Not suitable for blogger domains. If you have a blog blog.blogspot.com, then perhaps you will miss a good amount of visitors. Google has incorporated Blogger's domain redirection.  That means you will have to get approved for each of the domain separately .com, .in, .au, and the list is endless. 


▌Now what I am gonna do. 
I will keep this option for another month with a close eye on my earning. If the RPM sticks to zero, I will remove the Ads and believe that old rule, "AdSense is best". 

Have you tried Media.net? Whats your experience? Share with us. 

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Top 5 Ways of Driving Traffic from LinkedIn.

Creating a blog, either as a hobby or with the intention of making money, the top priority has always been to reach out to maximum people. And linkedIn is often missed out in driving traffic to your blog.

Driving traffic to your blog through LinkedIn/

The main reason why LinkedIn is not used effectively by other bloggers is the fact that Its not so social like Facebook, primarily considered as a job-seeking resume uploading website, and due to its somewhat difficult to use interface. 

However, if used consistently, LinkedIn can boost your traffic to a great extent and the major benefit of traffic from LinkedIn is that you get highly targeted visitors - Quality traffic.

Here is 5 ways of getting traffic from LinkedIn: 


▌Update your profile. Complete your profile 100%, add your own profile picture, and fill out all the details seriously. The more you look genuine, the more you attract people towards your shares and posts. If your profile is partially completed and weak, people may never read visit your profile or follow you or add you in their connection.

One more benefit of completing linkedIn profile is that your linkedIn profile is directly shown in search engines. Anybody going for a search of your name will likely to find you in search results.

Keeping a genuine account also improves chances of engagement with other people on linkedIn. Extending your reach is always beneficial. 

▌Increase Your Connections. Add more and more people in your connections. Invite them from your e-mail contact lists, other social networking platforms like Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc. You can even add people whom you interact on linkedIn or who are of same interests/ niche to you. The more 1st level connection, the more your reach. Its good to build a connection pool of genuine people who communicate and engage with you. 

▌Join groups. Search for groups of your niche and join them. linkedIn groups are highly targeted and sharing articles with them will increase your visitors. Don't be frustrated not getting approved from some groups. LinkedIn groups are strict in their policies, and the moderators may not approve you in 1st place. Search for similar 'open groups' and you will still find the targeted audience. 

▌Create your own group. Its not a good idea for a new LinkedIn signed up user, but if you have spent some time on LinkedIn, and managed to have a good reach, create your own community. Put links of your blog in the group description. Anyone joining your group will go to read the group profile 1st, and that may convert into traffic to your blog. 

▌Engage with people. Join in the discussions in comments section, groups and walls. The more you communicate with people, the more you increase your reach. Moreover, if you consistently participate in group discussions, people will notice you more, and next time you post an article links in that group, you surely gonna get more visitors than earlier. 


So, If you have been missing your traffic share from LinkedIn, its not too late. Join, follow these points and earn some quality traffic. All the best. !! 

If you have any other point regarding generating traffic from LinkedIn, do mention it comment. I will update it in this post :) 

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Top 5 CPM ad networks 2013.

CPM is Cost Per Mile. You are paid on per thousand impressions. These are best suitable to those bloggers receiving a medium and high traffic and where the number-of-pages/visit is greater. You can try them individually and figure out which one works for you best. 

1. Burst Media.

 

Site requirements ▌ A minimum of 25,000 page views monthly. 

Payout methods are Check, PayPal and EFT in certain countries. Minimum payout is $50. 

2. Tribal Fusion.

 

Requirements is ▌Top level Domain.

                     ▌ A minimum of 500,000 unique visitors per month. (Yeah,!! that's too much).

3. Value Click Media.

 

Requirement is ▌A minimum of 3000 page views per month.

4. Advertising.com

 ▌2 million page views per month. That means only estabilished sites are eligible. Not for small or medium publishers.

5. cpx-interactive.

  

Site requirements ▌ A minimum of 30,000 unique visitors per month. 

Minimum payout is $100 through check, PayPal. 

Reviews: A detailed reviews of these advertising networks are going to be done in coming posts. You may subscribe to the blog to receive all those updates. 

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Top 5 Ways To Monetize Your Blog.

There are various ways to earn money from your blog. Many webmasters start blogging for the sole purpose of making money but majority of them give up because they don't see any practical earnings in the beginning. However, money making from blog takes some time and the results are shown to those who continue even after seeing a little or no income at all in beginning. The real thing is to keep hanging up for some time, may be an year. 
 
Here is a list of 5 different ways of making money to your blog. Choosing the right option for yourself depends upon your niche and the way of your blogging and you should give a research as to which form will earn you more. Or you can try some for days, and find out the best one for yourself. 


1. Pay Per Click. This is the most widely used form of earning. As the name suggest, you get paid when a visitor clicks on the ads shown on your website. This method of earning is beneficial with websites/blogs receiving a lot of traffic, since only a small number of visitors will gonna click on your ads. The CTR (click through rate) is the number of clicks per hundred visitors. A normal optimized for ads website tend to receive about 3-4 % of CTR on an average. So earning from this method really needs a good amount of traffic. 
Some of the most widely used PPC programme are 

     ▌Google AdSense
     ▌Chitika
     ▌Clicksor


2. CPM Advertising. CPM is Cost per Mile. Instead of earning from the clicks you get on the ads, you get paid by the number of times the ads are shown to the visitors. Put it simple, the more pageviews you get, the more you earn, irrespective of any clicks. CPM advertisement is a sure shot mode of earning.

The rates are fixed per 1000 page views. That means if you get 10,000 visitors (page views) and the ad network is paying you a CPM of 1$, then you will make 10$. As you can see, for earning a small amount you need a lot of visitors. CPM advertising is best suitable for blogs with very high traffic. Getting a few hundred visitors will earn you penny for a day. The plus point is that you are sure of those pennies irrespective of clicks. 

There are various CPM advertising networks like

     ▌Casale Media 
     ▌Clicksor
     ▌BurstMedia 
     ▌Tribal Fusion
     ▌Value Click media. 

Some of these have minimum requirements. You can have a look on them by visiting their websites. 


3.  In-Text Ads. In-Texts-ads are contextual advertisements where keywords from your posts are selected and an advertisement is connected to it. The keywords are double underlined or dotted, and when a visitors hovers mouse on those keywords, the advertisement is pop up-ed. Here the payment is usually through cost per mile. The benefit of In-text advertising is that they don't take any space on your blog and normally do not lower your site speed. 

The two most widely used In-Text Ads schemes are

     ▌Infolinks
     ▌Kontera 


4. Affiliate Marketing. With this kind of advertisement, you earn commission from each sale that is done through your referral link. You write reviews about products and when some one buys any product through your referral, they pay you a commission. 

     Lets say a network pays you a commission of 5%. If someone buys a thing with cost price Rs 100,000, you will make Rs 5000. That's a lot of amount to earn from CPC and CPM ads.

Affiliate marketing is favourite among some of the blogger since chances of earning much more is higher. However, setting up a fan base, reviewing products, and compelling people to buy a product is a hectic task. 
Some of the affiliate Marketing networks are 

     ▌ClickBank
     ▌AffiliateWindow
     ▌Commission Junction
     ▌Amazon


5. Selling ads spaces on your blog. Selling ad spaces on your blog to display advertising banners is a good way of monetizing blogs. This is a profitable thing, since all the money comes to you and no middle person/ company takes a part of your income. The interested advertisers contacts you, a deal is done and you are paid for banners you display on your blog. These can be CPC banners or CPM banners depending upon the advertisers choice. 

You can still go to third party for managing of Selling-buying ads so that you don't have to deal with the complexities. However, then the third party will eat up a part of your income. 

The major advantage is that you have the option of deciding the minimum rates for the ads you will show on your blog. 


Do you use any other method to monetize your blog? Feel free to share it to the readers of this blog. Time to make some money. 

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