Well, time seems to be slipping through my fingers lately. Been so busy with our home based catering business and backend work on my other sites that I missed a really big piece of news.

It would seem that Clickbank now accepts Malaysian accounts.

I was browsing some local sites when I happened to scroll over a banner. Usually, I ignore ads, but I happened to like this banner and rolled over it. What surprised me was that the affiliate link was a clickbank hop link.

I thought to myself, "Now that can't be right... This guy is a local fella. How come he has a Clickbank account?"

I surfed more local sites and started to notice more and more Clickbank hoplinks.

So I moseyed along to Clickbank site and tried to register and "Wahlo! Malaysia appears in the drop down box!!!!"

So I went... "Well Duhhhhhh.... you're late again Andrew"

This is really fantabulous news!

I've always been dissapointed that we Malaysians could not register with Clickbank. They are after all the world biggest marketplace for buying and selling online products. I believe Malaysia was previously on their list of high risk countries, but obviously things have changed. Thanks to whoever helped make that change.

I'd rate this new at #3 after Paypal allowing withdrawals to Malaysian Visa Debit Cards and Adsense allowing withdrawals to Malaysia via Western Union.

So how can Clickbank make a difference to making money online?

Well for starters, any additional revenue stream is always welcome because it's never ever a good thing to rely on only one revenue stream (for most folks it's Adsense).

Second, with Clickbank you get to offer your visitors lots more options in terms of products and information.

Third, we can go full force into affiliate marketing and create websites based on clickbank products, where we were limited to building websites around Adsense and contextual ad revenue model.

I'm going to make time to see what brilliant money making ventures Clickbank offers me....

I ALWAYS experiment with Adsense ad placements and formats. This is to counter ad blindness as much as it is to optimize Adsense as much as possible. Well in January 2008, I found that the half-banner which once used to perform pretty well on my main Adsense website started to suck major lemons. eCPM was going down the tubes and so was CTR. I decided to kill the half banner and replaced it with the large rectangle format. Now what happened since has really surprised me.

Although purists would crucify me for plastering a whole slab of Adsense on my homepage, that fella has been out performing ALL my ad blocks on ALL pages collectively. The thing is as this is happening, I've found that the bounce rate for this page has increased in tandem with the rise in earnings. Obviously people are arriving at this page, seeing this whopper of an ad block and just clicking on it. The sorry victim in all this is Kontera, which I use for all my sub pages.

Now, I expected that earnings from Kontera would dip with the rise in clicks on the large rectangle Adsense block, but it has actually crashed and gone erratic. The chart below shows my daily earnings in the last 2 weeks or so :

What was happening was unbelievable... I was starting to see earnings of 10 cents for 10 clicks or more! Now that's bad. Where I used to be able to earn an average of 15 to 20 cents per click, I've been seeing a major increase in 1 cent or less per clicks the last few months. The peaks you see in the chart above are nothing to brag about. We're talking about less than $1 here. To illustrate how bad Kontera is performing now, I have only just managed to pass the $100 mark at the end of May 2008. That's 5 months to reach $100 - an average of $20 per month or 66 cents a day! Since this has been happening over the course of a few months, it is telling me that one or more of the following is true :

• Kontera's advertiser pool is shrinking - hence the low eCPM and EPC.
• Kontera is somehow able to see my visitors prefer clicking on Adsense so they're punishing me for giving priority to Adsense (this is a conspiracy theory. I cannot prove it)
• It's just market forces at play and market forces are saying my site deserves 1 cent clicks.

Now it's not pride here. I cannot accept the third possibility BECAUSE since deploying the large rectangle Adsense block, my EPC has actually increased by almost 60%. To see if the market as a whole was weakening, I decided to give LinkWorth a try. I'll talk more about LinkWorth in a separate post later, but in the 3 weeks or so that I've been with LinkWorth, I am very pleased with my earnings so far.

So the bottom line is... I am not going to waste my web real estate on Kontera anymore. I've been patient enough. Five months is enough I think. Later this week, I'm going to convert all the pages that were once reserved for Kontera to Linkworth.

Thanks for paying for my hotel stay in Genting, but I gotta say Adios Kontera!

Well this sucks. This is the first withdrawal to my new Public Bank debit card and it gets stuck in pending mode. And it's a fairly large amount too which I withdrew on February 1st. At least Paypal saw fit to inform us instead of letting us hang in mid air. Then again, I'm pretty sure they've been deluged with queries about the prolonged "Pending" status.

Tags: Paypal

At that time, I figured it didn't hurt because the image was just about 1KB in size, so I did nothing. However, this kayu website (a very big website with thousands of Malaysian users) started hotlinking to multiple images and was beginning to eat up my bandwidth. So I decided to block all hot-linking.

It's pretty easy to block people from hot-linking to your images. Just add the following code to your .htaccess file :

This should effectively block all those dartardly evil doers who don't have the decency to create their own images but instead choose to steal not only the image, but to eat up my bandwidth while stealing!

Tags: Stop Hot-Linking

Here's something you might not be aware of - not all bots are good. I've been having problems with one particular bot this past 2 months. Last month, when I noticed a huge spike in hits, I peeked into my logs and noticed a bot called FunWebProducts hitting my sites and eating my bandwidth. First, I thought "cool... this bot is picking up my content". Then whammo... I checked to see where this bot was from and it turns out FunWebProducts is NO GOOD.

Bad bots do harm to you in many ways :

• Some bots are designed to scrape your content - copy and steal your content.
• They eat up bandwidth - remember you pay for your bandwidth.
• If they hit you often enough, they can choke your bandwidth and real visitors will have problems accessing your site.
• The make your server logs files look like one long piece of s**t. It's tough enough looking at your log file without having to see this crap popping up in every other line.

So the good thing is that FunWebProducts made me learn 2 ways I can block people or bots from accessing my websites.

The first way is to deny specific IP addresses or blocks of IP addresses by entering those IP addresses in your CPanel > IP Deny Manager panel.

Now, the problem is that FunWebProducts has way too many IP addresses to block, so I checked if there was another way to block the bot by name and indeed there were a couple of ways. I found that the simplest way to block bots was to use your .htaccess file to do it.

I've just deployed the changes to my .htaccess file. I'll post an update later.

Update (20 January 2007) :
Apparently, the second method above failed to block the FunWebProducts bot from accessing my site. I contacted my web host and they help to include one line in my .htaccess file :

This seems to have worked, going by my server logs. Notice the 403 Forbidden status resulting from FunWebProducts trying to access my homepage :

Now, the problem with throwing a blanket block on FunWebProducts is that any visitor using any product or tool from FunWebProducts (who may genuinely wanting to visit my sites) will see a 403 Forbidden page. I will monitor my stats and see if this adversely affects my earnings. If it does, I may be forced to find some sort of compromise and let FunWebProducts through even though it is bloating my log files terribly.

Update (21 January 2007) :
Lots of people have inadvertently downloaded toolbars from FunWebProducts without knowing the full consequences. I found some resources that you might want to read :

• http://www.liamdelahunty.com/tips/fun_web_products.php
• http://forums.spywareinfo.com/lofiversion/index.php/t12812.html

Tags: FunWebProducts, Bots, Spyware

I think that there are a number of advantages to this format :

• It adds interactivity to the ads; I believe visitors are more likely to click on an ad if they can interact with it.
• The abillity to scroll means that more ads (variety) can be displayed withing a limited space.
• This should allow for more opportunity for targetted ads to be displayed.
• If this format is applied to Referrals 2.0, then there is a possibility of more clicks (higher CTR).

I haven't seen it (this format) appearing on my sites as yet, but I think I have on other websites. Whether publishers like the format or not, one thing is clear (to me at least) - Google is pro-active and changing to meet the problems of ad blindness, in particular, Adsense blindness.

Tags: google adsense, adsense ad, adsense

Camptasia Studio, the cool Windows screencast creator is now available for download. This is a really neat piece of software that you can use to record everything that you see and do on screen. Here's some ways you can use Camptasia Studio :

• Record Powerpoint presentations, upload to a web server so you can screen it from anywhere in the world.
• Record training slides and demonstrations that show how to use a certain software.
• Record and narrate your business presentations and demos.

Okay, so here's how you can get you completely FREE and FULL versions of Camptasia Studio :

1. Download Camptasia Studio 3 free version which is about 28 MB. Took me approximately 5 minutes.
2. Register yourself at this page. You will be asked for your name and email address.
3. Once you've gotten your registration key, you can install the software and enter registation key. This will give you free and complete use of Camptasia Studio 3 (no expiration date).

Cool. Go ahead and enjoy!

Tags: Camptasia, Camptasia Studio 3, Free Software

When I first applied to TLA, I noticed that they required sites to be of a certain PR or Alexa ranking. I didn't like it, and I felt that this would be a loophole for abuse by members. Apparently I am correct but who am I to shout "I told you so" now.

I've noticed that many bloggers are just soooo greedy that they take on EVERY advertiser, whether they were relevant to their blog niche of not. This is one of the things that Google hates, so yes... everybody who has taken the time to learn about SEO knows that the first rule of linking out is to link to relevant content.

If you don't know if your TLA plugin is the lates, check your HTML souce, then look for the term "functions tla_ads". If it shows up, then you have the old plugin.

I respect John, but I must caution that this borders on "grey". Using image links to avoid Googlebot's notice is an old trick that will pass automated crawls but NOT human checks. If a human were to manually check your site (don't think that Google doesn't) having an image link like this may make things work and give the reviewer the impression that you are trying to cheat.

Many webmasters this technique because they believe that who they link as affiliates is THEIR OWN business and not Google's. However, remember again that Google seems to be intent on cracking down on paid links. They will surely use manual checks as part of this process and a redirect hidden behind a nofollow will not get through a human check.

I believe that if Google wants to continue waging a war on paid links, it IS going to use every method at its disposal. I suggest you use the techniques described above ONLY after you have decided clearly in your mind that you WANT to continue selling links. To each his own. All the best!

Tags: Text links, Paid links

Basically what this new change means is that ONLY the URL and the Title of the ad in your Adsense blocks will be live. Clicking any other place (ie white space) will NOT take your visitor to the advertiser's website. I've found that roll out is not complete yet. Some sites will have the old format where white space is still clickable. I expect the roll out to be completed very soon with the Christmas shopping season and holidays nearly upon us.

Most of us are familiar with when accidental clicks happen :

• If you still use one of those old-fashioned mouse with the roller ball, you know accidental clicks happen when you move the mouse and the pointer doesn't follow.
• You're sleepy (or bored) at work and you're surfing a site you're NOT supposed to. The boss walks in and you click like mad to try and close the window.
• You're working happily on your computer and your kid suddenly screams coz she slipped and landed in the toilet hole (wait till it happens to you - then you'll understand).
• You click on an ad, THEN see a more relevant one, but you can't do anything about it.
• You rush to finish that spanky new look for your web page and your wife walks past you in her very nice nightie asking when you're coming in to bed (ahem).

So why is Google bothered with such a silly little thing you wonder?

Accidental clicks are STILL clicks and every click registers in their humongous database. Advertisers PAY Google AND publishers for every click, so if a click was accidental, it means that advertisers lose money. Even if each click cost 5 cents, mutiply that by a hundred accidental clicks a day and you get $1850 paid for clicks that were never meant to be.

The new clickable areas are also good for publishers in the long run because :

• There is a lesser chance of you receiving that "nice little email" from Google telling you that they've detected invalid clicks and you're being tossed out of the program. Yes, you will very likely see your CTR and eCPM go down for a while IF you have been blending your ads like mad to try and "fool" your visitors or if your site somehow attracts drunken, sleepy visitors who can't aim their mouse properly.
• Less accidental clicks may attract more advertisers to the content network which translates to a wider range of ads and more potential for revenue.

In the Webmasterworld thread I mentioned above, AdsenseAdvisor (a Google staff who participates in the forum and acts as a representative for Adsense) has this to say :

So here are a couple of things you can do if you find your Adsense revenue affected by this change :

• Use BLUE for your links. There are the default color for links and your visitors are less likely to make accidental clicks on obvious links.
• Opt for image ads where the whole ad space is clickable or try a combination of text and image ads.
• Make your ads obvious - don't try to use blending as a way to "confuse" or "fool" your visitors into clicking ads.

Personally, I have not noticed any change in my Adsense revenue, and CTR continues to be the same. I don't think I WILL see any change because I opted long ago to make it easy for my visitors to distinguish ADs from content on ALL my sites.

Tags: Google Adsense, Adsense, Adsense clickable_areas

• I'm trying to keep my Adsense earnings at an optimum by reducing impressions.
• I'm trying to reduce my dependence on the big brother Google.

Your earnings per click (EPC) is derived from a complex calculation and no one is privy to that formula except Google themselves. However, it is generally accepted that to optimize your earnings, you want the have the following :

• Optimum CTR (Click-through Rate - Not too high and not too low)
• High number of impressions corresponding to targetted traffic
• High Earnings Per Click (EPC)

Now, just to explain things a bit, there are many other factors (just like any other business) which may also influence your Adsense EPC at any one time, causing the fluctuations that you see in your stats :

• Number of advertisers in your niche at any one time.
• Advertisers' budget.
• Seasonal trends - holidays, pre-Christmas, etc
• The general economy
• Many other reasons...

Many newbies to Adsense get all excited and display the maximum allowed Adsense blocks (three blocks are the maximum) on every page, only to see a sharp decline in eCPM, EPC, CTR and earnings. The reasoning is simple. It's called the dilution effect.

Adsense works because relevant ads are displayed based on your content. When people looking for information see relevant ads within your content, they are more likely to click on those ads. When more ads are clicked within a given number of impressions, your eCPM increases. eCPM is the predicted earnings for a thousand impressions.

If you add 3 large Adsense rectangles to every page, chances are Adsense will have a hard time finding 12 advertisers that match your page content EVERY time someone views that page. What happens then is you will get off target ads (ie. ad relevance is diluted). When you get off-target ads, your visitors are either going to ignore those ads altogether or worse, get irritated. Either way, they won't click on your ads AND you will probably lose any chance of that visitor returning.

In an experiment 18 months ago, I removed every Adsense block leaving only had ONE ad block per page. I tracked the performance of those ad blocks by creating channels for every category. Even after a week, I noticed a marked improvement in my eCPM and also my EPC. Of course earnings still fluctuated on a daily basis, but they were trending upwards. I waited another 3 weeks (to collect sufficient data) and then reviewed the performance of each channel. What I found was :

• article pages were performing very poorly despite the high number of impressions they were generating. I deduced this to mean that folks who visited these pages were interested in the content and not inclined to look elsewhere (or click on ads) for more information.
• pages with technical (how-to) information were also performing poorly. This again I deduced to mean that visitors were finding what they needed on those pages and did not need to click on ads.
• free services pages (eCards, downloads etc) were the worst performing.

We don't know for sure how Google arrives at the Earnings Per Click figure, but I'm sure that it varies from one publisher to another, based on a myriad of factors including those listed at the beginning of this post. Put together, my non-performing pages were generating thousands of impressions that were just not converting into clicks, so I removed Adsense altogether from those pages. Reducing impressions obviously meant that CTR increased but more importantly, EPC also increased.

I'm sure you understand now why there are no Adsense Ads on HomeWithAndrew.com. I've always read that blogs are NOT the best performing platforms for Adsense, especially when your blog doesn't focus very tightly on a specific niche. Another reason why many blogs report low CTRs and EPC is that visitors to a blog are more inclined to be repeat visitors who are more interested in the content or to keep in touch with the blogger.

HomeWithAndrew.com is still relatively unknown and most of my visitors are friends and fellow bloggers who visit mostly to keep in touch. This means that it is generating Adsense Ad impressions that don't convert to clicks. WHEN this blog starts to receive higher traffic, I will consider adding Adsense again, although it will be done on a controlled basis. I will add ad blocks one category at a time and monitor their performance.

I hope I've help you to understand how reducing Adsense impressions can actually increase your earnings in the long run! Remember that every blog or website is unique and the only way you can truly know if reducing impressions will optimize your Adsense earnings is to experiment.

Tags: Google Adsense, Adsense ad impressions, Adsense page impressions, Optimize Adsense earnings

Remember in my last post on the latest PR Update, Matt Cutts in one of his blog comments stated that PR updates are considered non-events at Google because PR fluctuates almost on a daily basis. The Toolbar PR is also only a snapshot of the actual PR that is in their system. Again, PR value is only ONE of many hundred parameters that factor into the final algorithm that determines how you rank in the SERPS.

The problem with Paid Links was that people chose to pay for links in the hopes of BUYING higher PR value. What Google is doing is telling these folks that if they want to gain higher PR, they need to do it based on the strength of their content, not on the mighty buck and buying links on high PR sites. There are also many site owners who have "gamed" the system to achieve higher PR with the intention of selling links and advertisers will also achieve a higher PR too. I think Google has no choice but to lump everyone together and penalize them.

So back to the question : To Sell Links Or Not To Sell Links?

It's really a catch 22 situation don't you think? Selling text links is a viable way for bloggers to monetize their small sites. I remember when Text Link Ads first appeared on the scene and they were hailed as a breakthrough to the problem of banner ad blindness. Now Google seems intent on gunning after bloggers who buy and sell TLA.

People are buying and sellling links to try and increase their PR score as much as it is to monetize and promote their websites. When we selll a text link, we have the choice of approving or declining it, but we can't know for sure WHAT the advertiser's intention actually is. It was Google who first introduced that stupid Toolbar PR and created a mad rush for green pixels. They've gotten hundreds of thousands of webbies believing that Internet Nirvana is just a matter of getting a high PR and money will come rolling in. Now to clean up their own poo-poo with their latest PR update, they're penalizing thousands of bloggers who were just following the trend that Google started in the first place - build a website then get links (preferably from high PR sites).

It'll be interestind to see how TLA deals with this predicament. I've already noticed a decline in text link sales on my sites. It would seem I have 2 choices : Stop selling text links. Be a good boy and do what Google wants... or continue to sell text links as long as it's a viable means of monetization.

I'm not sure how it will turn out but I do know one thing. Google is frustrating website owners and bloggers when it keeps changing the rules. Their algorithms have gotten out of control and they know it. It's like webbies coming to play ball with Google everyday, and everyday Google keeps changing the shape of the ball! Pretty soon, nobody will want to play with Google!

Tags: Google PR update, Text links, Text link ads, TLA

BlogRush Phase 2 rolled out about 6 days ago. I delayed posting about it as I wanted to make time to have a good look at it first.

The first thing you will notice is that they've spent a fair bit of time on improving the graphics in the dashboard. I like the look of the charts, but the buzz meter looks tacky (to me at least) and unnecessary. I feel a simpler more streamlined version with a more professional look would lend more credibility to the system. John Reese created a video that gives an indepth explanation of the features of Phase 2, and while he says that it is important for members to view the video first, my take is you can skip it. The Dashboard speaks for itself.

The screenshot on the left is from the video, showing the stats of Internet Marketing Sweetie, the example blog used by John in the video. The numbers you see in the column with the red line are the number of times each post was syndicated across the network. In other words, this number shows how many times a post appeared in BlogRush widgets all over the network. The column of numbers next to it are the clickthrough (number of times someone clicked on the link to that post).

Members are reporting low clickthrough rates - from as low as 0.3%. Some of my posts are also showing really low CTRs. If this were an advertising campaign and I was getting those figures, I would run out of budget pretty soon and go broke. But to be fair, there are a couple of reasons why we're seeing low CTR :

1. Post titles may not be interesting or "inviting" enough. John has addressed this many times over the last couple of months and while I do feel post titles merit a lot of our attention, there are more factors that play into the low CTR.
2. The widget may seem like an ad or banner to visitors and they pusposely look AWAY from it (banner/ad blindness). I get the feeling that the widget can be improved to seem less "outstanding". Perhaps members can be allowed to fully customize the look and feel of the widget to blend in with their blogs. Although John has added a narrower widget (which I was looking forward to) it's just that too narrow for my blog. So I have opted to keep the original version.
3. Blog posts may be wrongly categorized. There is a new feature in the "My Blogs" section that allows you to specify which category you feel your blog belongs to, so I suggest that you make use of it. I have chosen "Work-at-home" as the category for this blog. However, most bloggers have a myriad of categories and post on wide ranging topics. The ability to specify categories for individual blog posts must be available or we will continue to see low CTRs.
4. Widgets are not in the optimum position. I believe the primary reason for the low CTRs and ultimately if BlogRush meets with an untimely death, will be that bloggers are taking it as a FREE ride. John talked about this in his video and I believe that it is a critical factor. I've noticed many popular bloggers who place the BlogRush widget right at the bottom of their blog. Like it or not, they're expecting a free ride. They're generating tons of credits from the widget appearing on their blog, but purposely placed where people will not click on the links - and leave their blog. In return, they expect that OTHER bloggers will place the widget right smack in the middle of their blogs and click on THEIR syndicated posts.

John says that they will be monitoring the performance of individual widgets. If a blog is deemed top be performing below par (clickthrough that is not within the acceptable range), then they will notify the blogger of the situation and if performance continues to decline, then those blogs will be "removed" from the network. However, I think that this is not going to go down well with bloggers. In fact, I wouldn't be too surprised if bloggers start to think that BlogRush is just not worth their blog real-estate.

The next two months will be crunch time for BlogRush . John has to break the vicious cycle. If bloggers don't see the rush of traffic that BlogRush was originally intended to bring in, then they're just going to continue to push the widget right to the bottom of their blogs. And as long as the widget remains at the bottom, folks are not going to find our posts.

So what am I going to do? Frankly, I like the BlogRush concept and I respect John, but after weeks with the widget on my blog, I find it sticks out a bit too much and I find myself even avoiding looking at it on other people's blogs. So I'm going to give it another 2-4 months before I decide whether to pull the plug and let BlogRush R.I.P.

Tags: BlogRush, BlogRush John Reese, John Reese

I don't worry about Google's Toolbar PR rank anymore. The Toolbar PR is merely a visible parameter that is used in Google's very complex algorithm. Like everything in life - PR fluctuates every day in Google's mega-humongous network of servers. In fact, I remember clearly when the forums were filled with threads because of a statement from Google that the PR value was for entertainment purposes only! We'll never really know for sure if those nice bright green pixels are indeed there just to make us happy. However, most newbies (including myself once upon a time) think that the green bar is the end-all of their websites development, marketing and promotions, believing that once you get a certain Page Rank, you'll reach a Nirvana-like state and will automatically receive tons of traffic and your pockets will be bursting with money from advertisers.

But here's what Matt Cutts, one of the head Google Search Engineers has to say about PR :

I think because the green bar is the only value (of many hundreds) in Google's search algorithm that IS visible - and since it's been given the term "Page RANK" - many webmasters and website owners have become fixated on it. No one really knows how much weight the PR value carries in determining your site ranking for any given search phrase. But based on what we've seen, here's what we do know :

• Google updates PageRank continuously - not once every 3 months. Toolbar PageRank is only a snapshot which can be at any time between updates. Sort of like if you took a photo of your family - it's just a snapshot at THAT point in time.
• Some PR Updates have been buggy enough to seriously misrepresent a page's real PR value, let alone the real value of a website. There have been numerous updates where large prominent sites like Amazon have gone to PR0.

The whole focus on Page Rank has sent thousands of webmasters on a wild goose chase, believing that they can game the system. It's gotten so bad that people are paying good money to buy links on high PR sites, purely to raise their own PR. And if they can't get links from high PR sites, why not get thousands of links from link farms. After all, why waste years trying to build good content when there's a short cut?

And so, in August, there was a thread spanning a long 19 pages on Webmasterworld about whether Goolge should do away with the Toolbar PR. This was sparked by Adam Lasnik.

I've experienced bad judgement calls for homewithandrew.com because of its PR value too. Would you believe that homewithandrew.com once started out with a Toolbar PR0 which suddenly jumped to 5 three months later? The PR5 stuck for about 3 months before it went down to 4. After a lapse of about one inactive year, it went down to where it is now - PR2. Unfortunately, it was then that I decided to revive my blog. I applied to a number of revenue generating sites and was promptly rejected based on my PR2. Crap... if I had know this was going to happen, I would have applied when I was at PR5!

Some of my other sites have not really seen any changes in PR value. Even if they did go down a notch or two, I wouldn't feel like it was the end of the world. Throughout all these PR updates and fluctuations on my sites' PR value, traffic has more or less stayed the same and I've been ranking on page one for many competitive keywords together with the big boys. So as far as I'm concerned, those little green pixels are nice to look at, but don't really mean much.

So to close, here's a good read for more information on page rank : http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-info-on-pagerank/

And remember... it could very well be that the Toolbar PR is really just to keep us entertained!

Tags: Google PageRank, Google toolbar, Toolbar PR, Page Rank, PageRank, PR

You are receiving this update because your blog has passed our strict Quality Guidelines and criteria -- we believe you have a high-quality blog and we are happy you're a member of our network!

Why am I so glad that I passed? My gut feeling tells me that BlogRush is going to play a big role in promoting member blogs in the years to come and it's a good feeling to know that I'm in the loop.

I cannot verify that 10,000 blogs were removed from the network after the review process, but I do know that John Reese isn't someone with a reputation for fibbing. It's tough enough trying to get your blog noticed without having to clamour for traffic with thousands of spam, scraper and black-hat blogs. It's good to know that I'm part of a quality network of blogs.

The first thing I'm gonna do is to give the thin widget a swing. I hope they allow us to control the look and feel of the widget even more. The 3D border doesn't sit well with my creatively fussy genes.

Congrats to all fellow BlogRushers... or is it BlogRush-ites?

Tags: BlogRush, BlogRush review, BlogRush review results, BlogRush Phase 2

Following hot on the heels of Paypal allowing Malaysians to withdraw funds to our credit cards, then Adsense offering payment via Western Union, if this bit of news if confirmed, then it will be heavenly for us! Imagine not having to wait for checks to arrive and then a longer wait for them to be cleared. Worse still if you have the unfortunate experience of having your Kontera check sent around the world!

I believe that this email is authentic because the publisher information contained within it can only be known by Kontera, but like I said before, Kontera seems to be very primitive in many ways. I will post a confirmation when I receive an official reply from Kontera. Now... if they would only work on giving publishers a decent control panel that REALLY lets us control things instead of having to email them for the simplest of matters.

So let's say bye-bye to long waits for paper checks and hello to instant (well... almost) money! I looooove making money online!

Tags: Kontera, Paypal, Kontera offering payment via Paypal, Kontera ContentLinks

• Number of customers who join
• Number of customers who stopped
• Total number of customers
• Total expenses
• Total profit

I also keep track of my online income by charting the various figures available to me for example for Adsense :

• Monthly Impressions
• Total earnings
• CTR
• eCPM
• Earnings per click

I don't use expensive software - just Microsoft Excel. I've got to admit it - I love seeing making colorful charts and looking at them (must be the creative genes in me) - but even keeping simple statistics can reveal a lot about your business.

For example, the stats for my home based catering business reveal an increase in customers stopping every September followed by a another dip in November and December every year. The first two years, it was quite unsettling to see this happen. Then as we continued to track the numbers we saw the same pattern every year. The many public holidays and long school break at the end of the year is probably the time families go for their vacations and don't need our catering service. We prepare ourselves for this annual 15 to 20 percent dip by setting aside additional savings each month. That way, we can still enjoy our annual family year-end holiday and not have to worry about the slide in revenue, because we know that it's a seasonal thing.

Then as the new year begins, we see a rise in business which usually peaks in July. Why? Well, we asked a couple of customers who used our service only for these 2 months and confirmed our suspicions - ladies just don't like going to the market or slaving in a stuffy, humid kitchen during these hot months, so they cater food from us. So we learnt that hot weather causes a nice upward trend in our earnings and customer count chart!

It also makes good sense to keep track of your statistics so you can see how your business is growing (or not). Whether it's our catering or online income, it's easy to get discouraged (and panicky) when you look at the daily/weekly fluctuations in earnings. But if you keep your stats long enough, you will have enough data to show you whether you are trending upwards(growing), downwards (shrinking or losing ground) or flatlining (no change). We know that our customer base has grown substantially from when we first started, but it's really an encouragement every time we see that growth represented in a chart. And like the example I gave you, your stats will show you seasonal trends so that you can prepare yourself and your business.

Running a business from home can be more stressful than your day job. Income and expenses will fluctuate everyday. Some days you win and some days you lose but if you lose sight of the big picture, it can drive you nuts, so I highly recommend that you keep statistics to preserve your sanity.

Tags: business statistics, small business statistics, home based business, making money online, making money

So as expected again, many bloggers thought it was cool to throw brickbats at John, saying that the widget was not getting them traffic. Well, John clearly stated that one of the best ways to get traffic was to create interesting titles. After all, millions of posts will be competing for that all important click, so who wants to click on a post title "Find a girlfriend for XYZ". Lots of blogger imagine that the BlogRush to be a miracle, hands-free, sit-back-and-chill widget that would get millions of visitors to their blogs.

Anyway, as a result of this avalanche of low quality sites joining the BlogRush network and clogging the widget with post titles for the mentally challenged, John put on his battle gear and went into action. He recruited a small army of reviewers to weed out the blogs that didn't meet the minimum standards.

Okay, so while that's in the process of being completed (he says it will take about a week's time), John is gearing to push out Phase 2 of BlogRush. You can read about Phase 2 on his blog here, but I thought I'd like to give my 2 cents for some of what he's written :

Nice. I like. Orange is a good color for old men who need reading glasses like me.

Obviously he's listening to his network members.

A boon for new blogs who are trying to compete with the big boys for prime space. I think this is just goes to show you that John is in tune with how difficult it is for new bloggers to compete in the open battle field for traffic.

Can you ask for more? Remember that BlogRush is FREE.

With thousands of junk blogs out of the way, your blog's titles will have a much better chance of getting noticed. Then again, since we don't know what the criteria is for "junk blogs", I might just find out that the widget doesn't load on HomeWithAndrew anymore!

Let's hope that the standards are maintained from day one.

This is targetting the scammers who have joined BlogRush expecting a free ride. I want my post titles to be seen prominently on someone else's blog, so it's only fair to give others the same treatment. Burying the widget where the sun don't shine in some obscure place in my blog is just not fair to others. I believe in adding the "Karma" in the BlogRush equation.

With all the work being put into BlogRush, I'm excited at the possibilities it presents. If you havent joined the BlogRush network yet, you can sign up here.

Tags: BlogRush, BlogRush Phase 2, Viral marketing for blogs, John Reese blogrush, John Reese

Anyway, here's we separate the boys from the men (so to speak). Any lesser internet marketer would have just side-stepped the feedback but not John. He's been responding 100 percent to the "critiques". And in giving his word to clean up the BlogRush membership of scraper and spam sites, he's now paying YOU to join him as a Reviewer to review blogs. I just receive an email from him which I have copied here in its entirety for you to read :

So, if you're in the mood to make some extra cash, do it now!
Me? I'll give it a pass. My plate is full, but I wish you all the best...

Tags: BlogRush, viral marketing, Blog marketing BlogRush

Okay, so Adsense has finally come to its senses and made available a new payment option to Malaysians via Western Union :

I haven't changed my payment option to Western Union yet though. I don't like to the first for these sort of things (in case there are bugs in the system). Another reason is that all online earnings are extra and saved or invested so I don't rely on it. However, I'm sure I will opt for payment via Western Union in the near future. Paper check travelling half way around the world and the long wait is just too risky.

Tags: Adsense, Google Adsense, Adsense payment via Western Union

This opens up soooo many earnings avenues for Malaysians. Previously, I would just pass up on revenue streams simply because they only offered payment via Paypal. The problem was trying to open a US bank account. Recent changes to US banking procedures have made it nearly impossible for non-US citizens to open a US bank account.

Some of the solutions I found were :

• an eBook by a Malaysian who gave a detailed workaround to the problem, but that involved making a trip to Singapore. I was about to do it at the end of this year. Looks like I don't anymore.
• another guy was selling his solution for USD100 which contained all the forms and documents needed to open a US bank account. He gave a money-back guarantee if the application was rejected. That would have been my second option.
• to open a premier bank account with HSBC. The bank manager said that the only way they could help was if I were to maintain RM250 K in that account for a period of six months and they would assist in opening a US bank account.
• to look for a Paypal exchanger. I'd have to sell him my Paypal funds for a low exchange rate (some as low as USD1 : RM3). Not my favorite option, but something I would have considered if all options panned out.

In any case, I think our good fortune is also a crucial blow to the guys who were selling their workaround solutions for this Paypal problem to Malaysians. I wish them all the best in finding an alternative product to sell.

Anyway, if you're a Malaysian and you log into your Paypal account now, you will see the following option added to your withdrawal page :

Adding credit cards to your profile is a simple process. You will need to enter you credit card details :

After you've added your card(s) to your profile, they will be shown as such. You can add other cards if you wish :

Okay... I'm all set. With this new withdrawal option, I can change many of my revenue streams to payment via Paypal. Saves the RM70 bank charges I currently pay with checks... plus it's a lot faster and safer. No need to worry about checks getting lost or ending up in Senegal!

Plus... I'm now open to revenue streams that only pay International publlishers via Paypal! I can smell money coming...

Tags: Paypal, Paypal withdrawal, Paypal withdrawal to Malaysia, Malaysia paypal