Archive for December, 2008

404 Error Page is a page that a visitor see when he clicked on a link that the server can’t find. This happens for quite a few reasons. Perhaps the destination page has been removed or renamed.

As I was analyzing my blog’s statistics recently, I found that there are thousands of 404 error hits! This is a waste of potential readers/subscribers/buyers.

404 error pages very important but most bloggers ignore them, myself included. We are losing all this random 404 incoming visitors. So I did a little research on the subject and found some interesting things that I can do to turn these into a good thing. We can turn these 404 error random visitors into our blog readers, subscribers and even buyers!

So what do we do? We create our own custom 404 Error Page!

On this page we suggest ‘other’ resources on our blog. It’s better that the ‘other’ resource is related to what the visitor was searching for in the first place.

Basically, our customer 404 page should have a simple statement saying that the URL was not found on your blog, a brief explanation on the most common mistakes that could’ve lead to the missing page, and finally the ‘other’ resources.

Oh, if you’re using Wordpress, then you must install the Redirection plugin. This plugin will redirect broken links into actual links

So what are the resources that we can include in our custom 404 pages you ask? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Related posts – use the Related Entries plugin with the 404 related pages extension
2. Adsense ads, Chitika ads etc – you might get extra a few cents hahaha!
3. Your products – you can offer a free ebook, free subscriptions etc, be creative!

If you chose suggestion 1, your custom 404 pages might look something like this:

We’re sorry but we cannot find what you’re looking for. The page you’re looking for is either doesn’t exist anymore or there was a temporary technical glitch. While you’re here, why not check out these:

• How To Make $1 Million Dollar In 1 Day
• 5 Tips To Make Your First $1 Million Dollar
• $1 Million Dollar Blogging Tricks

(the related posts are all made up… of course the plugin will show your actual post links!)

This might turn our random visitors into readers

p/s haven’t implement this on all of my blogs yet. Time to get busy this weekend. Yikes!

You do a lot of advertising. You get involved in social networks. You get all the traffic. But you still have a high bounce rate. They come and they go. Do you know how long they stay on your blog?

Getting the traffic to your blog is only half the battle. The other half is to get them stay longer on your blog. And more importantly to get them make positive response. This can be subscribing to your feed, contacting you by email, clicking on PPC ad, filling out a lead form, buying product you offered, leaving comments, cast a vote on your articles etc. These increases the time they spend on your blog.

So how do you make your visitors stay longer on your blog? Here are a few tips:

1. Fresh content. Fresh content. Fresh content.

A person will spend more time reading interesting and unique content. If you ‘re-post’ an article from another site or using a private label rights article, your visitors may have already read it from another blog.

2. Make your blog looks like a professional blog.

Your blog should have a good structure and should be easy to read. It also has to have a fairly good and easy navigation.

3. Make sure your blog loads fast.

People don’t have time to wait for slow loading blogs. Your blog may take longer to load if you have so many widgets. Choose only the necessary ones and remove the rest.

4. Make your articles more interesting.

This can be done by adding interesting multimedia like images and videos.

5. Encourage reader participation.

Write engaging articles and ask your readers a question that is pertinent to your post and ask them to leave their responses in the comment section.

By keeping your visitor longer on your blog, they are more likely to make positive responses. Try implementing these simple tips and see the difference.

I’ve registerd with Twitter a long time ago. But I haven’t maximize it’s full potential. I’ve read on a few blogs saying that it’s a powerful tool. So I did do some some readings and research. It’s kinda fun actually

I also found some cool apps designed for you Twitter people:

TwitterFox
This app is actually a Firefox extension. It notifies you your Twitter buddies’ status. It also lets you twit from your browser status bar. How cool is that?

TwitterCounter
This little app shows how popular you are by the numbers of people following you.

TweetBeep
TweetBeep enables you to keep track of conversations that mention your products and you. You can also keep track of who’s twiting your blog. It’s like having Google Alert

TwitPic
TwitPic is a photo sharing tool. TwitPic allows you to upload photos and comments as a twit.

Twitturly
It’s a service that tracks URLs people are talking. People ‘vote’ for a URL, similar to Digg. The more votes it gets the higher it ranks.

Twitter Search
This is Twitter’s built-in search tool. Use it to find Twitter users, keywords, tags etc.

TwittAd
TwittAd allows users to monetize their account. Users will have to accept adverts on their profile’s background.

These are a few of my findings. Have you used any of these? Or do you have any other Twitter apps that you used and find very useful? Do share.

Oh by the way, if you haven’t already, please follow me on Twitter

Phew!

I just googled ‘healthy lifestyle’ on Google.com and saw my Healthy Lifestyle Blogzine at the #2 spot! It was #4 a couple of months ago. I hope Google isn’t playing some kinda tricks on me.

Although Healthy Lifestyle Blogzine receives the most traffic, the page rank remains PR2. It got to a PR3 at one point, then reduces to a big ZERO, then raised to a PR2 again. I guess it’s because of the sponsored reviews I’ve been making? I’m not sure. But I don’t care that much about thr page rank, as long as I get steady traffic from the big G.

A quick Dec 2008 analyze from Awstats shows:

• 12K++ unique visitors
• 80% visitors are from The United States
• most viewed page is Heal Your Man With Tantric Male G Spot Massage uhhh…
• 87% visitors are using Windows OS
• 62% visitors are using the crappy IE yikes!
• 68% visits are from a direct address/bookmarks
• 28% visits are from the search engines
• highest search keyphrase: healthy lifestyle

Well I hope 2009 brings even better result.

Oh by the way, do tell what keyword or keyphrase gives you a top 10 spot on Google

I’ve joined Adgitize two weeks ago and all I can say is WOW. Although Adgitize’s main target is for advertisers, being a publisher does has it’s own benefit. I shall talk about benefits on being an Adgitize advertiser another day. But for now, I shall talk a little bit about the benefits of being an Adgitize publisher.

In 2 weeks with Adgitize, I’ve managed to:

• make it into the top 10 spot in Adgitize’s Leaderboard (my main blog is Healthy Lifestyle Blogzine)
• get 90 out of 100 Ad Views points (score for Dec 26, 2008)
• get 406 out of 500 maximum points per day (score for Dec 26, 2008)
• accumulate a percentage earnings of 1.90% (around $6)

All of these starts with the unique Adgitize points system. The more points you get, the more it will translate into real money. So the question now, how do one score high Adgitize points?

Adgitize Points Categories

There are 5 categories. We can score a maximum of 100 points for each category, making it a maximum points of 500 per day. The categories are:

1. Article points
2. Click points
3. Ad views points
4. Page views points
5. Advertiser points

1. Article Points

To score a 100 points for this category, all you have to do is to post an article on your blog. It’s that simple. The difficult part is to post an article everyday. Since this category gives you the full 100 marks, you want to get it everyday. If you did not post anything on your registered blog, you will get a big ZERO points.

It will help if you register a few blogs with Adgitize. This way, you can strategize and plan out your articles. Like for example, for me, starting Jan 2009, I made a schedule when and where to post new articles on my blogs, so that I have a new post everyday.

• new post every Mondays on Natural Health
• new post every Tuesdays on Essential Aromatherapy Oils
• new post every Wednesdays on Healthy Cooking Recipes
• new post every Thursdays on Healthy Lifestyle Blogzine
• new post every Fridays on Natural Health
• new post every Saturdays on Essential Aromatherapy Oils
• new post every Sundays on Healthy Cooking Recipes

This will not only ensure that I get 100 article points everyday, it will also make me more discipline and have my blogs updated with fresh contents.

2. Click Points

Click points is similar to Entrecard points, but not the same. Basically, we score 2 points when we click on an Adgitize ad. Currently there are 32 advertisers on Adgitize network, so the maximum points we can get is 64.

A few facts you should know:

• One advertiser may have several advertisements. We can only get points for only one ad from the advertiser per day.
• Only one ad click per blog per day is counted. If Healthy Lifestyle Blogzine show 2 ads; Ad1 and Ad2. Even though you click on both Ad1 and Ad2, you only score click points for Ad1

How do you know you have completed your click points for the day? Look for the ‘Spot Completed’ ad. If you see the ad spots are filled with the Spot Completed ads, this means you have clicked all possible advertiser’s ad for the day.

3. Ad Views Points

The more ads were viewed by visitors on your blogs the more Ad Views points you’ll get.

There are several ad group size options for us to choose from. Some people choose the ad group that will look good on their blog, some people only put an ad group with only one ad so that they will not clutter up the blog’s sidebar. But I chose ad group which gives me the most ad views, depending on the blog.

Adgitize allows TWO ad group per blog. The smallest ad group is a 1 x 1. The biggest is 3 x 3. The most ad views you can get, per page view/page load, is 2 x 3 x 3 = 18 ad views.

Consider this example:

Scenario 1

• You put 2 ad groups: 1 x 1 on the sidebar and 3 x 1 on top of your articles
• You get a 100 page views for the day
• Your ad view points = 100 x (2 x (1 + 3)) = 800 ad views

Scenario 2

• You put 2 ad groups: 1 x 8 on the sidebar and 3 x 3 at the end of your articles
• You get a 100 page views for the day
• Your ad view points = 100 x (2 x (8 + 9)) = 3400 ad views

See the difference? Although you receive the same page views for the day, you will receive higher ad view if you display bigger ad groups sizes. So choose wisely.

The formula that translates from our ad views to Ad View Points remain a mystery

4. Page Views Points

This category, for me, is the most difficult to score. My highest so far is 50. I have to work more on this category. There are a few things that we can do to increase our page views.

Make your blog pages Search Engine optimized.

Well I’m no SEO expert. There are lots of SEO tips on the internet. Look for them Do the basic things like maximizing on the keywords, style your titles and headers with bold, and use inlinks to your other articles throught your blog. Ken actually wrote an article on how to improve your blog SEO. Go and read it.

Get involve with social networking sites.

Stumbleupon, Facebook, Blogcatalog, there are so many of them. My personal favorite is StumbleExchange.

Leave comments on other blogs.

Leave only relevant and well thought comments. It will be even better if the blog is running the CommentLuv or Top Commentator. With CommentLuv people will get to see your recent blog post at the end of your comment. If your blog post title is catchy enough, people will visit your blog.

Do a contest.

This has proven to work. You can work with several others to make the prize more interesting, attracting more visitors and readers. The contest can be anything, from the most interesting comments to guessing your age The only limit is your imagination.

Guest blog.

This is especially good if you get the chance to guest blog on a more popular blog. Guest blogger are usually allowed to include their ‘author info’ at the very end of the article, with a link back to their blog.

Advertise more.

This one is quite simple. The more you advertise your blog, the more exposure and visitors you will get. Adgitize is a good example. Enough said.

New exciting and interesting contents.

When you update your blog regularly, you will get regular visitor and readers.

Tips: If possible, make use of the MORE tag. Users will read the excerpt on the front page, and they will have to click MORE to read the full article. That’s 2 page views instead of 1 page view with a full article on the front page

The formula that translates from our page views to Page View Points remain a mystery

5. Advertiser Points

Well, this is actually a bonus to the advertisers. You become an Adgitize advertiser and you will get 100 points. It’s that simple. But please take note, even though you have several different campaigns, you still score 100 points.

There you have it people. Now that you know how to score high Adgitize points, get to work! And if you currently not an Adgitize member, I encourage you to join Adgitize now!