Nash's World, Life and times of a web publisher

Changes in Skilled Migrant Program

2008-03-02T01:06:00.000-08:00

The Uk has anounced a revision of its points based entry called the HSMP.
The system will be replaced by a new one called the Tier 1 (General) - highly skilled worker

This is obviusly going to make entry into the UK much tougher as it includes tougher conditions such as a minimum of 2800 pounds in maintanance(self sustenance) money and a higher application fees of 750 pounds.

Read more about this on the Home Office website and on this blog

Free hosting dreams

2007-03-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

Is there such a thing as completely free hosting.Many claim to offer this service but it comes with conditions such as banners and ads.
I stumbled upon a company that offers the closest thng to 100 % free hosting. Its called i6 networks. I almost closed the page before doing a double take and decided to give it a try.

The package they are allegedly 'giving away' is very comprehensive and feature rich. I wont go into the details or you might think I am canvassing for them.

Where is the catch(es) ? DRUMROLL !...............
The service is free for the first year only.
Your domain has to be at least 2 months old to be hosted for free.

So far i havent mentioned a single expletive on this blog but right now I am tempted to say £Y&*%

Adsense earnings without clicks

2007-03-18T03:35:00.000-07:00

Today I checked my adsense reports and realized I had earned 0.01(next to nothing but that’s not the point) but I had zero clicks.
After searching all over the Internet for an explanation I only came back to google adsense help and got the answer I was seeking.

I was under the impression that you did not get paid for ad impressions (excuse the silly pun). Contrary to my belief there are certain ads that do pay for impression. CPM ads as they are known, pay per thousand impression. Silly me.

So there i can still earn with zero clicks

Google explains it here.
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=18192&ctx=en:search&query=earnings+without+clicks&topic=&type=f

Wordpress Wins by TKO

2007-03-17T23:03:00.000-07:00

Wordpress Wins by TKO
The fight raged one could really tell who was going to win. Wordpress seemed to be connecting more head blows but Blogger did not go down. In the end a unanimous decision was made to give the victory to WordPress.

What I like most about WordPress
-Speed, Speed , Speed I am using a dialup connection and publishing to Blogger is way too slow.

-Control over content. Just imagine one day google decides to shut you down. The Horror. With WordPress you have total control over your content. As long as you stay within the agreed bounds of your hosting provider you are totally safe.

-Blogger does not support categories and customisation is limited or difficult. I had my Wordpress blog up and running and managed to change to a three column template very easily

What I like most about Blogger
-Blogger is very easy to use.I am still to figure out several things on the wordpress platform such as inserting adsense, tags, images e.t.c

-The first issue I had with WordPress was security. At the time of writing there was news of the wordpress platform having been hacked.
WordPress 2.1.1 dangerous, Upgrade to 2.1.2

Verdict
Guys you can find my blog at my new home –xHydra.com Powered by WordPress
I will however find time to post to my Blogger blog from time to time.

2007-03-11T12:23:00.000-07:00

Wordpress vs Blogger (ROUND 2)

Ok why am I challenging all users of Blogger.com by continually posting about Wordpress. First of all Blogger TOS don't disallow me from mentioning competitors. Secondly its a free capitalist web and anyone is free to try any product they wish.It actually may turn out that Blogger is better than Wordpress.

To be able to use Wordpress the blogger must have a basic understanding of web hosting and should be able to do things like creating a Mysql database and editing PHP code to place adsense code, redit, fark, and de.licio.us widgets on the blog

As mentioned before in the previous post minimum requirements are :

* PHP version 4.2

* MySQL version 4.0

Installing Wordpress on a blog hosted at Godaddy (Linux Deluxe Account)

The host for my new Wordpress blog is Godaddy.com. Godaddy is considered to be the grumpy granddad of all web hosts and is sometimes difficult to work with.

I was surprised that the job turned out to be a true ‘5 Minute Install’, simple from start to end.

Installing Wordpress on a Godaddy account is truly a trivial task.

Step 1.

Download Wordpress from http://wordpress.org/download/. (There is unofficial news however floating Wordpress 2.1.2 has been breached and is not secure)

Unzip the folder to your local drive

Step 2

Click on Create New Database. Select your prefered version and enter the other requested details.

The next screen shows you that the database has been created. Take note of the “Host name ”. It is required in the next step.

Step 3

Open the folder where you extracted wordpress and rename the file wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php. Open this file using either Dreamweaver or Notepad

Edit the following lines by entering the details that you used to create the database on the Godaddy control Panel

define('DB_NAME', ''); // The name of the database
define('DB_USER', ''); // Your MySQL username
define('DB_PASSWORD', ''); // ...and password
define('DB_HOST', ''); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value

Your wp-config.php should now appear like this.

Step 4

Using your favourite ftp client upload the whole Wordpress folder onto your web server.

Step 5

Type http://www.yourDOMAIN.com/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php to begin installing Wordpress.

WordPress will then create the required database tables in the database and issue you with a randomly generated admin password.

You can now log on at http://www.yourDOMAIN.com/wordpress/wp-admin/wp-login.php

SIMPLE AS THAT!!

Common errors

"Error establishing a database connection....."

99 % of the time this error occurs when you have edited wp-config.php wrongly. Check your DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD and DB_HOST variables.

Those who say Godaddy sucks can eat their hats. HAPPY BLOGGING.

Adding adsense to wordpress blog.

2007-03-10T11:11:00.000-08:00

Today i had a short flirt with wordpress.I created a new blog with them. Obviously my immediate action was to try and add google adsense to my blog.

I searched and searched the Wordpress dashboard but there seemed to be no place to edit or configure ads. It turns out you cannot place ads if you are being hosted on a free wordpress subdomain e.g bugsniper.wordpress.com.

However I did a little research on how Wordpress users configure adsense on their blog and came across this link. It shows how may add PPC ads to their wordpress blogs.

http://codex.wordpress.org/User:Tomhanna/Adding_Ads_to_Wordpress

If you want to be able to display adsense on a Wordpress Blog Follow these steps

- Get a Hosting account that provides hosting with at least:

* PHP version 4.2 or greater
* MySQL version 4.0 or greater

- Download Wordpress from http://wordpress.org/download/

- Install this on your account.

- Go to presentation > Themes editor and select where you want the ads displayed

Blogging for cash

2007-01-24T09:58:00.000-08:00

Blogging for cash
Many bloggers out there are making money through blogging.
Blogging for cash is simply writing an article , publishing it and hoping that people click on attached ads.
What brings the people to the article are search engines used by netizens to sift for information on the web.

Search engines use keywords typed in by the users to direct them to relevant websites.
Search engine do this by regularly trolling the internet and categorizing web pages under keywords.These keywords are the lifeblood of any blog article.

Blogging for money and fishing are so much alike. Each article baits the search crawlers with tantalizing keywords and juicy phrases. With each article written there is a hope that the correct keywords are included. The correct keywords will land you $1, $5 + clicks and the wrong ones will well get you either $0 or a couple of cents.

Blogging for cash .How to?
Pick a topic and type up an interesting article of about 400 words. The article should include phrases that would be used by someone looking for information on that topic.
For example if someone typed "blogging for cash" into google they MIGHT be directed to this article because the phrase is included several times.

How much can be made?
Truthfully I do not know ? Some claim a couple of $100 a day. The real figures will never be revealed because most Pay per Click programs do not allow disclosure of earnings.
So far i have written slightly less than 100 articles. One day i will write the magical blog article that will appear tops of every google search and make me millions. Maybe this article is it.

Does freerelevantlinks.com work ?

2007-01-24T09:49:00.001-08:00

freerelevantLinks.com is a link exchange service.
It basically operates like a pyramid scheme for links. You add your site to their list and link to four sites(with one link going to them).
You then wait for your site bubble to the top of the list and get linked by other new sites.
Like all pyramid schemes it depends on new members signing up and placing links on their sites. This is not a problem in principle because millions of webpages are being created every year and if plenty sign up to this service the pyramid will not collapse.

Many net newbies wonder whether freerelevantlinks.com works. Here is my analysis from me an experienced webmaster.

The site freerelevantlinks operates on the principle that the more links you have pointing to your website the higher you are ranked by search engines. This is obviously true. The question that remains unanswered answered is how many links you get in return.

Another advantage of freerelevantlinks is that they allow you to select the anchor text for the link to your website. Choosing relevant anchor text is crucial in SEO.
This means you can choose keywords that you are optimising for on your site. For a forex tutorial website would pick the anchor text "learn forex trading".

Another attractive feature is that freerelevantlinks allows you to choose what category of sites you want to exchange links with. Exchanging links with related sites is good for SEO.

The service promises that you will get backlinks within 30 days.
My verdict on this service is that it works in principle.
I have signed up and i am waiting to bubble to the top of their link pyramid.Only then can I prove that it works in practice.

One thing is for certain that this link exchange works for their website. A link popularity search reveals that they have a massive 540,000 links on all major seacrh engine. My site www.fxacademy.net has 52.

Are Link requests Spam,

2007-01-17T09:24:00.000-08:00

Link exchange requests are spam.

Making link requests appear less spammy is a challenge that any webmaster has to face.
Today i thought of this disclaimer to use in sending out link requests using contact us e-mail adresses picked on websites. It appears to make sense legally, logical or otherwise. Here it is below:

We comply 100 % with spam laws and do not condone any form of spam.
This email was delivered via an adress that was made available on your website to provide a means of contacting the website owner/operator.

Several lawyers will obviously crap themselves laughing after reading my silly little disclaimer above.
The truth is any unsoliscited mail is unwanted mail hence is considered spam. Never the less I will include the disclaimer with all my unsoliscited link requests.

Many web folk wonder why link exchange request are considered spam. Let me explain:
The rule is that any party has to give EXPLICIT permision through written or electronic means BEFORE you can send anything to them anything.
So unless the webmaster said, "contact me using this e-mail for links exchanges" , then your unwanted request is spam.

Most naive webmasters I know won't realise this.

So the answer is obvious, LINK REQUESTS ARE SPAM, so watch who you send them to. Many website owners have recieved warning or harsh punishment for link requests gone bad.

The truth is no disclaimer will ever cover you when it comes any unsoliscited link requests.

How to make your link requests less spammy.
- Keep them brief and to the point.Do not use excessive marketting jargon.
- Send only to people direcly involved in running a site e.g administrator, support or webmaster.For example send a link request to admin@abc site.com and not sales@abcsite.com
- Do not repeatedly send a request over and over again.

Any people wishing to exchange links for forex related sites have explicit permission to send link requests to blackvine@gmail.com.

Week 13 Selecting the best site tracker

2007-01-10T12:14:00.000-08:00

Selecting the best site tracker(sitemeter.com vs tracksy.com)

Today i switched from tracksy to sitemeter.com for my website. sitemeter seems to be better than tracksy in several ways.
Here are some of the major points on tracksy vs sitemeter:

Advantages of sitemeter.com over tracksy.com
- Sitemeter indicates length of visit
- Sitemeter just seems to be more accurate
- Sitemeter show stats by entry page and exit page.

Advantages of Tracksy.com over sitemeter
+ Tracksy offers an invisible site tracker for free but with sitemeter you have to pay
+ Tracksy had the advantage of being faster to download on mobile device i.e less graphics, smaller page size and simpler layout
+ Tracksy offers statistics of returning vs old visitors

Conclusion
Both sites have a traffic prediction.Both sitemeter and tracksy.com have visitors by location but sitemeter goes the additional step by providing a world map graphic respresantation.
The difference between the two is very fine but i have decided to select the better site tracker which to me is sitemeter.com

Linkrefferal.com
Another option which became immediately available to me was linkrefferal.com I had to research whether to use this service but i decided against it. Most of the advice against linkrefferal came from .
Linkrefferal is fundamentally of traffic exchange and hence is against adsense TOS.
I decided against it. However some desperate publishers might want to risk it.

This blog says linkrefferal is fine but well thats their own opinion.If only adsense could provide a list of banned sites. Maybe publishers should get together and create a list of sites banned from adsense.

Week 12 The Link campaign

2007-01-04T07:42:00.000-08:00

Boy am i glad i did not quit my day job for this shit.I am so far from earning my dream of $100 a day. However i am glad indications show that i will at least cover my hosting charges.

Link building
For the past week i have been submitting my site to directories - link building. I thought there was a corelation between the number of links and traffic to your website but unfortunately this is not true. I have over 100 reciprocal links in various directories but i have not recieved a single referal from any one. I suppose link building is good only for page rank

Link exchange
I have discovered websites called link exchanges. I think these offer better results as compared to listing in randomly chosen directories.

The future...
I will not give up maybe one day i will come up with a concept that will earn me $100 a day or maybe $1000 the sky is the limit for the year 2007

Week 4: zero traffic = Zero Earnings

2006-11-05T07:46:00.000-08:00

Week 4 has been rather slow as the truth about online affiliate marketting has really begun to sink in. By starting with forex Niche i think i started in the deep end. Man this is a tough sector.

I have been submitting to free directories and this has not done anything for my traffic stats. I now have 7 links on google for searching FXacademy.net . A link populrity check revealed that i have one inbound link on MSN. I did not do anything to get this link. In fact i never even submitted my site to MSN.

Earnings.
I have not earned shit in the past week. Obviously zero traffic = Zero Earnings

Week 2 and 3 trafic tracking, SEO, domain reselling

2006-10-21T06:06:00.000-07:00

Week 2 and 3
These are the activities that i have been carriying out the past 2 weeks.

Traffic Tracking
This week i added tracksy to my website. Tracksy is a web traffic tracking sofware program.
My ISP is saix.net and this keeps on popping up in my reports because currently I am my only site visitor.
I registered with alexa. com as well so that i can track my site visitors. I got my first international visit from alexa.com. California VA.
This affiliate thing is interferring with my sleep and work as well. I check my adsense stats compulsively as if a traffic miracle is going to happen.

So far i have managed to rack up five pages of content on my website which is not bad considering that i am new to this fOREX program thing.. I am going to finish the website this weekend(At least the basics)

SEO
I have just downloaded google adbar with pagerank tracker. I opened a blog that i last worked on in november last year(www.cindr.blogspot.com). I was excited when page rank was show as 6/10. Maybe if i pointed fxacademy.net to it a bit of PR might rub onto it.The blog was badly designed so i decided to change the layout. As soon as i finished this. POOF my page rank dropped to zero from six. I non the less added fxacademy.net link to the blog just in case it rebounded.
The wuestion is how can a page rank drop from 6 to 0. Its fucken amazing

Domain reselling.
I put my other domain xhydra.com onto a seven day auction.Seven days elapsed without a single offer
I think its becoz $600 was a ridiculous minimum bid for a crap domain like xhydra.com.
I will try to offload it for $20 next week.
First Affiliate program
On Friday i signed up with forex-affiliate.com as my first program. I have to wait for them to approve my website. I hope they do not reject it. I also am planning on signing up with shareasale on their program offering training tools.I have sublitted my site to

Week 1 : In the Beginning

2006-10-09T22:39:00.000-07:00

Week 1. "In the Beginning"
The project began on 2nd of october so today it is 1 week old. I have registered two domains with Go daddy. I was attracted by their bargain basement prices but i hope that as soon as i make my first few bucks I will bail out.
I have heard too many horror stories about Go Daddy.Just search "go daddy sucks" on google to see what I mean.

I intend to set up two websites.
Xyhdra.com - An online resource for gamers -worldwide.
fxacademy.net - An online resource for online Forex Traders.

So far i have started work on FXacademy.net. I have already broken the first rule on SEO by buying a .net domain instead of a .com domain. But FXacademy.com is taken and is currently not configured for any website. The owner registered it for an online tutorial on Special Effects (FX) so he won't conflict with me i hope.

I have realised that Forex is not as easy as i thought it was.
But my first click generated $0.67 which is incentive. Just imagine .67 cents just for one measly click.

It is very difficult to come up with content in Forex trading. So far i have come up with three pages of thread bare content.

I plan on placing these on line this weekend.

My advice to all affiliate newbies is stay away from tough sectors when you start. I have just realised that succeeding as a forex affiliate is going to be tough.

The $100 a day Goal

2006-10-09T22:37:00.000-07:00

The $100 a day Goal
This blog is a weekly journal of my activities concerning achieving my activities in affiliate marketting. I have set my goals on achieving $100 a day income by year end next year. The goal seems simple enough. $100 bucks in this country is more than enough to live on. I would be earning my current salary every 5 days.