Blogging experience

Do you think your blogging experience was a success?

In my opinion, I am still a newbie of the blog; this is the first time I created blog for myself that I haven’t done it before. I feel so amazing about the blog I have made. I am not the person who writes much on the internet, but since I have done this for my assignment, I like it now.

Do you think you will continue to blog?

Yes, I do. I will continue to develop my blog. Firstly, I will try to visit more blogs on the internet to learn the experience from other bloggers. Secondly, I will try to focus more on the blog configuration to make my blog a good looking. Finally, I will try to post more useful articles to attract more visitors coming to my blog.

What were the most difficult things to do with your blog?

The most difficult thing to do with my blog is making the layout. I am not a good designer, so I find it difficult to setup my menu on the blog, choosing the font style and color for my blog tec…

How easy was it to come up with new idea every day?

No, it was not easy at all. If I do not have the project guideline, I do not know what I should write on the blog, thinking a good article for the blog is not simple.

After this experience, do you have a new perspective on blogging?

Yes, I do. I would like to share my computer knowledge to everyone on the internet, therefore I am going to make subpage that will contain all the articles and knowledge bases about the computer to share to everyone.

Alexa

What is Alexa Rank?

Alexa Rank is a measure of the popularity of the website. The index ranks of Alexa website reviews from two combined factors that are the number of users who view web pages (Page Views) and the number of website visitors (Reach).
The number of Alexa statistics based on data collected from users who install Alexa Toolbar on their web browsers. On every 3 months, Alexa conducts data review and rating sites.

Alexa Toolbar is a utility to help users surf the webs; there are more than 10 million Internet users in the world using this tool.

– What is the benefit when increasing Alexa rank?

The high number ranking on the Alexa website means your site is very popular on the internet.In the online advertising market, Alexa Rank can be used to assess the value of advertising.

Number of visitors Per day  Sites	April	May	June	July	August
Facebook	22M	23M	25M	26M	27M
Twitter	6M	6.5M	6.8M	7M	8.2M
Google+	Null	Null	Null	300K	5.3M
Linkedln	2.7M	3.2M	3.3M	3.4M	3.7M

Why these websites grew?

Facebook:

Facebook is one of the most popular sites for sharing pictures and videos. Facebook took aim at college age youth and then quickly brought mainstream users into the mix. More importantly, it pushed family members, coworkers, and casual friends to connect. By sometime early next year, Facebook will hit 600 million members. Over three million companies use the site for marketing.

Twitter:

Twitter actually working as a social network for professionals and businesses – simply because it isn’t very complicated. So many brands that we know and interact with like Microsoft, Alaska Air, Southwest, Wachovia, Dell, PCC Markets and others are doing a great job at building loyal followings, creating real-time communication platforms with customers, and the ability to target marketing specials. These interactions and the follower base are what is generating revenue and cost savings — creating more traction than fan pages of yesteryear did for many brands in places like Facebook or MySpace. So, this is why Twitter is and will continue to be valuable…

Google+

Google+ is a new tool just coming a few months ago. The advantage of Google+ is Gmail integration and the link to other social networks such as Facebook, Twitter etc….

 

Linkedln             

Given that business men and investors alike continue to focus on Brazil, Russia, India and China (known as BRIC), LinkedIn is in the right track to expand its member base in these countries. E-Marketer reports that in March 2011, leading up to the eighth anniversary of its launch, LinkedIn released updated statistics about the site and its usage. The data showed that India is the largest source of members outside the US, with 9 million members, followed by Brazil and Canada, both at 3 million. Brazil is the fastest-growing source country of new users, with 428% year-over-year growth in membership in 2010.

Other Resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexa_Internet

http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/549/how-does-alexarank-work/

http://www.blog.web6.org/how-to-rank-higher-on-alexa/

http://www.compete.com

Google vs Bing

Google vs Bing

The search engine wars were hot back when Bing against Google. When the search engine of Microsoft Bing jumps to No. 2 in the market and get support from the strength of Yahoo, the search engine stage now is in the battle between Google and Bing.

To know which search engine is the best at the moment, we conducted a comparison of the search between Bing and Google.

The basic search

Here is the best way to comparison between Google and Bing: Google focused on the search results to you and these results are the most relevant to sites. The tool also allows you to narrow your search results by date and location. In addition, Google also indented the search results in the same web site so that it can help users to see the results more easily. This is a powerful tool in providing the best link, but it’s less about the possibility of making private information, such as the explanation of human or animal, directly from the search results.

The Search Results from Bing and Google are the same. But the result in Bing is a bit different. When looking for a company by name, Bing will show you the stock price and the customer service. When search for “interesting things in Chicago” and you’ll get a list of events related to this area. Moving around a link, you will receive an option to the right, an option displays some relevant information from the respective web page. Sometimes, Bing even link to the search results are concerned, such as “diabetes symptoms” when you search for “diabetes”.

Winner: Google

Images

Photos provided by Google will expand when you move the mouse over them, making this tool becomes more than convenient. Bing and Google have so many options when searching for similar images, such as “similar images”, “sizes” related to the search and the selected design. Even if Google includes some ads annoying, it still provides a better interface compared to Bing, expand the image when you move the cursor over the image while displaying the words associated with the word that you search and put the picture into the appropriate frame.

Winner: Google

Video

Same as searching photos, Bing and Google offer similar customization options in the search for video, such as length, quality, and sources, although Google has some extra options for subtitles and it is close those recently published. However, Bing has over Google in this area while providing a clear system of video, making navigation a lot easier than the Google arrangement. In Bing you can move your mouse on the video that you can view the content of this video. This is really convenient when you can see the contents of the video in a short time without having to click on them like you do when searching with Google.

Winner: Bing

Map

Google and Bing have jointly engaged in the battle map features last year, and Bing was leading while providing more features. An upgraded version of Bing Maps Silverlight includes applications for finding petrol stations, parking lots, which sell food…. The tool also offers the attractions along with the note in the directions. Corresponding features of Google to help find browsing faster than Bing and provide information on the road and more traffic. However, Bing has more powerful and generally has more information and this is the record of this tool.

Winner: Bing

Shopping

Microsoft’s search engine has lost its main advantage over Google because of the Bing Cash back service, where you can get the discount when you do the shopping on Bing. Both sites are showing the detail information about the products, comments, and a list of retailers, but if you notice carefully, you’ll see some interesting things on Bing. When you search for the Apple iPad or a new video game Halo: Bing does not list retailers, such as Amazon or Target (Google). And when the search term “furniture in the bar,” Google has taken the result with the corresponding items, while the results that Bing made just only about the furniture. However, the biggest advantage of Google feature shopping list (the link “My Shopping List” at the top of the shopping sites) where you can mark items for review or buy them later.

Winner: Google
To sum up, Google is still the best search engine at the moment and Microsoft needs to work hard to overcome Google.

Other Reources

http://technorati.com/business/article/google-vs-bing-crunching-the-figures1/

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/edwardbaig/2009-07-01-google-vs-Bing_N.htm

Making money from blog !

Making money from blog is not just only placing Google ads on the blog, this is just only the beginning. Your job is to find as many ways as possible to maximize the money from the blog while still providing the reader experience and valuable knowledge. The complaints about ads on blogs always occur even when there is only one ad on the blog. Here are a few things to remember: the most complaining about ads on blogs also means that the visitors never click on an ad, or sometimes they might use some tools to block ads, then you cannot earn any money from them. Is it annoying if there are so many ads on the blog?

So how do you know how many ads on your blog have been clicked by visitors? The answer is simple. Traffic will tell you about that- if your traffic starts to decrease, you need to change. However, reducing traffic by placing too many ads is pretty rare. The biggest reason that visitors leave your blog is not about your blog has too much advertising on it, it’s just because they are fed up with the disrespectful way of speaking or boring and poor contents on your blog.
We take a look at one of the biggest online blog, Engadget.com. There are 21 ads in a page. The reader won’t complain about it? If you want to make money from blogging, you should develop your blog with some amazing articles to attract reader to stay on your blog longer.
The trick to place ads on your blog is using the ads as much power as possible and split them out to see them not too crowded on the site. If Engadget.com placed 21 ads in one place, then certainly there will have many complaints about it. One very effective way to avoid complaining from the visitor is making the ad always in sight when the page scrolls. You can put a bunch of ads on a page and keep them look tidy.
Another trick is to use too many kinds of advertising when possible. It will be ridiculous when you put 21 banners on a page, however if you put it along with banner, text link, buttons, etc… You can still create a page with a good looking and look tidy.

Do not worry about complaints. Most readers will not complain when you have ads on your blog, they only complain you when you ask them to click on the ads before they can read content on your blog, otherwise it should be fine with your ads.

Other resources:

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/02/08/how-i-make-money-from-blogs-my-top-earners/

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/how-to-make-money-from-your-blog/

http://lukli.wordpress.com/2008/03/08/how-much-can-this-site-make-in-advertising-money/