Has your blog been cached by Google?

Posted on August 6, 2007
Filed Under Tips/Tricks, Blogging | 1 Comment

If you have read any of my recent posts, you will know I’ve been checking out some affiliate programs to add to my blogs. Also I have been looking into the pay to post type of programs as well.

Well, I have found a glitch for new bloggers that I wanted you to know about. Because once again, I had no clue.

My blogs were rejected by many sites I attempted to participate in, and not because my blogs were so new, but because “your blog has not been cached by Google”.

Being a newcomer to the blogging world, I had no idea what this meant or how to fix it. So I looked into it, and hopefully it will help you too on your journey as a successful blogger. Let me explain….

What it is:

What being “cached” means, that basically Google has a record of your site somewhere over in the magical place called Google-land. Google knows your site exists.

How do you know if Google has cached your site?

Go to Google and put in “cache:http://yoursite.com”. Then search. If any information about your site comes up, then they have cached you. If no information comes up, or you get a message that says “Your search did not match any documents”, then your site has not been cached by Google yet.

How do you fix it?

If you want to have your site cached by Google, and it has not been yet, then try these tips.

Register your domain name with Google. To do this,  go to http://www.google.com/addurl.htmland enter your site’s url address.

Get incoming links to your blog. There are a bunch of ways to do this, but here are a few of the best ones I’ve found.

Post or comment  on other peoples blogs that interest you. When you comment, always have a link to your blog in your signature.

Add your site to directories. Go to this link and look for free directories. http://www.avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories/ .

Google says to make sure that your site is designed so that it is easy for Google to effectively crawl your content.

But as always, it seems to be the most surefire way to have success in the blogging world is to have content that people want to read.  Because being connected by links seems to be the number one way to have robots and spiders like Googles to find little old you out there in big ol cyber space. And if you have stuff people want to read, then of course they will link to you.

That is my unofficial opinion. Let me know what you think!

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Make Money Writing For Bloggerwave!

Posted on August 3, 2007
Filed Under Sponsored | Leave a Comment

I’m sure you have noticed recently a change to my posts. I might have a post followed by “Sponsored By” or sometimes an entire sponsored post. What this is - is an advertisement that I have written for a sponsor. I will read about the company or product then write a little about it and include links to their website. I have started doing this because it gives me freedom to write more and more on my blogs (which I love to do) by generating revenue for me. Its a cool opportunity for bloggers, and especially for bloggers who love to write (like me). Go to Bloggerwave to sign up today.

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Advantageautoquotes.com

Posted on August 1, 2007
Filed Under Sponsored | Leave a Comment

This is a sponsored post:

Advantage Auto Quotes is a one stop shop for all of you auto insurance needs. With Advantage Auto Quotes, you will save yourself the headache and hassle of calling around to find the best deals on auto insurance because with Advantage Auto Quotes, you can get all of your insurance quotes online.

They have solutions for everyone, from teen drivers to drivers with bad credit. It doesn’t matter if you have a classic car or an SUV. Whatever your insurance needs are they have the best deals for you.

If you want to spend less and save more on your auto insurance, you should visit Advantage Auto Quotes today.

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What I’ve learned about affiliate programs

Posted on July 31, 2007
Filed Under Affiliate Programs, Making Money From Your Blog | Leave a Comment

If you are new to affiliate programs (like me) I just wanted to give you a little advice. I will let you in on what I have just discovered that the affiliate program did NOT tell me.

So I was in search of making the most of my new blogging hobby and was looking for the ‘holy-grail’ of advertising for my website. And am still looking :) (I’m a ‘glass is half full kinda girl’, what can I say)

But my rose colored glasses about affiliate programs were shrewdly ripped off this past month. I have discovered something that I did not find written in any blogs, posts or information provided by anyone out there in cyber-space. So I thought I would share it with you so you can move right past this mistake and find greener (you know what I mean- $$$greener$$$) pastures.

The not so lovely affiliate program Rocket Profit is who I was inspired by to write this article was originally the affiliate program that I thought had the most potential for a newbie like me. They seemed to have great offers and sizable payouts for things like “free trials”, “front page landings”, and “zip code entries”.

Putting myself in my readers shoes, I thought that I should put up advertisements that they could get something too - like free music downloads. It sounded good to me (of course that should have been a red flag right there).

I spent a lot of time reading through all the offers and choose two that I was to put on my sites.

#1 “25 free song downloads” What I was told, was that I would get paid for every free trial that was completed.

I thought “cool! I can get something and they can get something.” The perfect situation. So I put it on one of my sites. Three weeks later….nothing. And I was confused because I thought “why wouldn’t anyone want FREE music?”. I know I would. So I knew something was wrong. I decided to investigate.

I tested the free trial. And I quickly found out why the few click that the ad had did not go through to finish.

I clicked on the picture. Entered my info. Then happily waiting for my free trial…..was surprised to be asked for my credit card information. They wanted your credit cards for a free trial! The “free music” did not seem to be so “free”anymore. I thought that that was total B.S.

Who wants “free music” that costs $29.95? Not me! After feeling totally scammed, I investigated my second ad that I chose to put on my sites.

#2 The ad: “Win a $500 shopping spree - free”. Want to know what happened when I tried out this offer?? Filled out information. Next page. A list of questions (ex: household income, ethnicity etc). Next page. 10-15 more questions. Next page 10-15 more questions. This went on for about eight pages. Then I got so irritated I just closed it. “Click here, check this” over and over! No wonder no one completed it. But they sure got a lot of information from you before you realized it wasnt going anywhere (maby it did….I wasn’t going to stick around to find out though).

But after all those questions. I answered the most important question of all….why didn’t I have ANY conversions from these ads? Answer: instead of enter to win a $500 shopping spree, it was enter to win a half hour of answering questions. I still don’t even know how much longer it would have taken to actually register.

My conclusion - REDICULOUS!

Hopefully I can help the other newbies like me save a headache or two from my learning experiences. Also, what are you experiences? I would love to hear what you think.

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5 Things I’ve Learned About (Trying) To Monetizing Your BLog

Posted on July 25, 2007
Filed Under Making Money From Your Blog | Leave a Comment

5. Its much harder than it seems. I never expected to “get rich quick”….but everyone else in blog-land makes it seem so simple!

4. Research, Research, Research! If you want to put advertisers or affiliates on your page do your homework. Those guys are tricky! The ones that seem to good to be true…probably are.

3. Google’s AdSense: Its #1 for beginners in my book.

2. Learn from your mistakes. And don’t keep doing something that’s NOT WORKING.

1. Content. Since the real objective of my blogs are to share with people what I know, and maby help out someone. The content and quality of what your putting out there is what you should focus on.

The moral of the story: The real reward of giving something to my readers. Anything else is just icing on the cake.

What have you learned about monetizing your blogs??

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Like My New Theme?

Posted on July 24, 2007
Filed Under Themes/Templates, Creating My Blog | Leave a Comment

I finally found it! My perfect theme (for now). If you love it too this is where I got it :)

http://themes.performancing.com/

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More Word Press Themes

Posted on July 8, 2007
Filed Under Themes/Templates, Creating My Blog | Leave a Comment

Here are a few more sites that have Word Press themes.

http://www.peterandrej.com

http://www.edmerritt.com/

http://www.amsterdamn.org/free-themes-for-wordpress/

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How To Make a Screenshot

Posted on July 7, 2007
Filed Under Tips/Tricks, Creating My Blog | Leave a Comment

I found this great article on creating screenshots. Its always fun to learn new tricks! I hope this helps you out as well.

Here is the site where I found this information:
How to make screenhot? Taking screenshots is fast and free. No software to download

How to make a screenshot

A “screenshot” is a snapshot of what’s on your computer’s screen.

To create a screenshot follow these steps:

1. The first step is to create the windows that you want to capture and leave them up on the screen.
2. Just to the right of your keyboard, you should see three groups of keys. The lower set of keys usually is a group of arrow keys. Above that is usually a set of some six keys that are labeled “Insert,” “Home,” “Page Up,” etc. Above that should be three keys that have rather odd labels - like Pause/Break and ScrLk. One of those keys should be labeled PrtScrn/SysRq. Pressing Alt-PrintScreen (Alt-PrtScrn) places an image of the frontmost window on the clipboard. Pressing PrintScreen by itself places an image of the entire desktop on the clipboard.
3. If you press PrtScrn/SysRq, nothing will appear to have happened. However, your computer just took a snapshot of its screen and stored that picture on its clipboard, much as it stores information that you cut and paste.
4. Open MS-Paint. (From Start/Run, issue the command “mspaint”.) Create a new empty image, and use Edit/Paste to bring in the screenshot you just took. (If the screenshot is smaller than the default Paint canvas, you will end up with white areas. Start over: create a new empty image, change its dimensions to 1×1, and Paste again. The canvas will grow for the Paste, but it doesn’t shrink.)
5. Use MS-Paint to Save As, using PNG as the file format (it is superior to all the rest).

Other Notes

* Instead of MS Paint you could also use Word, or some other word processing program, you can paste the image into it. You can then save the Word document and email it to us as an attachment.
* You may also be able to paste the image directly into your email, depending on what type of email program you have. (Microsoft Outlook can do this, for example.)
* If you press Alt and the PrtScrn/SysRq keys together, the computer will take a snapshot of the currently active window ONLY. This can save some space in a Word documentor in an email.

This works on all versions of Windows: Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT and Win2000, XP, 2003.

Example of my blog:

kjs-blog.PNG

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In Search of the Perfect Theme Template

Posted on July 7, 2007
Filed Under Themes/Templates, Creating My Blog | 1 Comment

I’ve been searching the internet this week to find a “theme template” that I like. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, but I’m going to be testing out a few that catch my eye as I’m searching.

In my search I have found some amazing sites that have so many cool things to put on your blog but personally I’m just trying to do one thing at a time. I thought it would be fun to share them with you. You can tell me what you think. Here are two of my favorites:

This one is one I found through the Word Press site, but it has so many (and if you put your mouse over the title, it shows a preview picture of what it will look like - so you don’t have to keep loading a new page to preview).

http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress/themes

alexking.PNG

Another site I found that I think has a really wide variety of free layouts is

www. layouts4free.com

layouts4free.PNG

Then here is a list (from Word Press) of sites to search for themes. I’ve looked through many of them and there is so many good things that I wouldn’t have time to list everything I liked. But they are definatly worth browsing through.

Themes

Have fun!

P.S.

I found the theme I am currently using here (its called “Fluid Solution”):

http://www.kaushalsheth.com/

fluidsolutiontheme.PNG

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Welcome!

Posted on July 4, 2007
Filed Under Creating My Blog | 1 Comment

Welcome to my new blog! I wanted to start a blog on certain interests of mine which had nothing to do with blogging. But when I started learning about blogging, there was so much! It was overwhelming.  So I figured that as I was learning, that I could share my ideas and discoveries  with you.  Maybe make it easier for you as you start your blog. So that’s the reason for this blog. I am not a professional. Just a beginner like you. Hopefully I can be helpful! Wish me luck.

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