Reaper-X » Journal

Message from Google Adsense Optimization Team

Reaper-X — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:30:50 +0000

Okay so yesterday when i checked my adsense account, i just noticed that there’s a message on my adsense reports page … and to be honest, this is the first time ever i saw this message because previously it just left blank until yesterday (actually at first i thought that the Recent Message section on the reports page is just for decoration purpose only lol)

But the question is … what is the subject of the message actually that makes me interested on posting it ?

While here’s the actual message read :

Dear Publisher,

Here is your optimization report for the month of November. After an automatic review of your sites, we think you might be able to improve your monetization using the following tips:

You may be filtering ads that monetize well on your site.
How can I fix this? Dismiss this tip.

We hope these tips are helpful, and encourage you to experiment using different layouts and formats—no two sites monetize the same way!

Sincerely,
Google Adsense

and here’s the screenshot :

Based from the above message, it seems that some of the url’s listed on my Google Adsense Competitive ad-filter might be able to improve my monthly earnings, and fortunately since there are only several urls listed on my competitive ad-filter page i can guess on which one to remove :D (beside i just put those url’s several days ago)

Anyhow … i’m really glad when i saw this message, because it really save my time from testing the competitive filter list :)

As a side note, i’m not the first publisher to receive this message because there are some other adsense publisher that receives this message as well … such as Dave Taylor from Askdavetaylor and Rusty Brick from SERoundTable

0x87485B96 | Tags : Google Adsense, Journal, Making Money

Google slow to load …

Reaper-X — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:25:13 +0000

Just when i thought i’m the only person who’s experiencing this problem, someone create a new thread over at Digital Point forums saying that he’s also experiencing slow loading problem when accessing various Google services such as Adsense, GMail, Adwords or the Google Search itself

All the Google features such as GMail, Adwords, Adsense, and just plain old Google Search have been lagging a little more than usual for me. Google has something going on. I think soon Google will surprise us with a bunch of new features. Just be patient all you PR fanatics! Can you say algorythm update!

With the exception that i don’t think there’s PR Update going on … i just think that there’re some network issues somewhere. Other than that i also noticed a slow loading time when accessing my adsense account page or searching the web using Google although i don’t really have problem with the GMail or Adwords simply because i don’t use it (well i’m using Google hosted email and using POP3 to retrieve all emails)

I don’t know if it’s just me or does anyone else who visited this site also experience delay especially at the Javascript part which is comes from the Google CSE, but recently i’ve been thinking on moving the Javascript over to this site … but i’m not sure whether if it’s going to break Google rules or not (i know that this vps is nothing compared to the Google server, but it just bothering me because whenever i try to access this site, i always see some delay when loading the Google CSE Javascript code)

Forum Discussion over at DigitalPoint

0x87485B96 | Tags : Google, Journal, Personal

Sorry folks … i’m back to using summary feeds …

Reaper-X — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:08:16 +0000

So today i just found out that some of my popular articles got scrapped again by other website, and what makes it worse is … that scrapper website is stealing this site article (although they put a link back to this site) but … with a nofollow tag attached to the link ! and of course they also use adsense to monetize their site

To be honest i do not have problem with automated content scrapper (read my site terms of use), as long as they give me credits and in this case by simply putting a link back here without the nofollow tag … simple isn’t it ?

Using automated scrapper tools, and combining it with the nofollow tag is just the same as stealing the article without giving the author a single credit plus without doing any work at all, if this site is at the same level as other big website then i don’t have problem with it simply because many people know the original source of the article (but most people simply won’t bother to click on it)

But things i hate most is … they try to monetize their site by placing adsense ads all over their page and don’t even bother to give the original author a credit

I guess that’s all for today rants, i’m going back to use the summary feeds only …

0x87485B96 | Tags : Journal, Opinion, Personal

Testing Wordpress 2.3 RC 1 … without getting any error message ?

Reaper-X — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 12:05:24 +0000

I guess most of you already heard that Wordpress is going to have another major release which is Wordpress 2.3, and so that’s why yesterday i’ve decided to try out the Release Candidate 1 of Wordpress 2.3 / Wordpress 2.3 RC1 that’s just released yesterday (19 September 2007) .. because i want a smooth transition when upgrading into Wordpress 2.3 when the final version gets released to the public … and it’s all thanks to the new database schema changes

The first thing i noticed when opening my local test server is … i get various MySQL related error message which is basically saying that some table can’t be found (obviously) because of the recent database schema changes. And of course the next step would be running the upgrade script in order to fix that error message (simple isn’t it ?) … and everything seems to be okay again, i didn’t see any mysql error message get displayed on my test server … which is quite strange (at least for me)

Based from what i’ve read so far from Spencerp.net, Wordpress 2.3 are going to drop some of tables that’s used previously like post2cat, link2cat as example. Beside i confirmed this myself because after upgrading to 2.3 RC1 i didn’t see those tables listed in the database. And from what i’ve read that any plugins that use those tables are going to fail, and in my case i’m using one plugin that’s using post2cat and that’s the Wordpress Category Tagging plugin and listed as incompatible with Wordpress 2.3 from the Wordpress 2.3 Plugin Compatibility page

But … in my case … i didn’t see any problem or whatsoever, because it works just fine :(

Well … i guess it’d be better for me to wait for the Final version of Wordpress 2.3

0x87485B96 | Tags : Journal, Wordpress

Finally reached 1.000.000 Page views

Reaper-X — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 16:14:41 +0000

Wheee finally today 18 September (actually it’s 19 September in my local time) this website finally reached 1.000.000 Page views (to be exact 1.002.150 Page Views recorded) according to my Google Analytics account (after 1 year, 1 month and 3 days)

While for some people this number can be considered as normal, but if it’s for me … of course i’m really delighted for it because i just never thought that i would reached this amount (beside i never dreamed about it before) … and that’s all thanks to Wordpress. Because if i didn’t create my first blog ever in their free service, there’s no way this site exists (except there’s someone else buying this domain name at the first place)

And here’s the breakdown of this site analytics for 1 year, 1 month and 3 days :

540,031 Visits
428,694 Absolute Unique Visitors
1,002,150 Pageviews

As for the technical profile :

50.66% Visitors using Microsoft Internet Explorer to visit this site
42.83% Visitors using Mozilla Firefox Browser
4.32% Visitors using Opera Browser
and many other user agent recorded, from a Playstation 3 User-Agent, to someone trying to do some XSS attack via their browser user-agent (duh) … and it’s all recorded by Google Analytics (wow!)

And finally here’s an image to shows you what this site statistics looks like until i reached the 1.000.000 Page views taken from my Google Analytics account

Note : The above image shows you the number of visits this site receives since the beginning / the day i moved from Wordpress.com to a real web hosting (15 August 2006) until 18 September 2007 :)

So … at this time i’d like to say many thanks to all of this site visitors for coming to this site, and to those who’s interested on reading my previous journal when i just started this website, or things i’ve learned ever since i started this website … feel free to check this site archives

As for my next target … i’d really love to get 1.000.000 Visits first and then perhaps the absolute unique visitors can also reach the same amount :D

0x87485B96 | Tags : Blogging, Journal, Website

Flashget 1.92 constantly sending unknown packet to various servers

Reaper-X — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:26:48 +0000

So recently i just upgraded the old Flashget 1.80 which is installed on my computer since few months ago (if i remembered it correctly) to the new Flashget 1.92. While i must agree the new Flashget 1.92 is giving a cleaner user interface compared to it’s previous version. But yesterday when i just finished downloading several files from various website using Flashget, i found out that the PPP Led Indicator on my adsl router keep blinking (which indicates there’s internet activity done from my computer) even though i’m not using my internet connection

Because i find it’s strange for me to see the PPP Indicator on the adsl router keep blinking, i tried to lookup by running netstat from the command prompt and found these address:port which is obviously not there previously …

59.151.31.139:53 (China)
219.239.90.172:28221 (China)
72.51.37.237:8899 (United States)
66.199.250.170:8911 (United States)

Note : I’ve disabled automatic update, Emule, and shareurl service, and also not downloading / seeding torrent

So … i tried searching around the web for more information to the above address and found some useful information from Softpedia and Wikipedia

Quoted from Wikipedia :

Although Softpedia had marked Flashget as having a “5-star Editor Review” award (for version 1.8), since 1.9 Softpedia has revoked their “100% Clean Award”, because as soon as it is started, the program tries to call various servers around the world every 3 seconds. This is also why they no longer host the latest version.

Quoted from Softpedia :

Softpedia no longer hosts the latest version of Flashget, because FlashGet 1.9.0, as soon as it is started, tries to call various servers around the world every 3 seconds. This is also the reason why FlashGet no longer has the Softpedia “100% Clean” award.

in the end … because i no longer trust Flashget (and not planning on reverting to the old flashget version), i’ve decided to go back to one of my favorite downloader (W32 Built)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Journal, Privacy, Software, Windows

Lessons i’ve learned about making money online with blog after 1 year

Reaper-X — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 07:57:44 +0000

Hurray … today this site turns 1 year old (actually it should be on 6 July but at that time im still using free Wordpress.com blog so i dont count it anymore) :) … at first i never thought that i’d be coming this far simply by just blogging about anything (although most of the time i wrote about Computers, and Game related content). And of course it’s all thanks to those who’s visiting this site (regular visitors or just passer by). And as the title said, this time i’m going to tell you what i’ve learned so far about make money online by Blogging

1. Write Useful Content

Content is king, and that mean if you really want to drive visitors to your site, of course you’ll need to create useful content. Let’s say you love to write about yourself, your cat’s, etc … but think about it this way, what if you’re looking at some unknown blog writing about themself or their cat. Do you really care about it ? … i’ll leave the answer to you

2. Search Engine Rulez

Forget those who says that Search Engine is useless, because search engine is the first source of your traffic no matter if your site has large user base or not, so you’ll need to make sure your site is optimized for search engine because that’s how most people find your site

3. Learn to fix your mistake and never give up to early

Let’s say you’ve set a target on making your site to make specific amount of money after six months of blogging. But when that time come, you didn’t really make anything from your site. Now what you should do then ? first thing is of course look at what you’ve wrote so far and ask yourself, does your content gives valuable information to those who’s visiting your site ?

But what happen if you decided to give up on blogging at this time instead of learning to fix your mistake ? Here’s a good lesson i’ve learned from Electronic Arts (i know EA is on different level than blog, but look at below paragraph)

According to the 1982 business plan, the company’s original business goals were to grow to a billion-dollar company within its first six years and to “make software that makes a personal computer worth owning.” At the time, Electronic Arts was the 136th game publisher in the U.S. EA eventually attained its goal of becoming a billion-dollar company, though it took 12 years to do so.

4. If you really want to make money, you’ll need to spend some money first

If you’re really serious about making money, of course you’ll need to spend some money first in order to do it and in this case you’ll need good hosting company (for more flexibility, and control), and a domain name only or perhaps to promote your site by placing your site ads on other site

Let’s take an example, Wordpress.com offer you a free unlimited blog hosting using wordpress (in terms of bandwidth and post storage not image, etc) and top notch server (no problem for getting digged, or slashdotted) but the downside from their service is … you can’t place any advertisement on your site (and that’s including affiliate links)

Now what about Blogger.com / blogspot ? basically they have the same offer just like Wordpress.com, with the exception you’re allowed to place advertisement on your blog unfortunately with this downside :

3 out of 4 Blogger urls are SPAM : source although previously i’ve wrote about it too … which mean most people don’t trust blogger powered blogs anymore (or at least for me)

I knew both of them are offering domain mapping so you can use your own domain name instead of using their subdomain to look more professional, but that’s the point

5. The only thing you need to know from other website that tell you about make money online is what advertisement program they’ve joined

This may sound a little bit harsh, but one thing i’ve learned about making money online is by looking on what advertisement program are used by the big site / or other website, because that’s how you’re going to make money online

6. Do what you love and money will follow you

I think this tips already explain it all,

What tips would you give someone just starting out in blogging if they wanted to build a profitable blog?

First, pick a topic you love, one that you can’t wait to write about every day. If I wasn’t truly obsessed with productivity, I would have never lasted at Lifehacker. Second, center your site on the reader, not yourself. Provide useful, informative, entertaining material that readers will come back to over and over again. Third, measure your success by your readership and the response you get from others, not your Adsense checks. Once you build your audience, the money will follow

If you have your own experience about this, of course i’d be delighted if you could share some of your experiences too :)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Blogging, Income Sources, Journal, Making Money

VPS Plan Upgraded

Reaper-X — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:14:31 +0000

2 days i just ordered VPS Hosting from WiredTree with 30GB RAID-10 Disk Space, 300GB Bandwidth (Wow … i do not think i’m going to reach this amount), with 256MB Ram (Burstable to 1GB) …

At first i thought that capacity is enough for this small site, but i guess i’ve made a wrong decision because if you’ve visited this site since yesterday, i’m pretty sure you’ve noticed that this site is unreachable (i’m sorry i didn’t notice it first when i wrote my previous post about my new host) … and that’s all thanks to the low RAM

But … today i just contacted my web hosting company, and ask them to upgrade my vps plan into using 512MB RAM … and things seem to be working a lot better now … so in this post i’d like to say sorry to those who’s trying to access this site earlier, and get an unreachable page

Conclusion : With this new server specs, i guess i need to work even harder so i can pay my monthly hosting bill and my internet bill

0x87485B96 | Tags : Journal, Web Hosting, Website

Please Welcome … WiredTree Web Hosting

Reaper-X — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:29:17 +0000

So yesterday i’ve finished moving this site to a new web host named WiredTree (after doing some testing with my other domain name), and i must say although at first i want it to have no downtime at all … but it seems that’s almost impossible for me to do it, because … well … i forgot to make few changes to the .htaccess file which is previously used on my previous host Hostgator (this cause several errors), forgot to add Zones for the site feeds itself, need to reconfigure ome modules installed on the server (if you visited this site yesterday you can see it from the Server Error Message), and i’m pretty sure the DNS records may not have fully propagated yet :P

Overall … the experience has been great (Many thanks to WiredTree Zac and WiredTree Joe), every ticket responded in just less than 5 minutes (if you don’t believe me try it for yourself) because there’s no way i can call them directly (it’s really expensive to place an international call from here … but the most important thing is … well you see about that in the next paragraph)

As a side note, they really call your phone number to verify your order (at first i thought they’re not going to call me directly to verify my order) … and to be honest, i’m really nervous when answering the phone call from them because that’s my very first time ever receiving a phone call from another country … beside … they do speak fast unlike in movie (that’s how i learn english language)

Anyway, if you’re looking for a Managed VPS, i’d definitely recommend WiredTree because they offer good prices for their package with top notch support team

But just a suggestion to them, just in case they read this .. perhaps it’d be better for them to put 301 Redirect on their domain name as SEO purpose and / or offer some affiliate account :P

0x87485B96 | Tags : Journal, Personal, Web Hosting, Website

Norton Ghost 2003 doesn’t work anymore

Reaper-X — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 08:44:22 +0000

So yesterday i just installed a fresh Windows XP SP2 into my HDD, because my previous Windows XP SP2 gives me a lot of problem. Beside i think this is the best thing to do because i have changed my computer hardware completely (new chipset, new vga, processor, etc). And i’m sure that problem was caused because the previous driver installed for my old motherboard / chipset, etc is still left in that previous windows installation

And after finished reinstalling windows, device driver, and any other important program … of course i need to create ghost image from the first partition using Norton Ghost 2003 (using Ghost 2003 DOS executable only because i do not like to install the Windows version) … but what happens next ?

I tried booting into DOS using Bootable CD i’ve created
Change drive into C:\ (i have one FAT32 partition for this purpose) and then go into the Ghost directory
Run the Ghost executable
The ghost program hang so i have to press CTRL+ALT+DEL
Tried it again for about 3 times or so … and still get the same result

Now … i get confused, because that tricks always worked for me (and to be honest that’s what i always do since few years ago and havent experience any problem like this before). And i think this problem was caused because the Norton Ghost 2003 doesn’t support one of my harddisk drive or in the simple words, it does not support my computer

As an addition, although i have Norton Ghost 12 ready to be installed. I prefer not to use it because i prefer the old ghost version, because the Ghost 12 doesn’t have the DOS Executable included unllike Norton Ghost 2003

Because i can not live without Backup Image from my primary partition (believe me, if you have created Ghost Image before, you’ll always want to use it again in the future because it really helps you if your system crash / windows not booting completely), i tried searching the web for similar program like Norton Ghost 2003 and found one from Acronis, but the question is … does Acronis True Image have the DOS Executable like Ghost 2003 ? or it’s a full Windows application like Norton Ghost 12 ?

Now because i never use Acronis True Image before, i decided to skip it and continue with searching and in the end i found nothing except that i found An all in one BootCD image that contains all of the stuff required for this purpose (it’s called Hiren’s BootCD 9.1)

Thanks God, because this time i have CDRW hardware available in my computer (and one blank cd available), i decided to download it and then burned it right away and boot directly from the CDRom

My first impression was … WoW !! … this thing is great … there’s Norton Ghost 11 and Acronis True Image available to use and many other useful programs (although i only need the Acronis / Norton Ghost program only) :P … but in the end i’m using Acronis True Image for my backup purpose because i want to try out something new

So what’s the conclusion ? if you really care about your computer and want the fastest way of doing recovery when your system fails … make sure you try using Hiren Boot CD or other similar BootCD. Because it really helps you alot when you can’t access your Windows Installation ;)

0x87485B96 | Tags : Computer, Freeware, Journal, Software