Why Don't I Shift To a Custom Domain

If you are seriously engaged in blogging, it is always recommended to have your own domain and preferably Wordpress hosted on it.Many Internet friends and some blogging professionals recommended me to have my own domain.Webtalks is making enough bucks for me to buy hosting and a domain for it.I'm a big WP fan and I too want to join the self hosted Wordpress community.Still there are few reasons that restrict me

• Domain Age.With the blast of links everyday towards this blog (say thanks to templates), I believe Google will put this blog in the Sandbox.Since I'm currently on Blogger, Google counts the domain age of blogspot.com which well is a pretty old one(1999).
• Time.As a student it isn't easy to come online everyday.Which leaves me with two alternatives.Either sell off my blog like Rishi did or keep the posts on blogger till I pass out.I'm not comfortable selling this blog as this is connected to my Google Account.So keeping it live on Blogger is the only option(Don't say that I can also delete the blog).
• Hosting.Though many web hosting providers promise 0% downtime, still there is a risk.On blogger, I haven't yet encountered any downtime for this blog.Blogger currently gives undisclosed bandwidth to its blogs, so no problems how much traffic I receive when I'm absent

The shift will definitely take place
You read it right.I will for sure move Webtalks to a custom domain.All I can currently tell you is that you'll have to wait a bit for it.I believe by May 2010.Yes I know its long after.But I will continue posting on Webtalks when I'm free.I had already bought a domain (ashtech.info) back this summer.But afterwards I came to know (.info) domains are full of spam, so next time I'll buy a (.com) only
I'm currently looking for a good domain name (.com). If you have any thoughts, feel free to share them in comments.By 2010, I hope it will gain some age and then we'll shift Webtalks to it.
During this period I will go through intensive studying as these 3 years will be determining for my career.If you are an Indian you would be quite familiar with IIT-JEE which is what I'm going to be preparing for.But still I need wishes from all you for cracking IIT isn't possible without your blessings.


source : webtalks.blogspot.com

Shared hosting websites for wordpress

Wordpress is considered one of the best opensource tools for bloggers today but if you plan on running a serious website then you are going to need some serious hosting with decent stats.
What is shared web hosting ?
Shared Hosting is essentially a company that has many clients (websites) running on one server usually for a very low price(around $2 – $10+). The one drawback of choosing such a hosting plan is that the plan is limited somewhat in terms of CPU usage %. Think of an apple pie (which is a server) , if more and more people want that apple pie then your slice will be smaller and smaller.
How to choose a web hosting company ?

• Compare the Price of the plan vs other companies
• How many domains / subdomains does it support ?
• Does it offer FTP file transfers ?
• Does the web hosting company offer a money back guarantee ?
• Look at factors such as promised/guaranteed uptimes
• Server speeds (take a look at some sites hosted by the company)
• Storage web space ?
• Features offered (Is there a Cpanel or backup utilities)
• As well as the reputation of the company.

Make sure you avoid web hosting companies that are known for crappy customer service , take some time to do your own research , check the interweb areas such as twitter & forums to see what people are saying about that particular web hosting company you are interested in. It’s also important on how you have to pay for hosting in advance like a contract or on a monthly basis.

Web-Hosting for Wordpress Bloggers







I am a bit personally biased with hostmonster since I use them for all my clients & their wordpress related hosting needs. I have not had a problem with them for over 2 years now.




Another respectable web-host that offers multiple hosting solutions at affordable prices as well as offering linux & windows solutions.




I’ve read some decent reviews regarding this company but not every company is going to have 100% approval rate , but at the same time it does offer a few features at low prices.





InMotion is a very good web hosting that can provide excellent customer service support.



In a very competitive market , GreenGeeks manages to stand out by promoting the fact that they are a very eco-friendly company that can offer high quality service at cheap prices. Might be a worth a look and check it out.
Need more power ?
If you are planning on your blog receiving high levels of traffic  , say around the neighborhood of 3,500-5,000 uniques a day then shared hosting may not be for you. If this is the case and your blog is heavy in traffic visitors then you may want to consider upgrading to a vps or even buying your own server.
I’ll do a post about dedicated machines in the near future.




source :sherifabdou.com

Make money using Wordpress

I’m glad everyone enjoyed my first article on how to be intuitive with your wordpress. Many people say that it’s crappy or not as powerful as joomla/drupal, I disagree with them because I know with a little bit of elbow grease and plugin power it’s a full blown cms. Anyway I digress from my point.
I’ve seen a few trends on some fancy shmancy blogs about how to make money but the one thing they never do is really get down and dirty into giving you real details not just the regular , oh put up good content and people will come like crazy. Or other stories like I just opened my website and got 500k hits in 6 hours , a few words for you my friend S-T-F-U & stop fraudin’.

Forget the money aspect of running a website for a second , just trying to market your website to the entire internet is hard word as well as getting loyal readers to come back and give you positive feedback.

In this rant I’m gonna explain how to setup your blog to earn you money.

Let’s begin shall we :

To start with , Your site has to have unique content. By this I mean give me (the reader) a reason to keep on coming back for more. If you just copied some other source or blog then there is no incentive for your reader to come back to you. You can do this by being controversial for instance. If your talking about Obama for example I don’t suggest writing extreme controversial things about him that would be considered a hate crime or racist instead perhaps something a bit off-beat.

Asides from staying unique and interesting you have to continue to post daily fresh posts. I would recommend getting a close knowledgeable friend or family member who can help you out. This is much beneficial as it will help you lighten the load , running a big site by yourself is sometimes scary to downright crazy at times. Think of this as the “buddy-system” for when you go to the gym , that other person that is there to motivate you to go through that last rep. Trust me on this it’ll pay off in dividends.

Before you get all trigger happy with your mouse putting ads galore all over your website you might have to do a few things such as assessing if your site has the constant traffic to support such ads as possible revenue streams.
I found a few awesome tools and sites you will want to use to asses your site’s traffic value.

Site Rankings

The first website you will want to go to is google webmaster tools , basically this gives you in pure detail if google is indexing your site correctly and if there is any errors in while doing it. I strongly recommend this. After you do this , there are a few popular sites that can show you the popularity of your site.

Here are a few of them ->

Google Analytics – Google Analytics is a great tool , it tells you Page View hits , Unique hits as well as which countries your users are coming from and who refers them. I use to use Mint & Peppers but then my friend introduced me to this and I haven’t looked back once since. If you want to directly hookup google analytics into your Wordpress Core then check this plugin out (Google Analytics for Wordpress), I use it and love it !

Alexa – This is a well known site that gathers traffic data on websites based on a few criteria as well as depending on it’s users using the Alexa Toolbar

Compete – This is another site like Alexa that can give you statistics on your page traffic.

Google PageRank – I saved the most important (In my Opinion) for last. Basically the higher page rank your site has , the stronger the traffic to it. From what I have read and personal usages it is more accurate than either Alexa or Compete. The site I linked lets you check the popularity of your website and if you would like you can post a script that updates it on your site.

This Picture borrowed from Einfach explains about Google Page rank and how it works visually
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After you have contacted and signed up for Google Adsense you might be eager to place lots of ads on your site. But after some research and personal experience the more google ads you put on your site the less you will likely make , I say this because as you have noticed or heard of each click will get you different rates some $2.00 + while another gets you .002 cents. If you put more ads let’s say 3 different banners , then the chances are most of the links will be worth low amounts while the high value clickable ad that will be randomly placed. So I would suggest to use only 1-2 ads at most this increases your chances of receiving a high value ad.
If your traffic ranks are high and you get 600-1000+ uniques a day I recommend the alternatives to google adsense as a means to diversify and earn more.

1) Buysellads – I have seen them all over the Net , Their commission rates are quite high though at 25% cut but they also have one of the best market networks. So finding a customer to buy your ad-space should not take you long or be difficult.

2) Adbrite – Is another popular advertisement network used by many bloggers. They even post a guide as to where you should post the advertisement according to most effectiveness only take this with a grain of salt as you do not want to offend viewers by posting obnoxious ads on top of every content post , then again this is my own views and you do not have to follow them. “AdBrite gives its publishers 70% of the revenues generated from their ad spaces and keeps 30%.” In addition to this fact , unlike google adsense where you have to generate $100.00 you can specify the bare minimum you would like to accrue in order to receive your check. So you can specify $5.00 as the bare minimum target to start receiving checks.

3) Bidvertisers – This marketing network is very unique from many marketing sites I have seen in the past as this site has users bidding to place their advertisement on your website. This forumla and way of thinking is meant to leave the owner of the website with advertisements that are worth more money when clicked. Basically the price-per-click you get is based on the quality and popularity of your website. The more popular your site is the higher the price-per-click will be.

4) The FINAL Alternative is yourself ! – If you have a high amount of traffic flowing into your website just setup and create a simple “Advertise Here” box. Then have it linked to a custom made form asking the person interested in advertising on your site such as , Name , Email , Phone contact if you wish , as well as length planning on wishing to pay you for placing ads on your site such as Monthly ,Weekly or Yearly. You can make your own custom form using an easy to use plugin such as Cforms II , You can also download it from wordpress’s depository. You may also want to setup your own “Advertise with us” Page if you plan on goin this route as well as including rankings from Alexa , Technorati , Google Page Rank etc. The more proven stats you post the more assured your potential customers will be.

source : sherifabdou.com