TheAnand

The recent reshuffle of the Google results has severely affected one of my most active websites with traffic falling more than 80%. It was one of my biggest single earners in terms of money and loosing revenue from it is a big time bad news for me.

After almost 3+ years of solid rankings and earnings, the sudden drop on the website was a surprise. The website in question was very genuine, with original content, optimized and valuable content for many keywords. Initially it was curiosity, to know why PANDA update caught my website in its filters and kicked it out of top spots.

Believe it or not, I never relied extensively on my browsers’ dictionary to spell the word – entrepreneurship until recently when I started to fill up my profiles on the web. As with everyone, with frequent usage I learnt the word without having to wait for the wavy red underline.

Someday is not a day of the week.

I have been meaning to update this blog “someday soon”. “Procrastination”  is the word I learnt. It was true. “Someday” never came over the past few months and this blog sat around ignored by its own author. While there are stats about how many blogs are started every hour, there has to be a similarly surprising numbers of blogs which just hang around stagnant.

I recently put out a tweet about how your blog is in the right track if you get more spammy comments. From what I see, you are seen by the bots, which means search engines and other kinds of bots should see you too. Its a good thing though not many followers agreed with me! What do you say?!

BUT, This post is not about spamming! This is about learning from a annoying marketing technique which has been existent since email came along. Spam emails! Everyone hates those nigerian bankers who want your help or those claiming to make your body organs bigger and even those promising you replicas of popular watch brands.

I am a internet junkie if not anything else! Spending hours reading blogs (about 250 of them) lurking around forums and not to mention Social Networks and the links shared on Twitter, Facebook and Stumbleupon. This has led to serious time management issues ever since I started working on my startup. I finally decided to fine tune the time spent online and this is my set of times for time management for the social media enthusiast.

Its very important to have your blogging milestones set before you start off blogging – thats what theory says. Unfortunately, I or anyone is rarely guided by people while starting off. After about 3 years of Blogging (4 years, If manually updating html pages everyday can be considered blogging) , here is what I think is the best way to start with your blogging milestones.

And while monetization comes in the later parts, this will probably answers your questions on making a living from a blog

Pre P.S: I sincerely hope dad does not read the second paragraph!

Does Anonymous You Online sound like an oxymoron??!? Well, its a rule that anyone getting online is not anonymous. For example a search for me renders around 9000 results online. That’s quite a lot about me online for everyone to see and read about and know me better worse. I am sure reverse engineering me can let someone know more about me than I do! This is something very related to the concept of “Reputation Management“.

Its a creative world outside!!! I know Joseph Thomas as a blogger and met him through the BlogCamp Kerala in August. What really caught my attention was a recent newspaper article about him in a national newspaper. He is the founder of Blogswara, which is a interesting mix of audio-blogging.

What is blogswara?

Blogswara is an internet music community which acts as a common platform for musicians (a majority of whom are amateurs) to showcase their talent before the world by producing original music and share it over the internet.

As of today, my RSS stands at about 808 and I am happy about it! The major reason I wanted to join in the Blogging Idol was a kick myself out of my comfort zone and get some work done. And in 24 days, I have gained about 200 subscribers! Thank you dear readers for lending your support!

Now the second part of blogging idol is on, the voting session. Here I am supposed to get my readers to vote for me! So, hop over to DailyBlogTips and cast your vote to the #87th – TheAnand!!!!

My cousin and I were trying to figure out ways to escape/reduce the problem of recession. Every person I have been talking to have worries over recession and especially those in IT related services.

They are a worried lot, with huge housing loans over their heads, with their net worth in the marriage market falling. These computer professionals are seeing an uncertain future.

But I think there are 5 ways you can actually benefit from a recession! Presenting TheAnand’s 5 ways to benefit from a recession.

Music does wonders to all of us. But can it help in boosting our productivity? I had sometime back stumbled upon on some article where the author said that jazz is the best companion for the freelance writer. Unfortunately I did not note the URL or the specifics of the article.

But since the start of this week, I have been trying out almost every variety of music out there and test my productivity with it. I initially started of with my own site which had some common genres of radio stations online. I hate playing music on the system since it limits the type of music you can listen to.

Blogging from Desktop Blog Editors are something you should consider using for all your blogs as they take blogging to an all new level of productivity and time saving.Desktop Blog Editors are already used by a lot of bloggers and they tend to make things easier for a lot of people.

So, do you use a blog editor apart from the ones on your wordpress blogging platform?

Popular desktop based blogging softwares include Windows Live Writer, Post2Blog and some firefox based addons like performancing or flock browser based ones.

The possible advantages I can think about using these blog editors and tools are:

I think I just got over the writers block last week and I think I have some 10 posts in future timestamp for this month already. I have not been posting regularly since the start of last month. But all that is set to change this month. I am planning on some really solid posts and some of them are already in schedule.

This post is the second post in the series of posts I plan to do on creating a niche blog.

I have been making niche blogs for about 3 years now and with each site I make, I learn a ton about making money online with niche blogs. Each site takes a different monetization approach once it hits a resonable traffic. I have been mainly monetizing my sites with Adsense and Chitika and very recently with MarketLeverage and Pepperjam.

I just finished putting my little health niche blog online and have been taking notes for the process so that I can share it with you guys.

When I was starting my money online ventures almost 3 years(woo, the anniversary is comin up!) back I had adsense on my personal site in geocities and stuck up adsense chunks on all the three pages of my site and was waiting for revenue to roll in. But then, if you have had your hands dirty with adsense, you probably now know that it does not work that way

I got my account activated on the 3rd of November 2005. And that was my first years income on adsense! But unlike most others, I did not quit Currently making a decent money on adsense, I guess I can talk about a few reasons why you do not make anything out of your adsense sites.

Truthfully, I started blogging to make money online and am still focused on it. And I believe that everyone should start with making money online. The niche almost exploded when JohnChow, the papa make money blogger started his little experiment.

Then on till today, most of them have quit, some succeeded and others moved to greener pastures (niches). Starting off with making money online will allow you to learn a whole of thing which you will miss if you start with other niches. What did I learn from Making Money Online? Truthfully Loads!

This is it. I had tried so hard to ignore this newly propogated idea on the internet that suddenly “content is not king”. But being the kind of guy who reads about 100 blogs a day, its so hard. Till the recent times, as recent as 3 weeks back, it was said that content is king and suddenly everyone wants to turn the plate?

I have been hearing about this since the day I got online and from the day I started blogging. But suddenly the content king is being de-throned by marketing and linkbuilding and even social media? I beg to differ and stick to the old age saying which was phrased by God-Knows-Who.

BlogCamp Kerala 2008

It was an amazing day last Saturday, the 16th of August 2008. People from diverse backgrounds, when I say diverse, It goes everyone from a school student, a farmer, a cartoonist, a researcher and even a food lover! The day started off at Allapuzha with bloggers coming together at about 9. Though we had a small problem with the delay of the houseboat arrival, it actually helped people to start socializing and get to know each other.

With my own blogging celebrations coming to an end today by 18:00 Indian time, I was back to thinking about how contests can help gain more traffic to our blogs. I know at least 10 bloggers who usually put up contests on their sites and giveaways to make their blogging community active and interesting. But do you think its a viable means of increasing traffic over the long term? I would really appreciate your comments on this.

Sometime back I had done a small un-comprehensive case study on how blogging contests affect traffic metrics on blogs. But then this contest was not meant to be a traffic puller, but was in essence to celebrate nothing, yet something

Last week BlogCamp Kerala was on news again, this time on ‘The Hindu’. What started as a small unconference took a life of its own teaching me the fact that ideas take a life of their own once initiated. With less than 2 weeks to go for the Kerala’s first unconference blogging event, things are shaping out really well. We had a trip to the venue last weekend and the pictures are now live at the official site.

Also, in case you are an outstation bloggers and are looking for a place to stay overnight or the night before the event, do get in touch with me so that we can see if its possible to arrange accomodation for you.

The other day, blogging idol went live and competition is going on strong. Though I was not a part of this competition, I was looking for ways to increase my own feed reader base. Since feed counts are what new advertisers and people use to judge your reach in the whole of blogosphere. Here are two tips I used in the past week to increase my feed count from 160 to the current count. And for the lazy bloggers out there, this is easy

Coming back from a short blogcation(a brief period of vacation from blogging), I am getting back to the groove of things. If you remember, I was thinking of a BlogCamp in Kerala with a few fellow bloggers in Kerala. Things got on track and it is now a reality. BlogCamp Kerala is coming this August 16th at a Houseboat in Alleppey, Kerala.

I am really amazed at what has come out of a small discussion and the idea took a life of its own and we even managed to rope in Kerala Tourism (Kerala Govt.) as a platinum sponsor for the Keralas’ first “Blog Unconference”. Goes a long way to say what willpower can do.

The other day I was pondering with the pencil in my hand. What can we bloggers learn from a pencil? Here are a few things we can learn from the humble pencil.

1. The lead inside matters more than the wood outside.

You might have the best of designs on your blog, but if you have crappy content rehashed from elsewhere, or post infrequently and post without a purpose or a meaning. Visitors can start with a “Awww…” with your terrific blog design and end it with a “….Sheit!!!” seeing your content.

2. Pencil can leave a mark.

The title should not really be what blogging bought me, its more like what my online activity bought me. But then, blogging got me introduced to making money online, then to macro sites, niche sites and all that. I never really invested anything I made online back into the business expect for buying new domains and starting over with some other niche site. Thank you blogging and my readers who indirectly helped me buy it.

BlogCamps are fun! Not that I have been to any. Judging from how the recent barcamp went, it seems that BlogCamp will be hell lot of fun!

The concept of barcamps, meetups and unconferences are slowly catching pace in Kerala judging the crowd at the past 3 barcamps and junior barcamps. Funnily enough, my spell checker says barcamps, meetups and unconferences are not dictionary words. Heck, even blog is not a word in my spell checker!

I was wondering how to reach all the bloggers and to inform them about the event. One list acclaimed by many is the Kerala Blog Roll. Anyone knows any other directories where bloggers can be reached?

I am some sort of a pioneer in making money online my friends circle. Initially I used to persuade my friends to make money online, but these days I am persuading them to start blogging. So far I have succeeded in converting one to blogging religion but he is not actually blogging for the right reasons. Ahh Well! The other managed to get a site, hopefully soon he will be a convert.

Since in the past year that I have started blogging, it has become some sort of a addiction, a private place in the public domain to shout about anything and everything. Blogging is such a great experience that….eh? My Firefox Spell check says blogging is not even a word!

Millionaire? Not Exactly Last week I got my first Adsense Check from Google. Nothing else for a better New Year Gift! Hope I keep getting these every month!

How much was it?

The check was a huge princely amount of 127$! Yep, I have not left out any zeros on either side intentionally or otherwise!

First?

Yep, right again. This is my first check from Google ever ever ever! I have been online for more than 7 years now, blogging for about 16 months now and this is my first check? YES! Thats the best part, I just learned the hard way that pennies and cents do addup to a nice amount.

One of my resolutions for the New Year was to connect with more techies and webbies offline and hence have a pool of contacts I can always count on to have a drink or a watch a movie together or maybe simply ask about their adsense earnings for the week . Orkut was my first stop to find some people offline at my place Cochin. I found a few really interesting people and got in touch with them. It was really great to meet up with them, a bunch of techies who are warm and made me regret I had not taken this decision earlier . No dollars ever earned gave me the feeling of happiness when people recognize your site and appreciate it. You need to feel it to actually understand what I am trying to say.

Its the holiday week, I expect the traffic to dip on almost all the blogs and online shopping and even offline shopping to pick as CNN reports that a chunk of US citizens are not done with the X’Mas shopping yet!

And as for this blog and me, I might get back to regular blogging if I can call it regular in any way possible this weekend or so once I am through with the exams on the 29th. So far its pretty good except for the mathematics which I am hopeless with the only consolation of “Better Luck next time!”. The others were much to my surprise pretty easy. Now all I hope is that the examiner does not correct my papers thinking about his ex-girlfriend who ruined his life!

Title says it why I have not been blogging, not chatting with you people on Yahoo, MSN and even Orkut for that matter. I have been am really busy trying to figure out the various protocols like TCP/IP, figuring out who a System Analyst is and learning about binary trees (nope, not those normal green trees ).

As a result, all my blogging activities have been stalled till the end of this month. While all other bloggers who go on a break have photos to show you, I can only show you pics of my IGNOU’s BCA (Bachelors in Computer Application)textbooks

Just to clarify my status, I just wanted to tell a few fans (mainly myself ) of my blog and other readers that Anand is not dead yet! I was putting up posting to the next day all these days mainly due to laziness and pressure at college and other not so life threating problems. So what was I upto all these days?

• I had the first flight travel of my life on 18th Oct. 2007 to Chennai in Indian Airlines from my home town Cochin. And good things come in a big box, I had my return in the evening in Deccan Air.

How NOT to SEO

I recently noticed that I rank pretty high for the keyword “Web Designer Cochin” on the first as the 4th result. I got all happy and then I decided to have a goal to reach the top to topple the currently numero uno. I with my knowledge of search engine optimization, I optimized my pages with keywords in the title(I did not have it before), keywords in the body and stuff like that. But to my astonishment, I found Google kicked me to the second page for all my good ranking terms. Now I have been going up this week again to reach the 6th position. So the moral of the story is – “Do not optimize your sites too much for keywords, anchor text is important and don’t live by Google!”.

This is an antique debate on using the do-follow plugin on your blogs. Are you looking for more comments on your blog or are you concerned about having a blog that “leaks” pageranks? I had some thoughts on this since I started blogging about a year back. But when JohnChow decided to sell do-follow on the comments on his blog, I decided to take some steps to make commenting more prominent on my blog too.

I had some doubts about this, but when a survey says that you are addicted, you really should be!

78%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

How addicted are you? Let me know through your comments! Happy Weekend folks!

This has to be the first time I ever took this long a break from blogging since I started off almost a year ago. Initially it used to be a redirect problem which was solved with the help of a line addition to the .htaccess file. Then it turned out that I was seeing two different blogs for each URL of the blog. That took a while to solve. Suddenly my proxies are taken down by my host saying that the bandwidth limit has been exceeded. This came as a blow considering that I was told that I will have unmetered bandwidth.

I usually take some time off to optimize my sites once in a while. I always thought that Search Engine Traffic is the best traffic for a blog. Since this traffic is highly targeted and they reach your blog looking for something specific and they are more likely to click on your contextual ads since they relate to what the visitor is looking for.

This a pretty interesting thing I came across all the normal blogs, which claim to make you money online is not making a great deal of money online. Only the big ones like John Chow and others of the kind are actually making big bucks enough to quit a day job. Also the content for making money blogs attract people who already know about advertisements and adsense and others, so it will not make much in terms of PPC revenue either. I had these thoughts running through my mind when I saw this at Courtney Tuttle:

Welcome to TheMusings – My blog. This is my first foray into the world of blogging. I have’nt really decieded what to post in this blog. But one thing I can assure you is that the content in this blog will be heaven for every casual surfer on the net. For now, all I can say is WATCH THIS SPACE