Technocrati-zed blogging

If you are not familiar with Technocrati, here's a definition from Wikipedia:

...is an Internet search engine for searching blogs. By June 2008, Technorati was indexing 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media. The name Technorati is a blend of the words technology and literati, which invokes the notion of technological intelligence or intellectualism.

So how does that concern you as a blogger? Technocrati is the most relied blog search engine in the web today. If you want to put yourself in the english blogsphere map, then this is the site to be "linked" to. Sign up for Technocrati and you will be able to claim your blog and place it on their directory, which search engines like Google use, making it easier for people to find your blog, get online promotion and helps with putting your "trademark" on the map. The fact that you will be able to see other bloggers with the same interest as you have, helps you develop your own blog into something better than what it is now.

Sounds interesting? It should, especially if you're serious about your blog and honing your blogging skills. It's quite easy to Technocrati-zed your blog. Just go to: http://technorati.com, click on the sign up link, fill in primary information, verify your account, then update your information (includes blog url, feed url) then click on "Claim"  to claim your blog.

It should give you a page confirming your request, click on claim status. There you will be instructed to verify if you are indeed the author of the blog. You would need to include in a new blog post a unique code assigned to you, similar to this one: V768D54YYRAB , and publish it.

Once done posting, go back to your Technocrati account info page (clicking on your username will take you there) and go to Claim Status, and click on Verify Claim Token, Technocrati will be checking on your site feed and verify if your unique code is included in that post. If things go smoothly, you should be receiving confirmation that the verification was successful and that your blog is set up for review.

You don't necessarily need a whole new blog, a long standing unclaimed onr works. This might just be the boost your blog needs.

What are you waiting for? Go get Technocrati-zed!

Site Ads: blog click ka-ching!

A lot of blogs nowadays have extra widgets that says "Ads by Google" or "Click here to win prize!"  (for the unfamiliar, a widget is an added box/feature in a blog lay out for easy access of information or tool). Back in the old days, we simply take pleasure in reading entries/ blog post and find those banner ads annoying and complain to the blog-owners what about them taking up most of the content space. Of course the bloggers wouldn't tell you much about them or do anything for that matter. These ads are, in fact, extra-income generating tools. However the "earning" part is dependent on the traffic a specific blog can attract, of course advertisers wouldn't be too care-free where to invest their funds in. They would need sites which attracts consistently-increasing visitor numbers, not necessarily readers, so their names can be seen and possibly their linked could be clicked on, their site visited, strong recall on potential consumers. Advertising done thru social media! Brilliant. Possibly earning extra dough while writing about whathaveyous? Genius.

To get a nutshell understanding on how it works, click play the video below (from Smowtion Media):

What is Smowtion media? from smowtion on Vimeo.

However, interested blogger and blogger-clicker friend beware. The Google people are a lot smarter than you think, they can very well track down where the clicks come from and if clicks are done too often to the point of becoming suspicious. This may very well be the end of your Adsense treasure future, indefinitely.

So how do you instead make profits out of Adsense without literally telling people to click on your ads? Here are some tips.

1. Add a blog roll on your page. This increases the flow of traffic on your blog, eventually visitor would click on the ads if they find it interesting. Of course, advise the other blog owner that you'll add them to the list, so they can too add you. Both of you can benefit from this exchange, also spreading some virtual camaraderie on the net.
2. Exercise and expand your content writing. The more posts you have, the more content, the more keywords, the more chances that your site end up in search engines, the more possibility a random visitor will get into your page and click on your ads.

Another thing... patience is a virtue. Adsense is not fast money, it will take months if you're lucky, to get a ROI. But come to think of it, blogs primarily, aren't money making tools, except if you're putting up a online shop. So just relax and focus on content writing skills, who knows, eventually you might just impress a random visitor or two who will be really nice to you and do you a favor.

When Signing Up: read the fine print... and the back page!

Being LavaLark's first blog host, we found the Blogger site to be quite user-friendly. Any difficulties that we may have come across would be because of our own impulsive clicking (or skip-clicking).

The Blogger site provides you with step-by-step set up, but we do know that most people do not read or go thru each step with zeal. Often times this attitude would let a user miss out on features that may help them fully utilize the account which they have signed up for.

In LavaLark's opinion, you definitely need to know what you are about to sign up for. Treat each "Yes, I want to Sign Up!" button as your signature. Often people would dismiss reading the fine print, then complain once their expectations were cut short or they "innocently" violated some rule that caused their accounts to be shutdown.

Also, be wary on which site you entrust your information to, even the false ones. It may haunt you in the future and you might end up in a very compromising position.

So read, try even research. And if you've already signed up, do what we're doing right at this very moment with Blogger: explore!