Exceptions to the case – How to be a skeptic in this superfically optimistic world.

Recently I realised i have become more and more a skeptic instead of the optimist I used to be. Back in the old days, I do just take into consideration the actual path of how things should be and assume the reality would go along those ideal paths. Yup I have failed quite a few times because of these assumption of mine. Idealist be damned.

Nowadays, presented with an idea no matter how bright or beautiful it seems on first sight, I would unconciously test out the concept mentally to check for exceptional scenarios that would cause the whole downfall of things. Thereafter contemplate on tactics on how to resolve these scenarios should they occur. In the event of a lack of resolution put it on hold and come back to it at a much later time. Progress along the path seems slower now than it used to be.

Being a skeptic is indeed a painstaking task and not a role of brain lazy people.

Unable to connect to the database:The MySQL adapter “mysql” is not available.

Solution :

Go to C:\program files\mysql\bin\

Copy this file libmysql .dll to C:\windows\system32\

System:

Windows XP

Why it occurred:

You originally installed a previous version of MySQL probably 4.+++ and then tried to install a new version MYSQL version 5++

Symptoms:

When you run your apache server you see this error in the error.log file of your Apache server

PHP Warning:  PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library ‘C:/Program Files/PHP/ext\\php_mysql.dll’ – The specified module could not be found.\r\n in Unknown on line 0

… and it happened  despite php_mysql.dll already being in place

Make money from YouTube another affiliate advertising revenue stream

This was sourced from google for my personal reference but feel free to share it.

Last week, we announced that the video units feature will soon be retired. Our announcement has created some confusion, so we thought it would be helpful to outline how Google will still continue to support revenue opportunities for video content owners.

The video units feature allowed publishers to create video unit players, with YouTube partner content and accompanying ads, within their AdSense accounts. They could then embed this special player into their web pages, and revenue generated from the ads would be split between the YouTube partner, the AdSense publisher, and Google. Although we’re retiring the video units feature, we’ll continue to offer the following monetization solutions to video content creators:

AdSense for video

AdSense for video gives video owners the ability to earn money from videos they create or own. They can run placement targeted instream video ads (pre, mid, post rolls) and graphical overlays or contextually targeted text ads in Flash players, and the ad revenue will be split between the video owner and Google.

Current AdSense for video publishers include Encyclopedia Britannica, Demand Media, and College Humor. If you’d like more information about the program or how to apply, visit our microsite.

YouTube Partner Program

Similarly, the YouTube Partner Program enables popular content creators to share in advertising revenue from their own videos hosted on YouTube. Participants can choose the videos on which they’d like to show overlay ads or accompanying banner ads. These videos earn them money whether they’re viewed on YouTube or embedded onto web pages elsewhere online, and the revenue generated from these ads will be split between the YouTube partner and Google.

The YouTube Partner Program has thousands of participants from ten countries around the world, and is accepting applications. To learn more about the program, visit the Partnerships Benefits page.

GMap2 is not defined on ThingsToDoSingapore.com

Apparently it seems the Google Map API isnt all that stable after all. On and off while loggin into my site ThingsToDoSingapore.com I encounter this problem of  GMap2 not defined.

GMap2 is apparently the core object class that one instatiates a map object from. I have been researching over the internet to find a work around this problem but it seems this is a very common problem that one faces when using the Google Map API.

This is very painful indeed as it is costing me traffic volumn. Ouch!

Increase Adsense Revenue: Google Adsense Revenue Sharing Sites For Backlinking

This page is for my personal reference. The original is here

It has been under 6 months since I joined Google as an affiliate, during which time I have built up a respectable second income here on hubpages; most of this income comes from AdSense whilst Amazon is very much a secondary source. Publishing online content is a steep learning curve for those that wish to successfully monetise their efforts, it certainly requires a lot of smart working and at times purely hard working as well as a whole lot of patience. As I approach my 200th page of content here on hubpages (this is hub number 198), I have finally begun to develop and implement a clear strategy for success with AdSense which involves significant amounts of time but has shown me enough to suggest that it is one which will pay dividends for the long term. This AdSense strategy involves multiple sites all of which can generate you plenty of extra AdSense revenue whilst enhancing the performance of your primary content.

My ‘Bookmarker’ Adsense Strategy

The strategy is entirely simple and is in fact nothing more than you should expect to have to do to become financially successful on hubpages, and basically involves numerous means of ‘backlinking’. Please note that this strategy assumes that you already know how to optimise your hubpages for search engine traffic (SEO) and using keywords, otherwise you should research these things first; it also assumes that you know what a dofollow backlink is. This method works equally well with articles published on other good self publishing sites including Squidoo, InfoBarrell, Ehow, and HowToDoThings. It also assumes

  • Write your keyword optimised, informative, presentable hubpage (Primary Content).
  • Submit a bookmark of your hubpage to as many revenue sharing bookmark sites as you can, e.g. SheToldMe, Xomba, and RedGage. Use alternative search terms and in the description if possible – never copy and paste parts of your original hubpage (Secondary Content)
  • Have a look on the first few pages of google for any additional possible dofollow backlinks to your content, using your primary keyword phrases. Additional backlinks such as this do not pay but can be invaluable.
  • Write a shorter yet unique version of the primary article on your personal blog, with a backlink from the post to your primary content (Secondary Content)
  • Submit a bookmark of your blog post to exactly the same bookmarking sites, again using any possible new keywords and search phrases (Secondary Content)
  • – THIS STRATEGY IS ONGOING AND GROWING, IT WILL DEVELOP WITH TIME!

My Traffic Growth In 6 Months

This hubber does 0-6000 in under 6 months! Impressive?
This hubber does 0-6000 in under 6 months! Impressive?

It may not seem advanced, it may seem difficult and time consuming, but so many people have asked how I am gaining views at such a rapid pace – and this is how. I still have so far to go, so many more backlinks to build, so much more time to find and utilise. I have no secrets, nothing that many of you don’t know already, I just backlink in places which also directly boost my AdSense earnings. Is this strategy working for me? The picture above suggests so and I expect that the curve will keep on heading north over the next 6 months – the answer is yes. I am still only using 4 bookmarking sites, and haven’t yet finished using them, there are also another dozen or so to go! If you wanted to take your backlinking one step further then you could even bookmark your bookmarks!

SheToldMe.com

SheToldMe was the first Adsense Revenue sharing site that I used, and with great success. I soon found, following a Google page rank update, that my hubs bookmarked through SheToldMe were performing better in the search engines than my hubs which were not. This initial success prompted me to bookmark every single one of my hubs, and the improvements in my traffic have been clear for me to see. SheToldMe gives you 100% of the Ad Impressions attributed to each of your bookmarks, a scheme which is now making me a respectable $5-$10 extra per week. Remember that these bookmarks are ‘dofollow’ so each bookmark benefits the page of content that you link to, the direct earnings and 50 visits a day from these posts are nothing but an added bonus. All of my hubs are now bookmarked on this site.

Xomba.com

My success with SheToldMe led me to explore other bookmarking sites which shared Adsense revenue, and this led me to discovering a number of sites including this one – Xomba.com. It works just like SheToldMe but has a greater ‘page rank’ and more traffic because it is a lot more established. It is still early days for me with Xomba and I have only bookmarked 20 of my hubs, however I am already seeing AdSense revenues from them and my bookmarks are of course ‘dofollow’. Traffic to my hubpages, my primary content, has not yet been evident but the most important thing for you to consider is the positive effects on the search engine placement. I suspect that my direct AdSense Revenue from Xomba will eventually far exceed the $5-$10 a week that I generate from SheToldMe despite it only sharing 50% of ad impressions with it’s users.

Snipsly.com

Snipsly is another AdSense Revenue sharing bookmarking site, this one paying a generous 80% of impressions with its users. I am currently building up my portfolio of back-links on Snipsly and it is one which will benefit you more in the long term rather than the short, purely because it is yet to be truly picked up by the Google monster. I haven’t seen much in the way of revenue or traffic yet from Snipsly, yet I know that bookmarking now will see rewards in the future. I can fully recommend Snipsly for it’s easy to navigate wordpress theme, in fact I believe that it can outgrow any of the other sites listed on here. To find out more about Snipsly.com, check out my dedicated article ‘Snipsly.com – Make Money From Your Bookmarks’.

YouSayToo.com

YouSayToo.com is one which is best used with your personal blog, and basically links your blog to it’s website. Every time you publish a blog post it replicates and backlinks it to their site, giving you a 50% share of AdSense Revenue as well as giving your blog numerous dofollow backlinks. The trick for hubbers is to use their blog posts to link their hubs, with each blog post then being linked on your YouSayToo.com account. This one is entirely automated, if only they were all made like this!

List Of Other Revenue Sharing Backlinking Sites

I have so many hubpages to retrospectively bookmark, and so little time at the moment, that I haven’t even signed up to these sites just yet. The potential for improvements in search engine placement and increased AdSense revenue is huge when considering just how many variants of each bookmark I can create, each counting as a dofollow backlink. It is a slow but sure process that I will complete – and each six months on hubpages will see a new hub updating you on my progress. It was little over 3 months ago that Ryan Hupfer interviewed me and published a blog post charting rise to 1000 page views per day, now that he is gone it is left for me to tell you all myself. I hope that you enjoyed this light piece, I will leave you with that list of backlinking sites now!

Once again this page is for my personal reference. If you are thinking of looking for the original  article please go here.

Non-Revenue Sharing Sites

Remember that it is the dofollow backlink which is most important, AdSense is just a bonus, so you should take advantage of all available free backlinks. These sites offer free backlinks to your own content, all dofollow, but do not share any AdSense impressions with you:-

My Latest Content

Using statcounter.com concurrently with Google Analytics

These two days I got really puzzled with Google Adsense. My page impressions were really high but apparently no clicks were registered on my page for the adsense. I wonder what went wrong. So ended up I started researching over the internet about Google Adsense click not registered. This was when I chanced upon this new tool called statcounter.com

This is a real time tool that shows you where visitors came into the site from and where they exited the site to. One of the really useful things about this is the fact that they could help track if someone actually clicked on the links in your adsense. This does provide a counter as to whether Google Adsense if just simply faking your click rates.

I would not have changed upon this site had I not found my adsense revenue to be suspiciously non-existant

Alternatives to Google Adsense

I came across this very goood and informative article on online advertising revenue streams and hence copied and paste the whole thing here for personal references

Google AdSense is the most popular contextual advertising network currently available on the internet. Many webmasters and bloggers earn money through this service. It’s available for anyone completely for free, AdSense is supported internationally – wherever you are!

Six Good Google AdSense Alternatives and Replacements

But, unfortunately, many users simply can’t join this service – since Google don’t want to approve their requests. Also, many bloggers and webmasters are banned from Google AdSense, because they have broke Google’s terms. Once you get banned from Google AdSense – it’s very hard to re-enable your request!

Fortunately, there are many similar contextual advertising networks available for free. Of course, all of them allows you to earn money per click, like Google AdSense do.

6 Google AdSense Alternatives

1.) Clicksor – Clicksor is very good and quality Google AdSense alternative. Allowing you many advertisement types at good click-through-rate. Allowing you to use Contextual and many other ad types that are not supported by Google. (read review)

2.) AdBrite – One of the oldest and most popular advertising networks on the net. Advertising through AdBrite gives your visitors opportunity to buy advertisements on your sites easily. In other way, giving you related contextual ads to earn money through. (read review)

3.) BidvertiserBidvertiser is professional contextual advertising network. Offers you only contextual and feed advertisements. Very similar to Google AdSense. Giving you opportunity to earn money by displaying related textual ads on your site. (read review)

4.) ChitikaChitika is founded in 2003. It is the leading blog advertising company with a network of thousands of blogs and websites and hundreds of name brand advertisers and merchants. Offers you to earn money by using many ad techniques and options. (read review)

5.) Text Link Ads – This service is not actually contextual advertising service. TLA allows you to earn money by selling text and inline text advertisements on your site or blog. Choose price and sell textual advertisements on your site with this service. (read review)

6.) Yahoo! Publisher Network – Yahoo are currently playing catch up to Google and are trying to release their own context sensitive advertising service. This promises to be an excellent alternative to Google Adsense but in reality is likely to be a simple copy with the same restrictive terms and conditions as Google, including $100 minimums on payouts. Right now it’s not available internationally.

Related posts:

  1. Ways to Make Money through Google AdSense
  2. Chitika vs. Google AdSense
  3. Clicksor – Online Contextual Ad Network
  4. Google AdSense for Domains is Available
  5. Where to Place Google AdSense Ads

Improving the performance of Ajax on ThingsToDoSingapore.com

Recently I started working on Things To Do Singapore again.

Apparently the javascript libraries were getting quite thick and this was affecting the loading of the interface.

There is the use of the following :

  1. Xajax Library
  2. Jquery Library
  3. Google friends Connect Api
  4. Facebook Connect Api
  5. SWFUpload Library

After much observation I realised the SWFUpload Library sometimes takes too long to load and fails as well causing the whole interface to fail loading at time seriously affecting usability of the site. Perhaps this might be to cause of the high bounce rate I observer from my Google Analytics of 80%.

I spent this morning thinking how to go about solving this problem and this was the method I came to

Javascript library should be classify into two groups as critical and non-critical to user experience.

The Xajax Library, jQuery library are considered critical to user experience

The Google Friends Connect library as well as the Facebook Connect library are not often employed. though these two library are too tightly integrated with the core achitecture. Perhaps it was a bad design choice.

SWFUpload is not often used by other users and hence rarely employed.

Having done the proper classification, I next work  on loading the SWFUpload asynchronously after the other library and interface has loaded. This in face drastically reduced improved useer experience. It reduced user waiting time as well as at the same time reduced the error rate of the loading interface.

This was how I did it.

jQuery(document).ready(function() {

loadScript(“http://thingstodosingapore.com/swfupload/swfupload.js”);
loadScript(“http://thingstodosingapore.com/swfupload/swfupload.queue.js”);
loadScript(“http://thingstodosingapore.com/swfupload/fileprogress.js”);
loadScript(“http://thingstodosingapore.com/swfupload/handlers.js”);
//alert(“swf loaded”);
});

function loadScript(sScriptSrc) {
var oHead = document.getElementById(‘head’);
var oScript = document.createElement(‘script’);
oScript.type = ‘text/javascript’;
oScript.src = sScriptSrc;
oHead.appendChild(oScript);
}