Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Planning a Windows 7 reinstall

One of these days, I will re-install the Windows 7 OS on my laptop and downgrade it from a 64-bit version  to the 32-bit version.

I think it would turn out much better if I had some sort of plan before I start doing anything. Off the top of my head, here is a list of the stuff I need to install after the drivers and windows patches.

General:
Archiver: 7zip
Virtual CD: Virtual Clone Drive
Text Editor(not free): e-texteditor
PDF: foxit pdf reader

Internet:
Torrent Client: uTorrent
Download Manager: Free Download Manager
Browser: ChromeFirefox


Multimedia:
Media Player: VLC
Flash Player: Adobe Flash Player

Security
Anti-spyware: Spybot S&D
Anti-virus: Avira



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Sunday, October 25, 2009

Grails on Windows 7

Java Runtime: Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_16-b01)
Grails: 1.1.1
Editor: e-texteditor 1.0.39
Bundles for groovy and grails: http://github.com/gtcaz/tmbundles4win
Database: mysql 5.1 works fine on 64 bit windows 7

grails would not start with the following error:
Error starting Grails: org/codehaus/gant/GantBinding java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/codehaus/gant/GantBinding

to actually make it work, I had to modify startGrails.bat:30 to:
set JAVA_OPTS=%JAVA_OPTS% -Dgrails.version="1.1.1"

Someone must have forgotten to adjust the batch file when the stable version was released


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Sunday, October 11, 2009

Earn with AdSense: Keyword Research

Earn with AdSense is a series of posts that chronicles my attempt to earn with Google's AdSense. This is the 2nd post of the series and describes how I do my keyword research using freely available tools.
If you missed the first post, you can check it out here: Earn with AdSense: The Beginning

What is a keyword?

The term keyword refers to a word or a phrase used by Internet users to find information on-line. For example, if Juan de la Cruz wants to find information about condos in the Philippines, he will probably go to Google, Yahoo or Bing and type in:

condo Philippines

and the search engine would readily display the result page containing links to hopefully relevant pages.

So what is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of finding out what people search for, how much AdWord advertisers are willing to pay and the relative difficulty of getting to the first page of the search results. The search process may be seen as a Demand vs Supply model. Demand is the keyword search popularity or how many times the keyword has been search for a month while Supply is the number of pages that seem relevant to the keyword in question. With the millions of automated junk pages with random text on the web, it is wise to use your own judgment while determining what is a good niche and what is not.

How will this help me Earn with AdSense?

Keywords are very important because it allows us to know what people want. We can benefit from knowing what people search on the internet because it provides an insight into consumer desires and wants. This in turn gives us very valuable information on what to optimize our sites for and bring us traffic.

How do I do Keyword Research

The primary tool I use to do keyword research is Google's free AdWords Keyword Tool. To use it, you just have to open the link in another tab or browser window.
I then type in the keyword I want to check and click on the Get Keyword Ideas button.
This will generate the desired results. To go with our example, I typed in

condo Philippines

and clicked on the Get Keyword Ideas button. I then proceed to change the way the results are presented so as to make analysis easier.
  • set the currency to USD and click Recalculate
  • hide the Local Search Volume and Advertiser Competition column
  • show the Estimated Avg. CPC column
  • change the match type to Exact
  • click on the Global Monthly Search Volume to sort the results in descending order
I then export the result of the keywords related to the terms entered to a csv file for importing into a spread sheet. I then create a column that multiplies the Global Monthly Search volume to the Estimated Avg. CPC. I then create another column that takes 10% of the resulting product. I then sort the spreadsheet based on this column and I take note of the rows that produce a result greater than 20, these are the keywords which I will check for competition.

[condo philippines]
USD 0.69
720
496.8
49.68
[philippine condominium]
USD 0.82
590
483.8
48.38
[philippine condo]
USD 0.60
590
354
35.4
[condominium philippines]
USD 0.61
480
292.8
29.28

I then open a separate tab in my Firefox browser and do a search in Google for the first keyword in my list: condo philippines. The result page tells me that there are 1.89 million pages which are relevant to my search. What is more important is the top 3 search results. I use SEOQuake which is a Firefox plugin that will make finding certain information about sites easier more specifically the Page Rank.

I determine the relative difficulty by taking the Page Rank, add 1 point if the URL contains the keyword exactly, add 1 point if the title contains the keyword exactly. Pages with a higher difficulty rate are harder to beat which might mean that I should try for easier keywords instead. As an example, here is the top 3 results for a google search on condo philippines:
  • http://www.condosphilippines.com/
    • Page Rank: 2
    • Exact Keyword in URL: yes
    • Exact Keyword in Title: yes
    • Difficulty score: 4
  • http://www.condominiumsph.com/
    • Page Rank: 2
    • Exact Keyword in URL: no
    • Exact Keyword in Title: no
    • Difficulty score: 2
  • http://www.viviun.com/Real_Estate/Philippines/Condos/
    • Page Rank: 2
    • Exact Keyword in URL: no
    • Exact Keyword in Title: yes
    • Difficulty score: 3
  • TOTAL Difficulty Score: 9
To me, a score of 10 or below is doable so I will target the keyword "condo philippines"

Please check back in a few days to see how I am fairing in my effort to earn with AdSense.

If you found this post useful and you wish to thank me or help me, please blog about it and link to this post using the link below:
<a href="http://blog.henyo.com/">Earn with AdSense</a> 
You are also welcome to subscribe via email or subscribe via reader to get updates.

Thursday, October 08, 2009

Earn with AdSense: The Beginning

Earn with AdSense is a series of posts that chronicles my attempt to earn with Google's AdSense. Part 01 introduces Google Adsense and mainly documents what materials and resources I am using to study and learn how to earn with AdSense.

What is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to earn money by displaying targeted, unobtrusive Google ads on their websites. AdSense also allows you to provide Google search to your site users, while earning money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages.

How to earn with AdSense?

The main way of earning revenue with AdSense is by displaying Google ads on your site.

With AdSense for content, these ads you display on your site can be either cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand-impression (CPM) ads. For CPC ads, you'll generate earnings when your users click on the ads. For CPM ads, you'll generate earnings every time the ad appears to a user viewing your site.

You can also generate earnings while enabling your users to search your site and the web.

AdSense for search lets you offer your users Google web search directly from your pages. By placing an AdSense for search box on your site, you'll generate earnings from ad clicks made by users on the search results pages.
You won't, however, receive revenue from user searches through your AdSense for search box. When users perform searches on your site, but choose not to click on the ads on the search results pages, you will not receive any earnings.

What am I doing now to earn with AdSense?

I am currently studying several web sites and a couple of e-books:
  • google.com/adsense
    • the source of official information on adsense
  • makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com/
    •  some of the info on this blog may not be up to date
    • after reading the lessons, I can't help but feel that the site is written to sell keyword academy and the other SEO tools
  • macuha.com and zdiaz.com with their guerilla blogging e-book
    • home grown book by Filipinos
  • pinoymoneytalk.com
    • this site holds the number 1 spot on google SERP for earn online
  • johnchow.com and his make money online e-book
    • a popular internet marketer
  • brad callen and his seo made easy e-book
    • another popular internet marketer
UPDATE: additional resources
  • thekeywordacademy.com
    • forked over USD 1.00 for the first month subscription to their members area, now I just have to figure out how to opt-out of the USD 33.00 per month that they charge their members
  • selaplana.com 
    • this is one of the top philippine blogs which also has information on how to earn with AdSense
I have long dreamed and planned to get some passive income from AdSense but I've never really gotten around to actually implementing all the things I've learned ... until now.

Here is my initial plan of action
  • Research on how to find a keyword or niche to target
  • I will create a blog on blogger.com and make 7 posts that are relevant to my keyword of choice
  • I will learn to optimize blogger templates for AdSense
  • I will create an account on technorati, feedburner, alexa and add them to my blogger template
  • I will create an accounts on twitter, facebook, myspace, friendster, multiply and add them to my blogger template
Please check back in a few days to see how I am fairing in my effort to earn with AdSense.
If you found this post useful and you wish to thank me or help me, please blog about it and link to this post using the link below:
<a href="http://blog.henyo.com/">Earn with AdSense</a> 
You are also welcome to subscribe via email or subscribe via reader to get updates.

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Change the mysql root password on Ubuntu

If you guys/gals are maintaining a site and find yourself needing to change the mysql root password on Ubuntu then this post should help you.

Last night, I forgot the root password for mysql on a VPS that I rent. It took a while to find a really simple way to change it but eventually, I found that all I needed to do to change the mysql root password on Ubuntu was to issue the following command:
dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.0

You can then proceed to type in a new mysql root password and type it in again to confirm it.

Did it work for you? You are welcome to post your comments/questions or better yet, link to this post, blog about it and tell all your friends who might find this post useful.