Karlonia.com

Debate Continues Over Whether Longer Domain Registrations Provide SEO Benefit

Today I have renewed the domain name of this site for another nine years until 2018, the maximum allowable term under my current registrar, which means that Karlonia.com will be stamping out ignorance along the path to enlightenment for several more years to come.

Meanwhile, of greater importance to most people in the webmaster community is the issue of whether longer domain registrations such as this provide any benefits with regard to search engine optimization. As with most things SEO, there is much debate and guesswork going on among the interested parties over this, and so far it seems that we have not been able to reach any clear consensus. I have read through several articles dating back to 2005 and many related forum threads hoping to figure out whether my longer domain renewal would eventually help me rank better in the search engines. After reading through all of the discussion and comments, it appears that there is roughly a 50/50 split between those who believe that longer renewals confer a (probably small) boost to search engine “trust factors” and those who believe that it makes no difference at all.

The people who believe that it does provide some sort of benefit point to an interesting little tidbit found in a Google patent application from 2005 that states:

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The new search engine Cuil, first heralded as a rival to Google with serious potential and then heavily criticized for a plethora of recent difficulties including an apparent inability to handle punctuation marks, insufficient server capacity, and a general lack of results on many basic queries now seems to be making significant improvements.

After checking my referrer stats earlier tonight, I confirmed that the first search query visits have arrived at this site from Cuil’s domain. Two hits were recorded on the query “free cash-paying surveys” and they managed to pull up one of my posts on this topic from last year. This is good news because that particular post happens to be the one that is generating a fair percentage of my Clickbank sales (most of the remaining sales are coming from the bum marketing page).

Meanwhile, I went to the main Cuil page and tried out some more queries. Overall their performance was significantly better than it was yesterday. Searches on relatively popular keywords are returning more results than before, although still not as many as the other major search engines. Moderately long tail queries are starting to return a few results where there were none at all before. Interestingly, longer tail queries such as How Can I Fix My Cell Phone It Got Wet are not returning any results but are displaying the following message:

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This article by Angela Baca explores some of the reasons that people resist change and suggests ways to overcome this resistance and become more adaptable when necessary. I have noticed the ability to adapt to change is one of the most important attributes for a webmaster to have, especially if he or she is not simply blogging for pleasure or rambling purposes but is actually trying to make a living at it. Fortunately, technophobia has not been much of a problem here at Karlonia, although adapting to the constantly changing Internet trends and search engine algorithms is becoming tiresome.

Here is a good axiom to live by — if a situation doesn’t change, then change your situation. This axiom sounds great. Can you put it to good use?

The tendency to resist change is evident in the human experience. Call it animal instinct if you like. It is just like the puppy who returns home for his owner to feed him. Some personalities resist change more than others. How has your capacity for adapting to change affected your opportunities and your happiness?

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In my ongoing quest to test different monetization methods, I have finally installed a Scratchback widget on the sidebar and now have relatively cheap text link ads available for only $1.50 each. It is placed above the fold just below the RSS buttons. Any incoming link placements are set to remain on the site until 10 others are purchased and bump the first one off the list.

Originally created by Jim Kukral, the ScratchBack system is designed to allow bloggers to receive tips from readers, but instead of using the standard donation buttons, it allows the blogger to “scratch back” the reader by providing a text link in exchange. Although technically the payments are considered tips, the effect is the same as buying text links for traffic and branding recognition without having to worry about messing around with Google’s PageRank algorithm and bringing down their wrath on hapless webmasters. All links in the widget are automatically set to nofollow and are also contained within JavaScript, which means that they are unlikely to unduly influence search engine rankings.

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Although search traffic remains relatively strong, the big news of the week is actually from StumbleUpon, where my healthy snack page managed to go viral about four days ago, increasing its number of “thumbs up” votes from 15 earlier in the week to a total of 42 currently. It has received over 4,300 page views in the last 7 days, placing it above all other pages in terms of recent traffic. Another page that is beginning to do well in StumbleUpon is the one on stopping websites from resizing your Firefox windows, a much more recent post that has received nine positive votes so far along with 1,050 page views.

Meanwhile, some of the search queries are getting pretty funny, with people continuing to be overrun with ants and wet cell phones. Grammar-related questions are also beginning to show a significant increase. Here is this week’s list:

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MyLot is an interesting combination of discussion forum and get-paid-to (GPT) site that I joined several months ago but never really followed up on with active participation. This review article by Azlan Zahid that I found earlier today served a timely reminder for me to give this program another look because it is a potential source of PayPal funds that would not require as much work as writing full-length articles or essays. If you are not already a member of MyLot and would like to join the program, you may do so by clicking on their logo image in the upper left corner of the page. Registration is free and open to residents of all countries.

I came across MyLot.com in one of the forums I joined. The person who recommended MyLot.com to me mentioned in his post that MyLot.com pays for people to post on their site. Since I do some posting to other forums, I thought it might be a good idea to look at this one.

When I first clicked on the link to MyLot.com, I was initially disappointed. Loading of the pages seemed to take longer than I was accustomed to at other sites. However, once the main page was running, I was quite surprised. Unlike most other forums, MyLot.com covers a very wide variety of topics from the usual “making money online” topics to sports, general life issues, religion, politics, social issues, travel, and leisure. Topics such as music, movies, gardening, and cooking are also covered.

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Although not my favorite genre, this movie review of the Black Book by Nicholas Cockayne paints an interesting portrayal of a WWII spy thriller that takes us back to what is probably the darkest period of the 20th century. Carice van Houten and Thom Hoffman play the starring roles while Paul Verhoeven directs.

While period spy thrillers usually have a limited appeal to the mainstream audience, Black Book proved such a refreshing change from all the tired clichés of the genre that this film totally blew all audience expectations out of the water.

Director Paul Verhoeven does a terrific and often unrelenting job keeping the audience immersed in the film, whether it be in the pomp and splendour of the Nazi party or in the brutal murder of Jews fleeing for the border, Verhoeven pulls no punches and offers the audience no opportunity to distance themselves comfortably from all that goes happens on screen. From the horrific injuries of someone being shot in the head to the heroine giving herself sexually to the head of the Gestapo in the name of the Resistance, the audience is right there with the characters, totally involved in it all. This is probably the film’s main achievement as although it offers a stylish portrayal of the World War Two resistance spy thriller, it is hardly ground breaking within this tradition. Where it diverges from similar films of the past is in its willingness to show the more shocking aspects of the story, such as the heroine being showered in feces, dying her pubic hair, and much full frontal nudity, that films in the past have been content to imply rather than explicitly depict.

Normally with a film 145 minutes in length, by the end of the second hour the audience would be hoping for the ending, but Black Book holds the attention riveted throughout, and leaves the audience still wanting more as they leave the cinema.

This is never a comfortable or easy watch, but the cast throw themselves wholeheartedly into their roles, with Carice van Houten as Rachel and Thom Hoffman as Hans Akkermans in particular shining in a more than able cast. Carice deserves a special mention as the captivating Rachel/Ellis, her performance surely launching her into more big mainstream films in the future.

This film is highly recommended for fans of the genre, and an engaging watch for those that aren’t.

After noticing that my two previous quote compilation posts have been doing well in drawing traffic from casual searchers, I did some keyword research earlier today to find out what other kinds of quotes people are trying to find. One topic that came up fairly high on the list was quotes about money and finance. This seemed like a pretty good idea, especially since this blog is supposed to be about Internet marketing and economic freedom. So I pulled together 101 of my favorite “funny money” quotes from my text files, forum signatures, and various other websites to compile this list that I hope the rest of you will enjoy.

• Money can’t buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery. — Spike Milligan
• The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax. — Albert Einstein
• I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor: Rich is better. — Sophie Tucker
• When you’ve got them by their wallets, their hearts and minds will follow. — Fern Naito
• The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill. — Peter Ustinov
• What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money. — Henny Youngman
• Money can’t buy friends, but you can get a better class of enemy. — Spike Milligan
• We didn’t actually overspend our budget. The allocation simply fell short of our expenditure. — Keith Davis
• To make a million, start with $900,000. — Morton Shulman
• A bargain is something you can’t use at a price you can’t resist. — Franklin Jones

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In addition to having the need to resize pop-up windows occasionally, we Firefox users also encounter annoyances such as websites forcibly resizing our browser window for no apparent reason. This has happened to me before with certain traffic exchanges where every time another site came up in the rotation, the window would suddenly shrink from full screen down to about one fourth of its normal size. This made it very difficult to view all of the content on the page without constantly pressing the maximize button in the upper right corner. Fortunately, while searching for information on regaining the ability to resize windows, I also found out the solution to this little annoyance. Here is what you need to do to prevent websites from resizing your Firefox windows at their whim:

• For Windows users, go to Tools >> Options from your browser menu. For Mac and Linux users, it’s Edit >> Preferences.
• Click on the tab at the top of the Options menu that says “Content”.
• Look to the right of the Enable Javascript checkbox and click the Advanced button.
• You should see a pop-up menu with the title of Advanced Javascript Settings that looks like this:

  

  Now you need to uncheck the box to the left of “Move or resize existing windows”. It’s the first menu option and is highlighted by the dotted box in the screenshot above.

• Click OK and you’re done! No longer will you have to worry about having your browser window suddenly resized without your permission. Of course, if you want allow on-page scripts to resize the window for some reason in the future, you can always re-check the appropriate box.

This little tip has saved me many headaches, especially when surfing through traffic exchanges, paid-to-read (PTR), and paid-to-promote (PTP) sites, which seem to have more than their fair share of pages with annoying scripts that try to hijack your browser in some way.

Although generally considered annoying by most Internet users, there are times when being able to fully view a pop-up window is actually necessary for certain types of online transactions. For example, I ran into a problem yesterday when I needed to make an E-Gold exchange, went to the site to log into my account, and clicked on the SRK (Secure Randomized Keyboard) button to bring up the window that allows me to input my password without exposing it to detection by keyloggers. The window appeared, but it was much smaller than the normal size and did not allow me the full range of characters necessary to input the password.

I attempted to resize the window with the usual click-and-drag method on the edges, but to no avail. The window would not budge, other than being closed by the infamous red X, so I wound up having to use the less-than-ideal Internet Explorer browser to complete the transaction. Afterward, I became so annoyed by this and similar instances of abnormally small, inexplicably locked out windows that I called upon my amazingly savvy research powers (in other words, I used a search engine) to find a solution.

Fortunately, the solution to this annoying situation for Firefox users is actually pretty simple; in fact, I’m not sure why the Firefox browser does not simply use these settings by default. In order to bestow yourself with the magical powers of being able to resize pop-up windows, here is what you need to do:

• Go to your browser bar (that is the place where you type in a URL to go there directly) and type in the text about:config exactly as it is displayed on this page. Press Enter.
• You should see a menu that is appropriately labeled about:config in the title bar. It appears in table form with the columns “Preferences”, “Status”, “Type”, and “Value”. Under the Preferences column, scroll down through the alphabetical listing until you see an entry with the following text: dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable.
• Double click on this text or anywhere along this particular row in the table. If done correctly, you should see the text change from regular font to boldface and the Value for this entry will change from false to true.
• That’s all! Now you will have the amazing ability to resize your own pop-up windows to any size you want (within the limits of your monitor screen) by simply clicking and dragging on the corners or edges of the window.

As stated above, I have no idea why the developers apparently thought that the ability to resize popups was too dangerous for newbies to handle, but at least it can be easily enabled without any programming degrees or purchases of expensive ebooks.

Thus another tidbit of ignorance has been stamped out of Karlonia and effectively banished from the minds of all visitors who are fortunate enough to stumble upon this article. In our next mini-tutorial, we will learn how to prevent other web sites from involuntarily resizing our Firefox windows so that we will not have to worry about altering their size again later just so that we can read all of the content on the page.

Last Saturday (July 19) the popular GPT program Treasure Trooper celebrated its three year anniversary and published a newsletter that was somewhat of a departure from the usual short summaries of recent events at the site. This time the site owner decided to write a longer letter and explained the story behind the program’s origins. It was actually a pretty interesting read, as I had never known about how the site started since I wasn’t really into paid-for-offer sites at the time. As usual, I have reprinted the text of the newsletter below for your informational pleasure.

Meanwhile, if you want to find out more information about how to make money with the program and see my latest payment report, you can go to the Treasure Trooper review page. If you’re looking to join the program (yes, it’s free and they accept international members), please click the banner below and click on the “Register Now” button after the page loads.

Dear Troopers,

TreasureTrooper is officially 3 years old now, and I’m feeling a little bit nostalgic. I have decided that this newsletter will be a departure from the usual format. The bonus offers are still there for those of you that can’t live without, but for the rest of this newsletter, you will have the forced honor of listening to me, your humble site CEO, ramble. I’d like to begin with the story of how TreasureTrooper came to be.

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While the overall search traffic has not significantly changed since last week, I have finally managed to implement some Google AdSense units on selected pages of the site. The basic idea is to target the pages where most of the search traffic is coming in while preserving a clean layout on the front page and on any pages where low quality traffic would noticeably reduce CTR values. So far the strategy seems to be working as far as CTR goes, but the earnings per click seem pitifully low compared to the values that I am seeing for my targeted keywords in the AdWords tool. It is clear that my life has become little more than a numbers game; I must either increase traffic to this site several times over or acquire other sites in order to make my efforts worthwhile and avoid a humiliating demise. Meanwhile, I suppose that I should tend to the business of answering this next batch of search queries.

what is atm surcharge — An ATM surcharge is a fee that is charged by banks for using ATMs that are not owned or affiliated with their particular company. This fee generally ranges from one to three dollars per transaction and can be avoided by either using an ATM that is affiliated with your bank or having an account with a bank that reimburses these kinds of fees. For more information on this, see How to Avoid ATM Surcharge Fees.

clixsense how many ads can we click — You can click on as many ads as are available on the screen after selecting “Get Paid to Browse Ads” from the left side menu after logging into your account. After you have clicked all of these and received credit for them, it’s a good idea to check back fairly often (at least once or twice per day) because new ads appear frequently as the advertisers purchase more clicks. Also, the number of ads available for clicking greatly increases when you upgrade to the premium membership.

does usaa accept paypal transfers — If you mean transfers from your PayPal account to your USAA account (or vice versa), yes. I have done these kinds of transfers both ways before, and my experience shows that the transactions take about three to five days to fully settle and allow usage of the received funds.

treasure trooper multiple accounts — According to Treasure Trooper’s FAQ item #5, you cannot have multiple accounts within the same household. It is possible to have multiple people operate a single account within the same household, however. For more information on this program, see Treasure Trooper Payment Report and Review.

did we have a leap year in 2000 — Yes. We also had a leap year in 2004 and 2008. Next…

correct grammar they’re work or their work — It should be “their work”. “They’re work” would be the same as saying “they are work”, which would not make sense in most contexts.

metal lead or led — If you’re talking about the metal, it’s lead. Led is the past tense of the verb “to lead”.

correct usage for WE WAS — It’s “we were“. Was is used with singular subjects such as I, he, she, or you (if you’re referring to only one person). For plural subjects, use were.

Image Credit: Problogger.net, showing the percentages of bloggers who earned various ranges of income per month with AdSense.

Last night I received a query from a searcher at Ask.com who wanted to know about the correct use of passed and past. Since I had already included this pair of homophones in my list of future post ideas, I might as well use this one for the current week. I have seen people confuse these words on web page copy enough to justify writing up a short tutorial on this so that webmasters can get past the relatively mundane task of worrying about grammar errors and can instead concentrate on the really fun things like monetizing their websites and blazing their own trails to economic freedom.

The usage of passed is relatively easy to explain; it is simply the past or past participle form of pass. Although pass can be used as a noun, the past tense form passed is always used as a verb. Generally speaking, it means to move beyond, to proceed, to transfer something from one person to another, or to gain an acceptable outcome. Here are some example sentences:

1. The quarterback passed the ball to the wide receiver.
2. We passed several cars on the way to our destination.
3. The students passed their exams while the legislature passed more laws.
4. Google AdSense will release payment to publishers after their earnings have passed the $100 mark.

Meanwhile, the word past has a few different uses. When used as a noun or adjective, it refers to something that has already happened, is no longer current, and has become a part of history. If the word is used as an adverb or a preposition, it carries the connotation of moving beyond something. For example, if you walk past something, you have traveled beyond it. If we stay awake past midnight, we have moved beyond that point in time and into the next day. Again, here are some example sentences:

1. Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana
2. During the past few days, I have begun implementing AdSense units on selected pages of my website.
3. My Clickbank earnings moved past the $100 threshold and triggered another check payment, thanks in part to my page on bum marketing techniques.
4. Due to the current schedule of events, I have had to stay awake past midnight to finish this blog post.

Now we come to the fun part of finding examples of incorrect usage from various web pages and supplying the needed corrections.

Incorrect: I’ve Moved Passed Falling In Love to Pure Obsession With This Product! — title of a product review article written by “Catherine” at Epinions.com

Correct: I’ve Moved Past Falling In Love to Pure Obsession With This Product!

Incorrect: There probably isn’t much you will be able to do since you have went passed the cooling off period. — user “greenbrucelee” at CertForums.co.uk

Correct: There probably isn’t much you will be able to do since you have gone past the cooling off period.

Incorrect: i called dishnetwork already but of course they past the buck to discovery channel. — user “esxsctt” at Yahoo Answers

Correct: I called Dish Network already, but of course they passed the buck to Discovery Channel.

Incorrect: I past the ball to Andrew and he shot at the goal and he made it! — Taylor & Alexa’s Weblog at blog.penwellfamily.com

Correct: After I passed the ball to Andrew, he shot at the goal and made it!

Quick Summary: If you are moving beyond something AND using the word as a verb, use passed. If you are NOT using the word as a verb, use past.

As consumers continue to struggle with unusually high prices for gasoline and other petroleum-based products, promotions of various gas saving products and gadgets are on the rise. This trend has followed through into the Internet marketing world, as we are now seeing increased sales of ebooks designed to provide useful advice and strategies for saving money on fuel costs either by increasing our overall gas mileage or seeking out lower-cost alternatives that can replace some or all of our current petrol consumption.

Last night I received a promotional email from Daniel Hill, an Internet marketer who has managed to put together a series of five ebooks that cover the topics of hypermiling, gas saving devices, fuel efficient vehicles, living green, and renewable energy. He is selling them as a package called “Intelligent Powered Car” for $19.20 through PayDotCom, an affiliate network similar to Clickbank that uses PayPal as its primary payment processor.

Although I do not remember opting in to this guy’s list, I will save him the embarrassment of putting his email into the Spam & Scam section for now so that you will have a chance to review the product and find out if it is something that you might find useful. I have reprinted the text of the email below, with some slight modifications to correct spelling and grammatical errors in addition to removing superfluous product links and optimizing the anchor text for the ones that I have allowed to remain.

Meanwhile, if any of you have already obtained a copy of the product and have had a chance to read through the material, please relay any impressions or opinions that you might have about it in the comment section. This information may be useful later in putting together a full review of the product for the benefit of our readers.

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The popular affilate network Clickbank released its July newsletter to subscribers today. Probably the most interesting news for Internet marketers is that the company has finally implemented a direct deposit system for receiving our coveted payments. As you can read from the excerpts that I have reprinted below, there are some qualifying conditions for this, namely that you must have already received at least three standard check payments within a 90-day period. You must also reside in the selected group of countries that Clickbank has chosen to make available for this option.

This means that I will probably need to wait until my overall Clickbank income increases somewhat before using this option because I do not yet receive checks often enough with my current minimum threshold. Of course I could always lower the threshold to the minimum of $10 and receive enough checks to qualify for the direct deposit, but then I would not have the actual checks available to use for those enticing Clickbank payment proof posts like the one I published back in May.

Meanwhile, if you’re just looking to make more money from Clickbank and would like some tips and strategies for how to do this, you can read through my bum marketing methods page where I have put together some of the best advice that I have gleaned from emails, newsletters, case studies, and my own experience.

Direct Deposit is Here!

ClickBank is pleased to offer Direct Deposit (ACH & XACH) into both domestic and international bank accounts to eligible clients, at no extra charge.

Direct Deposit is a fast and reliable method for receiving your account payments. Additionally, it allows you to receive payments in your local currency, alleviating unnecessary bank fees.

To be eligible an account must have first received three paper paychecks within any 90-day period. Additionally, only accounts in the following countries are eligible at this time: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

For more information about direct deposit refer to the 2008-07-15 Release Summary.

Tools and Tips — Enabling Direct Deposit

To enable direct deposit within your account, follow the instructions below. For more detailed information, including screen shots, refer to the Direct Deposit Release Documentation.

Steps to enable Direct Deposit:

• Login to your ClickBank account.
• Click on the “Account Settings” tab.
• Click “Edit” next to “Payment Information”.
• Select the “Direct Deposit” payment method radio button.
• Add the requested data to the direct deposit information area.
• Click “Save Changes”.
• The system displays a notification in your account and sends an email to the email address you have listed as your “Account Email” with instructions for completing the enrollment process.
• Go the email account specified in your “Account Email” address.
• Locate the email recently received from “ClickBank Notifications” and follow the instructions provided in the email.

That’s it! You’ll receive a confirmation email from us that the change has been made.

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