Pagerank is Dead

Whoever says that pagerank is dead does not know what he is talking about.

Google's pagerank algorithm is still very much alive. However, Google is facing all kinds of problems ranking pages with the onslaught of the number of blogs that arise up in the internet. The thing is this : Google needs to ensure that it remains profitable by showing adverts of advertisers to the best publishers.

The internet order has however been turned upside down with the proliferation of countless of blogs. This range from the good to the bad. The problem then is how does Google rank these blogs when compared to more established publishers like newspapers and stuff.

So the rise of this new form of web journalism had some people signalling the end of Pagerank and the entry of a new or better way of indexing pages in Google's search engine. Perhaps, blogs should be left out of Google's index some say.

But that does not solve the problem. At the end of the day, more and more people are turning to blogs for their information, entertainment and lots more. The sprouting up of blogs all over the internet has also been sparked by the craze that people have of making money online. Google itself had provided the means by which people could easily upload information in the form of Blogger.

Pagerank is still not dead. With the rise of the blogs, Google will just have to tweak its Pagerank algorithm to suit the new internet environment that is sprouting out. At the end of the day, people will only link to sites that they find useful. (that is of course excluding people who sell backlinks on their sites).

The new world order of blogs has arrived and the old world of journalism has learnt that they need to embrace it instead of fight against it. They have started to hire popular artists or even stars to write articles for their own blogs. These star studded blogs hopefully will attract more eyeballs than the normal Joe out there who spends his life in anonymity behind some blog.

How To Boost Adsense Earnings

Here are a list of things you can do to boost your adsense earnings:

1. Placement of ads
2. Color of ads
3. Use Adsense for Search
4. Use Adsense for Feeds
5. Write better quality content
6. Write greater quantity of articles
7. Comment on other people's sites / blogs
8. Use social bookmarking services
9. Get more people to your site
10. Write keyword specific topics

Any other suggestions?

How Often To Blog?

New bloggers always face this dilemma on deciding how frequently to put up new posts in their blogs.

Frequency versus Regularity

Before discussing how frequently to put up new new posts in your blog, I think that we should clarify the difference between frequency and regularity.

Frequency is the number of times a new post is put up in a week or day.

Regularity is how often the blog is updated.

While it might seem that these two are the same, they are essentially different. A blogger could be putting up new posts very frequently but not regularly. This could be the serial blogger who has what I called "a posting spurt" where he posts 10 to 20 posts in a single day only to leave the blog alone for a few months before posting again.

On the otherhand, another blogger might post very infrequently but still does it on a regular basis. This kind of blogs are usually personal blogs where the bloggers update it once a week or month. Though the postings are not so frequent, they are nevertheless regular and a reader who is visiting the blog knows that when they visit the blog in a month's time, it will be different.

How Often To Blog?

How often to blog depends on the kind of readers you are expecting. If you post too frequently, you might chase them away as it is usually impossible to keep up with the quality of posts. Many experts agree that the posting frequency should be around one posting a day. New blogs should strive to put up at least 2-3 posts a day.

The issue however is not about frequency but about regular postings. If people are left to guess when to visit your blog, they will give up after sometime especially if they noticed that your blog is not updated regularly. Who wants to read stale news afterall?

How often you should blog also depends on the purpose of your blog and its audience. Once you determine who your audience are, you can safely decide how often you should put up new postings on the blog.

Blogging Does not Equal to Earning Money

Some people think that by blogging frequently, they can earn lots of money through affiliate programs or adsense. This is certainly not true.

I have a few blogs and I realised that certain blogs which I have not updated for weeks or months are still earning me a tidy sum of money each month. Talk about passive income!

On the other hand, certain blogs which I update very regularly and frequently are drawing a much smaller online income. So from this, I can vaguely conclude that though there is a correlation between frequency of posting and adsense earnings, there is certainly no simple cause and effect that can be derived.

Adsense Earnings for Feb 2010

After a stellar performance in January 2010, my adsense earnings have declined slightly to end off at $48.97 for the month of February.

It is amazing how unsatisfied I am with this earnings when people are still struggling to even get their first paycheck from adsense.

But the truth is that I have made some goals to hit an average of $10 per day in adsense earnings for this year and if this continues, my goals will not be met. Afterall, isn't earning $300 per month a reasonable amount to ask for considering the amount of time that I spend on my blogs?

Third Cheque from Adsense

I received my third cheque thus far since joining Google's Adsense program in 2008.

The third payment that I received totals to an amount of $180.75.

I have been making very good progress on my earnings in adsense.

Over the past 2-3 months, my page impressions have increased and led to higher adsense earnings. I can consistently earning $1 a day now using adsense. There is of course a lot of hardwork involved.

Click-through rate remains relatively the same regardless of site so it seems that the only way to increase my adsense earnings is thru the following means:

1. Increase page views/ visitors
2. Increase no. of sites

I hope to get my 4th payout by April or May 2010.