Post Rating Widget for Blogger

I really liked this widget, and found it easy to install, once I figured out why it wasn't working!

From Blogging To Fame - Bloggers Bread :

Post Rating Widget for Blogger
I will show you how to install Post Rating widget to your blog. The Simple steps given below will install this beautiful widget easily. Below is the screen shot of this widget

Adsense Earnings at the Beginning & Today

I signed up with Google Adsense on May 8th, 2006 (my birthday!) and was sent my first cheque on June 23th, 2006. I made enough the very first month because I already had a busy website www.borntolove.com, that I had added Adsense to, along with my new blogs. If not for my website, it would have taken a lot longer to recieve my first paycheque! I think I forgot to make channels for every ad I placed, so it doesn't match the total.

May 1, 2006 - May 30, 2006 - Total - $182.02
Born to Love - $152.72 (584,546 page views)
Life Begins... - $0.39 (1,525 page views)
Frugal Baby Tips - $1.78 (583 page views)
Stories of Pregnancy & Birth over 44y - $15.49
(3,498 page views)


Photo by Glztt

Here we are, 20 months later, and my earnings have increased nicely! Borntolove.com still carries the bulk of my earnings, but the blogs are coming along nicely, and I have added a few new ones. Right now, some of the blogs aren't earning money - I'll have to work on that! Hmm... still doesn't add up to the total - I'll have to see what ads aren't connected to channels.

January 1, 2008 - January 31, 2008 - Total - $365.84
Born to Love - $199.51 (691,947 page views)
Life Begins... - $2.10 (1,948 page views)
Frugal Baby Tips - $3.82 (1,751 page views)
Stories of Pregnancy & Birth over 44y - $25.00 (19,157 page views)
Pregnancy Stories by Age - $28.62 (21,292 page views)
You Can Get Pregnant - $51.64 (6,742 page views)
Top Gambling Secrets - $1.18 (196 page views)

My goal this year is to get my daily average up to $20.00 (or more!) a day. For the past week or so, it's about $12.00/day.

Interestingly enough, while my earnings have increased in the past month, "some publishers have said their earnings are flat or up from the previous month but most are reporting a drop in earnings."

Page 1 on Google in 22 days!

I am sure, like me, you receive those emails about how they will help get your site to the top of page 1 on Google, for just a small fee. I have seen anywhere from $100 to $4,500 quoted!

Be first on MSN, GOOGLE, YAHOO ..
"Without being seen first on the search engines, your site can be little more than a glorified business card"
"If you're seen first on the major search engines, chances are you're the one people will call first. It's that simple."

Once, when I had pnemonia, and my website host suddenly changed my URL (this was in my pre-domain days of borntolove.com) - I broke down, and paid someone $99 to get me re-listed quickly - or so I thought...

Didn't make one bit of difference! I was so angry. So, as soon as I got better, I went back to my slow but sure method of submitting my site individually myself to the various search engines and waiting. And yes, it worked well for me, as it always did.

So I created this Marketing on a Shoestring blog on January 3/08, more to keep track of my marketing efforts and blog hacks than anything else. I did nothing, spent nothing, to promote it.

On January 4th, I received my first comment! A few days later, Blogger Templates (gave me 199 hits so far) added my link to my Blogger Hack: Three Columns, Any Browser on their site. Every day I post a new post, they update my link!

Insight Of Nothingness offered free links to 50 blogs, and I was fortunate to get 4 of my blogs added on the list.

So I decided to list the Marketing blog, along with my other blogs at BlogCatalog.com (11 hits), Zimbo.com (2 hits), Sitehoppin.com (17 hits), MyBlogLog.com (2 hits), DotDashCreate.com (18 hits) and Bumpzee.com (0 hits). Added a stats counter from Statscounter.com.

Still hadn't gotten around to listing it on any of the search engines, it was still too new. So I thought the other day, I would just check for search engine hits on my Recent Keyword Activity page of StatsCounter. And discovered I actually already had 13 Google hits!

So I click on some of the links to see where I am at, and find the following:

Date______Name____________ Query_________
Jan 6 -- blogsearch.google.com -- link:http://dzrbenson.com/blog/
- My Recent Keyword Search Increases Hits article is on page 1, 2nd listing down!

Jan 12 -- www.google.com -- hack three
-- My Marketing on a Shoestring: Blogger Hack: Three Columns, Any Browser article is on page 1, 2nd listing down, AND the coveted indented second entry Marketing on a Shoestring : Marketing on a Shoestring underneath.

Jan 15 -- blogsearch.google.com -- blogged find better blogs
- My Recent Keyword Search Increases Hits article comes up as
"Results 1 - 1 of about 1 for blogged "find better blogs"."

Jan 18 -- www.google.co.uk -- dotdashcreate.com
- My Marketing on a Shoestring: 1/6/08 - 1/13/08 article comes up on page 1, 9th listing down.

Jan 23 -- www.google.com -- marketing tip white space
- My Marketing on a Shoestring article comes up on page 1, 3rd listing down.

No, not every listing made it to page 1, but 5 out of 13 isn't bad and none were further back then page 2.

Considering I still haven't spent much time (and absolutely NO money) promoting the blog, AND it's only 23 days old - I am impressed with my little blog!

Recent Keyword Search Increases Hits

I did a little experiment, by adding the links to recent keyword searches from my StatsCounter account to the bottom of my posts, in each of my many blogs, as of December 24, 2007.

Let's use my Pregnancy Stories blog as an example: Prior to this my average page loads was 343, unique visitors was 169, first time visitor was 139, and returning visitors was 30.


Immediately I saw a difference, but decided to put it down to the holidays and many people getting new computers for Christmas. But after one month, the increase has continued.

Average page loads has increased to 692, unique visitors to 299, first time visitors to 250, and returning visitors to 50.


What I did was I went to my Recent Keyword Activity in StatsCounter for each blog, highlighted a keyword search, copy (CTRL-C)and pasted (CTRL-V) the link to the blog: blogger page elements - this easily copied the link as well as the words to my blog in one step.

For the Pregnancy Stories By Age blog, I put 5 keyword search links in a small font at the bottom of each post, and kept to my daily habit of 5 story posts each day. (For the other blogs, I added 10 links and posted once a day)

Now, I also started adding more links in the body of my posts, linking words to Wikipedia pages or revelent articles or sites. This can be harder to do with the pregnancy stories, as few words were appropriate to use, but the other blogs, such as You Can Get Pregnant in Your 40's and Life Begins... worked much better for this method.

Of course, this also affected my Goodle Adsense clicks and earnings.
From Dec13-24, average daily clicks was 36, average daily earnings $7.20
From Jan 8-13th, average daily clicks was 70, average daily earnings $11.43

Why did this work? Well, since people found my blogs with these words, they are obviously relevant and targeted. Targeted keywords generate targeted visitors, and targeted visitors are much more likely to be active while on the pages of your website.

More stats on my busier blogs:

Frugal Baby Tips:
Dec 13-24/08 - Average: 31 Page Loads, 17 Unique Visitors, 16 1st Time Visitors, 1 Returning Visitors
Jan 8-22/08 - Average: 58 Page Loads, 35 Unique Visitors, 32 1st Time Visitors, 3 Returning Visitors

Life Begins...:
Dec 13-24/08 - Average: 32 Page Loads, 29 Unique Visitors, 27 1st Time Visitors, 3 Returning Visitors
Jan 8-22/08 - Average: 65 Page Loads, 54 Unique Visitors, 50 1st Time Visitors, 4 Returning Visitors

You Can Get Pregnant in Your 40's:
Dec 13-24/08 - Average: 112 Page Loads, 77 Unique Visitors, 66 1st Time Visitors, 11 Returning Visitors
Jan 8-22/08 - Average: 212 Page Loads, 157 Unique Visitors, 137 1st Time Visitors, 19 Returning Visitors

Stories of Pregnancy & Birth Over 44y:
Dec 13-24/08 - Average: 375 Page Loads, 249 Unique Visitors, 176 1st Time Visitors, 73 Returning Visitors
Jan 8-22/08 - Average: 602 Page Loads, 383 Unique Visitors, 287 1st Time Visitors, 96 Returning Visitors

Pregnancy Stories By Age:
Dec 13-24/08 - Average: 343 Page Loads, 169 Unique Visitors, 139 1st Time Visitors, 30 Returning Visitors
Jan 8-22/08 - Average: 692 Page Loads, 299 Unique Visitors, 250 1st Time Visitors, 50 Returning Visitors

I haven't even promoted this Marketing blog yet, since it is still so new, only 22 days old. But already it has come up 10 times in the Google search engines, so I will try adding the Recent Searches links here as well.

Recent Keyword Searches: blogger page elements, dotdashcreate.com, shoestring marketing, blogger hacks, #header .description { blogger fix, blogged find better blogs, blogger hack, float hack ie6 three column, hack three, link:http://dzrbenson.com/blog/