I’ll be on leave for 12 days.  This is  another much needed vacation that I’ve been waiting for. Not only for me but for my whole  family and ahemm… my new mistress.

Therefore, you won’t see any update on my blog until October 4 but please  do me a big favor.

Keep visiting my blog while I’m gone, will you? I just love the fact that somebody is watching over my “house” while I’m gone. At least I feel secured.

And in doing so, I’ll be giving you a big FAVOR too:

1. Grab this FREE Search Engine Optimization EBOOK. – It is a free search engine optimization ebook that tells you all you need to know about search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Grab it NOW by downloading it HERE – FREE SEO EBOOK.

Get it only if you want to  improve the ranking of your website on Google and other search engines

2. Get a FREE 1 month Ad from Adgitize. Yes, I’m giving away 1 month worth of Adgitize ad. If you are not a a member of this fabulous social network, then be a member now. If you want more information about Adgitize, you can read my previous posts HERE, HERE and HERE.

How can you get the free 1 month Adgitize Ad?

Simply leave a comment on any post here at BlogDeManila. I will use Random.org to choose the winner.  Just leave a sensible comment and that’s all. No need to spam. Make sure you are already a member or publisher of Adgitize, if not just visit their site and sign-up.

Click the image to sign-up

Only Adgitize members are qualified to get the free 1 month Ad coupon.

I’m actually leaving tonight with my family and new mistress. I’ll post about my honeymoon with my new mistress when I come back.

Talk soon…

If you have noticed, I’m a bit obsessed with driving web traffic  and how to get more quality links in some of my previous posts.  Today, I’ll be posting another subject on the same direction.

Let’s face it, your blog or website will not make any money if nobody pay attention to it. Simply means, no traffic=no money.

If you use Google in searching for something, for example the words “world cup 2010″ , you will notice that YouTube videos are always on top of SERP (Search Engine Rank Page).

Example of a Google search result with YouTube

This is not really unusual because Google owned YouTube.

What’s so exciting about this feature of Google search engine, is that YouTube is one of the greatest source of traffic of most websites now than ever! This is how the term “viral videos”  was invented. A lot of internet marketers are using this great tool to bring massive traffic to their site.

YouTube is a great way to market your blog or your website, but just like a well written article, you  need to have a  video that draws attention. After this you need to create more views that  will create the link and the position in  the search engine, and therefore the traffic.

How do you create more  YouTube views?

1. Don’t make your video  appear like an Ad. – viewers don’t usually share this kind of videos unless it really amazing. If it’s an Ad for the television, just upload on YouTube on how it was done. I’ve seen a lot of  ” the making of…” videos in YouTube that are so popular.

2. Try to make convincing(but not misleading) titles to your videos. Secret tip: I’ve seen a lot of fake videos title and hey…they have a lot of viewers.

3. Share, share and share. Take advantage of Facebook, MySpace, Forums and other social networks.

4.Try YouTube’s promoted videos feature. YouTube Promoted Videos (ads.youtube.com) is available for users in the USA only and for those Non-USA users, use Google AdWords to create a Promoted Videos ad.

5. Use a third party marketing firm. Try Increaseyoutubeviews.com. Buy YouTube views and let this company do all the hardwork to Increase Youtube Views.

What’s so special with Increaseyoutubeviews.com?  A lot actually. Let me just summarize it in few words. This company will, and can definitely get you on the most viewed list, and make your video go viral!  When it comes to YouTube Video Promotion, just go to Increaseyoutubeviews.com and you’ll be in the perfect place.

If you want to be more popular, you need something to get people interested  in your YouTube videos. Social networks and word of mouth will make you popular over time and so other third party marketing firm whose specialty is making your video viral.

YouTube got a lot of potential to make money, use it to your advantage.

Increase your revenue on Adgitize!

How?

Simply by scoring more than 300 points a day!

How do you score 300 points a day?

• If you are an advertiser, you get a 100 advertising points automatically.
• Visit and click 51 ads on the Adgitize network to score 100 points
• Write a blog each day for an additional 100 points

Doing these  methods will give you a total of 300 points, that is if you do them everyday.  Additionally, you will also gain points from page views and Ad view bonus points each day. These will increase your chances of reaching the 300 points or more.

Earn More through This Special Offer

You will earn a  minimum of 47 cents  for any day that you score over 300 points or an equivalent minimum amount of $14.57 for a full 31 day month.

What Else? Nothing… You are not required to do any more than be an advertiser and score 300 points a day.

So what are you waiting for? Advertise now on Adgitize and recoup your investment at the end of the month! Yes, advertising is an investment with profit and not just a cost. Adgitize will pay you back more on the money you invested  if you will do your assignment.

This is no joke. ‘Been there done that’, and I’m still doing it every month.

As of this writing, my Adgitize earnings for the month of May is already at $17.88. I’m pretty sure that this will increase because there are still articles that are unaccounted for. My biggest earning from Adgitize was at $35.81 on January of this  year.

By the way, this promo will run through July 31st, 2010. If the promotion meets Adgitize sales goals then they will continue the promotion throughout the year.

FREE Domain Name Registration

Want to register a new domain for free?

Yup, I’m not kidding. If GoDaddy is offering $0.99 ( or $1.17 including ICANN fees), 1&1 Internet on the other hand is offering  a free one-year .com domain registration.

hmmm…sounds like a good deal isn’t? After all, free is free, right?

If you are looking to start a blog right now, this offer is really for a grab!

Here is what written on the special terms and conditions:Special Offers Extended until June 2010

Note: Offer limited to one .com domain per customer for the first year. For each additional domain that you order, you will be billed at the regular price of $8 .99/year per domain. After the first free year you will be billed at the regular price of $ 8.99/year.

You may be asking these questions to yourself right now:

• What’s the catch?
• Do I need to pay something in advance?

Well, to answer those questions and kill the curiosity, I actually registered a new domain on them before writing this post. See the order cart screen shot below.

This is the actual shot of my payment receipt.  As you can see, I did not pay anything, nada, zip, zero. I even got a Free Private domain name registration (worth $8.99 at Godaddy).Don’t forget to check this when ordering!

By the way, after I ordered and paid (free or course), I opened my Paypal again to check if I was billed and I was surprised that I did not see any advance payment for 1&1 Internet. It means the deal is real. No string attached or whatsoever.

Hurry, this offer is good until May 31 only.

If you visit 1&1 Internet, you can see on their webhosting page that they also offers 3 months FREE for all their packages. They also have one of the cheapest package that starts at $3.99/month ( with 3 free months).

Grab this opportunity and make your presence known.

Image from TheList Company

Let me start by telling you  that this post is about business blogging, but in general it is also applicable to any type of blogs.

Almost every business owner wants to grow their market and reach a larger audience. There is no better tool nowadays but to give your “brick and mortar” business an online presence. This is where business blogging comes in.

Gone are the days when static pages are the king of the web landscape.  The power of blogging has been fully recognized by the business community as a powerful tool in reaching more potential customers.

If you are into business blogging then congratulations! You’ve done the first step (and sometimes the most important).

Since you already have a physical product  to offer  ( it applies to digital products and services too), all you have to do is to sell, sell and sell.

I won’t talk about landing pages here nor the aesthetic design of your business blog. I want to emphasize on this post on how to promote your product or business online in the quickest way possible.

Let’s forget the technical details of a blog. We don’t need the perfect keywords at this time,  in short we don’t need SEO. Believe me, it  will take t time for a search engine to index your business blog. Let’s forget social media such as Facebook,  Myspace, Twitter, etc..  Let’s keep those in the background for a moment.

Your goal is either to make or increase sales. In order for you to achieve this, you need to inform your potential buyers about your business blog. In blogging, the right term is to drive traffic in your site.

so… How can you promote your product as fastest as possible?

By using  a LIST. Most if not all internet marketing gurus will tell you that without list there will be no traffic. Some equates LIST with Profits. In some way it’s is true.

Spread the word about your business blog  by  building a list. But wait a minute, isn’t building a list takes a loooooonnng time?

Well, definitely yes.

But what if, instead of building YOUR OWN LIST, you can LEVERAGE on other people’s list? If you can ask favor from other people (internet marketer) who are willing to share their list, or do a swap so much the better. Just give a share for every sale (like an affiliate).

If you cannot find other people to promote your product through their list, there are companies out there whose specialty is building a list and either you can rent or buy from them. What’s so good about these companies, is they already have market segregation. If you are looking for a consumer list, you can request them to segregate the data according to your criteria such as geography, age, income, purchasing behavior and more. They can even provide you a special list according to your target such as business list, auto insurance list, etc.

I hope I’ve given you some initial idea in promoting your business blog.

Having a business blog pays – but having a profit pays even better!  This can be easily done the fastest way by leveraging on other people’s list.

Has Entrecard been hacked?

I’m doing my Entrecard drop routines today and I noticed a series of “sexy” widget images with almost the same themes on my “Drops Inbox”.

EC Sexy Widgets

The reason on why a series of “sexy”  or “hot” images on my EC dashboard suddenly appeared in just one day really puzzled me. A two or three succeeding sexy images  is believable, but more than 10 is really humanly impossible. Nobody can switch their EC account in a snap of a finger unless the people who are doing these are using scripts to automatically “drop” on a particular site.

Here’s the result when I tried to connect to click on one of  the widgets:

From this:

Sexy Widget 1

to this one, that belongs to http://abidsyah.com/

Sexy Widget Homepage

If you check their sites, you will notice that they have almost daily post! Some even multiple posts in one day alone! And guess what?They even know how to properly target their market by using profitable keywords! These are sites made for Google Adsense although most of them doesn’t have single ad (yet) not even an image except for the EC widget.

Now, if you click on their EC image on their site, it will return a “No such user” caption such as this:

EC No such user

To my disappointment, I even got a “Penalty”  status from EC when I tried to click on a legitimate blog:

EC Penalty Status

This is the first time I saw this status since I joined EC two or three years ago .

Anyway, this is just to warn you that indeed a spammer or a group of them is lurking the EC community. Beware of them. I’m positively and absolutely 100% sure that they are using a sort of script or a bot doing an automatic drops in our EC widgets.

I will  inform the owners/moderators of EC about this issue and let’s see what’ will be their feedback.

Before I end my post, here’s another set of “sexy images” in one of my “make money online”  EC account:

EC Drop Me

You have been forwarned. Don’t waste your time in clicking their EC widgets.

I received a letter today from Google. I thought it was a letter banning me from their Adsense program or a legal letter letting me know that I’ve done something wrong with my account.

To my surprise, it’s a letter inviting me to be an advertiser on their Google Adwords program. Enclosed on the envelope with the letter is a voucher worth PhP1,500 of free advertising if I sign-up before May 7, 2010. After this date, the value will drop to PhP1,000.

It is written in the letter that there are 3 reasons to advertise your business on Google.

1. PhP1,500. For you. For free. Use it to drive potential customers to your website. For example, if your average cost-per-click was PhP10, PhP1,500 could deliver 150 visitors to your site.
2. Reach your exact customers. Show your ads on Google only when potential customers search for your products and services. Target prospects in Philippines, Asia or the entire world.
3. No risk. No obligation. There’s no contract to sign or minimum spending requirement. Once you use up your free voucher, you’re under no obligation to continue.**

Written under the letter in small print:

** After the promotional credits has been exhausted, your campaigns will continue to accrue clicks for which the costs will be charged to your credit card. If you don’t want to be charged for additional clicks, you can pause your campaigns at anytime.

Not bad at all.

Now, I’m thinking hard on what product or services to advertise.  I’m sure some of you already know that I have my own small software company. I’m developing software for other companies and do consultancy services too. I might use the voucher for this.

Aside from the voucher, inside the envelope is a brochure detailing the step-by-step procedures on how to place an Ad on Google within minutes. See the image below.

The four benefits of Google Adwords are printed at the back of the brochure.

1. Find the people who are searching for you.
2. Pay only when someone clicks on your ad.
3. Show your ad where potential customers can find you.
4. Create your free ad for a successful campaign in just minutes.

I don’t want to waste this free opportunity. I know that Php1,500 is too small for an advertising but I’ve got to start using Google Adwords somehow. And, we all love free don’t we?

Sometimes you come up with a great blog story. You know it will drive you a lot of traffic but you have a problem. No one knows about your great blog post.

In order to get maximum attention you need to spread the word around. This is where the social / bookmark networks come handy.

Bill Gate is using the technology. Mircosoft is taking advantage of this new marketing strategy. What about you? Are you harnessing the power of social networks?

Social Network Logos

What is a social / bookmark network?

It’s a place where you can share your stories or blogs and network or bookmarks with others. Take Digg and StumbleUpon for example. You submit your blog story to the network, allowing other members to vote and comment on it. More popular stories that receive a certain number of votes get promoted to the front page. Most social networks are different. Some even allow you to export a large number of bookmarks straight from your browser.

Why social networks?

1) Social networks get a lot of traffic due to their nature. Users often return to read the latest stories and share their own.

2) Readers are usually only one click away from your blog. A popular submission can bring you thousands of daily visitors.

3) Most social networks are free and take seconds to register and submit your first entry.

4) You will be surprised when you see the amount of other websites that use feeds from various social networks. A good story can spread across the network like wild fire.

5) If your story will not get to the front page you can always submit another one. In most cases there is no limit on the amount of stories you can submit.

6) Most social networks are search engine friendly. Not only your story will be picked up by major search engines in no time, in most cases you will also get a reciprocal link. Some social networks have very good google page rank (PR)

Tips and tricks:

1) An interesting, catchy story is often a must. Your main target is to get promoted to the front page by getting enough votes. You need to convince other readers to vote for your story. Strange, shocking and controversial stories often do well.

2) You can always ask your friends to join and vote for you in order to get more votes. Don’t create fake accounts because you will simply get banned.

Secret tip: Form an alliance with other bloggers and vote for each other’s work.

3) The more stories you submit the better. If you want a steady flow of traffic you will need a steady flow of submissions.

4) Just enjoy your experience. I certainly find it more interesting compared to other methods of blog promotion, such as link development.

Social networking sites are useful, aside for their marketing potential,  but as a way of keeping in touch not just with your friends but with your universe of friends.

There are a lot of various social networks around. Simple search on google should do the trick.

Entrecard recently opened it’s network to virtually everyone. I’m sure most of the Entrecard members are already aware of this changes. According to Entrecard’s announcement, they are opening the system so bloggers can also network with regular website owners too.

I think one of the reason for this is that, by opening the network to regular website, they might also be looking for “other opportunities” to make the site profitable. I can’t see nothing wrong on this. It may even bring positive outcome later on, not only to Entrecard owners but to the whole community as well. This is what Adgitize is doing and I’m not against it. Let’s face the fact, business needs to profit too! Without a profit then there’s no business at all.

One of the  advantages of Adgitize over EC is your points (credits) are automatically converted to cash.

Entrecard is an advertising exchange network for bloggers (and non-blog too, now)  which holds the promise of boosting traffic by visiting other sites. Blogs or normal sites doesn’t matter because when you really want to gain more traffic in Entrecard network, you are suppose to reciprocate a visit.

Be a paparazzi and win at least Php 20,000 Cash + 1 Year’s Supply of Real Leaf!

Real Leaf launches its Paparraz-Tea blogger contest, open to all the bloggers of the Nuffnang Network!

Mechanics of the Contests:

1. This contest is open to all Nuffnangers and will run until January 31, 2010.
2. To join, bloggers must take a picture of a person drinking Real Leaf and create a blog entry about it explaining:

• Why the person was drinking Real Leaf
• The situation the person was in

3. Each blog entry must have the uniform title: “Real Leaf Paparazzi”.

4. Once you’ve published your entry, drop an email to realleafteacontest@gmail.com with a link to your post so we can keep track of it!

5. Entries will be judged by the following criteria:

• Creativity of photo: 30%
• Creativity of write-up: 30%
• Popularity of blog post: 30%
• Brand fit: 10%

6. Only one entry per blogger will be allowed for this contest.

7. Winners shall be notified via email and phone call.

Cash Prizes :

• First prize: Php 20,000 Cash + 1 Year’s Supply of Real Leaf
• Second prize: Php 15,000 Cash + 1 Year’s Supply of Real Leaf
• Third prize: Php 10,000 Cash + 1 Year’s Supply of Real Leaf
• Consolation Prizes (blog entries ranked 4-10): Real Leaf Product Bundle + Premium Item

Catch a Real Leaf now and be your own paparazzi!