How to Create or Download mp3, Polyphonic and Nokia Ringtones

September 2, 2008 · Filed Under How To and Online Tutorials · Comment 

Your phone rings for 20 seconds but your mp3 ringtone is a full-length song which not only a waste of memory space, but it defeats the purpose of having it as your favorite ring tone when what you want is the chores halfway into the song to play as your tone, not the beginning of the mp3 song.

Ever heard of Audacity? This is where the free open source Audacity comes in, it is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. What it does is it’ll trim your mp3 down to the exact 30 seconds chores you always wanted.

1. Download Audacity (free) and LAME mp3 encoder (free)

2. Install Audacity, unzip LAME mp3 encoder, you’ll need the LAME file in step 4.

3. Launch Audacity, using the Zoom and play buttons, locate the 30 seconds of your song you want to be your ringtone. Use the select tool to highlight the 30 second ‘ring tone’, from the Edit menu, select “Trim.” Screen shot below.

4. Hit ‘Export Selection as mp3′, a new window will pop up requesting for the LAME mp3 encoder, select ‘yes’ and locate the file in your hard drive.

5. Volla, you’re done. Transfer the mp3 to your ringtone and wait for a call.

P.S. Audacity is a powerful mp3 editor, be creative and browse around Audacity’s editing tool for effects such as ‘fade in and out’.

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How to increase your google adsense earnings?

July 20, 2008 · Filed Under How To and Online Tutorials · Comment 

How to increase your google adsense earnings

Blogging for money is not my cup of tea, but that doesn’t mean I hate the idea of making money online, who does? Lately, I’ve noticed a large number of people decided to blog not because they enjoyed blogging but wanted to make a living out of it, and that really annoys me. Reminds me of a good friend of mine, when the blogging world was in its infant years, I proposed the idea of co-blogging, with no intention of making anything out of it, but he rejected my idea, reason is because it is a waste of time.

Fast forward 2 years, he came talking to me and wanted to know how blog works and told me he bought a book - ‘Google Adsense for dummies‘, and just like yesteryear, I politely rejected his proposal on the ‘idea’ of co-blogging with him. His sudden passion in blogging was due to the fact that he overheard I’m making a living out of it.



Anyway, GeckoandFly was meant to be a collaboration between my friends (non-tech savvy people) by it did not materialized, glad that it didn’t worked out, if it does than my earnings would be equally divided among them. Three years of blogging and numerous trial and errors, I conclude that the art of monetizing your blog comes in many forms, depending on the blogging platform, keywords, language and many more, I would like to take the opportunity to highlight some of the key issues or shall I say some really simple technique that all newbie should know.

1. Insert Ads into your post.

This is by far the easier way to increase your CTR, but be cautious that just like a sword, it cuts both ways because it can be potentially annoying to your readers knowing that you are bombarding them with advertisement. Some of my favorite formats are the 468 x 60px, 300 x 300px, and 125 x 125px. Read AdesBlog.

2. Filter unwanted or low paying ads

Rumors has it that the author of AdsBlacklist own numerous spammy websites and the only for his splog to appear in adsense is by blocking out the competitions, thus born AdsBlacklist, basically he provide a list of his competitor’s splog to be filtered by the publisher. Well, it does works to a certain extend.

3. Ping your blog, submit to all the search engines.

Based on my 3 years of experience, pinging you blog and submit it to every known search engine does not guarantee traffic, and in most cases you get spammed in returned.

Submit to Google
Submit to Yahoo
Submit to MSN
Submit to Baidu (China’s biggest search engine)

Ping Moreover - http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://www.YOUR-DOMAIN.com/sitemap.xml

Ping MSN - http://webmaster.live.com/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://www.YOUR-DOMAIN.com

Ping ASK - http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.YOUR-DOMAIN.com/sitemap.xml

Ping Google - http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=http://www.YOUR-NAME.com/sitemap.gz

Ping Yahoo - http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=Yahoo&url=http://www.YOUR-DOMAIN.com/sitemap.xml

4. Sitemaps and SEO

Submit your sitemap.xml manually to Google, MSN, and Yahoo, it is a great way to monitor the keywords and your ranking in Google and Yahoo, highly recommended. The following table lists the Sitemap submission URLs for several major search engines:

Google Webmaster Central
Yahoo Site Explorer
MSN Webmaster Tools

If you are using Wordpress, then you should install these plugins:

All in One SEO - It works, based on both my blogs’ traffic, I noticed a 10 - 15% increase in term of pageviews.

Google XML Sitemaps - Will generate a sitemap.xml automatically whenever you update your post and comments, it pings all the three major search engine as well. A highly recommended plugin.

I’m not a SEO expert, neither am I a rich millionaire with tons of money lying around on the carpet. Just an ordinary kid making some spare cash for my college education. Whatever I wrote here are pretty basic in term of monetizing your blog, Google for more.

5. Drop Comments

By dropping your comments with a link back to other blogs, you’re building a social presence in the blog sphere, make it a habit, I would say at least 3 comments for each for your write.

p.s. If your new to the world of blogging, do read ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, it is very informative for beginners.

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