enrii.blog

When come to online advertising, you should always consider properly whether it's appropriate to put up an contextual ads (such as Google AdSense) or not. It is fine if you are running a blog or content based website, but it's may not be so good if you are running a product website, whether it's a free or a paid product.

It's debatable if the ads are raising funds to support freewares like TortoiseSVN, but the ads is confusing the users. The first thing the user sees in the Download Page is the link to VisualSVN, which I suppose to be another company selling similar product.

Of course, the user would be clicking on the link especially when the download links are only shown after the user scrolls down. I assume this would generate good money for them and gets the user confused in the website of another product.

Is this something right? I'm not sure. What I know is TortoiseSVN is a good software.

Update: Forgot to mention about AdSense's Competitive Ad Filter, which is good to filter out competitor's ads, but if the user is not there for that product, would they be interested to buy a car in a software website? Very unlikely, though possible.

Google's email asking me to accept new terms is a mistake. I receive this email today:

We sent you a message earlier this week reminding you to accept
our updated AdSense Terms and Conditions. However, the message was
sent in error, as our records show that you have already accepted
the new Terms and Conditions.

We sincerely apologize for the miscommunication and any confusion
caused. Please be assured that no further action is required on
your part, and you may continue to access to your account as
normal.

I received a email notification from Google AdSense, telling me that there are some changes to the terms and I should log in to accept the changes.

As you may know, we recently updated our AdSense Terms and
Conditions to reflect upcoming product changes and ensure that
they're consistent with policies across Google.

We noticed that you haven't yet accepted the new Terms and
Conditions. To review them and indicate your acceptance, please
log in at http://www.google.com/adsense and follow the
instructions. Please be aware that all publishers must accept the
new Terms and Conditions in order to continue their participation
in the AdSense program.

You can find more information about some of the changes in the new
program terms by reviewing
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=81794
. Unfortunately, we're not able to further interpret the meaning
of the Terms and Conditions for you. If you have additional
questions, you may wish to contact an attorney.

We appreciate your understanding.

I was asked to follow the instructions after I log in but I don't get any instruction at all. Is anyone experiencing the same thing?

P.S. I'm glad I my blog is finally up again. It has been down for almost a week!

Reasons to Install FeedBurner

Sometimes, I am really curious whether there is anyone reading my blog. From Google Analytics, over 80% of the traffic came from search engines, mostly from Google. Am I really write for search engines only?

Since I share my full feed, there is no point for the readers (i.e. you) who read at RSS readers come to visit my site.

I think the best motivation for a blogger to continue writing is for him to know that he has followers. And, I don't get much comments on my blog.

Setting Up FeedBurner

Simple. Create an account at FeedBurner. Add in your current blog feed, then get a new feed link from FeedBurner. E.g. http://feeds.feedburner.com/enriiblog

Obstacles

I have been promoting the default WordPress RSS link all the while and I think I could have a few readers subscribed to my feed. I think it is not appropriate to ask everyone to switch to the new feed link provided by FeedBurner.

Moreover, if I ask you to use this new feed link so that I can track you, would you like use it? Nobody likes to be tracked.

The WordPress Plugin

To solve the problem, I installed the FeedBurner FeedSmith WordPress plugin (gbyeow suggested me to install this years ago, but I didn't do it until now). The plugin will automatically redirects your original feed link which looks like http://blog.enrii.com/rss/ to http://feeds.feedburner.com/enriiblog.

So, you will need to enter the FeedBurner feed link into: WordPress admin page > Settings > FeedBurner.

There are users reported some .htaccess issues in the older version. It seems like we no longer need to do anything with .htaccess with the latest version of FeedSmith.

OK, It's working now!

Now I know how many people subscribed to my feed.

What else could you achieve with FeedBurner?

• Link to AdSense account - If you already have an AdSense account, adding ads into your feed can be done in a few clicks.
• Email subscription - If you have readers who do not use any RSS readers, they could subscribe to my post via email.
• Put subscriber's tag (FeedCount) - A small tag that you could put on your blog to show everyone that you have many subscribers.

Do you use it?

Just a note, if you are not aware, FeedBurner is now part of Google.

For Malaysian only: As far as I know, there's only one bank in Malaysia where we can collect our Western Union payment, the CIMB Bank. After I switch to Western Union cash as my Google AdSense payment method about 2 months ago, I finally got to collect my first payment.

The collection process was really easy. It only takes 10 minutes. It would have taken more than a month if you were to wait for Google to deliver the cheque to you, and to wait for the cheque to clear.

What do you need?

1. CIMB Bank Western Union Money Transfer slip
2. CIMB Cash Deposit slip (if you want to deposit the money into your account)
3. Your Malaysian Identity Card

What information do you need to fill?

1. Your first and last name
2. Your address
3. Your phone number
4. Google's name (Google Inc.)
5. Google's address (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA)
6. Payment amount
7. Money Transfer Control Number (MTCN)

You could get most of the information from payment history page in Google AdSense, except for your own details.

One problem with this payment method. There is no notification from Google when they issued the payment. That means, you will have to check the payment details from time to time to find out.

I believe many of you have enjoyed this facility. What do you think?