Blogging Rock Star

More Control and Bigger Earnings

November 25th, 2008 by Blogging Rock Star

Earlier today I was talking with a client about alternatives to Google Adsense for generating revenue from websites and blogs.

For those unfamiliar with it, Google Adsense is an advertisement application run by Google.

As a website owner, you can signup for this program to allow Google to place ads on your website according to your site’s content and audience.

Basically when your site visitors click on these ads, you receive a percentage of the ad revenue generated by Google.

While it is free to signup, easy to use and provides a supplemental income, there are also negatives associated with using Google Adsense.

Three examples are the lack of control over the ads shown on your website or blog, the small earnings for someone just starting out and the somewhat ambiguous rules.

Need alternatives? Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Affiliate Programs + Reference + Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

404 – It’s all about Error Handling and User Experience

September 10th, 2008 by Blogging Rock Star

For those not in the know, a “404″ error is also known as a “page not found” error.

When a 404 page is encountered, many people will not make an effort to find the missing page.

While some people might hit the Back button and try again, some might just leave and move on to another website.

In other words, every 404 error is a potentially lost visitor and loss of opportunity.

But there is no reason to allow visitors to leave disappointed, so why not create a custom “404 page” that can help visitors find what they thought they’d find on your website and keep their stay on your website longer?

When creating a custom 404 page, here are some things to keep in mind: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in HTML + Technology + Tips & Tricks + Web Design | No Comments »

Recover Tunes From Your Apple iPod

September 4th, 2008 by Blogging Rock Star

Someday the hard drive on your computer will crash, stranding thousands of songs on your Apple iPod. Here’s how to get them back onto your Windows or Mac based PC.

1. Reinstall iTunes. Launch the app and sign in to your itunes music Store account. Don’t plug in your iPod yet.

2. Install and launch a free trial of Music Rescue or PodUtil from KennettNet software. The app will sit there idling, displaying a Waiting-for-iPods message.

3. Plug in your iPod. Music Rescue will detect it and display a window that shows the files and playlists on your ipod. Click the “Choose” button at the bottom of Music Rescue and select your iTunes music folder.

Next, click the “Copy Settings” button. In the dialog box that appears, select both “Add Tracks to iTunes” and “Rebuild Playlists.” Click “OK.”

4. Read the Don’t-Steal-Music warning in the lower right corner of Music Rescue. Think carefully. Click the “Copy” button below it.

5. Watch as Music Rescue copies your songs, videos, playlists, and podcasts back to your computer and then loads them into iTunes. Reauthorize your iTunes music store tracks. Done!

6. Happy? Hit the “Register now” button and send the site 10 British Pounds (about $18 USD).

For another method, you can do this with a third party application called “iPod to PC transfer“.

When your computer crashed, just recover your iPod video music to your computer or itunes directly. It’s really easy to use!

With iPod to PC transfer, you can transfer iPod/iPhone music, videos to your Windows PC and iTunes. This option has made ipod and iphone deals more attractive than other bargains in the gadget market.

iPod to iTunes transfer can also transfer between iPod and iPhone, or among several iPods are also supported.

For Mac users there is also a similar one iPod to Mac Transfer which can helps you transfer iPod video, iPod music, podcast and TV shows from your iPod or iPhone to Mac.

Apart from that, it can add all these files from your iPod or iPhone to iTunes library. On the other hand, it is also Mac to iPod transfer, Mac to iPhone transfer software.

Posted in Technology + Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

Ways to Minimize Bandwidth Consumption

June 13th, 2008 by Blogging Rock Star

When trying to figure out how much bandwidth your website needs, the rule of thumb is:

[total size of website] x [number of visitors/month] = monthly bandwidth consumption

So, based on this formula, there are only two ways to reduce bandwidth consumption, either by the total size of website or by the number of visitors.

Since the purpose of having a website is to be seen by more people, reducing the number of visitors will not be a good measure for minimizing bandwidth consumption. That leaves reducing total website size.

So what can you do to reduce the size of your website?

1. Keep pages simple, limit rich web content

Rich web content (ie. images, flash, audio, video) is a good way to make your website more attractive, but these files burn out bandwidth fast. If you need to include all those rich content on your website, consider offloading onto different servers (ie. third-party storage sites). Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Technology + Tips & Tricks | No Comments »

What’s With Auto Email Forwarding?

September 28th, 2007 by Blogging Rock Star

Setting up different email accounts to automatically forward your emails from to a centralized email account is quite convenient.

With this type of setup you would only need to check your emails at one single email address.

Sure sounds great, right? I would have to disagree.

There are actually a lot of problems with automatic email forwarding.

Automated email forwarding causes a lot of spam issues.

Because auto email forwarding will forward all emails sent to an email address, it will forward all of its spam emails as well.

The recipient mail server will think that you are spamming them, when in fact, you are just passing the spam emails around.

This spam problem has caused many innocent email service providers to have their mail servers wrongfully listed as spam servers. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Technology + Tips & Tricks | No Comments »