WebGrrrl.net, Home of Lorna Timbah On-line

Make money online: yes, I’m trying my best

Lorna P — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:07:40 +0000

By now, a few of you may have realized my slow and steady attempt at making money online. One of the best thing about making money online earnings is that most of them are handled using the US currency, so just a few hundred dollars can translate to more than a thousand Malaysian Ringgit a month for me. Not too shabby for a stay-at-home mom.

I’m currently doing a few things simultaneously to generate my income online, from paid posting to WordPress services, and moving towards affiliate programs and ads revenue as both of these can turn to become passive income once the ball gets rolling. As mentioned in my previous post, things are looking well with my arts and crafts site which are generating income through three programs (CPC programs they call it) — AdSense, Chitika and AdBrite. These three ads work well together, and Chitika and AdBrite are AdSense-friendly.

On the other hand, my affiliate programs (CPA programs I think they call it) aren’t doing well; in fact, they’re not generating any income at all. The three programs that I’ve joined are Clickbank, Commission Junction and Amazon.com. I’m not giving up hope, though. I’m still very fond of CJ and Amazon, but I’m thinking of switching from Clickbank to Clickbooth. I’ve totally forgotten that I’ve signed up for them until I got the newsletter from them recently. The great thing about this program is that they currently have what is called Clickbooth Webinars, a collection of online videos featuring top affiliate marketers on the Net, sharing their success tips to users of Clickbooth. This is more than enough to convince me to switch. Hoepfully I’ll have better luck after using the techniques taught in the webinars.

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AdSense testing at WebGrrrl.net: ah, scrap it

Lorna — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:08:13 +0000

I remembered now why I removed AdSense almost entirely out of this site — doing so actually increased my earnings! I truly forgot that WebGrrrl.net is getting smart priced all this while, and when you have one site that’s being smart priced, the rest of the sites that are using your AdSense account can also be affected. You can read more about smart pricing at Griz’s money making site.

I mentioned how unfocused WebGrrrl.net’s content is, which is the main reason why my blog isn’t earning as much. In February I noticed that I was earning in the single digits (and in cents, moreover) per day at first. The more AdSense ads I removed from WebGrrrl.net however, the more I started to earn in the double digits through my arts and crafts site. Since I’m earning in the dollars, I’m not about to ruin my earnings now.

So goodbye again, AdSense. Well, not entirely. I’ll still have it in my games posts, and I would have removed them entirely by now if those darn pages didn’t have such high click-through rates of almost 15%.

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AdSense monetizing test on WebGrrrl.net

Lorna — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:17:37 +0000

I know, I know. I swore off using AdSense last year. So why is it back in WebGrrrl.net?

Frequent visitors to my site may have noticed that posts in this site has been sporadic these past months. The reason is because I’ve only started to create niche sites that not only am I passionate about, but plan to monetize on. Lots of it failed, but I managed to flip them and get a few extra buck out of them. Still, I’ve finally hit the jackpot with one of my site that focuses on a pretty small arts and crafts niche, which is earning me about $6 in September, and has jumped to $27 in October.

Back to the matter of putting AdSense. The thing about WebGrrrl.net’s traffic stats is that this site gets around 3,000 unique visits a month, with about 70 feed subscribers, and an 80% bounce rate. A bounce rate that low, for those of you who are not familiar with the term, means that out of 10 people who visit my site, 8 will never return. That’s pretty bad. Page views are about 1 to 2 pages per visit.

My stats on the new niche site of mine (note the word site, not blog) only recently gets around 3,000 unique visits a month, up from just about 60 uniques in July. It currently has 30 subscribers, half of it via e-mail, and a fantastic 35% bounce rate. Page views per person is at least 10 to 15 pages per visit. Isn’t that great?

However, due to the nature of that niche site, its earnings are pretty low. This WebGrrrl.net blog, on the other hand, tends to get higher CTR even though page impressions are less than 50 (only my games-related posts have AdSense). Plus, being an IT / computer / technology blog of sorts means that there tends to be more high-paying advertisers in the market.

So I’m putting up ads back in WebGrrrl.net to see exactly how AdSense earnings are influenced by this blog’s niche (which is a bit too broad for my liking) as well as the influence that the site’s stats has on the ads earning. After 6 months, I’ll be switching off the ads again, and make a comparison with my niche site to see what I can conclude from them. Please bear with the interruption as I research my way into this.

p.s. Be careful when taking a diet pill; it works but be wary of its side effects.

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Falling out and back in love with WordPress

Lorna — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:25:19 +0000

With the stable version of WordPress 2.7 coming out real soon, how can you not be excited?! Together with many avid WordPress users, I’ve gripped about how less user-friendly WordPress is since they rolled out WP 2.5, and the people at Automattic heard us. Now, WordPress looks and functions better than I can ever expect. If WordPress was a human woman, she’d be all beauty and brains, a knock-off, a hot chick not to be reckoned with!

Among the features I’m excited about:

QuickPress: Having it in the Dashboard looking so cute is definitely a A++! No longer do I have to go to Write every time I need to do a quick post, which I often do on occasions (read: paid postings, ahaks!).
Core Update: Finally! I feel so happy I could cry… instant WP update is now a built-in feature of WP 2.7! It’s a little more simplistic than other WP update plugins we’re used to, but if you use it in conjunction with WP DB Backup plugin, all should be fine and dandy. If only they could also include back-up feature of the wp-content folder, though. Also, according to a post in Weblog Tools Collection, not all web hosts support this feature fully due to the hosts’ server limitation and setup. Thankfully, my web hosting provider, WPWebHost, passes the test, and I took the liberty of adding them to the list of Core Update Compatibility web hosts in WordPress.org.
Oh-so-flexible navigation: Ooh boy, they did a great job with this one. This navigation is exactly what most of us WordPress users need. The menu of each section easily collapses and closes smoothly, and even though at first glance the menu has more sections than WP 2.5, it’s surprisingly much more intuitive and requires less click-and-wait than the usual to get to the options you want to go. The great thing about it is that collapsed and closed navigation remains that way even as you navigate through the Admin interface, then stays that way until you change it yourself. The drop-down Shortcuts on the top right of the admin page is also quite a smart move from the WP developers, featuring links to Add Posts, Add Pages and Manage Comments.
Oh-so-flexible Dashboard: I’ve never been particularly fond of WP’s Dashboard. Now, though, it’s possible to totally eliminate the default sections of the Dashboard via the Screen Options (which is also available in every other parts of the admin area). Though useful, I find the Plugins, WordPress Development Blog and Other WordPress News boxes to be a distraction. Now with a few clicks of the checkboxes, I can completely make it vanish into virtual thin air.
Pre-WP 2.5-nostalgic Write Post: If you hated having your Categories listed on bottom of your Write Post form like I do, you’ll be happy to know that it has been restored to the right side, just like we were conveniently used to before WP 2.5! You can even drag those boxes up and down to your preference, just like we could in WP 2.3! Even Tags is added on the right side! When I saw this, my body uncontrollably did a happy dance right in my ergonomically-challenged chair.

Aside from the fear that my favorite plugins might not work on the next update, I’m not too worried. Still, I feel a noticable slowdown of loading time in WP 2.7 compared to previous version, but I hope it’s due to it being a beta. Anyways, for those of you who don’t have the chance to experience WP 2.7 Beta 2, hop over to my WP 2.7 testbed and log in as general:general (Contributor level, please don’t change the password) to see the limited version of options you can find in WordPress 2.7.

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6-year old put in prison: oh yes we did!

Lorna — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 06:35:00 +0000

Wow, the paranoid Malaysian Government did it again. After putting in jail without judicial intervention of more than a couple of bloggers, a politician, an activist group, and God knows how many more in the span of just a few months, us Malaysians can now be proud of the fact that we may be the first ever country in this democratic globe to imprison a 6-year old named Vwaishhnnavi Waytha Moorthy.

The reason? For writing a letter to the Prime Minister of Malaysia. Oh yes, she did! You can’t do that, girl!

The letter sent on 23 October 2008 read:
Dear Mr. Prime Minister

On the 27th October 2008 Hindus in Malaysia would be celebrating Deepavali — a festival to mark victory over evil.

This celebration does not mean anything to us so long as my lawyer uncles, uncle RPK and all others are in prison under ISA.

Please release them as Deepavali gift for All Malaysians.

Please visit my house, I will wait for you with flowers, and cakes.

Yours loving daughter
Vwaishhnnavi Waytha Moorthy

I suppose that the government got more than scared after reading the part about inviting the PM to her house, having deciphered the flowers and cakes part as chains and knives.

Say you can tell that I’m being sarcastic about the whole thing, eh? But the part about imprisoning a 6-year old, not funny. I would raise hell if my kids were treated that way.

“Uncle lawyers” = the Hindraf group; “uncle RPK” = Raja Petra Kamarudin, veteran journalist and blogger, owner of alternative Malaysian news, Malaysia Today; “ISA” = Malaysia’s Internal Security Act. Oh, and “flowers, and cakes” = chains, and knives. Update: After being detained on Oct 23, she and her mother were released the next day but they chose to stay in the police station until the 9 others detained with them were released.

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FaceBook’s urTurn Scam?

Lorna — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 08:40:26 +0000

Scam: A fraudulent business scheme or con; an attempt to to intentionally mislead a person or persons usually with the goal of financial or other gain.

Background story — I first found out about urTurn through HongKiat.com, and decided to use it almost immediately to see whether I can make money. Here’s the concept — you do certain actions in Facebook like adding friends, posting a message, inviting people into Facebook, etc., which enables you to collect points. These points can then be advertised in urTurn’s Marketplace for people to buy, and to buy those points they will need to first send payment you by PayPal.

Here’s where my problem surfaced — I decided to sell my 450 points in the marketplace for USD0.01 per point. This means that I should get USD4.50 if the whole 450 points are sold, right?

WRONG! Clearly from the two e-mail screenshots you see below, there was no way for me to verify and accept the transaction on my part before the urTurn Marketplace sells it to the buyer.

And you know how much I was actually paid? ONE MEASLY CENT! YES, YOU READ CORRECTLY! USD0.01! Minus the PayPal fee? Well, you can see from my PayPal screenshot below just how much I actually got.

I have sent five emails since two weeks ago, three to support@urturn.com and two through their Marketplace system. None got any response. urTurn Marketplace is also down since a week ago, hopefully indefinitely, which is why I can’t supply you with screenshots of the site that says exactly that I would get USD4.50 for selling all my 450 points.

Some people at TechCrunch also reported on urTurn as a scam. And I agree with them. If you are using urTurn to claim a prize or get anything back in return, don’t bother. Just remove that app from your Facebook, it’s just not worth your bandwidth and screen space.

urTurn, you give Facebook a bad name.

Look to OMSOnline.net for an integrated e-commerce solution.

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WordPress Comment hack: Display Gravatar on non-pingback comment types

Lorna — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:31:01 +0000

One of the reasons why I haven’t been paying much attention to this blog is the fact that I have started several new meant-to-monetize blogs over the past couple of months. Being very particular about my blog themes, I have been tweaking themes here and there while referring to the WordPress Codex for the template tags.

An issue I was trying to solve within this past hour was my Gravatars setting. I would like to display Gravatars only on normal comments left by visitors. I thought it makes no sense at all to display them on pingbacks, when all you get are those mystery man icons.

You’re suppose to add the following code to enable Gravatar support on WordPress comments:

The code by itself doesn’t solve my dilemma. In other words, that code will display Gravatars on all of my comments, regardless of whether they are normal comments, pingbacks, or trackbacks.

The following simple hack, though, does exactly what I wanted:
comment_type=='') { echo get_avatar( $comment, 32 ); } ?>

Surprisingly, I couldn’t find any online documentation concerning disabling Gravatars on pingbacks, so I had to look through some of my very own customized themes as well as a little reference to my WP database to understand how I can go about solving it.

Sweet, eh? Try it yourself. WP theme developers may find this code handy.

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Kiva.org — giving and doing business all in one

Lorna — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 15:33:32 +0000

I haven’t gone to church for months, so in trying to feel good about myself, I decided to do the next best thing — microfinance someone. You could say that a microfinance is like a venture capital that you invest in a business, but really it is more of an investment opportunity where your money can be used again and again to help the poor get off their feet and attain financial freedom. In other words, microfinance is a glamour word for what it actually is — a donation (I know I’m oversimplifying its actual meaning, but that’s what I wish it should be anyway).

I heard about Kiva.org through my favorite daytime show, Oprah, when they were interviewing Bill Clinton, and he in turn introduced the Kiva founders, a couple named Matt and Jessica Flannery. Kiva’s business model is very simple.
1) Kiva lenders collectively funds a listed enterpreneur of their choice with a loan.
2) The money is distributed to the chosen enterpreneur via Kiva’s microfinance partner.
3) The enterpreneur repays the loan to Kiva lenders.
4) Kiva lenders can re-lend the funds, donate them to Kiva, or withdraw them.
Like so.

I like the fact that Kiva supports PayPal payments where all my online income is going into, and so I did my first Kiva funding of USD25 (check out my Lender’s Profile while you’re at it). I know that isn’t much, but that’s what’s left in my PayPal since I haven’t been actively making money these past couple of months.

Still, it feels good knowing that I’ve helped made a change in someone else’s life. The best thing is that when Patricia manages to pay me back, I can do the whole good deed all over again, and that would be double my happiness! You know what karma says — what goes around, comes around.

For this reason, I am at this moment declaring that 25% of my monthly earnings from this blog (which translates to roughly around USD50 including ads and paid postings) will go to funding Kiva as well as another of my chosen non-profit organization. It’s highly likely it will be Doctors Without Borders, the group of people responsible for introducing the life-saving Plumpy’nut and end malnutrition deaths among infants and children in the Third World countries (! watched this amazing peanut-butter like food helping infants as young as 4 months old stayed alive through 60 Minutes). I just hope they accept PayPal ’cause I don’t have a cheque.

p.s. Will this make me feel better about not going to church? Unlikely

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Yearbook Yourself and look hot!

Lorna — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:13:53 +0000

I’ve just finished having fun after a friend in Facebook shared with me a site called YearbookYourself.com. The Flash-enabled app takes your uploaded photo and transforms it into a yearbook-like pose that you can select, ranging from the 1950s up to the year 2000.

I downloaded the snapshot of every one of the photos I generated through the site.

Original photo for YearbookYourself.com

Here are a few of the yearbook photos generated which in my opinion are as hot as real ol’ me (in other words, laugh your head off):

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1998

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1996

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1994

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1982

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1978

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1976

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1972

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1966

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1960

YearbookYourself rendition of me in 1952

And if I were a dude in 1956, I’d be a damn fine looking one:

Have a look at my Flickr to see the whole set, or see some scary photos of countless of other people who have used YearbookYourself.com.

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Google Chrome: why you almost shouldn’t use it

Lorna — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:40:51 +0000

No one really bothers reading a product’s EULA until it’s too late, and that includes me. A good thing that Wil Wheaton gave a head’s up on a particular term of service on Google Chrome, which read as follows:

11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

Matt Cutts has clarified this with their legal team, and pretty recently retracted the few lines I have bolded out, citing that those lines were taken from their standard TOS. Wait, really?! I should be checking the TOS at Google Docs and GMail in that case!

Here’s another good related post I found highlighted at WWdN: In Exile.

Beware the Google God.

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