ExpertConsultant Blog » Daily Tip

Adsense Optimizing

ExCo — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 18:10:11 +0000

Recently I have noticed a drop in a click-through on my Adsense. So it is time to go back and adjust few things. But while doing it I decided to share this simple tip with my fellow Adsense publishers.

The problem is usually very simple. From time to time Google gets into “craze”, it is when some advertiser puts good money in and Google starts to feed absolutely irrelevant ads into virtually all advertising channels.

Couple of months ago it was Grupon, that was driving me bananas. Whatever the site about shoes, economics or medicine I was getting this stupid “Eat as much as you want in…” on ALL of them. As a result a click-through rate was zero, site looked ugly and badly designed. Last months it was 123-reg; same thing on the site that I was discussing, let’s say, iPod touch it was another domain advert. What do you think about click rate? Correct, it was zero again.

P.S. The advert is inactive now. Click-through increased immediately.
Today after seeing a drop I did check my ads, this time Adsense decided that I should only advertise watches, whatever the site is about – only watches.

Now, to avoid this you can use option block competitive ads and block all the crazes one by one. This immediately improves your click-through ratio in Adsense.

phpBB Spam – How to Stop it

ExCo — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:29:17 +0000

Expert Consultant website use to have a very popular forum, based on phpBB 3. Several months ago I had to stop the forum altogether and attempted to clean it from spam. It was such a tedious work, that I simply decided to clean the database directly, and kept only few random older messages. It was not a best way forward but it took so much time that I simply couldn’t afford. Moderators have “resigned” because of this as well.

Later the board was reopened and now trying to get into the same position it use to be several months ago. Just after few days of reopening spam was an issue again. I have even blocked all links, html codes, etc. – nothing worked. After checking logs I found that 99% of spam comes from two courtiers (no prejudice in this post – just bare stat logs) Moldova (1405 forum-only visitors in 10 days) and Ukraine (1196 forum-only visitors in 10 days). By forum-only I mean that visitor gets straight to the registration-confirmation-post and NEVER visits any other section of my website like articles or blog.

At first I was thinking about putting a country-based IP blocking, but later I thought that punishing my real visitors because of spammers would be unfair. After searching around and trying to find easy to implement method I came across short PHP program called Advanced Textual Confirmation (Google it up for the latest version). Installation was really easy, required adding one extra line of code in your phpBB based forum. The idea is simple, before allowing to post user is required to answer a general knowledge question (anything you can think of). Because forum is mostly chemical, I decided to put two very simple chemical questions. And you know, people, that was it! Bots are not designed to answer questions but people spamming boards could not be bothered (or don’t know the answers) because they have 1000 boards a day to spam. Simple, elegant and efficient solution. But, what is more important, questions could be easily changed. Therefore if some spammers learn the answers, I will replace the questions.

So there is a way for both: keeping board spam-free and also educating some young and curious spammers in simple chemistry.

Due to enormous number of SPAM comments originating from RUSSIA and UKRAINE comments are being switched off. They have tried to spam my board – they couldn’t, now they are trying to spam this blog. Sorry, I can’t let it happen.

Name’n’Shame: IP address 92.241.165.236 originates from Russia, 3 spams a minute

Tip No. 9 Simple way to prevent the RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury)

ExCo — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:23:13 +0000

I am working with computers for years now and keyboard is something like continuation of my hands. So as any “typing professional” I was always aware of the RSI – Repetitive Strain Injury that people get when using keyboard too much. Well I do know several colleagues with the RSI, not a pretty thing to get. I decided to try and avoid it but using something that would work for sure. There are lots of gel pads and similar things around but working on client’s sites and carrying a gel-pad in your pocket… hmmm… not my idea of fun.

After thinking for a while I came up with simple solution – fingernails. Yes! Funny enough it worked. The thing is, your hand position on the keyboard depends on the length of your fingernail. With short nails you type almost in vertical motion, but slightly longer and your hand changes the angle. And as nails tend to grow the angle changes slightly almost everyday. So instead of keeping everything trimmed to the very tip of my fingers I decided to let it grow for a bit (nothing offensive, 2-3 millimetres are already changing the position) before trimming them back. And using PC for hours everyday for the last 15 (or more years) no signs of any RSI. Maybe this is not a scientific approach but it worked for me.

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Tip No. 8 How to Get the Best Web Hosting

ExCo — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:07:38 +0000

Right, if this section is called “Daily Tip” then somehow I have to stick to the definition. I had no time recently do make many updates but today I will give it a go. At least I would try to revive the tips section and try to give you not only a tip but some savings. Well, read the whole post to find out how.

Everything is now about Internet, even most of my tips and articles are about things people mostly do online. But to get online not as an ordinary “surfer” but as a part of the multi-billion community you should consider starting your own journey. And the first step in that journey – a website. Ten years ago only few advanced users were involved in Website building. But now with all CMS systems, blogs, tools – everyone can do it and even, with some effort, look professional enough in the vast number of sites already present on the Net. So you decided what to do and then you should decide where to put your work. You need a hosting company. When I put my first site, hosting company offered me a “huge” 10 MB of space. Yes, just 10 Megs, something like 2 good quality mp3 files. And I was happy with it. Database or scripting was out of the question. Long gone that golden age of first “amateur” sites and here we come with the word “Unlimited”. Now everything is unlimited, space traffic, domains. Even pricing is similar, give or take couple of dollars. So what is the tip, you might ask? Simple, I would recommend hosting companies that I use personally after many trials and errors. One of them is called Site5, when I just started hosting with them it was a small company, run by few enthusiasts. That was one of the reasons, that I decided to give it a go – personal approach. And you know what, they grew big now, became part of The Planet but they kept this personal approach they use to have as a small company. Personal tip: highly recommended http://www.site5.com. And yes, this page that you are reading now is hosted by the Site5.

Second company a do host with and I am recommending to you is Dreamhost. Dreamhost was designed to be as easy as possible and cater for even least experience Website owners. And it is big, and I do mean BIG. But you know what, I can’t really call myself inexperienced, well after more than 100 sites designed, developed or supervised by me in the last few years. But I do enjoy this “easy going” feeling with Dreamhost with some tongue-on-cheek humour. I host something like 10 websites with them some of the sites are in excess of 1.5GB. I do like Dreamhost and (I think) Dreamhost likes me. Because I do have a special promo code made for me only. This code could only be found on the ExpertConsultant Website and it never expires. So if you signup with the Dreamhost (http://www.dreamhost.com) for a year and enter EXCO80 as promo code then they will give you 80 dollars off, which will bring you total cost of one year hosting to about $ 49 with all the unlimited features the Dreamhost provides.

Tip without a Number or good old mobiles

ExCo — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:24:26 +0000

Well, I left my blog “untouched” for a while just because I am pretty busy with new Projects. At the same time my phone line was “accidentally cut” during some roadwork, which left me both without broadband and modem altogether! Not nice!

Typing in with any type of a mobile device, even 3G, and trying to use WordPress is something really daunting.

I dug out my old mobile and made an easy GPRS connection just because it’s cable is a simple mini USB which you could find virtually everywhere. Tip: don’t throw away your old mobiles, they might be useful one day even if you have the latest gadget in your pocket.

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Tip No.7 Make a small change in your article and avoid being rejected by Ezine

ExCo — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:30:42 +0000

I have published quite a few articles on Ezine. Sometimes I was puzzled why an article which has nothing to do with any marketing or promotions is being rejected as “overpromotional”. Until I have found a very simple reason:

Tip No.7 – When sending articles to Ezine avoid using “I” or “my”, instead of it put words like “some”, “usually”, etc. In this editor is not under impression that you are promoting yourself or your service. And don’t forget that even with this tip the main point is: your articles should still be useful and informative.

Daily Tip – New Category

Tip No. 6 If you got a Trojan on your Website.

ExCo — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:51:31 +0000

Just answered a question somewhere else about how to get rid of a Trojan on the website. But the more important thing is:

Tip No. 6 If you got a Trojan on your website you should be more worried of how it got there. If from your own PC during the upload, it’s more or less OK. But if your site was compromised then after clean-up, check with your hosting provider or brush through the raw logs to see any unfamiliar IP’s accessing your admin area.

Tip No. 3 – Cpanel Hosting and IMAP

Tip No. 5 – Temporary replacement for a thermal paste

ExCo — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:50:01 +0000

Warning. Use this information at your own risk. I am not responsible for any damages.

Some time ago I had to replace a faulty fan and heatsink for a processor in one of my computers. As it was a weekend night and I had a Project to finish the work was absolutely urgent. I took a heatsink and fun from an old PC but had no thermal paste. Then a decided to make one using whatever I could find in cupboards. I found some old pencils (graphite) and petroleum jelly. The melting point for petroleum jelly is around 75° C. It is just enough for it not to melt under normal processor operating temperature. I made some graphite powder and mixed it with the petroleum jelly to get extra “heat conductivity”. It became a dark-gray coloured paste that I applied both on a heatsink and processor. The construction worked perfectly for two days, until I bought some proper paste to replace it. Removing the home-made paste was also a snap, just wiped it clean with a dry cloth.

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Tip No. 4 – Cpanel Hosting and IMAP – Google Apps Solution

ExCo — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 17:33:46 +0000

After my previous Tip No. 3, I’ve received several e-Mails asking if it is still possible to have IMAP for several users with shared cPanel hosting. The answer is yes, there is a solution. Therefore here we go with a new daily tip:

It is possible to “outsource” your e-Mail even if you are on the shared cPanel hosting. To do that you would need access to your domain’s MX record. If you can change it then you can opt for Google to handle your messages for you. Sign-up for Google Apps, and don’t forget that the free Standard Edition could do the job for up-to 50 users, which would be enough for many small companies.

Tip No. 3 – Cpanel Hosting and IMAP

ExCo — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 17:50:40 +0000

Many web hosting companies provide shared hosting with Cpanel. They do often offer unlimited e-mail accounts with both POP3 and IMAP access (including webmail). What you should know if aiming to provide the IMAP for the whole company, is that connections to the server are usually limited to 8 from a single IP. Therefore if using a shared internet access for number of users the most you could provide is 2 maximum 3 IMAP mailboxes. Going above this limit would make connection to the IMAP server to time-out. You can provide much more POP3 accounts together with the IMAP without getting into any connection trouble.