December 22, 2008

Website design for your business

One of the most integral aspects of a successful business these days is a well designed website. In a constantly expanding cyberworld full of competing services, the choices available to customers are endless. It can seem like a daunting task to differentiate your business on the web, but having a properly designed website will give you a great advantage over your competition.

What makes a web site great? There are many criteria to consider. The most important aspect is that your services can be clearly identified, and this is accomplished through thoughtful logo design, concise information as well as a "business appropriate feeling". For example, an owner of a small children's toy store would not wish to use the same serious, more grown up corporate layout on their website that a law firm may use, instead opting for fun fonts and a more playful mood overall. Typographical selection can make a world of difference in the message sent to the target customer, and careful selection can insure that a casual viewer of your page gets a feel for the type of service you offer. Color, pictures, flash and other animations will greatly contribute to your site's overall feeling.

No mater what style you choose to present your business in, it is vital that you appear professional and exhibit expertise in your field. Clean, readable text is always preferred to jumbled paragraphs and large sprawling pages, which often times give off an "amateur" feel. A properly designed page will have working identifiable hyperlinks, easily locatable menus and quickly displaying pictures/content. The speed at which a page loads directly correlated to how long a visitor stays, in that slowly loading websites have a much higher click-off rate than do fast loading ones, so it is smart to always make sure that you can fully access every page and photos within a few seconds of initially clicking. Another attractive feature to include is dynamic and updated content. Updates will give customers an incentive to view your site more often, as a stagnant page offers little value to previous viewers.

Everyone who has browsed the internet has at one point or another has ignored a website's content because of its poor design. With a well thought out blueprint executed by qualified professionals, this need not be the fate of your page. The smartest and most profitable business decision you make could be enlisting the help of website design, internet marketing experts, such as Cybertrack Marketing Inc, who have all the tools and experience necessary to give you a major edge over the competition.

December 12, 2008

6 Most Frequently Used Google Search Operators For Better Searching

Google supports several operators which gives you more control on search results. There are too many search operators to remember. Also, not all of them are useful all the time.

So I am describing today only the most frequently used search operators alongwith real-life examples. College students will particularly find examples more interesting! ;-)

>> First note common syntax of following Google search operators…

operator:parameter

There should not be any space on either side of colon [:]

Also all search operator are case-sensitive!

# site: This operator is useful for searching a site and/or its subdomain.

  • site:devilsworkshop.org will restrict search to all subdomain under devilsworkshop.org
  • site:edu will search all site in edu top domain. Useful for researchers and college students while studying and writing for papers as site:edu will restrict search results to the educational sites!

# filetype: You can directly use Google to search any type of files.

  • filetype:ppt to search all presentation slides. This is how I manage to create presentations just one night before! ;-)
  • filetype:pdf will search only pdf files! Good for searching ebooks.
  • filetype:pdf site:edu will return all files with pdf extensions from edu domain. Useful to complete journals or study assignments!

# inurl: To search something in URLs

  • inurl:md5 will find keyword md5 in URLs.
  • inurl:md5 filetype:java will return all java source files with md5 in their name or URL. How about using this to complete programming assignments in college!

Also try allinurl: operator which looks all keywords into URL only!

# intitle: To search something in page title. Useful when searching a too common word.

  • intitle:md5 will return all documents having md5 in their title.
  • intitle:Hacking filetype:pdf will return all pdf files i.e. mostly ebooks and papers about hacking.

Also try allintitle: operator which looks all keywords into title only!

# define: To use Google search as dictionary. There are other dedicated dictionary services but none of them is as clean and fast as Google.

  • define:hacker will show meanings of hacker.
  • define:network security will return meaning of network security.
  • Note: Do not type anything before define: or combine it with other operators!

# OR - To combine results of multiple searches! By default Google performs ANDing on keywords we use while searching. But sometimes explicit OR can help more.

  • filetype:pdf OR filetype:doc will search for pdf as well as doc files. This will help you complete your journals
  • site:en.wikipedia.org OR site:howstuffworks.com will restrict search to Wikipedia English and How Stuff Works site!

Note OR must be in capital and it doesn’t have colon after it!

In case you are interested in complete list, its here… (printable format)

Useful web sites for torrents, software, games, etc downloads & free SMS!

#For FREE Online SMS

  1. www.mobik.com - This is one I just came around today. Nice one but one problem! You can send SMS to only the person who have registered on it! That means only if your friend is a member of mobik then only you can send a SMS to him!
  2. www.yaari.com - I used this to send whole pages thorough SMS. But with rise in the traffic the massages may take ages to reach but otherwise it has no problem like mobik! You can send SMS to the anyone! No membership is required!

#For Torrent Downloads…

Torrent is a nice way to download any sort of stuff - softwares, movies, games, etc (anything you can imagine in digital format) but the only problem comes when the seeders are less in numbers than the leachers, then the speed is really slow!

  1. www.torrentz.com - This is a free site. It does not require any account or anything. Here you can get almost anything you want to search for. After searching the item please make sure that the host you decide to download from has more seeders than leachers. Rest enjoy!
  2. www.desitorrents.com - This is not a free site. You have to have a account with it to download. This site provides you with all the Hindi stuff like movies music videos, mp3’s and also of other Indian language! Here also please make sure you have enough seeders!

#For FREE Software Downloads, Cracks & Keys

Apart from torrent site listed above there are other options too as torrent sometime does not work in LAN environment!

  1. www.ddl2.com - This website provides every software in the world (it has never disappointed me). It gives u rapidshare links or other links from where you can download the software. The softwares are always in their full versions or with cracks, keys!
  2. www.LimeWire.com - You can download the pro-version of LimeWire from the above options(torrents/ddl2) as its not free! Once you are in the programs option search for the required software, games, etc and its done!

BUT please be sure that what you dowload is not a virus or trojan…

how can you do this???

The unwanted material is in KBs. The name that appears is same as what you searched for but you will see the required softwares are larger in size say MBs than the unwated stuff which is in KBs!

Also use best antivirus!

Get Personal Mobile SMS Shortcode for FREE


Consider this: You meet a new person or you give a V.Card to someone which reads…

“To know more about me/To know more about the product, SMS to 5xxxx”

Doesn’t leave a good impression on the minds of others, that this person is really kewl and a hi-tech kinda guy/gal and spending a lot on advertising too?

But guess what! What if you get these Keywords for free, so that every time you can say “To know more about me SMS “Name” to 5xxxx, quiet impressive isn’t it?

Yes you heard it right, its free and SMSMEON has started a new Venture where you can get your keyword for free and manage your account to send what SMS to send to anyone who access the keyword..

Example: My keyword is iAbhishek. So you send a SMS “iAbhishek” to 56070 and you will get my details.

Whats more, you can have sub-keywords, i.e one can send “iAbhishek Location” to find my current location (It reminds me of twitter in a ‘pull way!’)

So get yourself your desired keyword (Your Name) before anyone takes, I was a bit late so have to settle with iAbhishek, you don’t wait get one for yourself!

Advantage: Can be given instead of email ID or Domain Name. Or you can give it alongwith other ids.

Disadvantage: Mobile operators charge premium SMS rate to anyone who sends SMS to your shortcode. This limits many from using it.

Anyways there is no harm in getting one for yourself as its free, go to www.smsmeon.com for more info.

Google SMS: Power of Google Search on Mobile!


SMS team at Google has come up with Google SMS Search. Now you can send all your queries to 9-77-33-00000 without paying any premium charges! SMS Search offers an easy-to-use way to type in free-form searches. No longer will your questions require complicated prefixes or a tight syntax. You can learn about the interesting features and try our interactive demo at http://www.google.co.in/sms.

For details go to the Google Mobile website or check their help center for more details.

The Google blog says that you only need to pay the standard SMS text charges for sending the SMS query to Google – there’s no fee for the incoming messages from Google. The service is available for all popular cellular networks including Airtel, BSNL, Idea, Reliance, Spice, Tata Indicom and Vodafone.

This service is available across all operators on both GSM and CDMA mobile phones. Give it a try by SMSing “help” to 9-77-33-00000 and don’t forget to save the number of your newly found friend (Google SMS) in your phone book!

Google SMS can be used for Live Cricket Scores, Railways PNR Status, Train schedule, Stock Quotes, Horoscopes, News, Movies, Flight status, Translation, Currency Conversion, etc.

5 Best Torrent Search Engines + Google Trick for Torrent Search!






There are many sites which host torrent on Internet but most of them are spam sites or porn sites. So finding a torrent is hard and Google is not just enough to do this job. So here comes the list of search engines specially meant for searching torrents! At the end I will be sharing a trick to use Google for searching torrents!

Torrentz: This is my favorite. Simple and fast. Key feature is same torrent from different sources is not duplicated while showing results. So you get comprehensive search results. After selecting a torrent from results you can see user comments, various trackers, mirror links, related torrents & most important authenticity of that torrent.
It also have a dedicated movies & TV shows section. All torrent in these sections are verified. Additionally you can limit your searches to these sections. There is RSS feed option for these sections sections as well as for all search queries. So feed addicts will find torrentz most interesting!

ScrapeTorent: This also search across various torrent indexes. Key features are option to limit searches to particular category, option to filter dead-torrents & duplicates from results. They also have a forum if you need help. I come to know about this recently via Anil, a geek & fellow blogger.

PizzaTorrent: I use this when torrentz fails. It shows real-time results from 15 best torrent hosts. It doesn’t club similar torrents in a single group so you may notice much higher number of results. But it does grouping by categories which saves you from downloading wrong torrent! However it produces too many useless results for multiword queries.

YouTorrent: It also shows real-time torrent results. By default it gathers results from 10 different torrent hosts. You can add/remove various torrent hosts for fine grained results. in left sidebar it shows related searches as well as top searches. This also produces few extra result which user may find useless. I think by default it looks search keywords in torrent description. This may be useful sometime but most of the time user is interested in torrent names only to get accurate search results.

PinkTorrent: NOTE: This is for adults only. So skip this if you are minor according to laws in your county.
This is best for searching free porn torrents. I do not have more details about this but its best according to many reliable sources. Use at your own risk! Only thing about safety I can say never share your personal information with porn sites specially your credit card info!

Google: Yep Google can be used smartly to search anything on the Web! Just add filetype:torrent as it is to your search query and you will get results restricted to torrents. I use this only when all above fails. Unfortunately due to high amount of spam in torrent world you will be disappointed most of the times!

Also check 6 Most Frequently Used Google Search Operators For Better Searching!

There are many torrent search engines on net so it may happen I am missing your favorite one. Anyway let us know which one you like?

Update: Following is list of torrent search engine picked up from comments below…

BTJunkie - They have database of 1.5 million torrents which they claimed to be largest. Better search options and ability to browse torrent is plus point.

Toorgle - Power of Google Search used across 250+ torrent websites. Have index of more than 7 million torrents. A nice example of Googles custom search!


Torrent-Finder optionwise this beats all other torrent search site. Really

hugedatabase, with fine-grain control over what you want to include in search! Results can be browse in tabs.



Download Videos from Websites Like Google Video, YouTube, MySpace, and Others!

In this post, I am sharing a way to download videos from the internet (MySpace, YouTube, Google Video, etc) and save them to your computer using firefox extension. Before going ahead you need to have firefox.

You can then Video Downloader firefox extension! VideoDownloader add a small icon on the status bar at the bottom of your firefox window, and a toolbar button. Just click that and download the video you are watching !

Once you installed this extension, you can download this PDF Tutorial by Giles in case you have problem using this extension.
Don’t worry this is not any long lasting tutorial… In fact I bet you will enjoy doing this!

Note you may need to rename files to add extension “.flv”. Files in flv format can be played in VLC Media Player.

Click here to download firefox!

Updated: Working proxy(ies) for Orkut, Myspace, Facebook, etc

Update: you can now always access new proxies list here!


This is for all orkut addicts whose addiction leads their network administrator to block orkut!Here are some proxies by orkut itself, u can use try!!!

Actually they were created to host images on orkut! Chances of working these are very rare!

Also there is a different breed of “proxy” specially designed for orkut, myspace and social networking sites like these…

So try following… They are 100% tested. (Last updated: July 30, 2007)
(By tested I mean they are tested to work with Orkut. Note that not all proxies which you find on internet can open sites like orkut and myspace)

[updated: 2008, JAN. 23]

#HTTPS Proxy List (more secure)

#HTTP Proxy List (less secure)

There are more… and if u r using any proxy successfully… please take pain to post about it in comments! So the list can be updated continuously!

Enjoi Orkutting!!!

Use Microsoft Word ‘07 as a desktop blogging tool


Few moments ago, while using Microsoft Word 2007 I found it strange that there is an inbuilt option in Word 07 to use it as a desktop blogging tool. Personally I prefer Windows Live Writer (WLW) as a desktop blogging client, but making use of Word 07 too is not a bad idea, as Ms-Office is pre installed in almost all Windows systems and you need not install WLW which also requires .NET Framework to be pre-installed. Also this is good for blogger who does not blog too often.

Even I tried writing an article on my blog using Word and found that it is as simple and convenient as WLW. If you too want to blog using MS Word 07 just follow these simple procedure:

  • Open MS Word and hit the office button on the top left corner.
  • Go to New-> Blank & Recent-> New blog post
  • Use ‘Manage Account’ option on blog tool bar (pointed out on the image) to configure your online account
  • Just enter your contents and hit ‘Publish’
  • Instead you can even save an article as a draft on your weblog to edit it later from a remote computer.

That is all what it takes to blog using Word 2007. :-) As said earlier if you do not blog very often, than this is the best option available for you.


Beware Google Desktop users!


n my earlier post, I mentioned how Gmail can be used on your desktop using ‘Google Desktop’, but after using it continuously for a day, I realized that Google desktop consumed a lot of my bandwidth. Also I came to know that, the problem was not only with me but many other Google desktop users too complained about the same thing. Some even said that it burned off their 1 GB of bandwidth in a single day. I think this is not an issue for users with unlimited bandwidth plan, but those users having limited bandwidth plan will have to end up wasting their whole month’s usage limits in a single day. So, this is my responsibility to alert you about such problems.

Well, you need not be sad thinking you need to uninstall Google desktop. Actually, after installing Google desktop, it automatically indexes your hard disk which utilizes a lot of bandwidth. By preventing this, you can save a lot of your bandwidth. To stop Google from indexing your hard disk, just follow these step by step instructions:

  1. Right click on the tray icon of Google Desktop and select ‘Options’.
  2. As shown on the image below, uncheck ‘Enable content indexing’ option from the window that appears next to clicking ‘Options’ button.
  3. Save you preferences and you are done.

Just by following these three simple steps, you can save a heavy amount of bandwidth without even uninstalling Google Desktop. ;) Also as an extra precautionary step, I would suggest you to use bandwidth meter on your system, which will monitor live data usages of your computer.

Google giving away free Gmail stickers

Google is again in with a good news for all Gmail lovers. All Gmail fans there can collect your free Gmail stickers just by sending a self addressed-stamped envelope to the address mentioned on the bottom of this post. The best part is that, you will get not only the ‘Gmail logo’ stickers, but also a sticky list of Gmail shortcuts which you can paste somewhere behind your keyboard and get familiar with its shortcuts. ;)

I am big fan of ‘Gmail’ and desperately in need of those stickers, but the sad part is that I am not aware about how to send those self addressed envelopes to a foreign country. If any one in India have ever sent such self addressed envelopes, please let me know the procedure in detail. Your help to me will be highly obliged. :-)

Address to send your request:
Send me some Gmail stickers already
P.O. Box 391420
Mountain View, CA 94039-1420



Free Airtel GPRS trick is back

Update: Using TeaShark on mobile, you can access FREE Airtel GPRS from mobile handset. Also using some more complex methods, as posted in comments you can access FREE Airtel GPRS via PC also.

Once again, free Airtel GPRS is working.

In NUTSHELL you had to do only 3 things

  1. Enter your cel no. into USER NAME/NO. Field (If it is blank)
  2. Change access point / APN to airtelfun.com or airtelmms.com
  3. Configuring your application for following proxy setting…

- If u r using airtelfun.com
IP Addr : 100.1.200.99
Port no. 8080

- If u r using airtelmms.com
IP Addr : 100.1.201.172
Port No. 8799

That all about settings!


Related: If you want to access free AiretlGPRS on phone only, use TeaShark

[NOTE: Nt all proxy will work for all. Also proxies are location-specific so a proxy working at my place may not work at yours. I know it means checking so many proxies but there is no shortcut for FREE!]

Access free airtell GPRS using TeaShark

TeaShark, a mobile browser like Opera Mini, allow you to access Airtel GPRS for FREE. Shockingly it has nothing to do with modifying any Airtel settings or any kind of hack. I am clueless about how its working! I tested it personally throughout the week but I haven’t been charged a single penny.

Here is how I used this…

  • Download TeaShark v. 312. Its free and being JAR file it can be installed on most handsets.
  • Open it from your mobile and select AirTel Live as access point.
  • That’s it! Open any site from TeaShark and you won’t be charged anything.

Note for the first time, when TeaShark starts, it may take more than one minute to initialize. Also this one time initialization may fail many times. But don’t loose your heart! :-)

December 11, 2008

High Chair Hygiene

Meal times are a time of learning and exploration for babies and toddlers. Not only are they exposed to a variety of new textures, but to tastes and smells as well. While your baby is still eating purees from the spoon, fewer messes are to be expected; once he or she graduates to finger or table foods, however, all bets are off.

When our daughter first began eating table foods, it was an adventure. Not only did she have the joy and frustration of discovering different tastes and textures, but she also was able to explore her food for the first time not only with her mouth, but with her hands as well. After meal time was over, we’d find crumbs and small pieces of food tucked away into her hair, down her shirt and even underneath her legs where she was sitting. The high chair fared no better – food would be found all around the padded seat cushion, including on, inside and underneath it, not to mention crusted onto the tray.

What’s a somewhat clean-freak parent to do? Before getting out the bleach and spraying down the entire high chair, my husband and I decided to take a more calm approach. After taking the tray and padded cushion off the chair, we read the manufacturers’ instructions and proceeded to clean the chair accordingly. The tray goes to the kitchen sink, where it’s washed with dish soap and warm water, then dried and returned to the eating area. Then we use a non-chemical all-purpose cleaner to spray down the vinyl seat cushion, the chair underneath, and the foot rests. For the straps that hold her in, we scrub those with the cleaner and a sponge and, when they get really bad, soak them in soapy water or run them through the washing machine.

As for our daughter, we’ve learned a few tricks to keeping her clean at meal time, too. We use a receiving blanket tucked around her neck and down over her chest to catch any crumbs that fall down from her hand or mouth, and try to wipe down her hands with a damp wash cloth before she gets a chance to rub her eyes, hair, face or anything else within reach.

It’s not a fool-proof method, but it usually keeps the messes to a minimum.

Thanksgiving Foods to Avoid if You Are Pregnant

Food and the pregnant woman… either the thought of it makes you hurl, or you can’t get enough of it, or you get woken up at 4 a.m. with cravings for nachos with jelly, or someone is telling you no! you can’t eat that!

It’s actually really important for pregnant women to be careful about food safety. Getting food poisoning is never fun, and it can be really serious if you are pregnant. Dehydration, a common complication of food poisoning, can affect the baby, deplete amniotic fluid levels, and even lead to premature labor. And and even more scary, is that some bacteria that cause food poisoning can cause severe birth defects.

Here’s some tips for having a safe holiday meal, and avoiding the most common causes of food positioning at Thanksgiving.

  • Turkey - make sure it’s cooked properly, all of it, all the way through, until the inside is 180F. Be careful when preparing the turkey. Defrost it properly in the refrigerator until it’s completely thawed before cooking. Also wash hands well after handling the turkey, and any utensils or surfaces that have come into contact with the raw bird or juices. Keep raw turkey, and other raw meats, wrapped, on lower levels of the refrigerator, and separated from other foods.
  • Stuffing - cook the stuffing or dressing in a separate dish outside the bird - the inside of a turkey just doesn’t get hot enough to kill any harmful bacteria.
  • Smoked meat, meat spreads, deli meat, pate, smoked salmon - avoid any of these products if they are from the chiller cabinet. These have been known to be contaminated with the listeria bacteria, which can cause serious birth defects if contracted by a pregnant woman. It’s OK to use meat products that are canned because they are sterilized in the can.
  • Leftovers - get them wrapped and stored in the refrigerators as quickly as possible, before any bacteria get a chance to grow. Don’t wait for them to go cold, you don’t need to, the fridge will chill them faster than they will get cold at room temperature. Get them in the fridge as soon as you can so you don’t forget.

google adsense tips

Google just released a newbie central for their Adsense program, those ads webmasters can include on their site to earn money for every click on the ad from a visitor (if you're using the program, part of the advertiser budget will go to you, and the other part to Google). I wanted to add some tips from my own experience:

  1. Ads can work well in-between other stuff. On a games site of mine, some of the games don't contain ads next to the game area; the AdSense ad will only be shown in-between game rounds. This is the time the visitor is not concentrating on performing a task but might take a small break, and be open to the option of visiting new sites.

  2. Put too much emphasis on AdSense and your site may be linked to less. The more available space you dedicate to AdSense on your site, and the less you differentiate between ads and content in your design, the more money you earn with the program, right? Not quite. While pushing the AdSense may result in short-term gains, it might also convince some visitors that the site is too crowded to be worth visiting again. And some of those visitors may also be bloggers or other people who might otherwise help to promote your site with links to it. And the less your site gets linked to, the less traffic it gets, meaning AdSense revenues may go down in the long term.

  3. Even if you get huge traffic, the AdSense income from the site is more dependent on the site type and audience. Google targets AdSense ads automatically to the site content. Or at least, it does so ideally – but some types of content fare better than others with this targeting. I noticed for instance that AdSense does better on a games site than on a technology blog. I also heard people say that AdSense does quite good on product oriented blogs; say, one post solely about the iPod; another post solely about Gadget XYZ, and so on.

  4. Image ads can be relevant and work for you, but they might also apall some visitors. Google's AdSense program gives you the option to choose between a couple of different ad formats. Two main groups are text ads vs text & image ads. When you choose the latter, Google will deliver what they deem works best for your content (or so one would hope, and it would be in Google's best self-interest to serve you the best possible ad, it seems).

    However, Google doesn't really know your layout preferences, and they don't really understand when your audience thinks ads are "too much"; and considering image ads include Flash animations (which you can't disable, once you go for image ads), Flash animations may well push some people away. One thing you can do is to only show image ads in areas where they don't disturb the content, e.g. at the end of posts. Also, you might want to listen to visitor feedback on the ads being served; I received emails before that the blinking ad on this or that site made a person want to leave the site, at which point I blocked the specific advertiser via the AdSense Setup -> Competitive Ad Filter option.

  5. When it comes to context sensitive targeting, you can increase or lower the importance of certain parts of your page. To help Google find a matching ad for your content, you can use the HTML comment syntax by encapsulating more important parts with


    ... your important site content here ...
    .
    Or, to lower the importance of a section, use:


    ... your not so important site content here ...
    (Google notes that it may take up to 2 weeks for this change to your site will be taken into account by the AdSense.)

    What if your site doesn't have any good matchable content to begin with, though? Say, the page just includes an image. Well, for the reasons of search engine optimization but also ad optimization you might want to consider using at least a descriptive title, an explanatory footer containing the important keywords or keyphrases (the kind of footer that actually helps the human visitor by explaining what the page is about). In the case of image content, reasonable alt and title attribute texts should be used as well.*

    *Whatever you do, don't resort to "keyword-stuffing" as it doesn't help your visitors and may get your page ranked lower in search engines.
  6. Be aware of risks when you change ad layouts too much. I once had a system on the server to randomly differ between various AdSense layouts on the same page. Doing so I was hoping to add some good variety to keep the ads at least somewhat interesting and notable. Shortly after I stopped doing so and simply included a rather big static area for the AdSense to "do what it wants," the AdSense revenues for that site increased. Now, I don't know if this was a coincidence of some sorts, as revenues often go down or up even when you don't do anything, but it might well have been that there was a connection between adding too much homemade randomization, and lowered revenues.

    At another time, during the redesign of this blog, I switched from one ad format to another for the end-of-posts AdSense ad space. This, combined with perhaps other layout changes, suddenly cut the ad revenues in half for the blog. It took me some time to realize that I had some ad channels* set up for the specific old layout size, and by changing this I must have kicked out all those advertisers who were pushing their ads through the channel.

    *This setting can be found at AdSense Setup -> Channels.

  7. Use competing ad systems when AdSense doesn't seem to work for a site. At CoverBrowser.com, which shows galleries of comic and book covers and so on, I tried including AdSense ads in "non-annoying" places in the layout (including trying to use AdSense affiliate links via AdSense Setup -> Referrals), but this didn't seem to work at all. However I then tried "affiliating" the "buy" link below individual covers, utilizing the eBay affiliate commission system offered by auctionsads.com*. (Disclosure: Patrick Gavin, co-owner of AuctionAds, paid me for consulting before on other projects, like Sketchcast.com.) This worked a lot better, and as it was simply connected to an existing site feature, it also didn't add clutter.

    A good start to find other ad programs is to search for adsense alternatives on Google... you will see a lot of lists which are dedicated to competitors. (Note that some of these competitors may be US-only.) You may also want to join an ad or blog network like The Deck, Federated Media (disclosure: I was part of Federated Media before), or 9 Rules. Before joining such a network – which might require you to show them your traffic stats and so on – check if their typical ads and campaigns fit with your site layout and your general ad type preferences.

    *CommissionJunction also offers an eBay affiliate system but CommissionJunction has really low usability, in my opinion; setting it up is confusing.

  8. Sometimes you may get a sudden increase in traffic, hence ad clicks, but you can't locate the source of the traffic. I'm using google analytic to track my sites, though AdSense is also a good first indicator of traffic explosions... because it will show the combined page views of all your sites (provided you include AdSense on all of them), as opposed to Google Analytics, where you need to check site by site individually.

    However, sometimes even with Google Analytics, you won't be able to locate the source of your traffic because there's no specific new popular referrer being shown (a referrer is the site linking to your site, provided people click on that link). In these cases, it may well be that your site has been discussed in a TV show or similar, as the show won't "link" to you (but audiences will be entering your domain manually into the browser when they like what the saw on TV). When you feel that there has been a traffic explosion sometimes you may get additional email feedback in regards to your site, and it makes sense for you to ask your visitor: where did you first find out about the site? Maybe the can let you know about the name of the TV show, or magazine, or other "offline" source responsible for the peak. (I sometimes sent pointers to the BBC clikc show for instance, with partly enormous effect.)

  9. Consider using AdSense even when the page doesn't get any traffic yet. Who knows, some day the traffic suddenly explodes, and you might not realize fast enough and thus miss out on the action (as sometimes, traffic goes as fast as it comes).

    On the other hand, reversely I would suggest to never do a site just to make ad money with it. That kind of motivation may lead to spammy sites that don't help anyone really. (If a project is great, it's great even if it doesn't make any money.)

  10. Making money with AdSense takes time. In my experience, it may take many months to years for a site to gain enough traffic to make OK money through AdSense... if ever. I have almost never experienced any site making quick and easy money with AdSense (though you may be getting quicker results than me of course, as it depends on so many variables!).
    I think for any site getting a couple of thousands of visitors a day, you might want to start playing around with AdSense to see where it takes you (if you didn't already include AdSense anyway just to see what happens, and following up on tip #9). As you are paid in US-$, the actual benefit the ad revenue will bring depends on your local costs of living as well (you might even ponder moving or going on an extended holiday trip if your local costs of living are too high for your site revenues to cover).