It was a while since I last checked out some site that let you earn while blogging. Refer this. I started looking up ways to earn through blogs ever since I started off with my very own set of blogs. For me, the priority is to blog. If I am able to make some money off it, then why not? Since I started doing that I happened to research more into earning through blogging and guess what, its such a common thing on the net. People actually blog to earn rather than earn while blogging. There are people who have sites and blog with content that just fetches them money. So, while I kept going with my research, I learned a lot about advertising over blogs using various sources such as google adwords, amazon affiliates etc. Then I also happened to stumble upon sites that pay you to blog about certain topics. One such site was the one that I had reviewed earlier.

Then there is this other site called payperpost.



From the looks of it and from the search results on google, this is one of the most popular and successful site that pays you to blog. Of course I did want to try this and if I can earn while blogging then why not. So I registered and submitted my blog for approval. One thing here is that every blog is approved and every post is approved. You have to adhere to certain criteria before your blog/post is accepted. For example, your blog should not contain only sponsored posts, but should also contain other reading material between every sponsored post. Also the posts themselves have to adhere to certain conditions set while taking up an opportunity such as having an image or a link or some keywords in the post as specified.

Also compared to the other site which allowed only posters from certain parts of the world, this one allows postings from almost all over the world. Also the number of opportunities are huge with some advertisers paying even upto $250 per accepted post. Of course the ones that pay good money also have some other criteria such as minimum Google Pagerank. In fact some advertisers also have certain restrictions such as blocked domains - this includes even the likes of livejournal and blogger among others. While that is definitely a damper, there are many opportunities that are open to LJ also. Solace comes from the fact that there are people who have earned in the range of $1000-$2000 each month. Thats quite a lot of money for even sitting all day and blogging IMHO.

Well, I am definitely not looking to earn that kind of money, because if I do, then that would be my primary source of income and I would then have to think about quitting the job that I have. Of course it doesn't hurt to tread into new waters and see what opportunities are available in the world outside. Who knows, if things work out well, and I am able to earn out of something that I enjoy, then maybe I can think of some totally different career paths a few years down the line when I am willing and able to take risks with my career. Till then I am just going to keep on experimenting and see what is out there on the internet that interests me.

Choosing a web hosting provider

I remember the time when I was looking for a decent web hosting service. Back then google was my only help. Not that it was bad, but when you enter a search criteria such as 'best web hosting', you end up with 100s of site that claim to compare 10-15 hosting providers and finally choose the top 3 out of them based on some set of criteria. Half the time you end up spending 10 mins trying to look up the results before you finally find the top 3 hosting providers. Now about 90% of the sites that I have seen, seem as though they were paid by the hosting company to write about them. The top 5 on different such sites rarely even match 50%.

Of course, back then I used to sign up for trial offers on many sites and decide which was good and what kind of service they were offering. I used to google up web hosting companies and compare their plans and what suited me and what did not. Now its about 1 year and I am pretty happy with my hosting provider. I know quite a few friends/groups who have tried to sign up with hosting providers and have burnt their fingers while at it.

Why did I bring this up? I happened to stumble upon a website today which is trying to build up a directory of web hosting providers. I have been trying to look in detail at the site and figuring out how they could help up. Unlike other comparo sites, this one is trying to be an advertisement-free directory only. So far it does look that way only.




http://www.webhostingchoice.com is a collection of Web Hosting providers and their hosting plans on offer. It even has a directory of plans which you can drill down according to various criteria such as Unix, Windows, Python, Frontpage Extensions etc. The first thing that you will notice when you log in to the site is a search box where you can specify some criteria and you will get a filtered list of hosts/plans according your search crteria. The results in all cases are simple and sweet. It shows up in a tabular format where you can compare some of the important offerings on a plan basis.

Then again, http://www.webhostingchoice.com may not yet be completely exhaustive and doesnt contain all hosts(the one that I am on for example :) ), but then its a good star and its worth a look at for someone who is looking for a hosting provider either new or for a change. It also has some sections where you get some tips on what to look out for and also some details on the terms involved in web hosting. I would say this site is definitely a must for someone who is looking to start hosting his/her own site.

Yellow Pages Search

What are Yellow Pages? Yellow pages is the term given to the listing of business. Usually these refer to the listing of telephone numbers of various business. Yellow pages are generally huge directories with indexes spanning tens of pages and hundreds of categories. It would take a person a long time to search for a listing from within this huge list. Now image the information of the Yellow Pages couple with the ease-of-use and the power of the internet.

Enter Masterseek (http://www.masterseek.com).




Masterseek is no less exhaustive and no less detailed than any yellow pages directory. In fact Masterseek has been able to do what no yellow pages could do before - to integrate all the yellow pages listing from all over the world into one single directory. Imaging the size and complexity if all business listings from all over the world are in just one book and you would have to refer to that everytime. Now with the power of the internet, this amount of information under a single roof is a reality and the footprint is just one webpage. This service contains the business listings from more than 45 million companies spread across 75 countries. The listing are available in as many as 20 languages so as to cater to a huge audience from all across the globe.

You can search based on companies, products or descriptions and also country-wise. The user interface is intuitive and searching for information is free of cost. Advertising charges would vary depending on the content of the ad and these are mentioned on the site. This may well be the newest way on how you would list your company for a wider audience.

Blogging - A potential to earn?

These days blogging has moved from a way of expressing oneself to a way of making money online. Most of the bloggers have ads on their sites which fetch them some revenue or at least they have an idea of how to make money by putting ads on their blogs.

Then there are some other sites which pay you to do some activities related to blogging. Bloggerwave (http://www.bloggerwave.com) is one among those. This site uses blogs as ads. They give you certain assignments, which they term as 'Opportunities'. Each opportunity is based on a product - which can be websites (from what I have seen of their current portfolio) or anything else. The idea is that you create awareness of that product among your reader circle and hence are advertising for that product. So they will give you some money as payment for advertising. This is definitely a good concept and if it catches on, it can lead to some excellent advertising opportunities, especially seeing the reach bloggers and blog have on the internet.

The opportunities have various parameters based on which a blog might be accepted or not. These parameters are mentioned on the opportunity page itself. Eg: Inclusion of some links, some keywords, the tone in which the post should be, and also other advanced parameters such as page ranks. It remains to be seen how this concept catches on and how the bloggers out there are able to make the best use of such opportunities.

This post was sponsored by bloggerwave.

Launchpad to report bugs in Ubuntu

Launchpad is this Ubuntu community site which can be used to report bugs (thats how I came across it) and many other community features such as codes and translations and QnA. After I filed my 2 bug reports on this site, I decided to go ahead and register here so that I can give back to the community some day. I also registered myself as a Ubuntero which involed some length verification process. That was the first time I created my PGP key and played around with GPG.

To verify oneself, one has to generate a PGP key and upload the PGP fingerprint to it. Then one has to download the Ubuntu Code_of_conduct document and sign it with his PGP key and upload it to the website. Then website will then verify if the code has been signed with the correct key and then you are a registered Ubuntero and are a part of the community.