Thursday, July 17, 2008

Excel and Monkeys

I've been building my email list recently and found too many duplicate email addresses on several different "lists.txt" i've gathered in the span of say... ten years. For my first attempt at contacting our previous clients, I tried mailchimp and found excellent for managing and building lists and sending beautiful html pages! Previously i was sending Thunderbird created ones and it was a very difficult thing to do!




As I was importing my list to MailChimp (Powered by MailChimp) I found my excel lists to be unbearable. I never thought organizing an email list could be this TEDIOUS! I've spend two whole days just looking for duplicates and makign sure to filter out the spam emails like viagra@boost.com or the countless number of qwert@gmail.com type of emails. I thought i had culled it down to a manageable 1000 but as i run this find duplicate script in excel my list was reduced to a not very encouraging 500.

here's a link to Microsoft's very own guide to find duplicates on excel!


Method 1: Use a worksheet formula

To use a worksheet formula to compare the data in two columns, follow these steps:
1.Start Excel.
2.In a new worksheet, enter the following data (leave column B empty):
A1: 1   B1:     C1: 3
A2: 2 B2: C2: 5
A3: 3 B3: C3: 8
A4: 4 B4: C4: 2
A5: 5 B5: C5: 0
3.Type the following formula in cell B1:
=IF(ISERROR(MATCH(A1,$C$1:$C$5,0)),"",A1)


How to compare data in two columns to find duplicates in Excel

Friday, July 11, 2008

Remove Posted by on your blogger account

It's been a bit bothersome for me to see Posted by "gmail account for blogger" id on all my posts. I can across this tutorial on the net that solves that problem really easily!

http://tips-for-new-bloggers.blogspot.com/2007/06/post-footer-customize-template-i.html

Enjoy!

Monday, July 7, 2008

Setting Joomla 1.5 Changing Global Article Parameters

Have you ever had that first Joomla installation then immediately got irritated as as you added articles and finding out that Joomla 1.5 defaults to having author names and titles and date published on top of the article? Well here's a quick way to remove them on all articles. If there's any other article you'd like to optionally show the author names, titles etc.. you can always set them individually on each article while having most of your articles use the Global Parameters setting.

Here's the video

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Remove "Welcome to the Front Page" from Joomla Home Page

It's always irritating when you set up a new site and greeted with the

"Welcome to the Front Page" text everywhere, from the Meta Title on your browser to the Main text on the body. Its very easy to do and this link below shows you how to remove the Welcome text on Joomla 1.5

http://www.phoca.cz/articles/joomla/welcome-to-the-frontpage-remove/

Enjoy!

Friday, July 4, 2008

filipinoadsensewebmaster Adsense Earnings


Here it is. What you've all been waiting for! The unglamorous reality of Adsense! The earnings are highly erratic and seem to be all over the place It's been three weeks but still there doesn't seem to be any trend going on.

Hopefully in a month or two even 12 weeks more we'll hit a stable 1 dollar per day. Maybe even ten! Enjoy!

Average Earnings for 24 days = $0.46375 USD or 20 Pesos a day

The Perfect Joomla Layout for a Site

They say that when using Google Adsense the most important thing you do after generating incoming traffic is ad placement. Some people report doubling or even quadrupling their Click Through Rates just by smarter Google Adsense Placement. The popular 336 Ad box is considered to attract the most clicks and no one knows why. Since I am a proponent of Joomla 1.5 ( its a long story ), I've found it difficult to find a template that just I wanted to be based around the 336 Ad Box. Like this website

http://www.familyfirst.com/
This website is said to have Click Through Rates much higher than normal. I've read that around other blogs that of figures around 20%! That's really high. So why don't we all make a layout like that? Find a template and build a site around it. Unfortunately its a lot more difficult when you are bound by the CMS you are using. I don't know many Filipino Joomla developers. Yes, I could make my own template but these days I focus more on writing or finding quality content. So, what's the quickest way to come up with a template like this for joomla?!

Switch to DRUPAL! That's easy! But I've grown to love joomla with all its idiocyncrasies. Besides the learning curve of Joomla is quite high not because it is a difficult cms but it stems from the fact that there seems to be an abundance of tools that are very useful that haven't been updated to work with the newest version of Joomla, Joomla 1.5 for example. It's not as straightforward as I hear Drupal is but I love Joomla.

Luckily I found this website

http://www.joomla24.com

If features 1500 Templates for Joomla! FREE! Templates such as this:

http://www.joomlademos.de/home?template=Avantgarde-Template-Joomla15x-Free

Offer so much more options than the standard Joomla left column navigation big content center column and small right miscellaneous column. Its almost like a blogging template. But makes it possible for you adsense boxes to blend in. I'll continue my search for prettier 3 column Drupal like blogsque columns for Joomla 1.5. But for now i think that that template above is almost my ideal Joomla 1.5 Adsense template.

Have you found your own ideal Adsense Joomla 1.5 template? If so tell me about it!

How to Add Google Analytics to your Blog

The first few things a filipino webmaster should do is to find a way to keep track of the statistics of his blog. I've used many statistical or tracking services before and I've found Google Analytics to be one of the easiest to use. Before anything else go to the Google Analytics home page and apply for your google adsense Account. It takes just a minute to do.

http://www.google.com/analytics/




After you've done that follow what the video says. Basically these are the steps on what a Pinoy Webmaster should do to add Google Analytics to his or her Blog

1) Apply for an Analytics Account
2) Add a New website profile on the Analytics account
3) Follow the Wizard and Copy the tracking code provided by Google
4) Open up your Blogger Dashboard by logging in http://www.blogger.com
5) Edit your layout by going to the Layout Tab and editing the HTML Template
6) Paste the Tracking Code Provided by Google towards the end of your template code. BEFORE THE END of the tag
7) Save your template
8) And wait for your tracking code!

We'll that's all there is to it! Now Filipino Webmasters and Pinoy Bloggers can track their Blog with Google's powerful Analytics tool!

Thursday, July 3, 2008

My Adsense Journey

For quite a while now I've been wanting to try and have my own blog. It's been a long time coming but discovering the Google Adsense Program and my initial frustration of not being able to sustain a $1 earning each and every day led me to make this blog. Blogs were the in thing 5 years ago! And here I am late but motivated to be able to improve my adsense earnings. This blog is an attempt to document my Adsense Challenge!

You read so many things off the internet about adsense millionaires. Last week I just found out about this Filipino teenager allegedly earnings five figures per month in dollars. that's $xx,xxx anywhere from 10,000 US Dollars to 99,999 US Dollars! That's amazing! Although, I had my reservations of course. Anything that's too good to be true, probably is. And with the internet this has been really an issue! I've been reading the DigitalPoint forums, PinoyMoneyTalk forums and recently the Warriorforum Forums. Is there any truth to earning upwards of a thousand dollars a month?! How long will it take for someone who has just started Adsense this 2008? Is there any thing left out there that hasn't been written about?! Why would I care to try?

Perhaps it is because as a Pinoy i've always felt that the internet and its rewards belonged to the Western World. And sadly, throughout my Internet "life" I've noticed Filipinos unwilling to help their fellow countrymen. I hate it every time this realization has surfaced but I do think that there is a tremendous lack of Adsense Publishers from the Philippines to share their knowledge.

I am not going to play hero but I will try my best to document all issues I have in my Google Adsense journey to help my fellow Filipinos. I've already come across many issues already that are Pinoy-Centric with the Google Adsense Program. I hope all of you will join me in my journey from now till well... well into the future.

My Journey Officially Started at June 11, 2008
and Yes, It's been hard breaking $1 US Dollar per day!