Why I do not shift to a custom domain

If you are seriously engaged in blogging, it is always recommended to have your own domain and preferably Wordpress hosted on it.Many Internet friends and some blogging professionals recommended me to have my own domain.Webtalks is making enough bucks for me to buy hosting and a domain for it.I'm a big WP fan and I too want to join the self hosted Wordpress community.Still there are few reasons that restrict me

• Domain Age.With the blast of links everyday towards this blog (say thanks to templates), I believe Google will put this blog in the Sandbox.Since I'm currently on Blogger, Google counts the domain age of blogspot.com which well is a pretty old one(1999).
  
• Time.As a student it isn't easy to come online everyday.Which leaves me with two alternatives.Either sell off my blog like Rishi did or keep the posts on blogger till I pass out.I'm not comfortable selling this blog as this is connected to my Google Account.So keeping it live on Blogger is the only option(Don't say that I can also delete the blog).
  
• Hosting.Though many web hosting providers promise 0% downtime, still there is a risk.On blogger, I haven't yet encountered any downtime for this blog.Blogger currently gives undisclosed bandwidth to its blogs, so no problems how much traffic I receive when I'm absent

The shift will definitely take place
You read it right.I will for sure move Webtalks to a custom domain.All I can currently tell you is that you'll have to wait a bit for it.I believe by May 2010.Yes I know its long after.But I will continue posting on Webtalks when I'm free.I had already bought a domain (ashtech.info) back this summer.But afterwards I came to know (.info) domains are full of spam, so next time I'll buy a (.com) only

I'm currently looking for a good domain name (.com). If you have any thoughts, feel free to share them in comments.By 2010, I hope it will gain some age and then we'll shift Webtalks to it.

During this period I will go through intensive studying as these 3 years will be determining for my career.If you are an Indian you would be quite familiar with IIT-JEE which is what I'm going to be preparing for.But still I need wishes from all you for cracking IIT isn't possible without your blessings.

Will miss you all.

© Webtalks by Ashwini Khare | We are looking for good writers

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Site Report for October, Perfomance report of AdSense referrals

Its the first of month again, so here comes my site report.We got 8,037 visitors who get generated 11,452 page views with 81.65% being the new visitors.Again Google organic search brought me the maximum number of visitors with the templates post being the most popular.During this period, Webtalks crossed the 100 RSS readers mark...


Blog Income Report
This time, I can see a good rise in the the Blog income.Here's a report

AdSense : 26$
Template business : 100$
Widgetbucks : 25$ + 4$ + 8 referrals
Reviews : 60$
Other :15$
Total : 230$
This time the earnings have tripled itself from the last month's.I draw three major reasons for that:
-Pagerank export.We got a PR of 5 while many others got slapped
-100 RSS subscribers.
-Alexa Rank in top 200,000

Google AdSense Referrals 2.0 performance Report
As some of you maybe knowing, I changed few Ad units on my site from AdSense to Content to Referral Ads.They have been up for a long time and here is a performance report.

I would say a big disappointment for me. I almost tried everything.The conversion ratio was extremely poor, more then 75:1.Still I got something in store for you if you still want to go with them

• Text based Ads perform better then Image Ads
• Smaller Ad units like a vertical banner 120 x 140 perform better than 300 x 250 Ad units.
• If available, go for Text links.They have a higher CTR.
• Always check the Pick Best Performing Ads Option.
  
• Don't give them the prime Ad Spot.A referral Ad in less visibility region will be ok but you shouldn't neglect them completely.Ideally, a small Ad unit in the lower sidebar.

If I were to talk about successful conversions, I'll say I only received one and Google still has the default limitation on me.

Conclusion-Referral 2.0 Ads sound interesting but their performance isn't up to the mark.Google AdSense team should consider the Referral section again.If you are a webmaster/blogger, implement them only when you have around 100k page views per month to get the best results.

© Webtalks by Ashwini Khare | We are looking for good writers

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Anything new?

Quite a few things have been happening in the blogosphere.I'll just sum them up.

Today's Blog Action Day when bloggers write to promote environment.My contribution is today I wrote a poem on a chart for my class soft board on Nature title "leisure" by William Henry Davies.Its a good one.

AdSense team has blogged about a quality control over the inventory by placing a restriction for publishers monetizing Displaying non-Google referrals.In this case, you'll just earn a little less than the price you get for a successful conversion for the first few times, after which you'll earn normally.If you don't display Google AdSense referral 2.0 ads, its out of your business.This happened just a few hours after I received my first successful conversion :)

Webtalks has been experiencing a poor posting frequency over th past few days.The reason is here.I was busy with the launch of another Tech Blog, And now I'm proud to announce that we just launched the Ashtech Blog (Go grab the RSS).Reason, Wordpress is a much better blogging platform for tech-savvy bloggers like me.While Webtalks will continue its normal routine on the same *.blogspot subdomain , I will be joined by my classmate, Harshyt Goel at the Ashtech Blog.Harhsyt has got some writing skills.He previously used to blog at the Review Blog.Check out the Blog now!

Google Pagerank gave a so called teaser trailer on 13 October.All sites reporting changes have got a low pagerank than their previous ones while some are complaining about their non-involvement in link business.Webtalks remained unaffected with this partial update.It looks like Google are really after it.Some folks are saying about a new algorithm change, When I searched for it, I concluded it was the Orion algorithm which Google bought a 17 months before from an Australian Scholar.Going by the data, I think the Quarter 4 export should happen by the end of October but this time its not going to be exciting as Google have tested our patience upto an extent from where no excitement about the next export is left.This teaser update was a big enough news to get a Sticky Post on DP forums.

Remember Top 100 Make Money Online list by 45n5.com? Jason Blanton a has made a list of feeds of all top 100 blogs right in one post.It must have been a painful task.You can also check out The Webtalks feed there somewhere in the middle.Advertisers maybe this is a good opportunity for you.

© Webtalks by Ashwini Khare | We are looking for good writers

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Site Report For September

Its the first month after holidays, but with a day less.So here's my site report

Statistics

We got 10,486 pageviews according to analytics by 7,289 visitors.Interestingly Adsense Dashboard says we got 11,140 pageviews while statcounter says we got 9,000 pageviews!


Google Organic Search continues to dominate the referring source while most visitors were from United States and were after Templates!

We have done pretty well in Technorati as we currently rank #400

Blog Income Report
Adsense :31$
Test Link Ads :25$
Template business :20$
Kontera :1$ (lolz)

Which adds upto 77$.Ther has been a certain dip from the previous income report reason being I have removed 2 Adsense Ad units.Adsense has displayed consistence performance while I managed to refer one advertiser to the TLA network.I have done 2 design makeovers 15$ and 5$ respectively.While Kontera has been a poor perfomer.

I am thinking of removing Kontera from this site, its making the things confusing.I have temporarily removed the Advertiseing Link for I think it requires some proper attention.

New Feature : Last night, I added a new feature called as Table Of Contents in which you'll see all posts published on this weblog on simply clicking a link.Its using API so the list would be listed on the same page.You can also toggle between Post Date,Labels and Post Title.The Table Of contents Link is visible in the right sidebar.

© Webtalks by Ashwini Khare | We are looking for good writers

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View the best review we had so far...

Thank you so much Charles Lau for reviewing Webtalks visually and that too free of cost! Charles Lau has an excellent screen casting software called HyperCam 2 with which he reviews the sites.Its really an awesome experience to watch how do my visitors behave when they visit the blog.Enjoy the 10 minutes video below.Infact, this is not the end he must have spent long time typing about Webtalks too, roughly about 400 words.To be frank, even I couldn't have done it that well.



Jealous? Your blog too can have a decent video review but you need 10 paypal bucks from Charles.More details
But from my opinion its worth more than that!

We love you Charles Lau!

© Webtalks by Ashwini Khare | We are looking for good writers

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