Netformative: January 2008

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Pitfalls to avoid when planning for retirement

Have you started planning for retirement? Everybody needs to start planning for retirement. As we get older, our ability to update our blogs diminishes. We shall not be able to update our blogs regularly. This might be due to inability to type for a long time, lack of topics. Also, memory loss affects our blogging skills. We shall not be able to recycle contents to be good enough to appear original. We shall not have enough strength to be left clicking every 3 seconds to drop about 200 entrecards everyday.

I found this article on Motley fool that list ways to avoid botching your retirement plans. The link to the article is 9 Retirement Killers

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Want to what? Monetize this blog? Yes

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Fed has cut the rate..............and it means?

The Fed cut interest rates today, 30th January, from 3.50% to 3.00%. The interest rate is the rate at which banks lends to other banks for a period of time, usually overnight. The Fed did that to prevent the thought of recession. The Fed has to respond to the falling stock market and failing economy. The effects of the reduced interest can be categorized as good news, mixed news and bad news.

Good news
This will help people to borrow loans at a cheaper rate. This enables people to take loans for businesses or cars, that are within their reach i.e. loans they can afford the monthly payments.
People with variable rate mortgages loans can refinance their homes. Also if you have a variable rate credit card, you can call your credit card to lower your rate if your rate can be lowered.

Mixed news
Treasury bonds, already taken students loans and fixed mortgages will not feel the effect right away, but they will feel it in the long run.

Bad news
Savers and high yield interest rate account owners will have lower returns on their money. People with existing car loans will not benefit from this reduced interest rate.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

What is she looking at ?

I wonder what Jessica Simpson is looking at?

Want to what? Monetize this blog? Yes

I haven’t made a dime out of this blog yet. This blog is only 1 month old. I have read blogs in which the authors make like $1000-3000 a month. I usually say whoa. Then when I read blogs like shoemaker, problogger or the infamous John chow that make more than $100,000, I say eh mama. My first and the most common method of making money is by using Google adsense.

Google adsense according to what I have read is the highest pay per click (PPC) program. Pay per click program is a program that pays the webmaster money anytime an ad on his site is clicked. Pay per click is only important if you have a lot of traffic like more than 50 unique visitors per day. When you register with Google adsense, you can customize the ads to blend with your blog. Adsense try to display ads that are relevant to your blog. You also have the privilege to filter ads from some website. Adsense also gives you the opportunity to make money by including a search bar in your site. If your search bar is used to search Google, you get paid if an ad is clicked during the search process. According to adsesne, “Offer your users web search while earning revenue from ads relevant to their search terms”.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Recent Post Widget

At last, I can show my readers my recent post. When I visit other blogs I subscribed to, the first thing I try to look for is the recent post. I do that because I just want to read the newest post since I have read the older posts. This are the steps to take if you want to also install a recent post widget for blogger.

Log in to your Blogger account
On the dashboard, click on the “Settings” link

On the Settings tab, click on the “Site Feed” tab

Check the field “Allow Blog Feed”. Please select either “Full” or “Short” in the drop-down menu. You have to ensure that “None” is not selected

Click “Save Settings” button at the bottom of the page

Now, click on the “Template” tab. This will take you to the “Page Elements” tab

Click on the “Add a Page Element” link at the section where you want to include the list of recent posts. You can include it in the sidebar or just below the post

In the Page Elements pop-up window, scroll down to find the page element “Feed”

Click the “Add to Blog” button

Type the feed URL of your own blog. In the example below, I have typed my feedburner feed for my blog. You can also use the Blogger’s default feed URL http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/post/default. Replace the yourblogname accordingly for your blog.

Click on “Continue”

In the window that pops up, you can configure your feed. Type in a suitable name for your page element, like Recent Posts or Latest Posts

Select the number of posts to be displayed. Blogger allows only a maximum of 5 items to be displayed
You can choose to display the date of posting and the author name if you want. You will see a preview of your feed in the box
Click on “Save Changes”

You have added the list of recent posts. More importantly, you have taken another important step to make the navigation of your blog easier for your readers.

This tutorial was from Assess my blog

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New Template

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

RSS Feed Submission

If you update your content periodically, you definitly need an RSS Feed. Most website and blogs have RSS feed. Submitted RSS feeds helps to increase traffic to blogs. I saw a list of RSS feed to submite your site to. They are: