How to set a goal?

I tried to set a goal few times in my life but have none I can call a success.

To set a goal, you need a number (something measurable), duration to achieve, realistic.

The hard part is the monitoring part.

Say you are targeting to earn $25,000 a month by end of year 2010.

To achieve that, your plan should be based on smaller target/goals.

e.g.

Jan - $5,000
Mar - $7,000 (addn $2k)
Jun - $10,000 (addn $3k)
Aug - $14,000 (addn $4k)
Oct - $19,000 (addn $5k)
Dec - $25,000 (addn $6k)

Then need to think the plan how to achieve that. e.g. additional $2,000 from Jan to Mar.

To monitor every month on the achievement. Whether you are close to your goal or it's just unrealistic and unachievable.

I'm on skype again

It has been a long time ago I left Skype. Maybe about 2 years time. Got few friends on skype but not as many as I have in Google Talk and Yahoo Messenger (no longer in YM also).

I need to use it back for one of program support that I join. The strength of skype I think is on its voice chat and connectivity with phone.

Plan to use this blog again

I need some space on net to write something especially on my new findings and result of my experiments.

The blog post will be very short and I don't care about grammar or language error.

Now I want to make some research on twittter

Upgrade for more space with google

Official Google Blog: A simple way to get more storage

Google announcing space upgrading for most of their services like gmail, picasa etc.

With very special low price of $20/year you can add up to 6GB of space!

How to disable non-genuine windows warning msg

Just only few weeks microsoft announce to detect an display a 'warning msg' for all pirated microsoft windows software, now there is a work around to overcome that. How fast.

http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/04/workarounds-to-disable-non-genuine.html

Get mobile with your thumb drive

Now you can use your thumb drive to replace your hard drive. You can install portable applications on it and use it at any computers.

Check it out at
http://portableapps.com/

Get free essential applications with one download

http://pack.google.com/

included - firefox, antivirus, ad aware, acrobat reader etc.

My new blog

I've just purchased a new domain name and have my new blog over there.
From now on, I'm not updating this blog anymore. Please visit my new blog at

www.ahmadazwan.com

Content does matter. Most of the time.

What I've learnt after developing lots of websites for people and myself is content matter most.

Design goes to second place. Anyway we need to have at least an acceptable design to make it at least presentable to the website visitors.

My favorite free website template is

www.templatesbox.com

PHP MySQL development

Searching for ways to write PHP coding with MySQL database in more efficient way. Found this website that describe PHP db driven website architecture. Very complicated yet I think is very useful and efficient if it is implemented in big projects.

A Development Infrastructure for PHP

looking for a domain?

It's hard to find a good domain name since they are all taken. Now if you need a domain name, you have to find a long one, or with hypen '-', or with numbers, or with a different extension such as .cc .us .biz .info etc.

To help you finding a good left domain name, you can try
www.nameboy.com

Just enter your desired words, and the tool will list all available combination of the words with available status

Affiliate and referral program directory

Other than clickbank and commissionjunction, this website also popular among internet marketers

refer-it.com

Google tools page

This website provides useful tools to track google's stuff.

You can track
- pagerank
- back links
- indexed page

Further more you can put it on your website by copying the script and paste in your html code.

Visit Mypagerank.net

Other tools such as online stats - current user online, unique visitors, total visitors
and also google sitemap generator.

Submit your site to popular directory

Get higher ranking and link popularity by submitting your website to website directories. Some of popular directories are

http://dmoz.org
http://zeal.com
http://linkopedia.com
http://joeant.com
http://goguides.org
http://sevenseek.com

Submitting site to website directory is more important than submitting to search engine.

list of best web directories
http://www.best-web-directories.com/free-directories.htm

Apache mod rewrite

Apache mod rewrite is very useful to rewrite long url to short and search engine friendly url

For example from this url
http://www.mydomain.com/application/view.php?id=787&page=2

to something like this
http://www.mydomain.com/app/7/

The tutorial can be read at
http://www.google.com/search?q=apache+mod+rewrite+friendly+url

and the generator is available at
http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/mod_rewrite-rewriterule-generator.shtml

has been applied here
http://www.justmoney.biz

Get link back to increase PR

PR or pagerank introduced by google to rate the website popularity. It is measured from 0-10 where 10 is the most popular (but google.com still at 8 PR)

The simplest method to increase PR is to get as many websites to link to your website. To do this you can do a link exchange.

The most important content to be exchange are
your url:
your website title:
your website description:

Make sure the website title is the same with the one you use on the website of given url.

You can make a form for people whoever want to exchange links with you by giving them your html code and let them fill a form with the above particulars

Create a 'resource' page to list all the links of website. When the list grow in size, you can categorize them into few major categories.

email auto respond and mailing list

Auto response program is used to follow up, send sequential email and automatically response to sender's email

It is very useful to be placed on every websites since people will not buy on the first visit. We have to build confidence and provide free useful information to them in order to gain credibility and trust. Then the people will come back to us and buy from us.

Some of the FREE autoresponse program

http://www.freeautobot.com/
free autoresponder with ads

http://www.sendfree.com/
free autoresponder with 3rd party ads
ads exchange programs

http://www.getresponse.com/orderfree.html
limited to 5 follow ups
unlimited accounts, changes and subscribers
pro version = $17.95/mo (cheapest)

http://www.ymlp.com/
free list with ads when subscribe only. not in mailing list
low fee for premium one. $2.50/mo

Other paid autoreseponse

http://aweber.com/
$19.95/mo (cheapest)

http://www.emailaces.com
$8.95/mo + $2.95 to start (cheapest)

Mailing list
http://ezinedirector.com/ (has free option)


MORE AUTORESPONDER (not yet reviewed)
http://xenbot.com/ - free with cashculture.com
http://www.responders.com/

Tips to choose domain name

Domain name is a name that will refer to a server ip where the website is hosted. For example yahoo.com is a domain name.

You need to have a domain name or at least a sub-domain such as yoursite.tripod.com.

Some tips to choose a good domain name:

1. Easy to remember
2. Related with what your website offer.
3. No more than 7 characters
4. Try to be descriptive

Choose a domain name based on your keyword
Examples:

www.yourkeyword.com
www.yourkeywordwebsite.com
www.your-keyword.com
www.yourkeyword.net

Or alternatively, you can use any domain name with this method

www.anyname.com/yourkeyword (keyword in folder name)
yourkeyword.anydomain.com (keyword in subdomain)

website ranking tool

to check for website ranking on search engine based on specified keyword

http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/ranking-reports/
can check in multiple search engine. very good

http://www.rankdetective.com/
can only check in google

future google pagerank (PR). check against multiple google servers
http://www.seochat.com/?go=1&option=com_seotools&tool=9

google ranking with 10 keywords at one time
http://www.googlerankings.com/mkindex.php

Link popularity tools

Link popularity is the most important aspect to have your website ranked high on search engines list. Most of search engine use link popularity as a base to rate websites. The more quality links the website has, the higher will be the rank.

To check for link popularity
http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/link-popularity/ (web)
check against google, yahoo, msn, teoma. compared with popular websites like ebay, amazon etc
http://www.linkbuildingpro.com/ (web)
can define what websites to check against. can easily see the competitor popularity also in bold
http://www.checkyourlinkpopularity.com/ (downloadable)
more comprehensive stats. can compare lots of sites at same time
http://www.linkpopularity.com/ (web)
can check against google and yahoo only BUT can view list of all websites link to the page

To check for pagerank (Google pagerank)
besides downloading google toolbar, can use this page to check for google PR
http://www.linkbuildingpro.com/

To increase link popularity
http://www.axandra-link-popularity-tool.com/

Link hub (common link for websites)
http://www.andyhagans.com/tools/hubfinder/
http://www.linkhounds.com/hub-finder/