All the big players, including  Google,Skype, eBay, Technorati, YouTube and many others are featured in the Web 2.0 periodic table. 

In a similar fashion to the original period table, the websites placement in the table is not random, but depending on the web site category. The leftmost column displays the search engines , the second from the left displays Internet tools and so forth. 

Granted, the idea is a nice link bait, however i am still amazed by what people with some extra time can make .

 Via: Download Squad

I was pleased to see that 16 individuals commented 5 times or more during the last month. These good people can be considered as “serial commentators” , and were therefore eligible to participate in the draw.

Although i promised to hire a super model to draw the lucky one, unfortunately she and her bodyguards couldn’t make it, as they missed their connection flight to Israel (where i live) LOL

So given the circumstances, i was forced to use a simpler draw method based on the RAND() function in Microsoft Excel. The winner that my Excel 2007 picked was commentator number 4 – Mr Shankar Ganesh.

So again, thanks for commenting and congratulations to Mr Shankar for winning this contest. Shankar, I will be in contact with you soon to arrange the transfer of the extra sweet 15$.

I have been thinking about how should i reward people that spend their precious time and write valuable comments in this blog. These nice people provide me with their insight on my content and keep me motivated on my mission to provide you the best Windows and Web 2.0 tips.

 So first of all, i offer a free link to each and everyone of my 12 top commentators. From today, i will be resetting that list every 10 days.

Secondly, the first 5 commentators in each period will be mentioned (and link loved ) in my Sunday Quick links.

Thirdly, on July 10th i will reward one of my commentators with a 15$ prize (in Amazon gifts or a direct paypal transfer). In order to be eligible to participate in the draw you should have commented no less than 5 times at AvirtualExit.com in the period between June 11th to July 10th. If you choose, i can donate the 15$ to any non-profit organization of your choice (in that case i will add another 5$ from AvirtualExit.com).

At this point, i would like to remind you to subscribe to my feed.

Thanks for being with me,

Gili

So here’s my revival list:

• The Long tail keyword strategy
• Worpress.org vs. Wordpress.com

I would like to tag Ms Latina Renee (one of the Blogsphere most talented marketers), Vincent and  Garry. Guys, show us your hidden good stuff.

First and foremost, I would like to clarify that although this is an empirical model (as it was validated using actual traffic figures published by authoritative blogs, it doesn’t apply to all the Blogsphere. However, I have the feeling that my model is relevant to the big majority of the blogs. 

How blogs make you money?

For simplicity, I identified 7 possible revenue sources which can be leveraged by bloggers (I am sure that others exists, but these seem to apply to the mainstream):

• Contextual Advertising (Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network etc’)
• Inline Text Advertising (Vibrant, Kontera)
• Banner Ads (Burst, Tribal Fusion, BlogAds etc’)
• Affiliate Sales
• Feed Advertising

How blogs spend you money ?

Here the list of main expenditure items the blogging venture has:   

• Blogger salary
• Hosting and Domain
• Web Design/Programming
• Advertising
• Marketing, Promotions, giveaways
• Collection expenses (Paypal commissions etc’)
• Communication expenses (Internet Line, Phone)
• Administrative (incorporation, accounting etc’)

Assumptions

1. I believe that leveraging the Price / Earnings ratio applicable to SP 500 companies in order to valuate a blog is fundamentally wrong. The basic idea behind the P/E ratio is that in general, a high P/E suggests that investors expect higher earnings growth in the future compared to companies with a lower P/E. Most blogging ventures are “solo flights”, and have no patented intellectual property, therefore they have no much room to grow. Therefore I propose to use a modest P/E ratio of 3, in order to valuate blogs.
2. A blog revenue is primarily tied to three main factors:
   • The number of unique visitors it receives, and consequently the number of page views. The model assumes 2.1 page views per unique monthly visitor.
   • Its PageRank
   • Its average Contextual Advertising eCPM (Earnings per thousand page views).  
3. As far the other revenue sources, I made the following assumptions:
   • Affiliate Sales: Large blogs can make around 4$ per thousand views in Affiliate Sales.
   • Banner Advertising: Large blogs can expect to earn around $2.5 CPM from Banner ads. Blogs with less than 200K are seldom accepted to banner Ad networks.
4. As far as spending is concerned, I made the following assumptions:
   • Communication and administrative expenses (if you  operate in an official manner) will cost you around $70 (varies from country to country).
   • Blogs with more than 100K unique monthly visitors will need an upgraded  hosting package.
   • I assumed a $30/month  expense for Web design consulting services.

The Blog Valuation Calculator ™

I built the pretty basic Blog Valuation Calculator ™ in order to help you plan the expected profit from your blogging venture. You can also use it to assess the value of your blog. BTW -The tool is built using Zoho Sheets (hey, I didn’t forget we are a Web 2.0 blog ).

How to use the Blog Valuation Calculator ?

• Open the Blog Valuation Calculator
• Enter your blog’s monthly number of unique visitors your blog into cell B5
• Enter your blog’s PageRank into cell B6
• Enter your contextual advertising average eCPM into cell B7
• Cells B32 and C32 respectively will show your projected earnings
• Cell B34 will show your blog valuation

OK, I hope you’ll find my model useful. Will be looking forward to hear your thoughts.

For people not into PageRank and SEO, that’s not a big deal, but every webmaster will tell you that a web site with a “greyed” page rank bar is a big no-no.
Before the last TBPR (Tool bar PageRank) update, “greyed” pages were normally considered as banned by Google, thus, they were removed from the Google index, and as such,  webmasters and bloggers refrained from exchanging links with them.

So here’s the update: since the last TBPR update Google actually show new sites/pages with PR0 as “greyed” in the toolbar whereas before they show up as “white”. First, I was a bit skeptic about this, so I made a test: I searched for a “greyed page” from the Digital Forum in Google, and big surprise, it appeared there! . I repeated this test with a couple of other PR0 blogs that wanted to exchange links with this PR4 blog.

Bottom line guys, no need to freak out, it’s just a change in Google’s policy. The big majority of those “greyed” pages are perfecly ok, they are by no means banned, and are good to do business with.

Your thoughts are welcome! 

[tags] Google PageRank, TBPR, Goolge [/tags]

Being a tech blogger, who’s deeply into tips and tricks aimed to help you make the most of your PC, I jumped on the Top 5 train,  and would like to contribute my favorite top 5 list: My top 5 freeware PC utilities.

The great thing about these utilities/applications, is that they provide state-of-the-art performance, functionality and support for free. I strongly recommend that you install them all on any PC you use.

So here are my top 5 freeware utilities:

• Foxit Reader: No doubt that PDF has became the universal format for file sharing. Unfortunately, the PDF reader market is dominated by the extra annoying Adobe (Acrobat) Reader. The main drawback of Adobe is that it consumes plenty of your system resources. Foxit Reader, a lightweight application that enables you to read your PDF files like a breeze, is the preferred solution for PDF file viewing.
• AVG Anti Virus Free Edition: Malware of any kind and specially PC viruses can hurt your productivity and cause you valuable data loss. AVG Antivirus free edition, a free antivirus utility that not only features virus scan scheduling capabilities, but also scans your incoming and outgoing emails, can help you protect your PC and fight malware. 
• TweakVI Basic: Tweaking a Windows Vista system can be a tough task even for Windows XP veterans. TweakVI makes Vista customization a fun thing to do, by offering a you powerful User Interface and miscellaneous settings tweaking options. Moreover,  it features an extremely handy Windows utility menu, that eases the access to miscellaneous utilities (like the Registry Editor, the Backup and Restore utility and so forth).
• Audacity: Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. This great piece of open source software is developed by a bunch of volunteers. Highly Recommended!
• Salesforce.com personal edition: One of the main characteristics of the Web 2.0 paradigm is the emergence of Software as a Service (SAAS) applications. SAAS is a new delivery model where companies pay not for owning the software itself but for using it. Salesforce.com, a CRM (Customer Relationships Management) web based service, pioneered the SAAS domain. Salesforce.com personal edition features a super-intuitive web interface (no need to install anything on your PC!)  as well as a streamlined set of processes that helps you make the most of your Contacts, Accounts, Leads and Opportunities, and increase your sales productivity. If you are into marketing and sales – this is the tool you are looking for!

Well, that’s it. I know some of you might disagree, many will ask how come i didn’t include Google Talk, Twitter, Skype, Thunderbird, Firefox, Wordpress, Joomla and those alike. I am interested to hear your thoughts, What’s your top 5 ?
[tags] Audacity, Foxit Reader, Salesforce.com, SAAS, Tweak VI, Darren Rowse [/tags]

Enjoyed this post? Please take a moment and subscribe to our Full RSS feed. AVirtualExit.com brings your the coolest tips and tweaks that will help you make the most of your PC.

Built on Wordpress 2.1.3, EasyTweaks.com will deal exclusively with tips and tricks aimed to help you make the most of your PC. More specifically, we will be dealing with Windows, Office, Google, browsers and security specific issues.

AVirtualExit.com will still be featuring tips and tricks but will increasingly deal with Web 2.0 related topics and its implementation in the Enterprise world (AJAX and Enteprise 2.0 will be the focus) and blogging tips.

At this point, i would like to ask for your help in promoting my new web site. There are five main ways you can help:

• By linking to content posted at EasyTweaks.com
• By exchanging blogroll links with EasyTweaks.com
• By adding  EasyTweaks.com to your Technorati faves.
• By subscribing to the EasyTweaks.com full RSS feed
• By stumbling or digging posts you like.

In case you would like to help , please leave me a quick note with your proposal.

Naturally,the “more you give, the more you get” principle applies here, and therefore all links and subscriptions will be fully reciprocated. I even have 3 Joost accounts i will randomly give away in two weeks from now to people supporting my new web site.

Million Thanks!

Gili

Thanks to Chris from Blog-Op for sharing this tip with us.