How To Get Around Network Censorship

One of the most important part of my computer is it’s internet connection. I use the internet a lot, and without it life becomes so much more dull. There is one thing worse than having no internet - a crippled internet. My boarding school here in Singapore blocks out a lot of websites and ports that I feel is unnecessary  and that it actually hampers the internet experience.

In my boarding school I can get 2 networks, one is my school’s internet network and the other is my boarding schools network. There are 3 different kinds of programs used to censor out and block the internet - Fortiguard, Trend Micro Interscan and another unnamed software. These 3 firewalls seriously makes life hard on us boarders by blocking out some innocent sites and some much needed ports. Friendster, Facebook, Youtube, Filestube are blocked. The firewalls are so strict that even some advertisements on websites are blocked. This is what I’ll call an overkill.

Here are the two software products that I have found and personally tested that can bypass internet censorship whilst providing anonymous surfing:

Note: These 2 programs can bypass and get around fortiguard. Personally tested.

Ultrasurf

UltraSurf is the flagship software product from UltraReach Internet Corp. for Internet anti-censorship. This was one of the first anti-censorship software I have ever used, however the recent versions of it has been blocked in my boarding school. Oh well, all good things have to come to an end.

Features:

• It is a green software (meaning no installation - just start and surf)
• Small download size
• Proxy speed is fast compared to other web-based proxies
• Supports most if not all of a normal internet users needs (implements almost all browser functions)
• Can use Internet Explorer without having to configure anything, however if you want to use any other browser, some tweaking would have to be done

Homepage | Download page

GlobalPass (aka GPass)

GPass is now my favourite software I use to bypass network censorships. It is even better at getting around network censorships when compared to Ultrasurf. The speed of it’s proxy server is even faster and the connection more stable too.

Features:

• It is a green software (meaning no installation - just start and surf)
• No need to configure individual software to bypass the firewalls, just drag the icon of the software into GPass and it’s ready to go
• It’s speed is fast
• Small download size

Homepage | Download page

I hope that this 2 softwares help out other people who are facing internet censorship out there, especially students in boarding schools like me. Xp. I might be doing one comprehensive post about GPass one of these days.

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List Of Paid Blogging Networks

Here’s a list of some of the more popular paid blogging networks around. As this list is quite long, I’m pretty sure there are some paid blogging networks here they haven’t even heard before so you might want to give them a try. I haven’t tried all of them yet, the ones which I have tried so far are Smorty, SponsoredReviews, LinkPost by LinkWorth, Bloggerwave, BlogToProfit and a few more. Have fun trying them out . I’ll post a list of recommended paid blogging networks with detailed reviews in the near future, but for now, just know that there are more than one paid blogging network out there, which also means more money making opportunities

Some quick information for all you who are new to the paid blogging industry. First of all, you earn money from paid blogging networks by blogging about a specific product, services or other things. You can either write it as an advertorial, in a promoting manner, or just as a “let-you-know” post and paid blogging networks will pay you for the post. Once your post has been confirmed and accepted, you’ll generally get paid after a set number of days. As the money earned for every post is quite high, paid blogging is a quick and easy way to supplement your income as a blogger. Hehe.

Enjoy

Note: They are in no particular order and this list will be updated regularly.

1. SponsoredReviews

   

2. Smorty

   

3. LinkPost by LinkWorth

   

4. PayU2Blog

   

5. PayPerPost

   

6. LoudLaunch

   

7. Bloggerwave

   

8. BloggingAds

   

9. BlogToProfit

   

10. Blogsvertise

    

11. ReveiwMe

    

12. Ihype

    

13. SocialSpark

    
    Credit for this goes to Dan.

14. Blog2U

    
    Credit for this addition goes to Lalaboi.

I’ll keep adding more in the near future. If you know any paid blogging networks that are reputable and do pay, please leave a comment here so I can put it in the list. Due credit will be given to you.

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A Few Ways To Determine Whether A Pay To Click (PTC) Site Is A Scam And Is Going Bankrupt

Paid To Click (PTC) sites number in the hundreds - if not the thousands on the internet. Nowadays, ready made and generic Bux scripts can be found and bought of the internet for a couple of dollars, giving rise to a huge number of aspiring people who want to run their own PTC site setting up their PTC sites with these Bux scripts. With these huge number of new PTC sites on the internet, the number of scam sites have increased dramatically.

Here is some of the ways and things to look out for in PTC sites to determine whether a particular PTC site is a scam or is about to go under. Though this method is a good indicator of whether a PTC site is a scam, bear in mind that exceptions do exists and the site might be truly good or that the site is just taking longer than usual to acquire the “scam” status while slowly milking away investors and members money.

• Unprofitable business model
• Asks for donations
• Payment takes a long time to arrive
• Has too many promotions that give you too much while charging too little

Unprofitable business model

Many Paid To Click sites on the internet nowadays have either extremely unprofitable business model or a model that barely breaks even. Sites like this charge their advertisers less money than what they need to pay members for all the clicks. Sites like this are quite sure to turn out to be a scam as who in their right mind will want to run a PTC site that loses them money?

The way to determine whether a site has an unprofitable business model is to calculate their profit or loss for every 1000 clicks purchased and a 1000 clicks by members. Remember to take into account the amount needed to be paid the 1000 standard members who clicked and the amount needed to be paid if the 1000 who clicked were a referrer of someone.

Lets say PTC site A charges advertisers $7.99 for every 1000 clicks, pays standard members $0.01 per click and pays members $0.005 per referral click.

Income of PTC site A every 1000 clicks = $7.99

Money needed to be paid to 1000 standard members = 1000*$0.01 = $10

Money needed to be paid assuming that everyone of those 1000 standard members are a referral of someone (In a PTC site, nearly everyone is a referral of someone) = 1000*$0.005 = $5

Expense = total money needed to be paid = $10 + $5 = $15

Expense > Income

Profit = income - expense = $7.99 - $15 = -$7.01

PTC site A runs at a deficit of $7.01 for every sale of 1000 clicks to advertisers, which means PTC site A makes a loss of $7.99 for every 1000 clicks someone buys from them. PTC site A has a unprofitable business model and will most likely go bankrupt or is a scam.

Lets do a case study of Thinkbux:

Standard members get $0.01 per click

Premium members get $0.012 per click

Referral clicks are $0.005 per click

Thinkbux charges $14.99 per 1000 visits

Using the formula,

Income every 1000 clicks = $14.99

Money needed to be paid to 1000  premium members: 1000*$0.012 = $12

Money needed to be paid assuming 1000 of the premium members are referrals of another member = 1000*$0.005 = $5

Expense = total money needed to pay = $12 + $5

Expense > Income

Profit =  income - expense = $-2.01

Thinkbux runs at a loss of $2.01 everytime 1000 clicks are done. Although I assume that all 1000 clicks are from premium members, even if you take that all 1000 members are just standard members Thinkbux still makes a loss every 1000 clicks. It does not even break even. Thinkbux has an unprofitable business model.

Sites which have a unprofitable business models are more likely to turn into scams or go belly up as they just do not have the resources of finances to pay their members.

Asks For Donations

This is quite easy to understand. When a PTC site says it needs donations to keep it alive and to help pay the premium members without a valid reason, you know the site is a scam or is going down really soon. Sure, some PTC sites just need donations to get over a rough patch such as NeoBux which had their Paypal Account  frozen with 72% of their money tied up and had needed donations to get through. After about 20 days they got back their account and had given “donated” back to everyone who had donated to them in the form of referrals. However, more often then not when Paid To Click sites start asking for donations, you know they are going belly up soon.

Sites that ask for donations to pay members but do not have a valid reason are basically in a money losing cycle. They lose money every time advertisers buy a package from them that is why they need members to donate to make up for the balance, but as this is a cycle, they will always have to rely on members donation, thus hastening that particular PTC site’s death.

Payment Takes Too Long To Arrive

We all know PTC sites that take forever after we had cashout before we received the money. The cause of this if I were to put it into simple terms is that the money cycle is not moving fast enough, and is overtaking them. The reason the PTC sites cannot give you your money immediately is because they just do not have enough cash with them and are waiting for more advertisers to advertise with them. Once advertisers advertise with them, they use that money to pay off the earlier clickers, which however leaves the clickers who had recently clicked with no money and thus forced to wait. Sites that have a really long payment wait are bound to make many members unhappy and ultimately turn into scams.

Has Too Many Promotions That Give You Too Much While Charging Too Little

PTC sites that have constant promotion that seems too good to be true are more often than not going to turn out as another scam site. This is quite closely related to the unprofitable business model above.

Lets say PTC site B has a promotion package that costs $10 and gives you 20 referrals which is worth $20 and 1000 advertisement clicks which is worth $6. PTC site B has pays $0.01 per click for a standard member and $0.005 for every referral click.

Income from sale of promotion package = $10

Money needed to pay the members who click on the 1000 advertisement clicks = 1000*$0.01 = $10

Assuming each member that clicks is also a referral of someone (nearly everybody in a PTC site is referral of someone as the PTC site always sells referrals) = 1000*$0.005 = $5

With the 20 referrals, the person who buys the package from PTC site B would be able to earn even more money which PTC site B would have no way of getting without selling even more promotion packages, which in turn makes the whole condition much worse.

Expense = money needed to be paid = $15

Expense > Income

Profit = income - expense = $10 -$15 = -$5

PTC site B makes a loss of $5 for every promotion package sold and makes its condition worse as members would be earning more money with the referrals which PTC site B has to come up with.

Lets do a case study of Better-Bux.

Take a look at their Labor Day special.

Standard members get $0.01 per click

Referral clicks are $0.005 per click

Using the formula,

Income from sale of promotion package = $100

Expense = Money needed to pay members who clicked on the 250000 link credits = 250000*$0.01 = $2500

Expense > Income

Profit = income - expense = $100 - $2500 = -$2400

Even without taking into account the members who clicked who are referrals it is quite obvious that Better-Bux has no way of paying the members. Better-Bux makes a loss of $2400 every single time someone buys an advertisement package.

Needless to say, no PTC site wants to run at a loss, so these sites usually turn into scams so that they themselves can at least earn some money at the expense of members.

What Now?

These are just some of the methods I use to determine whether a PTC site is going to turn out to be a scam. I hope that you find it useful and be careful as you invest money buying referrals and time clicking on various different PTC sites. A PTC site paying you once doesn’t mean that it will never turn into a scam in the future.

But after all is said and done, even though some PTC sites I mentioned which makes some of the errors, they still have paid me, so do take everything with a pinch of salt , and make sure you do not invest more money than you can afford to lose. This way, even if you do lose money you would be able to absorb the loss.

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Bought Some Much Needed For My New Computer

I recently bought a whole new lot of “cheap” software to use for my MacBook that I just got.

1. Ecto

   

2. iSale

   

3. SousChef

   

4. World of Goo

   

5. PhoneView

   

6. LittleSnapper

   

7. Acorn

   

8. Kinemac

   

9. WireTap Studio

I bought Ecto as I needed it to replace Windows Live Writer which I used to use on my old laptop. I was thinking of buyinh Mars Edit instead of Ecto, but Mars Edit was more than double the price of Ecto so in the end I decided to go with Ecto.

I haven’t had time to download all the applications I bought yet, very busy studying

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The Importance Of The Priority Tag In Google Sitemaps

I’m sure most of you all have heard and even use sitemaps on your sites right? Well, I just want to take the time here to stress how important the priority tag in it is to search engines, particularly Google. The importance of correctly setting the priority tag in your sitemap.

At first I didn’t really care much about the priority tag in my sitemap, letting the the Google sitemap generator plugin in Wordpress do automatic priority calculation for my site when I upgraded it. So the plugin did it’s job, calculating the priority values for pages and posts in my site – my posts got assigned a priority value of about 3 to 4 while tags and categories got assigned a value of 6 to 8. At that time I didn’t understand what the priority tag in the Google sitemap meant so I left it be, trusting the plugins automatic calculations and ignoring the voice in my head telling me that the priority of URL’s in my sitemap  were actually all manually set at 1 before.

A few days later I noticed there was an extremely sharp drop in traffic from search engines. Keywords which I used to rank number 1 in were no longer bringing in traffic. I found this really strange as the keyword I was ranking number 1 in was quite a popular keyword and had been bringing in traffic quite consistently. I did a quick search on Google and found out that the post that used to rank number 1 in it was no longer ranked number 1. I added the word “drett” after the keyword and searched on Google again only to find that only a category of my site was indexed. The previous posts was nowhere to be found within the Google search index.

To confirm what I thought had happened, I did a quick search on Google for the pages of my site and this was what I got:

Notice that no posts was listed, only tags, categories and archives.

The first few pages of the result were all filled with tags, categories and my archives, the posts were at the last few pages. I immediately connected the situation with something to do with the priority tag settings in my sitemap and went and set the priority in my sitemap to be all the same for all posts, category, tag and pages.

After 2 days (today), I found that my previous keywords were once again bringing in traffic. I did another search on Google for the pages and posts indexed in my site to see whether there was any difference.

Notice that some of my posts are now included on the frontpage.

After looking at the results, I found that more of my posts were located on the frontpage, which is a good thing. There were still a few categories that ranked higher than my posts which I think that I will be able to fix once I set the priority of the categories lower in my sitemap. If you are wondering why I want my posts to rank higher than all my categories and tags, it’s because my posts contain more content and keywords thus ranking higher in search engines than my categories and pages.

I did a little bit more research on the priority tag on Google and found out that the priority of the URL is relative to other URL’s in your site and that the priority you assign to a URL has no direct influence on the position of your URL on the Google search engine. Although the priority has no direct influence on the position of the URL in the Google search engine, I found out that the priority tag influences the likelihood that your more important pages are indexed in the search engines results. When I my posts had a lower priority than my categories and tags, the Google search engine decided to include my categories and tags into it’s search results instead of my posts. This didn’t directly affect the position of URL’s in the search engine, however after running my categories and tags through whatever Google uses to rank pages, my categories could not rank as high as my posts thus appearing in the search engine’s index but not has high as my posts. This then directly affected the position of my URL’s in the Google search engine.

I’m still experimenting a bit with how the sitemap influences the inclusion of posts and pages of my site in Google’s search results, however I feel that it is safe to manually set all URL’s to a priority of 1 in the sitemap.

So, just to remind you all again, please do check the priority settings of the URL’s in your sitemap, as they might be limiting the amount of traffic you get from search engines .

Note: I do think that the priority tag has the same influence on all search engines but maybe I didn’t feel the affects of it as the other search engines might not have detected the change in priority of the URL’s in my sitemap.

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