₦airaland Forum

My blog reviews Nigerian websites - see my signature. There are a few good one out there. Webs business in Nigeria is beginning to be a serious issue.

Off the top of my head:

Meta tags are descriptive terms that allow search engine crawlers understand what a page is about. Search engines store these descriptive terms against that page and compare them to search strings. That is how your page comes up when someone searches on Google or Bing etc. Several sites compete on who has produced the best write up within a tag "categorisation". That is why they say one site ranks higher on certain terms. That is why one site appears on page 1 of a google search while another is on page 2.

Take for example, you are writting a page about Nollywood movies. You would be expected to use "nollywood movies"  or other descriptive terms people may likely use to seach for and locate information about Nigerian movies (nollywood movies) as your meta tags. Depending on how well you have written your piece and how many times you have repeated the tags within the writeup, search egines will rank you. A lot many people abuse this feature. They find currently popular issues. Create bogus pages of something entirely different and insert the tags for the popular news items. This will attract a lot of "hits" but the search engines punish them in the end.

Avoid what the first poster said too. "Meta tags stuffing" - unnecessarily repeating a term within your page to attract more hits. Search engines use intricate algorithms that expose cheaters. People are constantly devising ways of ranking higher on search engines but the likes of Google and co are very smart too. No one really knows how they rank websites. Its a closely guarded secret.

Most CMS, would automatically generate meta tags for you so you dont have to worry. Otherwise you can install plugins that will allow you enter your own tags. Most blogging software like Wordpress handle everyhting for you.

Studying about and improving your meta tags fall under what is called SEO (Search engine optimisation). Its a very vast, dynamic art and you can find loads of resources on the internet about it. Check this site SEObook. They are good.

Depending on whichh CMS you are using, there are lots of SEO plugins that will help you improve your search ranking. One important one you should install immediately is xml sitemap plugin. All the cms have that plugin.

What CMS are you using. Are coding from scratch? You should give more infor.

You can use "channels" to monitor revenue from each website. During the creation of the advert, you will get to a point where you have to "Choose Ad channels".

Basically "Ad Channels" allow you categorise your adverts so you can monitor each advert board's performance. It can be on the same site or on several sites. The channels themselves are just descriptive terms with which you can use to identify which is which among your adverts.

Example. I always name my channels like this. sitename.advert-type.

You said you have two sites: Site1 and Site2. if you wanted to create a 728x90 Leaderboard on each site, you should create 2 of these but create a channel for each. This will allow you monitoir, during reporting, the performace of each site.

The above sounds a bit tech. Let me know if you need more help.

Lovely idea. A good niche to explore. Several other angles you could add though.
Would love to do a full review on my blog if you contact me.

craptastic!

Log in to the admin section (dashboard)
Under the Appearance Group, choose "Widgets"
Locate the "Text" widget. Drag and drop it to the sidebar
paste your Google codes in it.

- Otherwise

Install the "Advert Manager" plugin from Wordpress.org. (recommended)

Start button -> Accessories ->Snipping Tool

why is everybody on an @ domain?

The seminars themselves are a way of making money - learn fast and start organising seminars on how to make money online. People never get enough of the same infor repackaged. Quite a few of the so called gurus run blogs on this topic and have massive traffic. They all say the same thing from different perspectives.

Get one thing clear though. No businessman will willingly tell you his business secrets. There is no fast way of making it online unless you cheat. Identify what will work, keep doing it. It always works at some point.

Twitter means different things to different people. Twitter itself may not be as entertaining as NL but a lot of applications built around it are. What can one do with twitter?

You can make money from it:
1. For example, <a target="_blank" href="http://spn.tw/roIh">sponsored tweets</a> allows advertisers pay you for tweeting their product promotions. If you have thousands of followers, its a nice way to make small change.

2. Amazopn Associates recently incorporated twitter for promoting affiliate links. As a marketter, you just need to post tweets containing products to promote and of course you affiliate link to your followers.

3. What about writing about twitter or developing mashups from twitter api? You name them tweetdeck, twitphoto etc. These guys are reaping massive income from the twitter revolution.

You can keep up with latest news
1. Twitter is a great tool to drive traffic to your site. Wordpress and other blogging platforms have plugins that automatically publish your posts to twitter. If you have plenty of followers, they in turn re-tweet the titles.

2. What about building relationships? I follow most of the big blogs and personal idols/individuals on twitter. You actually get these people responding to your questions. You may get lucky to strike up a personal relationship with them.

3. Use twitter to announce product launches etc

You can keep up with latest news
1. The best example that came to my mind here was during the Mumbai terrorist attack. The world kept intouch with the victims via twitter. Mention any other major emergency. Twitter played a big role in keeping us up to date with live info.

2. Every major boradcaster, or newspaper has a twitter account. You dont have to follow everyone of them.

3.For ajournalist, its a fast and efficient way of keeping up with news can contribute a lot to a business is not only for sending around

Tech and web startups review:
www.technuzu.com

learn blogging tips from one of the world's best
www.problogger.net

typical site. Nothing really is unique here.

You can actually create a facebook page for your website or business.

1. From the facebook Home Page (ensure your not logged in yet)
2. Scroll to the down side and look to the right. "Create a Page for a celebrity, band or business."
3. Click this and you will be able to make a page for your website. People can "Like" your website and they will be shown as fans using a small code you can cut and paste from facebook.

I am self taught. I started back in the days when GWbasic and Dbase IV and CA Clipper were the cool languages to learn. I trained in one of those private computer colleges (they later employed me). I have since moved on to HTML, PHP, VB, MSQL - all self taught.

It depends on where you go. A lot many jobs want to see a degree though. Other people have gone on to get proffessional qualifications to back their knowledge. Most of what they teach in school is outdated anyway. Frankly school cannot make a great programmer - you do it yourself. The more you code, the better you get.

Almost all the big sites are coded using PHP and you definitely need MYSQL - both work together very well. Even SMF - on which NL runs on works with these 2.

Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress, you name it. Its all PHP and MYSQL. PHP is comparatively easier to learn and there are millions of sample codes to learn from. PHP itself is open source.

check rocketthemes.com for good joomla themes. quite a few are free.

Check on Amazon.com. There are loads of fairly used books on web design for less than $10

Dont waste your brain matter doing that for the following reasons:

1. facebook will drag you to court for copyright breach.
2. the competition from facebook will leave you looking the size of a fly against the size of the earth. You will end up wrapping up.
3. Social networks are hard to monetise. Facebook found it hard to monetise in a way that will not put off their userbase. Are you doing this for glory or for cash?

What you can do in alternative:

1. Build you website using facebook API. In this way you will harness the power and data already on facebook to build something different. Facebook API will allow you interface between your website and facebook.

flickr.com is probably the most famous photo repository on the web. They have loads of free to use images. Check with the advanced search while on flickr.com. Look for "Creative Commons" labelled photos. You will find a subgroup of photos you are allowed to use commercially or otherwise without copyright breach. They also have photos you will need to obtain permission to use.

your site does not have an About and Contact page. How will you get customer feedback or even an ivestment offer?

A developer and a programmer are the same. They create codes that make site works. They are proficient with any of the languages like java, html, php, python, vb etc

A Web Designer, on the other hand, is different mostly because they deal with graphics interphase presentation. They dont have to be programmers. Most peaople using Joomla and other CMS software to put together a website are designers. The code exists already, they just assemble and cut or paste one html or the other here and there to achieve desired effects.

What exactly are u learning! Open source CMS like joomla? or the real stuff? Go for the real stuff. Learn the languages PHP, Javascript, HTML etc. The future is bright for automated operations on the web as is happening in developed places now. We need iphone apps in Nigeria too, we need to automate loads of utilities in Nigeria.

Who will create the necessary competion for the foreign bigwig sites?. Why cant we have a Nigerian facebook? built from scratch and hacker proof. Why cant we have a Nigerian google?

A lot many naija site are crap because they depend too much on manufactured code - joomla!
Show me one website designed from the ground up. Show one website coded from start to finish with a a nice appearance. Its all joomla plus freely available templates. Others have resorted to copying run away success stories like NL. Every single site wants to have "naira" in the site name. Other will add "naija" this or "naija" that. No creativity! Its disgusting. Far more annoying is the green white green hue on every single naija website. Cant someone tell them blanket green background is irritable to the eyes?

For once somebody did something different!
For not having "naira" or "naija" in the site name, I award you pass mark.
The design is excellent and looks like a proper directory.
I found it very fast also while browsing
Wish you all the best.
Watch out sha. You may get banned on NL. They hate competition.

Speaking from experience, its not a function of age. Its if your increased responsibilities as you grow older will allow you concenrate as much as is required. Most young people below 20 are excellnet programmers because they have time and do not have mouths to feed. Can you affords to sit on a PC for hours? I used to do it in those days when I had no mouth to feed. Now I live off what I leant then.

Like I said, its not age that matters. Even if you are 50, if you can be able to sit for at least 4 hours daily, you will make a good programmer - provided ya brain de sharp.

To contribute to this topic, I will reproduce a post I have on my blog titled

How do I make money from blogging

This is the commonest question beginners ask. There are many proven and tested means of making dosh from your blog. They work very well because I use them. Almost all the methods involve placing adverts on your blog site. It works pretty much like television stations. They run adverts between programmes to make money. The more audience a TV station has, the more they charge for their adverts. The newspapers and magazine do it too. Think about Vanguard newspapers and some obscure newly launched newspaper. Vanguard charges more because they have a wider readership. So the first step is to build up readership for your blog. Then you can place adverts (reasonably) on it for income. I want to explain the steps I use personally.

Before I go on, let me explain some terms. Affiliate programs lets you earn a commission each time you refer a person and they end up purchasing a product or service. Amazon.com has a very good affiliate program.

Contextual Advertising like google adsense react to whatever is on display and pulls appropriate adverts unto your site for readers to view or click on to learn more. You are paid per each click on the adverts.

Below are some of the methods I use to earn income on my blogs. In a future article, I will talk in general about the various methods bloggers make money.

   1. Google Adsense: Google runs the Adsense program which allows them put content sensitive adverts on people's websites. They pay these site owners for each time users click on the adverts. Before you can join this program, you must have a fully functional website because they will inspect it before allowing you to install any advert codes. Google adsense is one of my main income sources. Look to the right of this article. You will see my adverts from google there. Its a good place to start. First create your blog. Then register on www.google.com/adsense/ for the programme.

      Many people get banned from the program for clicking their own adverts or getting their friends to do it for them (click fraud). If you want to grow in this business, don't cheat. Work on offering good content and building your traffic. The rest, as they say, shall be added unto you. I know people who earn thousands of dollars every month from this unique programme. Its real. Some earn in millions per annum.
   2. Amazon Associates: As explained before, affiliate marketing involves selling products for other people via your website. You do this by including links to the product marketer's website.  For example, if your blog is about movies, including links to where your readers can buy any film you review will be absolutely fine for you. You get a commission for each purchase they make coming through the link on your site. I use Amazon links on at least 2 of my blogs. There are many affiliate marketing companies out there including Linkshare, Commission Junction and Clickbank. etc.
   3. Sponsorship Adverts: I don't use this method but it operates like the newspapers do. You basically accept and float banner adverts on your site. When your blog grows in popularity, advertisers will actually approach you to put advertise. It will happen if you own a high traffic blog.

These are the methods I use but other bloggers use a variety of other programmes and methods. As your experience and network grows, you will experiment with and come to know which is better for you.