Karlonia.com

Internet marketers who are trying to sell products, gather leads, and make money through Google’s pay-per-click AdWords system will have to cope with some significant changes that are being rolled out over the next few days. After introducing the idea of a “quality score” for individual ads back in 2005, Google has complicated the AdWords equation somewhat in recent months by factoring things like landing page quality and the loading time of the landing page into the quality score. This is important because the quality score influences the position of an ad (including whether or not it is actually displayed) and how much money the advertiser ultimately must pay. Here is a summary of the most recent changes:

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Although most people think of lizards as beneficial to the environment because they eat insects and other undesirable critters, others seem to have a significant fear of these little reptiles and will search for ways to get rid of them. While doing the research for this article, I ran across a desperate plea for help from a woman posting as “Janet” on a message board dealing with organic gardening topics. She had been scared away from entering her house through her carport door by the presence of two albino lizards that had started to wander around that particular area at night.

Eventually she discovered two smaller lizards in her bedroom, and after “screaming and gasping for air” she managed to grab a can of wasp spray from the kitchen and began spraying it at the lizards from several feet away. After using up about 2/3 of the can, the lizards finally died and it took another 15 minutes before she mustered the courage to remove them. She never mentioned what was done with the copious amount of pesticide that was sprayed all over her bedroom, which for me would have seemed scarier than the lizards!

In any event, for those who are afflicted with herpetophobia (fear of reptiles) or simply find lizards annoying, here are some methods that can be used to get rid of them:

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The idea of getting rid of frogs seems to be a controversial subject. Some people claim that frogs are endangered and caution against killing any of them, while others consider them annoying pests that have spiraled out of control in many areas. Overall, frogs are beneficial for the environment because they eat mosquitoes and other undesirable critters. In this way, they can be part of a balanced local ecosystem that enables the possibility of organic farming and gardening.

On the other hand, given the right conditions, certain kinds of frogs can multiply to the point that their numbers can create problems for certain types of humans. For example, south Florida seems to be having problems with the Cuban tree frog, which is not native to the area but has managed to migrate there and is now reportedly overwhelming the native frog population, disrupting the local ecosystem, and annoying residents with their noisy mating calls. Meanwhile, Hawaii has been battling a severe infestation of the coqui frog for the past ten years. Originally from Puerto Rico, this imported species has proliferated so rapidly on the Big Island of Hawaii that they have passed a state law prohibiting people from releasing, transporting, or exporting coqui frogs, which are classified by the state as “injurious wildlife.”

After searching through several different Internet sources, I have identified a significant demand for getting rid of frogs arising from frustrated property owners. Many of them are struggling with large numbers of noisy frogs disrupting their normal sleep patterns and even getting into their houses in some cases. Those who keep dogs in their yard also complain because some dogs foolishly attempt to eat the frogs, which often makes them sick because frogs are capable of releasing a poisonous substance called batrachotoxin when threatened. Others seem to like the frogs and don’t want to get rid of them, and animal-loving groups don’t like to use pesticides for this purpose because they claim that these produce a relatively slow and painful death for their beloved frogs.

Personally, I tend to favor organic and environmentally friendly ways of getting rid of things whenever practicable, but also favor lots of free speech and access to information. Therefore, in the classic Karlonian style I have combed through the Internet sources and brought together many different methods for getting rid of frogs that were reported to have some success. The “organic” status of some methods is debatable because although they involve chemicals, they are food-grade substances that do little environmental damage even though they can effectively kill or repel frogs. Here are the methods that I have found so far:

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The usual proportion of about 70 percent search traffic was reduced somewhat this week by an influx of 775 unique visitors from StumbleUpon, most of them going to my page on How to Stop Websites from Resizing Firefox Windows. The various quotes pages are also doing well in the search engines; I will probably branch these off to a separate category soon after I come up with a suitable category title. Meanwhile, after browsing through the list of keywords, I have selected the next group of eight that are due to receive answers:

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Following up on last week’s lesson dealing with the correct use of the colon, we will now move on to usage of the semicolon, a punctuation mark that dates back to the 16th century. This article will be relatively short because there are fewer uses for the semicolon than for the colon; there are also no other common meanings for the same word.

The semicolon has four basic uses in English:

• Semicolons are used to connect two independent clauses (in other words, two groups of words that can stand alone as complete sentences) together without using a conjunction such as and or but. Note that the two sentences should be relevant to each other:
  1. I submitted my comment on the other blog; it was immediately placed in the moderation queue.

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In many parts of the world and on the Internet, the English language has become a common standard for international communication. Of course it also has its fair share of quirks and eccentricities, as many of the quotes in the list below will attest. I was somewhat surprised by the relative paucity of attributed quotes about the English language I was able to find from Internet sources. Many of the quotes that I found were actually about England or the English people, but not necessarily the language itself. I have included a few of these other types of English quotes here in order to round out the list at 50; however, I am planning to reserve most of the famous sayings about the country and culture of England for another post.

• The two most beautiful words in the English language are “check enclosed.” — Dorothy Parker
• If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur. — Doug Larson
• Not only does the English Language borrow words from other languages, it sometimes chases them down dark alleys, hits them over the head, and goes through their pockets. — Eddy Peters
• A bicycle can’t stand on its own because it’s two-tired. — English Proverb
• Here will be an old abusing of God’s patience and the king’s English. — William Shakespeare
• The quantity of consonants in the English language is constant. If omitted in one place, they turn up in another. When a Bostonian “pahks” his “cah,” the lost r’s migrate southwest, causing a Texan to “warsh” his car and invest in “erl wells.” — Author Unknown
• We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language. — Oscar Wilde
• If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers. — Doug Larson
• If the French were really intelligent, they’d speak English. — Wilfred Sheed
• The English language is nobody’s special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself. — Derek Walcott

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Early this morning I found an annoying but interesting email in my Spam folder under the subject of “Zodiac Rings”. The text was displayed in a purple color and according to the header details was sent to “sales(at)karlonia.com”. In reality, I have no such email address, yet somehow this mail found its way to my actual address anyway.

As for the content, it appears that some dodgy marketer from India is trying to sell us on the idea that we can gain special powers and be more successful by wearing a certain kind of ring that is produced according to our astrological signs. It seems that our intrepid spammer has not learned how to target his advertising very well, for I do not even believe in religion, much less this pseudoscientific astrology garbage. Nevertheless, if you’re desperate enough and have a lot more faith than I do, these magical powers can be yours for only 1500 rupees! Just make sure that you do not put the ring on your “tall middle finger”…

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About two weeks ago, I read an income report from another blogger at DuckelDanny.com who claims to have made $374 last month with an advertising network called Chitika. After looking through the archives at DuckelDanny, I am still somewhat skeptical of the claim. This other blog has only half the number of posts that Karlonia does, and most of his posts have less content. Judging by the content, keywords, and Alexa rank, it’s probably receiving less traffic than this blog does as well. But I am only generating about $50 per month from AdSense even after placing units on the high search engine traffic pages and receiving a relatively high CTR on them.

Nevertheless, I am always on the lookout for better blog monetization options, so I applied for the Chitika program and managed to get approved. Here is the official email notification:

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The paid survey site Your2Cents.com sent out a rare email update today notifying us that they have upgraded their check processing system and also will be sending us more survey opportunities in the future. I have been a member here since 2005; so far they have been reliable about payments but the rewards per survey are fairly small, usually in the $1-5 range. Occasionally I have seen survey offers for up to $20 but these are less common. There is also a $5,000 sweepstakes giveaway that is held every quarter (3 months) where one winner is chosen by a random drawing.

Currently I have $17 in the kitty with this program, so I’m eligible to redeem this balance and receive another payment. I just might do this soon so that I can post the check image and make another payment proof post. Meanwhile, here is the actual text of the update, along with a few paragraphs of my opinions and commentary placed below:

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Earlier this month, article publishing site Triond released its August newsletter by email to its membership. Most newsletters of this type typically do not hold much interest for non-members because they usually focus almost exclusively on site updates or self-promotion. However, I am republishing this one because it contains some information that may be useful for article publishers and bloggers who are trying to maintain a professional quality site. In particular, the sections on successful subjects, dealing with images, and enhancing content quality may be of interest to beginners in the blogging or article writing genres.

It’s the last month of the summer vacation, so it’s your last chance to travel to exotic places, host a beach barbecue, or engage in your favorite leisure activity – and then write about it on Triond! Read on for this month’s exciting updates.

In This Issue

1. Triond Toolbar for Firefox
2. Profile Skins
3. Beyond Jane Launched
4. Successful Subjects to Write About
5. Give Credit To Image Sources
6. Embed Photos in Your How-To Articles
7. Block Users
8. How to Enhance the Quality of Your Content
9. Stay Updated

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This week was mostly uneventful, with the usual rejection letter and cell phone queries topping the list of pages receiving search traffic. Near the end of the week, my page on Ask BigNews picked up some unexpected traffic from StumbleUpon, indicating that someone probably gave it a recent vote even though the page was originally submitted by an Entrecard member back in February.

Interestingly, I have noticed that Stumble traffic has a much lower bounce rate than search traffic or any other type of traffic that I have received so far. This means that Stumblers are more likely to click on links to other pages of the site than other visitors, which is generally a good thing because it means that they are probably reading at least a portion of my articles. Unfortunately, most of what I have read indicates that Stumblers do not like to click on AdSense or other types of ads, which means that this traffic is not very profitable from a monetization standpoint.

Meanwhile, here are the next batch of answerable queries, most of them held over from last week. I have also been saving up a batch of computer-related queries that I will deal with eventually, perhaps in a dedicated post or separate articles, but many of these require further research in order to provide adequate answers for them.

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Although most of the lessons in our English usage series thus far have focused on homonyms and homophones, after doing some keyword research earlier today I discovered that many of you have been searching for information on the correct usage of different kinds of punctuation marks. The correct use of apostrophes is one of the most popular, but since I have already covered this, we will move on to the next most popular in terms of search volume, which is “correct use of colon.”

It turns out that the colon actually has a significant number of uses, which I will describe below followed by an example of each. Afterward, I will briefly deal with other uses of the word colon that do not involve its use as a punctuation mark. The purpose of this is to clear up any confusion that readers may have about the word, also known as disambiguation.

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These world quotes from people ranging from philosophers to business leaders provide an overview of different perspectives on the human condition and our overall environment. Since my last collection on 100 Quotes About Power has been somewhat of a disappointment so far in terms of popularity, I have shortened the list to 50 this time in the hopes that people will be more likely to read through the list and possibly add their own relevant sayings in the comment section.

• The world of poetry, mythology, and religion represents the world as a man would like to have it, while science represents the world as he gradually comes to discover it. — Joseph Krutch
• To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world. — author unknown
• Einstein said that if quantum mechanics is right, then the world is crazy. Well Einstein was right. The world is crazy. — Daniel Greenberger
• Since periods of great change such as the present one come so rarely in human history, it is up to each of us to make the best use of our time to help create a happier world. — Dalai Lama
• The world is more malleable than you think and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape. — Paul David Hewson
• I just started to see the world as it really is and it completely shocked me and changed my opinion on everything… on life and my values and certainly my own sense of self. — Angelina Jolie
• The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. — Karl Marx
• The world has entered a new era, evolving from an industrial into a knowledge-based society, and into a society that wants to live in harmony with nature. — Minoru Mori
• Man’s destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he’s done - almost. He hasn’t quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man’s conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we’ve attained, we don’t have enough mastery to stop devastating the world, or to repair the devastation we’ve already wrought. — Daniel Quinn
• Philanthropy is all about making a positive difference in the world by devoting your resources and your time to causes you believe in. In my case, I like to support causes where “a lot of good comes from a little bit of good,” or, in other words, where the positive social returns vastly exceed the amount of time and money invested. — Jeff Skoll

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E-commerce giant Amazon.com announced to their affiliates this week that the company is launching a new section of its website called Amazon Green, a multi-category program that integrates several different kinds of environmentally friendly products into a single shopping interface. Earlier today I had a chance to check out the product listings, which feature an eclectic mix of items ranging from toilet tissue made from post-consumer recycled paper to a bicycle for commuters called “Iron Horse Transit”. Energy-related items such as compact fluorescent bulbs and relatively inexpensive solar panels are also included.

For those of us who are trying to make money from Amazon’s affiliate program, this provides us with an opportunity to showcase a pre-selected subset of their product line that can be targeted toward environmentally conscious consumers. If you would like to check out the products yourself, simply click on one of the banners in this post to view the main Amazon Green page. Meanwhile, I have reprinted the email text of the announcement to Amazon associates below.

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Smart business owners plan for growth. In this tutorial article by Angela Baca, you will learn you can never spend too much time planning and managing your company. You’ll look at how securing cash through internal controls is an important consideration for a growing business. As your business reaches new limits, you will be encouraged to step up your management and planning strategies.

One way to improve business management is to create better controls for your company finances. If your operation involves collecting cash (either physically or electronically), more sophisticated controls are needed. First, think about how you can analyze your operations. What kinds of payments do you accept? What kinds of security features do you use for each transaction? How secure are your methods? These questions and others are important to design controls that fit the current dimensions of your business.

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