I suppose I bought Macbook Pro after Steve Jobs death. Please don’t think it somehow affected my decision. I’m not among those who consider Steve Jobs a great personality. Well, he was great in his field but there are many other great people in different areas who also deserve attention. I bought my macbook after my laptop crashed (it was a problem with HD). I had some amount of money saved and I decided to buy a new laptop. I decided to buy a mac as an alternative to windows.

 Here are some of my points which I wrote from a new user’s point of view:

1) Mac has nice design

The design of mac is really great. That’s why it’s a pleasure to work on Mac. It’s a pleasure to carry mac, it’s a pleasure to just take it out of your bag and put to charge. And finally it’s a pleasure to type on mac. I wanted to buy a typewriter and I will buy it some day. But among different types of keyboard I prefer mac. The external and internal design of macintosh computers (cause it’s not only related to my particular macbook but to other products as well) give their users esthetic positive feelings. That’s not only my point but many other people told me such impression.

2) Mac makes you feel superior

Many people use mac and that’s not a luxury thing. But for some people it remains a luxury. Many other laptop models can satisfy users’ needs no worse than macs. But still some people prefer mac due to its status. The whole mac hysteria gives Mac computers superior position comparing to others. Very often this feeling passes into computer owners. Of course it depends from surroundings. If you are among IT people your Mac means nothing, moreover some can even joke at you cause you bought such overpriced thing. But in other groups of people your Mac can make you feel superior both in your imagination and in theirs.

Actually that’s all. I have nothing to add. If I would need to talk about Mac’s disadvantages that would be much longer post. But that’s another story.

In childhood I wanted to be a polyglot, a person who speaks many languages. I tried to learn more languages in childhood and even later. But as the years passed it was harder and harder to learn languages. Moreover without the language practice I forgot many of what I’ve learnt. I think that knowledge still exists in the unconsciousness and if I will stay for some time in that language speaking environment I can restore that knowledge easily. For example I remember I used to speak good German but I did not use it for years and now it seems I’ve completely forgotten this language.

In my SEO job I like to speak with people from different countries with the help of google translator. I know that it’s almost impossible to avoid mistakes by translating big sentences this way. But I think somehow it helps me to learn new words. This post was inspired by reading the book about Global Search Engine Marketing. I have plans to do global SEO and online marketing. Not for the reasons to enlarge the number of clients and profits (in this case it would be better to focus on English language clients and projects) but because I like new things and new knowledge. In SEO which is sometimes quite boring such thing as international localization can bring both new language skills and entertainment.

Languages which I learn (or had idea to learn) include: German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin (yes, the “dead language”), Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Norwegian, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Belorussian, Italian, Romanian, Serbian, Hindu and Chinese.

Some people ask me if Flodner is my real name. Do you know someone with a name Flodner? I don’t. That’s a nickname or I prefer the word – pseudonym. Actually I agree that it’s better to have your real name in blogging. So by choosing Flodner as my presentation name for almost everything I do online I knew that it could only weaken my online identity. 

 But why not to use my real name? It seems for me when I bought domain flodner.com and later created some social medias related to this name I did not think I would need to have strong name-brand for myself. If I would create my web-site now may be I would use my real name.

One more reason is that I am a writer. I’m not among mainstream and popular writers now, but I think I would like to be. I have some works published under my real name and I don’t want to mix my real name with seo, online marketing and guest blogging writings.

 In addition, I think Flodner is quite good pseudonym, it originated suddenly and I don’t remember when exactly. I won’t tell what it means, I’ll only tell that there is a secret involved.

 I think that’s all for this post. And I hope it was interested for people with whom I work online together, correspond and communicate.

As you can see from my avatar’s screenshot I’ve just wrote my 666th post at MyBlogGuest forum. Firstly I thought to name this post “Satanic guest blogging” or “How I sold my soul to guest blogging Devil”. But I decided to go with modest title like Guest blogging addiction.

Addiction as a notion can be positive or negative. Most wide-known negative addictions include drug-addiction, alcohol-addiction, etc. Positive addiction can be for example some goal-oriented work, or total dedication of artists in times of the creation of their masterpieces. Even love is considered by many people as addiction.

Computer addiction, internet addiction, social network addiction are often discussed. For sure it is not proved if these addictions are positive or negative. I think it depends. The people you admire (you – I mean average internet users) were addicted – Steve Jobs, Mark Zukerberg, Google workers – all they were successful not despite their addiction but the help of it. In contrast to many other people who spend days and nights online, chatting about some shit or watching entertainment shows or spending bucks for downloading porno. In their case their addiction is if not a disease – bad habit.

Last time I spend a lot of time in guest blogging. Actually, that is my favorite seo job and it goes far beyond seo. Not only the process of writing article takes a lot of time, but the process of managing. It’s very easy to find blogs. Everyone can do it, just by typing query into google or some other search engine. It’s also not so hard to find good-quality blogs cause usually they are at the top of results. The most important part is managing your content and your connections by written correspondence and some other means.

Definitely guest blogging is a trend now. I don’t know how long will it last, but now for me it seems to be the most interesting link-building technique in web 2.0. Something really radical must be born to sweep out this trend. I’ve got more and more requests both to publish my guest posts and to publish posts on my sites. I even think that I need to increase the number of my sites and allow guest posts there. But guest posting takes so much time that sometimes I can’t do other things I planned to do online. It’s definitely an addiction, one more proof is that sometimes I check my e-mail which I use for guest posting more frequently than my personal mail!

But assuming all I wrote about addictions above I consider guest blogging a positive addiction. I know there are people who are also addicted (at least to some extent) to guest blogging. And I think we need to unite, may be in society of Anonymous Guest-Bloggers (like anonymous alcoholics), if MyBlogGuest would not exist – I think I would focus on creation of this community.  But now I don’t see the reason for doing it, I have enough contacts with bloggers from all around the world. We’ll see if other bloggers will recognize their addiction and then may be we’ll try to find some treatment. Not to quit guest blogging, but on the contrast – to force our addictiveness work for us and make us happy and successful.

There are many methods to monetize your web-site. There are hundreds of articles and sites dedicated to this topic. It’s very broad topic and may be in future articles I will focus on some methods which I consider the best ones. But in this article I would like to focus on the WORST method. Unfortunately now it is also one of the most popular methods – Google Adsense.

Why do people use Adsense?

1) This program is owned by Google.  People think that such famous company won’t cheat them. Moreover many people like to have the feeling of attachment to something great. And Google is great and cool in people’s minds.

2) Even for the web-newbies it is very easy to paste adsense code to their sites.

3) Adsense is paying per clicks. When someone visits adsense statistics he or she may have the impression that they already started to earn money even if they had just several cliks.

All these reasons are understandable. When I started to use Google Adsense in 2007 I was also expecting to make a lot of money in short terms. I know that long time before some people made simple sites called MFA (Made for Adsense) which received targeted quality traffic from search engines and with right adsense placement they achieved good results. Of course their accounts were banned later and now all good web specialists agree that adsense sucks as monetization methods. It’s better to pay attention to other programs.

Why adsense really sucks

1. You can be banned with no reason

In the beginning of this year after my adsense earning reached the level of 75 Euro (for dollars this amount is $100) I was banned from adsense and there is no way I can access even the stats of my account. I did not expect such fraud from Google but it happened. For my appeal they replied with standard message.

Hello,

 Thank you for your appeal. We appreciate the additional information you’ve
 provided, as well as your continued interest in the AdSense program.
 However, after thoroughly re-reviewing your account data and taking your
 feedback into consideration, our specialists have confirmed that we’re
 unable to reinstate your AdSense account.

 As a reminder, if you have any questions or concerns about your account,
 the actions we’ve taken, or invalid activity in general, you can find more
 information by visiting

I googled these words and found many other posts about adsense ban. As I mentioned I signed to adsense in 2007 and that should be my first check. So I earned 76 Euro in 5 years (!!) and I did not receive even this payment. Do you think I made “invalid activity” or clicked the ads myself? In this case do you think my earning would be so low? 15 Euro a year or 1.25 Euro a month. That’s not even the package of cigarettes!

You may think I have personal reasons for writing this post. In some way it is so, cause I don’t want my web friends and new web-masters to repeat my mistakes. Before I was banned I could not imagine that google can be so shit in one of its products.

2. There is no support

The standard message reply which I posted above was the only reply I got. I got no more replies and the situation is the same with other people who were banned. Moreover their FAQ page has only several general questions. So that means they don’t care. Probably because still there are many people using adsense.

3. You need to have really great traffic to earn something

If your site is new or if you have 100-1000 visitors a day you won’t earn much. May be $1-10 dollars a month. And in case you have big traffic – many direct advertizes will contact you by themselves. And they will offer much more money for the advertisement.

4. If you don’t receive elite traffic – you get minimum

If you are not from US or Western Europe- forget about big earnings. For US, UK, some other rich European countries (like Germany, France), may be also Australia and New Zealand traffic price per click is relatively good. It could be $1 or even more depending from keyword. That means that if your sites get small portion of such traffic – you will receive $0.01 – $0.05 for clicks.

5. Big delay in payment

When your earnings reach minimum $100 (or analogy in other currency) you have to wait 1 month or more till the check will be sent to you. Then it takes time for the check to arrive. Then it takes time for you to go to a bank. Then it takes about 1-2 month to receive money from that check (I was told so in bank)

6. Many banks don’t accept Google Adsense checks

Moreover they don’t even know about such checks. And checks is the only possible choice of payments for adsense. In contrast a lot of other advertising programs offer wide variety of payments and sometimes you can withdraw your earnings in 1 second.

7. Waste of time

Adsense setup and different placement optimization advices really waste your time. I regret that I wasted so much time in placing adsense, then removing, then placing again. I also spent a lot of time in my statistics panel to see which adsense channel, which click and when brought some earnings. That in some way I’m even happy I was banned so I won’t waste my time for adsense now.

8. Adsense is for beggars

I think that probably adsense is the most popular begging advertising. The “revenues” are so small so that is really the minimum you can get. I have analogy that it is like a begging. Someone clicks and you get a penny. And later you boss can take all the amount from you.

That’s all for now. I wish everyone to focus on really valuable things. Goodbye Adsense. Fuck you Google.

Many people nowadays are curious about SOPA, what it is and how to fight it. Wikipedia shut down, of course only for a while and only partially, but many people noticed their protest. I won’t explain what it is in details, I think all could be said in 1 phrase. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.

I’m not involved in any protests, but I think that all attempts to fight piracy may violate basic freedom principles. Moreover I share the idea is that USA is some kind of evil empire. I’m not afraid of evil and neither I want to promote anti-Americanism nor join the voice of liberal freedom fighters. I share the thought that soon America will lose it’s superpower and in future we’ll face huge cataclysms and catastrophes.

It’s hard to predict how the situation goes, but as one of my Russian friends told: SOPA is the sign of ZHOPA. (“zhopa” is “ass” in Russian). To finish this post I remembered one novel I used to read. The Turner Diaries by Andrew Macdonald. It’s a prediction of US future and how the society will go deeply in the conflicts and wars. I think you can easily find it as a free e-book, but to show respect to copyright I’m giving a link to amazon on the top )

Today I’ve seen many people inspired by this amazing date. Even crazy atheists are playing around with this date and may be even ask for their dreams to become reality. New excitement raises as 2012 is more and more close so the end of the world is near. Of course I don’t share these simple view promoted in viral way. But the nearest future will show big wars, crisis and catastrophes. Many people will day and the worst thing is that internet can stop working. Hahaha

Google+ made its ultimatum. And this is not only my problem, but the problem for everyone whose name may seem “not real” or who would be the victim of  “neighbor watch” or some complaints. I’ve seen before posts from people being banned from G+, but it seems Google came to the final solution fighting “unreal” people. Final ultimatum. You have 4 days to prove you are real or you will be suspended. Full text of their message and screenshot are below.

Hello,

After reviewing your profile, it appears that the name you entered does not comply with the Google+ Names Policy. Please log in to Google+ and visit your profile to learn more and take action.

The Names Policy requires that you use the name you are commonly referred to in real life in your profile. Nicknames, previous names and so on should be entered in the Other Names section of the profile. Profiles are currently limited to individuals; we will be launching profiles for businesses and other entities later this year.

If you do not edit your name to comply with our Names policy or appeal with additional information within four days of receiving this message, your profile will be suspended. While suspended, you will not be able to make full use of Google services that require an active profile, such as Google+, Buzz, Reader and Picasa. This will not prevent you from using other Google services, like Gmail.

The Google+ team.

Sabine Engelhardt also known as Sabine Becker is a bitch. I’ve added her to my Google+ circles and she commented “Spammer” at my last post. What’s more funny then she deleted this comment, but I’ve got the e-mail notification. Actually I don’t care what most of people think about me, moreover I don’t care what stupid ugly bitches (some people told she is very ugly that’s why she put a frog as her profile picture. Remember that tale about frog-princess?) think about me. But I think she complained to Google cause I’ve got message from Google about suspension of my account for non-real name. (I will write about it in the next post).

Why do I write about this Na, Atari-Frosch halt chronische Depression durch Repressionsamt, Hartz-geschädigt  Erwerbsunfähig BITCH Sabine Engelhardt? Consider it as a social experiment. Spammers don’t write posts about people or something non-profitable like this shit. That’s why when this post will rank #1 for keyword  “Sabine Engelhardt” her friends and relatives will take a look at this post and will ask her: “Hey Sabrine, are you a bitch?”. Hahahs, just kidding

Of course most of my readers are already on Google+ but if somenody still needs an invitation – don’t hesitate to contact me. I’ll send it to you ASAP. E-mail: flodner@gmail.com

Or you can sign up using this link: https://plus.google.com/_/notifications/ngemlink?path=%2F%3Fgpinv%3Dllz1zg1kvVE%3Al-zxcjF8-GY