I love blogging but in order to blog I need a domain and a hosting service. I do not like free blogging platforms such as Blogger because I just don’t like it and it does not like me too and I am not kidding. I also need an internet connection to blog at home and all of that needs money.

So, traffic means money. More traffic means more money. People often said you need contents to get traffic and then you make money. Well, I said, that is true. But I also want to say that you need money to have a blog so that you can put in your contents. In the end, it would be a chicken and egg situation.

Before chicken and egg becomes omelet with chicken meat, and this post become irrelevant, let me go back to this post about getting traffic to your blog.

There is a new program in the blogging world and it is called Adgitize. If you are familiar with Entrecard, then this is something almost similar in the sense that it is about getting traffic to your blog. Some people said that it would be competing against Entrecard but I said it would just complement it.

There are some differences between Adgitize and Entrecard but the differences that I want to highlight are:

1. You need to pay to advertise in Adgitize but you use credits to advertise in Entrecard.
2. You advertise on specific blog on Entrecard but your ads will go to all blogs in the Adgitize network.
3. You only get traffic while using Entrecard but you can get traffic and money while using Adgitize.

Those are the main difference that I know or want to know and if you need further details, just go to Adgitize.

Well, since this is about traffic, let me update you on my Mission Alexa. My rank has taken a little dip and this could be related to some busy time at work as well as unexplainable laziness during the weekends that caused me to be less active online. The Alexa ranking has dropped from 124,364 to 125,308 as of today.

However, the good news is in the chart below:

The ranking in Malaysia has gone up from 3,805 to 3,479! Anyway that’s the only good news as the other rankings have gone down especially the United States.

Hey, has this got something to do with the financiial crisis over there?

For the past few weeks I have been reading about Alexa on many blogs that I have visited. So, I have been asking around about what it is all about.  After a few replies that I have got from some friendly bloggers out there, now I know that Alexa is generally about traffic to our blogs.

I love traffic. I am just like one of those people who built super highways and then collect tolls from the users. The only different is that while it is mandatory to pay the tolls on the highway, it is not required here since your toll would be paid by the sponsors. And, my “toll” is not a fixed amount too…

Never mind, sometimes, I am not completely sure about what I talked or wrote here so just let it be. especially this post came after reading some stuffs at Alexa…

Anyway, back to Alexa. Kisahberuang.com has a traffic rank of 124,364. Not that bad for a less than a year old blog when compared to some blogs that are still in its million.

Then I went on further reading the stats and love to see all the green arrows on the 3 mos. Change column there.

Then, at the end of the stats, I saw that note: *Daily values are not available for sites ranked outside of the Top 100K.

That’s what Mission Alexa is going to be about. I am going to aim for Daily Values to be available on my Alexa stats. That could take years or forever but that will be the mission!

Kisahberuang.com must reach top 100K on Akexa!

Now back to some stats again.

Now I know why my Nuffnang ads revenue are not that hot. My Malaysian traffic is only 11.2%.  So I need to get more Malaysian to come over here. I hope that they are not staying away because I do not write in Malay…

Well, nevertheless, Kisahberuang.com is ranked quite high as far as Malaysia is concerned and that is good. So. let’s see what will happen next week.

See ya!

I love Firefox not because many claim that it is the safest web browser in the world. To me, there is no such thing as safe surfing on the internet. It is just like there is no such thing as a car that is totally safe to drive. You just need to be careful and not do some stupid things while you are at it.

At the same time, many claim that Firefox is the fastest web browser in the world. There is some truth in that statement when running it side by side to the fat Internet Explorer from Microsoft. However, when it is timed against Google Chrome, that opinion might not really hold 100% as some sites are loaded faster on Chrome compared to Firefox.

So, if those are not the reason to fall in love and to be still in love with a fox that is on fire, what is it then?

Well, it is none other than the Add-ons! Those little programs that hop into the back of the fox and make its fire hotter are the answers. Now I am going to share with you what Add-ons I have on my Firefox 3.0.3:

1. Download Statusbar – I use this download management add-on a lot for downloading pictures, plug-ins for my blog as well as some other things that I need to download. I chose this because it does not give me one of those big download windows that pop-up on your face when you are dwonloading something.
2. Downloadhelper – This add-on is primarily used to download YouTube videos to my hard disk so that they can be viewed offline. An FLV player is needed to play those video or you can install a video converter program and get this add-on to convert it to the format that you want automatically.
3. Entrecard Toolbar – I am an Entrecard member and this one helps me to do my daily drop.
4. Extended Statusbar – I like the status bar on Opera web browser and finally I found this. It shows percentage of the page loaded, number of loaded images, bytes downloaded, average download speed and load time. It is more for fun than anything else.
5. FireFTP – FTP program is a must have for those running their own sites. So, instead of installing a separate FTP program, I use this add-on and it has done nothing but wonders so far.
6. Flagfox – It displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website’s server and provides quick access to detailed location and web server information. For example, if your site/blog is on Blogger, then the US flag will appear. If you load this blog, the Malaysian flag will appear.
7. Gspace – Not G-spot! This extension allows you to use your Gmail Space (4.1 GB and growing) for file storage. It acts as an online drive, so you can upload files from your hard drive and access them from every Internet capable system. The interface will make your Gmail account look like a FTP host. I have never actually used this so far.
8. Linky – A handy tool if you need to open multiple links on a page into multiple tabs and then you can visit them one by one. You are going to be sure that you would not miss a link.
9. Resurrect Pages – This one performs like magic. Dead pages, broken links, the scourge of the internet. Powerhouse sites like Slashdot and Digg can bring a server to its knees. What do we do when a page is dead but we still want to see it? Call in the clerics, and perform a resurrection ceremony! Or, the easier route, use this extension. I had even managed to copy some entries from my defunct blog at Modblog using this.
10. SeacrhStatus – A quick way to view that PageRank and Alexa rank of the site/blog that you are visiting. It displays the Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete ranking anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and other SEO tools.
11. Tweak Network – I was using Fasterfox on Firefox 2 before and it is still in the experimental stage form Firefox 3. Therefore, I switched to this. With Tweak Network, you can tweak these settings, and you might be able to speed up the loading of web pages. You can also increase the maximum number of simultaneous downloads from a site (the default is only four). Please bear in mind that it can not do anything if the bottleneck is your own internet connection.
12. TwitterFox – I need to see what people that I follow on Twitter are doing and talking about. This is the best tool to do that so that I don’t miss a tweet.
13. Zemanta – An excellent blogging companion for me. Zemanta expands the author’s regular blogging dashboard, populating it on the fly with content suggestions relevant to the current text. It presents images, links, articles, tags in a simple interface. It encourages re-use and linking to other content with as little effort as possible – a single click.

There you go! What about you?

If you are not a Firefox user, you can go here.