Tag: Google

RetailMeNot – Single place to get promo codes & discount coupons

Post author By Rahul Bansal
Post date September 2, 2008
5 Comments on RetailMeNot – Single place to get promo codes & discount coupons

Everytime someone says promo code, I remember not using one while signing up for Dreamhost and so loosing $97 in discount. 🙁

I made a mistake as I was new to Internet and had no one to help me out. But when I realized my mistake, I started searching and ended up on this site – RetailMeNot.com. Since that day, I never missed any promo code or discount coupon.

About RetailMeNot…

Its a very simple but highly useful, one of its kind site where users/site owners/service provider share promo codes they know with site name on which they work. Then as a consumer, you go to RetailMeNot, type website name in its simple search box and hit enter. Search result page instantly show promo codes with small description, ranking, user comments and other info.

To get better idea check RetailMeNot page for GoDaddy. Yes, you can bookmark RetailMeNot pages for sites where you shop often!

RetailMeNot Firefox Addon…

Now if you are a lazy consumer, then you can use RetailMeNot Firefox Addon to automate promo code hunting. This small firefox addon checks if promo code is available for site you are visiting automatically. If promo codes are available then a small notification is shown on top side of page which lists few top ranked promo codes and link to page consisting all promo codes.

Link: RetailMeNot Firefox Addons

When RetailMeNot have no promo codes…

It may happen RetailMeNot have no promo codes for site you are visiting. But it does not mean promo codes don’t exist for that site. Or there may be even better promo code exist at other places in some cases. For example, check Dreamhost page on RetailMeNot. They do not have any of Dreamhost special promo codes worth $200 discount!

So whenever in doubt, use google to find promo codes that are not listed elsewhere. 🙂

Link: RetailMeNot | RetailMeNot Firefox Addons

Tags Dreamhost, Firefox, Google, Interesting Links, Internet

Tips

Join Pepperjam Affiliate Network with $10 Sign-up Bonus. Last 2 Days!

Post author By Rahul Bansal
Post date August 29, 2008
5 Comments on Join Pepperjam Affiliate Network with $10 Sign-up Bonus. Last 2 Days!

If you are an active blogger, then I bet you already heard about Pepperjam Affiliate Network and their lucrative $10 sign-up bonus offer. If you haven’t joined Pepperjam or planning to join it later, this post is reminder to rush up as sign-up bonus and other Pepperjam offers are available till 31st August.

Overview of Pepperjam offers:

1. $10 New Publisher Sign-Up Bonus – You are eligible for a $10 bonus just for signing-up for Pepperjam Network. Only thing you need to do is join Pepperjam via any referral links.

2. Flat $7 for each referral – For the entire month of August the Pepperjam Network Publisher Referral Program will pay publishers (aka, affiliates) a flat $7 for every new publisher referral. Now if you are a blogger, then you must join Pepperjam within 2 days to get $10 sign-up bonus. You can use last day to refer your blog visitors to Pepperjam via your affiliate links.

3. Blogger Incentive Program – Yes, there is still some money. Pepperjam publisher / blogger will receive $10 for each post they make (up to 5 per month) that promotes Pepperjam Network or any Pepperjam Network tool. Of course, your post need to be pre-approved by them. I already got late to try Pepperjam, so I am posting this straightaway so you don’t miss your sign-up bonus. But you can contact bloggers@pepperjamnetwork.com prior to making your post to gain approval of the topic.

Beyond these offers:

Above offers are lucrative enough to make you join Pepperjam. Honestly, I joined Pepperjam for $10 sign-up bonus. But when Google closed their Adsense product referral program, I really wanted to go for some alternatives.

I tested commission junction & Chitika long time before. But after more than 100K impressions, they failed to make any money for me. I haven’t tried Chitika Premium ad unit yet. Widget bucks worked little bit for me but I had more advertising space to offer in this blogs sidebar. So after going through some alternatives, I finally put Pepperjam ads there.

Its too early to comment about Pepperjams performance, but I am hopeful because of following reasons:

First and most important, I liked product lists they are offering. I found many relevant programs for this blogs topics. Ex: text-link-ads, SEO Moz, etc.
Next I liked PepperjamAds section where one can create single ad-unit for all approved advertisers. The best thing about PepperjamAds is text-links it shows. I really hate flashy animated product image ads. Of course you can get image ads for any of your advertiser if you want. If you like to have preview of PepperjamAds, check vertical skyscraper ad unit in this blogs sidebar.
With the Pepperjam is launched and kind of money they spent on giving bonus/rewards, they must have very large publisher base now. This makes its attractive for advertisers and I already pointed out that I am really surprised to find highly relevant advertiser for this blog. Something I failed to find on years old commission junction.

That’s all for the day. Thanks Amanda (Coleman) for clearing my doubts about Pepperjam. 🙂

Links: Join Pepperjam Network today!

Tags Adsense, Advertising, Blogging, Google, Make Money Online

Tips

Search Regex – A must have WordPress Plugin

Post author By Rahul Bansal
Post date August 29, 2008
3 Comments on Search Regex – A must have WordPress Plugin

There are times when you want to make a change across all your posts. Consider following examples:

I have a dedicated page for firefox on this blog with AdSense’s firefox download code. Earlier I used to link that from every “download firefox” link. But as Google retired there AdSense for referral program, I thought its better to send visitors directly to official firefox download page. So task was to replace all link of type A with type B.
I kept open this blog for guest authors from long time. Earlier, I used to send interested people to registration page. Then I created a dedicated page about joining Devils Workshop. And so I needed to replace all links.
Gaurav Dua of Orkut Plus first moved his blog from blogspot subdomain to .org top-domain and for some unfortunate reasons, again shifted to .net domain. In all these transitions, links remain in-tact, but speaking for my posts I would love to give links which will not redirect. Technically its not bog deal but from user experience point of view its good thing. Again task is to replace all links of type A and B with type C.
Then there is another top blogger Darnell Clayton from Inside Orkut who started with blogspot subdomain but with time registered top level .COM domain.
OK enough about links. Now lets come back to some text. Gaurav Dua of Orkut Plus started his blogging career under nickname Jerry. He no longer uses that name but my old posts had it. So here I wanted to replace Jerry with Gaurav in my all posts.

Looks like there is lots of work to do when you encounter such examples in your blogging career. Of course if your on Blogger then you have to edit each post manually but if you are on wordpress. there is a plugin for everything.

Of course, those who comfortable with MySQL can directly write queries to do such jobs but I still advise using Search Regex wordpress plugin.

With this plugin, you can not only do search and replace of any text but can also preview changes first. All form one page! Power users can also use regular expressions too.

This is one of my most favorite wordpress plugins.

Link: Search Regex WordPress Plugin by John Godley.

Tags Adsense, Bing, Blogging, Firefox, Google, plugin, Plugins, Wordpress

Reviews

FriendFeed – Best Social Aggreagator

Post author By Rahul Bansal
Post date August 26, 2008

FriendFeed is one service which I am using from long time but never mentioned it. It is a social aggregator which allows you to build a customized feed, made up of content generated or shared by your friends on various social networks as well as their own blogs.

Content includes web pages, photos, videos and music that your friends and family are sharing on Twitter, Del.icio.us, Digg, flickr, Last.fm, YouTube and many other social websites.

FriendFeed let you spy on your friends and family members. Of course, everyone on FriendFeed can control contents that show up in their updates.

Now all such updates from your list are delivered to you via a feed that you can subscribe in your favorite feed reader. If you don’t use feeds, you can get all updates delivered to your mailbox as well.

Also if you think this is just a kind of spying service, then check some features listed below, explained by Amit Agarwal.

Create ‘River of News’ from Your Favorite Blogs
Track Your Favorite Topics (like Google Alerts)
Find People Who Enjoy Reading Your Content
Subscribe to Interesting Discussions
Get Productive – Skip the Links That You Have Read Already
Take Your FriendFeed With You to Facebook, iGoogle, etc

Finally check following sildeshow by Daryl Pereira if you still need fore info about FriendFeed.

Links: FriendFeed | Follow me on FriendFeed

Tags Google, Internet, YouTube

Tips

Be a Gmail Power User : Use Advance Search Operators in Gmail Search

Post author By Abhishek
Post date August 24, 2008
3 Comments on Be a Gmail Power User : Use Advance Search Operators in Gmail Search

What do you do when you want to search something? We google it.
Why google? Because of its amazing search techniques to deliver accurate results.
Google provides the same searchability in Gmail too. Within Gmail searchbox, you can enter a word or multiple words that appears anywhere in your mails.

For more specific search, you can use gmail’s search options nest to to search box. You get most of the options like ‘From’, ‘To’, ‘Subject’ but what if you want to search mails with only attachments or a mail with specific labels. Gmail Advance search operators come handy at this time. These operators are query words or symbols that perform special actions in Gmail search and allow you to find what you’re looking for quickly and accurately. They can also be used to set up filters so you can organize your inbox automatically.

Previously Rahul posted 6 most used operators for Google search. Here is the comprehensive list of search operators for Gmail. Complete list is here.

Operator	Definition	Example(s)
from:	Used to specify the sender	Example – from:akshay Meaning – Messages from Amy
to:	Used to specify a recipient	Example – to:david Meaning – All messages that were sent to David (by you or someone else)
subject:	Search for words in the subject line	Example – subject:dinner Meaning – Messages that have the word “dinner” in the subject
OR	Search for messages matching term A or term B* *OR must be in all caps	Example – from:akshay OR from:david Meaning – Messages from Amy or from David
– (hyphen)	Used to exclude messages from your search	Example – dinner -movie Meaning – Messages that contain the word “dinner” but do not contain the word “movie”
label:	Search for messages by label* *There isn’t a search operator for unlabeled messages	Example – from:akshay label:friends Meaning – Messages from Amy that have the label “friends”Example – from:david label:my-family Meaning – Messages from David that have the label “My Family”
has:attachment	Search for messages with an attachment	Example – from:david has:attachment Meaning – Messages from David that have an attachment
list:	Search for messages on mailing lists	Example – list:info@example.com Meaning – Messages with the words info@example.com in the headers, sent to or from this list
filename:	Search for an attachment by name or type	Example – filename:homework.txt Meaning – Messages with an attachment named “physicshomework.txt” Example – label:work filename:pdf Meaning – Messages labeled “work” that also have a PDF file as an attachment
” “ (quotes)	Used to search for an exact phrase* *Capitalization isn’t taken into consideration	Example – “i’m feeling lucky” Meaning – Messages containing the phrase “i’m feeling lucky” or “I’m feeling lucky” Example – subject:”dinner and a movie” Meaning – Messages containing the phrase “dinner and a movie” in the subject
( )	Used to group words Used to specify terms that shouldn’t be excluded	Example – from:akshay(dinner OR movie) Meaning – Messages from Amy that contain either the word “dinner” or the word “movie” Example – subject:(dinner movie) Meaning – Messages in which the subject contains both the word “dinner” and the word “movie”
in:anywhere	Search for messages anywhere in Gmail* Messages in Spam* and Trash are excluded from searches by default	Example – in:anywhere movie Meaning – Messages in All Mail, Spam, and Trash that contain the word “movie”
in:inbox in:trash in:spam	Search for messages in Inbox, Trash, or Spam	Example – in:trash from:akshay Meaning – Messages from Amy that are in Trash
is:starred is:unread is:read	Search for messages that are starred, unread or read	Example – is:read is:starred from:David Meaning – Messages from David that have been read and are marked with a star
cc: bcc:	Used to specify recipients in the cc: or bcc: fields* *Search on bcc: cannot retrieve messages on which you were blind carbon copied<!–	Example – cc:david Meaning – Messages that were cc-ed to David
after: before:	Search for messages sent during a certain period of time* *Dates must be in yyyy/mm/dd format.	Example – after:2008/07/16 before:2008/08/18 Meaning – Messages sent between July 16, 2008 and August 18, 2008.* *More precisely: Messages sent after 12:00 AM (or 00:00) July 16, 2008 and before Augut 18, 2008.
is:chat	Search for chat messages	Example – is:chat money Meaning – Any chat message including the word “money”.

Important: Gmail doesn’t search in Spam or Trash unless you tell it to.

[Editor Note: This is a guest post by Abhishek Mandloi, a technology enthusiast who writes at www.gtricks.com about google tricks. If you like to guest author here or join us as co-author please check this.]

Tags Gmail, Google

Tips

AdSense for Feeds – FAQ & Guide

Post author By Rahul Bansal
Post date August 19, 2008
3 Comments on AdSense for Feeds – FAQ & Guide

Few days back, AdSense opened their feed advertising program for all publishers. I put AdSense ads in some of my feeds. The whole process of adding AdSense codes in feeds is not that simple as it may seem. Here I am listing few resources, which can be helpful for all bloggers/publisher who still have questions about AdSense for Feeds.

AdSense for Feeds Video

Google Product Manager & founder of FeedBurner, Steve Olechowski introduces AdSense for feeds. If you are not familiar with feeds, then this is best way to get started.

AdSense for Feeds Guide

Ionut posted everything in detail with nice screenshots. If you know what feed means, then his post is the only resource you need to get started.

3. FeedBurner MyBrand Issue

This is for those who use FeedBurner with their MyBrand service. If you remember, while configuring your DNS to use MyBrand, you had created a CNAME record for feeds subdomian. Now to use AdSense for existing feeds at FeedBurner you need to update that CNAME record as pointed out by Amit Agarwal.

As of now it is like:

feeds CNAME feeds.feedburner.com.

Change it to:

feeds CNAME ghs.google.com.

If you forget to update above CNAME record, then your feeds may become unavailable when requested through your domain.

If you know any other guide which covers any missing info, please let us know.

Enjoy AdSense for feeds. 🙂

Related: 8 WordPress Plugins for Feeds

Tags Adsense, Advertising, Blogging, Google, plugin, Wordpress, YouTube