PinoyMoneyTalk.com

As promised, here’s the update on our listing of the Top Philippine Blogs based on Alexa rank which we published last month.

A few changes occurred in the top blogs’ list for May. FleshAsiaDaily.com, a blog about babes and celebrities, jumped four notches to rank at #6. This month’s biggest gainer is Jehzlau-Concepts.com, which zoomed to 15th from 29th place in April. Also for this month, six new blogs entered the Top 50.

Without further ado, here’s the list of the Top 50 Philippine Blogs, ranked based on the 3-month traffic rank in Alexa. A list of this month’s Top Gainers and Losers also follows.

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The formula, they say, to successfully make money from a website or blog is Quality Content + Traffic.

A lot of “make money online” experts — the true gurus and fakes alike — claim that fresh, unique, and high-quality content translates to traffic and traffic ultimately equals online income. By now, it probably is an accepted fact that a website with more visitors will earn more than another site with fewer visitors.

But how related exactly are site traffic and pageviews to the advertising income of a site?

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Earlier this week, I upgraded our blog to Wordpress 2.5.1, the latest version of the Wordpress blogging software. Although the upgrade was successful and complete, the Admin Dashboard still showed a strip saying “WordPress 2.5.1 is available! Please update now.”

At first, I dismissed it as an annoying bug that will probably go away upon the next release. But after searching the net for more information, this may actually be a symptom of a Wordpress vulnerability and the site may have been hacked or SQL injected.

Fortunately, a few online sources have already detailed a solution. I tried it in our blog and after a few hours of 404 Not Found Errors and Database Connection Problems, the problem seems to have been solved.

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If you came here a few hours ago, you probably were not able to access the blog and instead were greeted by a Wordpress error on the front page. Here’s how I solved this wp_cache_mutex problem.

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Alexa started implementing its new ranking system yesterday and websites have now been re-ranked as a result. It will surely have its share of criticisms still but, whether we like it or not, there is no doubt that Alexa remains a primary reference tool in ranking websites.

And so we are using it here to show a ranking of the top blogs in the Philippines. Eugene made a commendable effort compiling the list last month but we updated it to show the new Alexa ranks and included other Filipino blogs not mentioned in the list.

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If you don’t notice it yet, the PMT Blog is now sporting a new look. We’re currently using Brian Gardner’s Revolution Tech Theme, a premium theme that costs $79.95 for a single site installation and $199.95 for installation in multiple sites.

Nope, we didn’t pay anything to acquire this theme. Back in February, McBilly hosted a Wordpress Theme Giveaway Contest and, luckily, we won!

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Scraper sites are always a problem for blog publishers, but don’t worry because there is a way to fight back.

Scrapers are sites that steal content from a blog by syndicating its RSS feeds then republishing those stolen content in another blog usually peppered with ads. By stealing content, they get to earn from their own ad clicks but the worse thing is, they even compete with the original blog in terms of “duplicate content.”

When there are several versions of a blog article in several sites, search engines like Google still find it difficult to determine the original author of the duplicate content. How important is it to be recognized as such? Well, for one, Google ranks higher a site it thinks is the original author of an article. How would you feel if you wrote a unique post then was copied by another site and yet that scraper site was #1 on the search result and yours was nowhere near the first page?

Fortunately, you can fight back. Here’s how.

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Apparently, controversial Manila Standard columnist Malu Fernandez is still not done with bloggers. In her newspaper column on March 10, Fernandez has got something new to say about blogging and bloggers.

For the uninitiated, Malu Fernandez achieved notoriety because of an August 2007 column in People Asia where she talked about her supposedly annoying experiences riding the plane with Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs). The column sparked massive protests from OFWs and bloggers who found the article offensive. Bloggers then pushed for a boycott of the Manila Standard until Fernandez was fired. She allegedly resigned but the newspaper did not accept her resignation.

In her new column article this week, Fernandez derided bloggers for not being like journalists who “adhere to certain guidelines that govern the freedom of speech.” She also described blogging as a “slacker job or a medium and pastime for lonely people to connect.” She advised bloggers to turn off their PCs and step outside the comfort zone so they can “find some real live people to talk to instead of typing away in cyber space.”

True, blogging in general is still not considered “journalism.” But then again, a lot of bloggers don’t attempt to pass themselves off as “journalists.” Most of them still regard their blogs as a “personal diary” where they report on events and issues from their own point of view. Blogs may not necessarily be good or objective sources of information, but the good thing is, they don’t pretend to be.

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The latest survey of 304 companies in the US showed that 84% of employees fired for internet misuse was due to accessing porn or other inappropriate content at work.

The study, conducted by the American Management Association (AMA) and The ePolicy Institute, analyzed cases of workers fired for misusing the internet on the job.

The survey also showed that 34% of these companies let go of workers due to excessive personal use of the Internet. A majority of companies monitor the online activities of employees by monitoring their keystrokes and time spent on the keyboard. They also review personal blogs for company-related content and even individual social networking accounts of employees in, say, Friendster, Myspace or Facebook.

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I signed up in Entrecard only two days ago but I must admit that I am already loving the service.

I particularly like the idea of dropping my “digital business card” in someone else’s blog to signify that I visited the site and to sort of introduce myself to the other blogger. That’s one easy way of generating more contacts especially from within the same blog niche.

Of course, advertising my “card” — for free! — in someone else’s blog is expected to deliver more site traffic too, and I’m sure that’s enough bonus to other Entrecard users as well.

So as a gesture of appreciation to those who visited the site via Entrecard and to those who drop their cards day by day, I am recognizing the Top Entrecard Droppers on this site.

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