Everyone wants to get rich, as is everyone's right. Some people work long and hard for it, while others get lucky. But if you think it takes resources to become rich, then read the rest of this story, and judge for yourself. It's a story about Christian Gheorghe, a Romanian who came to the U.S with just $26 in his pocket, but a couple decades later, managed to sell a startup company for no less than half a Billion dollars! 

This one is all for inspiration.

Gheorghe's journey from Communist Romania to the U.S is nothing short of a wonder. As a teenager in Romania in the '80s, he replaced vacuum tubes to keep his television running, and he made a living out of selling music records. He also taught himself a little bit of English off songs from the likes of Pink Floyd. 

Saving up for years, Gheorghe used the money to buy a knock-off replica of the Commodore 64 PC. From there on, he used to hack into the video games on that machine, and taught himself to code! Most of us look towards college where we're taught coding! Gheorghe, of course, had no such luxury.

Migration to the U.S. in the early 1990s, he only had $26 in his pocket, and could not speak English. He did, however, know how to drive, and so stumbled into a job as a limo driver. That's when he started living in a cheap youth hostel.

While his job as a limo driver, Gheorghe met a man named Andrew Saxe, who would ultimately help him launch his new career. During the ride, Saxe learned about Gheorghe's interest in computers and told him to come by his office. Saxe ran a computer software consulting company. He hired Gheorghe, and the two built a company together. That company was one of the earliest that did "big data," though they didn't call it that back then.

They sold the company to Experian, and Gheorghe ultimately found himself in the position of a CTO for the new company.

After a few years, he launched a second startup, TIAN, and merged it with a company called OutlookSoft. OutlookSoft did a form of big data known as business analytics, where companies slice, dice, report, and predict trends in their business by sifting through their financial transactions.

This is when Christian's luck was about to change. SAP, the enterprise software giant showed an interest in OutlookSoft, and bought it for $500 Million. OutlookSoft was part of a crop of business analytics companies acquired by big enterprise software vendors around that time: Oracle bought Hyperion, IBM bought Cognos, and SAP bought OutlookSoft.

As a result, Gheorghe found himself as a CTO for SAP for a couple of years - a huge position for a self-taught coder.

In 2010, another pang to create a new startup hit Gheorghe, and Tidemark was born. It has all the signs of being another golden venture. Tidemark also does business analytics, but it's designed for the modern age: it is a cloud and mobile app. More importantly, it is designed to be what Gheorghe calls a "revolution at the edge" with a "Siri-like interface." That means that business folks can use it without help from their IT departments creating pre-programmed reports.

All they have to do is ask Tidemark a question, any question, about how their business is performing like ... Why isn't this product selling? What happens if we assign three more people to this project? What will our sales be next quarter? Tidemark answers with charts and graphs. It even names the people in the company who could help with the project.

It's an innovative idea, and is already attracting attention. The company has grown more than 300% year over year, and it is destined to hit the market again, much bigger than half a Billion dollars we presume!

Inspired yet? Got anything to say about this story? Feel free to drop us your comments in the comments section below! Cheers (:

MBT

So, another year has passed, and we've entered a whole new, more promising one. We find ourselves yet again asking the question that we ask each year - can you still make money blogging in this year? A question that, no doubt, will prickle the interest of many a bloggers, especially new ones or those aspiring to become one. So, can you really make money blogging in 2014?

It seems like only yesterday that I last wrote on a topic like this, even though it's been almost an year now. So much has changed, yet so much has stayed the same. Even though the backbones of SEO remain the same, a lot of frontal details have changed. So is this year going to be any different for blogging? Let's take a look.

What's changed so far?

OK, before we mention anything else, let's talk about Hummingbird - the latest Google's search algorithm.

Hummingbird

While the Penguin and Panda updates in the last couple years were merely updates, this here is a big overhaul - a whole new algorithm. It's so big, that the major Caffeine update in 2010 doesn't come close. In fact, the last update of this scale was way back in 2001! So you can expect this one to be a major player, if not a game changer, yet.

The major emphasis now is on "conversational" search terms - queries which more closely resemble questions asked in real life. While this should not much effect bloggers who are currently publishing, it could, however, mean that beginners need to get more work done. Google is now trying to 'understand' queries, rather than just matching keywords. That increases the complexity of content that can be created - not a big problem for established bloggers, but definitely a mountain to climb for starters.

Keywords data

Google made the move to make all organic searches secure starting September 23rd last year. This means we've lost the ability to get keyword data for users arriving to our websites from Google search. This impacts publishers in many ways, including losing a valuable tool for understanding what the intent of customers that come to their site, for conversion optimization, and much more. This means that keyword data for tactical SEO is now harder to come by, and although there are work-arounds, they make it all very complicated.

This puts beginner bloggers at another disadvantage - the learning curve for them has been stepped up by quite a bit.

PageRank

PageRank might finally be going away. Google has stopped updating it regularly (last updated in December, almost 7 months late. They also won't update toolbar anytime soon. This might suggest that PageRank could be going away, since Google itself no longer puts much emphasis on it. So how does that effect blogging, you ask? It doesn't really. But it does mean that since PageRank is now updated after a long time, new blogs will have to wait a long time before they get a PageRank, and get out of the "zero" zone, which is a huge disadvantage. A major reason is given below.

Malpractices

Speaking of disadvantages, starters now run a greater risk of being targeted by plagiarism, spam, malicious activity, and other illegal activities. No one is born a pro. But times have become difficult now. There are too many people doing these activities at the expanse of others. For example, a lot of people copy and paste content from this blog (MyBloggerTricks) to their own. Now of course, MB has a reputable standing (thanks to our beloved readers like you), so this plagiarism does not really effect us.

But what about a blog that started a week ago? Even if they are creating their own, original content, they run the risk of getting penalized for plagiarism. Although Google's algorithms are smart, and they can detect plagiarism, they do sometimes miss their mark. In that case, it's the newbie's word against a pro. Take a guess who'll benefit.

Malicious activity is another problem. You have to be very protective of your security and privacy these days. You never know when someone might be stalking you, observing, waiting for a wrong move - not uncommon for a starter.

Tonnes of competition

Well, that's not surprising. We're already past the era of digitalization, and almost everybody has had their share of online experience to decide what they want to do henceforth. So everyone who wanted to create a blog, has gone ahead and done it. Of course saying "everyone" is a massive generalization, but not a very in-accurate one.

The competition is high - too high, and the payout is low - too low. It was difficult getting a fresh start in the world of blogging in 2013. It is even harder now. I'm not saying this to discourage beginners, but that's the reality of the world! If you are going to take a step forward, you should know what you're dealing with. And if you feel confident that you can work hard and overcome the odds, then we welcome you wholeheartedly! We need more brave people like you!

Is it worth it?

Speaking of competition, the advertisement rates today are much lower than they used to be. This means that starters have to look for other, possibly unconventional ways. Blogging, as we knew it a few years ago, has changed. 

You can no longer survive on hard work and luck alone. You need to lay down the entire groundwork. The concept, the idea, the design, the implementation, the maintenance. All of these things matter now. If you want to survive you need to have the full toolbox, and without a single component, you're a dead. To rise to equal footing with the others from the start, you need to offer something unique. Time is what it takes, and time is what you don't have.

So it it worth it, you ask? My immediate answer would be, no. However, you can turn it into a yes if you've got what it takes. Understand that you've got a long, tough uphill battle ahead of you. The rewards can be worth it if you set your goal to reach the top, and focus only on your goal. If you start thinking about the rewards, you'll get distracted, often frustrated, and you'll never get to the top.

So, what do you think? Are you considering picking this up as a career? We wish you the very best of luck, and we'll try to help you along your journey. Peace, and all the best :)

Social media is all about connections. But while Facebook might be referred to as an on-stage microphone, Twitter is more like a two-way radio, where businesses rely on interactions to grow (which is kind of ironic, considering it is Facebook that requires mutual consent for a connection). If you're active on Twitter, you may know that when you follow someone, they might not always follow you back. Well, you can use tools likeFriendOrFollow to find out who isn'tfollowing you back, and who is inactive etc.

Sometimes, people will follow you just so you'd follow them in return, and then they'd silently unfollow you. This practice is so against the general aesthetics of using social networks such as Twitter, Google+, Instagram, and so on.

Friend Or Follow

Friend Or Follow is a great online tool that you can use to identify which users aren't following you back on Twitter. It is totally free.

Friend Or Follow doesn't just focus on Twitter, but will also take a look at your Instagram and Tumblr if you so allow it to. It allows you to sort users by various factors, including whether or not they’re verified, when they last tweeted, how old their account is, or how frequent they tweet, etc. The tool is free, but you can pay for some advanced features. I, however, would recommend sticking with the free version, as it more than serves its purpose.

Find out who isn't following you back

Follow these steps to find out who is the traitor who hasn't followed you back!

• Go to friendorfollow.com, and Sign Up (Or Sign In if you already have an account)
• Once logged in, you can select the account you want to monitor. You can choose from Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram.
• If you trust this method I'm telling you about, go ahead and enter your Twitter username and password and authenticate the app from your account.
• You will now see a list of all the people who haven't followed you back!

My Blogger Tricks

The Google+ Commenting System Google introduced a while back was a marginal improvement over the default Blogger comments system and it also looks a lot better. We earlier shared a tutorial on how to enable this Google Plus commenting system for Blogger blogs. But some people still have problems implementing it on custom templates. And as it turns out, there are certain performance issues too. Here are some reasons not to implement it on your blog.

Moving your comments from one system to another is not as painless as you'd like it to be. Once you implement one system, you should pretty much stick to it unless there's a major problem with it.

Granted that the Google Plus comment system is an improvement over the Blogger comments layout, there are certain things you should know before you implement it. These things might not bother you, but for some users out there, these can be a deal-breaker. So heed well before implementing.

Lack of moderation options

Here's one area I particularly like to scrutinize with any comments system. An ideal commenting system has moderator roles in addition to basic moderation options. Kinda like a forum. This Google Plus comments system has no such options unfortunately.

Since people are required to log in through Google Plus, comments on your blog posts are as moderable as a social media post, say on Facebook or Google Plus. You can't prevent spammers, and the only thing you can do is delete undesirable comments. The rest is left upto the system, and Google Plus will automatically hide comments which it thinks is spam. You can review these hidden comments by clicking on the blue review comments bar.

Google Account login

That brings us to the other problem. To make a comment on your blog, readers will need to have a Google Account. If they don’t have one, they will be forced to create a Google account before they can comment on your Blog. Google is trying to force-feed their accounts to everybody they can!

Commenting gadgets disabled

If you're using a custom commenting widget on your blog, such as a Recent Comments plugin, it will no longer work properly with this new commenting system because a majority of these widgets depend on the default Blogger commenting system.

Google Plus profile

To enable the feature, you will have to switch your Blogger Profile to Google+.

There's another potential pitfall. If your change your Blog URL to a custom domain after using Google+ Comments for a while, the G+ comments will be lost when you make the switch!

Source: My Blogger Tricks

Blog monetization is one of the best ways to earn money online. One of the ways to monetize your website/blog is through advertisements. Google has introduced another way for bloggers to monetize their blogs - Google Consumer Surveys. Announced this week, the Google Consumer Surveys publisher network is now open for sign ups. Let's take a look at what this network is and how it works.

What are Google Consumer Surveys?

Think of it like a site where you pay to get unrestricted access, but without having to pay actual money. Your visitors just have to answer a few short surveys in exchange for access to your content, and you earn money for each question answered.

More and more sites are adding paywalls to access their content, meaning you have to pay a one-time or subscription fee to read articles, watch videos etc. A good example is the Wall Street Journal.

Google Consumer Surveys are similar to paywalls in the way that they block users from accessing content. However, the only barrier to entry is answering a few survey questions. No one has to shell out their hard earned money, but there is real potential here for website owners to earn extra money.

Earning potential

Right now, Survey creators (much like advertisers) are charged 10 cents per survey, out of which 5 cents go to the website owner. So that's a 50/50 revenue sharing between Google and publishers. Now it is up to you how many surveys can you get filled. The larger your traffic, the greater the earning potential. Assuming that even 20% of your 100K/month visitors fill out the survey, you get an easy $1000 per month!

The announcement states that Google Consumer Surveys are easy to control and add to your site. You can choose where they appear and how often users are prompted to fill them out. You can also set how much content you want to make available, and how much of it you want to make accessible via filling out surveys.

There are some requirements in order to be accepted into this program. You need to have an AdSense account in good standing, an 18+ audience, and must follow Google’s Publisher Program Policies.

US publishers are already being accepted, with publishers in the UK and Canada soon to follow. In the coming months even more countries are said to be added.

Source My Blogger Tricks