Code corrupted. Insert fresh copy.
Today while approving the baby photos for the monthly contests on one of my sites, i saw this error message “Code corrupted. Insert fresh copy.” in the footer section of the page. I was under the impression that the CPG gallery files are corrupted and i need to replace the existing files. But after checking out the template file for a while, i came across the statcounter code which was missing the first 4-5 lines in the code. I got the code again from the statcounter site and replaced and everything started working fine.
So do remember, if you get such error as “Code corrupted. Insert fresh copy.”, just replace your statcounter code. BTW i love the statcounter people. The stats they provide is free and they give you so many stats right from the visitor activity,pageload activity, keyowrds, download activity to the exit link option. It gives you a complete statistics of your site users and visitors and if you study it closely, you can improve the traffic. So if you own a website, and you are looking for a good web statistics site, then visit stacounter.com and grab the code.
Shaadi.com – Rewards?
I don’t remember when i joined the shaddi.com affiliate program.. maybe 2-3 years back, when i was checking out the performance of the indian based websites. As it happens usually, i might have put the code in some of my sites and forgot about it. After checking out a few months, when no rewards was showing, i simply deleted all the code. I think i missed to delete the code from one of the sites and one fine day, i got an email saying that there is a balance of 1581 INR in my account.
I was not too impressed with the earnings, but somehow i felt that atleast i am getting something. But since last one month, there has been no response from their customer care about the process of claiming the money. They say, send an invoice. I sent already.. but no response. I am not sure if they want a proper paper invoice sent through regular mail (that will be an extra headache). This monday i called up their customer care and she gave me an email id of one girl who is taking care of payment from the company called Peopleinteractive. I believe this is the main company which owns all these site like shaadi.com and makaan.com etc . Let us see if they respond soon.
I have had very bad experiences so far with all the indian based affiliates or the ad networks. When it comes to payment time, they just stop responding. Maybe it is just my experience. That way i prefer sites like Google and TLA. There is no payment hassle, either money is deposited every month in the account or you get the cheque of your earned amount. I hope shaddi.com people are reading this and will get back to me soon.
Update (23rd March 2010) – The shaadi.com people were indeed reading the post and they were very quick to contact me on Monday ie 22nd March. The person told me that the payment was on hold as they were verifying the registrations (i wonder how long they take.. but anyway that’s not an issue) and now they will process it and i will get the cheque in next 30 days. They also replied to my emails with the invoice attached. So i must say, they were very quick in their response.
That guy called me back asking me to remove this post but i categorically denied. I told him, i will just put the feedback and update about their response and the fact that i had issues earlier will remain as it is. But i will just update the post saying that they responded and it was indeed a very fast response.
So webmasters, if you are having trouble with any of your payments, it takes just a blog post
Paypal Policy for Indians
.. why is it different from other countries?
On feb 4th, I was surprised to receive this email, which said,
Hello xxxxx,
Your payment of xxx.xx has been sent back to the sender of the payment.
We reversed this payment because we have stopped allowing personal payments to be sent to or from India.
If this was a payment for a purchase of goods or services, and not a personal payment, then you may contact the buyer and have him or her resend the payment as follows: (a) click the Send Money tab, (b) select “Goods,” and (c) provide a shipping address.
If this payment was a personal payment such as a gift, then we have requested that the sender find another payment method until we restore personal payments to and from India.
We are trying to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we’re sorry for any inconvenience.
Thank you,
PayPal
I soon logged into my account and saw a negative balance. Two days back, i had transferred all my paypal balance to my credit card. I wanted to try this option even though i had to pay $5 for the transaction. Usually i just request for money transfer to my business account. This particular payment was from TLA, so I wrote an email to them also. So far no reply from them. I checked a few of the webmaster forums and it seems everyone was talking about the same issue.
I am sure paypal will solve the issue soon and all of us will get to see the money back in our accounts. Some people are saying, it was because of RBI’s policy to keep a tab on all the money transfer happening over the internet without any record and without any taxes being paid. The most surprising thing is that there is no notification from paypal also. However i feel it is more of a technical issue. I hope it is sorted out soon. Till then, just wait and watch.
Flowers, flowers… everywhere
… good to see. I never miss our city annual flower show and every year i look forward to visit the flower show and buy some cool flowering plants, even if they bloom just for 2-3 days after bringing home.
See the lovely orchild flower photos from the show where one of the nurseries from West Bengal was selling it. I sincerely feel to shift to eastern part of the country, towards my native place and start horticulture and floriculture business. it will take some more years to execute my plan.. i will keep you guys informed Till then enjoy these lovely photos of Orchid.
And this beautiful bonsai
SEO – To Improve CTR
We all love to see an improved CTR in our Adsense Reports and with an aim to increase the CTR, i planned to take out some time and revisit each of my sites and do a few tweaks here and there. Some of my sites have been just lying there without any content update or design changes for years. This baby names site of mine – just4babynames.com is one such site. It was once a very very popular site with a good number of visitors and a fair income from Google and and other small time link buyers. However with time, i had no time to look into them… so i stopped selling link spots and the google earnings also went into a downfall.. i never bothered.. as my overall income from all the sites was increasing.
After working on two other sites, i had a look at this particular site of mine, studied the statistics, checked out the popular pages on the site and the popular keywords which was bringing a few traffic. On the 14th of jan, i made a few changes, removed some old content, put some new content on the home page and a few tweaks of the ads and other links. And as usual, i just uploaded the new pages and forgot to check the result. Today, 8 eight days after when i checked the stats, i was surprised to see a sudden jump in the traffic of this site. See the image below
It was a good jump from around 50-54 uniques visitors to more than 400 unique visitors a day. For a moment, i was wondering if i had put this site on Google Adwords by mistake. I am running ads of another new site of mine on Google Adwords ( because i got a voucher worth 2500 INR.. and i had to use that). I checked the stats again and it was for real. The site is listed on page one of Yahoo for a very competitive keyword and it was Yahoo which was sending all the traffic to my site.
I am happy that my tweaks worked. I plan to give some time to all my sites and increase traffic, to increase the CTR which will further increase the earnings.
Wishing all of you a very Happy New Year and Happy Earnings!
