Selasa, 03 Agustus 2010

The Keys To Successfully Selecting Keywords

If you are the owner or operators of an online business enterprise, you may be interested in developing different schemes through which you can increase traffic to your Internet website and increase your customer or client base. Of course, more customers and clients means more revenue and profits for your business.

One methodology that more and more web based business owners are employing when it comes to increasing traffic to an Internet website is the use of keywords within a website and within articles included within the Internet website in question.

Of course, if you are going to use keyword enriched articles or if you are going to include keywords and keyword phrases (with the intent of drawing more traffic to your website) you will want to make certain that you are using keywords and keyword phrases that actually will attract more traffic to your web based business venue.

There are now services on the Net that will provide you with a listing of the most popular keyword searches (on search engines) at any particular point in time. By incorporating these popular key word phrases, keywords and keyword search terms into your website and into articles appropriately maintained at your website, you will be in a far better position to increase traffic to your website -- you will increase the number of potential clients and customers who pay visits to your website business.

Some search engines offer programs which can assist a business in developing an overall marketing campaign for a Net based business that includes the use of keyword enriched content and keyword enriched articles that can be included within the confines of an Internet website.

Finally, you might want to consider engaging the assistance of a professional in your overall plan to develop a meaningful keyword based marketing campaign for your Internet website. A professional, a SEO professional, can assist you in developing both website content and articles that include worthwhile and meaningful keywords and keyword phrases -- words and phrases specifically designed to increase your ranking on search engines, and thus increase traffic to your website venue. Again, increased traffic generally translates into an increase in revenues and profits for your Internet business enterprise. Of course, you will want to use a reliable and qualified SEO professional to assist you in developing your own Internet marketing campaign that incorporates keywords and keyword phrases effectively.

Senin, 02 Agustus 2010

Socom 3 Message Boards Revealed

Addicted with playstation? Got a passion for SOCOM 3? If so, then I am sure that you would be happy to know that with the advent of the Internet, you can now discuss SOCOM 3: US Navy Seals with your fellow SOCOMers on some SOCOM 3 message boards.

SOCOM 3: US Navy Seals is in the first place one of the hottest playstation games on earth. It was developed by the Zipper Development team and since birth, SOCOM 3 have earned status and station in the playstation universe through avid gaming and forward thinking. Today, thousands of people considered themselves as SOCOM fans.

With the rising popularity of such mentioned gaming fad, more and more playstation sites are now designing and developing SOCOM 3 message boards online. These message boards, also known as online forums, were developed for one particular purpose, to provide the fanatics of SOCOM a great place to meet and make friends with the other fanatics around the world. The SOCOM 3 message boards are also a great place to learn about the game. You can in fact find and information about the history and the development of the game, its guidelines and controls, and everything about the game. The message boards are also great places to exchange your comments, ideas, suggestions or advices, and some tips for a successful gaming experience.

Now, the question is: are you interested to find SOCOM 3 message boards online? Do you want to participate in the forums and discuss about this gaming sensation? If so, I have here below a few sites that you can visit online. You can access information about SOCOM in these sites, but if you really want a full access to the various sections of the SOCOM 3 message boards, then you better consider membership. You only need to register.

Playstation.com

The SOCOM 3 message boards at http://Playstation.com are managed by Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. (SCEA), a company that markets the Playstation family of products and the one which develops, publishes, markets and distributes software for the PS one console and Playstation computer entertainment system for the North American market.

The SOCOM 3 message boards run by SCEA accept posts from anyone who has interest on the game. These SOCOM 3 message boards are in fact considered as the communities suitable for gamers of all ages. At these boards, you can find different sections; all tackle everything about this game sensation. There is also a section that is only official to the players of SOCOM, and there is a section that tackles everything about the seal weapon and the SOCOM maps.

IGN.com

You can also access SOCOM 3 message boards at http://IGN.com, a site maintained by IGN Entertainment, unit of Fox Interactive Media, Inc. which is a leading Internet media and services provider that gives certain focus on the videogame and entertainment enthusiasts markets. At this site, you will not only find SOCOM 3 message boards, but also other forums designed for the other hottest playstation games. It is actually at these message boards where the playstation addicts of all ages, gender and race meet.

Minggu, 01 Agustus 2010

Profiting from internet home based businesses

These days, very few people can ignore the opportunity that the internet offers. Unless you are among the affluent few, internet home based businesses can give you a very large boost in your income. Thus, it is important that you understand how they work and how you can make such businesses work for your benefit.

Internet home based businesses can help you earn a income, and they can help you earn residual income as well. Residual income, of course, is money that you earn for a one-time effort, as opposed to a salary, which you only receive as long as you keep working. Residual income allows you to profit from something that you have already accomplished in the past, such as when an author receives royalties on a book that he has written, even if that book was written twenty-five years ago.

If your concern is earning a salary, you will have no dearth of opportunities online. As long as you have a specialized skill, you should be able to find work. Telecommuting is now an accepted practice for most companies, so take advantage of it. You can sell your personal services on both a salaried basis and a freelance basis, whichever you prefer. Both have their specific advantages and disadvantages, so choose carefully. If you become a salaried employee, for example, you will necessarily have less control of your time, but a more regular income. A freelancer, on the other hand, only gets paid for the work he actually finishes,

If your goal, however, is to earn residual income, then affiliate programs should be an important part of your strategy. Affiliate programs, as you know, are programs that allow you to advertise and sell someone else’s goods and services for a commission. Unlike what most people think, however, succeeding in affiliate marketing actually does require work – lots of it, at least in the beginning. Finding a good partner merchant and selecting a reasonable compensation package takes quite a bit of research, something that most people are unwilling to do. However, it is very important that you lay the right foundation, so spend some time here and look up what if currently available.

As with every business matter, being able to trust you partner is important, so look up on your partner merchant’s record. If you know anyone who has done business with them before, be sure to ask them about the experience. You might even sacrifice higher returns with a relatively unreliable company to work with a more established one.

Once you have established a relationship with a suitable partner, all that’s left is developing your site. There are many resources on this on the internet, be sure to look them up. Site building software is also available, so check that out if you feel that you need more assistance. As long as you put a good effort into the creation of your site, your internet home based business will flourish, and you’ll stand a good chance of earning through it for years to come.

Sabtu, 31 Juli 2010

Online Paid Surveys – Internet Jackpot or Petty Cash?

Type the phrase “paid surveys” in Google, and you will see a countless list of paid survey web sites. Some claim $150/hr payment, others say it’s the perfect work at home job, while others say online paid surveys are just a scam. With all of these conflicting links, it’s hard to know what to believe. Are online paid surveys an Internet Jackpot, an online scam, or somewhere in between? Are you missing a great opportunity or should you stay away?

The first thing that you must understand is that market research is a real business. Market Research firms have been paying customers to take surveys and participate in focus groups long before the internet was a household commodity. It’s just that with the increasing number of people online, the internet has become an effective and efficient way for marketing companies to collect data and test their advertisements. Also the internet gives these market research firms access to a wide demographic of users, which allows them to get a better idea of how their products will perform with people of different age, sex, nationality, etc.

Unfortunately, many questionable sites have popped up on the internet which has ruined the image on online paid surveys. These sites usually make outrageous claims about how much money you can make by working from home. They usually charge a “membership fee” to gain access to a list of web sites that conduct online paid surveys. They claim that their lists are special, and offer the highest paying surveys. But the truth is that the survey sites they list can be found for free on the internet. Legitimate market research firms do not charge panel members any fees or try to sell you any products. With a little research you can find all of the quality market research firms yourself. Also, there are several good sites on the internet that offer free reviews and listings. You should never have to pay for information or access to online paid surveys.

Assuming that you manage to avoid the scams, and stick with legitimate market research firms, the question remains is it really worth the time? The answer lies in your expectations. If you are looking for the perfect work at home dream job, this is not it. If you would be happy with an extra couple hundred dollars a month then read on.

The typical pay for any given survey varies, but most offer between $2 to as high as $50 or more per survey. The problem is that these firms are usually looking for a certain demographic, and you may not always qualify for all the paid surveys that are sent your way. These survey invitations are usually sent to you via an email, with details about the incentive offered, and a link to the survey. Usually you are asked to fill out a short screener survey, and if you qualify then you can continue on and earn the full amount promised. If you do not qualify, you are dismissed, with some sites offering a small incentive or a sweepstakes entry for your time. The screener survey usually takes less than 5 minutes, and the full survey can take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes.

If you sign up with several quality market research firms, and can qualify for several surveys, you should be able to make anywhere from $50 to several hundred dollars a month for the household petty cash piggy bank. It’s not exactly a fortune, but it can help offset some of your monthly bills, and it only takes a couple hours a week.

Jumat, 30 Juli 2010

Make A Fortune On The Internet

Think You Can Top Yahoo?

Do you want to make a fortune on the Internet? Sure, we all do. People use the Internet to work from home everyday, and many of them earn a living from it. But is it really possible to make a fortune on the Internet?

Well, that depends on what your idea of a fortune is. If working from the Internet allows you to pay your bills, put food on the table, gas in the car, and clothes on Little Johnny’s back, then yes, it is indeed possible to make a fortune on the Internet. However, if you are thinking in numbers closer to the upper hundreds of thousands, millions, and even billions then the likelihood of being able to make a fortune on the Internet is probably not too great. Not impossible, mind you (think Michael Dell of Dell Computers, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Pierry Omidyar of Ebay, and David Filo of Yahoo!—all are worth billions of dollars today), just not too great.

Many websites claim to be able to help you make a fortune on the Internet. Be careful with these. Usually they are scams that try to get you to purchase materials and equipment for something that won’t be successful, if it even exists. They’ll throw ridiculously high numbers at you, promising you can make that amount if you follow their plan. Some websites, however, are very clear in their definition of what a fortune is. For example, if you visit a website that claims you can make a fortune on the Internet by completing online surveys at twenty-five dollars each, you’re probably safe. They are honest about the money you would make, and you are smart enough to know that unless you complete thousands of surveys a month, you aren’t going to be able to make a fortune on the Internet using this plan. But if you need some extra cash for the holidays, go for it.

Your dream to make a fortune on the Internet is similar to the dreams of so many others. And, though it’s not an impossible dream, it’s not an easily possible one, either. Have patience, do research, and most importantly, come up with something bigger than Yahoo!

Rabu, 28 Juli 2010

Is It Possible To Earn A Fulltime Income Online?

Most of us have seen numerous adverts promoting programs that will earn us yachts and mansions for only a few dollars investment. Too good to be true? Unfortunately yes. Most of the time you will waste time and money with these programs. So is there a way to make a full time income from only working online a few hours per day?

The short answer is yes but you need to put in a lot more time than a few hours per day to start with. Over the past 6 months I have worked up to 12 hours per day building an income to replace the one I lost when I left my previous job. It takes dedication and focus and slowly but surely your income will grow to the point that you can cut back your hours and get some quality time with your family.

The first thing you need to do is to sit down and have a long hard think about what you want from life. I would bet that most of you will at first think about the fast cars and mansions and the celebrity lifestyles that are depicted in many aspirational adverts. However think harder, these are things you would like to have not what you want from life. If after you’ve thought deeply you decide that you want to see your family grow up, you want to be able to make it to your children’s school concert and not have to work late on that important project. If you decide that you want to be able to take your wife for a romantic lunch before you collect the kids from school then you have the correct frame of mind to start making an income for yourself. If you don’t have a family and you decide you want to be self reliant and not a wage slave then you are on the way. Be realistic and you won’t be disappointed.

Now you know what you want and you know it’s realistic it’s time to get yourself a strategy. I like to think of my income building strategy in terms of building a house, before you put up the walls and roof, the part of the house you can see and admire you need to put in the foundations. The foundation of your income has to be a steady source of reliable income that you can build on. For this I built a number of content websites and monetized them by adding Adverts and Amazon feeds. I write articles and submit them to directories. I do everything I can to get the sites into the search engines and get traffic to them. Once the visitors started coming and I was getting a steady income then it’s time to branch out and work on the 4 walls of our strategy.

The second part of the strategy involves taking some profit from the site building and investing it in well researched programs that have a long history of paying out. You need to do your research and due diligence here and spread the risk among a number of programs if you have any doubts about a program walk away. Now you have your foundation and 4 walls in place it’s time to top it all off with the roof.

The Roof like in your house is the top level of our strategy, this is where you take everything you have learned building your foundations and walls and apply it to your own programs, by now you will know what works, you will have developed a network of contacts through programs and forums and you are ready to develop your own programs.

The great thing about this strategy is that if you have no spare cash you can start out with very little, in fact it is possible to start out with $0.00 and turn this into a full-time income by clever use of resources. If you don’t believe that this is possible then have a look at the blog detailed in the resource box at the end of this article and watch start with $0.00 and prove there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Remember be focused and realistic and a full time income is within your grasp.

Selasa, 27 Juli 2010

Internet Myths Exposed

The last 10 years we have been overwhelmed by the get-rich-quick schemes on the internet. The variety is huge but they do have some common principles. They promise you less or no effort and spend nothing and gain gazillion dollars in a month.

Myth 1: Buy this “Super Magic” software and you will become an internet millionaire overnight.

Although there are great software titles out there that can automate your business, there is no such a thing like Magic software that does everything. You can find software saving you time or even money but you will never find software doing everything.

Myth 2: I make 35.000$ per month!

It’s true, people who make that income exist and maybe more. But what they don’t tell you is how much they spend in order to make those amounts of money. Don’t believe anyone of them, promise you that by spending 10$ you will achieve those numbers. A good example is Google Adwords.

You see those sales letters and the photos with proof of making 600$ per day? Did they also show you the advertising costs? Sure, spending 1000$ per day on Adwords, with careful planning, can make 1600 per day. The tiny detail is this: can you afford spending 1000$ per day (30.000$ per month)?

Myth 3: Become Rich with other people’s efforts.

This refers to MLM and similar techniques. You shouldn’t contemn multilevel marketing completely. There are serious MLM companies that have been expanded on that way. Some universities also teach MLM. But when someone promises the earth by making downlines only and not focusing on the products and how to market them, stay away.

Do you honestly believe that you will find 3 business partners becoming your downline and each one of them will bring a thousand referrals with you doing nothing? It will Not Happen.

Myth 4: Work only 10 minutes per day!

I wish this could be real. We should believe in the saying “work smarter not harder” but there is huge misunderstanding on that. Even the most successful online entrepreneurs , before they reach the ideal lifestyle working few hours per day, they came across the path of working endless hours , spending & loosing money , testing & retesting , failing . There is no shortcut to this. PERIOD.

Myth 5: I make 50.000$ per month. Buy my 19.95$ “Super Magic Secret E-book”

Isn’t that obvious? Doesn’t it ring the bell? If you had that “50.000$ Super Secret” would you share it with the whole internet world and actually charge it so cheap? Get Real. It’s 100% certain that you will find the same recycled information with other 500 similar resources.

Myth 6: Buy 5.000.000 email addresses CD. Only 99$!

Be Careful. This is SPAM. Have no doubt about it. Don’t even think of purchasing this. Those emails have been extracted without the email owners consent. You will not make a dime and you will loose your website & internet connection and maybe more with the new strict antispam laws.

Myth 7: Sign to 50 Auto Hits Generation websites and Get 20.000 visitors per day.

There is another saying for that: “Garbage in – Garbage out”. Think for a while, if you are using this web traffic generation method what stops other webmasters do the same? You will not watch at the sites automatically reloaded and obviously you will be doing something else during that time.

So, you think you are the only one who thought about that? No you are not.

Senin, 26 Juli 2010

How Many Links Should I Have To Point At My Website?

Using links as a way to get your search engine ranking high is a good thing. The question that many people ask, though, is just how many links should you have in order to have this happen? Can you have too many? Link marketing is the use of links to build traffic to your website as well as to build your search engine ranking. These things go hand in hand. If you want to increase your search engine rank, work on your links.

But, How Much?

There is no real set number. It's not having ten or twenty or even having a 100. It is more about having the right type of links coming to your website. For example, you need to consider both reciprocal links as well as those that are one way links. One way links generate traffic to your site without luring someone away with additional links on your website. Reciprocal links, when placed correctly and used in the right overall manner can help as well.

Beyond this, you will want to work with having good quality links. The links should be related in some way to your website. For many this will mean finding webmasters that offers similar, but not the same content as your site. If you are in the market of refurbishing homes, you may want to have links at your site that are not directly related but indirectly. Here, you could have a roof specialist listed.

As far as how many links you should have pointing to your website, the best number to go with is as many as you can. Make sure that they are solid, well researched links, not something that is inexpensively purchased. Make sure they provide for both reciprocal and one way links. Use them correctly and your business really can benefit from them.

Minggu, 25 Juli 2010

Getting Your Site Indexed Before You Launch

I've noticed that most SEO articles focus on what to do after you launch your site. Those that do deal with preparing your site for launch usually discuss on-site SEO like keyword research and meta tags. What tends to be neglected is the advantage that you can gain by getting your site indexed before you launch. With a little planning and a few hours of work it's easy to be indexed by Google, Yahoo, and MSN before your site goes live.

The key to getting your site indexed in the big three is getting links pointing to it from sites that are already indexed. When the search bots crawl those sites they will inevitably find the link to your site and your site will be added to their index. Follow these five steps a month before you launch and you'll be a step ahead of the game.

1. Register your domain name. You'd be surprised how many people wait until the last minute to do this. The sooner you register your domain, the sooner you can get some quality links pointing to it and get it indexed.

2. Put up a home page. Make a “coming soon” page with your logo, information about your site, and expected launch date. You can also add a form for people to sign up for email updates about your site. This starts building your email marketing list before you even launch.

3. Start a blog and sign up for Feedburner. Put up a blog at www.yoursite.com/blog. It doesn't matter if you use WordPress, Blogger, or whatever blog platform you prefer, just make sure you host it on your site. Make a few posts about your site, what people can expect when it launches, and why your site will be unique. After your first post, sign up for a Feedburner account at http://www.feedburner.com/. Under 'Publicize' in your account make sure to sign up for 'Ping Shot'. This will notify blogging directories of your posts which hopefully will result in a few links to your site.

4. Write a few articles and submit to directories. Regardless of what your site is about, there is certainly a topic relating to your site that you could write an article about. For example, if your site is going to sell fitness equipment, you could write an article about how to build a home-gym. Or if you are going to rate and review new cars, you could write an article about how to shop for a new car. After you've written and proofread your articles, submit them to article directories like Ezine Articles (http://www.ezinearticles.com/) and iSnare (http://www.isnare.com/). Be sure to include a description of your new site and a link back to it in the resource box. Again, this should result in a few links to your site.

5. Get a link from an indexed site. Steps 3 and 4 should result in some links from indexed sites which should then ensure your site to be indexed. But it can't hurt to get a few more on your own to be certain. When I launched my last site, I linked to it from my personal blog, which I knew was indexed. If you don't have that option, you can ask someone with a blog or site related to yours to mention it. If you can't find anyone willing to do it for free, you could offer them some free advertising on your site when you launch in exchange for the link.

Getting yourself indexed before you launch gives you a head start on your SEO and will allow your site to have a more immediate impact. Why wait until you launch? Get started a month early and you'll reap the benefits when launch day rolls around.

Sabtu, 24 Juli 2010

Ever Thought of Running a Poker Website?

Running your own poker website can be very profitable and a lot of fun. In the current climate of uncertainty in the employment market, starting and running your own poker web site offers a realistic way to make a very good monthly income that is both sustainable and constantly increasing.

These days more and more people are turning towards the internet to find ways of making extra cash or even to make a full time income and one of the best is to start a poker information website.

There are numerous advantages to starting a poker website; an enormous customer base, flexibility, the fact that you can start with virtually no money at all, and best of all - the chance to make a really good income online.

Now there are some truly awful poker sites out there but that is in fact a great advantage for you if you decide to build your own poker site. The fact that so many poker websites are of very poor quality means that you can build up a strong and loyal following just by offering a service that is better than the majority of the rubbish out there.

People search the internet for one thing above all others, and that of course is information. If they are looking on the web to learn more about their favorite poker player they want to go to a site where there is some decent, well written content. If they find what they are looking for then they will come back again and you will have gained a loyal customer.

If on the other hand they are taken to a page where there's nothing of interest and all the site is doing is trying to sell them something, they will leave quickly and probably never return.

Once you have enticed your visitors in to look at your site and they have found valuable information, they will be in a mood that is more predisposed towards buying so if you do have something to sell, you are far more likely to buy it.

So provide valuable information for your visitors and you will be miles ahead of all the other junk and spam poker sites out there.

Jumat, 23 Juli 2010

Dmoz is in dire need to improve its image.

Dmoz.org or ODP (the Open Directory Project) is a web directory which was originally created in 1998 as Gnuhoo by Rich Skrenta and Bob Truel while working at Sun Microsystems. The first controversy started soon Soon after the launch the directory and lead to renaming it to NewHoo after wide spread accusation that the name of the directory implied open source yet the directory was a closed source which negates the spirit of free software of GNU projects which the directory was originally named after.

The directory was sold to Netscape which is now part of AOL/Time warner and currently boasts of having 5,229,762 sites, 71,337 editors, in over 590,000 categories. The importance of the directory increased and its status and the status of websites listed in it also increased despite the Internet trends of using search engines to locate websites faster than navigating through a multitude of categories in a web directory to find what you're looking for. The popularity and importance of Dmoz to webmasters followed the increased importance and relevance big search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN placed on the directory and on sites listed in it. This can be seen clearly in search results with sites listed in Dmoz listed on top of most search results for most search term. Another value that has been closely associated to Dmoz was Pagerank, which is a value Google places on web pages, one of the most important factor that drives Pagerank up when Google does its calculation of Pagerank is the number of back links, and the Pagerank value of those linking web pages.

Dmoz is important not only because it is a great web directory, but because many search engines adopted it as its de facto directory because of the ease of importing the the whole directory data and reusing it as its own. Google's own web directory is based on that of Dmoz. The estimated number of web sites that use Dmoz's data as a base for their own directories, and the number of mirror sites of Dmoz are not known exactly but it can be argued to be in the thousands. This number translates to a huge number of back links to websites listed in the directory. This alone makes Dmoz very important to any serious webmaster in their website's marketing strategy, contrary to what Dmoz editors on their public web forums try to convince webmasters otherwise.

Having a very valuable Directory at their disposal the editors of Dmoz have a great deal of power at their finger-tips and they know it. I say they know it because of the over the top attitudes of take it or leave it, and its our way or the highway attitudes expressed at the resource-zone forums, the hangout of the egotistic editors. Many webmasters depend on their websites for a living and hence they try to market their websites with everything available to them in order to ensure a steady stream of income. When there is a perception that there is a great resource that can help make or break a website by the mere fact of being listed or not listed in Dmoz makes it hard for webmasters to swallow. This is not a bad thing nor should it not be controlled by competent editors. yet the stories of unethical editorial behavior, kickbacks, and revenge and overwhelming feeling of corruption and egotistic attitudes towards webmasters makes a person cringe at the mere mention of Dmoz submission.

There are many other stories and complaints about Dmoz, about its editors, about the way they run the directory, about the refusal to listen to suggestions for improvements, about their lack of sensitivity to webmasters, about the length of time it takes to review a website though they have thousands of editors, about their inability to get with the time and roll out better measures to control and run the directory while minimizing abuse and setting in place tools that help in enforcing a fair and equatable checks and balances approach when including websites.

There has been many suggestions to the directory and its editors, most have been dismissed as unworkable, or too much of a burden on the directory and its army of editors to handle, yet they forget that they have a lot of responsibilities to the general web users and webmasters. A constant theme with the editors is that the directory is here to serve the public i.e. the surfer/visitor public and not the webmasters, yet the webmasters are the ones who made the whole Internet what it is right now, the webmasters work is what the public seeks. Measures to accommodate webmasters and release that they DO count and that the directory does need them is required and DMOZ does need to reach out and work with webmasters to help make the directory better and more reflective of the reality of the Internet.

When looking at Dmoz as a project there are a multitude of features that are badly lacking and in need of improvement, some of the needed improvements are critical to the well being of the directory and to its survival, others are nice to have and will help make the directory better and help give the project the respect that it needs and is currently lacking.

One of the most important improvements is a system that will make submission and review faster than the current system which can take up to 3 years for a website to be reviewed and added to the directory. This is not accepted today as it was not accepted in the first days of the Internet. In todays world of constant change, it is very hard to even find a decent website that does not make changes weekly or daily let alone yearly. A site submitted a year ago may not be the same a year form now and maybe rejected on that bases alone.
A system that will decrease the SPAM the directory receives is the first step to improving responsiveness to site submission and review process. Editors claim that over 95% of websites that they receive can be classified as SPAM or BOT submissions. Captcha (a way to control web forms, which distinguishes between human and automated robotic entries and submission) or a similar measure should be put in place ASAP. If this measure is implemented to weed out 90% of web site submission the total wait time will improve accordingly. A web site that might take 6 months to be reviewed will be reviewed in 18 days (6*30*0.10=18). That alone would be a great improvement and it would elevate the heavy load on editors.

The second critical improvement to the directory and to its image would be in implementing a system of better control over editors and their power in accepting and rejecting websites, especially those that directly compete with their own websites or websites that they are affiliated with. A good start would be by implementing a system that marks websites added to the directory with an existing affiliation to an editor. Currently Dmoz require editors to declare their association, yet the public does not have access to base any complaints that is supported by this claim. Dmoz itself does not have to publish this association in the public directory but should make sites associated with editors clearly stated in their public profile, so when someone has a complaint about how a directory branch is edited they can find any relevant information in the editor profile where they can base their investigation of any unfair editorial claims.

Another benefit of the above would be helpful for the directory mirror sites when editing listing and deciding on a relevancy of websites to be included in their implementation of the directory data. I know first hand of some of the major implementation of web directory based on Dmoz data that administrators would like to know which websites exactly belong to editors which may need to re-reviewed by a third party before inclusion in their directory but the volume of the links in the directory makes it hard to weed out any sites that are implanted unfairly by corrupt editors and are being spread unintentionally throughout the Internet. This is in no way meant to punish or remove sites belonging to editors, but after all the accusations and controversy this may be needed and website using the Dmoz data can decide on their own what to do with those websites.

There are many more things that can be done to improve the directory but the above two suggestions would make a huge difference in restore the respect, the image and the spirit that the directory was created under.

Kamis, 22 Juli 2010

Can You Make Money With A Turnkey Business Website?

There are lots of ways to start making money online, but all come with a cost. You can spend the time to learn about html, website design and scripts, and build your own website, or join an opportunity which gives you a sales site identical to everyone elses, but there is another way.

You can buy a turnkey business website. This is a prebuilt website which is all ready to take orders, and make you money, but can you really make money with these sites?

The simple answer is yes you can make money with a prebuilt website, and it will help you to cut a lot of corners in getting started in your own online business. With a turnkey website there is no need to learn all the geeky stuff behind the scenes, as long as you buy from a reputable seller, the site should be ready to update with your details in a simple admin panel, and start making sales.

There are a lot of different turnkey website packages available, and you'd need to do a little research to find out what is best for you. Do you want to own a sales site selling digital products, be an affiliate for another company with a prebuilt store updated from the main companies website, or do you want to try making money with Google Adsense?

Once you have decided what kind of website you want, you can then purchase a turnkey website which does what you want it to. Then your work begins. Unless you pay the extra for a site which is already developed, which could run into thousands of dollars, you will be buying a site which is all setup, but has no traffic. You will need to do the work to get a steady stream of traffic to your site, but this is the case with any business, you will need to bring in your potential customers. This will involve doing link exchanges, advertising and promoting your website address to get people to your site to turn into customers. An advantage of a turnkey site is that the copy will have been written by a profesional, so it should have a higher conversion rate than a site you built by yourself, making it easier to turn browsers into customers.

If you want a shortcut to owning a website business online, then turnkey sites are well worth looking into. Just make sure you know what you want before you purchase and don't believe you will be able to buy a site, kickback and do nothing but watch the money pour in, you will still have to build your business the same as any other and put in some effort to get customers.

Rabu, 21 Juli 2010

Bring Your Family Home To The Internet

Are you concerned about the mental, emotional and physical distress being placed on your family by our society? Actually, you should be! The family is clearly the most important unit in our society. However, it is well recognized that the family is in a negative down spiral. The social environment in which we live is turning our families into a complex unmanageable organization.

Statistics and facts show the family being overwhelmed by uncontrollable circumstances. Money Management for example; there is never enough. The credit cards are overdrawn. You just bounced another check. You need to pay for school lunches-again. How does the young family manage on such a small income? Rent costs are out of sight. Inflation is settling on everything we purchase. How can we cope with the high price of gas?

Do you have a solution? Not likely. But there is a change needed. Maybe we need a new approach and outlook on life.

"You've got to win in your mind before you can win in your life." - John Addison

Actually this just might be the right place and time to make changes to our baseline strategy of managing our families. Now consider this very real fact for a moment.

Husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, parents, children really CAN manage their lives! You really can care for you family properly IF you can get just a little have help from friends. Think about it for a moment. If information is needed about how to manage a family where else would one go? The internet of course! There are incredible amounts of information on any subject you might have in mind. That is literally an ocean of products available at your finger tips. Really!

However, the internet is such a massive collection of products and data the average individual has no idea of how to use it properly. But the solution is rather simple. If we can’t take the family to the information why not bring the products and information to the family --- via the internet.

For instance let us put all the “products” and “help” into one place, i.e., a family oriented user friendly website. A website where you can go for one stop stopping for the information and merchandise needed for the family. Now you CAN save time and money! Now you have access to the information that might help you manage your family.

We are talking about a website that does more that just sell and run. The internet website we are talking about is a holistic family website with your family interest in mind. It is true the website would provide access to carefully selected merchants that will fulfill family shopping requirements. But if you have a family problem that needs immediate attention the website would provide access to those ebooks, documents, and links that will provide immediate help and guidance to you. AND if you cannot find exactly what you need on the website a search of the entire internet would be available for ebooks, links, document and other information. More importantly the information must be downloadable in digital form for immediate access.

A website to be of service to the family must do more than sell a product, take the money and disappear. It must supply additional functions to maintain health and well being for you and your family.

Can your family read? Of course they can! Let us rephrase this last question. Does your family read? If not why not? There are unlimited FREE downloadable ebooks, magazines, articles and other publication (any type you want) on the internet. Do you know what the top 100 downloaded ebooks were last week? You will on the family imall. Any classic work you desire is usually a free download. You can LISTEN to many popular books with free down loadable Audio eBooks? There is a fantastic selection on the internet. If you need additional documents or information you can search the entire internet with advanced ebook/ezine search pages. There are over 10,000 ebooks at you disposal. Do you suppose this would be more beneficial than 10 hours of TV violence every day for you family?

In order to stay current with the world there must be FREE informational news downloads and news letters to keep you informed. In order to save on the cost of gas you can keep abreast of the merchant national sales promotions from the current sales webpage. In addition for your convenience we have a website category directory page with many day to day informational functions. This includes a search page, news & weather, with much more

Are you interested in saving money through competitive shopping for you family? At the family imall all merchants are brought into one website for your convenience. You do not have to drive for hours just to get to each merchant. Also keep in mind anything you purchase from any of the merchants on the internet is delivered to your front door. In addition, there are ‘specialty ishops’ to cater to the popular needs of the family. When you become part of a family oriented website you seldom have to leave your home to shop.

If you ‘bring your family home to the internet’ you will be able to find and have access to what is required to manage a family. A family mall is about Internet honesty and morality. It is a website where a family member can go for an honest no scam internet deal. It is more than just selling. It is about sharing. It is about being of assistance in times of distress and in good times.

It is about your family.

Selasa, 20 Juli 2010

Your Visitors Want to be Blown Away!

Today I stumbled upon a cool music player – it worked so well, it was so easy and intuitive – it simply delivered. In fact it was quite remarkable. Take a look at that word – remarkable! Remark-able, yes, I was able to make voluntary, un-coerced positive remarks to my friends. They also liked it and may just tell their friends. What makes one website/product so remarkable? Well simply put when a website solves a problem, meets a need or satisfies a want, it’s likely to be a good site. However a remarkable site does all that so well that it literally over-delivers, surpasses all expectations and makes its visitors feel good just for finding it. In what way is your site, your product remarkable?

Why do you care? Because you want traffic, traffic, traffic. A good site may only convert 2- 5% of its traffic, so the higher your traffic, the more you sell. But other than positive, pervasive word of mouth you will have to work or pay for that traffic. I say work because there are some ways of generating traffic that don’t cost much money – rather they demand time and effort.

One of the best ways to draw people to your site is through original content, articles specifically. There are hundreds of sites dedicated to article postings and within your ‘author bio’ you can post the link back to your site. People go online primarily for content. They are looking for answers, looking for ideas and solutions – sure some people are just bored and browsing, but your potential clients will only exchange their hard earned money for the promise that your product will get them closer to their goal. If you can write articles that show you understand them and that you have a special insight into their interests, they may in return believe in your product enough to give it a try.

You can also write some press releases. A press release is nothing more than a written announcement that discusses something exciting and hopefully newsworthy about your business. Typically it will have contact information so that any member of the press can easily reach you in case they have questions. There are many press release sites that can educate and help you spread your news.

These ideas are just the tip of the marketing strategy iceberg. You ought to find a mentor who can help you do all the above and more. Remember – be remarkable. Let’s give them something to talk about!

Thanks for reading,
Your Rich Cousin
(Author and Business Success Story) Get the free e-book that got me started and helped me start making money at http://www.richcousin.com It's so straight forward and easy to understand AND you will have the support you need to start making a great income online.

Senin, 19 Juli 2010

What I Discovered About Global Resorts Network - Part One

I've been involved in Internet Businesses for quite a few years....even before we retired. We were fortunate to be able to retire early, thanks in part to the Internet. I've had success with some programs, as well as paying my dues and acquiring an expensive education with unsuccessful programs. But I've certainly learned a lot. And one of the most important things I've learned is that things are constantly changing on the Internet. What worked last year might not work this year or a new strategy will work better (more on this later).

A real business with a real quality product, that is worth the cost, is important to me. Although, I confess I've gotten caught up in a few "money games" and questionable programs along the way.

Anyway, last year my main business company was going down, although I was still working it. I started looking to see what else was out there. I saw several programs selling ebooks and software for a hefty price...many of them were available for free or a low cost if one searched. And other programs with good products that were over-priced. And some other programs with some good products, but hard to understand and explain to justify the cost. Many now days are 1 or 2-up programs, where you just make money on your sales with no opportunity for residual income. And a lot were probably good programs, but were not capable of producing a great income without recruiting tons of people into a matrix.

And then I was introduced to Global Resorts Network by my sponsor in a couple of previous programs. When I saw it and studied the product, I was thrilled. We love to travel and own a couple of timeshare weeks and enjoy staying in luxury resort condos. It's so much nicer than just a hotel room.

But time shares can be frustrating. It can be hard to exchange for when and where you want to travel. And the fees keep going up...there are maintenance fees, exchange fees and subscription fees, plus the initial cost of buying a week...which can be tens of thousands. We pay over $1000 a year in these fees. So when I saw the GRN Platinum Lifetime membership for only $3000, I was excited. We could get rid of our timeshare weeks and not have to pay all of the fees. And with the Global Resorts Network membership, now we pay only for what we actually use...as low as $298 for a full week in a luxury resort condo!

Minggu, 18 Juli 2010

Ways To Distribute Your Catalogs To Your Targeted Customers

Ok, you have done everything you need to do to produce a quality catalog and they have been printed. How do you get them into your customer’s hands? In this article we will talk about catalog distribution.

If you are going to distribute your catalog in the most common method, by mail, then you will need a mailing list. Maybe you already have a list of customers you are mailing the catalog to or maybe you need to purchase a mailing list that targets a specific demographic or geographical area.

There are mailing lists that are targeted by zip code, by income, by the fact they are homeowners, by if the people on the list have children, and even more specifically targeted categories like homeowners who have lived in their home more than five years, etc.

You can easily find lists by searching the web, but be careful. How new is their data? When was the last time they updated their data? Is the company you are buying the list from reputable? These are questions you need to keep in mind before purchasing a mailing list from anyone.

There are also catalog distribution services who already have all of that information and who can handle all of the distribution for you. Having a professional catalog distribution service do this for you can help you avoid costly mistakes.

The post office can give you rates depending on the size and weight of the catalog you want to distribute by US mail. Something I hope you kept in mind when printing your catalog is durability. The post office has to process all mail including catalogs, then it is handled by other people, then the postman, before it ever gets to your customer.

So if you do not have at least a durable cover for your catalog, you may want to have them wrapped before mailing them out to protect them from damage. You want your customer to see your well-designed catalog before any damage occurs.

There are other ways to distribute catalogs as well. Of course if you have a retail outlet or store, you can offer your customers or walk in traffic a catalog. If you have foot traffic going by your store all the time, you can set up a display outside of your store with catalogs for them. You would be surprised at how many people it will bring inside to shop.

You can talk to friends who also have stores and shops, your beauty shop or barber shop, convenience stores even. People will pick up a well-designed catalog that looks like it has something they might need. Everyone loves to shop and a catalog is the easiest way for them to shop.

Be creative, keep catalogs in your car so you can hand them out to people. When you stop somewhere you might want to ask the store owner if they mind putting some of your catalogs somewhere for their customers to pick up. Obviously if you sell anything similar to what they sell it’s not a good idea to ask them.

Last but definitely not least is offering your catalog through your website, ezine, or newsletter. If you have a website, you simply put in a form for a visitor to fill out with their name and address and mail them a catalog. Websites seem to be impersonal to many people. The offer of an actual catalog sent to them from your website will also give them more confidence to buy not just through your catalog but through your website as well.

If you already have an ezine or newsletter you mail out to website visitors, offer your catalog to them as well. Here is why. Yes these people already may be buying through your website so sending them a catalog is costly. However, you have to keep in mind when you send out one catalog to one person, many people may end up browsing through it. They distribute your catalog for you in effect. They may not show everyone your website, but they will share their catalog.

I hope this article has helped you with your decision about how to distribute your catalog. There are other methods depending on your budget, the number of catalogs, and the people who you want to send them to. The most common way is to use the postal service. Professional distribution is more costly, but they know how to get your catalog in the right hands and can track the mailings and have other advantages.

Sabtu, 17 Juli 2010

Tag Clouds Coming to Your Desktop

With overwhelming amounts of information cramming the Internet, it's harder and harder to find something meaningful every day. Web catalogs such as DMOZ can hardly list a few million sites, when there are literally hundreds of millions of them in the wild. There are almost a hundred billion unique Web pages in existence. It comes to no surprise that this non-structured, hardly categorized crowd can no longer be effectively searched.

Finding a particular site from billions of pages is near impossible statistically. One has to be dedicated and persistent in formulating advanced search queries in order to find the result. You can 'surf' the list of returned results, and if you're lucky, you’ll find what you need. Want more of the same kind of result? Until today, you had no other choice but to continue surfing.

That's all changed now. With the release of INTSPEI P-Navigator ( http://www.p-navigator.com/ ), you are no longer forced to surf on the surface of the Internet. Dive deep into the depths of mysterious relations and tag clouds, and get more than you even wanted when you started searching!

Based on tag clouds, P-Navigator not only searches better; it searches deeper. Tag clouds are assemblies of links made of various sized words that you can stumble upon frequently on blogs. On most blogs, the size of the link typically indicates the number of times the tag was used on that site. P-Navigator reinvents the concept of tag clouds by performing semantic analysis of all resources on the Web, and forming tag clouds to improve your searches.

P-Navigator is a daring explorer of the depths of the Internet. Based on revolutionary search technologies, P-Navigator makes comprehensive Web searches available to everyone. P-Navigator allows finding documents and finding out about relations visually, memorizing and improving your searches with a semantic tag cloud. All actions are performed from the modern crafted visual interface coming straight from tomorrow.

P-Navigator brings you not just a revolutionary visual view of a search experience, it also offers a fully featured tool for researching the Internet not only on what's out there, but on how such things relate to each other. Your searches are structured into straightforward hierarchies, and are easy to refine by simply clicking the mouse. Another click of a mouse will switch the view on what's linking to the page being investigated. One more click, and the view is transmutated to display what other pages are referred by the page you are researching. Need your own view? Unleash your imagination and make one!

With P-Navigator, you can discover hidden information, find out how one document is related to others, assemble all connections and solve the puzzle. Intrigued? Download P-Navigator now (http://www.p-navigator.com/). Revolutionize your search and never look back.

Jumat, 16 Juli 2010

Selling Services Online

Is it possible to take a normal offline service business like a legal practice, private medical practitioner or even a real estate business and make money with it from the Internet?

As someone who’s been doing this since 1996, I say the answer is a resounding “YES”.

If you are a business owner, or even an affiliate marketer, you know how hard it is to make a living online.

Many so-called Internet Marketing gurus will tell you that the only way to make money online is to create your own information products, hype them up with a completely fictitious sales letter and then sell via Clickbank, allowing an army of keen and eager affiliates to do your marketing for you.

Whilst that can and does work, there are other paths that are equally successful.

I know from experience, having made my living online by using my own web sites to promote other people’s businesses.

The business I chose were all service oriented. The reason for this is that a service business typically has a low overhead in order to provide the service.

I found that they were more willing to provide me with a larger share of the fees I was able to generate.

The key is to use sales language and “speak” to the businesses clients in language that they understand and respond to.

For example, there’s no point using a 5 page sales letter when you’re trying to sell the services of a conservative legal practice – it just won’t work.

The other key thing is to build the web site in a way that it looks to be providing objective advice.

People like objectivity when they are buying.

The sites I tend to concentrate on are business to business sites. I just don’t like selling to individuals, as they have less money to spend and are infinitely more fussy than a corporate buyer who typically just wants the facts.

My approach works and through various web sites, I have attracted the business of quite a few household name clients for my clients.

The great thing about the way I do business, is that I don’t necessarily have a client when I build my web sites.

Instead, I build a web site based on a certain topic and then quite literally build a business around it.

The sales copy doesn’t have to be blistering hot, it just has to be convincing and contain a strong call to action for the reader on the particular web page.

Make that call to action strong enough and the customers will come knocking on the door and there will be no need for cold-calling. The web site does the selling for you.

Of course, it’s not just down to the sales copy. There are a number of tools that can be used very effectively in order to make selling services online extremely easy.

Kamis, 15 Juli 2010

Rules Of Duplicate Content

If you are going to be starting a website, you have probably heard the phrase “duplicate content” come up time and time again. This is a much discussed area when it comes to the internet, and one that has garnered a lot of attention over the past couple of years. But the fact of the matter is that most people have no clue what duplicate content is, or how the rules are enforced.

Knowing the definition of duplicate content is the first step to avoiding the penalties that go along with it. Duplicate content is when different domains use the same or nearly identical information in order to serve the online community. In other words, this means that there is more than one website with the same information on it. People do this in order to get as many websites out there as possible, but without having to put in all of the work. Duplicate content also covers when content of one page on the internet is identical or similar to another page.

But even though this may seem like a large problem, it really only affects webmasters that are trying to design a lot of websites without having to put in all of the work. Unless you are using the exact same content as another website, in the exact same way, you will not be hit with duplicate content penalties.

If you are concerned about duplicate content penalties the best thing to do is to determine if anybody else is using your information. The most common way is by running the content through copyscape. This will tell you if anybody else is using your information.

At this point, you may be thinking about the private label articles that you use on your site. Many people use these as a way of getting new content every month; but at the same time there may be other people that are using the same content as you. The best way that you can avoid this is by taking the articles that you receive from your private label company and slightly modifying them. By doing this, you will be able to avoid any penalties. And remember, while you are modifying your content, anybody else that received the articles will probably modify theirs as well. The end result is entirely different articles being posted on each respective site.

Another great way to use content, but avoid duplicate content penalties is by sending them in text format. In other words, if you have an article that is going to be republished on other websites, make sure to send them in text format. This way when the recipient posts the content it will be reformatted. This will ensure that the content is viewed by the spiders sent out by search engines as original.

Duplicate content is not as big a problem as you may think. Many people are under the impression that this is a huge problem. Even though there is no place for copyright infringement, if you have the rights to an article you do not have to worry about this. Overall, duplicate content penalties are most often enforced on webmasters that are trying to create several sites using the same or similar content.

Rabu, 14 Juli 2010

Part Time Income

Many people love the idea of having some extra part time income and are able to enjoy time with my family and friends. Some work part time and are involved in a variety of loose-ended jobs: delivering newspapers, selling encyclopedias door to door and even selling a little insurance. Although these experiences teach the basics of sales techniques and perseverance, they rarely offer any significant amount of income. Some even try the infamous MLM opportunities and, as many, are thoroughly disappointed.

Some of these so-called “home based businesses” promise a lot of people of achieving great wealth. They prey on unsuspecting folks with the idea of utilizing their families and friends and then having them recruit their friends, as well, for the purpose of generating sales. Some even require big start up costs for the purchase of their products and then a sacrifice of the first couple of sales to a “sponsor” or “mentor” before any income is reflected. Lastly, money back guarantees are rarely offered.

Scams are everywhere: illegal pyramids, ponzi, chain letters and gifting schemes. The owners of these companies love the idea of taking advantage of the individuals recruited performing all of the sales for them while they are banking the money. What is worse is that these people had to spend practically an arm and a leg to even get access to these programs. They offer absolutely no support and never respond to any email inquiries or telephone calls. A complete waste of time!!! As the old saying goes, if it looks to good to be true than it probably is.

What ever happened to good old fashion instruction on how you can build your part time home based business - establishing sound fundamentals with little or no-start up costs. People want to find a particular income vehicle that they can operate out of the comfort of their own home. The Internet has provided this as a reality for many in the form of Internet Marketing. Remember making money part time does not have to be laborious in nature. If you have a skill to offer or hobbies that you enjoy, these also can be made into income producing revenue. There are a many available resources online that can teach you on how to get it started. Instruction is the key so become a student of the Internet and you too will see your part time income soar.

Selasa, 13 Juli 2010

Make a Referral Offer They Can’t Refuse

Sometimes your referral marketing effort just needs the right hook or offer to get people to pay attention and participate. Draw from my top 5 referral offer starters and think of ways to creatively wrap your business around one or more of them.

1) Offer special pricing

If you are looking for referrals from your existing clients, you can develop a special price for those clients who refer a set amount of new business. Then, when a new client asks what the price of a product or service is, you can respond, "Do you want the full price or the special referral price?" This encourages repeat business and can provide a strong incentive to refer on the spot.

2) Will work for referrals

If you can target a referral source that has influence with your target market, you can offer a trial service or product in exchange for an endorsement of your products or services, a testimonial or a place in the next association speaker panel.

Seek out the leaders in trade groups and organizations you would like to target and offer to perform a service or let them try your product free of charge. Get them to agree that if they like your product or service as much as you know they will, they will send a letter to the membership of the organization promoting your offer. Then write the letter for them.

3) Help a worthy cause

Donate a percentage of business acquired by way of referral to a non-profit agency. By offering to help a worthy cause, you can increase referrals while improving your community.

There are many variations on this referral strategy. You can make donations to a designated charity in your referral source’s name. You can allow your referral sources to designate a charity of their choice. If you have a product or service the non-profit agency uses or buys, you can donate that.

One of the hidden powers behind this strategy is that the non-profit agencies can become strong referral partners. If they benefit from referring clients, then they may be highly motivated to provide referrals. In many cases, non-profit agencies have loyal donors, board members, community activists and volunteers who would be happy to do business with a firm that was providing funding for the non-profit agency through a referral marketing program.

4) Give away gift certificates

Although the use of gift certificates isn’t a true referral marketing strategy, it can be great way to generate referrals. If you have a product or service that lends itself to this, you can provide your clients or referral sources gift certificates to use as a referral tool. The idea is that your clients would give the certificates to people they feel would enjoy receiving them. In most cases, these recipients would be new clients willing to try your service by using the certificate.

A consultant might give certificates for a one-hour evaluation assessment. The value of the assessment, if purchased, might be $150. It is important that the certificate communicate this value. Make sure that what you are giving has a high, perceived value.

A plumber could give free service call certificates at each stop and ask the client to hand them out to neighbors.

5) 100% refund for referrals

This is one of my personal favorites because not only is it a terribly powerful referral strategy, it presents such a strong offer that it can become a core point of differentiation.

In other words, the sales message is so strong, you become known for it.
In this strategy, you simply show your clients how they can receive a 100% refund on a specific purchase by simply referring five other people who become clients or make a similar purchase. (Again, you work out the numbers that apply to your business.)

The power behind this is three-fold.

It helps you land clients because people think, “What the heck, I can get all my money back,” and because it becomes a game for them. Structure your offer in such a way that they get a 20% refund (up to 100%) every time they refer someone. That way, they can keep score. It usually makes sense to put a time limit on the offer as well.

Another very important aspect of this particular strategy is that it has a viral component to it.

Anyone who can earn a 100% refund will talk about it. In addition, everyone who comes to your practice by way of this method will already understand the rules of the game and may very well be ready to play the day they become a client. So, that’s 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 and so on. You do the math!

Reread that last paragraph because it is true of just about any referral marketing strategy you create. That’s one of the reasons referral marketing is so powerful.

Senin, 12 Juli 2010

Lets fight the self-appointed Spam Lords

Lets get one thing clear - SPAM is very bad. Spam is demeaning, intrusive, frustrating, etc. However, the reaction to Spam is defeatist, Luditist, intrusive and reactionary.

Firstly, lets look at the reality of Spam; you download your emails, you delete the Spam.

Come on, are they that hard to identify? Is the email from Aunt Dot injured by the Spam? Do you have to spend hours reading each one to the bitter end to guess it is spam?

Email programmes come with a button called - DELETE; so delete - end of the matter. I hear you whinning: "but they take so long to download"; "they fill my inbox"; "they contain pornography", etc. One answer: Delete.

Actually, the porn Spam does present a bigger problem- for children of course, and the degree of insult they produce. To be honest, if your email is privacy protected, which it should be, then these problems can be partially avoided as well.

By the way, Spamhaus, a major Spam identifier, notes that 80% of Spam originates with just 20 groups.

So how does everyone suffer from over-reaction when dealing with Spam? How many genuine emails get blocked by Spam walls? I will use some examples of personal experience to show you the problems.

I have had important emails blocked just because I used an ISP that one of the 20 gangs had used for a period. This ISP was actually the major telephone service for a country, one that about 50% of the country's residents used. Great response: close half a country's international emails.

I have had emails blocked because I used the word, 'free'. My project, is a free resource on the Internet. Now I cannot say free, and hundreds of schools write to me to ask if my Project is free. I have also had emails blocked because I said, "For adults working with children"; NO adults, obviously pornography.

A professor at a University asked me about my Project; he was considering doing research with me, but I could not reply to him: intrusive Spam wall.

How many international websites today do not include any email contact details, or go to great lengths to hide them? What is the point of a website if you cannot respond and communicate with the owner? Am I expected to make international phone calls, send letters, snail mail?

I can go on. The bottom line is that our fears of using a delete button have allowed us to start to lose one of the great technology innovations of this era: email.

Email is better than great: it is better than landing on the moon. How did we live without email? This amazing technology is being murdered by ourselves and our ridiculous, stupid over-reaction.

Weigh the good of email and the cost of Spam; the balance is wrong. Wake up! To join the fight AGAINST the spam lords

Minggu, 11 Juli 2010

Learn How To Get High PR Links

In order to rank high in the search engine results (especially on Google) you need a series of elements, such as unique content, freshly updated web pages and, of course, plenty of links from high PR sites. “PR” actually refers to Google’s algorithm – Page Rank – used to determine the importance of a web page in relation with the others.

High PR websites are considered by Google to be authority sites and their web pages are often displayed among the top ten results during a search. For any webmaster who wants to promote their business, getting high PR links is essential.

But how can a young website get important links that will help it boost its popularity? Most webmasters that own high PR websites will not consider a link exchange with a website that has a PR of zero – this brings the high PR sites absolutely no benefits as far as search engine ranking is concerned. There are, however, a few ways to get links from websites that are deemed important by Google:

* Create a unique website that will impress other webmasters. This is the only way to get high PR sites to link to your new site. If the webmaster of an important site sees that your own website offers something complementary to his topic, and if you offer high quality content and an excellent visual appearance, you might just be considered for a link exchange.

* Stay within reasonable boundaries – don’t go asking for link exchanges from PR 6 or PR 7 websites – they probably get dozens of link exchanges each day, and unless your site is truly exceptional chances are they will not give your link exchange request any chance.

* Use online resources that allow you to post your own links. You can get some nice links from Wikipedia, the encyclopedia you can edit yourself. Just make sure to become a constant “Wikipedian” user, and add valuable content to the website – with a reference link towards your website. Most Wikipedia pages are PR6 and upwards, so this is a great source of links – just don’t become a spammer!

* Blogs, forums and other types of online communities might also allow you to post links. Some of these groups are very popular and have high PR, and if you become a member you might be able to post a few links every now and then.

* Article submission may also get you some nice one-way, high PR links. Although chances are that you will not have your articles published on blogs and websites with a PageRank over 3 or 4, that’s still an excellent start for a new website. You can add your articles to directories like:

o http://www.MyContentBuilder.com
o http://www.MyPetContent.com
o http://www.Buzzle.com
o http://www.EzineArticles.com

Article submission can be tedious, which is why you may want to consider an automatic article submitter. It will submit one article to over 30 directories in half an hour. To watch a video on how to accomplish this, go to:

o http://1trac.com/dt/t/Article_Submitter_Video.php

* Automated link exchanges – webmasters using automated link exchange websites are also less likely to dismiss your link exchange requests. A great resource for automatic link exchanging is:

o http://www.MyLinkMachine.com

Sabtu, 10 Juli 2010

Keywords, Content And Copywriting

Today WebPages must compete for survival just like animals in the wild. Natural selection isn’t just a concept limited to Mother Nature. Even in the world of cyberspace there is a “law of the jungle”. Search engine optimization or (SEO) lies at the core of this law. Many skills must be mastered to rise to the top. Three important ones are keywords, content and copywriting. Let’s begin with the first of the three.

Keywords are extremely important because they act as a marker for search engines. Keywords can be placed anywhere on a website. Besides being noticed they must be carefully selected. You must take care to choose keywords that are not only relevant to your site but also that are likely to be used by those who are searching for what is on your site. Several things must be taken into account. Variations in spelling of the keywords as well as spelling errors can conceivably drive traffic to your site. The links in your site are a vitally important spot to place keywords because not only will they be noticed by search engines but they will also direct people to the other pages on your site thus increasing your ranking.

Content is the second factor here. Beyond the obvious fact that the content of your site is what people are going to read when they get to your site the content is the larger aspect of keywords. The keywords may be the specific point that a search may target but the better your content in both amount but quality the easier it will be to place you keywords. Imbedding keywords in content is one way to get them spotted by search engines but good content will force you to have good keywords. As it has been said the best way to hide something is in plain sight.

To better facilitate the use of the aforementioned factors you must understand copyright concepts. Certain things can be copyrighted and certain things can’t. Slogans, titles, names and related items can’t be copyrighted although titles can be trademarked. One important thing to keep in mind is how you use something. The context of how you use a word or phrase or what have you can violate a copyright or not. Copyright in many areas is tricky so be careful. Things created by the government are free domain as well as donated items or things people give permission to use by other people for any purpose.

Learn the rules before you play the game.

Jumat, 09 Juli 2010

Solitaire Klondike: Learn How to Play

Since computers entered each and every household, classroom and office, solitaire became the most popular game. It is simple to learn, easy to play, and addictive because of its simplicity. But that was ages ago, and people have begun to grow tired of that same old game. As a result, they turned to new variations and Klondike is the most popular of them.

Ironically, its not a new game. The term Klondike as a game surfaces somewhere in the latter part of the nineteen hundred, and historians suggest that it evolved from miners in the Alaskan and Californian mountains to pass the time.

How Can You Play Klondike?
This is not a difficult game to learn, but what's good is that though you will get the hang of it quickly, its difficult to beat in an addictive way. Its not frustrating, but fun and invigorating. One of the things you must learn is how to lay the cards out.

1) Start by placing one card on the table in front of you. Place it facing up.
2) Place another six cards to its left, but keep these facing down.
3) Place a card facing up to the card left of the first card you placed down.
4) Add another card facing down to all the remaining cards a bit below them so as to form a column. Likewise, continue by placing one open card and then by adding a closed card to the rest.

If you follow the instructions properly, you should have it so that last column will have seven cards. Check also that you have twenty-four cards in your hand because these are the cards you will play with.

Now What?
What you have to try and do is place all the cards on the four different aces. These will appear whenever they do, and you have to try and create the four suited sequence from the ace to the king. The moment you see and ace, place it on the side and start adding the next card. (eg: After an ace, place a two and then a three.) Note that each suit must be according to colour and type. By this I mean that the ace of diamond gets only diamonds, the ace of spades gets only spade cards and so on. Likewise, you can create card sequences down on the base cards as well by placing the card lower than it of the opposite colour. For instance, under a six of clubs, you can place either a five of diamonds or a five of hearts, but the five of clubs or the five of spades is out of the question.

Opening the Cards Facing Down
When you can use the cards facing up, then you can open the card that appears under it. And like in regular Solitaire, when you manage to open a base card and have only six or less bases, you can open a new base by placing a King there.

Moving Sequences
You can also move card sequences from one base to another and this doesn't depend on the length of the sequence. All that matters is that the rules of sequence are kept.

To use the cards in your hand, take the top three cards and turn them over. But remember that you can use only the top card. Only if and when you use that card, you can use the next one under it. Continue revealing batches of three. Once done, pick up all the cards and start again.

Kamis, 08 Juli 2010

People Getting Rich Online - Niche Research

How’s that list coming along? You wll recall in the first part of this series I covered getting a list together of ideas for your site or blog niche. Hopefully you have a good sized list of general categories. The next steps involve narrowing the keywords and then doing some supply and demand research.

There are many keyword tools out there. I like to use Overture’s because it’s free and easy. Keep in mind that the numbers from Overture are usually inflated — sometimes a little sometimes a lot. They fudge the numbers by counting like queries — fly and flies or affiliate and affiliates get counted as the same query. Remember — they make more money convincing their prospective advertisers that a search term is popular.

So plug in one of the general search terms from your list. I’m going to try dogs. Here are the results:

Searches done in February 2006
Count Search Term
1104234 dog
225786 dog breed
183180 dog training basics
152056 dog show
139072 dog breeders
98321 dog name
97021 dog training
91172 dog picture
88480 dog for sale
62657 dog grooming
56907 dog gift

I edited a few like snoop dog out for expediency. I like dog breeds and dog training [basics]. Looks like people are searching for both quite a bit. Now that we have the demand, let’s go over to Google and check the supply.

Type in the exact search term, putting quotes around it so Google searches for exactly what we want. If you put in dog breeds, Google returns 5,59o,000 results. Look in the upper right-hand corner for this number.

Ever heard of Sumantra Roy? Probably not. He’s a man who specializes in SEO and particular keyword research. He has invented a formula called the Keyword Effectiveness Index or KEI to measure the potential of a keyword. I use a simpler version of it. Here it is:

KEI = Demand / Supply

That is - Demand divided by Supply. The higher the KEI the better. This gives you a simplified KEI that ranges from 1-10. People compare this to the Richter Scale, meaning that each successive number is exponentially better than the last number.

In our example above, the KEI for dog breed would be .04, which isn’t that great.

Dog Training Basics yields 45,600 results for Google. The KEI would be 4, which is terrific. Hmm…wait a minute. That concludes our lesson. Bye. [Sound of running down the hallway and door slamming]. A little nerd humor there.

Do a few more and see what you come up with. I did dog name and got a KEI of .10, which is lousy. I also tried dog gift, which got me a KEI of .07.

I usually pick up the highest KEI keywords and plug them back into the Overture tool and try it again.

Incidentally, Wordtracker does this all for you. Try it for free and see how easy it is. Just keep in mind that they use different sources for both supply and demand than my example above, but that shouldn’t make too much of a difference.

So now we should have a much smaller list that has some good prospects on it.

Rabu, 07 Juli 2010

New Web Site Helps Groups Stay Connected

Groups, clubs and organizations all face the same challenge - how to grow membership while increasing affinity and participation.

Whatever your passion, be it biking, documentary filmmaking, writing or photography, you can grow your group and drive activity by finding an audience at Gather.com.

Members of Gather Groups are connected through interactive, multidirectional communication that extends beyond the one-way communication inherent in today's Internet, according to founder Tom Gerace.

Gather Groups enables members to interact with one another through compelling, member-created content such as articles, photographs, profiles and messaging.

"Today, organizations lose the interest of their membership as soon as the meeting ends," said Gerace. "With Gather Groups members are constantly connected, which increases and maintains group affinity."

Anyone can start such a group, and each receives a unique URL. The group owner determines the moderators; who is allowed to post; and what permissions members have in terms of posting images and articles and inviting new members. Groups are searchable by tags, making it easy to find other members with similar interests. It can not only give your group more exposure, but also help you get feedback from others with the same interests.

"Gather Groups has enabled us to bring those involved with our organization together in a way we had previously been unable to achieve," said Cynthia Close, a documentary filmmaker.

"We've created a high-energy environment around a shared passion which has only fostered further membership participation. Being part of the overall Gather community has helped draw attention to our documentaries and brings out members' new perspectives, ideas and experiences."

Selasa, 06 Juli 2010

Online Payday Lending And The CAN-SPAM Act

The Internet-based sector of the payday loan industry began in the 1990’s, when the CAN-SPAM Act didn’t yet exist.. That’s because the Act didn’t exist back then. But as the popularity of the payday lending industry has grown, along with the popularity of all sorts of online businesses, it was time for the false claims and the intrusive nature of e-mail marketing to come under control once and for all. When the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 became reality, the online payday lending industry took notice.

The goal of CAN-SPAM, short for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act was to set standards for distinguishing between e-mails that are legitimate and those which are SPAM. The sending of SPAM is against the law. Since the Act applies to all businesses that use email in their operations, most payday lenders found themselves needing to understand this new law that outlined severe consequences including penalties and jail.

Online payday lending and the CAN-SPAM Act

The CAN-SPAM Act delineates guidelines for using email addresses for the purpose of sending and receiving electronically transmitted marketing materials. It is an extensive act, and here are some of the basics.

First of all, the Act prohibits the sending of unsolicited email. New online payday lending websites are springing up every day and each is competing hard to steer the attention of the masses in its own direction. Mass emailing messages with flashy advertisements and discounted offers is a popular way to steer new customers to this lucrative business.

One way to distinguish a good online payday lending business from the “bad” ones is by never agreeing to do business with a payday loan company that sends you unsolicited commercial email. Any legitimate company would never purposely violate the CAN-SPAM Act so you’d have to wonder about the legitimacy of a payday loan company that would intentionally do so.

The CAN-SPAM Act also states that the information in e-mail headers and subject lines must not to be falsified. If you find yourself the willing recipient of advertising from an online payday lending company and you are tempted to respond to the e-mail, go ahead and do so. If the information to which you responded turns out to be incorrect or misleading, that company could be in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act.

Choose online payday lending businesses that adhere to the CAN-SPAM Act

Another section of the CAN-SPAM Act states that any email message you receive must include an opt-out link. The link is a way of notifying the sender that you no longer want to receive email from that sender. If the email lacks such opt-out opportunity, the online payday lending business is violating the CAN-SPAM Act. Again, that’s probably one online payday lender you should stay away from.

Even though most online payday lending businesses are legitimate, some aren’t. The CAN-SPAM Act helps weed out the bad online payday lending companies so you don’t have to.

Senin, 05 Juli 2010

Make A Living On-Line

Is it possible to make a part time or full time living on the Internet? Can you make enough money to make your time worthwhile?

According to all the "gurus" you can easily make a LOT of money by buying their program and doing EXACTLY what they tell you to do.

Is all of this hype really true? The answer is yes and no. It really is true that a stay at home Mom or a student in need of extra income or a full time worker needing a part-time income can make money on the Internet. It is also true that a lot of people are making a full-time living and even becoming rich on the Internet.

The question is, "Can you do it too"? Again the answer is maybe yes and maybe no. It depends on how much time you are willing to invest in studying the techniques and learn the methods you need for Internet Marketing (IM) success.

The fastest way to earn extra money online is to sell on Ebay. You can start right now, today, and in 3 days be paid online for items you sell. There are a lot of "get rich quick" tutorials for sale on how to make it on Ebay, but you don't need one. You can simply register at the Ebay site, read their tutorial and get started selling items you have around the house.

A lot of people make a few extra dollars to a few hundred extra dollars a month on Ebay. Others make a lot more. Ebay or any business you get into online or in a physical business location has the potential to make money. Lots of people succeed in business and a lot fail. Your success or failure will depend on how well you prepare, how much you study and how much energy you put into the project.

The great thing about online businesses compared to brick and mortar stores is it usually costs a lot less to get started. For instance, getting stared selling on Ebay doesn't cost anything. You only pay fees when you run an Ebay auction ad.

Once you have some money rolling in on Ebay, you can invest in one of the guru courses that you can find in any search engine by doing a search for, "Internet marketing".

Do you have to buy a course? No, you can find free information online to help you get started. The advantage of a course is that it is all in one place.

Every course you find will offer you good advice. It is hard to say which is best. Just like some people love Fords and hate Chevy's, it is the same with IM guru courses. The secret is to do a little online research, pick one and then follow it.

Internet Marketing can be as easy as creating a simple website and putting other company's ads on the site. You get paid when someone buys a product or even when someone clicks on an ad. You don't even need a product to sell; you only have other's ads on your web pages.

Ebay is a make money today proposition. For most people, Internet Marketing is a get rich slow process. Yes, some people make money within days or weeks of starting on online business.

There are no hard and fast rules on how long it will take you to make money online or how much you can make. It all depends on how hard you are willing to work and how much time you are willing to devote to creating a new business.

Minggu, 04 Juli 2010

Online Business And The Solution Driven Mindset

I can't begin to relate how rewarding it is to have a solution driven mindset. This is the manner of thinking that looks at a difficulty and tries to find a solution, as opposed to excuses or avoidance. Online business is a business like any other, and problems occasionally arise. You might also fail to reach your goals once in a while, and both of these are instances where a solution driven mindset works so very well.

Some of you may know it better as "no excuses", but I see no reason to be harsh about it here. If you want to be successful in online business, you'll need to think in a way that solves your problems so you can meet your goals. Excuses are unproductive, and avoiding the problem isn't going to work for you either. The whole point of a solution driven mindset is to overcome your problems so you can make money in your online business and live your own life.

This mindset can be summed up as follows:

- If you have a problem, find a way to fix or mitigate it.

- If you see a problem coming, find a way to avert it.

- If you fail to accomplish something, figure out why so you don't fail again.

All well and good, but how do you solve problems? The first and foremost way is with learning. Knowledge is power. You'll need to know about how things work online to run an online business. This is less difficult than you might think. The Internet has it's own way of doing things, like anything else. But, it's not as difficult to comprehend as it may appear at a glance. All those complicated-sounding terms have explanations that aren't that mindblowing if you'll simply learn them.

The second is to act. Knowing the solution does you no good if you don't do something with it. I'm not talking about panic, which is an exceptional way to insure what you fear most comes to pass. I mean acting on your solution and putting it into effect. Come up with an effective plan to solve the problem and then use it.

Last, remember that problems don't get solved by any of the following:

- Ignoring them: Problems don't exist only in your mind. They can hurt you even if you don't want to know they're present.

- Giving up and making excuses: If you can't solve a problem at first, don't give up. You can either learn what it takes to solve it, or find someone who can solve it for you. Excuses aren't helpful, as no volume of them has ever made a problem go away. If they did, the world would be a problem-free utopia.

- Allowing a problem or failure to overcome you: Problems and failures happen. It's a fact of life and not a reflection on you. If they get rough, take a bit of time to make yourself feel better, then analyze your performance and try again.

- Not averting them: It's a blessing when you can see a problem coming, although I know it causes a lot of people heartburn when they do. If you see a potential trouble on the horizon, act to insure it never comes to pass. An ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure. It'll take less time, money, and effort to solve problems or avert them before they become big problems.

- Panic: It's worth mentioning this one a second time. I've actually seen former supervisors do this and bring their own worst fears to life in a frenzy of so-called 'preventative action'. To panic is not the equivalent of taking something seriously. Taking something seriously is the equivalent of taking something seriously. Panic is a good way to waste a lot of time and money. So suppress panic when things look tough, and just cut straight to the 'take it seriously' part.

I highly encourage those of you intending to start your own online business to develop a solution driven mindset. The path to wealth online can best be reached when you solve your problems and overcome your failures, which this type of mindset can do.

Sabtu, 03 Juli 2010

Innovative Solutions for Internet Branding

Since the advent of the Internet, computers have changed the way people work, play and communicate.

Today's children are learning by computer games. Today's businesses are building stronger relationships and experiencing significant change in organization and filing, research and operation - and even advertising and marketing - through their desktops.

There are more than 200 million Internet users, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. To keep up with the rapidly expanding Internet marketplace, many businesses are turning to companies like Centale Inc. (OTC BB: CNTL), based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which helps communicate, market, brand and advertise on the Internet.

The company's "next generation tools," like Catalyst EV, Music On Demand for Windows Media Player, custom Web browsers, instant messengers, media players and toolbars are used in all types of organizations where the goal is to build a community; communicate with subscribers or customers; develop new revenue channels; and increase brand exposure, traffic and customer loyalty.

With Catalyst EV, businesses are building effective marketing campaigns through a programmable desktop application that can be distributed as an e-mail attachment or downloadable via the customer Web site. This cutting-edge technology has Centale customers communicating with their audience, one-to-one direct to the desktop in audio, video, rich media, animation or text format.

Centale's universal instant messenger connects simultaneously to AOL, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber, IRC, Napster and other networks. Music on Demand is a desktop application that allows users to find virtually any song or video in the world and play it instantly without downloading any files. Centale plans to unveil an iTunes-compatible version of Music on Demand to attract digital-music listeners.

Music On Demand for Windows Media Player includes a publishing tool that allows webmasters to create and list their songs in the search directory.

Centale's custom-made branded browsers offer Internet security that blocks pop-ups and sexually explicit material. The browsers include an efficient search engine, an easy-to-use interface for people who are visually and audibly impaired and multilingual menus and translators.

Jumat, 02 Juli 2010

A Good Web Site Is a Web Site That Works!

How can you know if your web site is a good website, or what is a good website?

A good website is a website that works, if you have created your website to sell some products, you can say that your website is a good website if it does sell products.

* But are you selling as many products as a good website sells, or you are only selling a few products now and then?
* Are your sales pages good enouth to consider your website a good website?
* Do you have enough visitors to your website to consider it a good website?
* Do you have enough return traffic or all your visitors are first time visitors?
* Do your visitors stay enough time to consider your website a good website?
* How can you know for sure if your website is a good website?
* What kind of questions should you be making to yourself to know if your webite is a good website

ASK YOURSELF THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS TO KNOW IF YOUR WEBSITE IS A GOOD WEBSITE

* Who cares?
* What are you looking for?
* What kind of visitors do you have?
* Which is your priority?
* How should you mesure your success?

WHO CARES?

If the website belongs to a company, then the web pages don´t belong to a single person, there´s not only one person that can say if you have a good website, so you will have to round up the people that are vitally interested

You will find the techno-geeks, the sales people, the public relations people, etc. etc. and everyone of them will have their own idea of what is a good website.

But once again as the website belongs to ALL the company, the people on your company who care enough to judge the website, should be asked to join the team and take some responsability about the design of the website.

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

Every one of the people who cares about the website will have their own idea of what they want out of a good website. Many of them will just be talking on behalf of their own departments, but you must force them to think on behalf of the company.

Every department can have their own objetives, goals and aspirations, every one has his own idea about what is a good website, but they need to think as a company, and the conclusion must satisfy most of them, and if you can, your must create a good webpage for all of them.

WHAT KIND OF VISITORS DO YOU HAVE?

Every website has first time visitors, returning visitors, curious, buyers, people that arrived by mistake, people that spend a short time at the website, people that spend a long time at the website, etc.

What kind of visitors do you want, the ones that show more often, the ones that read the most pages, buys more stuff, buys more frequently or spend the most money?

Which are the most important visitors for your company, to think that you have a good website?

Once you get them you can be satisfied that your site is a good website

WHICH IS YOUR PRIORITY?

Once you know what everybody wants, you will have to prioritize everybody´s goals.

Will you go after increasing visits, selling more products per visit, provide more information about the company and it´s products, improving customer satisfaction.

After a discussion that will depend on how many people is giving their own opinion about what cares most, you´ll end up with your own list of priorities, and the ones that will not be satisfied with their request, at leas will know why.

HOW SHOULD YOU MESURE YOUR SUCCESS?

How can you be sure that the numbers that you are getting are telling you that your site is a good website, It depends...

* If your main priority is to get visitors, then www.Alexa.com and it´s ranking can help you on that, but you can also use some javacript and or cookies.
* If your main goal is revenue then the sales will have the leading voice.
* If you are going after customer satisfaction then you must agree with the other members of your company how will you gather satisfaction data and how will you weigh it.

All the information that you gather must help you take business decisions. It´s not a matter of getting as much information as you can, because too much information can be as bad as not enough information.

Make sure that you keep on measuring your success, make it part of a constant improvement process, because the web changes month after month.

Then you´ll really be able to tell if your website is a good website

Written by Dr. Roberto A. Bonomi